Writings By Location| None More Wet: Four Days at Corcovado | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
Back at the beach, Carlos told us stories over lunch about how he'd worked on some movie sets that had been filmed in Costa Rica, such as Congo and Christopher Columbus. (Apparently Costa Rica only attracts bad movies.) We'd then spend the rest of the afternoon swimming, lounging around in hammocks, playing "beach baseball" with coconuts and almonds from the nearby trees, and playing hangman in the sand with Etta.
When our boat driver picked us up, he showed us that night's dinner: a three-foot long mackerel. It couldn't have been a nicer day.
The fourth day, our trip to San Josecito Beach, was actually my birthday. It didn't exactly start out as the best of days: I nearly did a faceplant into the mud going out of the tent at 3 in the morning to go to the bathroom, the boat ride to and from Isla del Cano definitely didn't sit well with my stomach, and although I saw no fish in our few minutes of snorkeling, the several half-inch sized jellyfish did manage to spot my arm. Plus, I also forgot to take our sunscreen lotion out of my pocket before diving into the water, so some frigatebird or something is now either dead or extremely well-protected from UV rays.
And if that wasn't enough, my feet over the last few days had gotten blistered and chafed from walking, to the point where it was agony just to take a few steps. All attempts to protect the sensitive areas with moleskin and band-aids were exercises in futility, as they all just kept coming off in the water.
But in spite of my own bad luck, those around me were successful in making up for it. Later in the day, after our jaunt to San Josecito beach, Fernando caught me in a Costa Rican tradition. Apparently, the local custom is for the birthday celebrant to be "egged" by his friends. Giving Erin and Kim one egg each, they chased me down, and popped 'em right on my head. Standing there with raw egg dripping down my face and onto my shoulders, I did my best to take it gracefully, mainly by running into each of the girls with my egg-covered head. It was the best motivation I'd had all week for taking a shower with only cold water.
 |
| Birthday Card |
And the birthday wishes weren't all that unsettling, either. As we walked to our boat in the morning, I found that Erin and Kim had made me a "birthday card" in the sand. During the day, they also blew up a bag of balloons they'd bought in San Jose before coming here, and strung them to the rafters with dental floss. (If only they'd thought to pack a disco ball.) And at dinner time, Fernando and Carlos came slinking by again: not with eggs this time, but with a birthday cake.
It was the furthest I'd ever been from "home" on my birthday, but it felt more like home than any celebration I'd had in years.
