I'm High On Emotion : Costa Rica

8/9/17

I cut my time short in Monteverde to head to Manuel Antonio earlier. I was ready to be back in warmer weather and on the beach!. When I got on the bus to head to Manuel Antonio, Pratik was on the same one! We talked for the next 5 hours straight on the way there, and had a truly special conversation, while snacking on Rambutan fruits and looking at the most beautiful mountains.  We made a bucket list of things to do in Manuel Antonio.

I told him about PA school and my cadaver lab. I told him how perfoming a craniotomy to remove the brain from my cadaver was one of the more meaningful experiences I had of all the time we spent with them. Of all the parts of the body that we worked with, this was the part that made the cadaver an individual and conscious human being  before they even 'met' us. This individual’s brain was the core of his ability to love people in his life, to have a personality, or to make decisions. The brain's nerve synapses and neurotransmitters form us as ever-changing-and-learning beings. We talked about how gaining experiences and traveling is such an overflow of learning and experiences in such a short time and a very unique way to challenge your brain and identity. This brought us to discuss how traveling's gift of varied experiences and diversified worldview contribute to an individual's maturity or internal strength.

 Pratik, who has seen the difficulties of marriage, and I spoke about the psychology of relationships, both romantic and otherwise, and the nature of how they change in your life. When in Monteverde, we had been at dinner with a group and we were all talking about how much we learn from traveling. We referenced  how coming home always feels bizarre, because everything looks and feels the same, but you’ve changed. Sometimes, your relationships seem to change with friends and family as they feel a sort of difference between you.  
As Pratik put it: “you say you can’t keep up, but I’m not trying to run.”
Everyone in the group had similar feelings: that staying close to home isn’t what we will want, because there’s so much more to see in life. It’s not that there’s nothing worthy to being at your home, or nothing great about your home and the people there, it’s that there’s no reason to stay there in fear of it changing or of missing something. The trade-off to staying at home or living in your comfort zone is more dire, and it’s missing out on opportunities to challenge your identity and to gain ingenuity and grit. 

So, I looked at Pratik on the bus and said “if so many divorces happen (and friendships end) because people ‘change’ or ‘want different things’ as they age, and then a major passion for myself and this group of backpackers is to travel and to capture experiences that inherently will change us,  how do we hold long lasting relationships? People will undoubtedly change regardless of travel, which is really just a compacted period of life experiences and internal change. 
Every aspect of our relationships in life is a reflection of the level of maturity or internal strength one has acquired. Pratik said that each phase of life as you grow is "slowly claiming your own self."

His answer was: “it’s about having a vessel that’s big enough for the two of you to grow. If both of you haven’t grown on your own beforehand and seen the need to build a bigger vessel from the start, then how could you build a vessel big enough to carry the both of you, in addition to your changes?”         

I then arrived at my hostel and met a guy staying in my dorm for the night, David. He’s Spanish, and his parents both went to medical school in America. He's becoming a lawyer in Spain and likes to backpack to experience a different lifestyle from his own. So, here he was staying in a co-ed dorm in Costa Rica with me, hiking uphill in the hot sun to buy some groceries. 

The Hostel Cat

I went to the beach in front of my hostel and saw all the Capuchin monkeys running around and climbing the trees. There was even a sloth in the trees right by my hostel.

 

My new friend David and I went to dinner in downtown Manuel Antonio with Pratik, and then a bar named Salinas, and we all had a blast getting to know each other more. I realized that after all David had told me about his life and family, I hadn’t bothered to ask the normal things (like his age). At dinner, we realized that David and Pratik really had a lot in common. 

The next morning I went to Manuel Antonio National park. I hiked around and looked at all the nature around me. I saw even more sloths and monkeys, in addition to crabs and lizards. Some French people told me that they had seen a crocodile in the cove that Pratik, David and I were encroaching on in our beach walk the night before.

 

 

The first beach I went to was beautiful but not great for swimming.

The second beach, Playa Manuel Antonio, is great for swimming but is overrun by mobs of "gangster" raccoons and monkeys that want to steal your belongings. The locals at the beach bring long rods that they can use to fend off these raccoons, because yelling or making noise is insufficient.  The monkeys are so clever that they will steal your backpack, or really any possession, and either take the food from it or use it to barter with you for food.

Leaving the park, I ran into Michael-the fellow dog lover-again. He and his friends were passing through Manuel Antonio on their way to Uvita, and happened to be at the beach at the same time as me. They gave me a ride home on their way.

I met with David and Pratik at Balu’s, a beach bar with outdoor seating where you can have a drink watching the sunset. It was breathtaking. 

Pratik told us that he had arrived early because he had acquired a ‘driver.’  The AirBNB he was staying in is maintained by a couple, who work for the owner (Pablo). Pablo is gone for huge amounts of the year, so when the wife saw a scrape on Pratik’s knee, she insisted that Tony take him to the pharmacy in the nearby town of Quepos (yes, for a scrape). Pratik noted Tony arrived in a car with tinted windows and made several "interesting" stops along the way. He learned enough about 'the boss,' Pablo, to become a little suspicious. Pablo has more than 12 homes across the world, not including his AirBNB’s. He speaks upwards of 7 languages including Portuguese, Italian, French, Mandarin, Croatian, English…and is a “man of technology.” He owns multiple restaurants and AirBNB’s, but we can only guess why…

We also couldn’t figure out why the couple was insisting on being so nice to Pratik, and were worried that they thought he saw something he shouldn’t have while staying at their home. So, the husband, Tony, insisted on being our driver for the next days in lieu of Pablo. 
Next, the three of us went to the airplane bar in town and had dinner,

The Airplane Bar, downtown Manuel Antonio

Here's a description of the history behind the airplane bar: 

"When the strike on the Sandinista of Nicaragua was being organized by the CIA in 1986, the anti-government Contras rebel groups were assisted in the purchase of two C-123 cargo plans that would be operated out of Costa Rica. One of those plans was shot down. That event led to the global discovery of what would become a well-known political scandal involving the Reagan Administration and Iranian arms deal that ultimately assisted in raising money for the Contras rebels.

The other aircraft survived and was later abandoned at the San Jose Airport following the end of the conflict." 

The Spaniard