The Kid Arrives

The Kid is here! He flew from the U.S. to San Jose, then took a bus to San Isidro. Our instructions were to meet him directly in front of the cathedral at one, two or three in the afternoon on the designated Thursday – depending on when his bus would arrive.

We have only a few more days left on our rental vehicle. The day before we were to meet The Kid, we decided to take an overnight trip to Quepos, the quaint fishing village on the coast an hour north of Dominical and about two hours from home. We had visited here last year and this time we returned to the same hotel – immaculate room with air conditioning and hot water, also a lovely terraced garden and close to the downtown for $28US. It was market day in Quepos so the streets were crowded. We arrived late in the afternoon and wandered in and out of shops and ate at one of the market sodas.

I found an internet café (no café, just rows of computers) and did some work on my laptop, 550 colones or $1 per hour. This was much better than my usual tactic of standing in an alley with bootleg internet at San Isidro, or begging the daily internet passcode from a friendly clerk at a hotel where we’d stayed once, and then loitering briefly in the lobby with my laptop.

Pecos discovered that the downtown casino near the waterfront was having its weekly poker tournament. While he played for a few hours I wandered in and out. I tried the slot machines and when it was time for my small pay-out, the attendant came over and took a digital photo of the machine, of me, and of me and the machine together – I assume for verification of the amount she gave me. I soon realized that several of the other tourist-appearing gamblers were actually casino employees, hired to cheer at unexpected times and to encourage real tourists to step up to the bar.

I walked down the well-lit block to a restaurant/bar called Dos Locos, where a gringo rock band had begun to play. The lead guitarist and harmonica player were outstanding, even if the band did know only four songs that they repeated several times over. I ate at a sidewalk table and watched the prostitutes proposition several men (sometimes successfully) who were standing at the open wall of the restaurant and inside. This trade is legal in Costa Rica and I’d read that there are more than 15,000 prostitutes who are registered with the government – and that it’s anyone’s guess as to how many others don’t bother to register their occupations. It seemed that no other women, except those who were engaged in financial transactions of the evening – and me – were out alone at night.

I returned to the casino to watch Pecos come in fourth and one successful hand short of winning several hundred dollars. We had a late dinner in a bar. As I returned from the restroom, two scantily-clad women – a beautiful young Tica and a quite aged gringa – were moving in, stepping very close, elbowing each other aside, and trying to catch Pecos’s attention. He stared studiously at a hanging on the wall. Good old Pecos.

Much of the coastal highway between Quepos and Dominical is graveled in washboard, brain-jarring condition, although in some spots there is new pavement. Surprisingly, the blacktopped areas are quite broad, sometimes the equivalent of six or seven lanes wide. Then, without warning, the smooth pavement ends – sometimes with no signage and a foot drop – and the road suddenly is one lane wide and back to its conversation-ending, car-rattling condition.

Plantations of palm trees, grown for their oil, line much of this route. The rows of tall palms are broken by the occasional cluster of homes for the workers, each organized around a grassy field with soccer posts at both ends. Seedheads of palm, basketball-sized and ready for pressing, were heaped in large wagons for hauling to a centralized processing plant. Wagons were drawn slowly along the highway by tractors or oxen.

We stopped at a roadside stand for pipa fria. The proprietor quickly chopped a hole in the top of a coconut and stuck in a straw. This cold drink lasted several miles. We stopped at two secluded coastal villages where I swam in the clear, warm water. Pecos sat on the shaded, sandy beaches and watched for whales. Signs warned of riptides so I stayed close to shore. A few surfers were out quite a ways and a family or two were having picnics at each place.

We arrived back at San Isidro at 1:05. No sign of The Kid sitting on any of the park benches by the cathedral. But suddenly a shadow jumped up from the ground under a shady tree, and there he was! It’s good to have him here. He laughs hard every time I use my Spanish and smiles constantly. We visited the market and did a few errands before heading up the mountain.

The Kid offered to drive and he brought us slowly through village after village where he was greeted happily by all who saw him. When we neared our village, several people also called out to him from their homes. Two old men sitting on the bench in front of the pulperia greeted him heartily and swung their canes in the air. Mauricio, the proprietor, came around the counter and gave him a warm hug while talking excitedly for several minutes to fill him in on local news. Away for half a year, The Kid was expected and had been missed. 