Three weeks passed faster than I expected.
The work was practical, unglamorous, and oddly satisfying. Patching ceilings. Sanding countertops. Attempting to fix water pressure –a task I approached with confidence earned the hard way, from installing pipes on a remote farm where failure meant more buckets and patience. Some repairs worked. Some didn’t. All of them taught me something.
One day, we repaired a neighbor’s new home.
Not just us… everyone. Villagers showed up with tools, advice, opinions, and food. It wasn’t scheduled. It wasn’t transactional. It was just what people did. A quiet reminder that community doesn’t always announce itself sometimes it just arrives.
Our routine was simple: breakfast, work, lunch. After that, the day belonged to me.
I used it well.
I learned the island by bus, letting routes take me where they wanted. Beaches first long stretches of sand, arid land meeting ocean without ceremony. Then movie theatres, because some habits don’t disappear just because you cross an ocean. I watched a few films, grateful for the dark, the big screen, the familiar ritual.
On weekends, I went farther. Rocky mountains rose suddenly from dry earth, their colors shifting with the light. The island felt compact yet varied –desert and coast and stone packed tightly together. Every direction offered a different texture.
It felt good to help someone and still have space to explore. To live not like a visitor passing through, but like someone temporarily woven into daily life.
One afternoon, walking alone, I thought about Golfito.
About Dakka, pulling at the leash. About the old man I used to pass each morning, exercising before the heat took over. One day he’d stopped me and said, gently, that I looked sad. I hadn’t argued with him. He was right.
Here, no one said that to me.
Maybe they didn’t know me well enough. Or maybe something had shifted in the way I carried myself less weight in my shoulders, less absence in my eyes.
I don’t know.
But as I stood on a bus platform, island wind moving past me, I hoped I no longer wore that same face.
And if I did, at least now I knew it wasn’t permanent.