by Nona Martin Stuck

I didn’t speak Spanish, but I was leaving for Costa Rica. It seemed both good sense and good manners to learn a few rudimentary phrases. Planning the trip was my first healthy impulse as I struggled to break free of the cloud of sadness surrounding my divorce. What had begun as a simple desire to spend time in a new and unknown place—merely a respite from the scene of my loss—was fast becoming a compelling need to find some place to restore my faith in basic human kindness and decency. 

After the protracted and acrimonious dissolution of a 25-year marriage, any number of destinations might have met my original criteria. But I chose the remote and exotic Osa Peninsula, located at the southernmost tip of the country. Despite generations of gold miners and loggers, it is covered by one of the largest protected low-land tropical rainforests in the world. The Osa represented a kind of resilience and determination, a courageous spirit that might allow me to rediscover the hopeful person I had once been.

Preparing to sell the home in which I raised my four children, I squeezed travel tasks in between meetings with real estate agents, phone calls to painters and sorting through a quarter-century of family memorabilia: wedding pictures, birthday cards, baby teeth and discarded prom corsages. I borrowed a Spanish language book, bought a CD for my car and, in a reasonably short time, had mastered buenas tardes (good afternoon) and buenas noches (good night).  With a bit more effort, I was comfortable with the real essentials, Donde esta el baño? (Where is the bathroom?) and Café solo, por favor (Black coffee, please).

On a cool spring morning, I taped up the last boxes of my children’s school photos and soccer trophies, gave a spare house key to a neighbor and headed for the airport. The flight landed midday and I was immersed in the heat and urban activity of San Jose, Costa Rica’s capitol. Live guitar music and enticing scents filled the terminal, from the aromas of gallo pinto, rice and black beans, to dulce de leche, a sweet milk custard. The people in the shops smiled politely at my tentative efforts with gracias, responding with de nada (it’s nothing). But when I told them my destination, most reacted with a barely-disguised rolling of the eyes and a mumbled response that I later learned roughly translated as, “have fun with the peasants.” Given, the Osa was underdeveloped and difficult to reach. With so many upscale resorts available, it might not be a Costa Rican city-dweller’s first choice for a vacation. Still, I couldn’t shake the growing certainty that what made people think of the Osa as backward and boring—the simplicity, the seclusion, the fierce tenacity—were the very things that attracted me to it. Most of my married holidays had been structured and, usually, quite luxurious. For the first time in years, I was stepping outside the comfort of the known and easy and trusting my rusty ability to adapt to whatever might come.   

In the terminal, I got in line for a 12-person prop plane, the body painted with bright vines and flowers. Starting up the metal steps, I stumbled, but my fall was halted by the man behind me. “Gracias,” I said, but his response was not the expected “De nada.” It was something softly spoken and longer than I could quite make out. Before I had time to consider, I ducked into the cramped cabin to find a seat. The short trip made up in turbulence what it lacked in length. A nervous passenger under the best of circumstances, a bout of rough air could reduce me to white knuckles and hyperventilation in a matter of seconds. My ex-husband, who subscribed to the “buck up and behave yourself” school of support, had always responded to my fear with a terse account of the laws of aerodynamics, followed by donning headphones, opening a book and effectively removing himself from any hint of my embarrassing anxiety. His ability to compartmentalize had served him very well in his medical career, but several decades of disapproving silence in response to my distress had taken its toll.

The plane gave a small hiccup, and my already agitated mind skittered about for distraction. I glanced out the window at a darkening sky that signaled an approaching afternoon  storm. I thought about the signs I might have seen and interpreted to foretell the trouble in my marriage, had only my husband and I spoken the same emotional language. I fingered my little Spanish dictionary and tried to imagine such an aid for the rewording of feelings from one person to another. When the plane hit a particularly choppy patch, I only had time to gasp before the elderly man sitting next to me placed his roughened, brown hand over my pale and shaky one. He didn’t say anything, merely kept his hand lightly in place until things calmed and we began our descent. When I turned to offer him my quivery “Gracias,” his answer sounded like the one I hadn’t quite understood earlier. This time it was a clear: “Con mucho gusto.”  It wasn’t in my dictionary, but I sensed that, while it was a variation of the expected “de nada,” it meant something more.

Stepping onto the landing strip in Puerto Jimenez felt, in some way, as if it were the first true step of my journey. It was as hot as San Jose, but here was a breeze, soft and refreshing, redolent of ocean and earth and wild leafy things. In a line of dusty, dented vehicles, I picked out the Land Rover bearing the name of the eco-lodge where I would be staying. The driver, Alejandro, welcomed me, chatting in lightly-accented English as we bounced along the rutted dirt road.

“Hola,” people called to us and waved. A woman carrying a basket of fruit plucked a mango from her bounty and handed it to me.

“Gracias,” I said, and was ready, this time, for, “Con mucho gusto.”

We had only just met, but it was surprisingly easy to talk to Alejandro. “What, exactly, does ‘con mucho gusto’ mean?” I asked him. “I know ‘de nada’, but my book never mentioned ‘con mucho gusto.’”

“Well, you may use ‘de nada,’ and it will be correct. But here on the Osa, most people say ‘con mucho gusto’, which means something like ‘It is my great pleasure to do this thing for you.’ And,” he added, “these good people, here in this beautiful place, they really mean it.”

And just like that, with one small translation, the choice of one phrase over another, the shadow of despondency that had followed me for weeks finally began to lift. The bright Costa Rican sun glinted off the feathers of colorful birds nearby and a fragrant breeze ruffled my hair. I knew that the gentle inhabitants of the Osa Peninsula, wordlessly and in words they would help me to understand, would show me the way back to what I had come to find, someone not lost, but merely misplaced, the happier, healthier version of myself.