Pre-departure: Costa Rica/Monteverde

Cloud Forest in Monteverde, Costa Rica

Both Knausgaard and Noah seem to mock narrow-mindedness in general, even in themselves.  Noah meets a girl surfing in California and is appalled by her misconceptions about AIDS in Africa; she assumes not only that he would have AIDS, but that it could be a passing illness like a flu. In mocking her accent, he emphasizes this ignorance and stupidity through the inflection of her voice.  However, he also mocks his own ignorance about surfing when he talks about thinking all of her motions on the board to be unnecessary.