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Feb 13, Monday

Early morning we’ll depart from Manuel Antonio and begin our remote Osa adventure. By mid-afternoon we’ll arrive in the frontier town of Puerto Jiminez.  After a short instruction, we’ll board sea-kayaks and paddle out onto the pristine Golfito Bay and search for dolphins and whales. We’ll stay out on the water and watch a spectacular sunset highlighted by the silhouette of the misty rainforest.  Once the sun has gone completely down, we’ll don snorkeling gear for a magical nighttime swim amongst the bioluminescent plankton. Best on a dark, moonless night, trails of bioluminescent sparkles follow your every move! This is truly a magical experience. Finally, we’ll kayak back, still marveling every time our paddles dip into the glittering water.  This evening we’ll enjoy dinner at a local restaurant and lodge. Puerto Jiminez is also one of the best stops on the trip to see squirrel monkeys. Overnight at Parrot Bay Lodge or Black Turtle Lodge

Another lousy breakfast buffet.  I sit with E and M, and I tell E he is my new model for what a mensch is.  He first thinks I’m teasing, but I say, no, I’m serious.  I am especially appreciative of how he helped balance me for the whitewater trip, but I have noticed other little things he has done that have been very sensitive.  (I do not mention how he annoyed me with some of his picture-taking.)  He says I don’t really know him, and I say maybe, but this is what I’ve observed.  (After the trip I wonder if he is much more difficult in his ordinary life, and if, as is often true for me, he is freed up when he travels, or at least on this trip.)

E goes his way to return to San Jose, and the rest of us, a bit bereft, proceed on the bus towards Panama, to Golfito.  We have a rest stop in a small town.  I take a number of photos, including one of a bank front where an armed guard looking like the one in Santa Elena seems to wag a finger at me to stop, but I’ve already moved on.  I see what I think is our first traffic light since San Jose.

In Golfito we have a mediocre lunch.  We tip Ruben (I think Maxine and I plan tips for him and Koky that are more than others, or most others; I’m very aware that these people count on tips as part of their income) and he takes the bus back to its origin; he has also prepared for each person/party a map of Costa Rica with the route indicated with a highlighter.  I have wanted something like this the entire trip, and I’m grateful to have it.  Now I have a much better idea of where we have gone.

It is especially hot. Outside the restaurant is our boat to cross the gulf, tiny, with a single motor and a small canopied steering area in the middle.  The boat is just about big enough to hold the eight of us and the “captain.”  We hand him our luggage to stow in a compartment beneath the boy.  When I hand him my backpack I point to my book (Nature) hanging loose from the webbing, and he seems to wave a reassurance that it will be fine.

We had been told the crossing from Golfito to Puerto Jiminez on the Osa Peninsula would be smooth, but apparently this was an unusual day, because the first 2/3 or so of the 45-minute trip are choppy and we all get soaked as the boat bounces and sends up spray.   I’m desperately trying to protect my camera from the seawater, and I get annoyed when I see several of the others working to figure out how to protect M’s (better) camera, which they do with a large piece of plastic they find.  Eventually, Koky takes our cameras and stows them with the luggage.  During the ride I hold on to a blue-green rope attached near the bow.  Although I fantasize being thrown out of the boat, I’m not sure how much I really think grasping the rope will keep me from doing so and how much it just steadies me against the choppiness.

At the dock we walk to a van that drives us to our lodging for the night, the Tortuga Negra.  Part way there I realize Nature is missing (also a couple of pencils and the Costa Rican map).  I am annoyed, especially thinking about how I let the captain seem reassuring.  Koky phones the company and tells me the owner assures him that the captain will get it and leave it at the company’s town office in the morning.  I am mildly reassured.

The lodge staggers Maxine and me.  Off and on during the trip, I have chided her for asking questions that anticipate problems with accommodations, and she had started to do so again yesterday evening about tonight’s lodging.  There are several 2-story wood buildings with separate, shared bathrooms.  We are upstairs with no running water.  It is another setting that reminds me of a large camp room.  The lighting is terrible, but by this time I have come to adapt by reading with my headlamp.  I make a small stink about having an enlarged prostate and what a pain this will be in the middle of the night, though I add to the owner, who seems nice and proud of his lodge, that I blame not him but Josh.  Others in our group offer to trade with us, but I say no because I can’t bear packing up again (nor am I happy about acting like such a loser), especially since we’ve hung out to dry all our wet clothes from the crossing.  Koky tells me not to blame Josh because he has never been here; I don’t say to him what I think—that it’s Josh’s job to have vetted places, especially when he reassures clients about what they'll be like.  Maxine reminds me that she had been explicit with Josh that she counts on having a private bathroom.

I am now very very cranky, feeling marginalized and trapped.

Before dinner we go kayaking.  The lodge van takes us to the embarkation point, which is to my eyes a run-down backwoods kind of place.  I don’t bring my camera (or binoculars) in case I capsize.  I choose a kayak without any knowledge  of what to look for, and anyway by the time I get to mine everyone else has chosen.  We have two guides.  One lingers with me as I lag.  Something is wrong with my seat, and I am quickly getting exhausted.  The guide tries to fix it, then offers to switch kayaks with me.  I assume his is much better.  Although the water is shallow enough for me to stand, I find myself terrified of getting from my kayak to the water, and I awkwardly but finally transfer to the other kayak without getting in the water while the guide tries to steady both kayaks.  I don’t know why I find it so scary.  At least I’m in the better kayak now—until I discover that one of the ratchet adjustable foot pads is broken.  At first I think this is not as bad as the seat problem, but before long it seems just as bad to me.  By now I am way behind the group and soon don’t even want to catch up with them even though the guide says he can see dolphins where they are.  He encourages me to take it easy, gives me a spiel similar to the one I later learn the other guide gives everyone else.

I am full of rage, though I don’t express it; in fact, I try hard to talk in a casual, conversational tone.  Why could I not get a proper kayak?  Why should the weakest kayaker get stuck with the worst kayak?  Why has cheapskate Josh contracted with a company that doesn’t keep its supplies in good shape?  Why wasn’t I better looked after in choosing a kayak?

Instead of trying to join the rest of the group, we cut across the bay to an interim shore stop.  My guide has baked lemon squares.  I have one; it’s delicious.  We wait for the others as the twilight turns to  night.  There is a bit of fog.  Maxine is the last one in, but I am reassured that although I can’t see her the other guide must still be out there with her.  When everyone is in and has had a lemon square, a few go in the water to observe bioluminescence.  I dawdle but eventually put on a jacket and join the others.  We are all standing in shallow, warm water.  Eventually we start to see sparkles in the water that resemble fireflies.  The trip was supposed to include snorkeling; now one of the guides has brought out one or two snorkeling masks which we can use to look at the lights underwater.  I can’t believe that this is the extent of the advertised snorkeling experience.  I use one mask—by now on the trip we’ve all shared so much food and drink that I barely think about sanitation—and dip my face in the water briefly.  Soon I feel pain on my legs as if something is biting me or pulling at my leg hairs.  I think it must be paranoia because I’ve found so much go wrong, but others start feeling the same thing.  I forget what the critters are called that are doing the biting.  We all leave the water.

Now we must paddle back to where we began.  I get in my original kayak so that at least I can plant my feet.  In the distance I can see the light that demarcates the location, and it doesn’t look unbearably far, but once I’m paddling I begin to be in agony and feel desperate at the distance I must cover.  The same guide lags with me.  I stroke 3, 4, 5, maybe up to 10 times here and there then collapse in exhaustion to re-gather my strengthen.  I ask the guide if the current is against me and he says yes, so I am scared that I will keep losing any distance I gain.  In fact, I don’t seem to go backwards in relation to the shore.  Everybody else is out of sight ahead.  Although the guide will make sure I go in the right direction, I orient myself by the shore on my left and the target light in the distance ahead.  My thighs keep getting exhausted and painful; although I can get leverage with my feet, the seat slides around so much that I’m not sure the leverage helps.  A few times I emit a guttural cry of frustration as I try to force myself to make one further paddling motion.  I wonder if I can make it and what happens if I can’t; I guess that my guide will go to shore, get the other guide with a double kayak, and come back to retrieve me.  I want to cry.

If we followed the others, we would be taking a roundabout way to bring our kayaks back to their origin.  But my guide sees that I am desperate, calls ahead that we can’t come around that way, and gets out of his kayak into the shallow water—maybe a foot high—to tow his boat.  He has earlier told me I could get out and walk, but my anxiety about the water makes me resist.  Or maybe I think that will be even harder.  Now however I get out and he ties my towrope to the back of his own.  He walks ahead.  We cross a sandbank for perhaps 20 yards, then there is more wading before we are back on land for good.  I plod slowly, steadily, carrying my paddle.  After what seems a long time I make it to land and back to the others. 

At dinner I’m in a terrible mood.  Everyone, including Maxine, lobbies for a stop tomorrow in a reserve off the road to Luna Lodge; the kayak guide this evening mentioned it as a wonderful place.  I have been looking forward to relaxing at Luna, and I’m dismayed at this potential delay.  My own guide had mentioned that somewhere around here thousands of monkeys had been found dead and autopsies had not yet revealed the cause.  (Later I’ll hear that it might have been a few dozen monkeys, and that the cause is known.) 

G does his usual schtick about how he just wants to stay at the Tortuga Negra indefinitely.  Everyone other than Maxine seems to love the place, and I guess it is delightful to a certain taste that is less comfort-concerned (less spoiled American?) than Maxine or I (at least by this point in the trip).  I feel more marginal than I can remember in years (also: the lodge owner is a culinary institute grad who cooks chicken that to me is a bit tough; ceviche, though, tastes good).  I fuss about box lunches and wanting to know what will be in them, not just accept anything (remember the “chicken or beef?” on our flight here?).  Others encouraged me to persevere when I quickly gave up.  I kvetch about some of the other food on the trip.  They ask what I thought about this food.  Me: It is fair (no explanation re dry chicken).  A few of us do arrange for chicken sandwiches for tomorrow; I hope my sandwich will have something to give it moisture.  I kvetch about my general unhappiness  and gripe about feeling so different when others are happy.  People seem surprised.  A says something reassuring. 

I go off to bed, talk with Maxine about all this.  I finish her poem and, with difficulty copy it into her card.  Then I work on a puzzle (all this by headlamp, a good reading light but reminder of the shortcomings of the room).  Go to sleep 10:15, wake 12:15, need to pee, go downstairs with Maxine.  Back in bed I obsess about all my resentments.  Work on puzzle.  Sleep.  Up at 5:30 to pee.  Sleep a little more or maybe not at all.