Cabuya
19 Feb
I should have known. I should have known. I should have known when she laughed maniacally at the pregnant lady sitting in front of her on the bus. I should have known when she wouldn’t give Amy her own luggage ticket. I should have known by the way she smoked her cigarettes, darting eyes, shaking hands. I should have known she was nervous.
We met her at the hostel. Her face exploded into laughter, she was smiling a lot for the early morning. I peeked over her shoulder to the computer monitor, a photo of a blue cabana with a hammock; her property for rent. We liked her from the start. She was a unique hippie, a rainbow gathering momma, an inventive ayurveda practitioner, a passionate Italian, a sensitive and emotional creature of this planet.
We drank rum into the night, laughing and talking as the winds took effect. We were ready to ditch the city, vamos a la playa! We clinked glasses of cold beer, flung our bags over our shoulders, departed the hustle and bustle.
On the bus, she talked about the past, the present, the future. Her knees pressed herself into a cocoon on the seat in front of her, the pregnant lady in the seat wasn’t happy. She turned around, asked her to remove her knees, yet she responds with this laughter. Uproarious, erupting from the depths of her body, trembling and squinting.
A few minutes later, the policia stopped the bus, asking everyone for identification. I was fine, so was Amy. The woman didn’t have the correct paperwork. Her visa had expired a long time ago. The police took her away. She scribbled her cell phone number and address into my notebook, hopped off the bus as it was pulling away.
Amy and I, eyes agape, stared in disbelief. She left her stuff. We were now in possession of this woman’s two massive black bags, and backpack. We had no idea what was in them. We started thinking this was a set-up.
We spent the next few hours talking it out. We liked her, but episodes of “Banged-up Abroad” seemed too similar. Amy had a bad feeling in her gut. Had she set us up to transport her stolen stuff? Her drugs? A dead body? We recalled weird things she had done, such as given me all the luggage tickets (hers included.) Why would she have done that? Why didn’t she take the bags when the police took her off the bus? What should we do?
Deliberations later, we decided to take her stuff and try to find her house. We changed buses, the driver joked at all our things, were we moving in? The bus to Montezuma was slow. It was hot. The roads were bumpy and we were stressed. We hopped off at Montezuma with a massive pile of luggage, unsure of what to do next.
A man was there, looking for two girls carrying a bunch of bags. He was paid by the woman’s spouse to bring us to her bungalow we were intending on renting. Through the taxi window I spotted the full moon shining on the sea, and massive waves crashing onto the rocky shore. The air smelled like figs and flowers. It felt great.
We turned down a dirt path. A young boy opened the gate for us, and carried our bags to our new home. It was surreal; the light of the full moon felt like walking through a dream. The pebbled ground appeared to be moving; millions of hermit crabs scattered when we approached.
The boy is the woman’s son. He spoke to us in slow Spanish, so we could understand. His father was coming. There are 15 cats. The ocean is just over there. The woman’s husband appeared, carrying a toddler. He welcomed us with a massive hug, offered us coffee, and told us the police let his wife go. He had been worried all afternoon, she should be back in a few hours on the last ferry.
His Italian accent was smooth; he talked with his hands. He told us about the kids and invited us to a reggae concert (first of it’s kind) being held just a few minutes walk down the path, on the beach, under the full moon.
We went into our bungalow, and sighed. RELIEF. We thought we might be going to jail. Instead we found ourselves drinking coco-loco and dancing our asses off under the light of the full moon. An Italian boy said Costa Rica is like the apex of a pair of scissors; the place where past and present come together and you exist totally in the present moment. I agreed with him.
MRumianowski
Ahhhh! i love your writing. Keep it coming. But stop with the scary stuff. BROKEDOWN PALACE!!