Final Thoughts on Fate

This is my third time in Costa Rica. The first was a trip with my family and the second a group tour when I was in high school. There was a rebellious side to me as a teenager - I lauded Catcher in the Rye, and opposed almost anything mainstream. I associated a lot of these ideas with music, hailing classic rock as the sole genre worth listening to and insisting that that pop had no value except as a drug of conformity.

It was on an organic farm in Costa Rica that I put Zeppelin II into my CD player for the first time, watching rain pound against the roof of my camping tent. The effect that album had on my rebel teenage spirit was immense: when I returned from the trip, I arrived at school with “Ramble On” blasting through open windows.

In college, I got into more current music, rap, modern rock, and eventually jazz. While my devotion to The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and The Who remained strong, Led Zeppelin loomed farther into the background. As the years passed, I listened to them less and less.

Two weeks after moving to Costa Rica, I scanned my iTunes list for something to listen to. I had forgotten about the night on the organic farm with Zeppelin in my ears. Yet that night, I chose Zeppelin II. But that wasn’t all. The strangest thing wasn’t that I happened to put on the same album I got into the last time I was here, but that I got the same feeling I had while listening to it. I was into it like I had been that rainy day…a decade ago. It was only later that I made the connection. As the lyrics go, “I’m goin’ round the world, on my way, I’ve been this way ten years to the day…”

Journey into Nature Part 2: Is it fate?

As soon as I arrived in Costa Rica, there was talk about fate. Now I’ve never really been a believer in fate – I believe in choice and in God. In the recent months before coming here, I was becoming wary of making decisions. Maybe it was my future looming in the distance, but for whatever reason, I began taking a different approach for the small decisions: let fate handle it. And then suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, I ended up in Costa Rica.

When I first arrived here, Carlos told me the story about how the day he arrived in Costa Rica was the same day his wife's birthday (who is a Tica). Is that fate? My journey to Barva looking for the waterfall to no end, yet finding myself in the very festival I thought I was missing…is that fate? And why am in Costa Rica, anyway? Three weeks before landing at Juan Santamaria International Airport, feeling the humidity hit my cheeks, I never would have imagined myself living here.

With these thoughts circulating, I made a second attempt to escape the urban life and commune with nature. This time, I would head past Barva to San Jose de la Montana, which I was told, was a real mountain town, and was near the entrance of Barva Volcano. I didn’t know how long it would take to hike up to the peak of the volcano, or which path to take, all I knew was that I wanted to find a spot in the woods, eat a sandwich (I packed a PB&J with pretzels), and read my book (In Cold Blood).

I hopped on a bus, and when I arrived in San Jose de Montana, I got off at the very last stop, and asked the bus driver, “Donde esta la Montana?” Keep hiking up, he said, take a right, and a left, and then I’d reach the volcano. It sounded simple enough.

Simple, sure, but long and steep. I hiked up that road for four hours…and it felt fantastic. As I walked higher and higher, it became more rural and rural. I saw cows grazing on a cloudy field. Wet local cheeses for sale lying lonesome on a wooden table. A middle-aged man and woman igniting a fire with sticks along a stream. As I kept hiking, I entered into a white mist. It was gorgeous drifting through the trees that dotted the hills. But soon, I couldn’t see any trees. All I could see was white. I was in a cloud.

Fine, I thought, I could keep going all day – maybe I’d even reach the volcano. But then it started to rain.

I took shelter at a nearby restaurant – the first one I had seen for miles (or should I say kilometers). I had an umbrella but I didn’t bring my rainjacket, and I was getting cold. I knew then that I was done hiking for the day, even if I was just three kilometers from the entrance to the volcano. I had imagined the walk from the entrance to the base of the volcano to be a five-hour journey, but I’d find out later, it was only five kilometers away.

I sat down at the restaurant and was thrilled to see a cheese omelet on the menu. Cheese omelets here mean ham and cheese, so I tried to explain what I wanted to the waitress (no ham!), and a man came over asking if I needed help. I didn’t really, but I let him anyway. He said, “Welcome to Costa Rica!”, and sat back down with his family of four. When the omelet arrived, he came to my table again, and said, “Don’t worry, I already paid.”

I was wowed by this man’s generosity. Then as I began to walk back down, I debated whether I should try hitchhiking or not. On the one hand, it was pouring, but on the other, was it safe, in a country with metal bars and electric fences in front of homes? I finally got fed up with the rain, stuck out my thumb, and was picked up twice.

Although I didn’t reach the peak of Volcan Barva, it felt great to hike, and see rural parts of the country. And although I didn’t reach my goal – I never found that spot where I could sit down, eat my sandwich, and read – I discovered something more valuable. Maybe the generosity of the people I had met that day came from the fact that they were from the countryside, or maybe it was because they thought I was a tourist, and they wanted to make a good impression of their country. But still, what it showed to me, was that certain values have no bounds, and one of them, which makes humankind so great, is kindness.

Journey into Nature Part 1: Is it fate?

I wanted to escape the city and go into the mountains. I found on wikitravel a “gorgeous waterfall and swimming hall” in the “small and cute” town of Barva, which is just north of Heredia. None of the local Gringos or Ticos who I asked about the waterfall had ever heard of such a place, but that didn’t stop me from journeying into the unknown.

While on the bus, I reached for my guide book and read that Barva is known for the Feria de la Mascarada, where performers dress up in lavish costumes and wear huge masks (some of which weight up to 20 kg) of demons, devils….and local celebrities. The festival was on the upcoming Wednesday…I was three days too early.

I imagined Barva as a quiet village set under the shadow of Barva Volcano. But this was no mountain village. The main square was filled with people, out with family and friends, and vendors, selling churros and chop suey. I left the bus and read the directions, “Facing the church, walk left, then take your first left. Follow that road for a quarter of a mile…to the left will be a trail going down to the river.” I took the first left and walked down the road…

...as I walked, I came across a flat white building with music blasting from inside. I peeked my head in. There was a girl dancing, dressed in traditional garb, a white, green, and red plaited dress, in front of a screen that showed pictures of Jerusalem and had lyrics about Jesus. Everyone was chanting with incredible fervor, besides a detached teenage girl sneaking peeks at her cell phone. An old woman saw me and motioned for me to enter so I did, and I stood there and watched. I thought about my time at the discoteca and how dancing and singing was such a big part of the culture here…and I made the connection to religion. I suppose certain things are engrained in society and they're all interconnected. I thought about a night in Heredia when I heard blasting salsa music coming from a large hall and when I looked inside, I was surprised to see not the young students from the university nearby, but a crowd of old men and women, dancing their heads off. You’d never see that in the States, I thought, it’s not an integral part of our culture, something we learn as a child, and continue until we’re elderly, like dancing to a bolero, or bolting out tunes at karaoke, or juggling a soccer ball with our feet.

I continued down the road. But I saw no trail, river, just houses, and cars speeding by me at dangerous speeds. So I retraced my steps and took the second left instead of the first. This time I passed a river, and thought I was going the right way…but never saw a trail. By this point, I had walked quite a bit, so I took a taxi back to the main square, ready to admit there was no waterfall (but now, I wonder if it could have been the other "left"...)

When I got to the town square, a van stopped in front of me and eight young men and women dressed in costumes and giant masks walked out. They began dancing in a circle, and I realized that the reason the square was so packed with people was because today, not the upcoming Wednesday, was the Feria de la Mascarada. I watched the performance with glee, thinking, sometimes the unexpected comes true.