The Rest

A lot of cross-dressing, a fair bit of drinking and a lot of good people. Watching everyone splitting off bit by bit at the end was very sudden and you clung even more tightly to those left behind.

December 23, 2010 - The final Goodbyes

Left Fieldbase Sunday for Cahuita on the Caribbean coast – a nice drive down with a bunch of people that I’ve spent the last 3 months with. We arrived to slightly grim weather – I was not sold. We dumped our bags, got changed and headed for the beach regardless. It was absolutely covered in debris – massive amounts of driftwood making it hard to even get into the water, but once you got passed that it was amazing – brilliant waves and one of my favourite swims ever.

A handful of people left on Saturday afternoon – sad, as it was two of my best friends here (though really, as everyone has left I’ve realised that so many are…)

Since then it’s been a lot of relaxing, mixed in with Saturday night where we all had a few and had the most amazing night making our way about Cahuita central (after some impromptu spa pool action). My night culminated in learning to dance from a very, very stoned Caribbean man, lying in a muddy puddle in the road to watch the lunar eclipse while having deep and meaningfuls and finally a quick (…impromptu) dip in the pool before getting to bed around 2:30ish.

Up at 6 – off to the national park. It was lovely, but after everything I’ve seen (and being quite tired) it was pretty boring so I made by way back and lazed about the rest of the morning by the pool. A bunch few more people left that afternoon, more sad goodbyes, more doubts about people getting home for Christmas.

We planned a quiet night, but we picked the world’s worst restaurant – suffice to say I just about fell asleep waiting for my (bad) food (after having to change my order because they didn’t have bugger all food) and once we did eat and head off I had totally lost interest pretty much anything, so headed off for an early (ish.. 11pm, we arrived for dinner at about 7:30pm, so slow…) night with a couple of other deserters. It turns out everyone else headed back not terribly soon after.

This morning was really hard, with 10 people heading off to Panama for Christmas. A lot of people there I’m really going to miss.

So now I’m sitting, just waiting for my bus back to San Jose. I will be heading up with 5 other people, then continuing all the way up to the airport town by myself for the night, then off first thing tomorrow.

It’s been amazing, done and seen so much, met so many amazing people, going to miss it so much. Bring on Christmas, family and friends.