Do you like to travel?

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WARNING. If you travel a lot, or don’t know me well, this detailed report may not be as interesting to you as it is to my Momma, whom this is dedicated to.

4.3.2017 Was a good day, but bad sleep.

4.4.2017 One full day left in Samara. Which means, of course, that in the middle of the night the power went out for half an hour or so. Which woke us up because it immediately became too hot with no fan to move the air around. Pura Vida, baby: explain what it is. It also means that during the day the water went out for 6 hours. It was announced, but we missed the announcement but there was no missing the surprise of no water for daily activities. I went for a bike ride half way down the beach with Ron, then we were just turning around and a good friend was there on her bike. She wanted to go swimming. I said sure. First she wanted to bike to the farther end of the beach, for a good place to swim. It was worth it, there were few waves. We swam quite a ways out. It was the farthest out that I’d ever been. I wasn’t nervous because I can’t swim. I was nervous because it was the ocean full of ocean type creatures. My friend was nice and calm, so I was alright. Then we saw the most amazing thing. Flying fish. No lie. We saw them twice. The first time they were maybe 40 feet away, and they were kind of freaky. I’m in the water, my head is level with the water, you know? (Usually I’m in the water and playing in the waves with my feet on the ground, maybe swimming a little). The fish “flew” maybe a foot or two high, flying maybe 3-4 feet across. There appeared to be about a dozen of them. 10 minutes later there were more. They came straight to me, and then dodged to the side and just missed my head. It was crazy cool. But I tell you what, if I hadn’t seen them from a distance first, I would have lost it. Imagine, all of a sudden a bunch of things flying around your head? I would have panicked for sure. I think they resembled bats, their side fins looked like wings. They were maybe the size of my hand. It’s hard to describe though. I was so startled, so amazed, and it happened so fast. We laughed like maniacs. Then on the way home I had to walk my old bike, the front tire went flat. Pura vida. Because as I was walking I noticed a pattern. Jellyfish washed up on the sand. I took a picture of the first 7 that I came across. They were pretty cool. They were near invisible. Jelly fish are my one of my favorite animals. But if I had seen them on the way to go swimming, I wouldn’t have gone in! All of life is about timing, eh? A few weeks ago I went snorkeling near that area where were swimming, and I was stung by jellyfish. We all were. I had 3-4 stings, they were like small cat scratches and stopped stinging after a few hours. I didn’t see those jellyfish, which is a good thing. I would have freaked, and I had a ways to go to get back to shore. In 7 months I’ve only seen one jellyfish washed up on the beach. Seeing many was strange.

4.5.2017 Time to go! I usually have zero problems to get a good night’s sleep. This is day 2 of bad sleep due to good excitement. I spent the morning on last minute things. I also was setting up a little treasure hunt for my Mom. I put different things around the house for her to find while I’m gone. The first one I paced out using her shoes, so she could find a piece of coral with a fish shape rock on it. I painted the whole thing, and I was happy with the result. Then last night I told her about one that I taped under her kitchen chair. The plan is to send her the info on how to find things, every other day or so, for a whole month. I loved this idea, I was so into it – I created an excel sheet so I could keep track of what I hid, and where.

Then we had to get in the cab, with a final farewell to Mom and to friends, and to Samara. We were off! We took a cab with a friend, and we got 45 minutes away, and she realized that she forgot her shoes. She had Costa Rica flip flops, but she was going to… Massachusetts. I think she said there was still snow there. I gave her my shoes. It turns out my kind of small shoes were perfect for her size-smaller-than-me feet. I gave her my socks too. I gave her the shoes on my feet. Aw. Right? This meant that I was thinking of her the whole trip to San Francisco because my toes were cold. But I was smiling the whole time. The dang shoes were a wee bit too small anyway. Or maybe I just haven’t worn even sneakers in 3 months. My only other pair of shoes, though, was a pair of tall dress shoes. Open toed. At least they were comfy; they look dressy but they are actually made by a running shoe company. No thin heels. I was going to buy new sneakers in San Fran anyway.

So we say goodbye as she dropped off at the airport. My dear friend that I went swimming with. We stayed at a hotel near the airport, we had to be there at 6:30am. We got the hotel around noon, but we were so tired we didn’t eat. Ron bought 2 drinks and 2 bags of chips from the lobby, for $10. We were not near stores, and I didn’t want to walk around in the heat and shoes. That was lunch. We just skipped dinner. I didn’t want to eat much before a day of travel anyway. Trying to eat healthy leads to needing to eat less and still being comfortable. I lost 20 pounds, and my stomach apparently shrunk.

The first thing I noticed about the hotel room was not the iguana climbing the corner of the building. Nor the herd of cows out the back window, all white and horned and beautiful. It was the lighting. It made me realize how everything has been the exact same for 7 months. If I were to spend all day in my room, I would know what time it is based on when the sun came around the house and shone in the window. The lighting in the house, and in the bathroom mirror was the same every day. The only variation was changing light bulbs, and if it was cloudy or not. I looked different in the hotel mirrors. Maybe because this is probably the darkest my skin has ever been in my entire life. And I was probably 11 years old the last time I cared so little about what my hair was doing. I grew it out and put it in a pony tail every day. At the hotel we used the air conditioning, and I could have my hair down. It’s just too hot for that at my Mom’s house. We had an air conditioner unit in our room, but when I used it – I didn’t want to leave the room! It made the rest seem hotter than ever. I liked the variety of the trip we are taking. Before we went to Costa Rica I was on the go night and day. Then for 7 months we spent almost every night like this: watch a sun set. Cook a good meal. Watch a TV show with the 3 of us. Then I go and call people, or write my blog, or whatever I have going on. In bed by 9pm! Because we like to get up early and beat the heat. By 8pm I was usually starting to wind down, depending on how much biking or hiking or swimming I did that day.

We went down by the pool when it cooled down for the sunset. I didn’t swim because I didn’t have time to dry my suit. Dang it. We sat at a table and I looked over at Ron and he had an odd expression on his face. He pointed behind my head. There was a sign in Spanish and English. It had a list of things on it. The last one was: Prohibidas las escenas amorosa. The translation said: Love scenes are forbidden. (Wow, this is a thing? So common, that they had to make a sign for it??) I took a picture of it, because my life is full of all these things that seem so strange, I can barely believe it myself.

4.6.2017 Up before the alarm, another antsy night of sleep. We get there at 6:30am and have 3 hours to eat breakfast now. It cost almost $50 for a basic breakfast. Almost $10 for 2 bottles of water. Whatever. It was worth it. (Because we ended up skipping lunch and having a plain bagel for dinner). We keep looking at each other. We keep saying: it’s really happening, we are on our way!! The airport is nice and cool. It’s weird, I know the plane will be cold, and I am wearing pants for the first time in 5 months.  

  The first flight was no problem. I was getting a bit loopy though, with so little sleep for 3 nights. Which didn’t help when Ron and I had our luggage flagged by security. First, Ron had metal on the outside of his jean pockets for decoration. The security guard told him he was going to have to pat him down, the system says there is something in his back pockets area. So he did it right there, really quick. I blurted out: Hey, that’s MY job! I don’t think he laughed, but he was quick and professional. Then my luggage looked wrong on the X-ray, so another guy went through my suitcase. You know what it was?? I put rocks in my socks. Hear me out. My Dad says he has a rock tumbler, and collects rocks for it. There are some pretty cool rocks in Samara, so I put them in my socks, in a bag. That way they wouldn’t make a bunch of odd noise, the weight would be distributed in the suitcase, and they wouldn’t be able to bang into anything else. He told me the issue was that bag, and he laughed at my explanation. Briefly. He was trying to be professional, because the last thing I put in that suitcase was 2 bras. One was a lovely pink. It was the first thing he pulled out to test for drugs or explosives or whatever other evil lurks in the plans of the bad guys. Then they pulled Ron over with his back pack. You know why? Because my favorite hot breakfast drink comes in a powder form, it looks like hot chocolate mix, but it was in an unmarked zip lock bag. I laughed but Ron didn’t.

Then I stopped laughing because we were in Los Angeles and they announced the cancellation of the flight to San Francisco. Ron scrambled and got us 2 of the last 20 seats on another flight. It was late, so we had a chance to catch it. Then we got on board, only 15 minutes later than our other flight. Whew. Except we since the plane didn’t leave on schedule, we had to wait an hour on the ground for a spot to open up. For me, not a big deal. It’s that whole perspective thing. Those who didn’t make this flight had to go standby to Oakland.

Here’s what I wrote on the plane. (Remember the part where I was said I was sleep deprived).

It is entirely unnatural for a woman to be so high up in the air. Humans are not designed to look downward at the tops of clouds. I’m a pattern person. I like patter games. It’s the reason I crochet. I see patterns in what people eat, what they say, in their choice of shoes. One of my favorite patterns is cloud patterns.

I have no problem flying in a plane. I have places that I want to go to. It’s part of my journey this year. My mother lives in Costa Rica, my father lives in Denmark, my brother lives in Canada. I’ve lived in the United States since 1989. Getting to those places without flying at several hundred miles per hour, well that would be a different trip all together. But I’m fundamentally opposed to flying. We don’t belong up here. Yet here we are. Sitting in our claustrophobic seats, each dealing with our own set of  anxieties for whatever trip we are on. Cities whizzing by at 437 miles per hour, according the flight tracking app. I’m gazing out the window at mountains and rivers and small bursts of so-called civilization. Who flies the highest in nature? The bar head goose? It flies over the Himalayan mountains. Nope. I just looked. The goose goes 28,000 feet up. The griffon vulture goes 37,000!! I’m not a vulture, though. I’m how far up? I need to check the app again. I’m up here in a man-controlled environment eating the oreos I was offered. Completely separated from the world, and from my ancestral efforts to live a safe life.

How do I process what I’m looking at? How does my mind make sense of what my eyes see out the small window? Mostly I feel like I am just one woman among 7 billion people on this planet. But up here I feel like… a goddess taking inventory. I stare down and see a city, it’s metal and white parts sparkle in the afternoon sunlight as we go by. I see the patterns from the humans changing the landscape like they are Gods in training. Roads, farms, gigantic buildings. What are we doing? How long can we sustain this anit-nature campaign?

I see a big city with many roads, it looks like a 10 year old doodling in art class. We haven’t reached the U.S. yet. I can’t see the folks down there, yet I have overwhelming visual evidence. I want to shout through the atmosphere to them. “What are you doing?”. How is their Thursday afternoon going? What conversations are they in? What is currently holding their attention? Are they looking up at a plane in the sky above them? Are they chewing gum like me? I found a flavor called passionfruit twist, in the Costa Rican airport. I bet their gum options aren’t as tropical as mine are. Or were. I finally left Costa Rica today. It’s very bittersweet. Not the gum, the travelling.

Maybe flying weirds me out a little because I’m looking at part of an engine. I read a part of the wording on the side I could see, and Ron thought I was swearing at him. It said “access hole”. I know how many parts must work together perfectly to keep me safe and alive. In the brown landscape below I just counted 62 huge green circles. Crops, I guess. I don’t want to crash on any one of them. My life is literally suspended in mid-air. And if anything goes wrong? There is very little I can do to about it. Except scream. And ask: “What am I doing?!” I’m trying to get from Samara, Costa Rica to Brande, Denmark. I can’t make the world a better place if I don’t get out there, right? At this moment the world is beneath me, Arizona maybe?

 The pockets of metropolis don’t sparkle like jewels before me. They remind me more of shiny new coins. It’s all perspective. When you’re walking on rough terrain with a broken shoe – a mile is a long time. Distance and time are so inter-related. When you’re looking out into the vastness at 37, 998 feet high – a mile doesn’t really seem to be measured the same.

  Any time I’m in a plane there is truly so little that keeps me from a horrifying death. Contemplating my mortality is better done after a good night’s sleep. It’s different up here. Seeing all the streets but not close enough to see the cars. Like the planet is deserted and you hope you remember every survival book you ever read, every show you watched with that theme.

  I’m changing topics like I’m changing my position in the seat to keep my back from cramping up. My favorite things about Costa Rica include seeing my Mom (the only reason I’m there in the first place), learning Spanish, feeling Samara beach with all 5 senses, and spotting iguanas all over. I love the culture. I love how the people Make Do. With much less that I’m used to. They opened my eyes wider to a more simple lifestyle. I adore the expression they use a lot: “Pura Vida”. The direct translation is Pure Life. The Suzette interpretation goes 2 ways. One is when things are so naturally amazing. Seeing a monkey momma with her baby on her back, it’s tiny tail wrapped around the base of her tail. Feeling the change in gravity while swimming in the salty ocean. Hearing the call of 50 birds of 20 species, all together in one ever-changing chorus. You smile and say: “Pura Vida”. The other is when things go wrong. The power goes out and it gets hotter, sweatier. You go for a long walk, and as you turn around to head back – it starts raining cats and dogs. That, my friend, is also Pura Vida. It means there is much more to life than a simple (or complicated) inconvenience.

  I don’t have any tattoos. But I seriously considered getting my first one. Pura Vida. Over my left knee. Right side up and upside down. So if I’m sitting own and you are across from me, we are both reminded of the Pure Life. I never fully committed to the idea. In the end I couldn’t choose a perfect font to stare at for the rest of my life. That was my biggest obstacle.  But no matter where I go, until the end of my time I want to keep it close to my thoughts. Am I living the pure life? Am I letting things get to me that should never be affecting my smile?

End of air-born thoughts.

Then I had to put everything away, and people had to throw back their drinks and hand over their cups. Turbulence was coming. For the last hour it was a little shaky, and we were supposed to keep our seatbelts on. The last 20 minutes was the worst. The sun had gone down, but there was still light in the sky. It was like a white out  that I experienced while driving in Canada many years ago. I looked out  the window and the world was invisible. Nothing out there but a gray out. The sky was the exact same color as the wing of the plane. There was barely enough light to tell where the wind was against the matching gray sky. For a few minutes it was less like a plane ride and more like a very expensive roller coaster ride. My stomach did that thing it does when I’m going up in a really fast elevator. (If you’re from Samara, let me put it this way: For a few minutes it was almost as bad as taking the road to Nosara). We touched down and slowed down and then I could breathe again. I wasn’t that worried, but I sure was relieved when we stopped. It was a stormy night. We strolled out of the airport, happy with our decision to travel with just carry on luggage. It was rainy and windy outside, but we got right on a shuttle to the hotel. We walked in our room at 8:43pm. The news said there were mudslides causing small scale evacuations and power outages from the crazy weather.

I did a wonderful thing when we got settled in the hotel. I had a hot bath. It was fantastic after the cramped plane seats and high heeled shoes. Add some lavender essential oil, and there is a real Wow Factor. No hot water and no bathtubs for 7 months. The showers were just warm enough to not be called cold. Who needs heated water when the best part of the day was jumping in the shower to cool down?