Golfito is a town sinking into the jungle. I like it here, but I suspect most people don’t. It’s a place of peeling paint, vines, a certain past, humidity, alcohol and some aging, slightly overweight ex-pats who are desperate to figure out how they could ever live in the States on 10 hours of work a week and still afford three full-time household employees.
Golfito was once a main harbor for banana shipments. Bosses from United Fruit sipped gin and tonic on the wide verandas of painted wooden houses while mosquito netting hung over their beds. But that all ended 25 years ago. The ships don’t come any more. The cranes on the wharf are rusting. Most of the prostitutes got older, but some got younger as yanks and Europeans came in search of teenage sex in a town where the law is a shrug.
It is rainy season now, which means that the steep jungle hills above Golfito ooze water and mud. It’s hot here and even the earth is sweating. I can’t quite figure out why people stay here, or why anyone new comes. Of course, I’m here, but I am attracted to the weightless odor of interia, and this place is as languid as the steam rising from the rotting leaves in the surrounding rainforest. Maybe there’s fertilizer there, or maybe it’s just fetid. It’s a place where broken dreams and new dreams have reached a sort of equilibrium. Even plans have mildew here. Like I said, I kind of like it. Sighs have a certain authenticity. I am glad to have landed (or bounced) here for a bit.
I haven’t been writing recently because I wanted to write about singlehanded sailing, and that’s not what I am doing anymore. I miss being alone at sea, far out at sea, especially at night in the dim red lights, listening to the sound of water like amniotic fluid against the hull. I miss putting in that second reef, hanging on to a boat gone beast, water flying everywhere, me stumbling, slithering, grabbing for anything while water two miles deep scratches at my boat, and then “Ventura” is back on her feet, and I’m back in control, and as we shoulder through another big wave, spray in my eyes, I can taste it, and I am arm wrestling with God, a draw, at least for the moment. I miss my ascetic cocoon, cold cans of spaghetti, stubble on my face, and fear, my constant Siren, licking the back of my neck.
“Ventura” has been silent for a long time. She only talks when she is sure I’m listening, and she’s pretty sure I’m not listening to her now. She’s right. There have been two people aboard for weeks now. Gunilla is with me. So I talk to Gunilla, and “Ventura” has been reduced to a bunch of fiberglass, bulkheads, wires, winches and other inanimate stuff. She’s just a boat now, a small and uncomfortable one at that, and I have someone else to talk to. And caress.
I don’t really like sailing when there are other people on the boat, but I can’t stay in Golfito forever — cheap beer and entertaining misfits notwithstanding — so we’re off on Thursday for the final leg to Panama. It will take us about three or four days, probably with little or no wind, drizzle, sometimes blinding rain, and dozens and dozens of ships converging on or leaving Panama. We should arrive in Panama next Monday or so.
The current plan is to transit the canal around June 14 or 15. Gunilla will then fly back to Sweden. I’ll put “Ventura” in a new yard on the Caribbean side of Panama and then, after getting her ready for a long stay on dry land, I’ll make my apologies and also fly off to Sweden on July 1 or so. “Ventura” and I will get back together after hurricane season for (I hope) some time together alone in the middle of the ocean.
We’ve spent nearly a month in Costa Rica. It’s not all nuts. Gunilla had wanted to visit Costa Rica for years, and now she has. She loves it. God created Costa Rica early on, before He got bored. We’ve been in the wilderness, on the sides of volcanos, on horseback, in rapids, under waterfalls and rescued from a river by a jungle guide on a motorcycle. And then there are the monkeys and toucans and spiders as big as your hand. And the rain. It has been constant since the first week of May, five inches some days. But the clouds look spectacular, as if they might reach down and grab you by the throat. If you haven’t been here, come. Maybe not to Golfito, but come. Go to the jungle, where the muddy cliffs meet the sea, where the trees collapse into the waves, where the wilderness meets the wilderness. It’s a sight to behold!
Fair (and dry) winds.