On one of his trips to Costa Rica usually to the Golfo de Dulce he met a Frenchman sailing alone around the world with this story to tell:     After clearing the Panama Canal in his brand new yacht this French bureaucrat developed a situation off the Galapagos Islands to the southwest of Costa Rica. Due to the extremes in  temperature and possibly lack of experience the standing rigging let go in the night crumpling the stick in the drink. He was now foundering and trailing a mast that would eventually cause more problems. He busied himself with cutting through the hardened stainless steel for two incredible days of effort. Sure, there is another way. You can try to undo the shackles that have been wired to prevent them from coming loose. Usually, a forward thinking skipper brings massive bolt cutters for this kind of accident. The poor man had very weak eyesight and with everything else that was happening the only thing he managed was a hacksaw with spare blades. He needed every one of them.
After safely freeing himself of this debris, he turned on the iron sail for the long trip to Costa Rica and Golfito. The ship was a mess when I saw it. The skipper was dehydrated since he had no electricity after the accident to pump fresh water. If someone was ever in dire straits this poor man was. Gb had to help him find his way around Golfito. No one gets away from the Aduana. The customs office was on the other side of town. You have to present multiple copies of ALL your papers to various entities who also took some type of fee. This was a full days' project. Just getting a visa for him and his boat was a tremendous effort.  She was safely moored at the yacht club. Once he was officially in the country with a 3 month visa he could relax a little and ponder his fate. Gb told him to call the manufacturer and have them ship a new mast along with a technician to install it properly this time. Sometimes a vacation is simply helping someone in distress.

      Gb was catching a bus in some town in Costa Rica many years ago. There was a young mother who had been recently burned by a pot of boiling water that her child accidentally knocked off the stove onto her. She was in pain with second degree burns. She was doing the only thing she could. Catch a bus to her mother's and get help. I had a tube of burn ointment I gave her to relieve the pain of the burns. I also gave her my jar of aspirin which can be made into a paste to soothe the burns.  All of this happened in a moment in time.  Her bus arrived sweeping her away to a quicker healing.

      On another occasion in Golfito, I was at the drugstore getting some medicines for myself. You can't be too well prepared. Believe me, pain will find you.  It was early and the drugstore was still minutes away from opening. Two unkempt gringos came up to Gb complaining about an obvious foot wound.  I asked to look at it. He uncovered the top of his foot all swollen and full of pus. I asked what happened and he pointed to a little hole with a white thing protruding out. There were three or four identical puncture wounds with the white head protruding from wounds. This was my first time seeing a bot fly infestation in a human.
   The botfly larvae is transmitted by the mosquito bite. This unfortunate fellow had forgotten the golden rule of never sleeping outside of a mosquito net when in Central America.. Without being too graphic about this treatment you wrap a piece of bacon around the wound.  After a few days the worm will crawl into the bacon and be gone leaving an infection that still needs to be treated with antibiotics. Or...you can gently squeeze and squeeze until the worm pops out in a splash of pus and blood leaving an even greater wound. I warned you that it might be graphic. A doctor will make an incision which still leaves a scar. I don't like scars. They remind me too much of the danger in life.
      Golfito has one small clinic that I needed immediately. A filling popped out of one of my gnarly teeth and needed replacement. I searched out this female dentist and finally reclined in her chair of torture. She brought out this 1920 syringe with the thumb loop that looked to be a good 8" long. I suddenly lost my courage until she said it would not hurt. She would inject a lot of Novocaine. I surrendered to her loving touches almost falling asleep.
      Jerry and I would prowl the fishing docks looking for tuna boats. We wanted to make sure they used the new technique to release porpoises by simply backing down on the net. The stiff wire at the surface is driven underwater giving the captured air breathers a chance to flee. The tuna huddle at the bottom of the net. The dugout canoe was bought and repaired to encounter outgoing tuna boats. All of this was incredibly hard work.

   One night the wind came up and the raft broke loose.  I gathered enough water and necessities for a day or two then jumped in the dugout and started after the raft.  By night fall,  I found it snagged on rocks fifty feet down.  I boarded her and set the lantern up as a warning to fishermen .  I pulled the dugout up and settled in for a long night.  In the morning I took a survey of the situation .  It was not good.  She was breaking up as her lashings were coming undone.  Soon she would break up completely.  I was down to my last bit of water and food.  I had no choice but to cut her loose retrieving as much anchor line as possible.  I pushed the canoe out into the cobalt blue waters. and started for the shoreline about a mile away.  She probably meant her fate on the far shore where the Burca Indians live.  I managed to walk along the coast watching baby manta rays play in the surf.  I was sunburned and very tired. I slept for days afterwards.