Costa Rica afternoon

Once again I sit before the interminable blank page. The abyss. If I stop writing, I cease to exist.

Hummingbird, La Sabana

The past is in shreds and stuffed in my pocket; the grackle bathing in the pool, the old blond drinking herself to death on the long slow shuffle down (she hates everyone), the radio music playing in the kitchen... one sweet moment after the next, here then gone.

Shish kabob vendor. Fire in a shopping cart. Sunday in Costa Rica

I want to stop knowing this.

Notes from the day

Oops. The "Rapture" was a no show.
Chortling cherubs.

Okay. Time to clear the set. The Rapture was a no show. Ha ha. Sorry. No rain checks. No refunds. Time to move on. Here at the hotel, the boy is gone as is the old woman and her son who never left the compound. Funny how attached I get to strangers on the road. Anyway, they were immediately replaced by a sad cliche of a couple... a fat old American guy and his young Latin wife. Between his arrogance and her gold Rolex there is no love lost. He would be better off just paying for sex.

Dog and Buddha head - Costa Rica

These are from an old, lovely Spanish hacienda just up the street from La Sabana. The place has a slightly menacing air to it, palm trees rising behind the high walls of an inner court and a statuary attached. I only managed to take a few photos before an uptight guy came out and made a point of standing around on the sidewalk.

Notes at the end of the world

So far, I haven't taken many photos this trip. The most notable ones I didn't take were of the billboards along Route 66 in Texas alerting people to the fact that May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day. That's today. This is probably my last post. I expected The Rapture would be more inspiring, that maybe I'd manage to scribble down a couple of good lines before being cast into the abyss but no. Flat sea. Flat horizon. Not even the distant ridge line of an island or a few clouds gathered on the edge. NADA. Hmmm... perhaps my mind is the abyss and I've always been in it.

Did I mention that we are in Costa Rica at La Sabana Apartotel? It's much nicer than the hostels, madhouse B&Bs, funky hotels and weird campgrounds where we usually stay, not that I don't love them, mind you. But this is actually a nice place even though it's in San Jose.

Because La Sabana is so nice, and so apparently safe, medical tourists stay here while undergoing their whatever procedures. La Sabana is a small, safe lateral world perfect to recuperate in. One day glides quietly into the next beyond the filmy curtains. It's amazing how quiet it is here, given that it is in the middle of downtown San Jose. Well, this morning about 4 am I did have to call the desk and complain about a jet-lagged Euro couple who were sitting at the table just outside our open window smoking and drinking but no big deal. They left around 9 after a breakfast of beer and cigarettes, kid in tow. They probably went to the coast to zipline and look at monkeys. Watch out for the sloths, guys. I hear they are everywhere.

There is a steady stream of people here to watch, like the friendly couple from California. They came to San Jose to go to the dentist and talk to their lawyer. Seems a couple of years ago they bought a piece of Caribbean paradise beachfront property then, after the money changed hands, discovered that they didn't actually own anything at all. The document the realtor had them sign was not the title. It was an intent to buy.

But among our more notable fellow residents is a yoga teacher from Brooklyn who is recovering from hernia surgery. He offered to let us watch the DVD of his operation but we declined, politely. It was awkward. I half expect to see a note on the billboard... Movie at 2. Bring popcorn. We call him "The Boy" because, although he's basically our age, it's like he's our love child, one gone horribly awry. He looks like Lee... tall, shaved head... but he hangs out around the pool, twisted into the lotus position, waiting for people to sit nearby he can dazzle with his grasp of pop psychology and stories of his "dangerous" jungle adventures, both lead-ins for his conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, he is clearly more like his father than me.

In any case, if the world does end today, I hope the tiny hummingbirds who spend a lot of time here beak deep in the flowers will be alright. And, if this is THE END, I guess it means that I never did write that book you wanted me to Jim. Sorry. And, if today is Judgment Day, and Jesus destroys me for being a non-believer, I guess that means that I did not finish the new poem I've been working on too long. But just the other day I did update my poetry blog, Annasadhorse. I only posted a couple of old new poems but that is a couple more poems than there were before.

No bull

Here's some good news. In their recent election, Ecuador made an important step towards becoming a more consciously compassionate society by outlawing cockfighting and banning the killing of bulls in the ring. They need to ban bullfighting altogether but it's a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately Costa Rica, along with Colombia, Perú, Venezuela, Panamá and Bolivia, still allow this barbaric spectacle. Their attachment to bullfighting is especially pathetic given it is, in fact, a legacy of the spiritual gonorrhea the Spanish pricks infected the region with when they fucked the Americas 500 years ago.

But, times really are changing...

Last year the government of Cataluña in Spain banned bullfighting there ... and ... currently Mexico is poised to ban bullfighting entirely. That is significant, especially given that the Plaza México in Mexico City is the world’s biggest bullring. ¡Viva México!

sources: The Informed Vegan and the Irish Times

I'll get around to the personal side of our stay in Costa Rica later but here's one thing... there haven't been any new earthquakes since the 6.0 the other day. Slim comfort given that a really vivid image of the concrete ceiling dropping down and crushing me as I lay on the bed runs in mind whenever I think of it but I'll take it. I just have to think more like the locals. They are very used to them. Earthquakes are a regular occurrence here.

Earthquakes and daytime TV

Sandhill Cranes in a Florida shopping mall last Sunday morning. This is what I love about Florida. I wish we were there now but we decided to spend a few weeks in lovely Costa Rica before settling down in Florida for the summer.

So we're in San José at the moment. The capital. There's plenty of wildlife here too. For example, feeding the pigeons in Parque Central is wildly popular but, as much as I love birds, it seems kind of gruesome to me. It's an all day, every day feeding frenzy that feels like it might, any minute, spin out of control and you know who'd get blamed. The birds.

Holy crap! We just had an earthquake! 6.0 according to the news. The strongest this year to date. It was also felt throughout Nicaragua and Panama...this following an afternoon of repeating stories on TV about Bin Laden interspersed with images of the Mississippi flooding and Ron Paul scolding America again.

Sloth poo time

Potty training at the sloth orphanage in Costa Rica.

Aviarios del Caribe is in Cahuita. We passed the place a number of times when we were there but didn't visit. The Sanctuary doesn't release many back into the wild and, as I don't like zoos or prisons, plus the fact that we thought we be tripping over sloths in the jungle, we didn't go. You know how that turned out. We never laid eyes on one although I'm sure a lot of sloth eyes were on us in a dreamy sort of way. Monkey's are easy. They make lots of noise leaping around in the trees. But sloths? They don't do much of anything except look cute. Why would I want to see them?

In case you are wondering, we have been in Puerto Viejo the last four days staying at Pagalu, a hostel that does not offer wifi, just internet. This translates to mean there is access to a couple of shitty house computers which are being used most of the time but no internet for personal computers. At the moment we are using the wifi at Veronica's Place, a super excellent vegetarian restaurant and our current home away from home. I highly recommend the veggie (seitan) "steak", mashed potatoes and gravy. Perfect comfort food when you've got the rainy season blues.

So far, although we hiked through some pretty real looking jungle, we continue to avoid a run-in with a sloth. At this point, one more day and we're safe. We rented really shitty bikes the day we got here and rode the hell of them, including beating it back to town through a pounding tropical rain storm at dusk along a pot holed jungle road dodging trucks, cars, pedestrians and other bikes. As with all our travels, this trip has not been a lovely excursion to controlled, prefab environments where we enjoy invigorating yet soothing memory making downtime. They are more like some kind of quasi-spiritual boot camp trek designed to purge the fantasy that life is a safe garden in which I can order up my private version of happiness. Everything is real, pressing, fragile, terrible, beautiful, necessary and inescapable. Dogs standing in the street, nowhere to go but where they are. I cannot forget them. Throw in love and hope and stir.

We leave on the bus in the morning and, if all goes as planned, arrive in Nevada on Tuesday around midnight. Well, my battery is nearly gone. Hasta luego.

No sloth. Lucky us.

Okay. Okay. So we haven't seen a sloth. I don't even care. Who wants to see one anyway? They're just big slow-motion show offs. Here in Costa Rica, they're a damn cliche. Everyone has seen a sloth. Lucky for us we haven't see one, especially on our big jungle walkabout yesterday. Eight hours squinting up into the canopy, camera ready, stumbling over roots, soaked with sweat but not one sloth. Whew! Close call.

Photo by Pauline

One sauntered through the cafe when the Brits were having tea. Our German friend Marion saw one on her one and only two hour dash through the preserve and poor Ricardo and Marco had to brush a sloth off their car with a damn broom!

Photo by Pauline

I don't know how we escaped their shenanigans. We are the only people here who haven't seen a sloth. Sometimes you just get lucky. As for the critter I photographed the other day, Pauline and Olaf said maybe it was a sloth but, come on, they were being kind. Surely it was a monkey. Nice people but clearly the sloth has drawn them into his little game of charades but I know better.

Photo by Pauline

Then this little clown insisted our Dutch friend Pauline take his photo. Talk about a poser. I mean, really. With her kind permission, I include Pauline's photos here so that you'll know who to avoid should to find yourself in the neighborhood. As they say, to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Monkeys and sloths

Woken up this morning before dawn by a band of Howler monkeys howling in the trees directly above our cabin. They went on for until after sunrise. Seems they were exchanging the morning gossip and news with another band in the distance. Of course, I made several videos in an attempt to capture the sound. None of the turned out very good but I will post one anyway, but later. Right now, must sleep. I hear shuffling and rattling leaves in the canopy.

Is this a sloth?

At this point, everyone here at Alby's as seen a sloth but us. I took this photo on a beach walk this afternoon. Is it a sloth? Maybe it's a sloth. We have just under two weeks left in Costa Rica. Must see a sloth before we go. If all else fails, I'll go to the restaurant a wait for them to show up there. I hear they're regulars but that just seems too easy.

Monkey or sloth?

Pathways and crossroads

There are paths running through the trees at Alby's Lodge in Cahuite. Eight Capuchins passed right over our cabin this morning and this evening a large family of Howler monkeys made their way along a line of palms while we all watched. There are four cabins at Alby's. One is occupied by an incredible couple from the UK who are currently traveling the world for 15 months and home schooling their two young, extremely bright, well-behaved children along the way. They are like the storybook family you know do not, can not, actually exist because they are so nice and so kind and so loving even though you secretly want to believe they do exist somewhere because, deep down, you need to believe that pure, simple goodness really can make it in this world.

Protect the sloths

Another of the cabins is occupied by a young couple from Holland who were stayingat Casa Marbella in Tortuguero at the same time we were. The four of us did the guided tour of the canals together so ee were delighted when, to our surprise, they arrived here this morning. Cool people. They told us that this afternoon, while they were having lunch, a sloth came into the restaurant. As is common here, the place has no walls so she came in along the open rafters. The owner gave her some lettuce, she hung around a bit (literally) then went on through, crossed the dirt road, joined a fellow sloth and they headed for the beach.

Mr. Lee buying bread from the Italian breadman

The fourth cabin is occupied by a couple from Spain. She is a dunce and he is a total asshole who won't acknowledge that the rest of us exist. When the Howlers were sitting in palm trees looking down at all of us looking up at them, he shook the fronds and shouted to get the monkeys moving because he wanted more action in his damnvideo. None of us like him, not even the storybook people.

Marion, our German friend from Tortuguero, got here the day before we did. In that one day she hiked in the National Park where she saw a sloth, took the bus to Puerto Viejo, saw it, rented a bike, rode to Manzanillo, had dinner with us when we arrived last evening and left for Mexico City this morning where she will live with an Hispanic family for the next six weeks while she does a Spanish immersion program. She already speaks it fluently but has plans to teach it when she returns home. She was baffled that we would want to stay in the tiny town of Cahuite for the next six days and then do five more in Puerto Viejo. Not everyone is ready for the philosophy of One Thing of the Day.

Marion leaving for Mexico City

Tortuguero comings and goings

This little Capuchin monkey tried jumping, spitting (0:12), barking, shaking and throwing things to drive us away. Naturally, we obliged. I don't blame him a bit. I wouldn't want us in my jungle either.


The fuzziness is from raindrops.
It is such a treat being in a place where there are no cars, trucks, SUVs, buses, trains, campers, trailers, motorcycles or homes. And I have seen only one ATV during our time here. Of course, there are lots of motorboats on the river however many of them have four-stroke engines which are quieter than regular outboards so they are not so bad. Tortuguero really is at the end of the road. No. It's beyond the end of the road. And the path. The community website does mention that you can try hiking to Tortuguera but adds that you'll probably die trying.

Can you spot Raymond? He is looking at you.

When we first got here we took a guided river tour through some of the jungle water ways then went back another day in a canoe with a German woman we met enroute to Tortuguero. She was great fun to hang out with. Meeting cool people along the way is one of the best parts of traveling like this.

Marion

In the last four days we have seen all kinds of wildlife, including Capuchin, Spider and Howler monkeys, Raymond the Caiman, tons of lizards, a few toucans, frigates, lots of vultures, grackles, herons and other fisher birds. I found an unearthed turtle egg on the beach and reburied it in the sand and lent a helping hand to a couple of dazed and confused stragglers still paddling around in the sand after dawn. Good luck, little guys. And two nights ago we did the guided beach walk in hopes of seeing a mother turtle come up from the sea.

Turtle tracks to the sea

Watching a giant sea turtle lay her eggs in the sand, seeing a mother in a species so ancient that her ancestors watched the dinosaurs rise from the flux then fade back into it, seeing her repeat the birth ritual alone at night, as it has been done for 150 million years, then slip back quietly into the sea was an amazing and truly humbling experience.

We leave in an hour for Cahuita via boat, bus, bus and hopefully taxi. Hasta entonces.

Tortuguero outtakes

The only way to Tortuguero
is by boat or plane.
We went by boat.

View from Casa Marbella.

This little Capuchin had a pretty good view of us from her tree.

Mr. Lee spotted this
little turtle on the forest path.
Don't worry. She isn't dead!

She looked dead. She was pretty far from the shore and she was covered with horrible stinging red ants but she moved her head when I photographed her. I immediately scooped her up with a leaf and rushed her towards the beach. The damn ants started swarming up my arms. The little bastard's really bite. I think they inject some kind of acid. Anyway, I had to put her down a couple of times along the way to brush them off. But we made it to the water, I released her to the sea and, as far as we could tell, she swam away but at least we know one thing for certain... the fucking ants didn't get her.

M. Lee also found this beautiful sand dollar on the beach. It was too fragile to consider trying to get it back to Nevada and, even if I managed to get it there intact, it would be in Nevada... a damn desert .... so I photographed it and left it on its beach.

Hello again

The trip to the Caribbean is on again. According to the Tico Times, while the rest of Costa Rica is getting pummeled by torrential rains and devastating mudslides, the Caribbean is experiencing the "longest dry season in more than a decade" and is "perfect for swimming for kilometers over bright sand and psychedelic reef". According to the article, the bottlenose dolphins and manatees are doing just that so, Kristiana, perhaps I will get that photo of a manatee for you yet.

Tomorrow we will do bus bus boat to Tortuguero... (San Jose to Cariari to Pavona to Tortueguero). Price, under $9 each. We'll stay in Tortuguero for four nights then we'll take a boat and bus to Cahuita for another six nights then on to Puerto Viejo for four nights. Then home. Unless, by my luck, storms drive us out early. Rain is predicted everyday next week so we shall see.

Best laid plans

Good-bye baby turtles running to the sea. Good-by glassy blue water that is but a rumor to me. Good-bye Capuchin and Howler monkeys. Good-bye frogs, coati and boas. Maybe another time? We are not sure where we will go, maybe home, but Costa Rica is a mess, roads washed out, mudslides, swollen rivers. And, as in all of Centroamerica, you are on your own. Traffic continues to move over roads that have been undercut by slides and already beginning to drop into burgeoning sinkholes. Mr. Lee blames me. Every time we get near the Caribbean the place is ravaged by rain and hurricanes. Last time we tried was during Hurricane Wilma. Not that we wanted to go there but even Cancun was shut down. We managed to camp on a wild beach though and I got a good poem out of it but ultimately the storms won, chasing us out early, leaving behind the two starving beach dogs we had befriended. It was so sad watching them in the rear view mirror as they ran down the mud puddle road after us.

Merry-go-round

The trip to the dentist went well. I may be done by Friday after all, which means we can still go to the coast, provided the road hasn't washed out. It is raining just about non-stop at this point. We went to our favorite soda (tiny cafe) for lunch, two people... rice, beans, plantains, fish, salad and tea... 4450 colones. We were home by three and saw no corpses along the way. There were lots of cops on the pedestrian mall today. Maybe it was their routine crackdown on vendors selling pirated music from plastic tarps on the sidewalk. I don't know. In any case, today the presence of the policia was as conspicuous as their absence yesterday.

Being home early, I am enjoying the company of little Dublin, one of two resident dogs here at Casa Feliz. She is very very sweet, extremely tiny and is, at the moment, cuddled beside me in the orange chair in the upstairs sitting room. As usual, Casa Feliz is one big dysfunctional family in which everyone gossips about everyone else. Currently, the most screwed up character is a 60 something Brit who recently married a much younger Tica woman who barely speaks English. He simultaneously suffers the ecstasy and despair of this insanity.

As I hear it, after a brief acquaintance they married earlier this year. After a brief honeymoon, she beat him up and he returned to the UK. They then reconciled via email. He returned to Costa Rica and they have been on and off ever since. Our host is of the opinion that she is trying to provoke him to violence (she hit him again recently) so she can divorce him and get his money though Mr. Lee tells me she would not be entitled to property he had before the marriage. Anyway, a couple of nights ago, while he was waiting for her to maybe come over at nine and maybe spend the night, he and I chatted about where they could live happily ever after. Not Costa Rica. Not the UK. Not the US or Mexico. I suggested Panama. He like that and decided that's where they would go. She showed up sometime after 10, left the next morning and he stayed in his room for the next 30 hours. People did call through the door a couple of times to see if he was alive. Tonight he and Lewis, a 23 year old UPER and graduate from a high school class of 15, went drinking.

Outtakes, San Jose

Hello pandemonium of parrots. Hello Costa Rica rainy season. Hello all day at the dentist. I go back again tomorrow. I am having some crowns redone and we are stuck here until the work is finished.

Sorry. No photos for now. The camera I have with me this trip is too conspicuous plus, at the moment, the rain is nearly endless and I don't want to risk ruining it. I should have kept my phone. I could have taken stealth pictures with it but that didn't occur to me until this afternoon. The day before we left Florida we mailed our phones, GPS, some clothes and a bunch of sea shells etc. back to Nevada to lighten our load as we are traveling only with carry on luggage. But I could have used the phone. Oh well. Writers write, right?

We took a cab from the dentist's office to the bus terminal tonight. Generally we'd walk but after six most shops are shuttered and locked turning colorful streets into grim alleyways after dark. Through the window of the cab I saw people wrapped in plastic and cardboard lying on the street in the rain and on a side street a dead guy lying on his back, hand palm down on the asphalt, a white plastic bag covering his body from the waist up, a yellow police tape stretched over the entrance to the parking lot and one cop car, lights flashing parked in the middle of the otherwise deserted street.

Reflection

Giant moth.
Costa Rica

Message in a bottle

View from inside the front door


I really feel trapped at Casa Lunatic today. The woman who runs the place is kind of sweet and tough but falls into these long monologues about herself. We have heard her whole life story, plus the litany of daily woes, but that doesn't stop her from reciting them again, or trying to. This morning I had to hide in our room to get away from it and, while I was up there taking my "nap", everyone went out, taking all the keys with them. That turned this place into a virtual prison.

Most houses around here are like small fortresses or prisons, depending on how you look at things. I say prisons. I derive little comfort from bars. They are surrounded by towering, spiked iron fences, often topped with razor wire, and/or barbed wire, and/or electric wire, and/or a narrow roof discouraging would-be intruders from getting in and me from getting out. When all the doors and padlocks in this house are locked, it takes three or four keys, depending which combination of gates you choose, to reach the street. It's bad enough that I'm already stir crazy. I only recently started talking little walks around the block, but today there was nothing I wanted to do more. At least there's this.

Show-n-tell

Why do words vanish when I attempt to write them down? All day they flutter around me like butterflies. They are frolicking in the air when I wake up in the morning. They float nearby when I am eating, walking, driving, working, even at the most unlikely times and places images, ideas, and themes present themselves, promising more to come. But they lie. When I finally pick up a pen or sit at the keyboard... poof silencio nada.

I wanted to tell you about the colony of vultures riding the currents over the canyon, crossing, lifting, diving, swooping. But now I don't know where to start, how to frame it, how to make it worth your time. Now that I am sitting here, all I can think to do is blurt out, "Oh hi. I saw vultures flying over the sad river today". I feel like I'm doing kindergarten show-n-tell. I suppose this is why I write poetry. No matter how hard I try to settle on a point of view, images, words, sounds, ideas, events, thoughts spontaneously rearrange and realign themselves, take on different proximities, shift gravity, turn inside out, take on new meaning or lose meaning entirely. Poetry is the best way I know to reconnect whatever dots are left.

So... while I'm at it, I might as well mention the pandemonium of parrots that fly over the house morning and evening. Perhaps I will take a photo of them tonight. So far I haven't bothered because they are smallish and green, not flaming red, yellow, blue, orange parrots and, being the rainy season, and don't look like much against the drab gray sky. But they are very very loud, all squawking at once and constantly. No wonder pandemonium is the word used to describe them as a group.

Evening recap

We have been without internet for the last 24 hours due to a huge storm yesterday. It's the rainy season anyway but this one seemed worse than usual. I think we are getting the edge of the hurricane near Cabo San Lucas. I swear lightning nearly broke the window. Anyway, we lost power for the day and into the evening and the internet was down until this afternoon. Now it's late. My eyes are blurry, I have a headache, and the urgency to explain why I love Costa Rica has, in the meantime, subsided. It is an interesting place though, and I don't mean because you can zip line through the jungle canopy or raft white water. I love that the Harpy Eagle (still) lives here even though I didn't know anything about them until now.

For the last few days, M. Lee has been reading out lout to me about Costa Rica to me from the Moon Handbook. In case you also didn't know, Harpy Eagles are huge. Their wings are some 200 cm (6 ft, 7 in) across. I'd love one to drop by the Bird Park. Unfortunately, in my enthusiasm at breakfast yesterday, I told Maria, the really nice Nicaraguan cook, that the Harpy Eagle's wings are 20 ft across. That's how I remembered it at the time... BIG WINGS. The internet was down and the book was upstairs so I winged it. Today she asked Lee for their name in Spanish. At that point, it occurred to me that probably I should do a little fact checking myself. I just did and damn. Now tomorrow at breakfast, I get tell Maria how I, um, kind of overstated the size of Harpy Eagles that, in fact, they do not grow to rival the size of small airplanes. What a bummer. Now they seem like puny little sparrows.

Anyway, Costa Rica is wild with life of all shapes and sizes. For example, according to Moon, it is home to over 1,400 species of orchids. I did not know that orchids are such beguiling creatures. "One species even drugs its visitors. Bees clamber into its throat and sip a nectar so intoxicating that they become inebriated, loose their footing, and slip into a small bucket. Escape is offered by a spout - the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. As the drunken insect totters up, it has to wriggle beneath an overhanging rod, which showers its back with pollen." I swear that's a direct quote.