(Header pic: Francisco de Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters)

I feel as though I haven’t been posting as regularly as I should here, because based on what I’m seeing and hearing, there has been a steady increase in readership and / or curiosity: thank you endlessly and kindly for checking out my scribbling, and for your support and feedback via email.  I also apologize for how irritating it is to even “like” or leave comments on my posts, thanks to WordPress insisting on your entering name and email (“We’ll never share it publicly” or whatever they promise) and anything else that is required.  I hope this changes once I overhaul this thing, but I don’t base my output and efforts on social media-type validation via thumbs-ups and emojis and direct reactions: I can see my statistics and numbers, and that is good enough for me.  Thank you once again.

Also, I have been quite busy working towards a professional goal and a potential opportunity.  No, not my book, that is an extended labour of real love / hate (love, because it’s a lifelong goal and I believe in it; hate, because the topics I am exploring at length are bringing back a lot of irritation and discomfort).  No, I might be changing my situation for the better, and have, quite bluntly, been busting my ass making it happen.  If it does, I will let you know.  If it doesn’t, I keep going.  As my father always says–and it’s the best advice and encouragement you can give someone whether their situation is ascending gloriously or nosediving nightmarishly–”Just carry on.”  Really.  Just carry on.  You don’t need to hear much else, or keep anything else in mind; that is, unless you’re sitting in a scalding bath, fortified with bottom-shelf gin, weeping and holding a grapefruit knife to your wrist yet having second thoughts.  Nobody needs to hear “Just carry on.”

Can’t say I’ve been there, and I hope none of you have been, either.  In that case, my words would be “I love you.”  That’s also a three-word phrase which overrides all other feedback or attempts at guidance.  I love you.  And I do.

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“Just carry on” is also a phrase that I had no choice but to obey when I was living in Costa Rica from 2009 – 2010, and, on one ill-thought-out weekend, found myself on a famous ziplining tour in which I didn’t find out until we had begun that, after the first three ziplines, there was no going back.

Let’s start with how and why I was living in Costa Rica, to give some very necessary context.  Details and recollections of my entire time there would require many, many interminable posts–if not an entirely separate blog–and will comprise a nice chunk of my book, so I’m not really going to spend too much time on the minutiae and experiences I had leading up to and eventually residing there for nearly a year and a half.  However, setting the scene and providing some facts are necessary in order for you to understand why I, as a lifelong acrophobe, agreed to get strapped into a harness, which in turn was clamped onto several ropes stretched across mountainous terrain, which also happened to range anywhere from 250 to 600 feet above the planet.  And I did this willingly (albeit unknowingly, if that is even possible).

I had decided that, since I was already trapped in the unbearable quicksand of the ESL industry and living on slightly less than a pauper’s wages, I should probably get out of the Pacific Northwest and spend some serious time in a tropical land.  I had already been sent to South Korea for a few months to teach an utterly draining continuing-education course (although the experience of being in that country was exquisite, and this was many, many years before Korea became hip and trendy and began exporting slave-labour boy bands to the Western world), which netted me some okay money, but not nearly enough given my unreasonably punishing schedule and hours.  However, it was time to really give myself an adventure and go someplace that was warm, sexy, fun, and, while not a lucrative change of professional pace, would offer an inexpensive but satisfying quality of life: Costa Rica, of course! The country’s motto is La Pura Vida, and if that wasn’t enticing enough for a simple gal, what on earth could be?

…little did I know, of course, that about a quarter of all Costa Ricans (about a million and a half people) live in the capital city of San Jose, and if you want to teach English, you pretty much need to base yourself in this urban center, since this is where the majority of all languages schools were located.  And while it might be different now, 15 years later–although I somehow doubt it–when I had to live there, it was an utter, well, there’s no other way to put it: it was a shithole.  Sorry, Ticos and Ticas, but it’s the truth, and you kind of know it, too.  Ugly, run-down, crumbling, plagued with countless leadfooted drivers who don’t heed any sort of road rules, and dangerous.  Very dangerous, particularly when the sun goes down: you should not–you cannot–walk even a couple of blocks in the dark, even if it’s just from the bar down the street back to wherever it is you’re staying.  You must always take a taxi, of which there are plenty, thankfully.  

Crime is rampant there, as it sadly is in many Central American countries (although Costa Rica is considered the “safest” of them all, and impressively–perhaps deliberately?–has no military). I don’t want to get into the politics of the whys in regard to this, but one only needs to think to oneself: 

“Gosh…which country on this otherwise beautiful planet has been responsible for the most outrageous destruction, the most wanton violence, the most commercial colonialism, the most abuse against other sovereign nations, the most rapacious and deadly activity in order to gain for itself, the most shameless displays of arrogance and greed, the most cultural desolation, the most willing poisoning of even its own citizens in order to reap profit, among other unforgivable infractions?”  

There’s your answer.  

Costa Rica is a wonderful country with even better people, but its capital city is best to be avoided; or at least, used for its general purpose for tourists, which is a place to land at the airport, maybe stay in a hotel for a night, and then get the absolute heck out of there.  Never, ever schedule time in your itinerary to hang out there and sightsee, as it is simply not worth it.  Because once you leave San Jose, Costa Rica is exactly like the promotional material you see and read.  It’s even more breathtaking than that, in fact.  Again, I speak as someone who left there in 2009, and perhaps SJ has cleaned its act up–because I do know the country itself  has absolutely swelled and gained even more traction as a popular tourist destination–but when I was there, it was so awful, several teachers at my school broke their contracts early and went home.  Living there for a year simply wasn’t worth it to them.  Never mind the day-to-day normality of being mugged and robbed at gunpoint (including me, only once, and I was “lucky” in the sense that I didn’t have a weapon pointed at me, but instead, a guy walked directly towards me, grabbed my arm, stared me in the eyes, and yoinked the iPod from me with purpose…I was so terrified I could only say “Okay, okay, okay,” and he jumped into the passenger seat of a nearby car and sped away). 

While some teachers drifted away here and there throughout the year, disgusted, the final straw was when one of our students was shot in the head and killed, caught in crossfire during what was apparently a gang-related attack at a small plaza mere blocks from our school.  About six instructors immediately quit and went back to their respective homes in the US and the UK.  Oh, and I happened to be only one of two Canadians working at the former Instituto Britanico, for some reason.

After a disastrous initial stint at an inept language school in the barrio of Heredia, one at which I had obtained a job before arriving, I finally found Instituto across the city in Los Yoses (none of these places mean much to you, I understand, but just keeping you informed) and immediately had to find a new place to live.  Through the network of wonderful young teachers at Instituto, I learned that, because I was starting my gig during a new term, some teachers would also be leaving because they had successfully completed their contracts, and therefore housing would become available.  Even better, I got hooked up with a terrific sort of rooming house owned by an elegant, brilliant, gracefully-aged author, impressive ployglot, and respected scholar named Victor Valembois. It was a lovely two-story casa where mostly teachers at my school and some long-term international visitors lived, and after meeting up with him for lunch and a glass (okay, two bottles) of wine so he could talk my ear off and assess my character, he agreed to rent out the free room that was available within the next week.  I can be many things, but I am nothing if not charming.  Sez me.  

The four rooms on the ground floor, while equipped with roomy bathrooms, had to share a kitchen, whereas the four rooms on the second floor–where mine was–all contained tiny, perfectly decent kitchen units and smaller-than-closet-sized bathrooms.  I was thrilled to have this little in-suite cooking area all to myself with its big stainless-steel fridge, a two-burner stove, and microwave.  I always kept my place spotless and never, not once, saw a single cockroach. Victor also made sure to carefully and thoughtfully pin the respective flag of origin onto the doors of the people living in each suite; being the only Canadian, I boasted the only Maple leaf, and was the “Canadian delegation,” as he always called me.  This is what my place looked like, which are some of the rare and precious photos I still have from that marvelous, unforgettable time of my life.  

The teachers all hung out together, and classes ran from very early in the morning until quite late at night, so our schedules were never really consistent.  The only truly consistent thing was that all classes ended at noon on Saturdays, and there were no classes on Sundays, so everybody made sure to hurriedly scram out of San Jose for the weekend.  Not every teacher worked Saturdays, but they had early Monday classes, so they could easily leave on a Friday night and get two good days.  Those of us who worked Saturdays generally started late-afternoon on Mondays, so we also had time to leave in the early afternoon on Saturday and return on Monday in the late morning.  Essentially, we all had two days in a row to leave the capital, get blitzed, get burnt to a cinder, have a ball, and then do it all over again elsewhere in the country the following weekend if we so desired. 

The coach system in Costa Rica is also incredible, just one of the most efficient systems I’ve ever experienced, and it didn’t really matter where you wanted to go: Pacific coast, Caribbean coast, down South, up to the North, to some volcano…it never took longer than three hours, because the nation is so geographically tiny.

By August of 2009, after several months in the country, I had already been to several Pacific coast beaches, several Caribbean coast beaches, some volcanoes, some rivers, many bars, many great seafood restaurants, and on a few hikes.  I didn’t leave SJ every weekend; sometimes I just took it easy, cleaned my little suite, went to the Zapote Farmer’s Market on Sunday mornings, and cooked for the week.  Man, do I ever miss that farmer’s market, which isn’t the urban, overpriced, boutique, inaccessible luxury shopping experience it is here in Vancouver: it was an authentic outdoor market where farmers sold their goods for mere coins, and I would go home with two reusable canvas bags bursting apart with picked-that-morning produce for about ten dollars Canadian.  While I am no fan of tropical fruit (don’t start with me, I’m not), there isn’t a vegetable or herb I don’t adore, and the bushels of onions and peppers and cilantro and tomatoes and garlic and lettuce and…I’m going to start sobbing.  Since I was in desperate need of a red onion today (as one sometimes is), I paid $1.29 for one medium-sized, utterly average red onion down the street at what I plainly, crudely call The Local Ass Rapists. I swear that everyone who walks out of there–ten dollars poorer and with about three apples to show for it–is sort of limping, bent over, gritting their teeth and clutching at one of their buttcheeks.

…that’d be Kin’s Farm Market on Davie Street, by the way, who jack up their produce prices more than at any of their other locations simply because this one is located in the West End, and all of us residents are too dumb and/or lazy to not go there for emergency stuff.  Then again, our only other option around here is The Independent, owned by the hideous edax animae billionaire Galen Weston, Jr., and I’m not giving that sinister ghoul one more swipe of my debit card, not a single more precious nickel of my nonexistent money if I have to.  

(Trivia: Do you also know I share a birthday with him? Gross. He was born a mere three years before me and has all the money in Canada, I never seem to have enough money to even survive in Canada, and yet he is still somehow far more impoverished than I will ever be.)

SO ANYWAY, a weekend rolled around where I didn’t have plans, and neither did my next-door room neighbour on the top floor, a mischievous and delightful blonde bombshell from England named Jemima.  She had joined the school in the term following mine, and we made immediate, fast, very close friends almost from the time we introduced ourselves to each other.  Jemima proposed that we take a trip to Monteverde to do the zipline canopy tour that I mentioned at the start of this blog post somewhere.

“Zipline canopy tour?” I asked, unsure of what this was.

“Zipline canopy tour,” she confirmed.  “It’s supposed to be the best one in Costa Rica.  The forests there are apparently gorgeous [monteverde literally means “green mountain” in Spanish] and we can stay at this place I already found.  The ziplines are pretty famous, the sights are awesome, and we can go on this big nature hike around that whole area, too.”

Coming from a temperate rainforest, I was comforted by the idea of going to a mountainous region of the country smothered in green trees.  Ziplines?  Eh, I’d heard of them.  I think they maybe had one in Whistler by that point, but I knew it was a fairly innocuous adventure where you literally zipped on a line strung between two points, accompanied by a guide.  They never looked that high or intimidating based on the few glimpses I’d had of them, and I’m sure I had an even more pants-wetting experience back in Playland in 2001.  I don’t want to get into it too deeply here, but it involved a questionable harness, a minimum-wage teenager cranking me way up high in the air, facing the asphalt, and then pressing a button so that I plummeted almost to the pavement and then swung to and fro, to and fro, in giant, terrifying arcs.

“Let’s do it!”  I exclaimed.  “We’ll go straight from class on Saturday, just bring our stuff to the school and then hit the coach station.”

“Excellent!” beamed Jemima.  “This is going to be so fun.  A good getaway with a bit of adventure. You will have a blast.”

Jemima, you dollfaced liar, you.

To be continued…

(Reach me at nadya@nadzvera.com)