Curiosity Roving : V.23 : Pura Vida
Curiosity Roving
The Grand Adventures of L Rose Goossen
V.23 : Pura Vida
in which hope springs eternal
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Greetings and Salutations!
Welcome to the twenty-third volume of Curiosity Roving. I thank you kindly for your attention. If you missed any of my past letters, they are all available in the archive: https://tinyletter.com/curiosity_roving/archive
I have been living some wild times, reader. It absolutely was not my intention, but it is how things happened. Who am I to fight the tide?
Shortly after I sent out V.22, I took the cheapest, most cumbersome flight path from Medellín to San Jose, Costa Rica. The facts are these: I had been looking for a volunteer job for a while and I found something that seemed like a perfect fit. A new music festival cropped up, and the organizer said she could use me. The venue, an adventure ranch with all the usual touristic activities, was looking for an English-speaking volunteer to live onsite more or less immediately. It looked like a great way to get some rest, learn some things, keep my costs down, stay busy for a couple of months, and then cap it with an amazing party. I made a few phone calls, and then I made a decision.
It resulted in one of the strangest experiences of my life.
It resulted in one of the strangest experiences of my life.
bubble bubble
I traveled for about twenty-four hours to get from A to B, including a quick nap near the San Jose Airport. I cried in a Wal-Mart while struggling to get on the local cell network. I eventually had to give up and go to the bus station, where a shopkeeper told me that I was having trouble with the process because it was Saturday. I had worried that Costa Rica might be overly gentrified, and I was strangely relieved to discover that I was still in Latin America, with all the usual quirks and challenges. When my bus pulled into Jacó around sunset, I alerted the person with whom I had been corresponding. He sent my new neighbour to pick me up, and she charged me ten dollars.
I asked if I was expected, and my contact confirmed that I was, but the ranch was mostly deserted when I arrived at sunset. My neighbour disappeared. I was welcomed by a group of four visiting girls aged six to thirteen who immediately began my education in the names of local wildlife. The kids and the animals would prove to be the best features of the place.
kitchen helperAfter dark, I walked into my accommodation and sat down on a bunk bed. It broke underneath me, so I elected to use the other one. I had been instructed to pick up some rice and vegetables on my way, but there was no knife or cutting board. I chopped carrots with my teeth and mostly failed to sleep amid the sound of someone snoring in the next room.
The next day, I got out of bed, made two cups of instant coffee with some random carton of not-milk that I had purchased dazedly in the unfamiliar supermarket, and started to analyze the situation. I had instructions to go on a tour with the group that was arriving that day, and to "discreetly" collect cash from them with one of the guides. I was ready at 9 AM, and welcomed a group of six New Yorkers, each of whom paid 150 USD to spend a day being entertained in the jungle. The staff seemed to be confused by my presence, so I stood back and observed, answered questions, translated, and generally stayed out of the way. Some time after noon, our group swelled to ten, and we went into the forest. We rappelled down a waterfall, and zipped through seven forested lines. It was just business; when I spoke with the owner, he asked me "What do you think of the products?" I wondered if any of the tourists who had been shaking with fear in their helmets and harnesses had thought to consider the experience a "product".
tools of the trade
This continued for a few more days. I wasn't invited to the zipline again, but started to work with various guides providing translation on nature walks and horseback rides. I slowly pieced things together and found out that: 1) the person with whom I had arranged this volunteer position was not in the country and wouldn't be for another six weeks, 2) he is the owner of the land, but his wife is the manager of the business, 3) the guides are all relatives of the wife, and 4) the only volunteers they've hosted in recent years were local university students completing mandatory credit hours.
This was actually okay for me - the job really suited my skill set and I could see an opportunity to make a significant contribution. As an alumnus of more than forty volunteer, exchange, and festival positions around the world, I have the experience to improve a disorganized situation. I immediately started writing an orientation guide so that future volunteers wouldn't be thrown to the sharks like I was. I made a list of basic equipment that was lacking in the facilities. I created a resource for assessing the balance of value between the volunteer and the host. I started planning English lessons for the guides. I laughed on the telephone and assured everyone that I was prepared to be patient.
the neighbourhoodThe problems started when the tourists noticed that I was very, very good at this job. They wanted to tip me. Of course they did. Tourism in Costa Rica is heavily monetized. Tipping is standard practice. I was the only person who had enough English and enough hospitality training to tell them where the bathrooms were and how their itinerary for the day was planned. I translated "Love Of My Life" for a Dutch woman who wanted to surprise her partner with a tattoo and I slipped it to her on a card in secret. I was Miss Congeniality, and they knew I was in a volunteer position. Obviously they wanted to tip me.
The guides didn't like that. I accepted ten thousand colones, about twenty bucks, from a fellow Canadian after a three-hour combination nature walk and horseback ride with eight international guests who were based at a neighbouring retreat centre doing "yoga" (but I think that meant "ayahuasca"). They tipped the local guide as well, but they tipped him less. One hour later, I had six minutes of voice memos in my Whatsapp from the absent owner, explaining that I would have to give half of my tips to the paid staff, to make things "fair".
clink clank
To recap: I was living in very uncomfortable (of course they called it "rustic") facilities in the middle of nowhere, performing skilled and strenuous labour at a high level of competence for hours every day, spending hundreds of dollars on my food and transport, and receiving in exchange the dubious privilege of facilitating horseback rides with nervous tourists in the noonday sun, access to some busted-up bunk beds, and the opportunity to either stay in at night and listen to the neighbours or step out and brave the snakes.
I was polite, but I was very dissatisfied, and things rapidly devolved when I tried to negotiate for better conditions. I could see the wheels turning in Whatsapp, as the absent bosses slowly realized that they were exploiting me. The guides (all male, all family) started turning off the WiFi when they saw me using it - that was spooky, because I also didn't have cell service. The organizer of the music festival, who had originally connected me with this position, arranged to pick me up on her next site visit. The manager, who is rumoured to be a Costa Rican woman about my age but I wouldn't know because she had never actually introduced herself and existed only as a business account in our shared chat, brusquely dismissed me in a Spanish text message and gave me five days to get out. Thankfully, I was already packed. The owner wished me luck with my "objectives in Costa Rica", blissfully oblivious that I had actually chosen to come to this country at his glib invitation.
no rainbows without rainSo, what do you do when it all goes down in flames? I know what I did:
First, I let a sixteen-year-old spontaneously bleach my hair. Then, I went to the beach. I jumped into a pool from the second floor balcony. I rode some sweaty buses to places I had never been. I encountered a hurricane and let it tousle me while I straddled the continental divide. I jumped off a swaying platform fifty meters above the forest floor and came out swinging. I kissed a tattooed shoulder. I put my whole body in a warm volcanic river; moonlit, firelit, deafened by the current. I screamed from high places. I climbed into an inflatable vessel with a company of strangers and went careening down some rapids that are fierce enough to be illegal in other countries. I sang Spanish pop songs and Hotel California in a bar that shares my name. I nipped rum from a baby bottle in a Catholic churchyard and licked my fried-chicken fingers. I faithfully toasted each far-fetched coincidence and every grasping superstition with the weightless gravity of suspended disbelief. I watched the sunset, the moonrise, the moonset, the sunrise (in that order). I will never financially recover from any of this.
Jacó from aboveFor the record: there's no man behind the curtain. I do all my own stunts and I do them out of my own pocket. I don't have travel insurance, I don't have a trust fund, I don't have a sugar daddy, and I don't have online employment. What I do have these days are limitless opportunities to perform skilled labour without compensation, while everyone who benefits from my labour makes the comfortable assumption that my money must be coming "from somewhere".
I added a tip jar to this newsletter when I rebooted last fall. If you've ever thought about recognizing the value of my work - as storyteller, as wordsmith, as entertainer, as connective tissue, as living legend, as content creator, as court jester, as cosmic intersection, as puppet of the universe, as fearless fun goddess, as bardo bookie, as committed artist, as world-wide-web-weaver, as sacred clown, as conversation piece - this would be a great time, because January was frankly disastrous. Being alive in Costa Rica costs about twice as much as it does in the neighbouring countries. My credit card very nearly melted.
I added a tip jar to this newsletter when I rebooted last fall. If you've ever thought about recognizing the value of my work - as storyteller, as wordsmith, as entertainer, as connective tissue, as living legend, as content creator, as court jester, as cosmic intersection, as puppet of the universe, as fearless fun goddess, as bardo bookie, as committed artist, as world-wide-web-weaver, as sacred clown, as conversation piece - this would be a great time, because January was frankly disastrous. Being alive in Costa Rica costs about twice as much as it does in the neighbouring countries. My credit card very nearly melted.
I've had multiple people ask for my OnlyFans (sorry family - just for context, that's a popular platform for monetizing independent erotic content), but I haven't yet gone that route. It is profoundly discouraging to invest in the best that I have to offer and to endlessly come up against the hard reality that the only thing that might represent currency around here is my naked body, or more accurately, my naked body divorced from my personhood, because everyone who actually shares my bed still expects me to split the tab.
keeping the flameFor the last half-year, I have engineered the extremely expensive and complex scenarios that provide me with these unparalleled stories, and I've told them. I can do this for another month or two. After that, I'll probably have to disappear into some meaningless drudgery that pays in actual money again. You won't see me - I'll be quietly cleaning floors or packing grocery bags, carefully titrating my doses of homeopathic nihilism until I garner enough spirit and enough cash to have another bash at my strange vocation.
For today: I've relocated to Panajachel, Guatemala, and I've rented a room in a beautiful shared house near the lake - four women, three dogs, and all of our friends. If you visit my Buy Me A Coffee page at the bottom of this letter, you will see under the Wishlist tab that I am fundraising to offset two specific large expenses. If I have successfully entertained you, made you think, made you chuckle, given words to what was previously inchoate, sent you running for the dictionary, imparted valuable information, sent you down a rabbit hole, or inspired you to try something just a little bit crazy, please consider recognizing that with a donation. I didn't do any of this by accident.
quotidian miracle
Ah, reader. I do hope you're enjoying the show. Every day happens once in a lifetime, and even this is one of those days. Remember: when the plot thickens, you have more soil for your garden. Spring beckons.
Until next time, stay curious. -- Rose
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