Coco Loco

Coco Loco

Many years ago in Tobago, an enormous iguana fell out of a coconut palm and landed on top of me. I was looking up to see why several men were shaking the tree with great enthusiasm and determination. What was for them a hunting expedition, a business opportunity, became for me the prototype for all travel worth the price of a plane ticket. Something not listed in the brochure falls into your lap, takes you completely by surprise and turns your head around.

A relative of the Caribbean iguana seems to enjoy relaxing poolside here in Costa Rica where I have taken a trial separation from the unforgiving New England winter. The guide book says this reptile, garrobo, two feet long with ashy gray and slate blue scales, is reminiscent of dinosaurs. It is possible that the Fodor's guy spent a lonely childhood in outer borough movie theaters watching nightmare-inducing double features, but...despite the fact that I have entered my eighth decade, I have only a very dim memory of dinosaurs. As far as I know, they only live in the lurid imaginations of five year old boys.

Still, garrobo cuts an impressive figure sauntering in and out of the jungle landscaping and up and down the turquoise and white faux Spanish pool tiles. Occasionally for a change of pace, he climbs up a long flight of stairs to an upper deck and leaps into the air, crashing out of the Jurassic period and on to the tine roof of my bungalow. This is a killer just before dawn when I'm savoring the last frames of tropical dreamtime, trying to crawl back into the ooze. Garrobo goes about his pre-historic business undaunted by the hotel's intermittent water pressure and wi-fi-connection, unmoved by the young girls in thongs who ripen in the hot street like mangoes on the vine. He's been around, like me, and merits respect, a seat on the crowded bus commandeered by a fellow passenger shouting abuela! abuela! when I climb on board. Garrobo is like the aging ex-pats, mostly gay men, who gather on Saturday afternoons at Los Dos Locos in Quepos to listen to the Pura Vida Social Club. The band is playing a BB King-inflected set that pulses out into the torrid downtown from the open restaurant. Nothing separates the musicians and patrons, late of Houston and Pittsburgh and Atlanta, from the tico street life, mothers and babies, trucks unloading. The ex-pats are ebullient, demonstrative. They are all hugging each other. One seventysomething man says to another, "I heard you went up north. Is everything ok?"

The first few days in Costa Rica, I was preoccupied with parasailing. Every day at the beach, I would watch the silken material balloon up behind the person running those last few steps on land to catch up with the speedboat accelerating at a fantastic rate until suddenly she was airborne, hanging above the lukewarm ocean, and I thought si como no, why not? At night when I tried to sleep, I would be plagued by the existential dilemma, to parasail or not to parasail. Think of the post-vacation bragging rights, especially if I went up in the salmon-tinted sunset while the people on the beach were all sipping coco locos. In the end, I didn't do it and I'm glad. I just couldn't see the iguana in my lap. Only pride and vanity wrinkling my skirt. After all, the real stories, the essential stories, need time to incubate, time to hatch. They aren't the ones you can't wait to tell.