Brimstone Lark

The bus I booked was about to leave from San Jose, not San Jose Airport, where I landed. These two places are about 17 km apart which was a problem since the departure time was in 10 minutes.

After multiple desperate encounters with strangers, involving me pointing at my phone like a fumbling fool, “donde esta este autobus?”, I validated the above fact and purchased a plane ticket from the domestic terminal about 2 blocks away like a good little gringo.

This is the plane. There was a lightning storm in the sky but the security agent behind the X-ray conveyor belt told me that since this flight leaves at 2:30 and not 4:00 pm, we’d be okay. During the dry season, the flights leave at 4:00 pm when I guess this storm is supposed to be much worse.

Since it was only 11:30 am, I taxi’d to a mall, chatted with a waiter, ate some chicken, taxi’d back to the airport, and begged multiple strangers in the rain to break a 10 for me so I could pay my driver. I over paid him 2k colones but he gave me a fist bump and told me “buena vida” which I think means “have a good life”.

Most of Costa Rica that I’ve seen is farmland plains with skinny white cows, concrete congeries of locals living, and small coastal surfing hubs with dirt roads, a hostel or two and maybe a cafe or restaurant. Tamarindo would have been one of these small coastal towns but it’s long beach and free flowing alcohol attract thousands of travelers who in turn cause the town to be freckled more densely by hostels, hotels, and bars.

When I arrived I was surprised to find my hostel so beautiful. The thatched roofing of the resto-bar had little straw spherical hanging lights that reminded me of birds nests. On my first day there after catching a ride from the smallest airport in the world, I rented a surfboard and went to the ocean during sunset. “Ah yes here I am in a new country” I thought, “doing the same thing I liked doing at home, but in poorer conditions and in solitude”. You have to laugh at yourself sometimes.

I wanted to get away from home because I had been there for most of last year and the part of me that craves novelty began to speak up. While I floated in the ocean and watched the large, white tourists struggle in the waves, I wondered what novelties I would attach my strings to and eventually get bored of here.

I believe in the Potential Energy Theory of Routine. Haven’t heard of it? I made it up. My theory is that the feeling of being somewhere new is a potential energy that slowly gets converted to kinetic energy as you develop a routine in that new place. It’s like a bowling ball that you carried up a few floors in an elevator: all the energy expended bringing it up is equal to the energy that gets released when you roll it down the stairs and into the hotel lobby.

You know the moment of excitement when you step off the plane, train, taxi, or boat into a place that used to be far away, getting closer and closer to your destination – that glimmer in your sparkling virgin eyes is the potential energy I’m talking about. It’s the hopeful, inarticulate, fantasy about what it’s going to feel like to wake up and start your day, for which places you will become a regular, for which experiences you will cultivate.

My hostel room was a disgusting 8 bedroom shared dorm that had one roommate. His name was Sebastian. He was a middle-aged Argentinian man who spoke to me in spanglish and owned a newspaper called “The Tamarindo News”. I found an empty set of clonazepam pills on his bed.

“Can I rent a board for cheaper if it’s for a month? Si estoy aqui para un mes, es mas barrato?”. The board I used my first day was shit, but every surf shop and stranger I asked wouldn’t cut me a deal. For all my preconceived notions about Costa Rica being a third world country, it was fucking expensive. 20$ per day surfboard rentals, 30$ per day for a moped, 17$ for fish tacos, and 4$ for their cheapest beer. The only thing that wasn’t pricey was rent and gasoline. Dirt cheap. 30$ per night and 10$ to fill a tank cheap. It’s the perfect sticker price trap for dumb tourists like me who don’t think about actually needing anything other than a roof and a plane ticket.

After struggling to find a surfboard, I finally got lucky with the hostel I was staying at. I walked away with three things for 600$: 1. The option to use any board from the hostel, 2. Free use of a white, Honda moped for the entire month (sorry mom), and 3. A bike helmet. I negotiated with one of the hostel workers named Kenny. Kenny is a tall, 35 year old born and raised in Costa Rica who doesn’t speak much English. We’ve actually become good friends I think because our negotiation required us to shake hands and be fair with each other. Despite the language gap, we’ve made it work by exchanging comments about beautiful women and dangerous animals and surfing or being a dangerous animal that is after a beautiful woman or surfing the waves of beautiful women, avoiding dangerous animals or how women are like dangerous animals and we should just be surfing.

In the hostel, travelers come and go within four days, five maybe. Groups of two girls or one man are my favorite. If it were one girl, she’d be closed off and defensive. If it were more girls, they’d be scary. When more than one guy gets together in a group, they become impossible to relate to.

I’m an outlier in that I’ve actually gotten to observe this pattern since I’ve been here for a month and, in time, all my potential energy of anticipation has faded into routine.

We develop routine naturally if we’re in one place for long enough. Day by day, like a step in the staircase that the bowling ball bounces on during its decent, our fantasy get converted into memories. In my experience, it takes about 3 weeks for me to start taking things for granted.

My friends tell me that this is a sad way to look at things – waiting for excitement to fade to normalcy. But I think they’re wrong about how much respect and gratitude goes into the process of taking something for granted. You only take for granted the things that shape your time so consistently that they become a part of you. I like to think this is what lead singer of Matchbox Twenty, Rob Thomas, was getting at when he sung, “I want to take you for granted” in their hit song “Push” (it definitely isn’t). I think this idea will only resonate with severely ungrounded people who believe their life could take any path at any moment.

I’ve been surfing long sessions every day, mostly at a place called Playa Langosta, which is a river mouth point break about 1.5 miles from the hostel and 4 minutes by moped. It’s directly in front of a resort where more large, white people marinate in sweat and sunscreen as they watch the surfers. The waves here are the best out of everywhere nearby and for me, it’s been an absolute dream even though they don’t compare to the waves at home. What I like about it is how the waves have been the perfect size for me – enough to struggle but not enough to be scared. The fact that I’m 5 minutes from surfing at all points of the day means I can procrastinate both going to surf and coming back in from surfing.

Normally in the morning it’s just gringos and chiller locals in the water. These guys will smile at you but on the weekend there are more intense locals that you want to be considerate toward since they’re big bad dogs. I like it best when it’s me and one person out – it’s the perfect balance on the Social Anxiety <> Shark Fear Spectrum. When I’m out in the water, I find myself thinking “I wish my brother were here!” every time.

My brother is the kind of person who smiles and kids constantly to liven the room. Him being 10 years older, I looked up to him since I was old enough to look. As an adult, I wonder if there are any secret undercurrents in his life that I can relate to directly in the way I can with my other family members.

In a few weeks, we’ll be going on a trip to Indonesia to surf the best waves in the world. We’ll be living on a small boat for almost two weeks. When I’m surfing by myself in Costa Rica, I imagine how incredible it will be to be catching waves and roasting like a lizard on a boat him. My mind is full of inarticulate imaginings of what that experience will become. Even as I begin to form a routine in this new place, I am carrying another bowling ball up the stairs one by one.