After we made the trip to Guanacaste, some of our guests remained, so we went back to the beach, this time to Quepos. By now, we were no longer enamored of the drive over, so we decided to fly. Costa Rica, like many developing nations, had bought a bunch of old, yet serviceable DC-3’s from countries like the United States, the kind of plane that sits on a slant when at rest and is riveted together rather than welded. These planes comprised their domestic air service. A round-trip ticket between San José and Quepos cost about eight U.S. dollars, so it was actually cheaper than driving, and we could call ahead to the resort and have them send their car over to pick us up once we arrived.

 

We took off from the San José airport early in the morning and made the short flight over to the coast. As it was once again the dry season, we didn’t have to worry about clouds building up over the mountains, and it proved an uneventful trip. That is, until we neared the runway in Quepos. We started on our descent, but suddenly, the nose of the plane pulled up sharply and we zoomed back up into the air with a stomach-flipping lurch. This gave everyone a start, of course, and the woman who was seated across from us began to tell her seatmate about a ride she had experienced on the domestic Peruvian airline.

 

“We were flying toward Lima and everything was going great,” she said, “when the co-pilot strolled out of the cockpit and sat down to chat with the passengers. A few people gave him worried looks, which he noticed, so he told them not to be concerned, the pilot was in control of the plane. Everyone relaxed, but then a few minutes later, the pilot comes out of the cockpit and joins the co-pilot in visiting with the passengers. This time, everyone stared at him anxiously so he said, ‘Don’t worry! We’re on autopilot!’ So we all relaxed once again, but then we hit a patch of turbulence. And the door to the cockpit swung shut. And it was one of those anti-hijacking doors that couldn’t be opened from the outside!”

 

At this point, everyone on the plane had twisted around in their seats to listen to her story.

 

“It was pretty tense there for a while, but they finally managed to jimmy the door open with a plastic fork. Can you believe that? So much for being hijack-proof.”

 

By now, our plane had circled the airstrip and we aimed at it for another try at bringing the plane down. The landing was a bit rough, and we bounced along the ground for a while before coming to a stop. The engine coughed, sputtered, then died as the door to the cockpit swung open. An empty fifth of rum proceeded to roll out and down the entire length of the plane, its hollow sound amplified by the stillness of everyone on board who just realized what had happened. Roll … roll … roll … roll … roll, it went; then the bottle clunked to a stop at the back of the cabin. A very giggly stewardess came tottering out of the cockpit and announced that we had arrived in Quepos but by then everyone had already yanked off their seat belts, grabbed their carry-on luggage, and bolted before the pilots decided to take off again.

 

 

We hadn’t decided yet what we were going to do when we left paradise, but Jane had offered Richard a job in her new real estate development firm in Arlington, Texas, and we were considering it. No offers seemed to be forthcoming from other quarters for him and I hadn’t managed to sell my novel nor locate any botany or carpentry jobs. I had the feeling that Dallas might strike me as even more foreign than Costa Rica, but it sounded like an adventure whatever else it might turn out to be.

 

We did the usual while we were in Quepos, which still had not become the least bit boring—swimming, napping, reading, eating, body surfing, and drinking beer—and I had a fun little flirtation going with one of the staff, a young, handsome Costa Rican man who had a sweet little dark moustache and carnelian-colored lips. It started one day when I was sitting at the bar by myself, drinking a Coke, and an American couple rang in an order for lunch. They both wanted cheeseburgers with fries. Most of the guests who stayed at this resort were Americans, followed by Europeans, then Canadians, and most of them didn’t speak Spanish, especially the Americans. So Jorje assumed that I didn’t speak Spanish, either, and he remarked to the other young man working with him, “I think the only thing those stupid Norte Americanos eat are hamburgers and French fries!”

 

 

 

“I mean to say, there are so many other things to eat here,” I added lamely, trying to put him back at ease, “like … rice and beans! And … and platanos!”

 

His fellow worker’s shoulders began to shake and he turned around, hiding a smile and swallowing a laugh while poor Jorje continued to look dismayed, I suppose because he was afraid he’d insulted me and I might mention it to Garth or David.

 

I figured I’d done enough damage for one day, so I finished up my drink and left. That night at dinner, I think Jorje finally realized that I wasn’t going to get him in trouble with his employers. After that, he always cast me these flattering, smoldering Latino glances that said, “You are one hot mama!” I confess, I relished the attention. Hey, who doesn’t enjoy receiving looks like that, whatever your marital status is?

 

So, I was going to miss Jorje, and I was going to miss cool, elegant Waldon, and I was going to miss bitchy, gossipy Garth and David. I was going to miss the towels, the madly flailing overhead fans in the rooms, the incredibly soft, seductive air, and the leisurely breakfasts in the open air dining room, gazing down onto the sapphire blue ocean while flocks of bright green parakeets twittered past. Garth and David joined our party for drinks one evening and regaled us with stories about other guests, like the time the King of Holland came and brought along an enormous Dutch flag that was to be flown from the resort’s flag pole while he was there.

 

 

 

 

 

Well, it was time to say good-bye to Quepos; we left the next day blinking back tears. But with such a send-off as we had last night, it was hard to feel too sad or disappointed. I felt like Costa Rica granted my wish to see monkeys before I left and did so with an extravagant beneficence. The experience of encountering such exuberant, sentient life in the treetops made the entire planet seem more enchanting to me. It made me feel like anything was possible—for example, that the entire blueprint for any life form, no matter how complex, could be contained in a single, microscopic cell … or that a creature could exist to fill every single imaginable niche, from the crushing underwater depths of the oceanic trenches to the permafrost on the earth’s frozen poles, to sizzling, boiling, volcanic hot springs … or that a body could work in such perfect harmony and synchrony that it could breathe, pump blood, digest food, make enzymes, use enzymes, break down enzymes, motigate, speculate, and propagate, all at the same time, without so much as a burp or a hiccup, figuratively speaking.

 

 

 

 

*Intro:

 

At the end of 1982, both Richard and I had been out of work for a year, despite constant looking, and the best we had been able to come up with was scrounging for odd jobs. It was an economic climate much like the one we’re in now, and we were feeling both dejected and panicked about what the future might hold for us. We certainly could never have imagined what happened next: a dream job in a dream country for a dream boss.

 

This is Chapter 35 of the memoir I wrote about the year-and-a-half that Richard and I spent living in Costa Rica. It was quite the adventure, living with a an eccentric and flamboyant heiress** from Dallas, her elegant and erudite husband who wrote Westerns, and their handsome, bad boy son, whom Richard used to babysit. Oh, yeah, and next door resided the safe house for Eden Pastora, aka “Commander Zero,” leader of the Contras who were waging a civil war with the Sandanistas in Nicaragua at that time.

 

This was a particularly golden era in Costa Rica’s history, before it became “discovered,” even before the introduction of television there, really (it started coming in during the time we lived there). It was wild and exotic and magical and amazing.

 

 

**Jane, sadly, passed away not long ago, but she left a legacy as colorful as she was. In 1984, she commissioned one of the largest environmental sculptures in the Western Hemisphere, a set of standing stones in Arlington, Texas that were designed and built by sculptor Norm Hines. Caelum Moor has been a source of enormous controversy over the years. Check out my blog entry, “The Amazing Tale of Caelum Moor,” for more information.