#3

I awoke this morning dazed and confused. There was a lone black bean in the bed and my dear was nowhere to be found. How surreal, and seemingly, how fitting all the same. Some sort of strange convolution of "The Princess and the Pea?" It made perfect sense; one can only consume so many black beans, until they too are consumed by the bean.

We've been in Uvita for ten days now, and the sight of beans catalyzes fits of nausea deep within the pit of my stomach. Day old rice in the cooker, taking on the humidity, reeks like slow death, spongy cow's milk cheese turns my smile upside down, and corn tortillas are put to better use lining the sole of my old birkenstocks than for human consumption. Tersely put, when Noelle sets the table for dinner I just want to strap on my wings and fly into the hills like Icarus. 

Turns out she did not turn into a bean after all. She had been consumed by the mattress, lost between the four wooden support slats that no matter their configuration will inevitably lead to sinkholes large enough to swallow a man (or woman) whole by the middle of the night. The Costa Rican sun, cheerful and inviting in the morning subtly morphs into a punishing mass by midday, the power of which we quickly learned must not be underestimated. Our hides have been tanned and the looming threat of trading our browned skin for the leathery epidermis of a Florida retiree has us accepting the sun's early bird special. Climbing out of the deathly hollows of our thinning mattress, we've fallen into a familiar morning routine here in Uvita - rise, stretch the kinks out, groan a bit, brew some cafe, rearrange the slats, and climb back into the abyss to knock out a few chapters or ruminate in our respective journals. After a breakfast that undoubtedly includes some variant on rice, beans, eggs, and fresh fruit, we fill the water bottles and jog a few miles down to beautiful Marina Ballena National Park.

Arriving at the water each morning is pure, unadulterated bliss. The sun is brutally hot here even in the early morning hours, and nothing is more refreshing than our daily plunge into the Pacific tide. We tend to scamper to and fro on the beach for a few hours each morning - perfecting our handstands, practicing yoga postures, or merely doing battle with the succession of waves relentlessly groping closer and closer to shore. By noontime our skin is bronzed, our bellies' ache for sustenance and our feet take the familiar steps towards home.

The afternoon's pace is slow and steady - the turtle to our morning hare. Most days we pray for the forecasted 4pm thunderstorm; over-saturated cumulus clouds burst, releasing their torrents over the arid jungle, cooling our minds and bodies. The patter on our tin roof drums a familiar rhythm, echoing the tempo and beat of days past as we sink once again, enveloped by the mattress.