Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Later that evening my host parents took me on a driving tour of San José.
They showed me the neoclassical Teatro Nacional , the flagship of the revered POPS ice cream chain, and oddly, the Coca-Cola bus terminal.
They wanted to make sure I never went there: it was in the infamous Zona Roja , full of pickpockets and prostitutes.
Surprisingly, there was also a Taco Bell. I made a note of that for later.
But I had been too jetlagged to appreciate what I was seeing, so early the next day, I decided to explore downtown.
After all, part of my job was finding interesting social activities for the Truth Trip.
Eva and Luis reluctantly offered to accompany me, but I declined.
I didn’t want their impressions to color my own.
In less than one day, I had turned into a Christian. Who might I turn into today?
I waited for the Guadalupe bus against their advice.
Luis had wanted me to take the less direct Sabanilla bus, which traversed our upper-middle-class suburb, instead of the Guadalupe bus, which went directly through working-class neighborhoods to downtown.
Luis seemed to think poverty was contagious, like the flu.
The green-and-blue Guadalupe bus lurched to a stop near the blue water tanks.
The front window was lined with chili pepper string lights, and a small pinata hung over the driver’s head. How festive!
I sat down next to a little boy in a faded Superman T-shirt, eating sticky dulce de papaya .
He offered me some of his candy. I didn’t want to tell him there was no way I was going to eat something that came out of a plastic bag that was wet with his drool, so I just cradled my stomach and said, “ Dolor .” He gave me a sympathetic look, then calmly resumed chewing.
I looked over his head out the window; trees, houses, and buildings flew by in a blur.
It filled me with this incredible sense of dislocation and excitement.
Sure, I was only going downtown, but I felt like I was at the beginning of an epic adventure.
Soon we were in the middle of the city, but I didn’t know where to get off.
I didn’t want to miss my stop and end up at the Coca-Cola bus station, so when most of the bus disembarked, I followed suit.
I stopped a middle-aged lady to ask for directions to the Plaza de la Cultura.
She answered in rapid-fire, colloquial Spanish, which made me question everything .
I thought I spoke Spanish! So why couldn’t I understand her? !
“Go north and turn right at the old post office,” she said in Spanish, pointing to the corner.
“I don’t see a post office there.”
“No, love, I said turn at the old post office. Currently it’s a bank.”
After turning right at the current bank/former post office, I stopped a man in painter’s pants for clarification.
“ Mi reina , go fifty meters to the west,” he said, “and then turn at the scar of the obelisk.”
“There’s an obelisk downtown?” I asked, confused.
“No, there’s a scar of an obelisk.”
“What is a scar of an obelisk?”
He looked at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The mark that remained after the obelisk was removed.”
After three more similar conversations, I finally realized it wasn’t my Spanish.
I mean, it was that, too. But Costa Ricans had a fundamentally different way of giving directions.
It was based on landmarks, but the landmarks didn’t need to exist—at least not currently.
This was an existential way of giving directions, where the past and present were one. Deep.
Forty minutes and many loops later, I finally made it to the Plaza de la Cultura.
I stood in the center and looked around.
It was a juxtaposition of colonial buildings with eighties modernism, full of tourists, birds, and entrepreneurs selling turtle-shaped flutes.
I took out my camera, a Canon Rebel. I always had a real camera on me, ever since Sadie gave me one on my thirteenth birthday.
At first it was a novelty; who had a camera in the age of cell phones?
Then it was a self-defense mechanism. Photographing family parties was a welcome relief from participation.
But somewhere along the way, I fell in love with it.
I marveled at how when you changed the angle, you changed everything.
If only I had that kind of control over myself.
After I posted some obligatory shots to Instagram, I struck out from the plaza to explore.
The streets were much narrower than the ones at home.
Some were paved with stones, and many of them were closed to automobile traffic.
Vendors were selling things on every corner: lotto tickets, platano chips, fresh fruit, cheap necklaces.
I decided to check out the Central Market.
I’d read that you could buy anything there, including your dinner while it was still breathing.
I stepped into the street, and a pink bus with a sign reading, God Loves Everyone, Even You, Poor Sinner, almost ran me over.
Huh. Apparently pedestrians did not have the right of way here.
I would need to remember that. I walked east to the Central Market, where I learned that refrigerating eggs is optional and there is something called shelf-stable milk.
I went through the whole cramped bazaar, passing dead chickens, live chickens, herbs, plants, leather, and every food item under the sun except dark chocolate.
I left the market and stumbled upon a kosher deli four blocks away, squished between a knockoff sunglasses store and a Virgin Mary paraphernalia kiosk.
I could see the infamous Coca-Cola bus station looming in the distance.
I stood outside the shop and took a good look.
The windows were filled with musty bottles and foreign items; this was no Jerry’s Deli.
As I stepped over the threshold, little bells jingled.
The interior of the shop was dark and smelled like spices.
A middle-aged Sephardic woman looked at me from over the top of her purple rhinestone–studded reading glasses.
She said something in an unfamiliar language that I was guessing was Ladino.
“Can I help you?” the lady asked, switching from Ladino to Spanish.
“I’m looking for dark chocolate.”
The lady went through her chocolate selection.
While I was waiting to see if she had any 70 percent dark, I promised God I’d convert back to Judaism if he’d give me a Valrhona.
The lady handed me a Valrhona, and I handed her a couple hundred colorful Costa Rican colones . Sweet. The reconversion was on.
When I stepped out of the store, a born-again Jew with a bona fide bar of dark chocolate, I received my first piropos —catcalled “compliments.”
“ ?Ay, corazón, take me to heaven! ” A yellow taxi zipped by, leaving diesel in my nose.
“ ?Ay, you with those curves and me without brakes! ” said an old man sitting on a curb in front of a fruit stand.
“ ?Guapa! ” said a construction worker. “ Turn off the lights so I can see you better !”
I wondered what, exactly, these men got out of these transactions. I knew from other women that I was supposed to be offended, but I found it neutral-to-positive. It’s not like I received tons of compliments from people I knew.
As I wandered on, a sign in English caught my eye: Coffee Time. The logo was green and white, and looked suspiciously like a mermaid with a crown. This reeked of home. But across the street was an inviting Costa Rican café named Café Pura Vida.
I entered Café Pura Vida and surveyed the bar.
It was clear these people took their coffee very seriously.
The single barista was dressed formally, in a vest and slacks.
There was a Chemex, a Hario V60, a French Press, a Marzocco espresso machine, and something I had never seen before.
It looked like a combination of a ceramic pitcher and a vase.
I approached and asked the barista what it was.
“A Vandola,” he said. “This is the Costa Rican way to make café chorreado —pour over.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll have that.”
“Hmm.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m not sure you’re ready for café chorreado .”
“Not ready?!”
“No offense, but you seem more like a pumpkin spice latte person.”
I bristled. “For your information, I hate pumpkin spice.”
He laughed. “I’m just kidding. Everyone is entitled to their preferences. Even bad ones. Now, for your café chorreado —we have eight varietals. Please choose.”
I looked at the chalkboard menu, overwhelmed. He was wrong about pumpkin spice, but he was right about me being basic. “What do you recommend?”
“Do you like single origins or blends?”
“Please don’t judge me. I don’t really know the difference.”
“Well, blends are safe. Single origins, they are adventures. Like any adventure, they can go great—or they can go off the rails.” How could a coffee varietal be an adventure?
He read my mind. “Blends smooth out the differences. They give you a uniform, pleasant drinking experience. But single origins take you on a journey. They tell you the minerality of the soil, the humidity, the altitude. Even, perhaps, the dreams of the farmer.” He leaned over the counter, closer to me.
“In the single origin, you taste the terroir. You taste the soul.”
I have to admit, he made it sound intriguing. He wasn’t pretentious, like Cody. He was invested . “Okay. Give me your favorite single origin.”
He reached for some whole beans in a canister with a smile. While he poured boiling water into the Vandola from a gooseneck kettle, I read the flyers on the wall. Many were in English. One in particular called out to me:
looking for the thrill of your life?
a transformative experience?
come to el río bungee,
right off the pan-american highway, today!
Below the words were pictures of cheery blond girls suspended in midair over a river.
“One café chorreado from Tarrazu, listo ,” said the barista. “Tarrazu means from the land of the saints.”
“Does it come with any miracles?”
“No. That costs extra.”
I took the coffee and was about to add milk from the counter when he stopped me. “No, no, no. At least try it first.” So I did. “How do you like it? What do you taste?”
“Um... cocoa?”
“Good.”
“So I’m right?”
“There is no right. There is only what you experience.” He saw me looking at the flyer.
“You should go. You’ll never be the same.
” I blew on my coffee, contemplating. I had sworn I would never, ever, ever bungee jump.
What could be stupider than jumping off a bridge, essentially imitating suicide?
But never being the same was so appealing.
Plus, this would surely qualify as investigating a social activity for the Truth Trip. I could expense this!
“Take that bus right there,” said the barista. He pointed toward the glass wall of the café. There was a yellow bus parked outside. “Tell the driver to let you off at Salón Los Alfaro. Then just walk to the bridge. Easy.”
“Throwing myself off a bridge is easy?”
“You don’t even have to jump,” he said. “You just have to let go.”
* * *
So that’s how I found myself approaching the bridge over the Río Colorado.
Because the barista told me I would never be the same, and because being in a foreign country made me think nothing was real anyway.
This was like a video game; I couldn’t die.
Actually, my whole life had been like a video game, except someone else had the controller.
At least that’s what I was thinking when the God of the Bridge stopped me.
He was so overpoweringly handsome that I forgot to breathe.
“What’s your name?” he asked, in Spanish, slapping Velcro onto my ankle.
“Dee.”
“I’m Adrián.”
Adrián had curly hair, a quick smile, and a level of sex appeal that seemed frankly unfair. He looked up and down my body, which made my heart race and palms dampen. Then I realized he was assessing me for harness size. As he straightened out cords, he asked me, “You came here by yourself?”
I nodded, unable to speak. Was it because he was so hot, or because I was potentially going to jump off a bridge?
“Bit of a daredevil, huh?”
“The opposite, actually,” I said.
“You came to leap off a bridge, by yourself. You seem pretty brave to me.”
“Then why am I frozen in place?”
“Isn’t the definition of being brave being afraid of something but doing it anyway?” His eyes twinkled. How could I back out now? He held out the harness for me to step into. Then he bent down by my hips to fasten it. The closeness of his face to my waist made me blush.
“Is that tight enough?” he asked. I nodded. When he took my hand, heat filled my body. “You’re going to jump on three.”
I stepped onto the platform and looked down at the river.
The sight of all that water rushing so far below me sent panic flooding through my body in one enormous wave.
As I stood on the precipice, the reality that my life wasn’t a video game hit me with the force of a forty-meter plunge. This was real.
I backed away from the ledge. Some tourists waiting to go next pointed at me and laughed.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Adrián. “I can’t. This is a mistake.”
“It isn’t,” said Adrián. “Something brought you here.”
“Wimp,” said one of the tourists, a drunk frat boy.
“Hey,” Adrián said to the jerk in English, “that is no way to speak to a woman!” Then he put a hand on my shoulder and spoke softly into my ear, his breath hot against my skin.
The baby hairs on my neck bristled. “I know you can do this, Dee.” He took my hand in his and gave me a gentle smile. “Do you trust me?”
I don’t know why, but I did . “Yes.”
“The trick is not to think about it. If you hesitate, you won’t do it. When I say three, just go for it. One”—he squeezed my hand hard—“two”—he squeezed tighter—“three!”
I let go.