 It’s Boxing Day and instead of finding myself amidst a crowded mall, I am limping down a dirt path in the village of La Lucha, in the middle of the rainforest. Yesterday, I fell into a river and broke my big toe trying to crawl out after slipping on the slimy rocks on the riverbed. Luckily today is the one day of the month that the doctor makes his appearance in La Lucha. After refusing a shot of I-don’t-know-what for my now massively swollen foot, the doctor gave me 4 packs of different pills without asking for anything more than how to spell my name on the patient sticker. I felt like I had just taken part in some sort of underground drug ring.
So now Fernando, Trina and I are heading back to the "house" we’ve spent the last two nights in. Kind as it is for the family to let us stay in their absence, between the 2-inch thin boards used for walls and the 1-inch foam pads on the 3 level bunks in a room the size of a small bathroom but somehow fit for 6 people, I haven’t really slept. We walk and I pretend I don’t see the dead snake on the side of the path.
I am barely in my bunk before Fernando opens the creaky door to our room and tells Trina and I that we’re not staying here tonight. Leo and his family want to host us for the night so we are heading out past Capri. I don’t know their relation to Fernando but whatever, at this point I am void - completely emotionless as a way to keep myself sane.
Ten minutes later, I find myself in the back seat of Leo’s Jeep 4X4; crammed in amongst bags of rice, flour, coffee and other essentials. There are chains on the wheels so we can drive through the mud, deeper into the rainforest. It’s pitch black and pouring by the time we arrive at the house. Is it really the rain that is this loud or is my hearing just better since I can’t see a thing?
 The inside of the house looks like the messy, jungle-home of an explorer in the Age of Enlightenment. A log cabin of only one room; papers everywhere, a few messy dishes here and there, boxes and boxes piled in every open space of the room and one un-made bed in a corner, half covered by a mosquito net. I sit down in the kitchen corner, on a wood chair at a wood table. I am unimpressed and silently questioning where exactly we are all expected to sleep tonight. Leo’s wife offers me a drink. I decline and stare blankly at the table.
By the time I finally look up the room has been transformed. The piled boxes concealed other beds. They contained sheets to both cover the beds and to use as walls for privacy. I feel horrible that while I was moping, my hosts were busy setting up my own room, with a proper bed and mosquito net. Trina and Fernando are setting up out on the deck in hammocks. Leo (a scientist who’s job it is to draw intricate, hair-by-hair, computer images of bugs he catches from the rainforest) has since unveiled his Mac computer from underneath another sheet and starts blasting old-school rock tunes - there are no neighbours to complain. Everyone joins me at the table with a bottle of wine and a Monopoly board.
After a few minutes trying to remember the rules we begin and language is minimized to vowels each time one of us lands on another’s property. Ehhhhhhhh, quatorze piece! Ooooooooohh, no Boardwalk.
Suddenly the music and lights cut out. The cabin is run completely off solar power and there is no electricity left for the night. Dim candle light guides us to our respective beds. I have the best sleep I have had since arriving in Costa Rica.
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