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.
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