It’s good to spend time with family you love, but it’s really sweet when they join you far from home. My immediate family came to Costa Rica for a week to see the beaches and volcanoes. Anna my sister and her husband Tobie had already made plans to be here when I was offered the chance to move down. Tobie spent six months here a few years ago working in book bindery run by a local church. He was back to see his old friends. When my parents heard that I was going to be here they put two and two together and decided we should have a family vacation. It was a blessing. It’s good to remember God’s blessings, and to note them during stressful times.
Part of what made this trip good for me was being able to bless my family. I helped with the planning, rented the cars and did all of the driving. The driving was an exhausting challenge but rewarding. The narrow roads wind tightly through the mountains and you don’t want anyone getting car sick. You also don’t want everyone to die in a fiery collision with an oncoming passenger bus.
Tuesday found us enjoying excellent toast and eggs in the town of Quepos not far from the Manuel Antonio national park. After breakfast a van picked us up to take us to the marina and a waiting catamaran for a tour and snorkeling. The boat could hold upwards of forty but on that morning our family was the only guest. The sails unfurled and for an hour we slipped away from the coast. Islands dotted our path, a distant stormed darkened the ocean horizon and the central mountains towered far inland.
My dad was anxious to snorkel, so he convinced the crew to cut the tour short. We anchored in a small harbor, and our guide pointed out the tip of a rock, no wider than the roof a car, barely staying in view above the tide. It took us a while to get the hang of the gear and it was probably ten minutes before we reached the rock. On the swim across to it we didn’t glimpse a thing. My sisters were there first and looked under at about the same time. They popped up quickly and began giggling uncontrollably. After another minute or two of flopping I reached them and looked under. I couldn’t wear my glasses with goggles and my vision is pretty poor. I was concerned that I wouldn’t see any more than an occasional dark blur. The moment my eyes dipped below the surface I found myself staring at a school of palm-sized, yellow and blue striped fish mere inches from my face, swarming around me. Over the next hour I would see a dozen different species each as colorful and different as the next. There were boxy puffer fish, light blue with dark blue pokadots. There were thin, purple fish that almost glowed with a vertical white stripe on their sides and a yellow stripe along their tops. I can’t describe them all. We were overwhelmed.
On Wednesday we hit the national park: serene beaches, dense forest, but most of all animals. First we saw big lizards that would stand like proud statues with their chins up. A tour guide for another group was pointing into the trees, and my sister Lindsey was the first to spot the sloth high up in the canopy. It looked like dirty shag carpet wedged between branches.
The third beach had the busiest tourist attraction. There were crowds gathered and pointing in all different directions. We’d found the monkeys. The monkeys are hilarious. They stand out from every other animal I’ve encountered by how much they engage with people. They’ll throw sticks, they’ll yell, and they’re always scheming to steal food. As soon as some visitors sit down at a picnic table its game on. They may try a dash from the side, or swipe from a low hanging branch. They can open zippers and tear open plastic bags. Like people they don’t care that that bag of chips isn’t any good for them.
Thursday morning we were back in San Jose. We’d dropped Anna and Tobie off the night before. Lindsey discovered that she’d left her passport back at the hotel in Quepos. There are no normal parcel carriers like we have in the States, so we needed help from my Costa Rican coworkers to arrange a shipment. The hotel had to send the passport by courier to the local airline Sansas, and then we had to pick it up at the airport. Not only do you get to invent driving rules in Costa Rica you have to make up shipping routes too.
That afternoon another slow drive slithering through the mountains put us at the volcano Arenal. It’s world famous for being an almost perfect cone. It looks like your grade school science project. It’s also been active for fifty years. You can see the lava at night. That is, if there’s clear skies. I’ve visited Arenal twice now. The last time was in ’99, and the situation was the same. It is the cloudiest place on earth. Your eyes keep tricking you into thinking the ceiling is raising, but then another wave sweeps down over the mountain. You can see the dead zone above the trees where lava has passed, but never glimpse the mouth of the cone. It’s a beautiful place, but also an exercise in disappointment.
It was hard to send the family home again on Saturday morning. Living in another country can be lonely, and family is the most comforting thing to have around. I liked knowing that they were right across town.
One the best things to come out of this vacation is that I visited a cool church. Tobie took us to the one he worked with, and I really liked it. The pastor seems solid, and the people were friendly. I didn’t understand much of the Spanish service, but I think I could grow into it. Anyway there are some other places for me to try too, so we’ll see where I can connect and serve.
