Tamarindo, Costa Rica

 His face well worn, beard unkempt and his light grey and blonde hair dishevelled, he walked by with a large bag of groceries and a case of beer. His burly broad chested frame hunched to one side as he lumbered out of the supermarket in Tamarindo, Costa Rica. He had the appearance of a man who spent much time in his own company and had a long running commentary with himself. Our eyes met while I was pondering my options to return to my Airbnb several kilometers away with my groceries in a place where there was not a taxi in sight and uber wasn’t available.

“Another beautiful day.” I said as he walked by when he stopped, looked at me closely and said, “yeah. Yeah. It looks beautiful” and his voice trailed off into the mid-afternoon heat.

“You don’t think it is as beautiful as it seems” I said disinterestedly and was somewhat confounded when he stopped beside me and intensely gazed at the pavement as if he was considering my comment at great length,

“Nothing is as it seems” he said

I stopped scanning the parking lot for a taxi and looked at him directly.

“You are right.” I replied and added, “I sometimes can’t distinguish between reality and illusion.” I was filled with expectation that I may have an unusual conversation.

A long silence ensued before I said, “You must know Costa Rica well.”

He began to walk past me toward his car- a dusty forty-year-old black Nissan with a brown passenger door and a tailpipe tied to the trunk with a rope. Just as he reached the door, I said, “I’ll give you $10 bucks for a drive to Tamarindo.”

He got in his car and started it – the engine sounded like a race car – the muffler seemingly only for looks. The afternoon sun bore down on the pavement and made it shimmer. UHe was about to drive away when he stopped, opened his door, and stood for a few minutes fiddling with a door handle that appeared to have loosened. I turned away and wondered what I should do next. Suddenly, he stopped fiddling and asked,

“Did you say $10?”

“yes”

“Truth is I am broke,” he said, “I could use the money.” He crawled into his cluttered car and threw things into a corner of the back seat.

 When I got in the car, I finally got a close look of his face. The deeply etched crow’s feet along his eyes, and the wrinkles on his forehead beneath his ruffled whitish blonde hair left the impression that the man may have spent a lot of time at sea. The weather-beaten face may have once borne a smile but when one looked into his eyes, which seemed disproportionately small amongst such dramatic, Hemingway like features, it seemed absent of joy.

“You know last year they rounded up all the top bankers in the world like Rothschilds and Rockefellers –hundreds of them – and assassinated them. People don’t know. They keep paying their mortgages, but they don’t know that they don’t have to pay them. One day, they’ll find out and they’ll be free.”

 “Wow.” I said, “I never heard that. How did they keep it away from the news?”

“Hah,” he replied, “The news” and fell silent.

“How did you find out?” I asked.

“I know. My dad taught me to look for signs. He was one of the greatest economists in America in the 60s and 70s. He was the guy that predicted that silver prices would go to a thousand bucks and he made a killing. He was consultant for those bankers.”

“I see,” I said, “was he from the Chicago school?”

He slowed the car down and looked directly at me, “You know the Chicago School?”

“He must have been a free trader, was he?” I asked.

“He was a free trader,” he said. “But he hated America.” And added, “When he made his killing he moved here.”

“So, you grew up here,” I asked.

“Yeah, I grew up here. I partied. I surfed and sailed and drank. He was a great man” he said, and his voice trailed off as if the memory of his father flooded him with sentiment. “He hated America,” and added again, “why wouldn’t he. How can you love a country that took his only son to Vietnam?”

I fell silent. We drove the rest of the trip without a word. Finally, when we arrived at my destination, I paid him and was about to leave when he got out of the car and walked toward me and asked, “What’s your name?”

I looked closely into his eyes which seemed to have softened under the shade of the guava tree. “Ram” I said.

He pointed to my face, broke out into a brief smile, and said, “You are a typical Indian.” and he nodded his head, “a typical Indian. You studied everything. I know people like you.”