Once you know that the earth can move and buildings can sway in the wind like leaves in the breeze, it’s like nothing you ever knew to be true really is anymore, or will ever look the same again…

The Break of Dawn

The day of the quake dawned much like any other – a little early for my liking. I pulled back the curtains, heavy eyes squinting in the morning light. The sun was already shining on the swimming pool, shimmering on the clear blue water, and the birds were chattering noisily in the trees above. A lazy iguana was stretched out below; reveling in the potent rays and the monkeys began to howl from deep within the jungle.

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, almost feeling the air, lightly scented with Hibiscus, breathing life into me. It was a morning ritual I had gotten so used to and yet, somehow, could still barely believe was real. This time last year I stared bleakly ahead at the mildewed walls of my dingy, windowless, ground-floor apartment, the perpetual drilling of the round-the-clock construction site grating at my fraying nerves.

No matter how tired I feel today, or the fact that I would rather be splashing around in the surf or lazing a little longer under the comforting covers of my king-sized bed, I smile at my moment of peace and the morning sun that dances on the water just for me.

If I had known that would be the last time I would look out of my balcony while the world was asleep at the glorious morning below, perhaps I would have dwelled there a moment longer, memorizing the intricate details of life from this vantage point that I would never see again.

But I’d overslept and dragging myself out of bed with ten minutes to spare doesn’t even give me the chance to shower, let alone marvel in the wonder of Mother Nature, before I start my working day. I just about manage to splash some cold water on my face and grab a garment from the closet before I hear the swishing sound of Skype as my computer cranks into life.

I throw on my tired, old, fading, floral green dress and scoop my unkempt, sun-bleached hair into an untidy ponytail. I don’t even look in the mirror; my eyes aren’t really open yet and I’ve never liked this dress – I have no desire to see how it hangs unbecomingly on my frame. It has now been officially relegated to wear purely inside the house, upon being informed that I have actually been recognized about town on more than one occasion because of its distinctive pattern.

My original six weeks in Costa Rica have accidentally extended into an undefined period and my wardrobe is failing to keep pace. I’m so bored of my clothes and I have absolutely no use for the thick sweaters and figure-hugging jeans I packed for winter in Buenos Aires. I don’t even bother to scan the room for underwear today, knowing that the clothes I washed yesterday have been forgotten in the machine since last night.

I still marvel every chance that I get at this crazy ride we all call life – its twists and turns, highs and lows. Not so long ago I painted my nails every evening before going bed and applied lipstick and mascara every morning, after blow-drying my hair and going over my lines. I squeezed my tired feet into tight three-inch heels, a suit jacket hugging my waist with the suggestion of cleavage below. I knew full well that a meeting would always go better if they fell in love with me just a little.

Now I don’t even shower before work. I’ve learned from this new timetable of mine that I am not really a morning person. My memory is thick and foggy and my reflexes are weak. I am exceptionally accident-prone. In the last couple of months, I’ve sliced open my foot from a falling bottle of Tabasco that bounced off the kitchen worktop and doused my scalp in 40% DEET bug spray before 6am. Needless to say, I no longer bother with even the most menial tasks first thing in the morning. I’m too scared to put on the coffeemaker for fear of burning the house down or breaking something more important than a toe.

Instead I sit at my desk and sift through the stack of emails that need to be written, problems that have to be solved, and ideas waiting to be nurtured. After an hour and a half of my blurry eyes on the screen I decide it’s time to get me a coffee. It’s safe now; my morning stupor has passed and I successfully load the coffeemaker, yawning as I wait for the precious black liquid to drip down into the jug. I just about have time to run up the mountain of stairs to the top floor and set down my coffee cup as a deep, unearthly groan begins to rumble from below and the ground starts to move beneath my feet.

In the Eye of the Storm

With the first shake, I don’t immediately register the magnitude of what is happening. The desk starts to jump up and down and I leap out of my chair to see the solid oak bed ricocheting towards me. The building is shuddering uncontrollably and, as I throw myself under my desk, pieces of ceiling start to fall.

The house is convulsing violently. I cover my ears at the horrifying smashing of breaking glass and the terrifying moaning of the land. In a fleeting second, I realize that this isn’t just another of those quirks and bumps and oddities that make up life in Central America – like cattle in the road or a monkey on the phone line – we’re having an earthquake and it’s totally out of my control. Oh my God, we’re having an earthquake and I have absolutely no idea what to do.

I flinch as the chair legs scrape sickeningly across the ceramic tiles and the desk I’m crouched underneath jolts up and down with increasing vigour. The coffee cup I had been drinking out of moments before and the microphone I’d been speaking into crash to the floor beside me. The wardrobe bursts open and I watch as my clothes and jewellery and make-up are shaken off of the shelves and the doors swing open and shut.

I keep waiting for it to end but the angry earth unleashes more of its fury and the jagged convulsions grow stronger. My heart is thumping so hard in my chest I can feel it banging against my ribcage and beating deafeningly in my ears. I think I’m crying but I can’t be sure – between the ceaseless pounding of my heart and the inability of my brain to process what’s going on around me, everything blurs into confusion.

The building and its contents have suddenly come to life like something out of Alice in Wonderland and I feel like I’m in the waking moments of a dream; unable to distinguish fact from fiction. Maybe this day never really started at all and I’m still somewhere in the limbo between sleeping and waking; the dying embers of the night and the bright light of morning.

The next few moments play out in slow motion, as my mind captures every terrifying microsecond, like the shutter of a camera, frame after frame. Smash… the mirror shatters into a thousand pieces, thud… my book of Italian verbs falls to the ground, slam… the wardrobe door closes again, thump… my panicked heart beats in my ears. I watch incredulously as everything that’s supposed to be solid and stable leaps up and down before my eyes and my version of life as I know it is gone forever.

Panic Rises Inside

The drywall above my head is starting to fracture and the dust in the air fills my throat. The foundation below me is creaking and the air-conditioning unit above the bed detaches from its position on the wall, suspended in mid-air by its cables. I know how to protect myself in the toughest of situations and scariest of cities but suddenly I feel very small.

My whole body is trembling uncontrollably and a creeping coldness seeps into my veins and wraps its way around my throat. I struggle to breathe and it dawns on me that I might die in this earthquake in Costa Rica. The panic rises inside. I’ve never felt this level of fear before; never shaken so violently that my teeth chattered noisily together and my hands didn’t feel like my own.

The concrete beneath me is jolting with such force that my head grazes the top of the desk. It’s only then that I realise the solid support I am huddled under is actually made out of glass – if the cheaply-built structure collapses to the ground, I’ll be sliced by its shards as they fall on me like rain.

“Get out of the building! Get the f*ck out! Salganse del edificio, get out, get out!” The unmistakable drawl of Jerry Pilsen, my alcoholic neighbor, is suddenly commanding and urgent as he repeats the words over and over; his usually shaking voice and slurring words at once unwavering and authoritative.

“Everybody Out! Get out!” By about the fifth time of hearing this I realise he’s right and I don’t want to be buried under a pile of rubble. My eyes dart towards the door where the wall above the frame is starting to split – if I’m going to do this I’d better do it fast. I decide at last to make a run for it. Pumped full of adrenaline I spring out from under the desk and propel myself towards the stairs that are swaying from side to side, as if suspended in the air.

As I leap down them in threes I feel like I’m drunk, bouncing off of the walls on either side as they move left and right while I try to go straight. As I reach the middle floor I cover my head as the mirror in the second bathroom explodes off the wall.

Finally the front door comes into sight and I fiddle with the handle for a few seconds as the plates in the kitchen cupboard rattle up and down. As I leave the shuddering building and the earth starts to settle, I am overcome with emotion and throw myself into Jerry’s arms as the tears begin to flood down my cheeks.

It doesn’t matter that he stinks of beer at 8.30 in the morning or that the few words we had ever exchanged were forgotten each new time we met. I don’t care that he has no idea who I am or that I’d seen him urinate in public on more than one occasion and his bloodshot eyes never once held my gaze. All that matters right now is that we’re in this together and the comforting embrace of another human reassures me I am not alone.

It’s a Good Day to Die Today

Jerry was the reason I was safely out of my building and today, at this moment at least, he is lucid; the earthquake has shaken him into sobriety and his arms around me offer some comfort. “It’s OK” he says soothingly, “it’s over now. I’m from California, I grew up with earthquakes and I aint never felt anything as big as that.” He laughs the deep belly laugh that usually accompanies one of his jokes.

Ali comes running towards the pool and we hug each other tightly, relieved to be alive. She was on her own as well in her corner unit that seemed a little more robust than mine. She speaks at an accelerated pace about how the second she felt the house shaking she had pretty much thrown herself down the moving stairwell flight by flight to get outside in under a second and watch the rest from the road. “I just thought – get the hell out, I gotta get the hell out!”

I don’t really know why my reaction was to throw myself under my desk when it was so obvious to everyone else that leaving the building was the most important thing. I suppose we never know how we will act when faced with a situation we’ve never had to deal with before. Like encountering death for the first time, when you move through the motions of the aftermath in a surreal dream-like state, not quite sure what to do next.

My thoughts turn to Luca and where he was, and I needed to find out if he was OK. “I’ll be right back I promise” I say leaving Ali with Jerry for a moment as they continue to chatter excitedly about what had just happened, still running on pure adrenaline. I race out into the road, my wild uncombed hair ruffling in the breeze and skimpy green dress rising dangerously up my legs – I still haven’t had the chance to put any underwear on.

As I see him coming up the hill towards me my tears begin to fall uncontrollably; the magnitude of what has happened sinking in at last. He had been on the beach out in the open and was considerably less shaken than me, but he spoke of seeing the Diria, Tamarinado’s largest hotel complex, swaying like a flag in the wind and the terrified people running outside screaming.

I had promised Ali I wouldn’t leave her for long so we go back to my house, which is still standing despite the dust and broken glass. I am about to go inside and assess the damage, look for my passport and change my clothes when all of a sudden the word “Tsunami” starts to circulate, igniting like wildfire on the wind.

Suddenly what I’m wearing (or not wearing) and the few items of value I have are of no consequence at all when a killer wave could pound its way in at any minute, decimating the village and pulling us all to a watery end. The panic about the complex starts to alight once more.

Everyone is rushing around trying to get to their cars to take them to higher ground. Luca runs for his motorbike and Ali looks for her keys as Jerry hops on to his bicycle, somewhat unstable as he starts to wobble his way out of the grounds. “It’s a fucking Tsunami, this is it! It’s 20 years over-due”. His comforting composure has suddenly evaporated as his gaze fixes upon me for the first time and I notice that his eyes are hazel – “We’re all gonna die today” he slurs, clearly he’s knocked back a few Pilsen by now “It’s a good day to die today.” The cold fear rises in me again – we have to get to the Mirador now.

… Life is spiralling out of my control. I can see the people around me as they hurry to get up high; I can hear what they are saying and register the panic and yet somehow it isn’t real. I feel like I’m detached from the situation, the same way I felt on the night of my mother’s stroke. Suddenly I’m sixteen years old again and waking to the sound of screaming – the same chilling impotence floods through me – there’s nothing I can do to stop this.

Jerry Pilsen just said that we’re all going to die and the terror in his eyes was haunting. “A bigger one’s coming“, he said, “get ready a bigger one’s coming“. I want to cry; I feel dizzy and my legs are weak as I climb onto the back of Luca’s motorbike.

Nothing makes sense anymore. I’ve just seen the impossible happen and I don’t trust in the solid earth beneath me. The handful of possessions I own in the world are inside the red house in front, whose walls have just opened up before me, solid foundations lurching left and right.

I feel weightless and I have to force myself to cling hard onto Luca as he starts to speed up and we race around the first corner towards the Mirador. I can feel his heartbeat beneath my fingertips, pounding fast.

People are cycling, driving, running in the same direction, a mass exodus to higher ground. We pass by some others who are simply on their balconies, rocking back and forth in their chairs, looking unconcerned, and watching the flurry of activity with bemusement – why aren’t they moving? Why have they decided to stay in their houses? I feel as if we’re leaving them to die as we speed past them, ever faster, and they become specks in the mirror.

The local police (if that’s what you call those uniformed children that walk up and down the beach from morning to night) are blowing on their whistles “arriba, todos arriba, everyone get to higher ground.”

It’s like being in a continued and prolonged dream state. I wonder what they will say at my funeral – she died as she lived, on one of her adventures – where would they even have the funeral? Would anyone besides my family go? I hardly mean anything to anyone anymore, beyond a pleasant, or funny, or painful memory. It will probably be months before some of my best friends even find that I’ve died in an earthquake in Costa Rica.

A million things pass through my brain as the panic and adrenaline that have consumed my body continue to rise. It’s hard to breathe. I could actually die and I’m not ready to. Is it going to hurt?

The wind is blowing in my hair and face. I look into the rearview mirror and expect to see the glass filled with a giant wall of water thundering towards us, but the town is growing smaller and all I can see is a rising dust cloud in our wake.

I am sure I have seen this somewhere before in some Hollywood disaster movie, or read about it perhaps in a fiction novel about the end of the world. The sexy, dirt-smudged protagonists escaping the scene of disaster by the skin of their teeth, accelerating away from the tearing earth behind. I wish I wasn’t wearing this awful green dress with no underwear beneath. You should always have underwear on, it’s true, you never know when your life’s about to change.

Get to Higher Ground

We pass some local surfers and people we know from around the town, a bunch of Italians, flamboyantly waving their arms up and down and some cleaning ladies, looking distressed. As we swerve in and out of the large queue of cars, I draw some comfort from safety in numbers.

We reach the Mirador and see a ton of familiar faces. The man from the supermarket, some people from the hostel and other businesses about town. I smile when I see Amada, the doctor I had been to see a few days before. She gives me a huge hug and then steps back and asks if my ear is any better. We’re all about to die and she wants to know if I’ve been taking my drops.

I see Jerry walk past, a can of Pilsen in his hand and start to wonder where Ali is. Where did he get a can of beer from, in the tearing hurry to get out? Suddenly there seems to be an air of comedy about things as more and more people arrive and we share the only working cell phone between groups of people as I call my parents. There really is no good way to say “I’ve been in an earthquake and we’re expecting a Tsunami, but don’t worry“. I played it down as much as possible, while I heard someone say it was a 7.9. That’s pretty big I think.

We keep waiting for something to happen as we stare down at a tranquil sea, no sign of killer waves in sight… The heat is bearing down and the mosquitoes are starting to bite. OK, so… now what?

I slap my hand hard down upon my leg and squash a giant mosquito; they’re larger in the bush than they are by the sea, out of the breeze. My body’s still shaking and the sun is growing stronger every minute; the sweat’s starting to form on my forehead and there’s still no Tsunami in sight.

I look around me, at once overwhelmingly conscious of my inappropriate attire up here at the Mirador, surrounded by half of the town, whose state of terror is gradually transitioning into anxiety and, even… boredom…

The fact is that humans are limited beings and our capacity to hang on to extreme emotions is finite – it’s just as hard to maintain a state of intense fear as it is one of extreme happiness. Everything is transitory, the good and the bad; time renders all those unspeakable traumas that you think you’ll never be able to live through bearable in the end.

The Aftermath and Aftershocks

The seconds, minutes, days since the earthquake have been entirely new terrain for me– I’d never experienced anything like this before and I still have nightmares where the house is moving and I can’t get out, or the plane is crashing and I’m about to die – paralyzingly terrifying situations over which I have no control.

The only similar feeling I can draw upon is that one you experience when somebody close to you dies. At first, you are overwhelmed with a grief that tears you up from the inside out as your whole world is ripped apart and you can’t imagine how life can possibly continue without them.

Then the days go by and it does go on, and you find yourself unexpectedly laughing at a joke or involuntarily smiling at the sunlight on your face. You suddenly feel horribly guilty and chastise yourself for allowing a fleeting moment of happiness in, remembering that there’s nothing to laugh about and the world has changed.

Well, it’s not the same and no one close to me died, but everything was so surreal that I couldn’t retain sheer terror and panic all of the time, yet each time I let myself relax just a little I would snap back into the gravity of the situation and then slide right out once more.

The fact that I had been caught out with no pants on in public, watching my drunken neighbour stagger around the Mirador with a can of beer in his hand – I found myself exploding hysterically and uncontrollably with laughter at the ridiculousness of the situation and then stopping suddenly, reminding myself that I might be about to die and should really be thinking about more important things than this. Perhaps it was the shock.

The Tsunami alert was called off that day after about an hour of teeth grinding uncertainty and we gradually made our way back to the town; back to the house that had been swaying like a tree in the wind just moments before, and to the little community of concerned neighbors that had formed by the swimming pool.

Ali told me that as I had sped off on the motorbike with Luca she had been overcome with pity and solidarity for her neighbor – Jerry had looked so precarious wobbling about on his bicycle that she offered to take him up in her minivan.

In the panic to get up high and the frantic scramble to clasp onto life in the face of an impending wall of water, we had all left important things behind – computers, passports, photographs, Ipods, underwear… but Jerry had grabbed Ali’s arm and begged her to wait for just one second more as he dashed into his house.

She watched nervously in the rear-view mirror, hands anxiously gripping the steering wheel, wondering if her loyalty was misplaced in honoring the wishes of this relative stranger when she had four wheels at her disposal. The seconds drew on agonisingly longer until at last Jerry emerged with what he had rushed into the broken building to save – a can of beer – just one – the Pilsen he had in his hand as he teetered around the hilltop.

“A freakin’ can of Pilsen! I’m gonna die over a freaken’ can of beer? And ONE – just ONE – I’m saving your life and you don’t even pick one up for me?!!”

And so gradually, day by day, we all got through the aftermath of the earthquake in our own ways – drinking more, not sleeping alone, keeping an emergency “earthquake kit” by the door (a bottle of water, a packet of nuts, a flashlight and (just in case we really were about to die) a large bottle of Flor de Cana). I also made sure that my most important items, like my surfboard, were safe under the stairwell, in the event that the building should collapse.

The first strong aftershock came when we were huddled around the pool a couple of hours later, not quite knowing what to do next, but not wanting to be alone. I had just about managed to slow my breathing down when the ground shook with ferocity once more and the lurching pang of terror arose in my chest again.

Jerry’s wife Yvonna, from the Czech Republic, and bratty child were there, both inconsolably frightened, eyes darting this way and that, the son whining loudly that his favorite thing in the world – his BB gun – was about to be buried inside. It did cross my mind that a BB gun might not be the most appropriate toy for a pre-adolescent, but the jolting earth took priority in my ranking of thoughts at that moment.

We leapt out of our sun loungers, ready to run for the gates but it was over almost as quickly as it had come, only a 5.6. The tears started to form as I gave Yvonna a hug and we clung on to each other for a while.

It was funny, but the good thing about the earthquake, when you took away all the trauma and disruption and fear, was that it brought me together with people I never would have thought of exchanging more than the time of day with normally, strengthening my friendship with Ali; drinking wine out of a box with Jerry and his wife in their kitchen, learning some swear words in Czech.

I didn’t tell many people this because it sounds inconceivably stupid, but I actually went surfing in the evening; the accumulated stress of that day, waiting for the next one to come was unbearable in the end. It may not have been the smartest thing going surfing on the day of a massive earthquake and Tsunami alert but catching a few waves and unlocking some of that tension in the rush of the surf was perhaps the only thing that kept me together.

Assessing the damage was hard. I learned the word for “dry wall” in four different languages. The windows that I thought had blown out in my house were in fact intact; it was only the mirrors and a few plates that had shattered.

The dust and pieces of ceiling and cracks in the walls were alarming; every time I entered the house and ran upstairs I covered my head – Jerry’s entire ceiling had collapsed next door and I didn’t have much faith in mine. Every time I went up the stairs I relived every moment of the earthquake and the staircase began to move and I had mini panic attacks when I had to get something from the top floor.

That first night I didn’t sleep a wink. We moved my mattress downstairs on the kitchen floor; I just couldn’t face the thought of sleeping under a flimsy layer of ceiling that could come down at any minute, or having to descend three flights of shaking stairs to get out. At least on the kitchen floor I would be close to the door. I didn’t want to sleep alone either so Luca stayed with me that night.

The next days went by something like that. Nothing about it was real. It’s impossible to sleep with one eye open and I was up for 62 hours straight, feeling every little tremble of the earth and like I was losing my mind. They registered more than 2,000 aftershocks in the first week after the Nicoya earthquake – the ground was continuously releasing energy.

I had motion sickness and vertigo for about ten days. Every time I walked down to the beach with my surfboard I had to compensate for the tremendous gravitational pull I felt towards the earth and the sensation that I would fall at any moment and my head would smack the ground. I had to stop and close my eyes, or stop and sit down for a moment; everything was spinning, the only place I felt any semblance of normality was in the ocean on my board.

I moved out of my house after six fairly important walls were declared unstable by a Costa Rican builder. Admittedly though, his best assessment was that it wasn’t certain the house would collapse but “solo Dios sabe eso verdad?“ (Only God really knows that for sure).

With a penny-pinching landlord whose best offer was to fill the cracks with cement and paint over them and a builder that deferred to a higher power on the safety of the building’s structure I decided it just wasn’t worth the risk. I’d never be able to sleep soundly in that house again anyway, every tremor weakening the walls a little more.

I moved into Luca’s studio, high up in the forest -I called it the tree house, surrounded by leaves and birds and monkeys on all sides. I felt safer there but getting used to the new noises was hard. The swaying of the branches outside also gave me the feeling that the house was moving even when it wasn’t –my nerves were on a knife edge – a coconut would fall from a tree and smash on the tin roof above and I would leap into the air like I’d received an electric shock.

I’m still not comfortable with any sudden noises. The rumbling thunder that menaces the night now panics me in ways it didn’t used to and with every mighty boom that rattles the window frames and makes the lights flicker I get ready to run to the door. My mind switches into earthquake mode and the corresponding adrenaline that floods through my body takes away my breath.

The worst aftershocks are when I’m inside and the furniture shakes and glasses shudder up and down. I look at the walls with suspicion now; they no longer offer the same comforting solidarity I’d taken for granted my whole life.

But as the days go by, the gravity of the situation dilutes – time as ever, the greatest healer for all ills. Each night I snatch a couple more hours of fitful sleep and I can now walk in a straight line again.

The damage is being repaired and businesses open as usual. The tide continues to rise and fall and the monkeys howl in the deep. Coconuts thud to the ground, the iguanas change their skin, people make plans, and life goes on.

Because you can’t live your life as if a giant earthquake is about to happen, in the same way that you can’t live in the constant shadow of death. After all – solo Dios sabe eso verdad…