Costa Rica
Costa Rica
We went to Costa Rica
a preliminary post
When Steve told us we were flying Taca Airlines I thought he was making a bad joke. On the contrary and in fact, the planes were new and fine.
We had a very nice hotel in San Jose. the Hotel Del Oro or someting similar. Very professional, beautiful and well done.
We decided to walk down town and look around. The idea was fine but the execution was something else. i tried to cross a street. Ohhhhh myyyy helllllll. it was more dangerous than white water rafting. if I hadn’t heard my friends screaming at me i would undoubtedly have continued my fat and happy stroll across the intersection into certain death under the wheel or over the hood of various busses and private cars that increased their speed when they sensed I was new in town. I wont drive that fast on the freeway. I’m sure my car wont accelerate from zero to 80 in the few seconds it took them to almost kill me. i wish someone had clocked me on my return sprint back to the curb. nothing but hunters courtesy stopped them from coming up on the side walk to finish me off. Apparently “fair is fair”.
We were up town partly to pick up some equipment we needed for our overnighter in the Cloud Rain Forest alone in an isolated hut in jaguar and boa, eyelash viper and… etc. country. We wanted a knife. When after half an hour or so we couldn’t find a knife Steve approached a police man; well, I guess he was a police man, he had a pistol stuck in his belt over his left hip, When the man didn’t seem to understand Steve made stabbing gestures with his hand. i was trying to step back and disassociate my self from him when the man smiled in an almost amused way and gestured “follow me”. i figured that we might be being led to jail. We followed him for some time and every time we passed another policeman he made amused looking comments to them and continued on. But when after about fifteen minutes we ended up in front of a gun-shop i decided we had just provided him with a welcome break and a good story. You could have outfitted a small guerilla army from that store. Mossburg pump shotguns with pistol handles? In the City? The rats must be hell!
We got our knives. i have never owned a switch blade before. It does give you a certain sense of security. A Jaguar would have to think twice in the face of that gleaming, chinese made, shining thing of beauty. I did throw it halfway across the hotel room trying to get the blade to “flick open” the first time. It proved to take a certain deft fillip to open correctly. Well, you have to expect a glitch or two the first time with anything. And so I was a little annoyed at Kent’s reaction but in all fairness i guess it did almost hit him. But the blade, truly, wasn’t really fully open. And the whole thing, blade and handle, hardly weighs a full pound.
Spanish seems to be a more melodic and poetic language than english. For instance when in the mountains above lake Arenal in Costa Rica a foreman called a heavy equipment operator a “fat assed bastard” for arrogantly, dismissively, holding up traffic on a little dirt mountain road, it didn’t seem offensive at all. While no vote was taken, i think we were all in total agreement. Yet, let my wife say the same thing in English and I have often found it offensive. (It was bound to happen. my wife read this and pointed out that she had never actually called me a fat-assed bastard. Ok, I will give her that, though I regard it as a quibble. It’s not like she wouldn’t have if she had thought of it. People can be so picky)
One evening in Costa Rica, with the “stars shining and the shadows falling”, at a tourist trap in Santa Elena called the Frog Pond we found that there were no more guides. if we wanted to see the hundreds of frogs on display in their multi glass fronted, banana fly ridden, over grown, small ponded, display (you can’t tell the frogs without a guide, you can’t even find them to look at them) cases, we could pay our money and just wander around if we wanted. I enquired about the possibility of just sneaking up on the groups that did have a guide and secretly listening. The teller cum director explained, in a shocked voice, that that was strictly forbidden and impossible. Well, with nothing else to do in a small rural town, we had already walked down main street, we paid our money and sneaked up on a group with a guide. Frankly it was much easier than the “director” had supposed. After all, it was dead dark and thus easy to spot the guides flashlight as he pointed out the otherwise invisible small amphibians hidden under bark and leaf.
We had a great time kibitzing from our hidden position, in the dark, in the back. It was even better when the group from Texas joined up. They were perhaps a little racus, even crude, but great fun. When the guide pointed out that one form of frog did not touch one another during reproduction some one muttered, “how like my own dear wife”. The return volleys got to be better than the guides lecture, which often didn’t rise above, “and now this frog is a little green one which comes out at night, likes water and is small”. I figure “you seen one frog, you seen em all”. None of them seemed to have teeth or be flesh eating after all. By that time in the trip we had come to expect a little more excitement. Now if the frogs had been six feet tall and revealed looking hungrily down on us from the trees, their great saucer eyes gleaming orangely in the moon light, that would have been something else entirely.
When it was all over, as it was, all too soon, and we were back in the curio shop where they sold the tickets and various trash, the guide came up to one of our group and while ‘mad dogging’ him said, “One should not join a group of which one is not a member. it is forbidden.” He received a sweet smile and was told, “I’ll remember that next time I’m in Costa Rica”. It must be a cultural thing because he seemed “taken aback” and paused in some confusion and then “about faced” and marched off.
More later if I get feeling better. I see Dr sully at 3:30. I “May have picked up a little bug”.
Its not all bad. I figure this new delivery system may save me hours a year. it is very efficient.