Fishing For Coconuts

Fishing for Coconuts is about my much-anticipated arrival to the Pacific coast. After four weeks in a small mountain town in the center of Costa Rica’s mainland I was ready to be in the ocean again and surf some of the best waves of my life. Playa Dominical, along the southern coast of CR, is where I would spend the next seven weeks of my travels. I had a week off before starting a second Spanish course where I planned to meet Lucas, a German friend of mine from previous travels. Our plan was to scale the coast in a 4x4 and stop along the way for the best surf we could find. However, when we grouped up in Playa Dominical we became a little preoccupied.

From inland Turrialba I caught an early bus to the capital, San Jose, where I got on another bus to Jaco, which is in the center of Costa Rica’s coastal stretch, but still a two hour drive south to Dominical. I planned get a third bus from here or hitchhike, whatever came first. So after sticking my thumb out towards the sky for about ten minutes I hitched a ride with a crazy trucker for the last 125km stretch to Playa Dominical. He was on a high kite but after walking with all of my gear for one whole hour and now drenched in sweat, an air conditioned cap over a set of wheels felt real good. We drove along the Pacific Coast speeding fast passing any car that might slow us down straight on through the coconut plantations that grow on this side of the country. Aisles and aisles of palm trees for miles and then we saw a small community cut between the trees that goes way back, built a hundred years ago for the poor plantation workers. About a dozen houses half standing were situated around a futbol field and that was it, until we were back driving past more palms.

He dropped me off near Dominical eventually and I walked west down the dirt road serving as the center of this small beach community. Five minutes go by and while I stopped and drank a refreshing beer I could hear the surf nearby. Here I waited until Lucas and his friend, Henrick, picked me up in their 4x4 and took me to the hostel where they had been staying. Cool Vibes is the name of the place and it is located directly in front of the beach with perfectly breaking waves. I met Lucas six months before when he couchsurfed with me in San Diego, we became close friends, stayed in touch, and now we would spent a week surfing in Costa Rica together. Cheers to internal friends!

I borrowed whatever board was lying around until I could get my own which ended up being a 6-2 retro board that I fell in love with. Most days the surf was head high and the three of us were the only ones at the two-sided peak directly out front of our hostel. These were some of the best waves of my life and when we weren’t surfing we were eating, when we weren’t eating we were looking for more empty surf breaks, and when we weren’t doing that we were finding the most creative ways to preoccupy us until the surf picked up again.

One day we went to a waterfall with a natural pool at the bottom for swimming and a rope swing suspended ten feet high from a tree. We had competitions to see who could do a double back flip off of it. After completing this challenge one would gain fame and prestige, but most of us would instead acquire the humiliation and pain that is paired with the ever-frequent back flop across the surface of the water. After another morning of surf we went off-roading on many a property we weren’t supposed to be on through mud puddles and narrow winding bumpy roads to all the remotest hard-to-get-to beaches we could find. Other days we would climb up technical rock formations on the south point of the beach and from here look out across the ocean and spot point breaks that had perfect shape and no one on them. At low tide we would find out why: a shallow reef of sharp jagged rocks.

But what we liked most among our daily escapades was fishing for coconuts. In Costa Rica thousands of palms line the beaches and are loaded with ripe coconuts and each of them filled with a life giving bounty. But the difficulty, nay the challenge, lay in retrieving them. Of course you could visit a local fruit stand and have a chilled coconut cut open for you for only a buck. But Lucas and I were still suffering a damaged ego from the notorious back flops of the day before and in need of rebuilding our pride.

We liked the term “fishing for coconuts” because during our first experience we realized how similar to fishing it really is. A long pole is required and a lot of patience as well. Once the coconut has been “caught” it must be skinned, or violently cut open, and then the insides enjoyed. We took off down the beach, Lucas and I, feeling wild and indigenous. We had knives and machetes and a desperate thirst for coconuts. I spotted a long stick made from bamboo but it lay in a thick swamp with who knows what in it. I carefully balanced myself across the top of a tree stump to get closer to retrieving this tool but lost my balance when I discovered a nest of fire ants under my feet and dozens of painful stings across my feet. When I fell into the swamp I heard a sudden movement in the water, and knowing there were crocodiles all over the area, sporadically scattering about and accidentally threw myself at a barbed wire fence. Thigh, wrist, ankle, and hands were wounded but I thankfully escaped a more unforgiving enemy that still lurked in the water. But we got the stick and it would now extend our reach to about twenty-five feet. Now we could reach the bundle of coconuts on most of the trees, and after continuously nudging them we would shower ourselves in delight. Lucas and I had far too many coconuts to bring back home with us. So after drinking about five of them and then showering in five more we each loaded ourselves with four giant coconuts and headed back down the beach from where we came.

We left just too guys with injured pride, but now our party consisted of two guys, too many coconuts and a stick. No matter what bystanders on the beach thought of us, we had reassured our confidence and would soon return home to share our bounty.

Playa Dominical, Costa Rica

27 October 2013

Feliz Cumpleaños a Me

 October 6, 2013

A Moving Picture Journal Entry 1

(Below is the journal entry included in the video)

Journal Entry from October 6, 2013, the day of my birthday

La Pastura, Costa Rica.

After a difficult week beginning to learn a new language I decided to get away from the humidity and the heat of the valley by spending the night in the surrounding mountains. I planned to visit the highest peak and still active volcano, named after the city that was my temporary place of home and study, called Volcán Turrialba. I took a bus that ascended the mountain for one hour, then  I got  off at a very small farming and grazing town called La Pastura. This is the starting point for a long climb upward through open pastures, grazing livestock, and tropical forests, until after five hours you arrive at the base of an erupting volcano. 

I looked forward to everything about it but ended getting a little caught up by some local farmers while stuffing down a preparatory meal at the local restaurant and bar. I was at my table, and they were at the bar, drinking, laughing, and winding down after a long week of hard work. As best I could with the little Spanish I knew, I asked where would be a good spot to set up my hammock for the night. They said anywhere and continued to tell me all about the surrounding area. Once they mentioned a waterfall nearby I paid my bill and hurried off down the road in the direction they pointed. 

Although I never did find the one they had in mind, I hitchhiked to a bridge, and skipped on off down the rocky  river. The farther I went the more I forgot about my former residence at home and in Turrialba. It was the river and not roads that directed my way. It was an alive and sky-reaching jungle, not inanimate concrete buildings, that blocked my view and memory from the outside world.Eventually I came upon finding a waterfall of my own where without shame whatsoever I stripped down naked and bathed all alone. In that moment, I did not want to return to any form of structure. The remoteness of my location and the presence of solitude offered a spiritual refuge that comes only in such spontaneous moment as these. I suspended my hammock between moss covered trees along the narrow, gently flowing river. I layed down, closed my eyes, and sleep was interrupted only when I felt rain drops on my face. After realizing how thick the clouds had become I knew there was no way I could sleep out tonight. I was ill-prepared to sleep out in the rain- I had no tarp and I even forgot to bring a light. I made the only decision available and scrambled my way back to the road before dark and then walk an hour in the rain back to the restaurant where I made company earlier. 

When I returned it was the same guys as before sitting in the same chairs in front of the same empty glasses and a half dozen more. I wondered exactly how much they had to drink while I was gone, but they were just as talkative as before and soon learned of my desperation. They pulled up a chair next to them and immediately were buying me beer and food and whiskey to warm my blood. The bar owner said I could sleep on the floor of the bar as a heavy rained fell against a rickety old rust metal roof. It was everything I needed, but then the  farmer who I had made good acquaintances with insisted that I sleep in a bed in his house nearby. I turned down the offer because it was far too generous, but he kept telling me, "No problemo, mi muy rico. Tu dormes in mi casa," and then he would buy me another beer and yell "pure vida!" 

Once I accepted his generosity the night really got wild. Karaoke started and I must of sang an entire set of Johnny Cash before someone else decided to share the occupation. We finally made our way out of the bar and up the little hill and down the street and into his house. He showed me the room where I would stay, the one you see in this frame, and told me his wife would make me breakfast in the morning. I realized the depth of his generosity when I discovered that it was his daughters room where I slept. He had spent the night on an old rugged couch so that his daughter could sleep in his bed with mom so that I could have a bed of my own. It made me cry by the time I put it all together. The generosity of the farmer and his family will forever be one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given and it so happens to occur on the day of my birthday. 

In the morning we were all woken up at 5:30 by the rooster, and he quickly said goodbye and headed out to work on a Sunday. Meanwhile, we all slept in a few more hours and after eating a modest breakfast I said "muchos gracias" and walked out the door. Just outside there was a view of the entire valley thousands of feet below and the surrounding hillsides and grazing farm animals and the smell of fresh crisp mountain air. It was Sunday, and I spent my birthday hitch-hiking to the top of the volcano. There I found a stray puppy. He was the cutest little guy and I couldn't help but imagine he would become a fine travel companion in the months to come. I had wild thoughts of keeping him until I hitched another ride back down the mountain.

Arriving in the Tropics

September 30, 2013

Today I have arrived to the place where I will spend the next six months, Costa Rica, the land of pura vida. My first introduction to Costa Rica was from the window of the plane as we descended through the clouds. When we broke through the final layer I was welcomed by an entire color wheel of green. On these small and large portions of land is where coffee and bananas grow in abundance, and from where I looked way up in the sky, it looked like a heaven of perfectly manicured golf courses. Only these properties were not for the leisure of the retired and the upper-class, but for the livelihood of the working agriculturists and their families. 

While landing I noticed this airport to be very different from all the others I had flown in and out of through the years. Instead of the usual flat and barren land where airports normally reside, here there were encircling mountains and forests desirous to reclaim the intruding runways that once belonged to it.

After making my way through the airport - customs, baggage claim, and crowds of desperate taxi drivers - I bought a soda to receive back change in the local currency from a twenty dollar bill, and walked away from the airport. In only a minute I found myself in a tropical paradise. Coffee plantations grew off the side of the winding road, shaded by canopies of much larger trees and above rolled the dark indigenous rain clouds that signify that it is winter in Costa Rica. Rivers and streams flowing between the rolling hilled landscape caught my eye next, and everywhere I looked my eyes were met with stunning beauty.

After walking out of the airport I took out a piece of paper stashed away in my pocket with a description  of the location of the house where I was to stay. It read in Spanish something that translated to "100m before the court house turn right, continue 100m and turn left after the stadium, house is on the right and is pink with some green." I would later find out that in most of costa rica there are no street names or even legitimate addresses. A little worried I was doomed without an actual address, I knew that from here I had to somehow get to Turrialba. A taxi for me was out of the question. Not even to the center of town. And as I stood there thinking through my options a bus stopped just down the street which read San Jose. This I knew would get me a little closer to TRANSTUSA, the bus station in the center of San Jose that has direct busses to Turrialba. So I rode the bus for twenty or so minutes eyes watching the beauty go by the windows. As we pulled into the center of Costa Rica's capitol, advertisements and buildings began to go by instead and I had a feeling of vulnerability come upon me. I hopped out of the bus, and giving in, grabbed the first taxi I found to finish my journey to TRANSTUSA. It was only about five minutes away in traffic and I probably could have walked there faster, but with a large backpack strapped behind and another in front, one feels like a public invitation for theft. 

Soon enough I was on my final bus and had two hours of winding mountain roads to traverse. Though I hadn't slept for two days during my travels, due to a five hour lay over in Florida at four in the morning, I could not bring my eyes to rest - the surrounding forests, plantations, hillsides, and mountains were captivating. We wound around the narrow roads with sugar and coffee plantations on either side. I learned later that beginning in October is the picking season for coffee in Costa Rica, and I could see the red berries ripe and enjoying their last days attached to the life giving tree from whence they came. Elevated mountain roads allowed me a view spanning the length of the plantations and more, into the valleys and to the mountains on the other side whose peaks were disappearing behind moist grey clouds. One bend and another, around the mouton we went, until finally in the distance I had the first sight of Turrialba far off. I saw a remote village town huddled between the mountains, and beyond it a volcano that ascended the distant sky and clouded it with gas.

In that little town is where I would stay for three weeks and begin to learn a second language. There I would build the beginnings of a bridge that would connect me with the second half of the western world.

Turrialba with Volcano behind

A Romantic Departure

To be someone, as an artist, means: 

to be able to speak one’s self…

For everything that is unique to an individual,

if it does not wish to remain silent, 

needs its proper language

To say the same with the same words 

does not constitute progress.

Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters on Life

There came a day for me a few years back that changed everything; a day when I knew that I must find my own proper language. I was committed to the same routine of many college people my age, but unlike most of them, I was not happy. I found that the days would go by drudgingly slow while the weeks and months would go by as fast as my dreams would fade away into emptiness. For a long time I ignored the fact that the path I was on was for another kind of person. One day the dreadful thought of responsibility came to me when I realized that my personal dissatisfaction with life was due to the decisions that only I made every single day. Since then I’ve had no more excuses and no one else to blame. Change is not a waiting game. Change happens to those who throw themselves hard against the world and its shocking dissimilarities.

For me, it all starts with the simple click of a mouse. Purchasing a one-way, non-refundable ticket abroad is sometimes the best and hardest thing one could do. For me, it meant that I had to give up my job and the security that came with it; I had to let go of the family and friends who had spoken their voice into my life to hear a voice that sounded strange and unfamiliar; I had to stop grasping for control and accept the random, spontaneous circumstances that occur for no reason at all. Three years ago I did this and headed for Greece and Turkey. In three months I never once planned more than three days ahead. It was a social experiment on myself to see if I could feel whole without the use of institutions native and abroad. I learned that change is not produced by the employment of will but by the surrender of it. I learned to depend on strangers and to believe in the good of humanity. 

So here I am again, years later with undergrad behind me, a ticket in my hand for Central America, and many, many dreams to be realized. To learn another language, to take on a more simplistic lifestyle, to surf world-class waves, to volunteer at orphanages, to work on coffee farms, to ride a bicycle very long distances, to make new friends and to convince old friends to join me, to find opportunity in far out places, to see where I fit in the great puzzle of the world, to see what the nomadic life of Christ was all about—these are some of the possibilities. I will travel as long as I want until I want something different. That is all.

I am leaving my home but not my relationships. 

By writing this blog and you reading it I hope to stay connected. 

Hasta Luego!