One midweek day I left for Puerto Viejo de Limón, a laid-back Caribbean town in the jungles north of the Panamanian border.
I’d intended to stay for one night and then head out and cross the Sixola bridge into Panama, but I never made it that far.
I spent my first day meandering town with a rental bicycle and a boogie board, riding the giant waves. I ate grilled steak skewers from a street vendor and I relaxed on the beach with coconuts I bought from a blind man with a machete. He held the husky fruit in his outstretched hand then split it in half with a single, unseeing swing of his blade. I flinched, he did not.
That night, I stayed at Rocking J’s; a youth hostel regarded as the liveliest in Costa Rica. Downstairs, it served the best marinated pork tacos. Upstairs, it held dorm rooms of colorful pop-up tents called “Tent City.” I was here by myself, but it didn’t matter. Nobody acted exclusive with their group of friends but invited me to spend the evening with them.
“Hey! How are you? Sit! Tell me a story!”
I ate, and I drank, and I fell asleep that night to the company of new friends.
The next morning, I awoke to the sound of rain pounding the corrugated steel roof and changed my plane. Instead of continuing on to Panama, I decided to stay.
~
An American, expatriate named Jay owned Rocking J’s. He lived a life fueled by drugs. Soft-spoken by day, the vices of his lifestyle liquefied his spine and bolstered his courage. This gave him a different kind of freedom than the one I’d come looking for, but freedom all same.
I sat at the bonfire on the beach right behind the hostel the next night listening to the crash of waves, and the buzz of insects when the crack of two gunshots pierced the calm night air.
A moment later, a man came running out of the inky darkness of the beach. He grabbed a large machete. Recognition flashed—it was Jay.
“Enjoy the campfire,” he panted to me. Then he tuned back and smiled. “Oh and, ah … don’t worry.”
His eyes were wild and full, reflecting the bonfire as if it came from inside his soul. And his teeth showing white again his scraggly beard.
I’ve never seen a man look so alive.
Then, he bolted into the blackness. Jay, running barefoot and shirtless, with the gleaming knife held above his head, and screaming like a maniac.
A moment later, the police arrived.
News and gossip circulated among the tents that night, and by morning, I knew what had happened; Jay was kindling the evening bonfire when a man ran up the beach, grabbed a traveler’s bag, and bolted off the way he came. Jay chased after him, and then farther down the beach, the thief pulled a gun and shot twice at Jay— for I’d heard the shots penetrate the jungle—missing him both times. Jay didn’t respond by cowering or running away but came back, grabbed a machete, and continued to chase after the shooter.
~
That night, laying in my tent, the scene kept replaying. I could still hear his panting breath as his footsteps disappeared into the night. Barefoot, blade raised, staring into danger. Whether it was courage it completion, it stayed with me long after the waves and insects had settled.