not to see molten lava shooting sparks into the sky. Had the night been clear we would have driven up a narrow, winding road, littered with tree branches and rocks, to have dinner at a restaurant with a world-class view of the fireworks. Ah, well.
When the sun finally comes out we wend our way back down out of the mountains, and after a blisteringly hot five hours on a sceneless (is that the opposite of scenic?) highway, we arrive in the coastal village of Quepos. My fever is gone and Iâm feeling okay about David. We exchange some money at the local bank, which is guarded by two men with semiautomatics, and then buy some Mirinda orange sodas (the gustatory high point of our honeymoon) and some plantain chips from a little grocery. I want desperately to buy a box of Captain Crunch but it doesnât seem sporting. We walk around the village and when we donât find any cute shops we get back in the car and drive about a mile up a hill to our hotel, Le Mariposa. Although Le Mariposa is considered one of the best and most exclusive hotels in the region, breakfast here consists of hard-boiled eggs, fruit, dinner rolls, and Kraft-like slices of yellow and white cheese cut onthe diagonal. There is no room service and extra towels are a hot commodity, but the rooms are spacious and exotic, if you consider the seventies an exotic decade. Every day at three oâclock hundreds of some sort of monkey fly through the trees outside our balcony on their way home for lunch. Despite plenty of signage asking them not to, the tourists often feed the monkeys, and sometimes, when youâre on the beach at monkey-lunchtime, they drop out of the trees right onto your head.
On the the second night of our stay at Le Mariposa I am attacked by a ten-inch Costa Rican grasshopper. Apparently a fugitive from some nearby entomological freak show, it appears under a sconce on the opposite side of the dining terrace to the amazement and curiosity of all. Just as David assures me that it would not likely make its way to our dim corner, it promptly lands on my salmon en croute. I jump, nearly upending our table, and reel away with my hands over my face, like Tippi Hedren in The Birds . It would have been funny, had it been funny. A waiter comes over, captures the thing, and carries it off. Some time later, as David and I lounge romantically by the pool, it attacks my hair. I scream at the top of my lungs while executing a variety of graceless evasive maneuvers. Finally it lands in the blue water, and, because there is a God in heaven, drowns.
Why arenât I at a nice resort? Why am I in the middle of nowhere, eating freshly killed pet chicken sandwiches at âfamily restaurantsâ that consist of one picnic table surrounded by the squawking of the remaining pet chickens? Why am I in a country where I consider an Oh Henry! bar a suitable reward for surviving an afternoon of kayaking over giant swells in the Gulf of Mexico? Who am I trying to impress? David? Of course, David. I have known him for a year and a half, and I am still trying to convince him that I am of hardy stock. I want to be of hardy stock. I want to fit in with his friends, who are of hardy stock, who ski off-piste and hike up Mount Olympus or some such and camp out in places whose names in English mean âThe End of the Earth.â
Through the tropical nights I dream of a paddleless double kayak washing up on a deserted shoreline, a lone Teva floating in the waterlogged front cockpit. I dream of a vicious, fatal attack by starved orangutans. Of searing volcanic ash and washed-out mountain roads. Of kidnapping, carjacking, plane crashing. Of contaminated water. Of poisonous red ants.
Probably the only reason I can function at all on a daily basis is because my body has courage. It does thingsâdrives, flies, lives âin spite of me, maybe to torture me. To get back at it I conduct psychological experiments on myself: I have written the obituaries of myself
When the sun finally comes out we wend our way back down out of the mountains, and after a blisteringly hot five hours on a sceneless (is that the opposite of scenic?) highway, we arrive in the coastal village of Quepos. My fever is gone and Iâm feeling okay about David. We exchange some money at the local bank, which is guarded by two men with semiautomatics, and then buy some Mirinda orange sodas (the gustatory high point of our honeymoon) and some plantain chips from a little grocery. I want desperately to buy a box of Captain Crunch but it doesnât seem sporting. We walk around the village and when we donât find any cute shops we get back in the car and drive about a mile up a hill to our hotel, Le Mariposa. Although Le Mariposa is considered one of the best and most exclusive hotels in the region, breakfast here consists of hard-boiled eggs, fruit, dinner rolls, and Kraft-like slices of yellow and white cheese cut onthe diagonal. There is no room service and extra towels are a hot commodity, but the rooms are spacious and exotic, if you consider the seventies an exotic decade. Every day at three oâclock hundreds of some sort of monkey fly through the trees outside our balcony on their way home for lunch. Despite plenty of signage asking them not to, the tourists often feed the monkeys, and sometimes, when youâre on the beach at monkey-lunchtime, they drop out of the trees right onto your head.
On the the second night of our stay at Le Mariposa I am attacked by a ten-inch Costa Rican grasshopper. Apparently a fugitive from some nearby entomological freak show, it appears under a sconce on the opposite side of the dining terrace to the amazement and curiosity of all. Just as David assures me that it would not likely make its way to our dim corner, it promptly lands on my salmon en croute. I jump, nearly upending our table, and reel away with my hands over my face, like Tippi Hedren in The Birds . It would have been funny, had it been funny. A waiter comes over, captures the thing, and carries it off. Some time later, as David and I lounge romantically by the pool, it attacks my hair. I scream at the top of my lungs while executing a variety of graceless evasive maneuvers. Finally it lands in the blue water, and, because there is a God in heaven, drowns.
Why arenât I at a nice resort? Why am I in the middle of nowhere, eating freshly killed pet chicken sandwiches at âfamily restaurantsâ that consist of one picnic table surrounded by the squawking of the remaining pet chickens? Why am I in a country where I consider an Oh Henry! bar a suitable reward for surviving an afternoon of kayaking over giant swells in the Gulf of Mexico? Who am I trying to impress? David? Of course, David. I have known him for a year and a half, and I am still trying to convince him that I am of hardy stock. I want to be of hardy stock. I want to fit in with his friends, who are of hardy stock, who ski off-piste and hike up Mount Olympus or some such and camp out in places whose names in English mean âThe End of the Earth.â
Through the tropical nights I dream of a paddleless double kayak washing up on a deserted shoreline, a lone Teva floating in the waterlogged front cockpit. I dream of a vicious, fatal attack by starved orangutans. Of searing volcanic ash and washed-out mountain roads. Of kidnapping, carjacking, plane crashing. Of contaminated water. Of poisonous red ants.
Probably the only reason I can function at all on a daily basis is because my body has courage. It does thingsâdrives, flies, lives âin spite of me, maybe to torture me. To get back at it I conduct psychological experiments on myself: I have written the obituaries of myself
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