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