2004
Margie and I had a bit of
money left after our daughter's wedding in August 2004. So we decided to use it
and our 113,000 Aeroplan points for a Christmas vacation treat. To go anywhere
the points would take us. There wasn't much to choose from when we called Air
Canada. But as usual I was lucky. They had return flights to San Jose, Costa
Rica that fit our window.
Most of our previous travel was fly and try. That is we'd fly in, rent a car and try to find a nice place to stay each night. It was a leftover idea from my Europe hitchhiking days when I could not know where I was going to sleep when I woke up.
For Costa Rica we used the Rosedale strategy. We booked an expensive all inclusive beach resort on the west coast for the first week and a hotel in the suburbs of San Jose and four rounds of golf for the second week.
On the flight to San Jose we ran into an acquaintance on an ecotourism tour. Bed ‘n breakfasts. Birds. Jungles. Rivers. Volcanoes. Mosquitoes.
To get to the resort we had to grab a puddle jumper for a forty minute flight to the west coast. It took us about an hour of chasing to find that the puddle jumper didn't fly out of the shiny concrete San Jose jet terminal but from an adjacent shack that looked like it belonged in a Humphrey Bogart movie. The jumper was a crowded 8 seater. It took us to another shack outside Tamarindo, a beach and surfing town. We caught a cab to the resort and discovered the lousy back roads of Costa Rica.
The resort's main gate and reception area was elevated so that the resort spread out below on a plain down to the coast. It was an extraordinary vista - ShangriLa, plunked down in the third world.
That was the last notable thing about the resort. Everything was good but nothing was worth writing about.
Our touristing from the resort included a volcano tour, a river tour, a coffee plantation tour and jungle zip lining. The zip line adventure was enlightening. It was advertised as edging on dangerous what with soaring for a quarter mile atop the jungle canopy. The ride to the zip lines was an hour over more bone crunching roads.
We could only howl with laughter as we arrived. The parking lot was filled with two tour buses full of geriatrics, average age 80, who had arrived before us. No fear in their eyes. There was more chance of getting hurt by the safety harness than falling into the jungle and being eaten by a rabid leopard.
The trip back to San Jose included a visit to Tamarindo with lunch on the beach. The little town had the feel of spring break lurking under a veil of humidity. I sense the atmosphere had a faster pulse at night.
During the San Jose portion of our holiday we met a nice retired couple on a golf course and made a connection strong enough to have dinner in their gated community home. They were from Dallas and had retired in San Jose for the half price expat life there.
They were a catholic couple and the subject turned to the midnight mass they would attend Christmas eve. They invited us to join them. I agreed to go to my first ever mass. Their church was relatively small, not a cathedral. It was in the countryside away from the city.
The church held a few hundred souls. Everyone was dressed to the nines. The men in upscale cowboy gear or business suits. The ladies in their modest Sunday finest. We had terrific seats near the pastor. The solemn ceremony complemented by some outstanding music left me comforted at having witnessed one of the world's great rituals.
The next evening at dinner our hostess revealed that she had been born jewish in Madrid, Spain. That was shocking. She told us her story of family upheaval and change that ended with her living in Dallas as a catholic.
It's a life lesson reminder that most people have an interesting story to tell if you can wring it out of them.
The climax of the trip came after golf on our penultimate day in San Jose. We went to the hotel bar for a beverage before dinner and were gobsmacked by the tsunami news on CNN. A stunning, sad story of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A riveting hour.
So our holiday had nothing we had planned that was notable but delivered memories of people met, transcendent ritual experienced and history witnessed.
November 2019
