Two summers ago, my family took a trip to Liberia, Costa Rica. It was supposed to be a bonding experience, something we could fondly look back on after my siblings and I went off to college and our parents went back to their office jobs.
If you were to ask my dad what his favorite part of our trip was, he would probably say spending time with the family. My brother would say it was renting ATVs or going zip-lining. Mine? I’d have to go with the endless hours of reading I enjoyed as we drove our rental van around the country, stopping at murky beaches and tropical fruit stands.
Apparently our rental van was not designed for off-road adventures.
Sure, I loved the rest of the trip, too; don’t get me wrong. It’s just that there’s nothing quite like experiencing a new place as you devour a new book. You can faintly see palm trees growing on the streets of New York when you read The Catcher in the Rye in Hawaii. You imagine which part of the Louvre Hermione would most want to see when you read Harry Potter in Paris. And don’t even get me started on reading Game of Thrones on a plane. The quiet businessman sitting next to you could be only a second away from playing The Rains of Castamere through his iPhone speakers and sending the Lannisters’ regards to you.
A book (or five) is always the best traveling companion–no offense to my family. You’ll look forward to long lines and layovers in their company, you don’t have to buy them food or train tickets and they always come in handy when there’s an unfamiliar bug to shoo away.
Speaking of bugs, back to Costa Rica. During a beach visit, my dad and stepmom decided, much to my deep-water-fearing chagrin, that it would be a great adventure to take up a local boatman’s offer to sail my family into the ocean for a snorkeling adventure. My father, stepmother, teenaged brother and stepbrothers, as well as my aunt and uncle and their two sons, loaded onto the cramped boat and off we sailed.
What a peaceful, sunny day — what could possibly go wrong?
I had been reading Ned Vizzini’s It’s Kind Of A Funny Story, but since I’d borrowed it from the library at home, I thought it wise to leave the book in a ziplock bag in my backpack during this little ocean escapade. Now at this point, I was pretty invested in the plot–Would Craig ever leave the mental hospital? Which girl will he end up with?–and I was loath to take a break from my reading. However,upon assurance that I could finish it later, I hopped onto that boat with the rest of them.
The voyage began with smooth sailing, but it wasn’t long til “El Capitan,” as he insisted we call him, stalled the boat to allow the lanky man accompanying him to dive off with a knife in his mouth.
“He’s looking for mussels,” El Capitán assured us with a cheeky grin. I returned a wavering smile.
Not long after the second-in-command deserted, I realized there was a problem that I had not inflated in my imagination: a storm was looming in the distance.
Despite El Capitán’s assurances of “It won’t come close,” the storm did indeed overtake us. The boat was rolling on the rolicking waves, and the ride was getting choppier by the second.
El Capitán didn’t believe in giving up and turning back toward land.
“I’m stuck on a shambly boat, slowly filling up with rainwater and panic, in the middle of foreign waters,” I thought. “Even if I do survive this, the librarian will kill me for the inevitable water damage to her book.”
Thankfully, El Capitán pulled through and steered us to a marina where we took shelter until the storm passed. My novel escaped unscathed, and the book and I both survived long enough for me to find out (spoiler alert!) that it ends happily ever after.
We watched the storm fade away as we ate dinner at the marina.