 Costa Rica: Day One |
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It's 6:15 a.m., and I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to Charlotte. I slept for a few hours last night so I'm coasting on some burning eyes and incoherence at the moment. I got a bottle of water and a little cup of Smart Start and milk, so at least I had an iron-fortified breakfast. Don't even think I didn't also buy a scone at PJ's to snack on later. Inevitably, I find myself sitting here an hour before my flight surrounded by people who are not only very awake but very loudly delighted to be so. Their topics include a farting girl named Tasha and girls who walk like dudes. I do not know how I'm going to stay awake. "All That We Let In" is playing right now on the iRiver. I pray to God that these guys are not on my plane, but my psychic dread tells me that they are. It's now 9:55 a.m., and I'm boarded in Charlotte for the flight to San Jose. Am in bitchin', coveted row behind the first class wall with endless oodles of glorious legroom. The flight to Charlotte was uneventful. The woman across the aisle bashed me a few times with her purse, but I was, as Deedee Pruitt advises Randy to be, Christlike. I'm reading David Sedaris and will hopefully doze for a few hours so I do not collapse in a heap. To sustain me, I've got a small Banana Berry Jamba Juice. There's a Boston couple next to me. The wife wants to sleep, and the husband wants to practice their Spanish. He is going to New Orleans next -- he just told her "it's like its own continent -- a very peculiar and special place." It's 1:05 p.m. Central Standard Time, and for the living life of me, I cannot figure out when we're supposed to land. 1:04 is what it says on the ticket. Which is what time it is now. I have no idea what time it is in Costa Rica or what time my sister's friend's sister and my sister's friend's ex-boyfriend are coming to meet me at the airport. It's all very baffling, honestly. It's later. Costa Rica time. Costa Rica doesn't have daylight savings, so it's an hour earlier here. The airport was a comedy of sweaty, fly-ridden errors. Through several eventual phone calls with my sister's friend, it was revealed that no one was coming to get me. Before that I'd spent an hour and a half walking around ignoring taxi cat calls while my arm went numb holding up my damn sign like some kind of a dimwit. When I finally succumbed to the taxi solicitations, one driver told me to follow him to the car, and I said, per the advice of my sister's friend, "Registrado," and he argued with me and tried to lead me to his car, and finally I escaped his clutches and found the taxi office which seemed far less sketchy. I'm now in the cab. I'm not sure Marco knows where he's going, but with the windows down, it's a pleasant enough ride now that my lungs are being somewhat purged of the thick exhaust deluge of taxicab row. I bought a phone card in the airport from the Latina Dolly Parton. By what must be a miracle, I am at the apartment. Marco the Moron called the work number I'd written on the home directions, asked how to get there, and left me there. It fit the same description of the apartment, being yellow with an iron gate and a fountain, so I was none the wiser. Meanwhile, my rendezvous person had left work to walk home to meet me at her house. What a complete fuckin' fiasco. The apartment building is charming, especially the courtyard. I was just so glad to be somewhere where I could take a shower. When I opened my suitcase, the first thing I saw was a bug, which I smashed with my lint roller. When I disrobed, I noted that I had seven fresh, swelling red bug bites on my right hip. I was just about over the edge at this point when I finally stepped into what seemed to be a pretty kickass shower -- and the water would not get hot. In fact, it would get nothing but ice cold. I wanted to cry. So I did. I stood there and took a freezing cold shower and cried, whimpering with the windows open for God and everyone to hear. The truest desire of my heart right now is to get some sleep, but how I'm going to do that is beyond me considering that the motorcycle gang outside is peeling out every two minutes with wall-shaking abandon and some people are coming home any second. I hope to manage to get on the computer later tonight. Nap attempt was futile beyond belief. I cannot think straight to save my life. The others arrived home, and I could hardly string together a comprehensible sentence. It is cold, and I had no choice but to put on my traveling sweatshirt, which smells like airplane bathroom and exhaust. YUCK. Sweet Jesus almighty, please help me to sleep tonight. I think I'm going to use my beach towel as a blanket to sleep on a slab of wood with a little mattress on top. This apartment is adorable, and I want to love it, but mostly I wish I were alone in a hotel room with a TV I can turn off when I want dead silence. This place is loud. It's like trying to sleep while lying in the street in Times Square. I don't know where all the noise is coming from, but it is really stressing me the FUCK OUT. I really do appreciate their having me, but it's dreadful to be in this strange place with these strange people all alone. My stomach hurts, but I know I'll never be able to use the bathroom. It's weird to be sharing such a small place with a man who is not my sweetie. I feel lonely and like the vacation hasn't really started yet and just want to be on the damn beach already. Later -- I feel kind of bad because everyone is turning in early because I am, but I'm so tired right now that I just don't care. I fell asleep at one point for a few minutes with my head on the kitchen table. We ate at Machu Picchu tonight, a Peruvian restaurant. I had some chicken called aji de gallina -- spicy in a creamy nutty sauce with rice and a hard boiled egg slice and potato wedges and some strange parmesan cheese squares that looked like tofu. I took a small bite of ceviche, and it was yummy. I am about to go to sleep on my slab as if lying down in a very loud monastery.
About this time in ...
© Copyright 2005 elb |
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