Adventures Con Ivory: Costa Rica

They say Costa Rica is beautiful, and it is.  But what they don’t tell you is the most beautiful part of Costa Rica cannot be seen.  From the moment you step your first foot outside, it is there.  Wrapping you, swirling around you from your ankles to your neck.  The thick air.  Draping over you, like a smooth cotton sheet, gliding over your shoulder and slowly dropping to the floor, brushing over every nerve, making even the tiniest hairs dance, warm as it touches you and cool as it glides away.  Neither hot, nor cold.  Dancing past you, over you, around you, tip-toeing across your back, whispering in your ear, sliding down your hair and tossing it free.

Sure, the scenery is gorgeous, too.  Tall palm trees reaching high into the sky.  Green fronds rippling before the stars, seeming to touch the tips of fluffy clouds whispering by.  Bushy trees with their wide leaves and squat, spread canopies of cover. 
Bromeliads peppering the ground, popping up among a group of ferns or grasses, piercing orange, hungry bromeliads.  Banana trees, mango trees, papaya trees, fruits hanging low on heavy branches, plump and waiting for the last days of ripening.  Birds soaring, perched on tree branches, spray-painting the sidewalk an unmistakable white.  Green feathers that disappear into the magic decor that is “green season.”  Black feathers, glistening like oil in beads of water splashed down their backs.  Tiny birds of the most royal blue.  And the chirps and peeps and the squawks.  Oh, the squawks!
Or the people, the welcoming, sweet, pleasant people, who seem only to know happy, at least to strangers, and are considerate and courteous enough to somehow make a pattern of wild, narrow roads with few traffic signals work.  Who greet you cheerily with a “Buenos Dias” or “Buenos Aires.”  Who smile patiently as you try to mutter through very broken Spanish and who respond to ever “gracious” with an enthusiastic “mucho gusto!”  These things are all wonderful, too.

But, to be still, to just be, wrapped in that blanket of air, is the most beautiful part of all.