COSTA RICA: Circadian Rhythms, Café Con Leche, and “Wild”

 

One of the nice things about staying at a bed and breakfast is that you get breakfast, except of course when you sleep through breakfast hours.  It was understandable on that first day, because I had slept very little and was exhausted by my travels.  The second day it was more of a bummer and I felt disappointed.  When I finally went to breakfast on the third day, I was filled with appreciation, not just for the juice, food, and café con leche, and the glorious view, but the conversation.  It is a great way to meet other travelers.  Sharing a table with strangers over food breaks down a barrier, I suppose in the same way that sharing an airplane seat with the arm rest up lifts a kind of mental barrier.  People are more apt to talk when what is mostly a mental line of separation disappears.

Most of the other travelers had already had breakfast but I did have a chance to meet a nice young couple from Denmark.  After they left, Anita and I talked and talked, catching up and moving from one topic to another until it was lunch time.  Anita is easy to talk to with a multitude of fascinating stories. Her account of the monkeys recently breaking in through the screens to get food and causing some havoc caught my attention.  Would they be paying me a surprise visit in the cottage?  I wondered if the constant building that has continued in Manuel Antonio and the tourists that feed them when they absolutely should not is contributing to this kind of unwanted monkey business. 

I have only made it to breakfast 3 times and missed it 3 times, mostly due to sleep issues. My circadian rhythms are undeniably messed up in my life and have been for years.  Sometimes I feel no need for sleep.  Other times I need it desperately and can’t summon it, or sleep too much and it is unfulfilling leaving me exhausted in its wake, or throughout the night I awaken never getting more than 2-4 hours at a time.  When extreme, it’s enough to drive a person mad, filled with the kind of desperation and insanity that someone in the desert without water must surely feel.

Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica is no desert.  It is lush and vibrant; moisture infuses the air that delicately licks at your skin.  I sleep better here, which is simply to say that if I were in the United States right now, I would likely be a complete mess of sleeplessness. I would be like a madwoman, crawling through the desert without any water with the same genuine terror that comes from the lack of something necessary for survival, the terrain exacerbating the situation to a state of high emergency.

Here it is better and mostly tolerable.  Sometimes I wake up for no reason other than to watch the clock for hours then sleep through breakfast.  One morning I awoke around 4 a.m. to the sound of something behind the cottage, walking on the ground. Groggy and confused, I listened.  Definitely on the ground so not a monkey.  Maybe a raccoon?  A possum?  I listened as it slowly made its way to the side of the cottage, near my head where I sleep. Crunch, crunch, crunch.  It sounds like it may be eating while walking.  By the time it has come to the front of the cottage, I am wide awake with the porch light on and my flashlight out the window screen.  It is what looks to be a nine banded armadillo going about his business of foraging for food not phased in the least by my flashlight.  The armadillo is a good reason to be awake, and I watch him for some time before settling back into bed.

Every morning that I have missed breakfast, Nuria thoughtfully brings me café con leche down to the cottage.  On one such morning, I wake up disheartened at having overslept yet again and walk out my door to find a cup of café con leche covered with a coffee filter and hair band to hold it tightly in place and some sugars.  A flower is placed on the table in front of it.  It is simply beautiful, and I feel like the luckiest girl alive to be greeted in this manner.  It really is the little things in life, and it takes so little to make me exquisitely happy that I wonder at how so many can royally screw it up.

Unable to write and read at the same time, I am determined to finish the book my boss gave me while drinking the café con leche Nuria has left for me.  “Wild” is written by Cheryl Stayed and is about her solo trek through the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert in California through Oregon and touching Washington.  Cheryl is good at taking you along for her journey as if you were hiking the trail yourself, sans the blisters and bear and rattlesnake sightings.  It was the kind of book I needed to read – one about female solo travel. 

She meets men in the book who say things like, “I would never let my girlfriend do what you are doing”.  My chest tightens with rage whenever I hear this type of attitude expressed from men regarding solo female travel.  How many women are there in the world that yearn to travel and do not because the men in their life keep them in some invisible version of a lock-down?  Or worse, they do it to themselves?

I have been hurt by strangers in my life, but I have been hurt far more by those I knew and trusted and even those I loved.  When comparing equally egregious offenses, the latter hurts far more.  At least I get to see a little of this beautiful world, and thoughts are simmering in my mind and heart about what parts I want to see next and how I want to go about it. 

This is a good reason to read books on travel, travel articles, or travel blogs: it inspires you to think about what you fear too much to do and vicariously experience it.  It also inspires you to break down barriers and fears you only think you have that maybe are not so powerful after all and just go for it.  Cheryl Strayed gets a, “You go, girl!” from me, and inside I can feel a little voice that is telling myself, “GO, girl!”