Nighttime Adventure and Magical Moments

“The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.”- Vik Muniz   We decided to treat ourselves to a night out tonight.  It is a Friday night after all.  There is a little place in Guiones called The Gilded Iguana that we decided to go to.  We all got dressed up for our big night out.  I even wore white pants!!   It is the rainy season though after all and we were pretty sure the afternoon, evening rains would come and they did.  So instead of trying to make it there with a couple trips on the scooter and Guiones is about 3 miles away by the actual road, we decided to take a cab.  I naively thought that taking a local cab just a couple miles up the road would be around $5.00 US.  I mean, it only took us about 4 minutes to get there.  The cab driver was very nice, introduced himself, Francisco and we all introduced ourselves.  When he dropped us off at the front of the Gilded Iguana he then told us $15.00 US dollars.  I am not really believing what I just heard to I say, “huh, Que?”  Fifteen US dollars.  All three of us kind of gasp but what ya gonna do.  I payed up the $15.00 and we proceeded in to go eat, wondering how we were going to get home because there was no way in hell we were paying another $15.00 for a four minute cab ride.    We had a great dinner.  Jarred and I had the special of the day, Fish and Chips from fresh sea bass and Jacob had an amazing vegetable quesadilla dish.  We had a nice time relaxing and listening as the rain poured down around us.  This is an open bar and by that I don’t mean free drinks.  I mean that there are no doors, windows or walls.  It is open to the outside but covered.  It was a very nice place.  I would recommend it to anyone and prices were reasonable.  But then we had the challenge when it came time to go home.  It is almost 3 miles by regular road.  It is not pouring anymore but a little sprinkle.  There is one other option.  We can go to the beach and walk back that way.  There is a trail over the wooded area that separates the two beaches and we can go that way and the walk is just over ½ miles.  With my hip and this being Costa Rica and hearing all about snakes from Ed Scott (thanks Ed), I decide that $15.00 is a cheap price to pay for a safe, dry cab ride back home.  So I call the cab.  Hmmm, great!  No answer.  Now it could be that he is out giving some other gringo an expensive cab ride home.   OR, he may have heard us bitching about the price even after we got out of the cab and said to himself, “Yea, screw you, you gringos.”  Whatever the reason, we are not reaching him.  Our only option is to walk down to the beach and walk along the beach to get home.    To start with we have to walk down the road, which has swimming pool size mud puddles in the middle of it.  I keep thinking of those snakes.  Dang you Ed!!   We have no flashlights with us but Jacob remember that his cell phone has a little flashlight app.  Oh hey, yea, so does mine.  His is very dim.  Mine is very bright.  He has lots of battery life left.  I am down to 12%.  So we use his for most of the way.  We reach the beach without any snake bites or any other incidents.    Have any of you walked on a warm water beach on a moonless, starless night?  It was amazing!  Wherever the waves broke, the water was lit up with phosphorescence.  If you don’t know what phosphorescence is, here is an explanation.   Ocean “phosphorescence”, commonly seen at night when the water is disturbed, is largely due to the dinoflagellates; they occur ubiquitously in the oceans as planktonic forms, responding to mechanical stimulation when the water is disturbed by emitting brief bright light. Light emission may be seen in the wake of a large ship for some 20 miles. About 20% of marine species are bioluminescent and many are photosynthetic. “ Red tides” are transient blooms of individual dinoflagellate species. Phosphorescent bays (e.g., in Puerto Rico, Jamaica) are persistent blooms of this type.

Here was the magic right in front of us.  As we walked along we also noticed that when we stepped on the sand, it lit up with phosphorescence too.  We felt like we were walking along in Pandora in Avatar.  It truly was a magical evening that had we taken a cab home, we would have never experienced.   

The walk home was not totally without a frightful incident.  As we are walking along and I keep thinking about snakes, suddenly Jacob shrieks.  He says that a crab just pinched him.  I try to stay calm and say, are you sure it wasn’t a snake.  He said, “No, it was a crab.  I felt it’s pinchers.”  So then we all have a laugh.  We had to walk through a jungle area between Playa Guiones and Playa Pelada.  There was a path but it was a little creepy still.   I used the last bit of power of my cellphone to use my brighter flashlight through this area.  Soon we were on Playa Pelada.  We saw the orange lights of Olga’s Bar shining on the beach.  Jacob and I sat at Olga’s and grabbed a beer while Jarred went down the road to get the scooter at our place and come pick me up.

All in all, it was an awesome night!  I love the magic right in front of me.