Crocodiles and codgers

There is was again, the orange bulge-bellied boat with the magnificent aqua-green chipped painted insides. I was delighted to see the boat again, and when a small group of men was pulling it off the sand into the water, I told one VERY bucked-toothed fellow how much I loved it. He said with a puffed up but scrawny chest that he had painted it. He grinned his horrible but winning smile and then showed me his eyeball, which was bright red because he gotten a fish hook in it. A bundle of energy, the man had on a bathingsuit that balanced precariously at the bottom of his right hip as though it might slip down any moment. He beckoned me to follow.

Now, it probably isn't every woman who wolud follow a fellow like this, but his energy and his gait were so full of bounce and enthusiasm, I couldn't resist. He wove in and out of the small fishermen's houses, back to a swamp where he pointed, practically jumping up and down. There in the water was a large, complacent crocodile, skimming the water and occasionally pulling up his head to show off his teeth. He hovered along the shore for some time and then moved into the middle of the swamp; my friend, named Miquel - what else? - said there were four of them in there, but the fishermen keep them well fed with fish heads and such so that they didn't fear that they'd come ashore. He did suggest that sometimes they ate little dogs. Gulp. There was a woman standing near me who held a baby, and Miquel was jesting about throwing the baby in the water; the baby didn't think it was too funny.

The swamp was really quite magical in a spooky but awesome way with reflections and shadows contending for space. I told Miguel that I had to walk back to Bejuco, and he told me that I could come back for fresh fish tomorrow morning at 7:30; I still have fillets from the other night, so I bagged it and went running instead.

I walked the hour and a half back, watching the sun begin to dip down lower and more golden in the sky. Oh, my, what we take for granted! The long shadows and the dusting of gilt make me chuckle to remember a passage in Alan Holinghurst's The Line of Beauty where he writes, "Like his hero Henry James, Nick felt that he could "stand a great deal of gilt" (ever the academic, I shall give you the proper citation page number 5).

People were pouring onto the beach by the time I returned, compelled all by the glories and the gilt of the sunset, but my feet were sore from the sand, I was thirsty, and supper awaited - as did a beer! This is the vista across the little stream toward the beach. It doesn't look half bad either, as they say!-

THE Galloper...

This was the test for the almighty Galloper. A distant cousin and now friend, Laurie Higgins, was down in Jaco with her four BIG, athlete kids. I invited them for dinner and thought I might be able to find the waterfall on my own. I told her I might be 4 minutes late because I wanted to stop and get some glasses and a plate; my supplies are good for one but not so good for 6. The fresh fish man wasn't opened, so I bought 2 kilo of frozen fish, had some salad fixings and thought I'd be set. As Lolo can attest to, I am nothing if not disorganized, and I felt I could remember the name of the hotel and the street Laurie had given me, but instead, I spent one full hour going down every little street in Jaco, finally chugging up into the glamorously gated apartment building. They showed me their enormously spacious 3 bedroom apartment with a huge terrace and dining room overlooking the sea. I realized that not even thick stemmed champagne glasses from the super mercato could compensate for my wee digs...

When Laurie told me her kids were big, she wasn't kidding! All were surely over 6 feet tall; Hunter, the dearest football playing cowboy I'll ever meet, was the kindest helper and was hard pressed to fit comfortably in half the back seat with his brother Tayler, a trim LA film maker. The girls, both volleyball players, threw themselves into the way back seats, and Laurie sat up front with me; we drove like a house afire, all of us having the Spanish fluency that I have, which is to say little. It took loads of stumbling, turning, churning up and down rocky, dirt roads, to get to the trail to the waterfall, but we got there, piled out of the Galloper and began the trek through cow fields deep in dung to the river that leads to the waterfall. It was darkening down to dusk, so we went at a fast clip. I feared I'd done the wrong thing when after several bends in the river, we saw or heard no falls. Suddenly we were there, scrambling up the path, my camera dangling at my side, and at the top, I said, "Hurry, hurry, everybody jump so we can document it and get back before dark!" Hardly making for a leisurely event!

We did get photos - Taylor getting dozens with his Canon that did everything camera and video - drove back to my house where we all seemed to find seating, glasses, plates and plenty of fish, rice and salad. No wine opener? No problem! Just shove that cork back down into that bottle, and voila!

Today they are off on a tour to Arenal where they have a hotel as close to the volcano as you can get, and I'm sure they will have a splendid time in an environment where they can spread out and take their time! What wonderful new friends and relatives and what a lively crowd with whom to have one of my inimitable "adventures"!

Warmth and water

I walked for over three hours on the beach today and fell completely in love with the fishermen's boats as I usually do, but this one with the gently curved belly and the incredible colors made my heart go pit-a-pat. But then, the other boats were compelling as well. This one just had a mastery of shape and color that made me grin. Oh, and photograph.

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When I got back to our Bejuco beach, I saw some old friends, met some new folks, and saw again the Chester Springs family that I'd met this morning. Everyone had come down to see the sunset. Logs had been teepeed, ready for the fires of supper and festivities. I was thirsty and ready for a shower, but I was urged to stay, offered a beer and warned against drinking the tap water; it was just the moment to chug that beer to quench a thirst I'd built up over the past three hours of walking! I was convinced that seeing the sunset was in order, and indeed, it was!

Even if it does look fuzzy in the photo, you can get the idea, feel the sensation.

Now my neighbors have cranked up the volume of their rock n' roll in a very aggressive way; I'm not sorry that they are selling their house.

Last day...

Went with some friends to a local waterfall where we had to walk through the river to get there. So much for water shoes; I've already wrecked my Dansko sandals, so I just wore an old pair of running shoes. On the way, we passed a branch loaded with leaf cutter ants, and I learned that there is a cut off and some ants are not accepted for the carrying. These guys are so tenacious that they carve huge swaths through grass, bush and undergrowth, making highways to carry their huge bundles. Then the leaves all go into a pile inside the ant hill condos, and there it ferments; friend Bill swears that they then have a big party, but I'm more inclined to believe friend Mike who says the nutritional mixture gives them their necessary food requirements.

And it wasn't all smooth sailing, wading through this river. Mike warned me to always watch what was on tree branches before I put my hands around them, and this is the reason:

Right after he told me, I put my hand up instinctively and almost smashed it down on this spider, innocent though he may have been!

By the time I first caught sight of the waterfall, young Vincent had already scaled the side of the bottom on and was on his way to the top where he did a back flip off a branch into the highest pool, which because of my angle I couldn't see, making his flip look as though he were going head first into the rocks. For an 11 year olf kid, the guy was utterly fearless and masterful in his approach. I planned just to climb the root-riddled trail and watch these guys jump, slide and swim, but once at the top, it was all too enticing. I carefully balanced my glasses on a root, took off my shirt and shorts and climbed down to a reasonable height from which to jump - in my sopping and heavy sneakers. I am trying to upload a video amd suppose I must have faith that this is actually it. We returned, sloshing through the rising river, rain pelting down on us, then slooshed through the muddy field where the mud often came up over our knees - you can imagine those sneaks by now - and got to the woman's house where we parked and where a hose and dry clothes were waiting for those of us with foresight and foreknowledge; I was dumb enough to lug my towel with me, and at this point it was drenched and dripping.

We drove home in the dark, swerving to avoid potholes but feeling as though for a short time we had become a part of the natural world, which, indeed, we had!

Update before I leave

My neighbor and friend, David Yue, found this on the internet, evidence that shows the swirly sand drippings from Tamarindo are, indeed, worm turds. Nice to know.

I am leaving for San Jose area a day later than planned because I will be spending today at the lawyer's office - yet again, but different lawyer - so that I can purchase for way too much money this old heap of a 95 Galloper, a diesel truck-car that spews black smoke and rattles but can get me through tough terrain so that I can explore all those potted, dirt, rocky roads that rental cars hesitate to take!

Home soon, but this is beginning to feel more and more like home. I shall miss the morning bird activity, the enveloping warmth and the stress-free way of life; my goal in teaching this term will be to envelop my students in warmth, bring enticing, engaging activity to class, and keep my work environment friendly and stressless. I can DO this.

Samara, Tamarindo, Avellana and Rio Tempisque

After a long drive down to Samara from Naranjo, where the ferry docks, I booked a room at Entre Dos Aquas, a recommendation from Lonely Planet; after going into town for a dinner of grilled veggies and flan, I went back and sat in the dark at the pool (photo). It is an exquisite setting, but the couple running the place is clearly in trouble; they were running on automatic with no genuine enthusiasm or interest. In fact, I am tempted to write the D.C. owner to tell him that he really ought to get out of the business. I will never return there merely because the vibes were so negative even though the place itself was lovely.

Although Tamarindo was honky tonky like the Jersey shore, I was greeted with such friendliness and smiling welcome that I loved staying at my little Villa Maconda, where the towels were folded in two hearts on my bed. I never used the pool, but here it stood in the middle of all the little units, each with its own hammock... My first walk along the beach showed me a very different kind of sand that at one part was covered with narrow, coiled shells that looked as though someone had thrown gold tees around the beach. In the morning I found these peculiar mounds of sand drippings, clearly something created by a critter, not a human because there were many of them, and it was early morn.

But my favorite was walking back along the beach and seeing the people sweeping the beaches in front of the fussy hotels, making it clean and uncluttered for the clean and uncluttered guests who were paying over $200 a night while I had the bargain room at $25!

The next day while waiting for friends to arrive, I drove to Avellana, a beach that required some driving through mud, potholes and all the way back to Santa Cruz just to get more gas. I had read about this beach where Lola the pig lived and bathed in the sea, but I was not expecting the quirky small, white shelled beach under shade trees with wonderfully modern wooden tables, chairs and loungers scattered throughout. Waitpersons bustled about, carrying trays loaded with food and drink to those seated at their posts while high tide waves pounded the shore and surfers waited to catch that perfect wave. I was not all that hungry, but the menu was enticing enough that I had some sushi tuna with sesame and wasabi and a heavenly smoothie. I went in search of Lola and found her, seriously dug into some sound sleep. From there, I drove back to Tamarindo for dinner with friends, walking from their fancy hotel back to mine along the beach where it was just about dark and raining. I had an umbrella and walked in the warm rain, watching as the lights came on in the restaurants and hotels, readying for the evening's festivities.

Of the rafting I have not a photo because I had to leave my camera and my glasses behind, which was fortunate because every single raft overturned at least several times during the two hour journey down a sunlit Rio Tempisque dappled with the shade from enormous overhanging trees and sheer cliffs that ridged the river. We had 5 in our raft, the guide at the back, and we paddled according to his instructions, bouncing over, twisting around and tumbling into the rows of white water rapids that ranged from 1s and 2s to a final 5-6 scale one that they claimed was 12 feet; we all looked at it and thought it more like 8-10 feet, but it WAS a challenge and two of us actually stayed onboard and made it over successfully; I was not one of those, and my friend Russell did comment as we all trudged up the trail at the end that I WAS the only person who kept her high heeled sandals on the whole time! Who knew that Dansko sandals were okay for rafting?

Nicoya Peninsula

A drive to Puntarenas with my GPS "voiced" woman insisted I "turn right" every 400 meters or so, and I finally got to the ferry, second in line with a nice fellow from Virginia seemingly running the logistics. Once the car was on, I went up to the upper deck and saw these kids just waiting for me to give them the nod so they could dive for me. I shook my head and said no thank you. Boys killing themselves for coins ? Not on my watch.

The journey from Punarenas to Naranjo took about an hour, during which time the clouds were doing their surreal things in the sky, making the rest of us know our place in the world - and our significance.

The road, as usual, was highly-holed, but the surrounding scenes were lush, green and misty. I tried to do the usual photographing as I drove because the countryside was invitingly licked with that orange afternoon glow. When I tried to capture the descending clouds on some of the rolling hills, while steering and shifting gears, I must have hit some button or other to stay out of an oncoming car, and this is what I got, which is actually an evocative inside-out image of clouds and trees; perhaps it is just an acquired taste...

As it was beginning to dusk down to dark, and I had decided not to stay in the town/city of Nicoya, I found myself on a long, winding, road that was heading for Samara, a place I was interested in seeing, but not necessarily at 7:30 at night. I got here, booked into a little hotel with the disagreeable man from Washington, D.C. and his equally evasive wife from NY, ate a little supper and hit the sack; it rained somewhat heavily overnight, but I woke to the sounds of birds, dripping water, and blue sky patching, so I threw on my clothes and hurled myself out the door down to the beach where I had a walk along the water - a very different water from Bejuco, as it is a protected cove, and the shore offered rocks and heavy pieces of coral; there was no dead wood in sight, and I believe I found the only shell out there. The sand was bigger and coarser until I got down where the waves were; there it had the soft, muddier texture that is wonderful walking underfoot. This is the time of day for Ticos on this beach, and there was great activity around launching two small boats, cheerful chatter lacing together the souls working on the project. The walk gave me a sense of the spirit of the place, where I understand Ticos actually own some of the businesses; from what I saw there were loads of real estate enticements, just like the other beachy spots in CR.

I am going to try to head to Nosara, but it's a real journey from here on rambly roads and over rivers. I may change my mind and head straight for Tamarindo; these are the joys of solo traveling.

One word about truckstops: The "Sodas" along the highway where the biggest trucks pull in are generally the places of tastiest eating. I stopped at one yesterday where women were doing all cooking and serving, truckdrivers or other men were doing all the eating and television watching. I seem to be an oddity in these places, but like Thomas Wolfe, I like my options open when it comes to food eating and ordering. I LOVE the notion that shrimp and rice always comes with french fries, which I never bother with, but the arroz con camarrones was a yum, and with it came a little salad, with fresh, green curly lettuce and ripe tomatoes - tastily dressed. Cousin Brookie practically rolled her eyes at my gusto for a meal, and I love the freedom of being in one of these sodas where I can shovel in my arroz con camarrones with the kind of mannish relish that I KNOW my mother would need her smelling salts were she to witness it.

Bring your imaginations.

Everytime I go walking on the beach, I seem to "take a position," as I'm always trying to teach my students in their writing; I end up focusing on some general theme, color, texture or material. These pieces of driftwood came to me by chance, but then, what doesn't?

This here guy had a rather wistful expression as he checked out the shore weather, gazing out serenely to sea. I'm fonder of the angle with his sticky ear, but this other vantage point clearly offers another perspective - singing perhaps, or calling for his mate.

I have been warned to stay away from the little streams of "sweet water" because crocodiles live in them, and CR is crowded with crocodiles. This is actually the closest I've come to seeing one, but I know people who have seen them dead and alive.

This was a manmade construction, but that does not make it any less viable; it was still standing in the early morning, which, as far as I'm concerned, gives it legitimacy as beach art. This one is all about "Viking Ship," but that's the most wonderful thing about these sea pieces; they change depending on where one stands, but again - am I becoming stale? - isn't that the way life is?

I'm not much for Yoga, but I do try it now and then, and this is my all time favorite pose. I think this fella and I would get along famously.

Finally, I am struck by the consummate intimacy of this piece; the overlapping "leg" has grown into the one beneath it in ways that only couples who have lived through marriage, children, struggles, fear and glee can understand. The piece becomes all the richer for that entanglement and attachment, and when I see it in marriages, I am awed.

I should have known...

The day began as a crystal blue paradise, but it is winter here so clouds and rain are the norm. Perhaps this woodpecker was confused by the sun, but that fella just pecked and pecked away on this steel post; you'd think the guy would figure out that there was nothing for him in hard, hot steel...

Although the economy here - wedded as it is to the U.S.'s - is not sturdy, there is a great deal of building for the gringos, and the construction workers are out there all day, wearing towels on their heads, working, working, working, and this is the mode of transportation for most of them. What I loved about this bike is that the owner had some aesthetic understanding as he propped it right up against matching purple flowers. Do you think he planned it that way so that I would come along and photograph his bike, as I did while he was eating lunch, looking on as though I were crazy.

Just walking to and from the beach I discover new things everyday, and today I found this ruffly, fancy flower on the side of the dirt road; when I got up close to it, I discovered just how delicate and intricate it was. Those spinley pistols have large orange things at the end; I forget what they are called, and my 7th grade science teacher would be shocked to know that I'd forgotten... But there you have it.

I walked on the beach to the next town where the fishermen live and work; the one who sells fresh fish was out in his boat, not expected back until 5 or early evening, and so I took some photographs of the other fishermen's boats. And this dog who was clearly waiting for his master to return from the sea...

The sky darkened and got more complex as I returned, and even though the wintery light looks as though it would be cold, it is balmy all day long. These photographs have the look of Maine but the feel of tropics (sorry Mainers; it has always been too cold for me up there). As I neared the end of my walk, I noticed that the dead sea turtl

e was still attracting dozens of turkey vultures. A man who must have been bothered by all the fuss overhead came out with a shovel. He looked around, saw me, and put his shovel in the sand to begin digging; after I passed, I realized that he was walking back to his house, shovel over his shoulder. The job was just too much for him; he would stick with the natural world's frenzy over food.

One could really get to love the wintery light here if one were to stay for more than two more weeks.