I feel the need, planted in me...

Part of the time I was in Costa Rica we stayed at a beach resort. I was there with seven other teenagers and my high school Spanish teacher. ‘Resort’ may have been a slight hyperbole. It was a little house with some open walls that was awesome and owned by an older couple and there were monkeys in the yard. In fairness it was a resort compared to where we had just come from. Here is the resort:



It was very close to the beach, but you had to walk through a short sort of jungle-like stretch of land to get there. There were rather large burrow holes and a swamp among other obstacles. I’m pretty sure the holes were made by snakes. If I was alone I did not leisurely walk down to the sandy paradise. Instead I tried to run as fast as I could and leap over each hole, intending to leave a generous space between me and possible snake. There also might have been either alligators or piranhas in the swamp area, but happily there was a log so I didn’t have to wade through it. Not that a bouncy log that could snap at any moment and dump me into a murky bog was very reassuring, but I just tried to dart across like an agile jungle-dwelling animal that’s not normally on an alligator’s menu. I never saw a snake, alligator, or piranha, but that was probably because I never looked back and I was quick. My desire to get to the beach was greater than my fear of bitey animals.
These are my hands sticking out of a wave at the beach:



Freaking spectacular. It was practically private – I never saw anyone besides our group there in that whole week. Everything at the beach was turned up: brightness, wave height and consistency, and heat. It was…sizzly. The first day I laid out on the beach I burned in under 10 minutes despite slathering on SPF 45. After that I developed a glorious protective red crust. I had a white handprint etched into the blisters because I had rested a palm on my thigh while reading. Someone unfortunately has a picture of this. It hurt to put clothes on, but it didn’t really matter. We just ran around in hot swimsuits from the ’90s all day anyway. Like this:



One day the boys and I decided to try and maim ourselves. Nick and Eric were pretty cool, and I was 15. So. This predisposed us to want to do something that would result in a lot of bruises and rocks in our suits. (Not a good swimsuit look. I mean I need help in the top and everything, but rocks are not exactly the appropriate texture). At a certain point each day the tide on that beach did something different for about a half hour. Note how in the picture of me in a wave above, the wave happens sort of on top of a bunch of deep water already. Not so in the waves I'm about to describe. These waves would rise up to about 5 or 6 feet tall seemingly out of nowhere and smash onto the beach and flatten out. It looked like someone was kneading the ocean like dough. They’d pull up a wave mixed with rocks out of the sand and squish it down again. One minute there was a pebbly beach, and the next there was a wall of wave waiting to crush you. I’ve never seen anything so cool in my life.

Our brilliant idea of a fun time was to wait for the wave wall to accumulate and then sprint and dive headfirst into it. Ha! It was so dangerous. Sometimes the rocks were the size of our fists and we would leap in and cover our heads. It was what I bet being in a salad spinner would feel like. With a lot of frothy dressing. And dense croutons that could kill you. It was a complete rush: lack of control for about 15 seconds of moderate to severe fear for our lives. Then the wave would crash down and suck itself back into the ocean leaving us contorted and gasping for air on the beach. We’d scramble up before the next one enveloped us and the next idiot would dive in. I’m sure I flashed people several times because I was more concerned about little necessities like breathing and avoiding head injuries than keeping a swimsuit on. We really had no idea which way was up while inside the wave. There was no way to prepare for a glamorous landing; we were probably lucky no one broke their neck. Sometimes our faces would be smashed into the sand/rock mixture. Sometimes our legs would be at inappropriate angles or our arms would be lying limply at our sides. Rocks in swimsuits look funnier than sand. Have I stressed that enough? Afterward we felt fittingly like we’d been pelted with rocks for a half hour and tossed onto the ground repeatedly while being denied oxygen. We didn’t even care. I have never laughed harder while running toward imminent doom.