We wind our way through woods and shanty towns, past industrial zones and banana plantations until finally we arrive at the Caribbean coast. There is a mass migratory event that happens on the 23rd December in Costa Rica: cities empty and long lines of laden pickups jam the arterial roads. We have chosen to join them and traverse the country together. For eight hours we drive, inching our way along unlit potholed highways, sandwiched between ancient diesel trucks while Christmas hits rise and fade into radio static. This kind of trip takes its toll. Menna and I argued bitterly about some of my overtaking decisions.

Josh and Meg have come through with the goods though, finding us all a house at the eleventh hour. So it is around midnight that we roll up to our new digs: Casa Mango in Cahuita town. It is a bizarre crooked glass and steel tower, looming four stories high in a clapperboard village where no other buildings venture above two floors. The higher windows enrage the toucans that nest in the facing tree so they periodically launch frenzied attacks on their own reflections. There is a resident sloth too, navigating an arboreal map up in the towering figs; he descends to the ground once a week to deposit a prodigious mound of crap somewhere on the property.

We drive into Puerto Viejo next morning for coffee and last-minute panic buying. It’s a place with some notoriety in these parts. A reggae town where bright coloured paint peels off the driftwood store fronts, where fishermen, hustlers and barefoot surf kids mingle with Tico holidaymakers and stoner ex-pats; where dangerous snare-drum cannonades ricochet out from the beach market and the gridlocked cars on Main Street respond with honky-tonk klaxons; where bank security guards watch the crowds from behind dark glasses, fondling shotguns slung across their chests.

We arrive in town sometime around ten am on Christmas Eve and I guess the festivities must have begun a while ago, for there are already many prone bodies sprawled in doorways and stretched out under the palm trees. More Costa Ricans die with skulls cracked by falling coconuts than from all the crocodile and snake attacks together. This is one piece of wisdom I share with the others as the shopping trip slips into a more sedentary phase where fish tacos feature and cocktails on the beach. And somehow as afternoon surrenders to evening we are still there in town, presents un-wrapped, chatting with the lobster men down behind the fishing boats where the smell of weed is strongest.

The hardships of the road are behind us and we immerse ourselves into the reggae vibe. Christmas week slips past sweetly. Papaya smoothies, hard sun and transistor radio; sweltering nights with mosquito symphonies. The flushed faces of Matilda and Marlowe opening their stockings (‘Father Christmas did find us!’). Volleyball in the pool, a morning surf in Santa hats. We FaceTime our families at home, send WhatsApp messages to far off friends in alternate dimensions. Our playlist is all Lee Scratch Perry and Buju Banton, kids rocking out to the Banana Boat song. Meg cooks turkey and we eat it with chilli sauce and pineapple salsa. Cold Pilsen beers take the edge off the heat. We walk the beaches on Boxing Day, play charades and bake cookies. We are turfed out of our house and find ourselves driving around town knocking on doors in an unfortunately timed rainstorm, looking for accommodation to see in the new year.

“Where you people all from den?” asks the skinny black kid sitting on the bridge. But where we’re from doesn’t really matter now so much as where we’re going. We had been hoping to head on to Bocas Del Toro, an island archipelago across the border in Panama, but the whole country has gone into lockdown and ruined our plans.
“So tell us the news then chico, where’s the fiesta at anyhow?” but he just smiles and shakes his head. He don’t want no gringo white boys at his jam. So instead we come across Hotel Aban, a no-frills basic set of cabinas arranged around a small pool.

We eat lobster on New Year’s Eve, then swim, dance in the shallows, fight off hustlers on the beach, go to a circus show, drink margaritas and mojitos. We play loud games back at the hotel and go for a midnight swim. Time stretches, compresses, and this elasticity propels us into new year. We see 2021 in with something that resembles relief, even as we sprawl under the stars with cicadas whistling and all the dirty luxury of the Caribbean draped around us.

It is the promise of redemption and renewal that New Year brings; the clicking of astronomical gears that will surely return the world to safe kilter. This year will bring some kind of cosmic rebalancing I think, but this becomes an uneasy thought. Those of us who have floated away from the hardships of the pandemic like moths through the jail bars, where will we end up when the wheel of fate turns?

We test out 2021 gingerly: we find a sheltered bay, climb the cliffs, take pictures, get our cars stuck in the sand, eat pizza, have a beach run, make risotto, sleep off last year’s excesses. It all feels suspiciously like it did before. I stand on a rock outcropping at one point and frown out to sea, sun-dazed, spun-out and empty headed, wanting to think of something profound on that first bright day of the year. Then a huge wave surges up out of nowhere and I get soaked through.