Another Picture Bomb!

All That Went Wrong and All That Went RIGHT

If I had the literary ability and the singleminded dedication of an author, my Costa Rica adventures would read like a strange comedy. While I assure you that this trip is not all giggles and punchlines, a few very strange things have come about during my time here. 

At home, I am forgetful at best and empty minded at worst, and I tend to lose things occasionally. For some reason, this quirk of mine has been amplified ten-fold by the Costa Rican sun. The running tally of things I have forgotten/ lost is going on nine. This number might not seem terribly large, but when among the tally is a new iPad and a $300 camera, the stakes get a little higher. The situations of the losses makes the high stakes situation just the smallest big stranger.

The first item I managed to lose was my swimsuit. Some others from the group and I went to a pool that sits behind the reserve, and somehow I managed to leave my suit there. After repeatedly asking the reception desk for help, I had conceded defeat. As far as my knowledge goes, people don’t tend to steal old bathing suits, nor do the suits themselves sprout legs and walk off, but those were the only two possibilities I could fathom.

After resigning myself to my reserve (a.k.a. Grandma) suit, I mentioned my loss to my host mom. She immediately asked me for the when and where and got on the phone. I am half convinced that my mother here is part of some Tica housewife mafia, because within a week my abandoned suit had been found. 

The next item I lost was my brand new iPad mini. Yeah- empty minded, I know. We had been on a weekend trip and I managed to leave it at the hotel. Desperately, I pleaded with our accompanying professor to email the owner of the hotel and check if anyone had seen it. I was sure that the shiny bit of technology would not last long. I hadn’t even put a passcode lock on it. 

As I readied myself to admit my vapidity to my parents, an email arrived. And guess what. Someone had not only found the iPad, but had turned it in. I was preparing to take a costly two or three hour long taxi drive to recover the iPad when the owner offered to ship it. I got it a week or two later after our Tico guide, Carlos, picked it up from San Jose for me. I wasn’t even asked to pay shipping. 

The third thing I lost, and one of the few I have not recovered, was a headlamp. I have no idea when or where I lost that. Whoops.

Next, I abandoned my sunglasses at a bird observatory. I got them back the same day.

The last item I lost was that $300 camera I mentioned earlier. This story is a little unreal. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it.

My parents came down for Spring Break and we went to Arenal volcano area. Mom and I had signed up to do the zip line, and we were all going to hike around the forest. The weather was a little bit on the wrong side of miserable. The air was thick and there was a perpetual drizzle that had been going on for a week. We had crossed two hanging bridges and were trying to keep ourselves in decent moods as we trudged through the rain. 

We had finally reached the first lookout point and took a moment to appreciate the beauty of the forest canopy half hidden in the mist. My jacket was completely saturated with water and did nothing to protect me from the wet or the cold, so I took it off. I glanced around for a place to put it, eventually deciding to drape it over the railing which  kept the clumsier souls (me) from falling to a miserable death. Mind you, there was plenty of space on the platform for the jacket, and I had pointedly ignored the nagging voice telling me that the banister was a bad idea- but I did it anyway.

If you haven’t guessed yet, the jacket fell. It fell at least a hundred feet to land on the top  of a tree below us. Well, shit. 

As I had a silent panic attack, my mother walked away in frustration, and my father declared the camera lost. I took a chance wandering through the brush to retrieve the jacket to no avail. I was less afraid of the distance and the drop than I was of the infamous terciopelos which inhabit the forests of Cost Rica. One bite from a terciopelo (viper) and you’ve got an average of two hours to find a hospital, assuming you can keep yourself calm enough not to pump the venom faster into your heart.

Despite my intimidation of the forest, I refused to admit defeat. I had seen a guide a few hundred feet back, and I went for his help. When I asked if he was a guide and told him I had a problem, his immediate response was, “What fell?” Well, at least I wasn’t the first poor soul to overestimate my luck.

To make a short story shorter, within thirty minutes I had my jacket and accompanying camera back in my grasp. The lovely guide plunged into the forest to retrieve my fallen comrade with little to no cajoling, and he wandered much farther than most gringos would have dared- but then again, Ticos have a special kind of locura. 

Recently I managed to leave a watch and a hairbrush at a hostel in San José, but all in all, I’m going to consider myself lucky to have recovered what I have. It seems like for all that could have gone very wrong, more has gone very right.

I’m pretty okay with that.