Nighttime Nuzzles in Costa Rica
Issue 99
• Travel
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There is nothing more rewarding than gaining the love of a dog.
By Jane Thomas
We weren’t supposed to land in San Jose, Costa Rica, a few days before the city shut down for Easter. That is, I forgot to check – again – when the moveable feast would be occurring. Accommodation prices throughout the region baffled me until I realized my error, and it was with a degree of desperation I leapt onto the housesitting website at two in the morning and happened to bump into a fresh new listing. Two dogs for ten days in San Jose? I rattled off a bleary-eyed application and had confirmation less than 24 hours later.
As it happened, we hit the jackpot. We ended up in a large house in what I’d say was an affluent suburb, looking after Denver and Mochi. Both were shy rescues, with Mochi having been pulled from the streets of South Korea some years earlier but never quite recovering from whatever had happened to her before.
At first, Mochi stayed in the garden, looking in at us. She would come to the door when it was dinner time, waiting until we’d tiptoed away before she would approach the bowl. But at night, we were transformed into a safe space, and she would appear at the bedroom door, standing silently until we noticed her, then pad over to the bed and settle down. The bed was, fortunately, very low to the ground, so as the night progressed and Denver and Mochi stretched their paws more and more, Grant found himself balanced half on the bed, half on the floor.
The day after we arrived, San Jose emptied itself. Everyone disappeared to the coast. We would walk the dogs in the early morning, before the heat of the day arrived, silent streets waiting to be sniffed by two eager, elderly noses that were happy to sleep for hours to recover from their brief outing.