11th november

The markful day arrived along with the drizzle in the way that London does better than anywhere. After circumnavigating the one-way system at the airport three times before perfecting the art and getting bad-tempered with each other in the meantime, Linda dropped me off and waited until I had disappeared through baggage control, watching me go. I think she was just trying to make sure that I actually went, and then everyone I knew would throw a proper party! I flew via Washington, watching one of Hollywood’s traditionally pointless productions, ‘I, Robot’ I think, and landed more or less on time in Washington and then made my connection landing at 9.30pm local time in San Jose.

Costa Rica
Walking down the steps leading from the plane onto the tarmac of the Juan Santamaría airport, I was immediately struck by the warmth at this time of night and by the sound of the crickets in the distant grass. I immediately knew I was overdressed. I only had a T-shirt and thin coat but the coat was unnecessary and was already making me sweat. We were herded, albeit politely, straight onto the waiting bus at the foot of the plane. I was impressed. The bus then ferried us the crucial eighteen yards to the terminal, a trip that consisted of performing a tight 180º arc. It would have been quicker to walk past the bus and straight into the terminal, not to mention that the first passengers to embark on the bus had to wait ten minutes for the last passengers.
The Juan Santamaria airport was small but ostensibly reasonably modern. It was named after somebody or other - I promise to find out whom. It had a nice feel to it – not too large for the sake of it. I could never see the point in terminal buildings that were overly outsized and it took the best part of your holiday to get from the snack bar to customs.
I went through customs quickly and put on my bandanna in the toilet, feeling like a bit of a prat. I put it round my neck then decided to get in the spirit of things and put it around my forehead, as Che would have done. I felt like, and undoubtedly looked like a twit, not a revolutionary and decided that Che wouldn’t have got a lift wearing his bandanna (or indeed a banana) around his forehead. That’s probably why he got himself a motorcycle, cos he couldn’t get a lift with his banana. I reverted to plan A and put it around my neck.
I left the toilet and headed into the big wide world of my new dawn, Costa Rica. At the arrivals gate, there was an arc of people behind the barrier craning to see who was coming through next. There were people with boards and signs with names on and families waiting for loved ones and the usual rash of taxi drivers touting for business. You have to be quick here, it seems - get the business almost as soon as they get off the plane.
There was me looking resplendent in my yellow bandanna but it might as well have been a banana because no one was there to meet me. There was a throng of people milling around and I made sure I walked through them, past them and around them several times to maximise my chances of being seen. They were all wearing t-shirts and there’s me in my jacket. I would have put it away in my rucksack but I knew there was no room. Nobody seemed to recognise me. I stood around where I should be obvious, trying to look like I’ve just come off an aeroplane. At an airport, that shouldn’t be difficult.
I went back inside, got a coffee, and stood around slightly apart from the throng to consider things for a few moments. The plane had been about twenty minutes late landing and then there was the inevitable delay waiting for luggage so possibly anyone coming to meet me would have got bored and gone home. But then surely, they would check the screens and know that it was running a little late. Perhaps someone had been held up. Perhaps they started the revolution without me. Maybe I should have been worried but I really didn’t real threatened, lost, bewildered or bothered. It was warm and the place was lively.
‘Krusty will come! Krusty will come!’
I went back outside, walked around some more, waited some more and took solace in catching up on my cigarette ration for the day.
My bandanna is very heavy and I have my rucksack around my neck, or vice versa. Don’t I look like I’m heading for the rain forest? Where’s my motorbike?
The problem with doing your best to be seen is, of course, that everybody sees you. The taxi drivers kept bugging me asking me if I wanted a lift somewhere so I told them that someone was coming to meet me. They kept coming back again. Don’t they believe me? One of them was a woman called Joselle who I think took pity on me. After about half an hour of waiting, I gave her a cigarette in exchange for letting me use her phone and I rang one of the numbers I had been given by Jim. Someone answered it - it was Dave Gardella Jr. He told me he would come and pick me up and to look out for a white car.
About twenty minutes later, I saw a white car circle the one way system a couple of times with a young man driving. I stood in an obvious position with my yellow bandanna suitably necked but he still didn’t see me. I was beginning to wonder about the yellow bandanna. Verfy difficult to find and then it seems to make me invisible. I felt like Frodo. I felt like ‘lord of the bandannas’. So on the third circuit around the one-way system, I dashed across the road and intercepted the driver of the white car. He saw me and wound down the window.
‘David?’ I enquired.
‘Hi there. I didn’t see you.’ He pulled over and I dumped my rucksack in his boot and off we went.
‘We’d given up on you. My dad was here at 9am to pick you up but you didn’t come in.’
‘Really. I told Jim my flight didn’t land until this evening.’
‘Oh, Jim had said it was 9am this morning.’ I checked my emails later and I had definitely specified PM. I asked Dave Jr if he knew anything about Jim and he said not too much. He obviously didn’t know too much about why I was here either, and it seems I got him out of bed – great start.
‘Are you here for the Frisius?’ he asked me in his stateside drawl. Dave Jr was, surprisingly enough, the son of Dave Snr. who is a US ex-pat.
I thought he said, ‘are you here for the freezers’ which is pronounced about the same way.
‘I don’t know anything about freezers,’ I replied, wondering what I got myself into, although I once helped Natasha move a cooker when she moved from Greenhithe.
David Jnr. took me to the Hotel Mango where he arranged a room for me for the night. Early twenties, slim, I watched him deal with these guys in fluent Spanish tones, of which I was the subject and occasionally the respective conversers would glance at me meaningfully. I felt like a patient lying on a trolley, and the doctors were discussing where to make the first incision. I think Dave was in a hurry to get back to bed. Sinai Wildlife Projects (SWP) would pick up the tab.
It was about midnight when I finally got to my room, the last one at the end of a long ground floor corridor. I had a shower because I badly needed one and went to bed with wet hair.
‘What day is it?’ I tried to work out as I lay there somewhere between waking and sleeping. ‘Did I leave the UK today, yesterday or tomorrow?’ It was probably the same day but it had been one of those thirty-hour days that travellers sometimes have and I was now six hours behind the UK. My body thought it was 6am when I finally got to bed so it was nearly time to get up! No wonder I didn’t sleep.
And I don’t think I did. The hotel seemed to be right under the flight path and was very close to the airport – it was soooo loud, I could almost swear the planes were taking off from the roof, and they seemed to be taking off at regular intervals through the night. It was quieter in the terminal! In fact, I’m sure I would have been better off trying to sleep in there because I think there would have been soundproofing. There were also some boilers or something on the roof above, or next to, my room and they were switching on and off all night.
Bienvenida en Costa Rica, muchacho.