Costa Rica, 2010, 2

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 5:19 PM, Aaron Zacharias <pajarohermoso@yahoo.ca> wrote:

This is my final night in Alajuela.  Tomorrow mornng, early, I am taking the bus up to Monteverde.  I´m not exactly enchanted with this hostel, I feel a little bit old here if you know what I mean.  But I also know that there are worse hotels than this one in Costa Rica so I´m still counting my blessings.  I prefer staying in a bed and breakfasts, instead.  They´re not profit motivated and they´re usually in the biz because they love people and they love their country and they believe strongly in hospitality.  Not exactly my experience here at Alajuela Backpackers Boutique Hostel, but there are,as I mentioned, worse places, and yes that is their real name!  I´ve been walking a lot today and am feeling a little bit sore, but pretty good.  I took the bus out to the bird zoo again.  Pricey entrance fee, 15 bucks US but worth it. As I´ve mentioned in previous e-mails it is a huge luxuriant tropical garden with caged birds that are being rehabilitated for eventual release back into the wild.  They also have birds from other countries, most of which have been abused or abandoned by previous owners or zoos where they were kept.  They also have free-range peacocks. So nice to see peacocks again since they took the last ones out of Stanley park a few years ago and I think I will start painting them again soon, probably when I´m back.  They also have pumas, an ocelot, peccaries and other mammals as well as reptiles.  A fascinating place and great for people watching too. I think what intrigues me so much about the Ticos, as the Costa Rican people call themselves, is how unpretentious they look.  Totally no-frills, even the young women, no matter how they tart themselves up like hookers (and a lot of them do).  They are an attractive but not a glamourous people, if this makes any sense, say, unlike a lot of Colombians or Argentinians I have met.  This country is like one enormous small town.  It is a monoculture, very unlike the diversity we take for granted in Canada.  Family connections are very strong here and parents remain actively engaged in their children´s lives even after they´ve become parents and grandparents themselves.  A lot of them look alike, which is no wonder, since most of them have been in this country for many many generations. It still amazes me as well how incompatible the Ticos seem to be with the beautiful lush tropical environment they live in.  A lot of them strike me as quite materialistic and the automobile rules here.  Funny, when I stepped outside the hostel for the first time yesterday morning I was struck by that strange medley of familiar smells in the air that confirmed that I am back in Costa Rica; the damp, fecund warmth in the air, with the smell of flowers, trees, soil and decay, but also...car exhaust.  These people must have diesel in their DNA.

Mon., Oct. 18, 2010 at 5:17 p.m.

I arrived here at Monteverde at pricisely 10:40 this morning following a nearly four hour bus ride that took us up a long very steep and winding unpaved mountain road.  Once again I cannot begin to describe the wonder of this place but I don`t know if this is going to stop me. Right now I am dripping with perspiration, not from the heat, since it is very cool up here, but from climbing up steep roads and hills.  This is the place to stay if you want to get whipped into shape without really having to try.  The bed and breakfast where I will be staying for the next five weeks, ¨Mariposa¨ (Spanish for butterfly) is rustic, quiet with a huge kitchen and windows looking out onto the lush grounds.  Esteban, one of the owners was very welcoming, and patient with my Spanish. Just after I arrived a huge rain and windstorm kicked up and it looked kind of scary, but as it was winding down I went out anyway for something to eat and to reorientate myself to the area.  There are a lot of tourists here, and many business establishments have signs in English only, which to me seems kind of discourteous to the local people.  On the other hand, Ticos don´t appear to have a lot of time for places like Monteverde, unless they work or live here, but not to visit.  Exceptions seem to be for the middle and upper middle classes of Costa Rica, but this place seems first and foremost a tourist destination. The Ticos seem to have embraced it as a cash cow for tourist revenue.  But to be fair, a lot of the Ticos I have spoken to seem very proud of their country and its natural beauty.  Most of them work hard, long hours, and are very involved with their families.  They don´t have time or spare money for this kind of frivolity, I suppose.  On the bus coming up the mountain I was looking out at a lot of clearcuts that have been made in the tropical forest for pasture land and I am reminded of what I heard from someone when I was here for the first time in 94 that it was the American Quakers who settled here in the fifties who had to convince the locals to stop cutting down trees.  I am pretty sure that their being Americans has nothing to do with their good common sense by the way. This kind of brings me back to a previous observation about the Costa Ricans (many, but not all, I would imagine) being out of sync with the natural environment of their country.  If this is so then it must be because of their Spanish European heritage (no different really from my British European heritage) that was all about pillage, plunder, and conquest, and the traditional misinterpretation of the biblical command from God to be stewards and caretakers of the earth.  This type of thinking is still deep in our collective DNA and I don´t know if enough of us will be able to reckon with this soon enough before we have damaged the earth to the point of guaranteeing our own extinction.  But I still have hope. I´m also thinking of the kinds of people who have come over here from Europe over the centuries: over-dressed pale skinned savages with a pretence of culture and superior civilization, carrying lots of gunpowder and firearms and with poor hygiene dreadful body odour and likely extremely bad breath as well. Anyway, I`m going to give this entry time to ripen and maybe add to it over the next couple of days, after which I will send it out to all of you. It is nighttime right now and the air is full of the songs and calls of the night creatures.   It is Monday now.  I just did a major grocery shopping trip in Santa Elena.  It´s a four mile hike from my bed and breakfast with some very steep hills to climb but I walked all the way, filled my sportsbag up with food then walked back often in driving rain.  Great workout and I was soaked to the skin, more I think from persperation, but my umbrella is pretty small and flimsy.  This brings to mind how important it has become to me to make myself at home whereever I am.  In my hotel room I immediately unpacked and put away and organized my stuff, then rested before going out.  Now I am going to cook my own meals (and save tonnes of money, I hope), it´s part, I think of travelling well.  Walking everywhere helps.  Even though the hills can be grinding It puts one in sync with the terrane and helps you to come to love the land you are staying on.  Today I saw my first sloth, courtesy of Esteban the owner of the Mariposa, who pointed it out to me on the property, a mother with her young one high up in a tree together. Then I walked up to the entrance of the Cloud Forest Reserve.  I didn´t go in, it´s too rainy right now so it can wait a few days.  I went to the hummingbird garden to watch the hummingbirds, seven or eight species of them madly swooping from feeder to feeder.  It`s great to see them again.  I am working already on a new hummingbird painting while I´m here.  I also visited my friend Alejandro who owns the cafe there and lives with his wife and infant son in a house nearby just at the entrance of the reserve.  We had a great visit over coffee, talked a lot about politics and life in both English and Spanish.  His English is excellent by the way (he´s lived in the US) but i respect his desire to speak it so we are doing Spanglish. The biodiversity here does not cease to amaze.  Every tree it seems has ferns and vines and bromeliades growing all over.