Nosara, day one

This is my second time in the growing beach town of Nosara on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Two days ago I flew down to the capital city of San Jose, which is I think the only city in Costa Rica that can be considered a city. Even though San Jose is a modern city and the only city here with tall concrete buildings, it is still hard to send a letter there, and most people living in the ‘suburbs’ (surrounding hills) of San Jose don’t have a mailbox and need to get things delivered to their office building, for example.

The transportation system in Costa Rica is quite underdeveloped, so it can be bewildering to try and catch public transportation out of the city. Nothing can be searched on google, and most schedules are not listed online. If you ask someone, they will add you to a Whatsapp chat or send you a photo of a laminated bus schedule. Luckily I have some experience. Still, it’s not clear which of the handful of bus terminals I need to depart from to catch my bus to Nosara, and I do this from memory. Even on the spanish website where I reserved tickets, there are no instructions about where to board. However, the moment you ask anyone for help, things get done surprisingly quickly and efficiently as everyone is well interconnected and extremely caring. This is the unspoken rule of Costa Rica, there is no official system and you are forever falling through the cracks, but everything serendipitously works out that leaves you feeling a warm sense of community, and a dash of the miraculous.

San Jose is crowded and there are markets with clothes that look like the inventory of a Reebok discount store. Locals are shy, timid, and quite kind. The men are alot more outgoing than the women. I tried to compliment a cashier girl once on her nice top and she was too shy to respond. Everything is a bit worn-in, yet cheerful. From the fading, candy-colored stucco architecture, to the creatively bold and youthful murals. There is nothing exciting or flashy or risky going on, this is much more subdued than one would expect from a Latin American country. Things here are calm and almost boring, in the best way possible. The history of Costa Rica reveals some surprising and fascinating twists and brilliant political maneuvering that left it untouched by colonialism, or as much as one can. At one point, they negotiated with America to allow them to provide people with free healthcare, at the cost of disbanding their army, assuring America that although they were socialist-leaning, they would not be a communist military threat. Environmental issues are a big focus here, and a large part of their school curriculum. The country leads the world in using 99% of its energy coming from renewable sources. An anecdote I read in the the memoirs of a young Che Guevara comes to mind:

…where we met a professor of psychiatry, Dr. Valenza, another good talker who told us war anecdotes and others much like the following: “The other day I went to our local cinema to see a film with Cantinflas. Everyone laughed but I understood nothing. This was not so strange; the rest of the people couldn’t understand anything either. So, why were they laughing? In reality, they laugh at themselves, each one of them was laughing at a part of themselves. We’re a young country, without tradition or culture, we’ve barely been discovered. And so they laugh at all the blights our infantile civilization has not been able to fix… But now then, has North America fully matured, despite its skyscrapers, its cars, its good fortune? Has it left its youth behind? No, the differences are in form only, they are not fundamental; all America is a sister in this. Watching Cantinflas, I understood Pan- Americanism!”

Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries

The 7-hour bus ride to Nosara takes place in a coach bus, well-seasoned with dust, sweat and dirt from travelling the long and hot tropical dirt roads. The aged coach bus reminds me of the way you keep a coat of oil and the remnants of the last meal on an iron skillet, to deepen the flavour. There is a certain temperament that prefers things to be dirty and worn with the memory of adventure, and I am one of them. The landscape of moderately sized hill-mountains speckled with red tin roofs and handmade houses are so familiar to me now, on my fourth trip, that they no longer spark the sharp excitement of travelling to an exotic country. Yes, other places have taller mountains, deeper valleys, thicker rainforest, stranger looking people and towns and road signs, but this is my country. If I could, I would take my watering can and water every single flower in its jungle. I would put pennies in every beggar’s cup, I would make silly faces at every child, and ask every neighbour who walked by if they feel happy right now. There is something about Costa Rica that opens my heart fully, safely, humbly, gently, unglamorously. From the first friend I have ever made, and to the last expat who gave me a lift earlier this evening, every person I met here has bared their whole soul upon connecting. Some souls were damaged yes, and some people have hurt and betrayed and deceived me, but still, they have bared their hearts of darkness. Here, my forgiveness flows freely like a river at night, ever-rolling into a dark eternity. Emotions stir from some unfamiliar place within me and I start to realize that if I ever had a true love in my lifetime, this is it.

The man sitting next to me is clearly a hipster bohemian, (which I am aesthetically transitioning into myself, the longer I spend time here) with hair longer and prettier than mine and many tattoos. In his left ear is a long pointed corkscrew seashell in place of jewellery. The passengers of the bus are mostly locals travelling for work or to visit family, with the occasional student tourist or backpacker, which speaks for most of the demographic that makes up Costa Rica. I travel with my head sticking out of the window for most of the trip, just to feel the speed of the bus winding through the mountains and to feel small between the walls of tumbling monstera leaves. This is probably dangerous, I think, but I can’t help it, I do it every time.

After getting a small serving of arroz (rice) and ensalada (salad) for dinner from the rest stop cafeteria, the sun quickly sets. Our travelling ensemble eat quietly while watching the entertainment of the setting sun. What a slow life this is. Getting back on track for our trip, we’ve made progress since I last fell asleep with my mouth embarrassingly open the whole time. The view out of my window is totally dark now, with a faint glow in the pitch darkness that silhouettes the mountains far away. I am delighted to see many stars again after my years spent in the light-polluted city. We are further away from the capital now and civilization wrestles and gives in to nature here. The jungle dominates the roads and farm settlements. In the dark, it is easy to drift into a fantasy that we are in prehistory, watching the dawn of time behind those dark mountain lands. In the seven hours I have generous time to contemplate what adventures are ahead for this trip, and what I was feeling the last time I took this same bus route to this town. How I was visiting a small town that consisted of exactly one road, a town so small that its population consisted almost entirely of one extended family. I was invited into the home of young locals whose father built their house with his own hands, a house with no toilet paper. To my surprise, he pulled out a Macbook and talked about business plans and social media platforms and youtube engagement strategies. He wanted a sounding board for a surf school channel he was starting with his brother.

It is a total juxtaposition of civilization meeting rural life, where expectations collapse. Most people here, particularly young people, have grown up exposed to the most progressive of nomadic travellers, probably the wildest freethinkers of our times, including the now-trending digital nomads. Mingling with these groups has affected the locals immensely. Most of them have never left their home town, so I don’t blame them for not knowing that they have become some of the most philosophically sophisticated people you will ever meet. Like the ancient city of Budapest that thrived at the crossroads of continents, ticos (the official nickname of Costa Ricans) have grown up at the crossroads of western civilization, rural sovereignty, environmental and indigenous conservationism, and a steady stream of international students, artists, researchers, travellers, athletes, and businessfolk looking for an answer to a different kind of future.

The coach bus arrives in town and it’s already very dark and very late. I have to give instructions to the driver to drop me off at the town grocery store for me to catch my stop. The Airbnb owner picks me up in a tuktuk, which is like a cab on three wheels and no doors. He says it’s cheaper than maintaining a car, so this is what he uses as his main mode of transportation. We have barely crossed the road but we already have plans to go to salsa classes together. I’m friends with the teacher, I say out loud while I wonder if the friends I made last year will remember me. The social life of a traveller can be ruthlessly transient for the thousands of people crossing paths for only a few days at a time in a small tourist town.

I woke up the next day to the sound of actual roosters at 5 in the morning. Wax earplugs, apple max headphones and a pillow could not drown out nature’s wake up alarm. My only option is to sleep earlier. Unable to stay indoors, I found a yoga class which was a 1.5 hour hike by foot. I was happy to make the journey in my new surroundings but an old man offered me a ride as I started walking on the side of the dirt road. It only took a split second of deliberating if I should get into a strange man’s rusty car to remember I’m not in Canada anymore and the crime rate is actually lower here. So I hop in. He said his name was Floyd (like Pink) and he had moved here from Vancouver in 1999, and back then this was just a fishing town, with nearly nothing but jungle. I have heard of this story before from disgruntled ‘original’ expats. Now it extends to a main downtown centre closer to the mountains where most locals live, drink, farm, attend Sunday service, and do groceries, and an expensive beach tourist area close to the ocean, where avenues of expats live in their million-dollar modern glass sculptural homes and raise their international-schooled children who do yoga with their preschool math lessons. One main (and mostly paved) road collects the dirt roads coming in from the beach and its boutiques from the south to the north, connecting Nosara the neighbouring beach-towns of Samara to the south and Ostional nature reserve to the north. But ‘town’ is a loose term, since this is still mostly ocean, jungle, and nature.

Walking back from class, there is no sidewalk, and I walk precariously on the side of the road with cars driving fast around me. It’s terrifying, until it isn’t. Like most experiences here, you just learn to trust people. I’m aching from yoga, the sun is hot, and road dust and diesel exhaust is swirling in a thick cloud around me, and I have 55 minutes of hiking to go. I gotta get a bike, I think. I’m the only girl in this town that walks everywhere and people are starting to notice. The local men make faces at me as they pass by that only really bother me when I’m too tired and sweaty. Anyway, I think to myself, I’m not home anymore. That’s the point. When the novelty wears off, and the journey just becomes another logistic to solve, and I’m not sure if the new people I meet will become friends or lovers or strangers or enemies or a heartbreak, the point is simply that I am not home, and anywhere I am not home is freedom.