8:53 am: Malaria Monday! (Weekly doses of Novo-Chloroquine, since we started the trip on a Monday, a lot of people are on the Monday schedule.) I bought five postcards in the hotel for $1 USD and got back 100 colones in change.
    Breakfast was two cups of coffee, yellow pineapple, papaya, watermelon, Gallo Pinto (with red peppers, how cosmopolitan), a custom omelette “Todo sin queso, por favor”.
    After sleeping really early, I woke up at 1am really needing to pee. Turning the light on in the bathroom flooded the whole place with light, thanks to the huge window, and woke Ross up. We then stood around blinking in the brilliance: “It’s so bright”.
    “It’s a 60 watt bulb.”
    “But it’s been a while since we’ve seen a 60 watt bulb.”
    We went back to our beds, and around 6:15, Ross starting laughing in his sleep. I later asked him about it and he said he was dreaming about an SNL skit. He muttered something like “I don’t have any more [mumble], Chantal”. He barely snored during the night; he would start, then stop himself, probably expecting a balled-up sock thrown at him from one of the girls sharing the dorm room at the station. I told Elaine: “You’ve broken his spirit.”
    I felt really good when I woke up this morning. The early risers wandered through the garden, I saw a motmot. We met an American tourist at the coffee station, who discovered that we’re all biologists.
    “It’s the biologists who are going to save Costa Rica” they said.
    “…and then the world” said Chantal.
    We leave the hotel at 9:30, some people have gone to a nearby store for snacks and wheat-free food options for Nicole (or cheap cigarettes). My pants are still caked in mud around the cuffs; I tried to clean them a bit then gave up. I’m not even going to attempt to do anything with the boots. The bus crash from the highway yesterday made the newspaper, one death and a few injuries.

11:36 am: I feel pillaged. Casa Tica is a major tourist trap of a store in the airport, we passed three branches on the way to the gate, of course we all crowded into the first one thinking it would be our only chance. They had a buy-two-get-one-free deal on the t-shirts. Being in a large group allowed us to capitalize on this, I went in with Chantal, she bought two for herself, I got one and we split the cost proportionately. Mine has the logo of Imperial Cerveza with the national motto “Pura Vida” underneath; cleaner living through alcohol. I count at least 13 shopping bags between us; it’s so sad. We’ve commandeered a section of the seating at the gate and are rapidly filling it with crap.
    Several people got alcohol; they have cool bottles with glass cactus in the bottom. I’m not picking any up, so I’ve agreed to smuggle some in under my import limits. When asked why I’m not buying any I said: “I’m a horrible drinker.”
    “Well,” said Chantal sympathetically, “you’re…”
    “Asian and tiny?” I suggested.
    Chantal, in a good natured, false-mocking, ‘oh-pity-me’ tone, “I’m a tiny Asian man!”
    Me (equally whiny), “What do you want from me?”
    I’m imagining that the market at the Plaza de la Democracia would have been better. Dick says we would have found the same stuff, but cheaper. My purchases were somewhat desperate and random. More people have arrived with more bags.
    Lunch was a $4 pepperoni pizza. Chantal observes that you can get Gallo Pinto at Burger King.
    I have the whacking sticks. (Our bundle of wooden meter sticks, which would be passed off between several people during the journey.) All the people waiting at the gate look like Houstonians. The look is very J.Crew, but I’m not even sure what that is, so I’ll say Eddie Bauer. More people are speaking English here than in the gate in Houston; destination I guess.
    They asked us to remove our shoes at security. The guard spoke only Spanish, looks at us and goes “[Something, something] zapotas”.
    “Shoes?” I ask as I point to mine.
    She nodded and I remove my muddy, metal bound, laced to the ankle hiking boots, and put them through the x-ray machine. I still set off the metal detector. Removing my watch and spare change got me through to pick up my shoes and the whacking sticks.

    We said our goodbyes to Diane at the hotel and packed into taxi vans for the ride to the airport. We had just started to drive away when she yelled for us to stop, then came jogging up to the taxi holding the rear bumper, which had fallen off. Good omen.

12:42 pm: On board the plane in seat 27A, it was 26F but the woman in 26E asked if I could switch with her husband, who was seated apart from her. I was pulled out of the group and searched as we were boarding the plane, but not very thoroughly. The guard only checked the main compartment of my backpack, pulled out this book, and flipped it open to the pen I had inside (no state secrets here). There are four additional compartments in the bag that were ignored, as were all the souvenir bags I was carrying. I also got a once-over with the metal scanner thing, after spilling all my loose change on the table, the thing didn’t beep once. He then asked if he could search my shoes, which was hilarious considering the state of cleanliness of my footwear. I took a seat at his invitation on a metal folding chair and, once again, undid the length of laces on my boots. I handed them to him saying “They’re nice and muddy”, which at least got him to smile. He was wearing gloves and stuck a hand into them, which is more than I would have wanted to do with them were they not mine, then handed them back.
    Alright, one of the attendants just asked to see my boarding pass even though I’m already seated. Now I’m getting paranoid, am I under suspicion of something? I guess I could possibly be traveling alone, and y’know, non-white. Dick has relieved me of the whacking sticks, so that didn’t contribute to anything. The group is spread out through the plane, they’re closing the door, I guess I’m not getting kicked off.

1:18 pm: Costa Rica passes below; we’re seeing a parade of San José’s tin roofs, red earth, and green everywhere. The clouds are towering, with gaps showing views of interlaced dark green forests, fields, and lakes. Shadows of clouds mottle the landscape as the glint of tin in the sunlight reflects up to the sky.

1:23 pm: We’re over Lago Nicaragua looking at the islands in the middle, we can see Guanacaste province from here. The station is down there somewhere in the forest. Everyone in the group is riveted to the vista, even those without window seats. You can tell who the biologists are, from the mud definitely, perhaps from the smell, but also from finding the people who still look at the world in wonder.

4:09 pm: We’re landing in Houston. I sort of watched “K-19: the Widowmaker”, weird accents. “Please return your seat to the full, upright, and most uncomfortable position for landing.” One good, gentle touchdown later, and we’re wished a Happy Labour Day.

5:58 pm: Sitting in “Bubba’s” in the Houston airport. I had to take off my shoes again as we went through security to get into the airport. They made Sarah take off her sandals and patted down her bandana. We still can’t understand people’s accents here. Dick went through two security personnel before being referred to a third on account of the bundle of whacking sticks he’s carrying. The third security guard, after a careful study of the suspect package, pronounced “It looks like a bunch of rulers to me”.
    We had to claim our luggage during our layover. Dick was standing next to the carousel, as opposed to all of us taking up an entire side. He just grabbed anything that looked muddy enough to belong to our group and asked if it was one of ours. He missed my bag because “It looked too civilized”.
    The airport staff is very dispassionate as they yell (remember the Southern accents). “Sir, move all the way to lane three, you are blocking the way.” “Ma’am, no carts allowed here.” Really, saying “Sir” or “Ma’am” before yelling at someone doesn’t make it that much more polite.
    We’re in one of the restaurants now; I’m sipping on a bottle of Barq’s through a straw which is shorter than the bottle. A few people got beers using their passports as ID. I’m not legal in the States yet. I’m getting the gumbo for dinner, it turns out to be a spicy, chewy, okra stew with rice; I figure I am in the South.

7:12 pm: We’re on the flight to Vancouver. We have two card games going on in our group which spans a couple rows. Dick is up a few rows ahead, probably thinking he could get away from the adolescents, and ended up next to an infant who delighted in grabbing his nose.

7:26 pm: The lights just went out and the emergency lights and signs went on briefly. Now we’re back to normal. Nicole’s a little spooked. Liz’s bottle of tequila broke at the top, spilling some liquor one row behind us. She bagged the bottle and mopped up using whatever piece of cloth happened to be readily accessible, which turned out to be a pair of underwear. Our section now reeks of alcohol.

9:03 pm (Vancouver time): We just finished 2 card games, I won them both, did the requisite dance we came up with. Most other people are asleep, it’s 10:03 in Costa Rica, and we’re now used to getting to bed early.

10:50 pm: Landing.

1:38 am: We landed around 11; as soon as we stepped off the plane we could feel the blissful lack of humidity in the air. Processing through customs was brief. The agent was chatty, but I couldn’t even remember the word “biology” when she asked a question about the purpose of the trip. We met our respective rides in the arrivals lounge, said our goodbyes, which were more like “See you tomorrow, at school”, and sorted out who was smuggling in what for whom.
    My parents drove me home and I had a warm shower with a nice, soft, dry towel waiting for me. My face feels somewhat clean for the first time in days. I think I lost weight, I can see it in the mirror. I might have been eating less, and doing more work in between.
    I’m eating random Asian food in the kitchen. A large spider just surprised me, and I squished it with a broom and flung the cadaver outside the door. I guess I’m not that desensitized to bugs after all. Still, I know I can put up with them, and that I can live without a lot of these comforts, and get along with other people, and get by with a certain degree of independence. Still my bug-bitten fingers know the curves of this chair, my eyes know the glow of these lights; they are neither foreign, nor exactly the same as they were before. I have had no catharses, no tectonic shifts, merely an experience, the exact colour of which belongs to me alone.
    If our experiences are the palette with which we paint our impression of the world, than perhaps this is the most than can be hoped for; not to throw out our existing set of paints, but to add colours we could not have mixed ourselves, to better illustrate the shades in our newly broadened world.