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.
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 didn’t.
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!”
~
Late that night, I sat at the bonfire on the beach right behind the hostel 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,”
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.
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.
By morning someone filled in the story.
A thief had grabbed a backpack.
Jay chased him.
The thief fired twice.
Jay came back for a machete.
Then chased him again.
~
The next morning, I awoke to the sound of rain pounding the corrugated steel roof. Behind it, I could still hear his bare feet on the sand.
The machete as it caught the firelight.
His voice.
I just lay in my tent listening.