Crossing the bay would take only an hour or so. It was early enough I thought it was safe taking off my shirt. I had my eyes closed, trying to send good thoughts to a friend who was at that moment on an operating table. But the water reflected the sun and I was getting burned.<\/p>\n
The heat in Jaco<\/a> was intense. There was no breeze. Air conditioning at the first hotel was an empty promise, the main draws were beach and bar, neither a draw for me. So I left and found a place downtown. Though I tried to walk near the waves perfect for surfing, my sunburn sent me back inside to the deep shade.<\/p>\n White men on the street had a furtive air. Maybe their wives were all shopping, or maybe their wives didn’t come down for the sport fishing or the surfing. Groups of men wore similar clothes, like the feathers of a flock of birds. This flock wore black polo shirts with brown shorts and flip flops. That flock wore striped business shirts with rolled up sleeves, tan shorts and tennis shoes. Over there<\/a> getting ice cream were men in sleeveless shirts with either the brand of a beer or “pura vida” written on one side.<\/p>\n After dark I went out for food, and realized the town had changed<\/a> from day to night. Birds gathered<\/a> in the trees, and on wires above the sidewalk along the main street through Jaco. The ground under the wires is white with droppings and not a good place to walk. Black birds sit on the wires and in the trees and they talk to each other about what someone may have dropped outside the restaurants on either side of the street.<\/p>\n Men stood outside the bar with “two for one daquires,” talking to each other and any women who walked by, then came across the street to negotiate a price on an Indian meal for a large group, crossed back over.<\/p>\n Women in plumage began to appear on the sidewalks, stuffed into tight shiny dresses, on platform high heels that added inches to the length of their legs. One reached for my hand as I walked past, asking if I wanted some companionship. When I declined with a smile and as much grace as I could, she pouted and said she could make me more happy. The scent of her perfume lingered on my hand.<\/p>\n The next morning, a white man different than those of yesterday perched on a stool at the bar, then stood, like a jay or a magpie in a Costa Rica style, at a table where a man and woman waited for their breakfast. Skinny, unshaven, longish hair, blue jeans in need of a wash, flip flops and a Hawaiian shirt. He is animated talking politics, in English to the blond man, Spanish to the Tico woman.<\/p>\n It’s breakfast, I’m barely in possession of my first cup of coffee, and one of the first things I hear was, \u201cI just feel privileged to be able to vote in two places, you know what I\u2019m sayin\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually he sat at another table and ordered breakfast. I ask if he gets to vote in Costa Rica, how long has he lived here?<\/p>\n Bill came down here about 30 years ago for the surf and never went home.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, but I\u2019m going to open a hostel,\u201d he pauses, leans forward in a conspiratorial whisper. \u201cThat guy owns a hotel\u2026\u201d and nods toward the blond man he had been talking politics to.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to open a hostel!…\u201d he says in a much larger voice, as if the man who owns a hotel will be intimidated by a surfer hoping that American hostel transients will fund his dream of an endless summer.<\/p>\n But running a hostel is a lot of work.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, but I know this Nicaraguan woman who can cook. I think it\u2019ll work. Then I\u2019m going to drive around this country, and look for my future ex-wife.\u201d He waits for reaction to his clever discount of security, a line funny when he was 30 years-old and could discount romance so easily. Who will a 62 year-old surfer dude find who will be looking for him?<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, but there\u2019s \u00a0so many women in this country. It\u2019s unbelievable. I think the diet of rice and beans produces girls,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Bill came down to Costa Rica with a family, a long time ago. After a year, his wife returned Texas with his two boys, then four and eight. He does not dwell, but I see a small squall ripple across his eyes when he says, \u201cI still don\u2019t know what \u2026 why\u2026\u201d but he doesn’t finish the sentence.<\/p>\n His boys, raised by his ex-wife and her mother, she never remarried, \u201care killing it.\u201d One works for Merrill Lynch, the other for Goldman Sachs. Bill goes back to Texas to see them a few times a year, he says, but it’s a year since he’s been. He has a child with a Costa Rican woman, too.<\/p>\n Bill has been out of the business of building surfboards for a while. He built boards with styrofoam blanks that he carved out of styrofoam blocks with a hot wire. He’d hand shape the boards, sand them down, build them with glass and resin.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t really need stringers (the wooden strips that give a board rigidity) in a styrofoam board,” he said, “but I like the way it looks. Especially with three stringers, one in the middle and one between the middle and the rail.”<\/p>\n He sold boards to people who appreciated the hand made.<\/p>\n But thousands of boards are available on the street running through Jaco. \u201cThere are more boards than there are surfers,\u201d he says. \u201cThe hotshots and the corporations and the Chinese ruined the business. I think the Chinese should sell boards to the Chinese, and Americans should buy boards from Americans.”<\/p>\n But that wasn’t the only problem. “Me and my partner, we were building an inventory of surfboard blanks, but then he told me he wanted out. I told him we were just getting it going but he wanted out so I told him to just take what was his. He gave them to a guy we were selling the blanks to, who was going to pay him back as he sold boards.” Bill looks into the distance at what might have been a betrayal.<\/p>\n “He was a friend, too, used to be a friend, well, I guess he still is…” Bill’s voice trails off, then his momentum, never far off, returns to pick him up again.<\/p>\n “But I was ready to get out anyway, away from the fiberglass, the resins.\u201d He seems remarkably healthy for a 61 year old surfer. \u201cYeah, at least I got that.\u201d<\/p>\n But he knows all that sanding can\u2019t be good for him.<\/p>\n \u201cYou gotta wear a mask. Well, you should wear a mask. I like to work where the wind blows through so you don\u2019t have to wear one.\u201d<\/p>\n He has a piece of property up in the hills he doesn\u2019t want to sell. Only 20 minutes away, it\u2019s at least 1,000 feet higher in elevation, maybe 2,000 feet, I can\u2019t quite hear him, until he says, \u201cit\u2019s a lot cooler up there.\u201d He\u2019s tried to sell a piece of it, but anyone who looks wants the whole thing.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to sell the whole thing. In fact, I don\u2019t want to sell it at all,\u201d he says, and his face gets that same expression it had when he talked about his wife moving back to Texas with his sons, or when he talked about how his younger brother died six months ago, \u201cone day before his 60th birthday,\u201d which he repeats, as if that one day made it more tragic than if it had been a year before that birthday, as if his brother had just barely missed crossing some sort of finish line.<\/p>\n Bill finishes his breakfast while trying to figure out if one of his sons can put him on a payroll of sorts so Bill qualifies to receive whatever social security he may have earned before he became an expat in Costa Rica. “I think they left out the years I worked in Austin,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n A little later he may go back to the house he has cut in half to turn into a hostel. \u201cI got everything I need: beds, sheets. Everything, except for people to stay there.\u201d He may go on the internet, but leans forward slightly to say, \u201cI don\u2019t really want to be seen, if you know what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn’t want to guess what the conspiracy might be, so I play it safe. \u201cHard being seen without being seen,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I know that,\u201d he replies, as if I had just insulted him.<\/p>\n But his flyers from a copy machine aren\u2019t working, though everybody who’s seen them thinks they\u2019re pretty cool. He\u2019s thinking of changing the wording from \u201cnear downtown\u201d to \u201cnear the beach, because people will think it\u2019s not downtown and really it\u2019s only three blocks off the main street.\u201d He\u2019s going to drop the nightly fee from $12 to $10, though everyone had been telling him he should charge $15.<\/p>\n Bill comes here to the Oasis nearly every day for breakfast. He thinks running that hostel will be the answer. Maybe it will won\u2019t be like the cabinet building business, or the remodeling business, the surfboard business, the marriage.<\/p>\n \u201cThirty years,\u201d he says, looking across the restaurant but seeing off into a distance, years more than miles. \u201cI can\u2019t believe it\u2019s been 30 years. Where did it go?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Crossing the bay would take only an hour or so. It was early enough I thought it was safe taking off my shirt. I had my eyes closed, trying to send good thoughts to a friend who was at that moment on an operating table. But the water reflected the sun and I was getting burned.<\/p>\n The heat in Jaco<\/a> was intense. There was no breeze. Air conditioning at the first hotel was an empty promise, the main draws were beach and bar, neither a draw for me. So I left and found a place downtown. Though \u2026 Read more\u2026