Day 15

Since I was up before breakfast was served, me, my dry mouth, and my rumbling stomach went to the beach to watch the waves and the sand crabs. Just generally sit and relax with the end of this trip slowly approaching.
After breakfast it was another 1.5 hours by boat to make it back to that sandy strip where a bus was waiting to take us to San José. We stopped for lunch along the way, were Tonnie was surprised about her appetite being so big (I helped her to her second cocktail the night before and that was already enough to do the trick for her), so the two of us really had a go at the buffet.
Once we made it back to San José, Dirk gave us one final guided tour through the city center. Very interesting how a city may evolve without formal planning (i.e. the railway is literally in the middle of the street, so that the train is just as stuck in traffic as the rest of the vehicles). In addition to learning about the cultural and historical development of the city, country, and region, this is also where we experienced macho-culture in daily life. The ‘pretty girls’ get constant (and obvious) attention from the men. I’m fairly certain it does not bother them (or they surely would have dressed differently), but I wonder whether the guys responsible for the stares and comments do not care or whether they just don’t realize that every stare or comment to these women is also an implicit, but very public insult to the women next to them who may be smart, funny, and/or kind (i.e. generally have a great personality), but just possesses less obvious beauty. It must be hard for the latter ones to grow up and live in such an environment.
Funny thing was that during our city tour, we say or ‘own’ bus, with Chavo in it, waiting in front of a traffic light. We knew that Chavo would bring us to the airport that night and leave on another trip with Dirk the next day, so I figured that the poor guy had two days off when we were in Tortuguero, but apparently he had to work during that time as well.
In the evening we had a lovely final group dinner. As assistant guide I had taken it upon me to coordinate a thank you card and tips for Dirk. One of our group members said the day before that she had a card we could use, but it wasn’t until after lunch this day that I discovered it was a van harte beterschap (get well) card. As I was also trusted with the thank you speech on behalf of the group, I was challenged to find a way to work a card like that into the speech. I thought it was too easy to just stick with ‘beterschap with your next group’ – also because Dirk had been quite adamant that we were the best group ever and we all realized that better was a bit unrealistic with the bar that we raised. So after some serious thinking (really, this one wasn’t easy), I spun it to never trying to be perfect, as perfection makes improvement impossible and that we wished him lot of improvement (beterschap) for the rest of his career/life. I know it’s a stretch, but Dirk indicated that this was definitely the first ever ‘beterschap’ card he got for this purpose and with such a philosophical story. I am however curious what others can come up with, so if you are up for a challenge, please feel free to provide your suggestion on how you would have spun this in the comment section.