They've Got No Tomatoes in Costa Rica

Dear Reader,

After writing the story about my husband's tooth infection when we went scuba diving in Cozumel, I feel compelled to finish the story where it ended a week later in Costa Rica.

We don't usually take back to back vacations but some good friends, Mike and Jackie, had a home in Costa Rica and room for guests so they invited us to join them for Thanksgiving on the beach. That sounded great to me and also a way to get out of hosting and cooking for Thanksgiving as usual.

Neither of us had been to Costa Rica before but liked the sound of it. Mike and Jackie just loved it there and spent 6 months out of the year in the place so it must be great. Their house was in a community of houses near Coco Beach on the Pacific Ocean and about 30 minutes from Liberia where there is a small airport.

Since the flights were quite expensive we took their advice and flew into San Jose and rode the local bus to Liberia. Remember my Dolmus story in Turkey? Well this was different. The local bus is a school bus with very poor shocks, maybe none. We found it sitting in a building covered in dirt with a few people sitting around, waiting, I presumed. Suddenly people started boarding so we followed and hoped it was the correct bus and would take us to Liberia, a 5 hour ride away.

We took off like a jet bouncing over the curbs and squeeling through the city before we reached the highway out of San Jose. Once on the highway things were much better. The speed helped to clear some of the dirt off the windows so I could see at least some of the scenery. The heat was stifling inside and outside. It took two of us to push my window up only to find that the wind blowing in was hotter than no wind blowing at all. That was a bummer.

As we progressed we began to climb and climb into mountains and the road began to get curvy and bumpy, very bumpy. It got so bumpy that John and I were literally hitting our heads on the ceiling repeatedly. I had a splitting headache after an hour of this. Finally we stopped at a little shack in the jungle with outdoor picnic tables, shade trees and, yes, bathroom facilities! Fearing the worst I brought my roll of toilet paper with me which I always carry on all of my travels. But the toilets weren't bad. At least they had seats.

We bought some soft drinks and snacks and got back on the bus for another 3 hours of teeth jarring head banging ride which was also very noisy. Not the passengers. They were very quiet and polite. But the bus itself was loud along with the wind from the windows. By the time we reached Liberia we were shouting at each other because we couldn't hear anything and both of us had tremendous headaches and backaches. I had never seen so many potholes in one highway anywhere. It's as if they were sacred shrines not to be damaged rather than potholes.

We crossed a field of plowed dirt stumbling towards the only building in site hoping to find the next bus which would take us on to Coco Beach. Miraculously we found it with no problem, Mike and Jackie's information had been good, and off we went for another 30 minute bumpy ride. John was so tired by this point that he fell asleep, head banging routinely on the window sill. I don't know how he did it but was afraid he'd have a serious head injury from it.

The quiet little town on the beach was quite pleasant and the aromas of fresh fish and seafood made me very hungry all of a sudden. There was a bank of telephones in the middle of the street which we were supposed to use to call our friends so they could come and get us but every phone was in use. Not only that, each person using a phone was just hanging out having what sounded like casual conversations. This was going to take awhile before we had a chance to use a phone. What to do? We decided to get something to eat.

At a little restaurant within sight of the phones we each ordered a ceviche' which is raw fish, shrimp, scallops, or conch marinated in lime juice and diced up with tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, onions, and jalapeno vinegar. Some places even add diced cucumber and carrots which are nice. But these ceviches were rather plain looking. I took several bites before realizing there were no tomatoes in my ceviche. John noticed the same about his and we figured they must have run out.

After finally reaching Jackie by phone, Mike came down to pick us up in the ugliest bright purple car I've ever seen. It was some sort of compact car all banged up that he rented from Rent A Wreck in San Jose. This is a guy who always drives cool cars so we had a good laugh.

Their home was very lovely and had a nice ocean view, a very large front porch and a private miniature swimming pool. I was impressed until they warned us about the scorpions. I thought Mike was joking when he said they come in the house all the time but he showed me a large jar of dead ones, which totally grossed me out, so I believed him. They both warned us that the scorpions like to crawl into dark places like your shoes and to always shake things out before donning them. That first night I couldn't sleep and was terrified to get up and go to the bathroom because I might step on one.

We did a lot of fun things during our visit to Costa Rica, not the least of which was the big Thanksgiving party on the beach. It was quite the affair with a very fun bunch of people. John even helped by carving the turkey which is his expertise and gave Jackie advise about the cooking of such. She had carried that turkey all the way from California in an ice chest. I had to admire that.

John and I were, of course, mainly interested in scuba diving so that was our daily plan. We were surprised when Mike advised that there are no boat docks whatsoever. I wondered how to we go out to the boats which were at anchor. We found out the first day and it was not fun. First we had to go to the dive shop which was a couple of miles from the beach and load all of the equipment including tanks into the back of a pickup truck. Then we had to pile in. There were four of us, Jackie doesn't dive but her son, Brad, was with us, plus the divemaster and pilot and his assistant. Brad and John jumped into the cab of the truck and left me to sit on top of the tanks with the hired help. Okay, I get it, men stuff.

When we got to the beach they pulled in a row boat to the shore and we started a chain handing off tanks and other equipment to each other until it reached the boat where it was stored. The one of the guys rowed the boat out to the dive boat at anchor and transferred everything onto it. Then he returned and picked us up. The waves at this shore were rather strong. Even getting into a row boat wasn't easy but I had no idea what was to come. They had lost the ladder to the dive boat so I had to climb up and over the side which was really hard when rocking back and forth in the waves! I was thinking of how I was expected to climb back aboard with my scuba gear on.

The diving itself was disappointing. The water was murky with visibility of no more than ten feet but there wasn't much to see anyway. We saw plenty of Scorpionfish which are deadly poisonous, and rock fish, also poisonous and very little colorful coral. But by far the worst part about the diving are the jellyfish. On our first dive as I was beginning to leap into the water I saw them floating everywhere around our boat. There were round ones plus long stringers up to eight feet long! I said "I'm not jumping into that" but the divemaster assured me they were no problem and the stringers were just a string of eggs. Nothing to worry about. So like a fool, I jumped in where I was immediately attacked by one of the giant stringers. All I could do was descend quickly to get away from it but during the dive I really dreaded ascending again. They were waiting for me, I knew it.

At the end of the dive I nearly propelled myself onto the boat like a flying dolphin landing on the pool deck at Sea World just to avoid the jelly fish. Poor John, on the other hand, had a different problem. His tooth was killing him. Yes, this was the same tooth that was infected in Cozumel a week before. This time he was moaning and yelling so loudly we took him straight to a clinic. The free medical clinics in Costa Rica are very efficient and accessible. There's no paperwork to fill out, you just tell the doctor what's wrong.

It was crowded inside the clinic so Mike and Brad and I waited outside on the street corner. We were thirsty after diving and there was a little Pepsi stand across the street so Mike went over and got Pepsis for us. He had one of his faces on, the look he gets when he's thinking "Have you ever seen anything this crazy?" and when he arrived we saw he was carrying three zip lock bags filled with a dark fluid with a straw peaking out of one corner. We had a good laugh over drinking Pepsis out of plastic bags while John was suffering inside. It was hardly fair but what could we do?

When John came out he filled us in on how it went. First of all, he was by far the tallest person in the clinic and the biggest. Perhaps he was the biggest man they had ever seen anywhere. Everyone was intimidated by him and when he started roaring in pain, everyone waiting in line urged him to go to the front. He told the doctor about his root canal and the infection in Cozumel and the doctor took a dental prick and lifted the top of John's temporary crown. John said it made a hissing sound as the air trapped inside was released and he felt instant relief. The doctor also gave John some medicine to take and when John tried to pay him, the doctor absolutely refused. No way.

So John was landbound for the rest of the week while Mike and I went diving every day sometimes with Brad. Mike and I go back a ways as scuba divers together. Years ago he talked about scuba diving in Baja, California to find golf balls that had landed in the water from the golf course above. John and I both insisted he should get himself certified to be safe. When he finally did, he was really into it and went on to advanced diving fairly quickly. Meanwhile, John and I had also completed our Advanced Diving certification and several specialty diving classes working up to our Rescue Diver's course. When we told Mike, he said he wanted to take the course with us so the four of us went to Belize together and for 1/2 day over a 4 day course, the three of us got certified as Rescue Divers.

Since then, Mike decided to go all the way for his divemaster certification which requires rigorous training plus working in a dive shop for six months. He had been working at the local dive shop at his housing compound called Bill Beard's. Of course, being Mike, he already had some great stories to tell us about working there. On his first day as a Certified Dive Master one of his divers did a backroll without looking and landed on Mike's head with her tank. With blood running down his face, Mike had to be airlifted to a hospital. My favorite story is about the time Mike forgot to shake out the wetsuits before renting them. It's Cardinal law down there to shake the wetsuits in case a scorpion crawled inside. Mike picked out a wetsuit for a customer who went to the dressing room to try it on. Then Mike heard a loud scream and the man ran out all red faced and told Mike something had bit him. "Where?", Mike asked. The guy rolled down his suit to his thighs and then Mike saw it. The poor guy's genitals were bright red and swollen the size of canteloupes. Mike's emergency medical training kicked in and he said not to worry, he would fix it. He ran and got the great big medical book and started frantically flipping pages looking for scorpion stings but finally gave up and they got the guy to a hospital. Stories like these are why I couldn't sleep at night.

While we were diving, John and Jackie went touring some historical places. Then one day we all went on a long a very bumpy ride into the forest to go zip lining. This was my first time zip lining and I had no idea what to expect but I knew it would be fun. We did a short nature hike to the canyon stepping carefully over giant red killer ants and other nasty creatures. Brad got stung on the ankle by a bright chartreuse caterpillar. The guide advised him that the caterpillar is poisonous and he will begin to feel nausea and stomach cramps and then it will get worse. She also told us that the caterpillar in question turns into the gorgeous blue butterflies we saw everywhere so we didn't want to harm them. Poor Brad turned white as a sheet so her little story worked. She was only joking but the rest of us didn't find out until later when Brad never got sick.

The canyon was very deep and tree filled. We couldn't even see the bottom. The distances from tree to tree were great. Each one had a small platform which would have been easy to overshoot if a guide had not been stationed there to catch you. It was a fantastic feeling flying freely over the tree tops. I loved it. Also, part of it required climbing up a small hill with footholds in it, and there was a tree ladder as well but the zip lining part was the most fun. The last one was really long, at least twice as long as the others and from there I could see the entire forest. This was a great experience and I recommend it to anyone who has no fear of heights.

One evening while we were relaxing in the pool drinking beers I mentioned the strange ceviche' we had had without tomatoes. Jackie said there are no tomatoes in Costa Rica. I couldn't believe it. The climate seemed perfect, hot and dry. It didn't make sense and still doesn't. What kind of Latin American country is worth it's salt without tomatoes. I couldn't eat hardly anything without tomatoes. So I announced to Jackie that I could never live in Costa Rica. Either that or a great business opportunity came to mind. I could start growing tomatoes commercially and become the tomato queen. As a side business I would install payphones on every corner of every street in every city in Costa Rica. Yes, it sounds like a pipe dream, I know, but one can dream. It's dreams that often lead to reality.

Of course, to get me to move there they would also have to fill in those darned pot holes! We drove into a pot hole on the dirt road into the forest that was so large that all of us had to get out of the car and lift it out of the hole. We then had to walk for a couple of miles so the car wouldn't get stuck again. They would also have to build some boat docks and take us to dive sites free of jellyfish. I don't ask for much, do I?

On our final evening John and I were packing our gear, which had been washed and hung on the balcony to dry, into our gear bags. We have always used very large black rubber fins which are great and I will never try any others. When I picked up one of my fins, remembering Mike's warning, I shook it and out flew a scorpion. My reflexes kicked in and I started screaming uncontrollably. Why didn't anyone come to help me? I was frozen in place just screaming when finally John came outside, picked up my other fin and beat the thing to death. My hero! But the rest of them! Those rats were still sitting inside laughing their heads off. I got suspicious that Mike may have planted that scorpion for me to find but instead he came out with his jar and added mine to his collection. I was visibly shaken but nothing that a few more beers followed by a 5 1/2 hour bumpy ride to San Jose in the morning wouldn't solve. That's when we decided to splurge and buy airline tickets out of Liberia to San Jose to save our backs and heads and behinds.

It was a lovely visit spent with good company and loaded with things of interest. Not only did we get to see the interior forest and go zip lining, we also got to visit a free medical clinic. As a diver I can't recommend the diving. I've dived too many other places that are better. And as a fan of ceviche' I can't recommend it either, not without tomatoes! Maybe that's why our friends later sold their house and bought a boat in Mexico.

Hasta Luego