Another Beautiful Day
"No, no, I'm not concerned about burglars; I've been here four years and I've never had a problem with security," Christine says, with a slight pouting of the lips that some French speakers do so prettily. Her face is half invisible from the slowly rising wisps of smoke around her head -- she's smoking her morning cigarette as she's gazing at the ocean, waiting for the sun.
The day in Esterillos Este doesn't start with the sun. The first half-hour offers an unpromising domination of gray: thick clouds wide as the sky hang low over the noisy ocean, tirelessly pushing and pulling the foaming waves, breaking about a dozen meters from the beach. A fine mist of ocean spray creates the impression of thin fog, hanging just above the sand as far into the distance as the eye can see. The beach is almost empty at this hour: the only people here and there are sporadic brisk walkers (some with a dog), or a small band of surfers with their jolly-looking boards, gripped tightly under their arms as they're walking into the roaring water. But when the sun finally breaks through the widening cracks in the clouds and begins to take its uncompromising hold for the rest of the day, the droplets of foam and splashing water begin to sparkle and shimmer all along the beach. Brilliance spills from above, flooding the ocean and the sand in seconds and everything becomes unreal, magic. And it's here: a glorious new day, fresh and ready, as all the ones before.
Esterillos Este is the eastern-most of the three small settlements perched right on the Pacific coast in southern Costa Rica. Its beach fuses seamlessly with the beaches of Esterillos Centro and Esterillos Oeste and together, they form several kilometers of a perfectly uninterrupted sand strip, recklessly exposed to the never-ending fury of pummeling waves: a true paradise for surfers who'd like to avoid the more commercialized bigger towns such as Quepos to the east or Jaco to the west. There isn't much in Esterillos Este: a few small hotels or B & Bs, all lined up along the beach, and a primitive, dirt-road runway behind the houses in the middle of a field for small planes. The closest grocery store is a few kilometers away; the nearest restaurant in the next village.
The long beach, sole-searingly hot during the day, is about ten meters wide; its inner rim is lined with a dense growth of mature, broad-leaved palm trees providing a welcome dappled shade and a healthy green hue. Behind the palm trees are the backs of the houses, each one made to maximize the Eden-like nature of this place. Christine's house is a two-storey medium-size building, surrounded by a generous yard. Her apartment takes up the ground floor, while she transformed the upper floor into four separate and comfortable rooms, each one with its own washroom and kitchenette, all giving out onto the wooden veranda that runs the length of the house and offers glimpses of the ocean through the palm trees. Each room has a different layout; all are decorated in bright blue and white colours, or gentle pinks and browns, with old-fashioned wooden fans humming from the high ceilings.
Silence is light and translucent inside the rooms, their doors wide open all day long, inviting a chance passer-by on the veranda. Small messages written in Christine's flowing letters, in permanent glossy paint, sparkle from the dining-room table ("L'amour c'est comme le beurre: ça rend tout meilleur"), the mirror ("Te amo"), the washroom tiles ("La belleza esta adentro")... Even though currently without occupants, these spaces breathe calmly with a strong presence of something invisible and hard to explain. Something that envelops you with an absence of urgency; tucks you into the pure well-being. The same puzzling presence on the verge of revelation but too lazy to reveal itself hovers in the garden too. In one corner of it, Christine has made an open kitchen where sometimes in the evening she cooks in big pots. There are also a few decorative bushes full of delicate fuchsia flowers, a couple of trees with thick, meaty leaves (between two of them, she has strung her laundry cord and often puts her sheets there for airing in the morning), and a simple shower whose head is made out of a coconut shell. The shell was probably picked up from the beach, strewn with coconuts falling freely from the trees. The center-piece of the yard is a round tub filled with "very fresh water, which will wake you up nicely first thing in the morning," according to Christine.
Christine lives here alone, with a golden Labrador and two cats. Azurro, the dog, has the kindest canine eyes you'll ever see, slightly drooping at the outside corners, as if he were aware of some sad truth of life but had accepted it nonetheless. He was four months old when Christine came to Costa Rica from Quebec and brought him with her. He clearly has a special status and is even allowed into the refreshing tub with Christine and an employee (in charge of all the handiwork), where he sits contentedly while the two humans, laid back against the edge of the pool, chat and puff their morning smokes. Christine later wipes his big paws so he doesn't accumulate caked sand on them.
There aren't many guests here -- perhaps a little surprising for the beginning of January -- but some friends arrive. One evening, Christine hosts a friend from Quebec in passing, and a Costa Rican friend from San Jose, Gustavo, who's a surfer and a chef. He sometimes drives down to the coast and spends a couple of days at Christine's, surfing at high tide, and warning naive tourists who get too imprudently excited about the big waves. That night, he cooks for everyone and there's a feast in the kitchen outside. Christine, who's in her early 50s, looks sweet and girlish in her frilled swimming-suit and her glasses with a multicolored frame, which she often forgets on the table; "J'ai de bons amis," she says and means it. Gustavo, who learned a few French words from Christine, nods and gets sentimental, then talks about his father whom he'll soon take out of a retirement home. There are small tears at he back of his wine-shot eyes, which makes his brawny black figure even more imposing. Soon, the voices trail off, and the slumbering night reclaims the world.
The next morning Christine is sitting on the stone bench underneath palm trees where her backyard turns into the beach. She is smoking slowly and surveying her small kingdom of tranquility, filled with deep wellness and only occasional threats of solitude somewhere at the edges. As the sun begins to show through the cracks in the clouds and work its magic, she takes her glasses off, squints a little, and, like someone fulfilling a self-prophecy, says "Another beautiful day."
The day in Esterillos Este doesn't start with the sun. The first half-hour offers an unpromising domination of gray: thick clouds wide as the sky hang low over the noisy ocean, tirelessly pushing and pulling the foaming waves, breaking about a dozen meters from the beach. A fine mist of ocean spray creates the impression of thin fog, hanging just above the sand as far into the distance as the eye can see. The beach is almost empty at this hour: the only people here and there are sporadic brisk walkers (some with a dog), or a small band of surfers with their jolly-looking boards, gripped tightly under their arms as they're walking into the roaring water. But when the sun finally breaks through the widening cracks in the clouds and begins to take its uncompromising hold for the rest of the day, the droplets of foam and splashing water begin to sparkle and shimmer all along the beach. Brilliance spills from above, flooding the ocean and the sand in seconds and everything becomes unreal, magic. And it's here: a glorious new day, fresh and ready, as all the ones before.
The long beach, sole-searingly hot during the day, is about ten meters wide; its inner rim is lined with a dense growth of mature, broad-leaved palm trees providing a welcome dappled shade and a healthy green hue. Behind the palm trees are the backs of the houses, each one made to maximize the Eden-like nature of this place. Christine's house is a two-storey medium-size building, surrounded by a generous yard. Her apartment takes up the ground floor, while she transformed the upper floor into four separate and comfortable rooms, each one with its own washroom and kitchenette, all giving out onto the wooden veranda that runs the length of the house and offers glimpses of the ocean through the palm trees. Each room has a different layout; all are decorated in bright blue and white colours, or gentle pinks and browns, with old-fashioned wooden fans humming from the high ceilings.
Silence is light and translucent inside the rooms, their doors wide open all day long, inviting a chance passer-by on the veranda. Small messages written in Christine's flowing letters, in permanent glossy paint, sparkle from the dining-room table ("L'amour c'est comme le beurre: ça rend tout meilleur"), the mirror ("Te amo"), the washroom tiles ("La belleza esta adentro")... Even though currently without occupants, these spaces breathe calmly with a strong presence of something invisible and hard to explain. Something that envelops you with an absence of urgency; tucks you into the pure well-being. The same puzzling presence on the verge of revelation but too lazy to reveal itself hovers in the garden too. In one corner of it, Christine has made an open kitchen where sometimes in the evening she cooks in big pots. There are also a few decorative bushes full of delicate fuchsia flowers, a couple of trees with thick, meaty leaves (between two of them, she has strung her laundry cord and often puts her sheets there for airing in the morning), and a simple shower whose head is made out of a coconut shell. The shell was probably picked up from the beach, strewn with coconuts falling freely from the trees. The center-piece of the yard is a round tub filled with "very fresh water, which will wake you up nicely first thing in the morning," according to Christine.
Christine lives here alone, with a golden Labrador and two cats. Azurro, the dog, has the kindest canine eyes you'll ever see, slightly drooping at the outside corners, as if he were aware of some sad truth of life but had accepted it nonetheless. He was four months old when Christine came to Costa Rica from Quebec and brought him with her. He clearly has a special status and is even allowed into the refreshing tub with Christine and an employee (in charge of all the handiwork), where he sits contentedly while the two humans, laid back against the edge of the pool, chat and puff their morning smokes. Christine later wipes his big paws so he doesn't accumulate caked sand on them.
There aren't many guests here -- perhaps a little surprising for the beginning of January -- but some friends arrive. One evening, Christine hosts a friend from Quebec in passing, and a Costa Rican friend from San Jose, Gustavo, who's a surfer and a chef. He sometimes drives down to the coast and spends a couple of days at Christine's, surfing at high tide, and warning naive tourists who get too imprudently excited about the big waves. That night, he cooks for everyone and there's a feast in the kitchen outside. Christine, who's in her early 50s, looks sweet and girlish in her frilled swimming-suit and her glasses with a multicolored frame, which she often forgets on the table; "J'ai de bons amis," she says and means it. Gustavo, who learned a few French words from Christine, nods and gets sentimental, then talks about his father whom he'll soon take out of a retirement home. There are small tears at he back of his wine-shot eyes, which makes his brawny black figure even more imposing. Soon, the voices trail off, and the slumbering night reclaims the world.
The next morning Christine is sitting on the stone bench underneath palm trees where her backyard turns into the beach. She is smoking slowly and surveying her small kingdom of tranquility, filled with deep wellness and only occasional threats of solitude somewhere at the edges. As the sun begins to show through the cracks in the clouds and work its magic, she takes her glasses off, squints a little, and, like someone fulfilling a self-prophecy, says "Another beautiful day."
posted by Tijana | 11:05 PM
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