Paradise

Before I left for Costa Rica, I heard there was one place in the country a person just had to go - Manuel Antonio. I've been there twice before, and both times I left wondering what was so great about it.

Well, the second time I left, I was wondering if the hostel owners knew it was my visiting friends Dave and Linsley and I who used the hostel's entire supply of water flushing out the bungalow's sewage pipes. But that's for a different post.

For the past two weeks, I've been in Manuel Antonio taking a course to get my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate. While I'm still not very impressed with the town itelf, I did last weekend discover the national park.

Two friends of mine and I hired a guide to take us through the park and point out all the little critters and stuff. We'd just be walking along and the guide would squint into the forest and say, "Ah, here's something." When I tried to follow his gaze, all I could see was a bunch of trees.

Then he'd point his little telescope into the jungle and in the viewer would be a tiny little bat or a rainbow catapillar or the world's smallest humming bird or a crocodile eye peering up out of the water. My favorites were the sloths.

All of the pictures below were taken through the lense of the telescope. Are they called telescopes, or are telescopes only for looking at stars? I'm not sure.

It's a beautiful sound

I believe the bulk of the rain may be behind us now. We've had so much. I had been thinking all the rain was typical of Costa Rica in October, but according to the front page of the paper Friday, there hasn't be so much rain since 1944. Apparently it rained more in three days last week than it usually does in all of the month. Too much rain makes me sad. But on Friday, I woke up to blue skies. A lady at the bus stop commented to me that the season had changed. Later when I was outside walking with the baby, a high school student asked me if I was taking advantage of summer. Summer! Just like that. Yesterday we were in the dead of winter (77 degrees in my bedroom), and already today we are in summer. The seasons have been on my mind lately, so what else could I do but write a blog post about them. I forgot to post it while I was at the Internet Friday morning, so here it is, a little late but still timely.

I think I understand the bright paints of the houses here now. It's an effort to break up the monotony of green. There is the pure green green of nature everywhere. One glance out the window and all there is green. Scan the horizon and you see nothing but green. Look to your left and two your right. Green, green, green. I used to say with wonder, "It's just so green!" Now I say the same line with something more like disgust. I am ready to be home for a while. I wish for the feeling of fall in Arkansas, the look and smell of it. And the colors! Unlike the enduring green of Costa Rica, the colors of fall in Arkansas come and go so quickly, there is no time to tire of them. I can almost feel the fall wind picking up, bringing with it relief from the heat of summer and a hint of the coming cold. Maybe it's the rain that has me in such a nostaligic state. We are in the thick of it now. It rains off and on all day and all night, and even when it's not raining, the air is heavy with moisture. Water stands in every depression and drips from every eave. Mud is everywhere, tracked in on the bottoms of our shoes, clinging to the cuffs of our jeans, smeared into the hand-woven rugs on the doorsteps. The white uniform shirts of the students are splattered ugly with brown, and their blue slacks stay rolled to the knees. The heels of our flip-flops sling mud onto to the backs of our legs. There is almost more mud than green. The rivers are roaring and brown these days, filling homes and wiping away bridges as they make their way to the sea. And all there is to look forward to is the coming dry season, in which the heat will be as oppressive as the current rain. Back home the seasons hang around just long enough to give a feeling of excited expectancy. And when they change, we feel reassured by their reliability. In winter, we listen for the birds of spring and are comforted by the sight of flowers blooming. In Spring we tire of the thunderstorms and rain showers and long for the opportunities brought by summer. But in summer, it gets so hot. Won't fall be here soon? And then it comes and goes, and we remark gleefully, as we do every year, on the cozy smell that comes when we turn on our heaters for the first time. We cook chili and hope for snow. But it's not long before we are again listening for the birds of spring and taking note of the first green spikes peaking up from the ground. Other than family and friends, and there for a spell, tuna sandwiches, I have not missed much about the United States. I know others have missed its politics, its department stores, it's accessibility, but I have been fine living without those things, happier even, although I am finding it hard to live without the four seasons of home.

Happy Autumn!

Along came mister alligator

When I was in Ciudad Cortez, we stopped in front of a house, and my friend yelled to a man on the front porch, "Can we see the alligators?" The man turned out to be crazy, I think, but we managed to get from his jibberish that, yes, we could see the alligators. We walked through the house and out the back door. There was a stinking little pond there with pairs of alligator eyes sticking up from the surface all around. I chose not to walk across the bridge.

Another view

I am sitting in the fanciest Internet café ever. It’s all sleek and black with widescreen monitors and ceiling fans. There was no school in all of the country on Wednesday or Thursday of this week, so while many of my gringo friends headed off to the beach, I squeezed into the extended cab of a pickup and headed to a town called Coronado.

I went to help the sister, Zaida, of one of my colleagues at school edit her thesis, which is in English and due in December. The women grew up on a farm on the Terrabá River just almost where the river rolls out into the sea. All of the brothers and sisters (I think there are six or seven of them) work during the week in other towns but return to the farm on weekends to visit, or in the case of my colleague Jeanette, live.

My experience there was more like what I expected from Costa Rica when I first came here. The people were genuinely nice and laid back and just having a great time. They joked and laughed, and because Zaida speaks English, she could translate most of it for me. We went kayaking on the river and it reminded me of being at home, as a teenager, at the bayou.

They have a pig farm and all the pig poop gets drained into a big plastic bag. From the plastic bag, the leftover pig farts run through a pipe to the house, where the gas is used to heat the stove. Every thing we ate for lunch yesterday was caught or gathered or grown on the farm. We had fish soup with coconut milk and rice, all cooked with gas collected from the pigs. It was one of the most delicious meals I’ve eaten in Costa Rica.

After lunch, Zaida and I went to work on her thesis. She was writing in her second language, so there were lots of problems. We weren’t even halfway through the 40-page report when she announced I’d just have to go to her house to spend the night.

This is one of the things that still catches me off guard here. There was no, "Hey would you mind spending the night at my house tonight? I’d be a big help." It’s just, "Looks like your coming to my house tonight. Go get your bags."

I talked myself out of being huffy about this and instead gathered my bags and jumped into the car. On the way to her house, she took me to a little pond where there were lots of alligators. So that was nice. When we got to her house, I forgot all about being almost huffy. Her two-story peach-colored house has walls that go all the way to the ceiling, bathrooms with sinks in them, big puffy couches, cable TV, and a spotless kitchen. It even has an aquarium! And hot water!

We finished the thesis and watched Maria Jose lose to the Panamanian on Latin American Idol. I was bummed, but then I took a hot shower and forgot all about it. I slept bug-free last night and woke up right on top of the world. This morning Zaida dropped me off at the bus station, and while I had a great time with her and her family, I was grateful to be alone again. I hopped on the bus and set out for Buenos Aires to do my regular Friday e-mail check.

We made it as far as Palmar Norte, the town I am in now. Just as we were pulling out to continue on our way, the bus veered smack into a car, and the waiting began. It was just a little crash, but the police had to come and measure whatever they measure in these situations, and the drivers had to blow into the machine to see if they were drunk, which the person sitting behind me said the bus driver probably was because he’d seen him drinking guaro last night. I didn’t stick around to find out. Ticos can wait forever, I know, but I can’t. So I got my money back and walked off in search of an Internet Café. And here I am. This afternoon I’ll go back to the bus station and try my luck again. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go to Buenos Aires and post pictures from Coronado.

The whole wide world

In hopes of contributing something to this town besides a southern accent, I've decided to paint a map of the world on a wall of the school. So far I've finished most of the grid and some of Russia. The other teachers at my school seem a little worried about how the map will turn out. I keep telling them to be patient, that it will all come together, but I'm not so sure myself. The world is just so big.

Recess in the rainy season

Work of art