Puerto Viejo / Costa Rica · 2014   cloudy sunshine

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   I remember them fondly as some of the better bad days. It had all been pura vida for a little while, until it hadn’t. Suddenly it was more like meh vida. I don’t remember the exact order of events, but it all happened within a few days: I lost my credit card and someone thought finders keepers and went on a generous shopping spree; after a late night or early morning swim I had to remove a whole bunch of sea urchin splinters from my toes with a needle (one stayed in there to become a permanent part of me); and at some point I got sick like few times before and never after. But friends were made over these mini-hardships and once again people helped me out with money when I was penniless (and didn’t even let me pay them back, because “hoy por ti, mañana por mi”).

For better or worse, I never got to sport the uniform of the surfer dude army, uniting locals and aspiring locals, who, armed with lowrider bikes and surfboards, surfed their time away semi-professionally – not really as though there was no tomorrow, but more as though there was always a tomorrow. And as much as the life was pure, it all felt a little too easy, too smooth, too American. So I took off to Nicaragua and the rest is history in the making.

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a glimpse

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