I Used To Blog For Oxford -- The Costa Rica Diaries, Volume 2

"Nothing's ever gonna happen my dear
If we don't make it happen
Sleep away the day if you want to
But I got something that I gotta do."
~~ The Eels, 'Saturday Morning'

We are lost in the Savage Jungle.

The roads are too rough and too narrow for a charter bus, so when we reached the fishing village of Quepos, we transferred to a school bus. That’s right: a genuine, bona fide, break-your-fingers-fumbling-with-the-window-latches American yellow school bus. Only ours had been painted blue, which did nothing to mask its origins. When school buses no longer meet American safety standards, they are sold to countries in Central America with lower standards, or no standards at all. Now, 36 college students are digging their nails into cheap green vinyl, nervously laughing as the bus lurches through each pothole. I swear it’s the same bus I rode every day in middle school. This is a different sort of Jungle, but the dangers are the same: we are surrounded by poisonous serpents and merciless parasites, and I have no guidebook telling me how to survive.

We head back to the main road, and ask directions from a man and his daughter, who are riding their bikes to town. But either the directions are faulty or our driver doesn't follow them, because we are clearly off track. Our road is too narrow for the bus to turn around, and once in awhile it forks, and the driver is guessing our next move. The occasional leafy branch pokes through the open windows. Shrill screams sound as the branch thumps down the length of the bus.

Finally, we head back to the main road, and our driver asks directions from the same man. We promptly become lost, again, and return to the road and the bike man for a third time. This time, the man gets onto the bus, his daughter openly ogling the American gringos that just kidnapped her father.

This will scar her for life.

Now the bus is driving faster – the driver has renewed confidence after beating the Jungle twice before. This time, we come to a bridge, which isn’t so much a bridge as a narrow wooden skid thrown haphazardly across an irrigation ditch. This raises two questions:

1) Is this makeshift bridge wide enough for a school bus to drive across it?

2) Can this bridge support the weight of a bus, 35 students, a driver, a guide, and a pile of luggage?

I am not an engineer, but I have Serious Doubt. Our driver obviously has the same Doubt, but the guide motions him on, telling him the bridge will hold. I do not trust this man; he’s gotten us lost twice already. But the decision is not mine. The bus lurches forward.

Pura Vida.

We make it across, and the students erupt in cheers. But the joy in Mudville is short-lived, because we cross a half-dozen more of these wooden death traps, each more rickety than the last. At one point, one of the rear tires starts to slip, and the bus leans to the side. We’re sure it will tip, and a few people scream in terror. I am not a fool; terror is a waste of time. I am planning my escape route, and deciding if any of these Fearful Savages are worth dragging along.

Eventually, our guide points down a road. This is the one, he’s sure of it. We hold our breath as the bus jerks along. Daylight has gone; we will pitch our tents in darkness. But the relief of surviving this Jungle Expedition will more than make up for a few awkward bumps in the dark. When we reach the end of the road, there is a gate made of chain link fencing material. A padlock prevents us from opening the gate, and there is no sign of Life anywhere around it. This is a creepy feeling in the Jungle. Yet, we must be close: the markings of Manuel Antonio National Park adorn a crusty white sign barely hanging onto the gate. This is our destination, but the bus cannot pass, nor can it turn around. We are Stranded.

Two of our people disappear around the gate, searching for a ranger to help us. There is a moment of breathless silence, then a mad scramble off the bus. Those who haven’t relieved themselves in their pants already relieve themselves now, behind a bush or on a tree trunk. We mill about, wondering what to do next. Some people cling to the gate like forlorn prisoners.

How fitting, I think. We ARE prisoners. The Jungle is our cage, the trees our bars. There is no way we’ll make it out of here. Not in one piece, anyway.

Just as we begin to think our friends will never return, they come running up the trail. We can only see their silhouettes, because they are being chased by two obnoxiously bright lights.

“Get on the bus!” someone yells, though I can’t tell if it is coming from our side of the fence or theirs.

A wild rush follows – people are desperately squeezing through the bus doors.

This is it, I think to myself. We're doomed. They’re going to shoot. The animals have guns, and this time they’re hunting US.

Normally, this sort of Wild behavior would be cause for panic. But I am a New Man, with a New Motto.

Pura Vida, I think to myself.

I stay to make sure my friends are safely around the gate before I board the bus. It turns out our fearless friends are not being chased at all, but followed by a park ranger in a red pickup truck. He opens the gate, and the bus squeezes through. Our guide is roughly correct; we are a mere 100 yards from our campsite. But the bus cannot make the drive, so we throw our gear into the ranger truck or over our backs and walk to the site. I help the girls in our group pitch their tent before digging out Carney’s bag. That Maniac had avoided our bus ride altogether, spending the day buying supplies in Quepos with Matt, the director of Ascomoti.

Matt and Carney roll up just then, completely oblivious to our Misadventure, partly because we set up camp considerably fast in the dark, and partly because they had been drinking the entire ride back. Carney is drunk, the mad bastard, and completely incapable of helping me pitch our tent. I enlist the help of Bunny, and pick a nice, soft patch of ground for the tent. Unfortunately, this initial choice is a poor one. We stake the tent on a mound of flesh-eating ants. The Jungle is Savage, and I am clearly incapable of handling such ferocity. I jump and yell and curse and swat my legs and feet. I keep my cool long enough to snatch the tent away, and my next choice proves more suitable.

Matt and Carney have brought the group pizza, but by the time our tent is pitched the pizza is gone. Fortunately, they have also brought us beer, and my mood lightens considerably.

Pura Vida.

A math formula: 0 food + 3 beers = warm, fuzzy feeling. This was WAY more fun to study than Calculus.

Finally, we are settled, and we survey our surroundings. We are literally at the edge of the ocean. We’d been vaguely aware of this fact when setting up camp, but now we can fully appreciate our good fortune. We are Wild and Weird American tourists. Volunteers. Voluntourists. This is our own private beach; we have special permission from the Costa Rican government to camp here. Quepos is on the West Coast, but we still feel the slow Caribbean pulse.

There is little romance in this country. In its place is a sort of slow-motion desire to rebel, a lust without urgency, a Carnal need for Savage Behavior, incited by the vicious surroundings.

But that comes on other nights. This first night is held in reverence. A feeling of appreciation for our current situation: we are, after all, in a tropical paradise. This feeling is coupled with a deep respect for the Savage nature that surrounds us. There is Jungle, there is Ocean. We are on the cusp of two of nature’s wildest mysteries. Our camp is on the schism that erupts when two Savage elements collide. Our adventures are unforeseeable, and are bound to be unforgettable.

Pura Vida.

Carney and I meet up with Bunny and another group member, Ashley. We set out along the beach. The shores of Costa Rica are obnoxiously wonderful. The phytoplanktons – or more specifically, dinoflagellates – create a peculiar natural phenomenon known as bioluminescence. Their bodies produce a chemical reaction that causes the organisms to glow, similar fireflies. The shallow beaches churn them up, and the result is that breaking waves glow in the dark. This is mesmerizing. Staring at those waves will never get old. Bioluminescence is not limited to the waters. Enormous fireflies are zipping all across the beach, flicker-flashing their peculiar form of Mating Morse Code.

If this scene is not sweet enough for you, try to imagine the sky. This is a country with some of the lowest pollution rates in the world. We are on a private beach, which means no lights within miles of where we stand. It is a cloudless night, and we can see approximately 60 gazillion more stars than we are used to seeing – especially those from L.A. An infinite sky, a seemingly infinite ocean and a private beach lined with palm trees. A group of 38 college students on their Spring Break.

Pura Vida.

The group and I walk down the beach. There is a dark lump of peninsula in the distance, and that is our goal. But it proves too far, and we turn back to camp. When we get there, we find that most people have gone to sleep. I don’t blame them. In one day, they morphed from American Voluntourists to Jungle prisoners to bedraggled castaways on a deserted beach. Let them sleep.

Carney disappears, and while I talk to the girls, our other group member approaches us.

“You guys abandoned me! Where’d you go?”

We feel bad. We already left one group member behind: a government conspiracy at LAX held her up for a few days. And tonight, we’d left one more behind while we took a long walk on the beach. We apologize.

“It’s ok,” she says. “I just wondered where everyone went.”

She isn’t whining. She is stating a fact. I like that about her.

Carney returns with a piece of rope tied around his damn forehead like a pirate bandana. He whips out a huge knife. I brace myself for action. The knife turns out to be a Ginsu knife, one of those, “it slices, it dices, it-makes-the-perfect-babysitter-for-children-you-hate, all-around-handy, as-seen-on-TV” contraptions. It is not, however, suited for Carney’s purpose. He grabs a coconut off the beach, sets it carefully on the ground in front of him and attacks it with furious determination, like a 30-year-old comic book geek losing his virginity.

A curious circle forms around us. Another student, Alex, is given a more practical knife. The two become engaged in a furious race to determine who has the bigger penis. Carney slices through a thick layer, and we all hear a dull thunk.

“I hit something!” Carney yells.

Maybe it’s buried treasure, I think to myself.

Aloud, I tell him what the treasure is: “That’s the coconut, you fool.”

Carney stares in bewilderment at the scraps of fibers on the ground before him.

“You mean this is just the husk?!”

Eventually, both men crack through. We pass the coconuts around the circle. We drink deep. The milk is warm but good. I retrieve my bottle of rum (more on that later), and we pour a shot or two into one of the coconuts, and pass that around as well. The rum is Good, our evening a Success. We’ve hacked into nature’s Coconut Code, and drank deep from the well of Wilderness.

We went to bed.

Pura Vida.

~ Sketch E.