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Travelogue | |
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Costa Rican Beach Party by Chuck Pine (photographs by Helen Pine)
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As the 737 lifted off the runway at Juan Santamaria International Airport just to the west of Costa Rica’s capital city, San José, I exhaled deeply. The Club’s trip to this Central American jewel of a country was a resounding success. I was relieved. This certainly wasn’t how I felt a few short weeks ago.
As you might recall, due to an error by the travel agent, all of our reservations were lost—the air flights, the lodging, the car rentals-everything. And, they said, there was no way to get them back—at any cost.
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 Fortunately, persistence paid off. Chuck Elster’s persistence. He really wanted to go. At the point when I was ready to refund everyone’s money and call it quits, Chuck was still making phone calls, surfing the web, and keeping his nose to the grindstone. Within a few days, we had accomplished the impossible. We had reconstructed the trip; not a mirror image, but pretty darn close.
Although the flights left from Newark, not JFK, cost twice as much, and left us with less time to explore, they still got us where we wanted to go, and nonstop at that. Although the hotels were not the ones Helen and I had scouted out last year, they were in the same class and were in the same towns. Likewise the rental cars—not what I had wanted, but they were more than sufficient for our journey.
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 As I closed my eyes the plane went into a steep climb and banked to the right. My mind drifted away from the problems we had faced and settled in on the wonderful time we did have. The first image that popped into my mind was that of the face to face encounter we had with the white-faced monkeys on the beach. Those little imps frolicked on the sand, wrestling with each other, jumping up to the low-hanging branches, swinging back down, all within inches of our lenses.
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 The image in my mind shifted to the dozens of species of butterflies we encountered, both in the wild and in the several commercial butterfly gardens we visited. I blinked, peeked out the window through the clouds, closed my eyes again, and recalled the coatimundis blocking traffic as we tried to drive by. Of course we had to get out and shoot them (with film, of course). Their long tails sticking almost straight up in the air were one of the few things that distinguished them from their northern cousins, the raccoons.
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The plane started to level off now. I imagined myself peering down into the caldera of the huge Poás Volcano. Was I dreaming, or just remembering the view we had from the rim a few days ago. Or what about the perfect cone-shape of the Arenal Volcano; was I dreaming that, too? Did it really erupt before our very eyes? (I guess I was dreaming, I have no shots of the fireworks.)
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 The smooth ride of the jetliner was interrupted by some turbulence. The plane bounced gently up and down, but I didn’t awaken. I just put myself back a few days, thinking about the most bone-jarring driving experience I’ve ever had. The Costa Rican roads are mostly dirt, almost all uphill (both ways?), and filled with potholes larger and more numerous than New York City’s.
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 As we climbed above the clouds and the ride smoothed out, my thoughts went to the walks we had through the cloud forests in Monteverde. The ground was softened by the leaves underfoot; but more amazingly was the view when we walked across the canopy of the jungle on a series of a dozen or so suspension bridges. The solitude was disturbed only by the sounds of the birds hidden by the leaves below us. Or was that the gentle voice of the flight attendant (oh, how I want to say stewardess) waking me with an offering of food.
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 Ah, yes, the food. Rice and beans; beans and rice, arroz con frijoles. Sprinkle in some chicken, or fish, or some homegrown beef and you’ve got a feast. Back to my dreaming; the food on the plane couldn’t compare.
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I hear people gasp and scream. Is it real? Is the plane going down over the Caribbean? Or is it my memory of the boatman jumping into the Tarcoles River, dead chicken in hand, luring one of the hundreds of giant crocodiles closer and closer, “get your cameras ready.” Snap! The croc grabs the chicken and tears at it with his huge teeth. Snap! The shutters and flashes crackle all around me. Did I get the shot? Is it worthy of competition?
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 I feel a change in attitude, or is it altitude? We’re coming out of the clouds, descending. I look down out the window. Are my eyes deceiving me? Where is the lush green? Where is the sparkling blue of the warm waters? All I see is white. It covers the ground. It covers the buildings. We’re landing in Jersey. My dream is over; but my memories, continually spurred on by my photos, will last a lifetime. 
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