Costa Clems

 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Genesis 3:17-19

When I was the Family Ministry Director for Mars Hill Church in Ballard we got send a bunch of CD’s that contained songs for kids that formed a catechism by Dana Dirksen. We never used them in the church, but our family listened to them all the time. Some of them were funny, some were not very good, and some were awesome. One that constantly comes back into my mind is from the question “How Did God Punish Adam’s Disobedience?”

The song starts out with a base vocal repeating “thorns, and thistles and thorns, and thistles and thorns, and thistles – cursed is the ground; thorns and thistles and thorns and thistles and thorns and thistles – all the days of your life.” We always chuckled at the kids on the track repeating this line.

One thing I’m learning about everyday life in Costa Rica is that seemingly everything here is trying to kill me, bite me, injure me, or in general force the sweat from my brow. We are repeating to ourselves over and over, when we seem to be stymied by just the general hardness of life here, “everything is hard here, nothing happens quickly or easily.” That’s probably not a revelation to even most of the world and through most of human existence, but I come from a country where everything is expected and designed to be quick and easy, and we get enraged and frustrated and indignant whenever things don’t go our way, right away.

“Everything is hard here, nothing happens quickly or easily”

Shortly after I left (was laid off from) Mars Hill we moved to Wenatchee, WA. I remember coming from Ballard, a neighborhood of north Seattle, and then living in Wenatchee—it would drive me nuts when I went to Safeway because even though there were literally 500,000 less people in Wenatchee than in Seattle it took five times longer to get through the checkout lines. The person in front of me would talk to the checker about their cousin’s new truck, the puppies that their neighbor’s dog had, and whether or not the apricots were going to be a good harvest—all the while writing out a check for $12.46 for what seemed to be their first time operating the checkbook and pen.

Funny how we don’t expect things to go wrong, we don’t expect them to be difficult. When we flip a switch in our house we expect the light to turn on, not explode. When we plug in a cord we expect power to run smoothly through the cord not jolt through our arm while the cord melts in a [small] electrical fire, when we turn the key in the car we expect that the car will start right up.

But expectations don’t equal reality—that is what we are trying to engineer in our culture, but it’s not the reality of a world that is groaning under the curse, the earth that is literally fighting against us by the sweat of our brow, daring us to try and make it through another day. And here, in the jungle of Sarapiqui Costa Rica I’m much more in touch with the curse of the garden: thorns and thistles all the days of our life.

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The passenger seat detached from our car, Vaya.

The bolts just sheared off because of the age of the car (rust…29 years of holding people in it) and the difficulty of the “roads” and the seat just came out.

We had to stick it in the trunk of the car and Will rode “cowboy style” in the back of the car in an unsecured seat like he was going to tame the mechanical bull at a cowboy bar.

At this point with Vaya the 4-wheel drive didn’t work, the power steering didn’t work no matter how much fluid we added, the rear windows didn’t work let alone the radio, and in general the car was seeing its final days. Which is kinda what you expect from the super commonly seen 1997 Hyundai Galloper. I mean, I don’t know if anything still worked in that car but the odometer said Vaya had seen 930,000 kilometers, and I believe it. And, no, I’m not going to do the math for you; you can just ask Siri or ChatGPT to convert it for you.

So we decided to get a new [used] car. And after some searching online I decided on the equally common Kia Bongo III. She’s blue (the best color), seats 6, manual, 4X4, turbo diesel, and has a nice outdoor bed and frame. Everything we needed on the farm and the “roads” of Costa Rica. (Don’t worry about it, your rental car will do fine if you come and visit—the rocky road leading to our driveway will be surprisingly bouncy but just rent something with 4×4 and you’ll have no worries.)

So come along with me on our interesting roadtrip…

Day 1 – Driving to the dealership – 91 miles as the crow flies… but over volcanoes on a winding road we’re actually looking at 191 miles… which Waze says will take us 6 hours… (more math… but I’ll do this one for you: average speed of 31mph). But our Galloper with Will riding cowboy in the back can’t do 30 miles an hour uphill, especially in a rainstorm and inside of a cloud. Did I mention the driver’s side windshield wiper doesn’t work and neither does the defrost fan so we have to keep the windows open and we’re getting pelted with rain…?

thorns and thistles

Took us from 6am till 3:40pm to get there (more math… 9.5 hours!)

We go to the dealership and they tell us, ‘Yes, we still have the Bongo… but it’s not here, it’s at the mechanic because it made a vibration at 60-80kmph so they removed the 4×4 drive bar to have it machined. But you can still test drive it.’ We get a ride to the mechanic where it’s parked, the 4×4 bar is removed but the car still runs in 2 wheel drive and it drives great—we love it. So we decide to check in to the Airbnb we had booked, hit the beach, and arrange to pick up the car the next day. Cake.

Day 2 – Get up and hit the beach, the dealership calls and says we can come by around noon. We swim, we read, we play in the sand, we get lunch, and we roll into the dealership. There she is, the Bongo. ‘Bad news,’ they say, ‘the part is still being worked on and it’s in Quepos (1 hr drive north) but if you’re heading home that way, you can take the Bongo up there and get the work done.’ No problem, I book a hotel a little further north in Jaco and we think we’ll drive the Bongo up, get the work done, get to Jaco to break up the drive and smooth sailing from there.

thorns and thistles, cursed is the ground

We get to Quepos around 1:15, they tell us by 2pm they should know when it’s going to be done. 2pm comes and goes. Around 3pm we get a text – bad news, the part won’t be ready until 1pm the next day. So that means we can’t go to Jaco… Fortunately the dealership is being very helpful and they offer to reimburse us for a hotel in Quepos since we have to spend the night there now. So we book a little hostel in Quepos, and we take Mae to get her hair cut at a little salon. Mae shows them a picture of what she wants done and the woman says, (in Spanish) ‘Yes, I can do that.. it’s going to take a couple hours though.’ Well, we have time now, but it ends up being 3+ hours… Mae is fried, Jenna is fried, I’m frustrated, so we just go get food and flop down on the sketchy hostel beds.

thorns and thistles

Day 3 – We get up and go to breakfast. Breakfast is awesome. We go to a beach, the beach is awesome—this day is looking up but we are also really missing home (Sarapiqui). We start heading to the mechanic when we get the text – bad news, ‘if you want it done today you’re going to need to go to the place where the guy is machining the part, pick it up and drive it over to another mechanic, and then have that mechanic install it for you. We will pay them directly.’

It’s a little hassle but not that big of a deal, right? But then we get to the shop and though my Spanish is getting pretty good somehow between high school and Duolingo I never really learned the phrase “have you finished machining the 4×4 drive rod for my Kia Bongo yet?” I mean if I need to know where the bathroom is, or a library, or tell this guy that I like the beach, I am basically fluent. But my Spanish is failing me a bit and I’m resorting to charades at this point. I’m kind of acting out scenes from a Brian Regan comedy routine.

Finally we get on the same page and the guy is telling me he needs to be paid before he will give me the part. 50,000 Colones, which is about $100. But he can’t accept a digital payment or card, so if the dealership is going to pay for this then I need to go to the office (where the office is I still have no clue except it wasn’t on site) and get a receipt for proof of payment and bring it back to him. Time is getting away from us–we still have a 6+ hour drive and it’s almost 2pm and you do not want to drive up and down the side of a volcano in Costa Rica in the dark! Finally I ask if I can pay him in cash–he says yes, I pay him cash for the part and the dealership reimburses me via venmo and I drive the part to the mechanic down the road (which we barely found because though we had the address they didn’t have a sign). The guys there have NO IDEA who I am or that I’m coming. No one called ahead, no one gave me a name of who to talk to…

thorns and thistles

I show one of the guys the part, I tell him I’m in a hurry, I ask him if he can install it right away… he can and it takes about 35 minutes. I pay him in cash and the dealership venmo’s me again. It’s 2:45pm when we finally hit the road to home.

We stop for dinner outside of San Jose around 5:30pm. It’s getting dark, traffic is terrible, there’s nothing for it. We are going to either need to find another hotel, or we are going to drive the mountain road in the dark. So we go for it, up and over a volcano in the dark. Boinga the Bongo’s maiden voyage is a dangerous one. (btw her name is a tribute to the Backyardigans, if you didn’t catch that.)

Well, I won’t go on and on about this drive—it could be a whole other post. But I’ll just say this: at one point I’m drenched from sweat, tense as can be driving down what would barely be considered one lane in the U.S. with two way traffic, and fighting with Jenna much of the time—I yell, “Stop yelling ‘POTHOLE’ ’cause it doesn’t help me to have you yell that right before we hit them! Either I see it and can’t do anything about it or I don’t and we hit it!!”

9:30pm We get home safe and sound, 63.5 hours later with the truck.

thorns and thistles

Day 4 – We wake up to go to church… the truck won’t start. It’s dead. (Don’t worry, it was just the battery. 2 days of having to push start it, checking fuses and heating coils, and it was just a 6-year-old battery.) After blocking our neighbor in her parking spot for 12 hours we finally get a new battery all thanks to a friend who went to town to buy it for us…installed it myself today *pat on the back*… which is now day 7….

thorns and thistles, all the days of your life

1 Peter 4:13 – But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

I’m pretty sure Christ never suffered a 7 day adventure buying a new car… but he had his own struggles. I rejoice amidst suffering not because it’s pleasant, but because my joy is not rooted in the circumstance, therefore the circumstance cannot effect my joy.

And so, I look around at this paradise, this paradise that wants to kill me and bite me and sting me and maim me… and I say: bring it on, let’s see what tomorrow holds.