I never realized how much I valued large public busses with no AC and even less legroom. That is, until I experienced the colectivos that connect the more remote areas of the Osa Peninsula. We left our hostel in Puerto Jimenez the morning of March 13th and got on a beautifully clean bus that transported us over pavement that could only be described as luscious to the village of La Palma. The bus stop there doubles as a bakery, is across from the only supermarket that doubles as a hardware store, and is cattycorner to a coconut oil shop that also sells ice cream. From the bakery we boarded a colectivo bound for Drake Bay. Within 5 minutes we were on a gravel road, whose base layer of red dust eked out of every gap. The dust was the most notable part of the drive, not the precipitous drops, crumbling edges, river crossings, and beautiful vistas, but the dust. It was a constant fog rising up from the ground with the wind and the passage of other vehicles. It blew into the windows that couldn’t be shut for fear of heatstroke and lathered everyone in a thin layer of mud as the dirt mixed with sweat. However, the seats were comfy, the views breathtaking, and the company enjoyable. Looking back on it, even though my lungs are forever encrusted with dirt, it was great bus ride.
We arrived dirty, sweaty and smiling to the tourist village of Drake, with two super markets and quintuple the amount of hotels/hostels. “Downtown” sits on top of a hill that dives straight down to the beach one way and straight to our hostel the other. The hostel was called Mahogine, and its name was reflected in the wood that was used to build the main structure and the open air cabins. That’s not to say that the wood was mahogany, only that it was painted a dark brown. Four of us lowly students piled into one cabin with and extra bed on the floor, Michaela’s room was a three-person tent that almost certainly was a last minute arrangement, and our fearless, humble, intrepid instructors suffered on their own individual platforms with personal fans, tables, and hammocks. I think they even got private massages, face masks, and were hand fed grapes under the shade of a palm frond. I’m not bitter or anything.
No, they didn’t really have it that good, but our lodging seemed luxurious compared to our single burner stove and ant covered platform in Piro. We had a refrigerator, a working stove and wifi, what more could we ask for? We needed that wifi too. This past week was midterms. We had our day of arrival to steel ourselves against the oncoming tsunami of schoolwork crashing toward us. Then the next two days were non-stop work. Our second day there we had class in the morning at around 9 followed immediately by our midterm. Some of us took a break for lunch, scarfed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, giggled nervously, panicked with our eyes, and went back at it until 4:00 pm. The next day it was more of the same, frantically writing and citing for our first drafts of papers, and pulling our hair out when we got error messages from R (a computer program for stats and much more).
Unpopular opinion: I had a pretty good time those two days, in a sort of masochistic way. Working my brain all day left me wiped. It was that beautiful feeling where my brain was about to explode. It was endurance. It felt like running. When running my calves sometimes burn, plead, and fight against every step until I stop. Then they ask for more. When I would stop working, my brain would forget the torture I was putting it through and only recognize the reward, the progress that I’d made, so I kept going. The law of inertia applies to more than just objects in motion. The beginnings of the day were the hardest, but once the proverbial juices flowed they continued like a river, sometimes hitting dams, sometimes going underground, and sometimes exploding out of waterfalls. The river rushed, and the cycle of pain and reward continued until I had no more progress to make.
Those two days of work hit us harder than the five consecutive 10 hour days of fieldwork in Piro. We needed the next day of rest more than anything. Michaela, Megan, Eli, and I elected to go snorkeling at Isla de Caños, a protected island surrounded by a marine reserve that protects a huge coral reef. It was bliss. A small boat on a big ocean makes for an unhinged roller coaster. It’s like one of those at the fair for kids that only undulates up and down, where no one really knows how safe it is, if the brakes work, or if the 16-year-old running it is paying attention. Except the boat coaster goes way faster, isn’t attached to tracks and has one of the most spectacular views in the world.
A bumpy 45 minutes after embarking we dropped into the blue stained glass to discover the crystal clear world below the surface. There was at least 15 m of visibility in every direction, but to the sides the crystal turns to Safire and fades into a wall of blue. There, in the edges of vision and though is where the sharks and sea monsters must lurk. The thought of sharks and monsters brought no fear to my ill-adapted body, only excitement as did the myriad of life below me. Michaela, Eli, Megan and I would dive down and get up close to the coral showing off our skills from fieldwork in Saladero. However, unlike Saladero, the reef there was healthy and huge. There were blue, red, green and yellow corals. There were shelf corals, brain coral, finger-like coral, and coral that draped over the ground, coral that looked like play-dough and coral that bloomed like flowers. Up close to the corals I could see the sea urchins, eels, and tiny fish hiding in the cracks and crevices. As I would run out of air and float back to the surface I would see parrot fish, trigger fish, and meter long groupers. On one occasion our guide saw a Hawksbill Sea Turtle. Being able to swim along and get close to the turtle in its natural habitat is something I won’t easily forget.
Something about being in the smooth, blue, gravity defying world brought some much needed serenity for me. I don’t think I stopped smiling that entire day.
