December 13, 2002 - December 28, 2002

South Caribbean Coast, Costa Rica

You know, I didn't write a single entry during this time, which is a sad thing, seeing as it was one of the most eventful and interesting periods of my trip so far.  But I guess I did not write about many great things the fist semester like orientation in Liberia, the trip to Rincon de la Vieja including climbing the volcano and riding the horses, the little trip to Rincon in Corcovado, Volcan Poas, that little freezing cold cloud forest reserve above San Rafael de Heredia where the bus stalled, we had to hike up a hill for no reason and later on, it seemed like the bus was going to tip over, the going away party with the moms and of course, the bus problems again, my field trips to Cerro de la Muerte and Sarapiqui, Nicaragua, Thanksgiving dinner at Teresita's house, Central American Independence Day, Jaco with Alexis, Mike, Ben and Sam and the nasty cabin.  Wow.  So I guess it shouldn't be a shock that I missed some more good stuff.  But anyway, I'll try to give you an idea of what I did in these few weeks.  Quite a bit happened after all.

I think Alexis left for the States on the 12^th.  And aside from Becca and Sam and Justin, she was the last to go.  I felt quite alone.  Costa Rica just didn't look the same.  I was in a fever to get out of there.  I left the next day, having no idea what I would find when I got to the Carribbean.  Or even if the farm was open for Christmas.  The bus ride was nice except for the washed out bridge on the way down the coast south of Limon, caused by the massive flooding in the area.  We had to stop on one side, get off, walk a kilometer or so up river on a dirt path, board motorized dugout canoes and cross to the other side.  There we boarded another bus and kept on our merry way.  We arrived in Puerto Viejo at dark.  I somehow managed to find some random place called the Jacaranda run by this bitchy Trinidadian woman named Vera.  The place was about 10 dollars a night and although it was dark and sort of wierded me out, the decor was pretty exotic, hippie and cool.  And, of course, the essential, there were hammocks.  I had the pleasure of using a very smelly bug net and a fan.

The next day, I was out to explore and beach it a little.  I ended up walking quite a bit and I actually felt like I was in Ghana because of the totally black Rasta population, the jungliness and the utter un-Costa Rican feel.  There was a sunken boat a little out in the water.  It had a small tree growing out the top and a little black boy swam to it and then stood on top.  The mist rose out of millions of uninterrupted palms in the background.  His silhouette against the golden breaking sun.  I stood on a dusty dirt road by the beach.  This must be what Africa looks like.

I would only hear Reggae music for the next few weeks.  At night it was loud, no matter where you were.  Every Rasta man wanted to take me to his home or go to a bar.  Those things I refused.  But that night, I smoked a clove cigarette on the beach.  I have never smoked before in my life.  I hated it enough to do it only one other time after.  And I haven't done it since.  That night, before I went to bed, I read on the hammock in the tropical, hot, African night under the dim red light of a paper lantern.  I read Taipan.  It seemed as exotic as my surroundings.  The next day I simply chilled again.  Made friends with a few native surfers, surfing Salsa Brava, a Hawaiian style, hard hitting reef break.  I watched for a while, wrote Christmas cards and basically did nothing for the rest of the day.  The next morning, Monday morning, December 16, I tried to leave early to catch the bus for Manzanillo, about 17 k south on a dirt road.  The farthest south the roads go along the coast.  Vera wasn't there to pay.  I yelled and knocked but the woman, who was sleeping in her room, didn't even wake up.  I ended up telling one of the neighbors that I would be back to pay soon.  She would just have to trust me.  I left for the bus late, and surprise surprise, I missed it.  There was not another one until 3pm.  However thankfully, a Rasta man in a pickup truck saw me walking down the road with my pack and picked me up.  I swung my pack in the truck bed and climbed in the cab beside him.  He drove me as far as the hotel in which he worked, in Punta Uvita, about mid-way between Puerto Viejo and Manzanillo.  He wouldn't accept money for the lift.  Actually I think he laughed at me for even offering.  We had passed the bus on the way, so I sat by the side of the road to wait.  I didn't have to wait long.  I hitched a ride with the little bus and made it to Manzanillo around 8am. 

I had a very long wait in Manzanillo.  The dirt road ends there at that tiny little Rasta village (I'm not sure it's even big enough to earn the term village...) where I was to find a man named Bako who worked at the village bar to take me out to Punta Mona by boat.  Either that or go 5 miles on a poorly marked foot path through the jungle with my 60 pound backpack.  I decided to wait for Bako. 

Well I had quite a bit of waiting to do.  Bako never seemed to be doing anything at all and I found myself talking to this friendly Rasta man named Omar who was about my age.  We spoke in Spanglish most of the time although Patua (an adaptation of Jamaican Creole) was his most comfortable language, and surprisingly, I actually enjoyed his company.  He would turn out to be my first and last true Rasta friend.  Sometimes he would leave for a bit and I would read or chat with the village girls, who eventually decided to braid my hair.  I think they ripped more of it out then they braided.  When they were not harassing me, they were skipping rope barefooted around the little open area.  Actually, everyone in town was bare foot.  And most of the men were drunk although it was quite early in the morning.  Everyone seemed to congregate in the little open area or at the bar, at one side of it.  I think I knew every face in the town by noon.  I watched a few tourists come in and then leave.  The only ones I talked to were a couple from Oregon with two little girls about ages 8 and 5.  They asked me where they could find psychedelic mushrooms.  I was rather disgusted by the question, and Omar, who was with me at the time, surprised them by saying:  "We don't eat mushrooms around here."  He appeared rather disgusted too.

Finally, a boat came from Punta Mona, carrying a few volunteers and the two people I will not forget soon.  One was Ana, the little, 30 year old Colombian woman who I would begin to think of as an evil black widow and Arrington, the old Caribbean, Nicaraguan Creole who is the Punta Mona cook.  The man was skinny as a rail but muscular in a stringy way, always without a shirt and never without his big, toothless smile.  That man breathed nothing but marijuana.  Padi, the old Creole salt who owned the land that is now Steve's hippie commune came as well, the boat captain.  He still lives on a small patch of land right next to the farm.  His white dreads short around his toothless scowl.  That man was a live one if ever one existed. 

But we still didn't leave.  Eventually Ana went off with the volunteers to San Jose, apparently to go after her residence card which she had just obtained.  The woman, unfortunately for all, was now a resident of Costa Rica.  Arrington and Padi chilled at the bar and drank and drank and drank.  It got late.  Late afternoon.  Maybe around 5pm.  A soccer game broke out on the beach among a bunch of the young Rasta guys.  I expressed interest in playing and Omar had no trouble in dragging me out to the beach to play.  I began playing in the little impromptu game of all local males and only later found out from Jason, another of the guys I got to know, that I was the first girl, local or otherwise to ever play soccer with them.  For some reason, that sort of embarrassed me.  Although it was a little better when he told me that I had to come to town the next game they played.

Around 5:30pm, the last bus from Pureto Viejo came in, and with it, an 18-year-old freshman from the University of Oregon, named Kate.  She was also going to Punta Mona.  We had been waiting all day for her.  I wonder why no one had been able to communicate that to me?  So as the sun is setting over the water, we prepare to head out for Punta Mona on the boat.  Arrington took the front, Kate and I the middle and Padi instructed a young man how to steer the little boat.  I believe now, although I did not know at the time, that that young man was either Jerry, Padi's grandson, or Jason. By the time we got going, it was pitch black aside from the moon.  It was amazing to fly over the water in the cool night air.  After about 30 minutes on the boat, passing Punta Mona Island, we land at some beach and they announce our arrival.  There are only two lights back a bit in the jungle.  We walk in and are greeted by the only two volunteers at the farm at the moment, both of whose exact names elude me now (Kristy and David).  The girl was about 28, blonde and originally from California (I believe her name was Kristy).  She had a huge colorful tattoo covering her entire back and one on her foot as well.  She, as it became apparent over the next two days, was rather busy fucking the other volunteer (I think his name was David), a Spaniard from Madrid.  Despite the open sex, I got to like Christine, very soft spoken and sincere, quite a bit like Meghan Peot, whom I got to know in Ecuador (she had worked here for 6 months and was the one who had recommended the place to me).  David was also a pretty good guy.  I saw a cockroach on the first night.  I didn't know it then, but I would soon find out that cockroaches are very territorial creatures.  A group of two roaches came out every single night in the exact same place in the little shared bathroom in the main guesthouse.  They would disappear every day, but every night, they were there.  No one bothered them and they bothered no one.

Arrington played Swamp Ophelia while he was smoking in the kitchen after we went to bed.  I left my bed, sat on a hammock and listened.  Those hammocks would become the home of my ass in any free moment for the next two weeks.  Lovely, lovely hammocks.

Well I really can't go through what happened each day from here, firstly because I don't clearly remember what happened what day, and secondly, because it would take a novel.  So many people came in and out, so many people moving about, so much to do, it would be crazy.  But I will briefly describe the few people who became rather constant at the farm.

Steven Brooks - Curly haired hippie god of communal sex and good vibrations.  This man basically placed himself in a little microcosm in which he played the role of God.  I thought he was very testy and impersonal although he seemed to be worshiped by the rest of the women there.  He's the owner by the way.

Alita - The shorthaired chick from Montreal who was 24 but acted like she was 35.  She was the practical and annoying one of the group, always clashing with Steven and his insanely unbounded and impractical idealism.  She was the one mediating for Kate and I when we got into "trouble" near the end of our stay.  That in itself annoyed me, although I probably liked Alita more than many of the people.  She really didn't do much work though.  Her lectures on "living in community" were probably the worst.

Jessica - Steven's friend, a 30 year old hippie chick pretty much never doing anything at all except for running around in a bathing suit or quite naked.  She had lots of advice to impart over the sexual nature of Rasta men for some strange reason.  She lived once in Miami (where Steve's from), but now is a West Coast mystic.

Miquael - French Canadian man who was probably my favorite person and the only sane person at that freaking farm.  He worked a ton and was not fazed at all by any of the weird stuff going on there, although he wasn't really part of it either.  He's traveled quite a bit, especially in Western Africa. 

Aaron - Pothead and hmmmm... pot head.  Kate and I had to share our little open sided, wooden bunk house with the guy, which I guess wasn't that bad... it was just he was pretty much like a walking zombie all the time and the place always smelled like weed.

Jonathan - The hippie man if ever one existed.  I think he was more into the life of the place than even Steve.  Hair longer than mine, a big beard, guitar playing and singing Bob Marley, Dillon, and whatever else came to his head.  He has hiked both the Appalachian and the Pacific Crest Trails.  He worked the greenhouse and lived in a tent on a platform out by the greenhouse.

Jerry - The rabid dog of the freaking place.  This boy was a Rasta man, the grandson of Padi, who actually lived on Punta Mona.  He was accustomed to go the rounds to the beds of all the females in the place and ask the women to sleep with him.  Unfortunately, he took a special liking to me and came to my room and tried to crawl into my bed with a handful of condoms on Christmas Eve.  The ass got chewed out by Steven the next day.

Garret - Steven's friend from Miami who had planned on staying for a year.  He got there a few days before I left and honestly, the guy doesn't seem like the type.  Way to serious and quiet.  Way too normal.

Lindsey - Garrett's girlfriend, a 35 year old who seemed to me to be a 17 year old Notre Dame senior.  She taught me the trick of putting ginger in your water bottle to keep the water tasting good.  She brought to the farm all these weird books about the eastern art of tantric sex and love making which preoccupied everyone for about a week.

Jenny - The 40 year old mystic and 'witch' who told Jerry on numerous occasions to go to hell, to my immense pleasure.  She played the guitar and the mandolin and I ran into her a few months ago in Bocas del Torro with her boyfriend and a few other Punta Mona people. 

Sam and Doug - 55-year-old twins who are friends of Steven's and help him run the permaculture course.  I heard stories Doug at least, that were not too agreeable.  Doug, at 55, has a beautiful 25-year-old Italian wife and her beautiful little kid.  Apparently this is the first time he has been faithful to his wife for more than 10 minutes and the son of his wife is, in reality, like his 50^th kid.  Apparently he likes minors. Well, I guess I wouldn't be so damn judgemental if he weren't such a bitch to boot. 

Dara - Nudist queen.  Enough said.  (No wait, she was also Meghan Peot's best friend while she was there.  She also did the ISEP UNA program a few years back and lived in the same family as Alexis did... the family of Blanca and Laura and Josue.)  But she didn't like clothes.  And, por dicha, she was the only one of the hippie girls who didn't advocate "The Keeper" and we therefore got along. 

Grandma Rainbow - At seventy something years old this old Jewish hippie woman.  She lived in a tent on the grounds, was always practicing yoga and smoking pot.  Last I heard she was still living there in that tent.  She always wore only some wrap over her body and nothing more.  She probably had more knowledge than anyone there about moons and witch stuff.

Kate- Of course I must mention Kate.  She was 18, a college freshman, and the only one I really had anything in common with.  She was a little bit lazier than me, and quite the herb smoker, but at least both of us were not lost hippie causes.

Ana - The black widow.  What can I say about Ana?  Kate and I hated her, and she hated us.  Ana was very sexually pushy/vibey with everyone she came into contact with, especially Steve and Jonathan.  She was a conniving, manipulative, skinny little spidery bitch who just loved to be loved and had to be at the center of every man's attention.  I think she despised women as a rule (excluding herself).

There was also a girl there whose name I forget, but she was quite annoying:  the expert on hippie communal living, although she seemed more to me like a hippie wannabe.  The other woman was that Spanish woman whose name also eludes me.  She was a yoga instructor in her 30's somewhere.  She was beautiful but she sucked at chess. 

Well, there were lots of people coming in and out, staying for a day or two, or maybe even a week.  I can't even go back to remember them all...  I guess I can, though, talk a little bit about some of what went on there, although I doubt you would believe me if I told you everything.

They grew their own pot there.  Steve denied it (as technically it is illegal), but some days when I would be walking down a trail to some remote fruit grove, or to the rice paddies, or to the river or the water basin to wash my clothes and I would smell it.  The fresh smell of cannabis in the air.  And it was forever on hand.  Volunteers were expected to do all kinds of work on the farm, which was basically a self-sufficient organic farm.  There were lots of things, but especially fruit.  Fruit trees and fruit trees.  Everything you could possibly imagine.  One day I asked Jonathan, who is super knowledgeable about plants, what kind of fruit tree they didn't have.  He said, "Just name it sweetheart and we've got it."  I tried to stump him... at first with somewhat common things that I had not seen around: 

"Grapefruit?" I asked. 

"You bet, Padi's got a load of those trees near his house," Johnathan answered.

"Guayabana?" 

"You bet." 

"Jack fruit?" 

"Got one right over there.  Fruit's ripe too." 

"Bread fruit?"  "Got one."

"Papaya, Mango, Passion Fruit?  Caranbela (Star Fruit)?  Cas?  Marinon? Jocote?"

"Yep, yep, yep.  We've even got Indonesian cherries.  You ever tried an Indonesian cherry? (Indonesian cherries are wonderful yellow star-shaped cherries.)  And we've got 28 different species of banana and just as many species of plantain."

I could not help but be stunned.  In addition to all this fruit, grew millions of types of oregano, "romero," lemon grass, citronella grass, ginger, "asin-asin" for salads, chaya (the meat of Punta Mona), cranberry hibiscus, mint, pipa, orange, five million types of lemon including mandarina and sweet lemon, yucca, rice, palmito, pineapple, onion and garlic and other spices, pumpkin, watermelon, cantaloupe, ayote (squash), beans, lettuce, various types of cabbage, the fruit of the Jamaican hibiscus (which I can make excellent salad dressing with), "rose jamaica" for tea, cinnamon, and god knows what else that I can't think of right now.

Of all the structures, only the kitchen and the main guesthouse have electricity which is solar powered.  The "running water" for showers, sinks, and for the bio-toilets is provided by rainwater collected in massive holding containers on the roofs of most of the structures.  The gas for the stove is powered by gas produced in the bio-digester, which basically turns human shit into usable gas.  The oven was solar powered.  All soap products were biodegradable and all food waste was used as compost.  Instead or lawn mowers or weed whackers, we used machetes.  We used footpaths, which we generally walked barefooted.  We were eaten alive by mosquitoes and sand flies, which lived in our bed and ate us during the night.  I slept outside with just a tin roof over my head.  No walls.  No doors.  There was neither electricity nor water.  We got around by using flashlights and at night, it was much easier (and less frightening) to simply walk out of the structure (which was on stilts) and find a tree to pee on instead of walking alone, through the forest to the little toilets, which were up by the ocean.  At sun up and often a bit before, the loud cry of congo monkeys woke me.  One time, a big five foot iguana fell from a tree onto the tin roof of the bunk and started crawling around in the middle of the night, giving me the fright of my life.  He began to climb the tree again and then feel again, and then he did it again and again and again.  I was praying it was just coconuts falling on the roof.  Only the next day did I see it happen in the light and only then did I realize what the sound had been the night before. 

Around 7am, someone would sound the conch horn and we would eat.  Always fruit and something else and some weird fruit and oatmeal drink.  The bees loved the morning.  There would always be thousands buzzing around the fruit, hundreds climbing all over it.  They weren't the stinging kinds of bees.  One time, I think it was Sam's wife, ate one.  Having little insects climb all over your food was just something you had to get used to.

Maybe around 8:30am everyone would go out and begin working.  Maybe planting rice in the rice paddies.  Maybe slashing room around the shore to plant pipas, or maybe turning compost, working in the greenhouse, clearing trails, re-soiling vegetable beds, clearing out around the bases of fruit trees, separating rotten wood from good wood for fence posts (I had that job once... it was so awful.  I tested to see if the thin, tall wood poles were rotten or not by hitting them against the ground.  If they were brittle and broken, they were bad and I put them in a wheelbarrow to take to the fire pit for the Winter Solstice fire.  If they were sturdy, they were good.  One pole I hit against the ground did not crack, but when I hit it, something POPPED and a huge pile of termites and termite eggs just fell out of the center and onto the ground, creating a huge, disgusting moving mountain.  The entire stick was hollow and full of them.  That was my last job working with rotten wood.)  We literally had hundreds of different jobs.  Then, a few people would stop work to help Arrington with lunch.  Whoever wasn't needed continued with the morning's work. 

Who knows about what time it was, but the field workers would hear the conch horns signaling lunch.  Slowly, everyone made their way to the kitchen, we made a circle, everyone holding hands, which was the ritual.  There was a moment of quiet and controlled breathing before Steve would say something.  Maybe a welcome to any guests or new people.  If he had been gone, he would say how happy he was to be back.  Then anyone else who wanted to say something would give his piece.  When there was nothing left to say, everyone raised their hands and all let out a scream that sounded like a war whoop.  When the whoop began to die, Steven would scream "Lets eat!"  And we all ate on plastic Japanese dishes with chop sticks.  Salad from the garden was inevitable, usually de "asin-asin."  Then there was always something else.  And of course, another weird fresco.  We were always in the open air.

After he ate, Jonathan would inevitably begin playing his guitar and singing Bob Marley, or "One" by U2 ("One Love" was the farm's motto.)  And maybe there would be some relaxing.  Talking, reading, everyone rushing to claim a hammock.  And slowly, people began filtering out, back to work.  The same thing was repeated at night for dinner.  I always read after dinner on a hammock.  Kate and I usually went back to the bunk together that night because the trail was pretty unnerving to walk alone in the dark (especially if neither of us remembered our flashlight).  Usually we went back around 10 or 11pm.  That is, right after we went to the bathroom of the main bunkhouse and brushed our teeth and watched the roaches playing in the same place they had been the night before and the night before that.

Neither of our beds had pillows.  A sheet over the foam mattress and a sheet if we were cold and a cloth bug net.  The nights were always thick and hot.  The sheets always felt wet and there was always sand in the bed as we lived so near the beach.  Then right before the sun came up, it was cold.  I don't think I ever slept well there.  Especially not when the full moon shone in my eyes.  I always felt vulnerable to insects and scorpions and later, to any "Jerry attacks."  I had to fight to keep my sheets on my bed.  I did not like the way the nasty foam mattress felt.  I would generally wake up in the morning with more bug bites than I had had the day before.  They were miserable.  My legs were covered with them.  On Kate's legs, the bites were all you could see.  Grandma Rainbow offered us use of her "healing clay" she claimed came from Israel.  I tried it, but I don't think it worked.

At the Winter Solstice celebration around the fire, everyone smoked and Jenny and Steve took turns playing the guitar and singing songs.  The Spanish woman who was there for a while danced the flamenco around the fire.  They sang songs invoking the spirits.  And before it all started we faced each direction and Grandma Rainbow said the traditional Wicca chants I had learned to recognize if not memorize.  According to the "We-Moon," this is a night of women.  Therefore, as far as I know, there was no orgy.  It was actually a nice, night.  The stars were amazing.  More than I've ever seen anywhere in my entire life.  I had to save Kate once from going off with Jason (which we all know how that would have ended up), and embarrassed at her near mistake, she went to wait for me on the hammocks.  When Jerry got a little bravo, I left too, and we went back to our cabin to sleep.  That night, someone came to our bunk.  Kate and I heard him come in.  But it was pitch black and we didn't see and thing.  He sat down on the tree stump and lit a roach someone had left there on our makeshift table.  Only then, did I see that it was Jerry and not Aaron (who also slept in the bunk with us).  I'm sure if I could have seen myself in the dark, my face would have been bright red with rage.  I was fuming.  Neither Kate nor I said a word, but I knew she was awake too, watching Jerry in the dark.  Both of us just hoped that if we ignored him and pretended we were asleep, that he would go away.  No luck.  The glow of the little joint stub slowly went out and then all was black again.  He didn't make a sound and I had a hard time believing he was still there.  But I knew he was.  He was a patient son of a bitch.  And determined.  Finally, after maybe five whole minutes of interrupted silence, I heard him whisper:  "Jessica?"  'Wonderful,' I thought,  'This bastard is not going to leave me alone.'  I still ignored him.  'God damn it Jerry, go away!' I thought.  But he didn't.  He called my name again, louder this time.  "I know you awake baby." I couldn't hold it anymore. That "baby" thing really gets under my skin.  "How many times do I have to tell you my name is not baby" I said coldly out of the darkness. I knew he could not see me because of the mosquito net.  But I had not realized what a bad move responding to him was.  He had been so patiently immobile earlier because he was not sure in which bed I was sleeping.  As soon as he knew, he could act.  The next thing I knew, the one side of my mosquito net rises and a heaping dark hulk begins to climb in next to me.  "I'm sorry baby" it says.  My blood gets hot and I feel a shock run through my entire body.  And then I kick the hulk and push it out of my bed.  I flip on the flashlight that I sleep with and angrily shove it into Jerry's face.  I shine it right in his eyes as I begin screaming at him.  I don't remember exactly what was said.  Only that I've never yelled at anyone so furiously in my life.  And as he did not seem to back off from my bed, I began shoving him toward the stairs.  Kate, by this time, had joined in the cursing as well.  Only upon pushing him toward the door, did I notice what was in his hand.  In Jerry's hand was a packet of condoms.  Bright colored neon condoms.  And then I flew off the wall. I nearly pushed him down the stairs.  And I can only imagine how many times I said 'fuck.'  Kate, who did not see the condoms, being under her mosquito net, later asked me what the hell had happened that caused that sudden and vigorous outburst of swearing.  I think all I could manage was: 'that mother fucker climbed into my bed with a handful of god damned multicolored condoms.'  That strangely didn't seem strong enough for Jerry's infraction.  I could not think of anything biting enough for what I felt at that moment.  My accustomed expression of anger:  'god damned mother fucking hell' was not enough.  I stormed to the little cubbyhole that kept all my stuff and found my Swiss Army pocketknife and my other five-inch blade that I got last summer.  I crawl back into bed after sending my flashlight around the surrounding woods to make sure Jerry had really gone.  And then I pulled the knives close to me, along with the flashlight.  I had not slept with a knife since I left Nicaragua.

The morning after that incident, I told Alita what had happened.  And I believe she must have immediately told Steven.  Later that day while I was writing a Christmas letter to my family, I hear and see Steve absolutely bitching Jerry out not far from the bunk house.  My favorite part was he told Jerry that he had to leave Punta Mona for a while.  He had been bothering other people lately too and last night's incident had been merely the last straw.  I did not feel sorry for the ass at all.  I don't think he knew I was there (because I was lying on the floor writing), but Jerry came to the bunkhouse.  He climbed the stairs and saw me there, and I was suddenly sort of scared.  He was fuming.  His eyes looked really, really wild.  He saw me and sat down and picked up the knife I had forgotten about on the little makeshift table that I think belonged to Aaron.  He started playing with it, testing its sharpness, all the while staring at me.  I was nowhere near the steps.  But he began talking.  He could barely speak; the anger was so strong in his voice.  He asked why I had told Steven and why I had not told him before that night that I did not want to have sex with him. (!!!)  I was afraid of the knife and I gave vague, agreeable answer.  I did not want to make him any angrier.  I let him talk.  He began rambling on about good vibrations and positive vibes.  He really rambled.  Made no sense.  He said he that there should not be bad vibes between us, but then said something, which even though he had a knife and was rambling like an idiot, I had to respond to.  He basically said: "You know I see you baby, and I feel you baby and I feel you the one.  I feel you the one I be with.  I can tell you a good woman and the woman that right for me.  And there should be no bad vibrations there.  You get me?  Only positive vibrations.  You don't need to go makin bad vibrations baby.  We gotta be in tune with Ja and live in those beautiful vibrations, you get me?"  So basically he's telling me that I don't have the right to tell him to get the fuck away from me.  Because Ja wants him to be with me.  And he kept referring to we (the word us is not in the Rasta vocabulary).  We, we, we.  And I finally interrupted him and said quite coldly, "There is no we Jerry."  And of course he goes on, "Don't be like that baby... blah blah blah."  And suddenly I feel the overwhelming need to get out of there.  And I interrupt him.  "Jerry, I accept your apology if that's what this is, and I wish none of this happened.  But I'm not going to have sex with you so you need to get over it.  There is no we.  And you need to stay away from me.  And don't every call me baby again."  By that time I was up and walking toward the door.  I could see he was angry, but he thankfully didn't get up though he kept fingering the knife.  I walked down the stairs and away from the bunk toward the kitchen house and he started calling me "Jessica, come back up here.  Come here."  I just turned around and yelled up at the bunk "You know Jerry, I don't want to."  And I kept walking.  He remained in a silent and dangerously angry sulk for the rest of my time there.  I figured he would come back to the bunk at night but he didn't, thank God.  Steven didn't make him leave until the day I left.  I left the day after Christmas. I'm not sure if it was becasue of Jerry or if Jerry was just my excuse.

Arrington also had a crush on me I think.  But he was older and I tried to be cold and distant as I could be.  One night he offered to walk with me to Gandoca (which I had wanted to do for a while), but I did not want to go alone with him.  I asked Kate along and she accepted.  So around sunset, the three of us set off through the woods to Gandoca on a little trail.  None of us had a flashlight.  Gandoca, for your geographical and historical information, is the last village on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica before you arrive at the border with Panama.  Actually, the Panamanian border is only 15k along the beach from Punta Mona, very, very close.  Gandoca is about an hour's walk south.  There are no roads.  Gandoca is also a place made famous by the book "La Loca de Gandoca" about the illegal activities within the Gandoca-Manzanillo wildlife refuge within which Gandoca (and Punta Mona) lay.  (It is not illegal for these villages to be there because they were there before the establishment of the refuge... and in any manner, they are hardly large enough to be called villages.)  Anyway, soon after it gets too dark in the woods, we take to the beach and walk in the deep deep sand.  The going was not easy.  We cross a few rivers coming out of the jungle toward the ocean.  Arrington says I remind him of his ex fiance.  Finally, after forever we get to Gandoca, which is about one tenth the size of Manzanillo (which as you recall barely qualifies as a village).  Basically it consists of a bon fire, a bar that is really just someone's front porch, a few houses and the sorriest looking pulperia in existance.  It didn't even sell chocolate or water.  Anyway, in Manzanillo, Arrington begins to chug down the Imperials and Kate orders one too, although I simply order a Tropical not wanting to give Arrington a single advantage over me (I've learned the hard way to be the most cautious, uptight bitch alive when I travel).  The dueno of the 'bar' blares some music for us although we are alone and not dancing.  We talk a bit in Spanish (at my insistence, because I can't understand Arrington's Creole English), Arrington smokes like 500 cigarettes and we leave for the pulperia.  Kate bought some cookies and I bought a dulce de leche confite that was chewy and gross it was so old.  Then we began the walk back, this time completely on the beach.  This time, Arrington wasn't in such a hurry and he permitted the pace to be a bit slower.  When we reached the biggest river to cross the beach, Arrington called us over to a drift wood log and lit a joint, which I insulted him by not smoking.  He kept saying:  "I don't believe it," in his funkey creole dialect and I hid a smile.  After that, he ignored me and focused his attention on Kate who had eagerly accepted his weed.  I was saved.  Nevertheless Kate was not.  Later that night he asked her to sleep with him. (God, hadn't I already explained to her that damn unspoken Rasta rule about accepting marijuana???!!!!)

One weekend, Steve and the rest set up a little organic market a few miles north in the pueblo of Puerto Viejo, which I had first come into a few weeks back.  Puerto Viejo is so different from Manzanillo or Gandoca.  It is actually a real village complete with places to stay, restaurants and decent pulperias.  Kate and I decided to go in with the rest of them to help with the market on Saturday, and to go to Reggae night at Bamboo, a Reggae bar and club on Friday night.  The two of us had decided to walk on the long 5k jungle trail that connects Punta Mona to Manzanillo, first of all so we wouldn't have to pay the extra money for the boat ride out, and secondly because we didn't want to work that morning.  Anyway, I'd heard the trail was rather beautiful.  So I packed just enough to stuff my little backpack purse, and we started out, me wearing my athletic sandals and Kate in gym shoes.  Well the trail was tiny and poorly marked.  Needless to say we soon lost it.  We hardly had gotten to the other side of Monkey Island.  We backtracked and tried another path that had split off.  It led down, down into this marsh.  The mud was so thick and awful although it had not rained in a long time.  With every step, our shoes sunk and the mud went up to our calves.  Kate's shoes were absolutely ruined and the mud really fucked up my sandals.  It got in the Velcro, which then refused to hold together.  My sandals would not stay on.  About 2 hours into a horrible jungle trail in which we were lost, I was forced to go bare foot.  Walking through the mud, and over things.  We turned around and tried again a different way, but we ran into a banana plantation.  Finally, we decided to back track.  It was already noonish, the time the rest were supposed to be leaving on the boat.  We had probably missed them.  So the only thing to do was back track until we found a more promising trail.  So we did, slowly so that I could be careful where I stepped.  The trail pretty much follows the sea (duh), so as soon as we saw it again, I broke for the beach to wash my sandals off in the ocean.  As we sat there contemplating what to do, we saw a boat take off from Punta Mona.  Damn.  We wouldn't have been too late if we had hurried.  I began waving my arms anyway just to see if they saw us.  They did, and came in to pick us up.  It ended not being the Punta Mona people, but rather a private gringo tour group from some ritzy hotel up in Punta Uva.  We happily accepted the free ride, although we had to tag along to see a few other destinations before heading finally for Manzanillo.  In Manzanillo, we met the others who had not yet hitched a ride to Puerto Viejo.  Kate and I had planned to hitch hike but Steve found us a ride.  We rode in with Jessica and Steven and this Rasta dude and his kids.  And then finally, we were back in civilization. 

The first thing Kate and I did was find a room.  We went back to the Jacaranda so that I could pay my previous debt.  The woman ripped me off.  But oh well.  Kate and I got a small double room for $8 a piece. Apparently I had not known that the Jacaranda was like the Punta Mona inn.  The south Carribbean is so small everyone knows everyone else.  I quickly discovered three other Punta Monites there including this girl I had seen at the hotel on my first visit.  Her name was Megan and she was actually living in one of the rooms, working at Johnny's Place (which is a bar).  She was a very sweet girl but with no great like for clothes herself.  When it was just Kate, Vera (the Trinidadian owner) and I, she would andar in the nude.  I was stunned at first (although I had seen nudists running around at the farm), but easily snapped out of it when I realized she only though our discomfort was funny.  The only time I relapsed into stunned shock was when she changed tampons quite publicly in front of three of us.  But it was short lived.  I was also not too surprised when she offered us a hit of LSD.  Only Vera took her up on it.  The rest of the weekend probably is too boring to even note.

Anyway, I actually could tell lots more Punta Mona stories, at least one of which is a little too raunchy to put up here.  If you really feel the need for more, I'll tell you in person.  I won't be forgetting them any time soon.  But anyway, I left December 26, the day after Christmas, with Kate.  Neither of us left behind good feelings at our departure, due to a little situation having to do with Ana, Steven and Alita.  Both Kate and I had planned on staying a month but had changed our mind.  Kate left for home January 1.  She staid a night with me in Heredia, though, before leaving.  After she left, I rested a day before heading off for Chirripo.  And here, my regular entries pick up.       

December 28, 2002

San Jose, Costa Rica

MUSOC station

Yeah!  I get to wait for his dumb bus to San Isidro de General.  I'm in this building called MUSOC somewhere way far away listening to Shakira on the radio as I wait.  I'm not going to make it to San Gerardo de Rivas today.  I'll have to leave for San Gerardo really early tomorrow morning and just start climbing as soon as I get there.  OR maybe I'll wait.  I'll see once I get to the ranger station tomorrow to ask.  Supposedly this climb of Chirripo will take 7-17 hours depending on the hiker.  I'm guessing for me, since I'm not in shape, it will take more than seven. So I'll probably need to start around 5:30am to get there before it gets dark.  But I'll probably have to climb some in the dark anyway.  So who knows?  The food smells good so maybe I'll get some.  And I'm bored.  Didn't bring a book.  Packing light.  But that was a dumb call.  Sumamente dumb.