“You’re so eager!” Karina complains, breaking free of his hold as they tread water off Playa Platanares. The ink below roils beneath the phosphorescent surface as she escapes his hands, which have snuck their way behind her to couple her muscled buns during their exploratory first kiss. With two well-timed strokes, she places a body-length of flashing surf between the two. “If you can catch me, you can have me right now, right here in the water.”

Troy, a good swimmer, lunges and gives chase. She teases him, slowing to allow his hand the illusion that it might gain a purchase on her elastic ankle before bursting to place a length or two between his yearning and its satisfaction. Later, on the beach they kiss tentatively again, but he keeps his hands within the sphere of respectful exploration, humiliated from the water. The strains of music from the salsa combo Los Mineros filter through the almonds and coconut trees from the Pearl of the Osa. “I can’t believe they do this every Friday,” she interrupts their courtship. “All you can eat Italian? Live music? Hey! Let’s go back and dance!”

He pauses to study the many reasons why they should not go back and dance. “Very well,” he smiles. “Let’s go dance.”

She looks at him very studiously. “Troy, I want you to take me to Corcovado tomorrow.”

Troy did the Park a couple years ago on one of the trips down leading up to his move, and indeed, it was spectacular. But it was also grueling. And barring extraordinary preparations, it was not the zenith of creature comfort and convenience by any means. And this time of year was hit and miss with the rains, so they could spend their whole time there, ostensibly, wet. From her look, it was clearly futile to try to convince her that she didn’t want to go. No, it was him. “You’re tougher than I am. . .” he casts his eyes downward and replies at length, moving his hand from her hip, where it has grown both welcome and comfortable, to intertwine her fingers with his own. “You swim faster. You have better endurance. You’re younger. You likely have a higher pain threshold. You probably don’t mind superhuman exertion at all. Me? I like to drink Cabernet and eat escargot, not crackly old gallo pinto and fresco de Tang. I want to lounge at the beach, not hike in the sand. My idea of a camping trip is vehicle-accessible, with lanterns and cookware, a stereo at least.”

“Troy boy,” sighs Karina with feigns contempt, pulling his hand up to level a well-manicured index finger at his nose. “You are a milk-fed doughboy, through and through, that’s what you are!”

“Well,” he hems. “That’s a way of looking at it,” he haws. “There is a way,” he suddenly realizes, “to have it both ways. Look, the hopping off point to the park. . .”

“Los Patos?” she interrupts hopefully.

“Carate,” he pauses, looking at her now in newfound revelation. This might just work. “We can see the Park and so much more from Carate. Karina, this place is where dreams begin and end, where life enfolds like the night settling upon the mountain only to blossom like the rain’s curtain-call across an impassive panoply, where the flow of gold through the veins of the forest has conveyed some to luxuriant opulence and driven others to madness and murder, where. . . ”

“Doesn’t ‘carate’ mean, like, infection, or something?” she interrupts, skeptical.

“Look,” Troy replies, piqued by her cynicism. “Malpais got its name from a malaria epidemic in the thirties that killed some people. Today it’s host to thousands of foreign surfers every year. Going to Malpais doesn’t mean you’ll get malaria, and going to Carate doesn’t mean you’ll get ringworm, for which it’s named. It’s still the wild west even here on this side of the peninsula. But Carate over on the other side is the final frontier. But then,” he glanced downward, ”if you’re afraid of a few parasites, then the Park might just be out of your league altogether.”

“C’mon,” she says, grinning as she rises to her feet. “Let’s go wash off and get our stuff together and go back to my hotel to plan our Carate adventure in detail. She pulls him to his feet, and he lopes obediently behind her, unhappy to be running in the sand, unprepared to release her hand.

***

The towering waves pound a desolate and abandoned coastline. To the northwest the forests of Corcovado drip in majestic green down the precipitous slopes of the mountains. To the southeast the living green of the plane spreads across the land to merge with the primal cobalt of the Pacific. The roar humbles and the spume froths, sending primordial pheromones into the air enveloping our paradise-bound protagonists. “I don’t know. . .” she says. “Looks pretty dangerous.”

“Looks are not deceiving,” he agrees, pulling her to join him in the field of breakers. They bob in the surf just beyond the break and hold each other. The lubricious turbulence tickles Karina mercilessly, and she enjoys his touch as they kiss. But she breaks away to rejoin him with a quizzical grin. “So, I know I’m not supposed to ask, but is that where we’re staying?” she throws her head in the direction of the Lookout.”

“Maybe,” he ventures. “Maybe not. Why don’t we go hang out at the pool until the horses get here?”

After washing off in the pool and swimming around awhile, Tony breaks out the sausage, parmesan, crackers, and olives squirreled away in his day pack and produces a bottle of Chilean cabernet sauvignon and corkscrew. “You’ll get us drunk,” she objects. “And I don’t eat this,” she points to the sausage. “Give me that,” she indicates his knife, “before you pollute it.”

“I figured we’d break into the whole wilderness thing easy-like,” he explains the wine as she cuts the cheese with a paramilitary expediency. “We don’t have to drink it all in one sitting, you know. And cheese and crackers are pretty dry fare,” he smiles, watching her get her jaws around a bite. The pop of the cork is overwhelmed by the sudden descending chatter of a group of macaws upon a nearby tree. They eat and drink in the cool shade of the giant rancho, taking in the vivid colors of the lush sun-splashed gardens enveloping them. She dozes and awakens to find the horses waiting down by the road. She has had an incredible dream.

Troy holds the reins and watches to make sure she can mount without the saddle horn she would be used to. She steps right into the saddle and takes the reins and considers the bridle to decipher its comfort index relative the bridles with the bit. But then what can be worse than a metal rod in your mouth? Troy mounts and turns into the

road, and she nudges her mount forward, gauging her efforts by the results and settles on a middle ground of equine encouragement. Presently, riding the horse becomes second nature, and she focuses her attention on all the different plants they pass by on both sides of the road. A pizote jumps into the road ahead of them and pauses to consider them before ambling on across. He is followed by pairs and triplets, then two more juveniles, some more adults and juveniles and then a few more. Karina scours the underbrush passing the crossing, but the coatis are swallowed by the forest. She lends one ear to Tony when he rides beside her to expound upon the regional lore and the other ear to the sounds of the forest. The waves provide the bass drums, the cicadas and footfalls of horses the rhythm section, and the birds the melody line of the tropical chorus, trotting down the road to Carate.

Past the pulpería, The ghosts of mines past lurk along the banks of the Carate River, pieces of D-8’s and wash plants rusting gaily in the pounding sun. Less scrap than in years gone by, every last vestige of what was once the largest economic engine on the peninsula destined in time to complete erasure. Troy shudders and nudges the gelding to a gallop. Upriver they follow the road first on one side, then the other, of the mighty braided river, impotent in the sweltering dry summertime, yet a burbling brook nevertheless that even Siddhartha would have likely found as metaphorical and archetypal as any literary, mythical, or actual rivers that have fascinated a segment of mankind at some point since his origin. Inland away from the roar of the surf it is just the burble of the water, the squawks of ibises, chirps of cattle egrets, and the silent stalking hunt of the tiger heron—all prowling the rich shallows of the thirsty river to gorge on freshwater prawns. The road turns up into the mountains, and the horses appraise the steep clay driveway unhappily, the footloose foal dallying to graze then catching up. Up, up, up, wouldn’t want to lose your brakes coming down or it’d be lights out if you couldn’t bail quick enough, sure wouldn’t want to meet a vehicle and have to back down, a little scary. . .

The bungalows rise organically from the landscaped slopes living with color, and the forest, tall and forbiddingly majestic, looms from all around, the river a gentle ribbon winding through the valley below. Lana emerges like Venus rising from the sea from behind sweet ginger to welcome them. After introductions, she shows them to their bungalow and smiles to see Karina’s delight. “Settle in and come on back down to the lodge for something to drink. I’ll give you some mud,” she offers Karina with encouraging eyes, “if you guys want to go down to the waterfall.”

“Mud?”

“Oh, you’ll love it. Promise.”

***

He can’t believe how long she waits it out and is actually out of the pool and dry before she decides to finally wash it off. He slides into the pool to help her and they slip ever more closely in their frolicking toward that first knick point in the riverbed of every relationship, until she draws back from him with an impish grin, holding him still. “It wouldn’t be right,” she points out.

“It wouldn’t?” He’s not surprised.

“This is like a temple,” she explains.

“A temple of love,” he agrees

“But a lot of people come here. It’s like a public place.”

“You don’t like public places?”

“Troy! It would be simply disrespectful. How would you like it if you knew other people had done it here!”

“I love it when you talk dirty like that to me. Go on. Do it some more.”

She considers him for a moment as though he’s lost his mind, then settles on a different tack. “We’re just putting off the walk back is all we’re doing, you know?”

All uphill. All of it. Every step. Uphill. He catches up with her during the ascent when she waits long enough. It’s not a foot race, he keeps reminding her. It’s only important to get there, it’s not a question of when. Finally they break over the ridge and into the gardens as the sun grows heavy in the western sky. “I’ll just hop in the shower a minute,” he says before they reach the door of the bungalow. “The hell you will,” she lunges ahead of him to race. He grabs her hand to hold her back, but she pulls away, shrieking. They struggle into the shower together and wash the jungle slime and sweat off each other and cool off. “I am starving!” she announces before he gets any ideas.

The dinner crowd is a happy one, some tippling lightly, others abstemiously nursing club sodas, but everyone is animated and talking within smaller groups. The groups exchange brief interludes of dialogue according to the geography of the seating. Karina smiles broadly at the suggestion of wine; Troy gets all tingly.

“. . .right over it. . .I stepped right over it!” Ears are drawn to the very thin, hyperactive woman gesticulating to the ground, as if it had happened right there.

“The fer de lance is, after all, the most common snake in Costa Rica,” offers Karina. “I learned that at the Herpetarium outside of Turrialba,” she explains, suddenly awkward at having projected intelligence so recent to her.

“Is a herpetarium a museum dedicated to herpes?” muses Troy.

“You definitely have to be conscious about snakes when you’re in the forest,” Lana offers, “This is prime territory for the terciopelo.”

“Oh but the guide said it was a boa!” the thin lady explains. “But it was big, slimy, and ugly as hard-boiled sin.”

“I swear, Claire,” laughs Marjorie. “Snakes aren’t slimy, and he was beautiful besides, girl.”

Karina shudders and takes a long drink of wine. She has nothing kind to say about snakes and says nothing at all, turning a charming smile onto Troy to draw him back out of the parley and to her as the salad emerges. “Just in time to cool down,” she confides with a wink; “I was starting to get all warm inside.” He refills their glasses. The night is delicious, the sumptuous courses lit by candles that flicker in the gently moving air. The buzz of insects and chirps of frogs besiege the rancho, and Troy and Karina watch each other over the corner of the table and smile as they eat.

Karina awakens in the dark to the howls of monkeys. It’s early morning, and the last thing she remembers is getting a massage. She’d fallen asleep. Awakened by the light touch of her hands and the brushing velvet of her lips, Tony hears the howling morning call to prayer and knows it’s going to be a good day.

Breakfast is welcome afterwards, and there are more kinds of fruit than Karina can name, and they have omelets as well, the coffee so compelling she opts for a second cup. The horses, miraculously, are there waiting

right where they left them, and Troy flashes her a wink. They retrace their steps down the steep driveway and down the channel of the Carate River but turn to the northwest when they reach the mouth. Fifteen minutes up the beach they pull up the bank into La Leona Lodge. “Corcovado, here we come,” smiles Troy. She considers the spot he chooses to dismount and tie the horses, wondering if they’ll show up again tomorrow morning.

Introductions over, gear stowed in a commodiously immaculate tent, a quick dip in the surf for Karina, a day pack prepared, our feckless heroes set off in the company of Mike Boston, owner of Osa Aventura and argued to be the foremost Corcovado National Park guide on the planet. “Too bad you just have one day,” he smiles through a friendly Irish brogue. “One day, Troy, come on man? And getting a late start at that?” he laughs, the pace brisk along the searing beach.

“We’re working with a tight schedule,” Troy explains limply.

“Well, mate, we’ll hike from here to Drake next time around then,” he smiles. “Or of course, you can get back to your schedule, and Karina and I can hike to Drake,” he winks. “You’ll like the Madrigal,” he assures her. “Nice and cool in the forest.” The bellows of howler monkeys rolling down from the mountain like mini-thunder reminds them of this morning amid the rhythmic percussion of the pounding surf.

At the mouth of the Madrigal they turn inland and within five minutes, Mike’s eyes widen and he stops, pointing into the trees where a marauding toucan is being dive-bombed by scarlet-rumped tanagers protecting their nest and young from the big-beaked predation. “Bastards eat flesh as well as fruit,” he comments with a grimace, “chicks when he can get them. Not many people realize that.”

“I want to see a harpy eagle dive-bombing a three-toed sloth,” Troy requests.

“Coming right up,” laughs Mike. “Actually, there’s only one harpy left in the Park,” Mike replies, tinting the humor with a tinge of bitters. “There was a single mating pair until the male was poached.”

“That’s just awful!” exclaims Karina.

“The guy that poached the male got his in the end, but that’s another awful story. Makes me wonder if there’s not something to karma, after all. But there do remain about 26 jaguars, and they seem to be doing alright,” he weaves them away from that particular thread of conversation. “There we go!” Mike pauses, peering between the buttress roots of a ceiba. “Come to papa.”

“It’s a snake,” Karina freezes. “Ich!”

“Boa constrictor,” he replies, lifting the startled reptile and calming him with smooth handling. “Beautiful specimen, isn’t he, all of two meters in length. Here try him on for size; he won’t bite.” Karina freezes pale as Mike places the animal on her shoulders and his ropy coils wrap around her right arm, the large head moving to lick the air next to her face.

“I don’t know about this,” she states very softly, not moving a muscle.

“I think he likes you, K,” Troy observes.

She loosens up a little and Troy fishes in the day pack for her camera.

“He’s actually not slimy at all,” she says to Mike. “Very strong.”

“I want to see bushmasters mating,” requests Troy.

“I’ve never actually seen a bushmaster in the wild,” Mike replies. “They are elusive buggers. I would love to come upon two mating! Let’s go find them.”

Further up a bit he finds the habitat he’s looking for, a log jam in the canyon of a tributary. Mike pores over it with his eyes and crouches to examine and presently snatches another snake bare-handed out of its hole. “Now you’re mine you big monster,” Mike laughs, opening the mouth with the pressure of his fingers behind the serpent’s jaws. Drops of venom ooze from the tips of the two-inch long fangs. “Don’t recommend that you hold this one,” he winks at Karina, who keeps her distance but studies the malevolent creature with studious fascination. “Seven feet if he’s an inch,” observes Mike. “Enough poison in this head to kill several men, though mature terciopelos never exhaust their entire dose in one bite. They gage the dose in relationship to the perceived threat of what they’re biting. You’d probably have four hours or so to get tosome antivenin before your cardio-vascular system failed. Nasty poison, these little buggers pack. Has a component that immediately begins to digest the flesh. Leaves a gaping wound on anybody that is ever stricken, unlike the considerably more toxic coral that barely even leaves a tiny scar on victims that survive its bite.” Karina gravitates to Troy and draws under his arm as Mike returns to release the snake. “Maybe we better move a little farther away,” Troy says.

They cool off in the pool formed at the base of a waterfall and break out the grilled chicken and avocado sandwiches that La Leona Lodge has so graciously prepared for them, and dry off in the sun. An hour farther upriver, they all smell it at once, and Mike freezes, his finger to his lips to command silence. “Peccaries,” he mouths without sound, his eyes excited. Troy’s scrotum begins to retract, and he cases the ground for the most negotiable tree within reach. They follow Mike’s lead to the other side of the river and proceed slowly, studying the underbrush, hopeful it does not break like the levy with a flood of charging, squealing, little people-manglers. “There they are,” Karina whispers, pointing. A group of 30 or so white-lipped peccaries lounge in a clearing in the floodplain scrub they have trampled. A single standing guardian peers fruitlessly through his beady eyes at them and lifts his snout to catch their identity, but they are downwind. He begins cracking his teeth to warn them of their imminent peril, but Mike is not concerned about their danger and they proceed upriver, giving the herd a wide enough berth for mutual respect.

The trip back seems shorter than the trip out, and they break onto the beach with an hour of daylight remaining and find the hard wet sand for their walk back, the surf somehow smaller and farther out at low tide.

They arrive back at La Leona tent camp in time for another swim before sunset and cozy up against a log as the mighty orange orb sizzles in its initial descent into the sea. Other lodge denizens emerge onto the beach to enjoy the sunset, and the air is penetratingly clear. The colors progress from the yellows through to reds and just as the final piece sinks into the primordial stew the horizon flashes a preternatural green. “Can you bloody believe it?” Mike bellows. “A green flash. We got the green flash! A triumphal closure to a positively brilliant day indeed!” The echoes of his words fall away and all the observers remain silent, each stunned in his or her own particular way as the progression of colors proceed through mauve, vermilion, deep purple giving into the night.

Showered and coiffed, deliciously tired and hungry, red-cheeked and happy, the camp denizens gravitate ever nearer to the potent smells emanating from the cookhouse, straying to the coolers to grab beers, sodas, juices during the wait. Karina pours two tamarind frescos, and Troy drinks his greedily, without much of a thought to the imperials that some of the other guests are busy imbibing. Tonight they would not drink, he figures. Everyone compares their day and talks of the morrow as the curried fish and fixings emerge plate by plate from the kitchen, Tracy and Greg dishing up, servers delivering. Words fail, and the sounds are those of forks glancing off ceramic as even the cicadas back off their cacophony.

His exhaustion is so complete that his argument that the tents are not too close together for love-making is only half-hearted, and he falls asleep as they cuddle. A good routine falls together quickly, and to Pavlov’s posthumous amusement, they are ready and waiting the next morning for the howlers, regardless of the tent-spacing zoning regulations enforced by the sex police.

After coffee, the roaring surf roughed up by a brisk offshore breeze that raises gooseflesh, they discuss the merits of Tai Chi on an empty stomach and conclude that it will be best that way, retiring to the beach to go through the sequence of exercises that she teaches him. He gives it an honest effort and does not feel very silly at all, at first. They bathe and return to camp to wash the salt water off and sit down warmed and cooled and thoroughly invigorated to eggs scrambled with onions, peppers, culantro, and garlic, gallo pinto, homemade bread with butter, fresh orange juice, joe, and smoked sausage. They gather their things wordlessly, her imminent departure suddenly imposed upon them. He breaks out of it and gets happy again once their things are stored, their bill settled. The blue of the sky is preternatural, a passageway to Nirvana, and they -walk on the wet sand where it is firm, avoiding the lapping waves when one encroaches upon their path. “It’s not against the law to live here, you know,” he says to her. “Though it feels so good that it probably should be. This,” he waves his hand toward the ocean, “is one of the reasons I’m here.”

It’s a nice and romantic idea, Karina thinks, but not that practical. On the ride back, he takes her down Shady Lane to his favorite waterfall, and they bathe and fool around in the pool and on the rocks. “This,” he says, letting part of the water glance off the back of his head, “is one of the reasons I’m here. He takes her into Rio Oro and down to the beach there, and they watch the shore and drink the rest of the wine and make out on the desolate beach. “This is why I’m here.” Troy looks for mushrooms fruitlessly in the cattle fields as they continue back toward town. They stop at the hairpin turn in the middle of the Magic Forest and walk into the forest among the trees to look for elves and fairies. “Is this one of those reasons you live here?” she asks. They pull into Matapalo and cruise all the way out to the end of the road and hike out to gaze at the Rock of Matapalo and the landslide scar on the mountainside from up close. “Another reason,” he says. They swim at Pan Dulce and stop at Bar Buena Esperanza in the afternoon and have beers, leaving in order to make the final leg of the trip in the remaining light of day.

He takes her for her final night back to the Pearl of the Osa, the only place within reach of town where they are likely to hear howler monkeys in the morning. Dawn comes and goes however without their now ritual call to prayer. But that does not stop them. This time tomorrow she’ll be back in The City, and this would fade to certain irrelevance, but for now it was very consuming and important. Troy feels a seed of resentment that she is leaving, knowing that tomorrow will dawn with a yawning vacuum that he would fill with the many irrelevant and insignificant but necessary things that punctuate his days. But he’s being selfish and contrives a passable degree of enthusiasm to accompany the frantic excitement of her last-minute packing. He watches her mind change gears, thinking now about connections and layovers, worried about the time and taxi she will have to take in San Jose from one airport to another. On the flight she will begin thinking about her work and all the catching-up she’ll have to do after being away two weeks. At work she’ll think about taking a vacation and kick herself since she’s just had one.

Another one of those reasons.