Nosara IV

Woke, found string from Debbie's daughter, Molly, at VdP to tie the peddle on the Costa Rican Death Bike & peddled/limped/rode-the-brakes down to town for 10:30 yoga at the Nosara Yoga Institute (NYI). Yoga was good. Different style than the previous class. We dropped off the bikes back at the rental place. The agent, seeing me with peddle-in-hand says "Problemas?" "Si," I say, "mas problemas." He doesn't charge me for the second day of rental and we leave on peaceful terms. Then we walk.

On the path to the NYI we see some interesting vegetation (see photos; I know, not that cool: blog about vegetation), trees with thorns (giant thorns!), vines shaped like chains. We have lunch at Cafe Zen, run by former NYI students, all organic vegetarian fare. Then we head to Robin's ice cream for one of the two things she serves, and not the panini.

Then to get back up el hil to VdP w/o bikes. A cab is in order, but no cabs.

We walk to the Harbor Reef Hotel complex where friends of ours are supposed to be staying while they are here for a yoga retreat taught by a Renowned Yoga Guru from LA (RYGLA) who shall remain nameless….

They haven’t arrived yet, or we are unable to find them. We ask a Tica girl working at the resort if she can find us a cab. She spends 20 minutes calling, then says “let me ask if someone here wants to make some money.” Time passes. She returns and says in 15 minutes her friend will be arriving from the airport and he can take us. We wait. It’s siesta ahora, not only is nothing open but nothing is open. S reads a dated version of US WEEKLY WITH SHANNON DOUGHERTY OF BEVERLY HILLS 90210 FAME ON THE COVER AND THE STARLET STARING OFF INTO THE ETHER (DISPARATELY AT THE READER), THE TITLE OF THE STORY IS “HER TIME” and I open the DFW collection, “Consider the Lobster”.

We wait and wait. No friend from the airport, no RYGLA friends. So we walk, back toward the main drag. As we are walking I flag down a small Isuzu flatbed truck and ask the driver if he can Transport’e me e me esposa to VdP? He tells me, then S – whose Espanol is more fluente – that he’d be happy to but can we run some errands with him first? Hop in the bed of the truck I do, S climbs into the front and we escort our driver to first the ATM, then his house where he disappears and returns with a cousin/brother/son, mumbles something in Spanish and the cousin/brother/son appears to laugh, then we are on our way to VdP.

We resolve the next time we are here to A) not rent bikes and B) rent ATVs. Gunter, the German ex-pat, ex-German, ex-secret service half-time bartender at VdP owns an ATV rental Co. but says Zis iz zee high ceezon, you cannot get z ATV for two weekz ya? – but nexzt time.

A swim, nap, then Debbie comes screaming through the yard that her son Vincent has gone missing, Gunter cannot be found and she's just booked two large tables for tonight. Harry, of the other family staying at VdP, and I volunteer to help with service. I throw on a button-up shirt and jeans, he the same and we appear like some last-place duo in a Laurel & Hardy dress-off. I put out some chairs, clean off the bar and take up our posts. We wait for the first group to walk through the door, except it’s Vincent & Gunter….

S and I put in our dinner orders (Goat cheese salad, coconut prawns, chicken enchiladas with sour-cream chili) and our RYGLA friends arrive unexpectedly and join us for dinner. They are here also for Gabe & Meghan’s wedding, so they will be traveling with us later in the week. They are from Bellingham, Dan owns a POS software and equipment management company, Christy is an ex-teacher, ex-personal trainer, ex-herbologist. Their arrival to CR was decidedly more complicated than ours and includes first the hotel they had reserved in Liberia having been closed two months ago, taking the shuttle to Nosara and being put in a hotel the next town over after two missed attempts at the place they had booked, then a second possibility, being stranded out of town with no way to get into Nosara for the RYGLA retreat, beach etc. and having all the car rental companies have no cars, no ATVs and finally being consoled with an ATV from a local in Garza. But they are totally and completely “rolling with it” in a way that makes a person who had to take a cab out of town (once) feel really really petty for not doing the same. We talk into the night.

T and M, the Berkeley couple comes to the restaurant. Harry and his family are eating the next table over = the restaurant is almost half populated by people we know, people we’d met on this trip, people vacationing in CR.

On the walk to the cabina we see frogs (pictured). Giant frogs that will let you get right up in their placid faces and take their pictures with harboring no apparent discomfort.

M.