Jack Kerouac slept here...

I am in the Jack Kerouac room at the Hemingway Bed andBreakfast, where I even have my own bathroom and rice and beans breakfast. Can't beat THAT!

This morning I walked around and found THE museum, which included a numismatic section, gorgeous gold carvings of birds and other creatures and a contemporary museum with a show on an artist who is into synethesia like Kandinsky and Mondrian. It felt very familiar, probably becauseI had given a paper at the Algonquin on Kandinsky and relationship with music... I illegally took a photo of this creature who is meant to be a pelican, and I took it,like the photo of

this purple flower, an evocative image forthose of us who grew up in Florida and watched our father gently tend this vine that grew gloriously over part of the back terrace.

Spent much of the afternoon waiting for these frothing, jittery horses to come clippitying along at dancing paces, making mincing little cloppity clip steps to the side and back, prancing as if their lives depended on it. The crowds grew and grew, as men strutted through the sidewalks, carrying open bottles of beer, half dressed bosoms at their sides and big cowboy hats on everybody's heads. I stood with a nice group and we all took photos and chatted, they methodically performing the ritual of salt aboutthe top two inches on their Coronas and this very carefully squeezing lemon juice into them beforedrinking. I suppose this is one way to continue drinking all day long! Santa was even onhis horse, and men on stilts teetered around the high-strung, snorting horses, all clumped together, banginginto each other,clippety-clappeting for the judges, and the heat beat down on all thosecowboy hads, sparing only those who carried umbrellas. I was not one of them...

Tomorrow I am offto the Arenal Volcano and will spend the night in Fortuna, taking the jeep-boat-jeep to St. Elena where I will stay and walk around Monteverdi. Maybe I will stay up there for one night, maybe for two. Only time wll tell, but suffice it to say, I AM getting rooms with bathrooms and even passed a couple of dives tonight thatI wouldn't even haveconsidered... I'm getting spoiled, I think, but I still have difficulty spending much money on sleeping situations becauseit seems so wasteful...

More tomorrow...