If I’m in your inbox, thanks for subscribing! This week is a trip to Costa Rica — featuring sloths, beach read reviews, and a timeshare meeting from hell.
THE WEEKLY WHINE
I can’t decide if I identify as ‘spontaneous’ or not.
The case against: Not having reservations at a restaurant makes me nervous. I can’t buy clothes without cross-referencing at least 5 other stores to see if I can find a cheaper option. (My dad raised me to be a Catholic, my mom raised me to be a Maxxinista – only one of them took.)
The case for: My eBay purchase history, which lately has consisted of vintage movie posters in Japanese and early-aughts magazine covers. And, more recently – my trip to Costa Rica, which was planned approximately 15 days before departure.
Chasing the Central American sun, off I went with my pink suitcase, my tie-dye safari hat, and one of my oldest and best friends, Lucie. Thankfully, Lucie is also unemployed, just in a much more intelligent sense of the word: she just left her job at a hospital and is taking time off before starting med school this summer. I am so lucky she was down to come with me on less than three weeks notice — I think, given my rampant clinical anxiety, her hanging out with me is technically “field observation” for med school.
I don’t generally believe that everything happens for a reason but, waking up to a view of palm trees and pool from my hotel window, I believed it.
THE HIGHLIGHT REEL
We stayed near Jacó, a beach town on the Pacific coast known for its nightlife and surfing. The closest we came to nightlife was when the restaurant we were eating at suddenly began hosting an ‘open mic night’ where people exclusively sang acoustic covers of 80s rock songs.
We took a boat trip to Tortuga Island, which I kept incorrectly referring to as “Hotel Tortuga” – the name of a Mexican restaurant I frequented in college where you could bring your own alcohol that has since been shut down by the Health department. We booked a group tour which is ideal for me, as people watching is my favorite activity and befriending strangers is my special skill.
Our boat ride gave us an amazing view of the crystal-clear water and the extremely realistic tattoos of Mac Miller and Eazy-E on the left leg of the man across from us. The man in question, named ‘Blaise’ or something similar if I remember correctly, was a white guy from Winnipeg, Canada who looked like a SoCal surfer (hot) and was obsessed with Boston because he loved Barstool Sports (decidedly not hot). On the island, we got to snorkel with so many different kinds of fish and also rode something called a ‘‘banana boat” which I fell off of multiple times.
We did another tour to Manuel Antonio National Park which ended up being just us and a lovely guide named Rodrigo. The park has a long hiking trail on which, thanks to Rodrigo’s great telescope, we saw so many monkeys and sloths plus some tropical birds, bats, and snakes. Seeing sloths IRL made me kind of feel bad for them !! Everyone says they’re slow and lazy but we saw them make (relatively) quick work up those trees! It’s time to rewrite the narrative on sloths, girlies.
Of course, sometimes when you’re traveling you have to take risks. Our risk was not ziplining or jet skiing but trusting a man in a small Hyundai to drive us three hours inland and up a mountain and back. Not only did he take us to the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve way up in the mountains and hang out while we did an amazing four-hour hike, he also told us all about local progressive politics, the negative climate effects of the palm oil industry, AND (!!!) how he saw Bruce Springsteen live in Costa Rica in 1987. We were fast friends.
So we did a lot of things but we also did a lot of nothing. We came back every night and watched the sunset — my camera roll is like 70% sunset pictures at this point. We traded books and gave our reviews as we walked laps around the pools. We made peanut butter sandwiches in our room because we were too lazy and cheap to go to any of the restaurants. I downloaded a VPN for the sole purpose of watching the Survivor premiere live. We were in bed reading by 10pm every night, like the married couple way too many hotel employees thought we actually were.
In their defense, we did get a couples massage. But we had to WORK for it! Like my father and his father before him, I followed in the grand Burke tradition of attending a Marriott timeshare meeting to get free vacation perks.
STORYTIME: THE TIMESHARE MEETING FROM HELL
Our salesperson was either named Anthony or Andrew (we have since tried to repress the memory) and instantly things were off to a rocky start. It took me about ten minutes to get the espresso machine to work and when he came out to bring us to the room he made jokes about how he couldn't understand how people could struggle with something as simple as the espresso machine. Strike one.
He then told us we could get the short version of the presentation if we knew we wanted to purchase, to which I responded – “how many people actually pay you thousands of dollars on the spot?” I thought we were all joking around but he turned deadly serious. We got the long version. Strike two.
The best/worst part of this experience was also strike three, when he told us (unprompted) a long story about him and his family going to Orlando and accidentally spending the night in a house that wasn’t their Airbnb??? Like they fully broke into a house thinking it was theirs, slept there, and only realized in the morning it was completely the wrong house. He told us this (I think) to prove that hotels are a better investment than Airbnbs but then he also told us later (again, unprompted) that he illegally sublets his hotel rooms via Airbnb to make a second stream of income. I question his sales tactics.
Eventually, I had to tell Andrew/Anthony and his boss that I simply could not afford to buy a timeshare in Costa Rica at age 24 while Lucie hid in the bathroom. They were not happy with me but we were very happy with our free massage – and that’s what counts.
I will end this much too long recap with a PSA: if you have paid time off or vacation days, use them!!! A friend recently said they couldn’t take their PTO because there was too much going on that only they knew how to do and they couldn’t do that to their team/ boss /company. Look. I wasted plenty of my “unlimited PTO” either not taking it or working during it because I felt like I had to help or that the work wouldn’t happen without me. Let my mistakes serve as a cautionary tale: all that work that “wouldn’t happen without me” is now actively happening without me!
In conclusion – TAKE YOUR PTO and Pura Vida. xoxo
WHINE WITH ME
My beach reads, ranked!
Finlay Donovan is Killing It (Elle Cosimano): A crime romance novelist is overheard explaining the plot of her latest book at Panera and gets offered a lot of money to kill someone’s husband. I loved this one: it was a very original, funny, thrilling send-up of culture’s current True Crime obsession.
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie): My first Agatha Christie! I read this so quickly, thanks in large part to the great pacing and dialogue-heavy writing.
The Heart Principle (Helen Hoang): Lucie brought this one and I’m so glad she did. A very satisfying rom-com with some genuinely compelling/ heart-wrenching family drama mixed in!
I’m So (Not) Over You (Kosoko Jackson): Ok, I may have picked this up this gay rom-com at the bookstore because the author’s bio name-checked Taylor Swift. I think Taylor would approve of this one, a will they/won’t they about an ex-couple reuniting to save face at a wedding.
Love & Other Disasters (Anita Kelly): Really fun premise (queer romantic comedy on the set of a cooking show) with lots of heart, but ultimately didn’t feel too attached to the central romance and got bored. Still fun though!