I just got back from a vacation to Costa Rica, and this story is about getting there.

The airline wouldn’t accept my passport because it had been through the wash.  Luckily, I’m a dual citizen - American and British - and have a British passport.  But going home to get it meant catching a later flight.

My friends took Continental to San Jose and a charter plane from San Jose to Mal Pais.  When I landed in San Jose, I discovered that there were no flights to Mal Pais.  I had two options: stay in a hotel, fly out in the morning, and risk missing another day of vacation, or find a way to travel overnight.

Shamefully, I don’t speak Spanish.  I talked to a cab driver, and he put his English-speaking friend on the phone to negotiate.  For $60, he would drive me two hours to a ferry that would then take me another two hours to Paquera, and then I could get another cab to take me another two hours to Mal Pais.  My driver, who’s name was pronounced “Hoovenhile,” and I talked in broken English and Spanish about his wife, two daughters, and how Mal Pais is where you go to “boom the chicas.”

As it turned out, the ferry didn’t leave until 5am.  It was an industrial neighborhood with nothing but barrels, scrap metal, and stray cats.  So I slept on a bench, looking up at the stars.  In the morning, I explained to the confused ferry operator that I wasn’t transporting a car or truck, and he let me aboard for $2.  On the other side, a taxi driver named Chocolate led me to three different hotels of the same name before I finally found my friends.  I had been traveling from 5pm to 9am, for a total of 16 hours.

I only write about this because I had no idea I was capable of any of it.  I live my life in front of computer screens and video monitors, eating order-in sushi and taking bubble baths.  There’s an adventurer in all of us.