smagik

It is the rainy season in Costa Rica and though it begins gently enough every afternoon, by the time one song ends it has turned into a deluge the likes of which New Mexico can not imagine. On our walk to the beach we pass several pastures where horses and donkeys munch on long, lush, green grass. I tell them what the horses back home eat, but they don’t care. Pura Vida.

Next to those pastures we pass sign after sign advertising villas that can be ours, realtors to help us find our dream home, For Sale signs, and multiple lots under some stage of construction. Playa Avellanas, a tiny community too small to call a town, will be unrecognizable soon. I have never been anywhere in the midst of development like this; I always either came later when hotels already existed and felt like they’d been there forever or earlier, when hammocks for rent under a palapa were the only option.

My boyfriend and his boys surf and though at one point I thought I would learn, I now read on the beach and watch the crabs, the butterflies, and the surfers. One surfer in particular, a local man who tries to teach tourists how to ride a wave and other times dances on a longboard or surfs in a headstand, is my favorite; he looks like how I believe all humans are meant to feel; totally alive, present, and vibrant.

Pura Vida.

Today as I sat on the beach I thought about the 2023 Netflix movie “Leave the World Behind”. I love that movie and think of it frequently as the world devolves more and more into chaos and the idea of leaving it behind seems both appealing and impossible. Where is behind? We are staying in a house with air conditioning and wifi and a level of comfort many of houses we passed on the way didn’t appear to have. I am grateful for both and aware they are a luxury being paid for in many ways. Not far away there are developments that look like they could be in Santa Monica or Florida, paved, gated, and growing. The price for food and hotels is comparable and possibly more than we spend at home and the Canadian man we are renting a place from explains how imbalanced the local economy is because of ex-pats like himself, tourists like us, Airbnb, and change that comes like a tidal wave, so much, so fast. I wonder how those who are from here feel? I can only imagine.

Later we go to an Italian restaurant owned by a couple from Rimini, Fellini’s home town in Italy, as noted on their menu. We sit in a lush courtyard, order a pizza, and listen to the Americans next to us ask about various ingredients on the menu as they try to figure out what will work best with their restrictive diets. I judge them. Just leave it all behind, I think. What’s the point of traveling just to want it all to be the same?

After a day on the beach with no cell service, my phone begins to ding as I approach the house with its wifi; news updates, messages, and things not to be missed. I could have tried harder to leave it behind but there is part of me that wants to know about the people in Minneapolis defending their neighbors from ICE and to hear about the severe thunderstorm that hit Albuquerque last night; kind of like the part that wants to sleep with AC when it is dripping wet with humidity outside. As much as I hate to admit it, I don’t want to leave it all behind.

We head home tomorrow and I hope to take some of the headstand surfer’s attitude and presence with me because, though the horrors persist, so does this pura vida bella.