Seis Loco Chicas

On Saturday evening I was settled into a good rhythm in my writing.  While my neighbor and friend Kathia, a masseuse at the nearby yoga and wellness resort, had previously discussed  going downtown to the disco, I was content to stay home and make the most of the productive state that I found myself in.

At 7:30PM, I got a call from Kathia, actually a call to my landlord who then ran the phone over to my space.  Was I ready? Her girlfriends and I were driving to a small town in the countryside for some Latin style dancing (as opposed to the reggaeton downtown).  Despite my protests of working, and not wanting to make a long night of it, the decision was made.  The girls were going dancing and I was coming.  Period.  I was reluctantly granted a half hour to tie up the loose ends in my output from that day, and then off we went.

I jumped on the back of Kathia's motorcyle and we drove over the rolling hills that connect Montezuma and Cobano.  The road was mostly loose dirt that would turn into a cloud of dust with every passing car, and Kathia was concerned that her make-up job was turning into a dust mask. 

When we arrived in Cobano, we picked up Kathia's car and her two friends and headed off to Coyote.  Google maps has the directions as 39 kilometers and an hour and twenty minutes over "unnamed roads" which are uncharted by google.  We drove in total darkness over badly washboarded roads.  Kathia's small two wheel drive utility vehicle has seen a lot of wear and complained loudly and hesitated when we would climb hills.  It sounded like a ball joint or something similar was ready to give out at any moment, but on we went until we reached a river that was running across the road and was obviously uncrossable, and we were forced to backtrack for the 30 minutes or so to Cobano to pick another road and start again.

In town, we met another carload of girls and together we embarked on a second attempt to cross the uncharted expanse.  Again very bad, remote dirt roads.  Not a car or a light of any form for very long stretches.  We came to another river, sized up the prospects, and then drove over the optimal crossing path.  Another river, another crossing.   Several times I had serious doubts about whether we could actually get across, especially the 2nd vehicle which was a small sedan and lower to the ground than ours.   However, any questions to me of whether it was wise to attempt a crossing, in the middle of nowhere with no telephone service or prospects for roadside assistance, were purely rhetorical ...the girls were going dancing, period, and nothing that I could say could overcome their unwavering determination.

Finally, two hours later we miraculously reached our destination.  A mini fairgrounds in the middle of nowhere with a soccer field as a parking lot and a giant open air structure which was simply a corrugated roof supported by large cement pillars.  Carnival style food vendors lined the entrance side and inside a live Latin band played loud music over a modern sound system.  Four dancing male singers across the front of the stage with drums, bass, percussion, trombone, and a keyboard player with out-of-date synth sounds.  The giant, concrete slab dance floor (with a capacity of a couple thousand if packed in tight) was sparsely populated with couples.  Later the girls would bemoan the declining popularity of traditional Spanish music, and scenes like this that were a throwback to another time.

My group of six pretty, sharply dressed young ladies of ages roughly 24 to 32, settled in the back, and an interesting assortment of guys, old and young, politely approached and led them onto the dance floor one by one and for one song at a time.  While I usually am very comfortable in the dancehall, here I was a bit out of my element.  I know little about the various styles of latin dance, and that way of moving to music doesn't come naturally to me, so I was content to linger at the back with the girls who weren't dancing and observe the scene.

Since we arrived late, we only caught the last 5 or 6 songs of the band, and the dancing part of the night had barely gotten started before coming to an abrupt end.   While several of the male dancing partners made pitches about where we might go to continue the festivities (all of them far away), after having a quick bite to eat the determination among my posse to have fun suddenly turned into a resignation to get back to homebase and call it a night.

I guess it's worth mentioning that among the hundreds present at the fairgrounds, I was the only "gringo."  As we walked to the car, a guy with a giant straw hat looked at me, and the girls, and yelled "Hey Gringo" with a big smile.  I smiled back.

Since we were uncertain about the best way to return to Cobano (retracing our steps was not a great option due to the road quality and the rivers), we joined a small caravan headed south on a 3rd route through "unnamed roads".  The first river crossing, which required an abrupt swing to the right before an arcing return to the left to catch the other bank, was fairly uneventful.  However, on the second crossing, the sedan bottomed out and lodged itself in the rocky riverbed.
.......
Interesting reflection: My second priority on this trip (aside from my writing) has been to ramp up my Satipatthana meditation, both in terms of practice and learning.  This was essential in getting me in the right state to write (since my main character is a dedicated practitioner) and was aided by my isolation here in Costa Rica.  Anyway, something Yuttadhammo Bhikku said in one of his instructional videos resonated with me ...that is (paraphrased) to embrace "sati" means to change one's way of thinking and abandon the habit of forming opinions.  Makes sense.  However, I find myself firmly entrenched in the world of opinions.  My (former) career was defined by forming opinions.  In the last couple of weeks, I have done a fair amount of reflection about whether I need to think about aggressively weening myself off of this tendency (after the Super Bowl, of course ;) 

So it was interesting to observe the reaction of the caravan members (including several more vehicles of guys and girls) once it was determined that the car was stuck.   Everybody had an opinion, and eight or so people were talking at once trying to demonstrate the superiority of their opinion.  The only problem was, nobody had spent any time to properly diagnose the problem ...that is except Sophia who handled the sight of her rental car stuck in the river with surprising grace.  We dug out all the rocks under the bumper and still found the car firmly stuck.  Then we went around and used the flashlight of her phone to look into the wheel well, and found that the actual frame of the car was dug into the riverbed.  Clearly, we were going to have to lift the frame off of the ground to have any chance at getting out.  The girls (in their Saturday night clothes and bare feet) and I tried to lift the front of the car off the ground, but they weren't quite strong enough to budge it, and it remained stuck. 

Throughout the process, a series of (drunk?) guys manifested the "get out of the way. this is some guy shit" vibe and then got in the car and revved the engine and spun the front wheels (FWD) digging the car in slightly deeper with every subsequent effort, while also turning the steering wheel so the wheels were at least at a 45 degree angle from straight.  (In their defense, I guess none of the guys had ever gotten their car stuck in the snow before).

Kathia returned from her mission with a thick rope to tie to a big pickup truck.  This is clearly what we needed ...but some of the guys remained entrenched in the idea of driving the car out of the hole (still nobody else had looked extensively at the actual problem).  Against our advice to straighten the wheel and leave it in neutral while the truck pulled the rear and we tried to lift the front end, the newest "driver" of the stuck car hit the gas with maximum ferocity, and thrashed the wheel around throwing rocks in all directions (while I yelled "NO! NO! NO!") and sending me backwards into the river, now completely soaked as opposed to only partially soaked.

For the nth time I told Sophia, "We need three big guys to lift the front." and she answered "I keep telling them, but they don't want to.," and I replied, "Well we are just going to sit here stuck until they decide that they want to."

About 10 minutes later, after another round of 4 or 5 people talking at once I shouted "STOP STOP everybody STOP TALKING", and calmly told them that the frame was stuck in the bottom and that no amount of force could help us if the two biggest guys didn't help me lift the frame off of the ground from the front (this was translated by Sophia).   Finally, they decided to try this, and with great effort we lifted the car off the frame and rolled it out of the hole ... with Sophia in the driver's seat this time.

(The reason that I described that part of the story in detail is that it made a profound impression on me about the nature of opinions...given my reflections of late).

So with the car out of the river and back to the original shore, there was a unanimous consensus that it was probably unwise to try this a 2nd time, and so we chose the safer option of taking the best possible roads home ... unfortunately the backtracking and circuitous route meant a total of over 3 hours to travel less than 20 miles as the crow flies (and yes, I now have a heightened appreciation for decent roads and bridges)

On the car ride home, the girls apologized and laughed about what happens when you get caught up with "Seis loco chicas" although they added...at least you have an interesting story for your friends back home, and I told them that some day I would write down this story and call it "Seis Loco Chicas" and this was the running joke for the car ride home (which ended well after sunrise) ...the story of seis loco chicas.