Costa Rica 2019: What We Did (Zip!)

The path to the zipline included a suspension bridge

There is a common denominator in the two trips during which Husband and I were in the company of our offspring on our trips to Costa Rica: In both instances the tipping point of deciding on this destination was the availability of ziplines.

In 2001, when the Boys were 15-, 13-, 11-, 9-year-olds, they did not want to go to my second favorite place on earth. Not at all, not for any reason. They didn't speak the language, they didn't know what kind of food to expect, they would be missing a big chunk of summer vacation time, and (because this blog is all about Truth) they had spent 15/13/11/9 years listening to their mother talk about the enormous cockroaches and dusty bus rides of her Peace Corps years.

So, actually, kind of my own fault. But it would be fun! And they would see where I had lived! (And if that isn't the way to get a kid to enthusiastically jump on the vacation destination bandwagon, I don't know what is.)  Still they sulked.

Finally, as a good parent does, I resorted to bribery.

"We'll be able to go ziplining!"

These words were the bibbity-bobbity-boo of my sons' age group. Suddenly we had a group of more-or-less enthusiastic travelers and the resulting zipline experience remains in my top family memory bank.

Ziplining, for those who have never had this experience, is the closest thing I can imagine to flying. Steel cables are strung between landing points throughout the mountain, and with some kind of metal do-hickey clipped between that line and an industrial-strength harness that manages to harass all of the personal and private areas of the body, even an unathletic land slug such as myself is able to fly over waterfalls and peer down on volcanoes. It just takes the confidence in the equipment to sit down into thin air, and the rest is all wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It is, as we kids say, awesome.

Lovely Girl#2 had zipped in Hawaii during years past, and I'm pretty sure the prospect of returning to the lines was the reason she agreed to celebrate the first anniversary of membership in our family in Costa Rica. (Doesn't everyone take their in-laws on a romantic get-away?) I have imagined that conversation several times:

Boy#2: Hey, how about we take my folks along on our anniversary trip? And maybe a brother?

LG#2:

Boy#2: We can zipline!

LG#2: Out of my way--I'm packing the sunscreen!

The 2019 Day of the Zip dawned sunny, which is a lovely gift during Costa Rica's rainy season.

The company we chose promised 12 lines to zip, including one that is a kilometer long and the second longest in Costa Rica. (One of the lines was being repaired so we actually only zipped 11 times, but we did not complain about this. Much like being on a plane that is delayed for mechanical reasons, you do not want to the operators to say "Oh, you're inconvenienced? Then let's just take off." No, thank you. Plus they gave us lunch in the canteen in lieu of the 12th zip, so, win!)

I had talked to the company rep in advance and explained that while 80% of the party ranged in athleticism from fit to quite fit (did I mention that Boy#4 had run a half-marathon the previous weekend?) the remaining 20% (moi) could best be described as creaky. "But I can walk really well!" I oversold my fitness. The rep assured me I'd be fine--it's a short walk to the first take-off spot, she said.

So we strapped into our harnesses and blue helmets that the operators admitted would be useless if we actually fell from the zipline but promised would be dandy to protect from errant branches and in giving us all a distinctively Lego-headed vibe.

A tractor-pulled trailer took us the first leg up the mountain, but then we all piled out and began the mile-long trek to the lines.

My friends, I would never lie to you (literary exaggerations aside): This initial trek was on the upper edge of my bell curve of personal comfort. We followed a path of stone steps, several hundred of them, and the steps were not of equal height, and there was no handrail (In the mountain! Can you imagine that?) and I may have oversold my physical fitness to the firm rep because I was pretty gassed by the time we reached the first zip.

But then they hooked me onto the first line and I sat into the void. All my inner whining and outer puffing and panting were forgotten and I remembered that you cannot do this activity without grinning.

I am not a beautiful zipliner. Look at this picture of LG#2 on the line:

Gorgeous, isn't she, with her daintily crossed ankles? And watch her coming in for a landing:

She steps onto that platform with the grace and confidence of the trained dancer she is.

I would show you a picture of me in the same pose except, well, I believe this was the line in which I failed to make it to the platform and was stuck far enough out on the line that the overall-clad zipguide had to come out and rescue me by wrapping his legs around mine and hand-over-hand hauling us both to the end of the line. It was every bit as ungainly and mortifying as it sounds.

But guess what? I didn't even care, except to realize that the guide deserved a hefty tip. Look at this face:

Sweaty, slightly sunburned, wearing a truly dorky helmet that was sliding backward, and still as happy as a human being can get.

It's the magic of the zipline.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Costa Rica 2019: We Are Family

Lovely Girl #2 took this selfie of us with my Costa Rican family of the heart--Rosa-Emilia, Chena, Vital, and Jose-Antonio.

Before we start this post, a few numbers:

• Year I swore into the Peace Corps: 1979
• Ages of the parents in the family I lived with during this experience: 48 (the dad) and 44 (the mom)
• Year I finished my service: 1982
• Year I had intended to return to Costa Rica: 1983, or 1984, or maybe 1985
• Year  I actually returned to Costa Rica: 2001
• Change in family size in the intervening years: +1 husband, +4 sons
• Number of times I swore I would return following the 2001 trip: Every year. I promise.
• Number of times I actually returned following the 2001 trip: Once, a long weekend 50th birthday celebration organized by a Husband who knew how much I wanted it. 
• Current ages of the parents in the family where I lived during my Peace Corps experience: 88 (the dad) and 84 (the mom)

Those numbers are the closest I can come to explaining the urgency I felt to get back to Costa Rica.  For years I've put my second heart home on the table as a possible vacation destination, but it was never quite the right time. Time, or finances, or other priorities simply made this trip a luxury, and frankly, when four kids are growing up and getting through college and setting out on their own, luxury isn't an option. 

This year, though, the trip suddenly flipped from luxury to necessity in my heart of hearts. 

During the years I lived in Tilaran, a beautiful city in the low mountains of Guanacaste, I roomed with a family that adopted me as their big, bumbling, blonde galoot of a daughter. Chronologically I fell between Vital and Chena's two daughters, just a couple of years older than the two boys who rounded out the family. They became my family of the heart. 

 And because Chena was (like most of her contemporaries) a housewife, she became the most delightful surrogate mother in  a two-continent region. She was the one who showed me the societally-accepted ropes of being a Tica, taught  me how to brew a perfect cup of cafe chorreado, and laughed with me at the absurdities of life. She was the one who nursed me when (at age 25) I caught a horrendous case of the measles and was desperately ill, and when I managed to crash my motorcycle into a pasture and the resulting bruised (broken?) ribs kept me from being able to dress myself. She was the one who slogged through calf-deep mud with me to go to a dance in a nearby town, both of us squealing with disgust. 

I was 24, and she was the mother of grown children, so I thought of her as the most fun-loving, full-of-beans elderly person I knew (ah, the arrogance of youth). Years later I still laughed thinking of the afternoons we spent drinking coffee and discussing the neighbors' foibles. 

We've kept up through Facebook, and with occasional video chats, but this year my simmering need to be in the same room with my Tico family boiled over. 

Here's the thing about family of the heart: Whether you have been away from  them for 40 hours or 40 days or 40 years, that time compresses into a tiny, manageable thing that can be slipped into a pocket when you're together again, and it's as if you've never been apart. 

I walked onto the porch of the concrete house where I'd shared a room with Rosa-Emilia, my Tica sister, and called into the open front door. Within moments I was hugging Chena, then Vital. They are older and less healthy than they were during our hugs two decades ago. Vital, who's now 88, sleeps much of the day. At 84 Chena walks with a cane and pain in her right hand (arthritis? carpal tunnel?) has made it impossible to do the regular housework so a lovely neighbor takes care of them. 

Within minutes, though, we were laughing again, and that lovely laugh hasn't changed at all. 

We spent much of two days with the family--Chena and Vital, of course, and their daughter whose room I invaded for more than two years, and their son Jose-Antonio who lives just down the street and took us on a photographic excursion high above the city. (Another daughter splits her time between a home in the United States and trips back to Costa Rica, and the youngest son lies in the capital city.)

We reminisced, and caught up on neighbors and families, and shook our heads sadly at the state of politics in the world, and everyone laughed at the size differential between my boys and my tiny Tica mama:

They're standing on the same step

By the time Boy#2 and Lovely Girl#2 arrived to continue our vacation further inland, we had exhausted our hosts and my non-Spanish-speaking family was ready to understand more conversation than they had for the past hours. We took a final round of pictures and prepared to get on the road. Chena pulled me close, and traced a cross on my forehead with her thumb. "Dios me la bendiga," she whispered a blessing.

I waved once more to Chena, who was standing in the  door of the house, then we drove away. I only cried for a few minutes.

The Ticos have a phrase they use whenever they talk about an event in the future: Si Dios quiere. It means "If God wills it," and is almost as pervasive as "puravida." Are you going to the market today? Si Dios quiere. Will we win the soccer game? Si Dios quiere. Will the present arrive in time for Christmas? Si Dios quiere. 

Will I see this family of my heart again in this lifetime? Si Dios quiere.