What is it about being on vacation in the tropics that makes having a beer at 11 in the morning seem totally normal?
I found myself contemplating this for, oh, about five minutes the other day as I sipped an a.m. beach brew at Playa Negra on Costa Rica’s northwest coast. It was a Pilsen, one of two big competing national brands (the other is Imperial), just barely recognizable as beer but ice- cold and refreshing and, given the 95-degree heat, I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
Except, perhaps, for one of the mangoes growing on the tree behind the hacienda we were staying in, maybe chopped up with some red onion and avocado and salt and piled on top of, for instance, a plate of marinated pork loin and rice.
Or a seared filet of sea bass from right down the beach, juicy and meaty and fresh and piquant under a medley of slivered peppers.
Or maybe for the prime rib-eye one of my traveling buddies miraculously provided, grilled beachside over a driftwood fire and sliced in thick, crusty-rare chunks with red beans and salsa fresca.
Or maybe a daiquiri.
Considering the options was an entirely pleasant way to spend the bulk of the afternoon, and each of the three successive afternoons I spent there, limp- limbed under the shady palapa, “reading” (i.e. snoozing) my way to the sunset.
Outfitted with a well-stocked drinks fridge, a wet bar, and plenty of ice and limes, and perched just steps from the black-sand beach peopled (sparsely) with pairs and trios of daring young surfers and the occasional local fisherguy, the palapa provided shady relief for napping during the searing-hot days, and later, comfortable for the breezy, dramatic Pacific sunsets.
Feeling sorry for me yet?
I had the remarkable fortune last week to visit a friend, and some of his friends, at their collective second home in Costa Rica, where I’d never been before. Getting there, over treacherous, potholed, unpaved roads that made me wish we’d rented a couple of donkeys instead of the Mitsubishi SUV, wasn’t easy (on my bones or my sanity), but the prize at the end was worth it.
Said prize wasn’t the beach. It wasn’t the sunset, the mango, the driftwood- grilled steak. It wasn’t even the beer.
The prize was the solitude. No phone. No e-mail. No newspaper. No noise. Just sea and sand and stars and turtle-tracks and mangoes. And solitude.
Because without the solitude, we might not have bothered to gather driftwood for the fire. We might not have squeezed and tasted the mangoes. We might not have noticed the sunset.
And we for sure wouldn’t have had beers at 11.
(Moral of this story: Take a vacation. It’s good for you.)
