Caribbean Living in Costa Rica – To and Fro

Costa Rica, the rich coast, should have been named the rich coasts. I’d always traveled to the Pacific, and preferred it.

I’ve stayed in Jacó, Dominical, Punteraneas, and Manuel Antonio. But the Pacific coast has been discovered. Airlines fly directly to Liberia, which drops tourists off in the province of Guanacaste. Most people never step foot in funky San José.

Over the years, I’d never been disappointed by any of my stays on the Pacific and continued to return to my favorite locations, until New Years.

The Atlantic side is the beach less traveled. Backpackers are drawn to the trails in the national parks and the price of lodging can be as low as ten dollars. The Caribbean is an undeveloped region in Costa Rica.

The hurricane season brings a lot of rain, but never the eye of the storm, since the land swings too far south in the sea. The jungle spreads everywhere. Most houses are wood and on stilts, and most need paint and probably a new roof. Overall, the people are poor. Often, Limon is considered to be a forgotten province in Costa Rica. Those who have discovered the Caribbean trek on a different path.

A friend of mine invited my family to join her family in a hotel called Aguas Claras on the Atlantic. The drive through Brauilo Carrillio National Park was smooth sailing and gorgeous.

I remember the impact the rain forest had on me the first time I’d seen it eleven years ago: little clouds lofted above thick tree tufts and waxy leaves, bigger than the door of my car, hung over splashing waterfalls on the side of the road. It was Jurassic Park. I was terrified to get out and walk (I’d read about the 135 species of snakes in Costa Rica and the 15 to 18 poisonous one, depending on the source) yet drawn to tramp in the woods.

The rest of the trip bordered on torture. After driving the well-paved highway through the mountain pass, I navigated the car over bumpy, pitted and potted asphalt for the remaining 5 hours of our journey. My son bounced around in his car seat like a bobber, so the nanny took him out. She plastered him against her body. He looked like the Road Runner who’d just realized he ran off a cliff.

My daughter fought off motion sickness and repeated every minute: Are we there yet? Our stay landed us just south of Puerto Viejo, a few miles from the Panamanian border. We unpacked and settled into a cute and cozy cabina called the Red House. Things could only look up from here, but they didn’t.

The next morning, we hauled our two families, shovels, pails, towels, surf boards, sunscreen, cameras, and water to the beach. I couldn’t figure out what to do with my son, so I lugged the car seat while the nanny carried the child that went in it. He slept under the mosquito net while my daughter played in pools of coral reef.

“I feel like I’m getting the flu,” I said to my friend as we sat on a log and scoped out photo opportunities. I’d just recovered from several illnesses and was hoping my trip to the Caribbean would be a respite and sweet dose of natural medicine.

Doctors, healers, naturopaths, and even my own sixth sense told me that the salt air would be could for our health, especially my son’s. He couldn’t sleep at night because he couldn’t breath. This meant I hadn’t slept for more than a two hours at a time in months.

Tired and sandy, we lugged our bodies and equipment home. “My back aches,” I told my nanny. I reached for a pan to start boiling some water, and my arm hit against my left breast. It felt as if someone had pelted me with a rock. I set the pot down, and though I’d never had mastitis, I knew I had it.

I walked to the gift shop/café. The manager turned on the computer so I could look up mastitis on the Dr. Sear’s (the new and improved Dr. Spock) website. I wrote down the names of antibiotics and walked to my friend’s cabin, the Green House.

“I was so worried about you driving all that way,” said my friend’s mother-in-law. Gripping that steering wheel for seven hours is what did it.” My son hadn’t eaten much at the stops we made either, so the milk churned inside and became clumped, like feta cheese.

“I thought this New Years was going to be different. I thought I’d ring in a good year. Isn’t there a limit to the amount of pain you get in one year?” I said slumping back in the chair. I exposed my left breast to the other mothers in the room. The entire side was red as if I’d been scratching it for hours.

I sat for awhile and pretended to be normal and that I didn’t really have a fever while vacationing on the beach. We mothers exchanged breast stories: puss, expression, crystals, leaking, chafing, biting, nursing bras, back aches. (Breasts don’t just hang there; they’ve got work to do.)

“Would you go to the pharmacy and get me this prescription of antibiotics?” I asked. I was afraid to drive anymore, plus the fever was getting a grip on me. I’m not a pill-kind-of person, but I was determined to stay out of pain and have somewhat of a good time. After all, I was at the beach. The pharmacy would be closed the next day due to New Years, and it would be Sunday when most things, except the mall, closed.

The website had suggested hot water massages alternated with ice packs. I stepped into the shower. A tiny gecko ran out the window. The bathroom had a “shock shower,” which is an affectionate term for a deadly system installed in bathrooms that don’t have hot water in Costa Rica. The heater is located right in the shower head. Creepy electrical lines hang right above running water. The gecko returned. I massaged the welt for as long as I could stand the pain under a trickle of tepid water.

My friend delivered the antibiotics. “Are you going to take them?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Someone told me that infections spread twice as fast in the tropics,” I said. “At home I could do all this great natural stuff. I’m leaning towards the drugs.”

“Why don’t mothers just flee?” she said. “Considering all the pain, we should’ve kick- punted kids out of here a long time ago.”

“Fleeing makes sense,” I said. “Staying can only be instinctual. Who’d choose this? I feel duped. How was dinner?” I asked.

“Well, the oldest one threw-up and her sister fell asleep on the table,” my friend said.

“Was the food any good?” I asked.

“It was O.K.” she said.

“I went walking on the beach in the morning.” I said, shaking the pill bottle. “I looked out at the ocean. The view was incredible, and I thought: this is it, as good as it gets.”

I had my moment on the beach – my walk on the sand with the waves rushing around my ankles. I’d had the fresh sea breeze; the view of postcards. And then I realized, when I go back to the Red Cabin, the kids would need feeding, my breasts draining, the welt iced, and the dishes washed. No one pictures that in a postcard.

How could anyone live at the beach? This life was too hot, too hard. What about up-keep and that nagging issue of safety: who would watch the house when we were not there? Living at the beach escaped all notions of reason. But then again, so did bearing children. Most people can easily see having one child – it’s as romantic as dreaming about Christmas with snow and the relatives.

But after awhile that fluffy white stuff has to be shoveled, and the ice chipped off the windshield. So, we return home for the holidays, regardless of the frigid temperatures, inside or out. And, when that cute infant grows into a chatting toddler, we forget the pain of birth, or pregnancy, or sleep deprivation, and we do it all over again.

At midnight, I took my son out of the suitcase (yes, I made a bed out of luggage) to feed him. I wrestled with the mosquito net in order to fit us both underneath. I sat there sweating and swatting mosquitoes. I kicked aside the netting to sip on some water and didn’t bother getting back under.

Firecrackers boomed outside; people screamed to ring in the New Year. I turned off the lights and continued to nurse my son. A flash of light spread through the room every few minutes. A firefly had landed on my head. “Poor thing,” I said to my son as my head blinked again. “She’ll never find a mate in here.”

At 5 a.m., the Howler monkeys called to wake me up. “The locals don’t like it,” one man told me. “To them, it’s a nuisance.” Sometimes a group will howl in the afternoon or when it starts to rain. They make the loudest sound of any animal on land (the Blue Whale is the loudest on the planet).

The mothers carry their babies on their backs. I envy the monkey’s ability to move so freely, even with a baby on her back. I want to scream; I want to howl: I want to sit on a tree and preen. Maybe getting rid of our tails wasn’t such a good idea.

Sometimes seizing something, we have to swing with our sixth or seventh sense. That’s the only way I could have become a mother or decided to buy a house on the Caribbean. I should hate motherhood, but once and awhile, when I’m swinging to instead of fro, I’ll whisper the secret: I love it. And the Caribbean, I should have run like the wind and never gone back. I should have hated it, but instead I loved it.

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Written by Susan Lutz who is a film maker and writer living in Costa Rica. Her documentary film, The Coffee Dance available for sale an Amazon.com, follows a group of women in the depths of poverty as they strive for empowerment. She teaches film and lectures in Costa Rica. She’s produced radio documentaries and is currently finishing her first travel book on Costa Rica. She writes an internationally recognized blog on life in Costa Rica, Motherjungle.com and is the editor of the Organic Living Page on Allthingshealing.com

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Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.