Costa Rica Retirement – Like a Raw New England December Day

Recently I accepted an invitation for a day trip to Volcan Irazu, located about 15 miles east of San Jose.

My Cuban friend, Roxana, who moved to Costa Rica 13 years ago, wanted me to go with her and about 30 of her fellow Zen Buddhists. We all piled into a bus that started out in Santo Domingo de Heredia.

This would be my first volcano and I was excited about the opportunities to see one of the natural wonders of Costa Rica and to spend a day among Zen Buddhists who spoke Spanish. I’m learning the language and find that I can pick up words and phrases here and there.

Spanish was spoken all day except for some translations into English for my benefit. Roxana is almost fluent in English, and she and another woman were kind enough to translate for me what I didn’t understand.

We drove through San Pedro, Curridabat, Cartago, and lots of farm country as the bus climbed higher and higher into the clouds. This was a day of firsts for me, as I had heard of Cartago, but had never visited the city.

Ground-level fog and sideways-cutting rain greeted us at the volcano, which is 11,260 feet above sea level. I was awed to walk on grainy black sand, which was explained to me as being ash from the volcano. I knew I stood at the rim of a crater only because the sign said so. What was probably a spectacular view down into an abyss of a crater and across miles of land was actually an exercise in trying to see my hand in front of my face.

The pea-soup fog – or maybe they were clouds – was almost palpable, and the raw cold and blowing wind and rain forced our group inside the small, crowded restaurant after taking some photos in front of the crater sign to prove we had been there. We had picked a day when a cold front was hitting the country, bringing unseasonal rain.

Driving back down the mountain, my ears popped a few times until we reached Sanchiri, a restaurant from which we could have viewed both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean if only the weather had cooperated. Our group was seated at a long table in the al fresco part of the restaurant. While we had a roof over our heads, the sides of the building were open to the elements, and we struggled to warm our still-frozen hands and noses.

I spent considerable time in the ladies’ room in front of the hand-drying blower, warming up my hands and positioning the blower on my face and down the inside front of my two jackets so I could thaw. Originally from Massachusetts, I didn’t think I’d ever have to spend another wintry day in the cold Northeast, yet there I was in Costa Rica, my new home, which is much further south than Massachusetts but much higher in elevation, and I was miserably cold.

Lunch consisted of casados, a typical Costa Rican lunch of rice, beans, salad, plantains, vegetables, avocado, tortillas and a hard-boiled egg. Shivering burns mucho calories, so we all ate with gusto.

Riding down the mountain reminded me of day camp, but with an international twist. We sang songs, or rather, everyone else sang songs – in Spanish. I didn’t know any songs in Spanish. I got caught up in the spirit of singing, though. At one point, folks who were originally from Argentina, Cuba, Spain and Germany sang songs from their countries. The only song I could remember the words to was “Somewhere over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz, so I sang the first verse and felt good that I was able to represent the United States in this very accommodating group.

The next stop was Café Capucchino for dessert near Cartago. Seven of us had a lively discussion in Spanish and English about language and culture over shared cakes, brownies and pies. The bus then took a short spin around the basilica in downtown Cartago, and headed back for the Zen house to complete the trip. I hugged and kissed my new Zen Buddhist friends goodbye. It wasn’t until I returned to my apartment in Santa Ana, which is lower and warmer than Volcan Irazu by about 8,200 feet, that my nose finally warmed up.

Written by Margie Davis – Retired in Costa Rica.

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