El fin

El fin

Week 9

Following weeks of rain and jungle, stepping off the bus from Selva Bananito to San José felt like a sudden rushing return to city and sunlight. Traffic raced, and almost two months after I had first stayed at a friend’s house in Heredia, I struggled to direct my taxi driver to the address, proud to get us there on a few landmarks and half memories. 

I spent my last bits of time in Costa Rica walking and looking, trying to remember the sky and the streets. A few days before I departed, I went to Vólcan Poas, where I peered down into the volcano’s crater at the jewel colored water rolling in its belly. The ride there was all twists and mountain greens and mist, and from behind the glass of the car window, I spotted a sloth as it sunned itself in a tree beside the road.

I sent letters to Pancho and Kenneth and Jasmin from the post office off one of the central squares and ordered a fresa-guanabana batido (milkshake) for the last time, my mind both back in the past and turning over the present. I had done a lot in the last two months, made friends, seen life from a vantage that was strange and new. I felt as though I understood, in some small way, what it meant to be a Tic@. Language, which had so frustrated me at the beginning, was now more than ever a puzzle of words through which I needed to sort, pulling out the ones I wanted, ordering them, finding tense and meaning.

On the way to the airport, the talkative taxista rattled on to me in Spanish, asking questions and pointing out parts of the city. The sun streamed in hot through the windshield. It was funny then to realize how comfortable I felt here, how much I had come to understand language and place in a way that I would never before have guessed at. And then I was at the airport, saying ciao to Costa Rica.

Fotos: 1. Poas bound 2. Poas crater