What happens when 2 Canadians encounter wildfire on vacation
“Why go to Arizona for March Break when we can only pay $50 more for flights to Costa Rica?” I asked, well, informed Mark. In my determination to check another country off my list, I’d spent more hours searching the internet than I had sleeping.
“I’m in!” he responded, with his usual eagerness for holiday adventures.
…
“Why does it smell like someone’s making Guiness World Record sized smores?” I asked from the spot in the infinity pool where I’d claimed squatter’s rights. It was our first full day at our mountainside Airbnb near Playa Potrero. We’d checked groceries off our To Do list and now the 35-degree weather was eating away at any other motivation that had managed to tag along on this vacation. Even our novels were taking a nap.
“Check out the ashes everywhere,” commented Mark, sipping on his Costa Rican rum. Soot floated like lazy, mini-magic carpets onto the railings, tiled porch floor, and the surface of the pool water. I reached over and wiped a dark spot from his bare shoulder.
Green macaws zipped from branch to branch of nearby Calabash trees. Hummingbirds plunged their teeny beaks into bougainvillea buds. In the fields below us, cattle lazed in any shade they could find.
I had noticed all of these things. And yet it was only Mark’s mention that made me aware that ash was falling from the sky, dusting every surface. Including us.
We ate dinner and dipped in and out of the pool. Smelling fire. Wiping away grimy grey blotches.
We watched a dirt-encrusted Ford pull up to the shipping container of a unit a couple hundred feet from ours. Smelling fire. Wiping away grimy grey blotches.
“What are they doing?” I wanted to know why the couple, our new neighbours, had sprinted from their vehicle to the rental’s rooftop patio. Dragging the patio furniture to the edge they climbed on top of it and stared beyond us. Up the hill. Just past the shell of a mansion being built that we’d wandered through earlier in the day.
“You can see it!” the visitor shouted, in English. “You can see it from here!”
“See what? What are they looking at?” We both wanted to know. Smelling fire. Wiping away grimy grey blotches. We followed their gaze, our eyes sweeping up the hillside.
“Holy shit!” pronounced Mark.
Flames were rocketing up toward the barely visible moon, licking away the dusk’s darkness.
Find out more about our fire evacuation experience in Costa Rica in Part 2