Often times it proves futile to plan more than a few days in advance in rural Costa Rica, but my Tico grandfather struck me as the kind of man who would keep a promise albeit a week away. So, one Saturday I suggested that the next weekend we go fishing down by the Candelaria River, a river I had once before visited in summer when it was very shallow. Delfín Cascante thought for quite a while about the prospect, gazing off into the mountainside, considering his tasks for the coming week, the gathering of worms that would be necessary, and the dull ache in his right knee that had bothered him for years.
“Bueno…me imagino, pienso que sí, ir al rio pa pescar un ratico, hace un tiempillo que no voy al río pa sacar pejes.” He said. A soft contentment filled my midsection as he accepted my offer. I was already enjoying the future that would come to pass.
That week floated by on a hefty breeze like some weeks do and when Friday came around I found myself choosing a pick-up soccer game over the fishing trip for the next day, but only after making sure that Delfín was pura vida with pushing the trip to Sunday.
“Bueno….mejor porque Domingo, si, Domingo es un día cuando, la verdad es que, Domingo casi no se hace nada. Entonces…en vez de ir hoy nos vamos mañana.” Delfín is one of the happiest men in the whole town. He’s a deeply faithful man who is chalk full of sayings, aphorisms, and solid moral advice. I allowed myself to giggle over the projections my mind was creating for the next day, imagining Delfín dropping a time-tested story here, a jewel of mountain knowledge there, and then a powerful moment of silence shortly thereafter.
Sunday morning I woke up at 4am to the sound of rain on the tin roof. As I fell back to sleep I felt it wouldn’t be raining when I woke up two hours late – and indeed it wasn’t.
Sitting in the kitchen, the sideways morning light was coming through the boards of the wall, the smoke from the fire lightly filling the room. My host mother, Mariela, put a mountain of rice, a fistful of beans, a hard-boiled egg, and Lord-knows how many tablespoons of melted butter in the center of a big banana leaf, expertly folded the sides up and tied it closed with a thin strip taken from the same leaf. She filled a liter bottle with water, squeezed in some lime juice, dumped in some refined sugar and told me that forgetting my lunch was not an option. “Don’t leave it on the table or something, or you’ll be upset.”
“May God be with you.” She said as we headed out at 6:40am on a beautiful and crisp Sunday morning. “Igualmente.” Delfín and I both responded in unison. Despite our different ages we both felt like kids escaping the house, anticipating a day of adventure, surprise, sun, wind, rain, danger, animals, snakes, birds, creeks and of course the river.
We walked briskly past the first neighbors who were milking their cow.
“Off to the river, eh?” Jesus Astua, father of three asked.
“Si, si. Para pescar un ratito.” Delfín responded. Smiles and light laughter were exchanged. I could tell Delfín was doing something out of the ordinary and I only now fully appreciate his companionship.
We passed many more neighbors, a few walked with us along the way then drifted off on paths that transverse the hillsides, destined for distant swaths of land where their cows grazed. But we let gravity carry us down, down, down to the valley’s bottom.
Finally we crossed a creek and were plunged into the rain forest, leaving behind the cow pastures and corrals. Delfín’s head and eyes were shooting here and there, searching for something, something specific and very important, it seemed. I searched as well for this mystery necessity. An abrupt stop and he pulled out his machete, mumbling about trees and usefulness and flexibility. I stayed quiet as we continued downward, following his deft footsteps. His rubber boots hopped from spot to spot with utter stability – easily the most mobile 73-year-old I’ve ever known. He drifted down the path with as much ease as I, all the while looking for…AHA! He must be looking for fishing poles, I thought. Shortly thereafter all of his previous statements had new meanings. Palos didn’t mean trees this time so much as “poles”, of course! He cut down two small 6-foot saplings, stripped them of their little branches and we continued on down the mountainside.
Joking a lot and talking about everything, we also enjoyed wonderful silences filled with birds swooping and chirping, cicadas buzzing and the sound of boots plodding along.
Then came the familiar sound of life itself, water running quickly through the forest. We cut off the main trail and expertly descended (well, Delfín did, not me so much) down a hidden one. Then it opened up before my eyes: a lagoon in the forest, direct light barley skimming the surface so early in the morning, and the mystical sound of a bubbling stream. I was filled with joy.
We set down our packs and drank some sugar liquid, which tasted like liquid flowers, and I aided Delfín in the precise and traditional wrapping of the poles with fishing line.
“So, are you going to want to fish or just watch me?” He asked sincerely.
“Oh, I’ll fish for sure!” I responded, realizing that I had been in a sort of trance, staring in awe at the creek like it was the first one I had ever seen. My amazement couldn’t be contained. The place was a full ninety minutes walk from the closest house and running into someone else out there was almost an impossibility. But I pretended that I was not astonished and Delfín gave me thirty or so skinny earthworms.
As I put a worm on the hook he said, “Buenno, I thought I was going to have to teach you to put the bait on, but no, you got it down no problem, usted se la juega.” I smiled a Mason smile and we both had a good chuckle about the difference between “gringos tontos” and “gringos Cuerpo de Paz.”
While I was preparing to find a good spot I heard: “Buennnno! Jueeepuchis…!” Delfín had already caught a fish! “Bueeeeno….” He said as he put the fish in a plastic bag hanging from his hip. I took off my shoes and crossed the river, and little did I know the next five hours would be passed shoeless, hopping from rock to rock, sinking in sand and mud, while Delfín trucked about in his shin-high rubber boots, which he emptied periodically. A few hours were passed heading downstream catching sardines and small fish until we reached the river.
The clear creek water effortlessly mixed with the brown river, running along side until it was all one current. The river was about fifty meters across and five meters deep in the middle. We fished the dyed water and took out a few more fish, then moved down river a touch. A small crossing took us by surprise and the creek surged up to our waists.
“Bueeeeno…” We both said, the saying quickly becoming the most frequent phrase of the adventure. I would translate this particular inflection of the word to mean: “Well would ya look at that….”
By this point Delfín and I had adopted our own rhythms, each fishing his own river, walking ahead or behind, staying here or going there. A periodic call of “bueeeeno…” would get the other’s attention and spawn a sincere smile on both of our faces. Things were going well.
At one point I found myself walking on a fallen tree parallel to the river’s edge and I spotted a smooth movement amongst the vines beside me. A beautiful 6-foot sabanera was slithering along minding her own business. Yellow-bellied and non-venomous, I stopped for a look. I called Delfín over, both of us balancing on the log to get a good look. He mentioned that he would usually kill it with his machete because they are known to bite cows on the hooves. But that day he felt my aversion and we let him slither away.
About 1pm we started catching fish after fish, each of which Delfín could identify and I could not. Only barbudos (from Spanish barba for beard) I realized was the name for catfish. Our biggest fish was no more than a foot long but each of us caught about twenty, as well as many sardines as the day started to cloud over.
We talked about the coming rain as a drunk talks about the end of the night, we knew it was coming but we just kept on going. Our luck was on high. The bait was never in the water for more than a minute or two before a fish came flying out, bending our well-chosen poles!
“Bueeeeno!” Delfín called, and as I looked over I too got a bite! “Bueeeno…!” I said. We laughed every time. I didn’t know the expression in Spanish at the time but I knew we were both thinking: “this just never gets old!” My leaf full of worms came to an end and Delfín still had a few left, so I started looking for camarones (shrimp/crayfish). God smiled and I caught my first ever crayfish in Costa Rica. Shortly thereafter we used four dismembered pieces of that crayfish to catch four more fish!!! Neither of us could believe it. And just like that, as the last fish was pulled off the hook the first drops of rain hit our faces.
We laughed about how wet we were going to be as we gathered our things and then silently plodded up the mountainside. It wasn’t easy for either of us but then again neither of us is a stranger to hard work and long hikes, especially Delfín. We hiked through muddy cow pastures, pits of mud and manure, which was a tremendous bitch. But true to our luck that day, we got home by 3pm in time for coffee and ate our fresh catch for dinner that night.
The family was a little averse (I don’t really know why, history, I guess) to my decision to take some of my catch over to our neighbors but I knew it was something I felt compelled to do. Maybe Africa was telling me to do so. The universe shines on us every once in a while and there’s just no reason not to share the light.
Our poles are still hidden down on the river’s edge, waiting for the next trip.
