Walking on Stars and Malaria

Amy and I have been sitting in the Denver airport for about 6 hours now, with another 4 to go before we hop back on a plane to San Francisco. Where did the month go? I am simultaneously excited to go home and see my loved ones and pets and sleep in my own bed and horrified at the idea of returning to reality, especially a reality in which my most academically difficult year of grad school looms on the horizon (whose hair-brained idea was it to go back to school again? Oh yeah, that was me...). In less than a week, my hair will need to be a color that is found in nature again, and I will have to start wearing slacks instead of the same pair of quick-dry hiking shorts for 5 days in a row. Often, I am tempted to run away to southeast Asian or Iceland or Ghana or someplace of the sort in order to learn more about the world and hopefully help the underprivileged communities in it. And evade my student loans, which are accumulating interest with every second that passes. But alas, running away is not my style. Denial is more my thing, and it has gotten me through many difficult periods of my life. For instance, I am in the midst of a 10 hour layover in the Denver International Airport after waking up at 2:30 am this morning and not sleeping much since then. If I had allowed myself to fathom how long 10 hours can be when one is sleep deprived and $16 airport sandwiches are the only available form of sustenance, getting myself out of my hostel bed in San Jose this morning would have been much more difficult. Similarly, if I let myself acknowledge just how much work I am going to have soon and how much debt I am accumulating to do this work, I would drop out of grad school instantly. My semi-professional opinion as someone who will one day be a professional is that a mild amount of denial is adaptive and we humans would accomplish far less without it because we'd be too freaking scared to do much of anything.

Also, yes, folks, that's right: your therapist may indeed dye his/her hair blue and advocate denial when on vacation. Crazy, huh?

Anywaaaay...I feel that my sleep deprivation is leading me off on tangents. Back to Costa Rica! I left off in Montezuma, right after the ocean started glowing and Amy and I thought, "Hmmm, this must be what an acid flashback feels like." But good news! We went back the next night and the ocean glowed again! We also noticed that when we walked in the sand that was still wet from the waves, the ground around our feet lit up every time we took a step! It was amazing...kind of like walking on stars. Amy and I spent a decent amount of time pretending that we were walking on stars, but Amy wasn't feeling well, so eventually we retreated to our hostel for another night.

That brings up another fun topic...what to do when your girlfriend falls ill in a tropical country with scary-ass diseases. The morning after our first bioluminescent adventure, Amy awoke with a slight fever, a headache, and a generally achey blah feeling. My first thought: MALARIA (apparently I have inherited some anxious overreacting tendencies from my parents). Amy assured me that she probably did not have malaria and it could just be the flu...such minor illnesses do exist outside of the United States. I was not convinced, and proceeded to look under the "Health" section of my Lonely Planet, just in case. In this section was a list of potentially fatal diseases one can contract in Costa Rica, including Dengue Fever, Leishmaniasis, Typhoid Fever, HIV, and our old friends, the Hepatitises. Amy gently reminded me that it was possible to contract most of these diseases in the United States as well. Still, I went into a tizzy. Maybe there had been Leptospirosis in the fresh water pool we swam in?! Or maybe Amy accidentally stepped into the ocean and some of the red tide toxins had entered her bloodstream through a microscopic cut and now HER legs were going to fall off?! And potentially glow in the dark?! I found out where the nearest medical clinic was, in addition to the nearest hospital, and talked to our hostel about how we would get Amy there if necessary. Amy and I laid on our bed under the mosquito net and watched the howler monkeys outside of our window and the hundreds of ants who had decided that our room would suffice as a breeding ground due to all the rain outside. I had just started thinking about how I could evacuate Amy to the U.S. if necessary when she announced that she was beginning to feel better, lol. I think a bit of denial in the moments directly before that announcement may have lowered my blood pressure. But hey, you do what you can, right?

Okay, it is finally nearing time for Amy and I to hop on our last plane. I am going to go buy one more $16 sandwich. I will try to go back and recount more of our Costa Rica adevntures (there were lots), but there is a distinct possibility that I may not have much time when I get home. If not, maybe I'll publish a book of stories in a few years when I'm done hiding from the government/my student loans in southeast Asia or Iceland or Ghana. Until then, adios!

written by  kfox on July 26, 2012 from Denver, United States
from the travel blog: Costa Rica!
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