The natural world is always nearby in CR, wildness reaching its fingers always into civilization, as if trying to take it back. Reclaim it. The jungle sings all night. Rain falls on my jacket in sheets, the tendrils of hair that escaped my hood soaked and sticking to my face. In the pool a massive toad sits, enjoying a night time swim. He is displeased when we disturb him to get in ourselves. Within the rainforest, life exists more vigorously, more intensely, than anywhere else on earth. Every square inch is carpeted with layer upon layer of organic material, living and dead. Leaves, bugs, butterflies, birds and mammals and strange lizards, hibiscus so big they could be worn like hats, heliconia flowers and birds of paradise in bright candyshop colors.
Walking back to my hotel room one afternoon, I see dark shapes in one of the trees. Climbing silhouettes. I ask the handyman if they are monkeys and he smiles at me, a gaptoothed grin that cracks his leathery face in two, eyes twinkling.
Si, claro. Monos. Yes, of course! Monkeys. As if this is the most ordinary thing on earth. They jump and swing with a strange sort of grace. I stand there in my bikini watching them, and the handyman chuckles and heads off to finish his work, amused by the American girl transfixed on the lawn.
Not just monkeys, in fact, but howler monkeys. They call to one another loudly, dolefully, and their noise is the most savage and bizarre thing I have ever heard. The Costa Ricans are unfazed, because to Ticos, nature’s glory is part of the everyday. They take great care in protecting it, respecting it. There is no place the monkeys are not allowed to howl. A few days before the end of my trip, I saw a young man not much older than me, maybe twenty, in faux gangster clothes (beanie, long gold chain) take off his flip flop, put a land stranded puffer fish in his sandal and hand deliver it to the ocean--fully clothed.
The result of this stewardship is a country filled with tropical wonders, amazing discoveries hidden behind each bend of their rocky unpaved roads. IIn two weeks in CR, I walked on a suspension bridge above the rainforest canopy and saw thirty shades of green beneath me. Swam in a thermal river, warmed by forces beneath the earth so that the water is as hot as any jacuzzi. The water was colored by jewel toned algaes, torqiouse and emerald. I rubbed thick gray mud on my skin, and when I washed it away, felt my face smooth and soft, made new. I hiked to the top of a mountain and saw before me not one but two volcanoes, distinguished and strong. I flew over the jungle on a zipline 700 feet in the air, and felt what the birds must feel. I have swum in the clear Pacific, watched the palms sway and the children play in the sand, bathed in sunsets painted in red, gold, lavender. Every day, I found something new in Costa Rica, that little country endowed with so much to share. I became rich with memories, and each night I fell asleep to the sounds of the cicadas in the dark, and I dreamt of the beautiful things that little paradiso had to show me.
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