Bill Reynolds - Life Real Loud - John Lefebvre, Neteller and the Revolution in Online Gambling

Later, the chauffeur is elated. He might have scored a huge deal with a merchant. Ramping it up, working on something big. “We’ll see about the money when I get it,” is the caveat, because the guy could just blow him off for his commission. It’s not clear what the business actually is, but the chauffeur tells me that he’s lived on a few hundred a month when he’s had to. In one of the lean phases, an old friend bought him a car to get around. Whatever business he’s in, it’s boom or bust.

After lunch, around three o’clock, I make my way back to the B&B to do some writing. Meranda is working until around seven, and then we’re heading out for dinner. She decides on the Apolos Restaurant, another of John’s favorites. Great pizza. When she explains how her dad did not defend her against her stepmother in her teens and how she was kicked out of her own home and forced to fend for herself, it is difficult not to be moved. I’m impressed by her resilience and evergreen optimism.

Wednesday morning I’m up early. I didn’t want the hassle of a driving a car, so with Matteo’s help I booked a seat on a van that picks up customers at a number of hotels around town and travels west overland and then south along the coast to, among other places, Dominical on the Pacific side. That’s where a couple of Neteller pals bought a small oceanfront hotel. It’s a long, possibly tedious journey on twisting roads through mountains, but maybe it’s worth it — once — to see the countryside.

Don is back to drive me to the Courtyard Marriott to await my EasyRide pickup for Dominical. Right away, he finds a traffic jam because of the construction just down the hill from the B&B. Don does what he needs to do — he drives on the opposite side of the road, on the opposite shoulder, weaves here and there to avoid congestion — to get me to the Courtyard Marriott in San Rafael Escazú by five to eight. Don’s improv is entertaining first thing in the morning.

Alas, he needn’t have worried about the eight o’clock rendezvous. The black “Tourismo” van doesn’t arrive until nine. There is room for seven passengers. The first guy is an old gent from Australia who works in Toronto and Montreal for Domtar. I switch to the front seat when our driver picks him up. Better view. We head down a steep hill on Avenida 9. I notice a sign, Night Club Nicole, jutting above tenements in the next block. The shacks look seriously run-down — fatally dilapidated, actually. I decide I should snap a shot but it’s too late, we’ve already passed it. No matter, our neophyte driver can’t find the Best Western Hotel in this sector of town, Tangas, which is a little dodgy, being adjacent to the Zona Roja (due south of the Costa Rican Center of Science and Culture), so he has to circle around to catch the turn for Avenida 7. I nail the picture the second time.

I send it to John the next day, once I’m relaxing at a boutique hotel called Costa Paraiso, in Dominical, mainly because I’m proud of my lucky grab. The shot is chock full of contrasts — gambling, prostitution, poor shacks, rolling hilly streets, belching buses, traffic jams — representing the flagrant duality on display in this city. John replies: “Thanks, I’d almost forgotten just how mad it is there … valet park at Club Nicole and kiss your car goodbye. Hang onto your shit, man. And a great ride.”

Now it’s around 10:30 in the morning. I’ve been on this journey since seven, and we’re still in San José. Tico time. We pick up a young woman who hails from L.A.’s Koreatown. She’s dressed in a light top with beads hanging around her neck, one of those forever hippies, maybe, who is between jobs, on the road for a while, going to a festival in a couple of days with friends — kinda reggae, kinda Burning Man — happening at Dominical. It’s called the Envision festival, I find out later, and it’s the inaugural burn in the town and on the beaches of Dominical.

A half hour later we pick up the middle-aged woman from Lethbridge, Alberta, who talks about the weather here and how cold it is this winter. The AC in the rear of the van, right behind my head, actually, is dripping cold water, and she jokes about how she’s been avoiding it. I keep getting stabbed with the odd drip rolling down my back. At first I thought, Wow, am I perspiring that much? No, just cold water dripping from the ineffective AC. It’s eighty-two degrees outside, but it’s ninety-five inside the van. When we reach the highest point of the ride west, we stop for a washroom break. The view is a visual feast of plunging heights and greenery, but no water yet. Around 1 p.m. in our slow boat to the Pacific, about halfway down to Dominical, we pick up a hipster-ish, Hacky Sack — looking couple in their late twenties. Another hour goes by. There is one last Rocky Mountain — like climb before heading down to sea level. We chug along in this standard black Tourismo and move to the passenger lane as soon as an ascending passing lane opens up. No way we’re passing anyone in this boat. Our driver shuts the AC down. He tells me, in a way I can understand, that we’ll never make it up that hill with it on and seven adults in the car.

The countryside is generally wild and tropical. Beside the highway are perfect rows of African palm trees, plantations for the production of palm oil. Beyond those rows is nothing but jungle or cleared farmland down to the ocean. One of the disappointments of the journey is how little of that ocean we see from Jacó on down. The highway veers inland and mostly stays that way.

By 2:30 we’re in downtown Dominical, former fishing village, current surfing mecca, possible annual alternative-lifestyle festival site. It features beat-up gravel streets, shanties serving cerveza and fruit and ice cream, and super-buff and over-tanned surfer dudes wandering by with slightly overweight girlfriends. In Dominical, the garb is mostly hippie and post-hippie with a strong accent of post-Lollapalooza tattoo culture. Some have long, straggly hair, some look like direct mail orders from Santa Cruz, with super-bleached blond hair, long and straight. Some older Americans, maybe Canadians, too, look like they’ve opted out of the rat race for good.

On Thursday, I awaken to the realization that this coastal area is a gorgeous place, but the hotel itself is awfully close to the highway. From the road, it’s a walk down a steep-grade driveway and right turn into an open-air tiki lounge restaurant and small office. You’re here. Above you, on the road, every so often the truck drivers blast their brakes decelerating, which is not the kind of thing you want to hear in paradise. Noise pollution is rampant. There is also this high-pitch whirr that erupts every so often, like right now, at 7:30 in the morning. I have no idea what it is but it’s intrusive and off-putting. Eventually I figure out the sound is from tropical cicadas. They’re louder than the ones in New York or Toronto, but also mesmerizing. Don’t call it noise, call it natural art.

The cicadas are one prominent feature of paradise. Another is a security guard stationed at the entrance to the office. He arrives before six to light the outdoor candles and languidly paces back and forth near the restaurant customers to check his cell phone. Not exactly the best way to give new customers a warm, fuzzy feeling, but once rationality kicks in you realize the owners probably wouldn’t hire a security guard, gun hanging at his side, unless something untoward had happened one evening around dinnertime. As one fellow tourist said, “He’s not there to make sure everyone eats their vegetables.”

The next morning, Friday, I walk down the highway for a mile or so to pick up some food and drink for the stay. I catch up with the couple staying in the next cabin. They were looking for the trail that leads down to the beach, immediately north of Costa Paraiso, but are way past it now, sweltering along the highway. They discover the trail on the way back, walking along the beach. I see where the trail ends as they come onto the main road just outside the inn. Peggy and Paul live at Chestermere Lake, about twelve miles directly east of Calgary. They decided to come here because they know Bob Edmunds, one of the owners, well. They met Bob a long time ago at Chestermere, probably at Bruce Ramsay’s place. Paul used to sell sailing equipment there. He’s a fireman now. Both Peggy and Paul say the Denis Leary series about New York firefighters, Rescue Me , is spot-on. The guy comes home and tells his wife nothing much happened at work. A few years later, it comes out that he fished a dismembered body out of a car that day — a real clean-up job.