I was rather amused this morning at breakfast by a table of six French nationals, all from the Cote d´Azur. They were all between forty and seventy, full of life and appered to be having a lot of fun. And despite the language barrier, they were friendly, nice and pleasant. Later, as I was walking, I saw three morpho butterflies, eacjh flying in turn just ahead of me. Here is an image again to refresh your memory of those iridescent blue giants
I was seated on my favourite bench to look out at the Nicoya Peninsula. As usual, there were vultures flying overhead. I particularly noticed them last week when I was climbing and scrambling my way up that steep, rocky mountain path from San Luis. They appeared to be just waiting to see if I would make it or not. I did spend a little time today meditating on vultures. I´ll tell you a dream I had long ago when I was twenty, or, when large animals still roamed the earth. In this dream I saw a bald eagle flying, then an osprey, then a vulture. I heard a voice ask me, which of these birds is the greatest of all. I looked carefully, then I answered, not the eagle, because they rob the ospreys of the fish they catch to feed their young. And not the ospreys, because they feed only themselves and their young. It would have to be the vultures, because by eating carrion they perform the greatest service by cleansing the earth.
Later I saw a swallow-tailed kite flying overhead
This is the first time I´ve seen one of these birds since my first visit here twenty-three years ago. On my last day here back then I saw four of them soaring overhead, then separating, each flying in a differnent direction. It felt like a sign or omen. After that I saw a squirrel cuckoo. Please don´t ask me how they got that name.
I went again to the cafe at the Valle Escondido, or Hidden Valley forest reserve. There is also a bed and breakfast there. It is hidden away and it is the place where I stayed during my first visit here in 1994. In those days I really travelled by the seat of my pants. I didn´t even book any reservations. I just got off the plane, cleared customs, got in a cab and the driver drove me to a decent little pension in Alajuela. When I arrived in Monteverde, I went to this other place because I´d read about it in the paper. Much to my relief, there was a vacancy. I would never consider traveling that way again, but it was fun while it lasted. Kind of like hitch-hiking, in a way. And with the internet and Uncle Google at our fingertips it is so much easier to do research and book reservations almost anywhere in the world, except maybe for Somalia or North Korea.
The cafe is kind of open air, with no windows, just large spaces for the air to pass through and to look out at the fabulous view. There was a family of Americans. One of their children, a little girl of perhaps six or seven, accidentally spilled a glass of juice on the floor and was weeping inconsolably. I felt so sorry for her and her mother took her out for a walk to help her settle down. Later the girl´s mother approached me to say hi, telling me she was seeing me all over Monteverde. They´re from California and they have been here for two years. It also turns out their youngest daughter attends the same school as the granddaughter of the owners of the bed and breakfast where I´m staying and they know each other. Very nice people and I hope to run into them again.
On my way back I saw a calf wandering around free, grazing by the side of the road. When I got closer I noticed the poor animal had been mistreated. There was a long stick attached to it´s neck by a collar. I also noticed purple blotches on it and abrasions. Then two dogs started to harrass it so I sharply rebuked them in Spanish and they backed off and the calf appeared, by its body language to be saying thank you. A bit later I noticed a couple photographing a mot mot. I´ve seen so many today that they´ve kind of lost their novelty, but they are lovely so here´s another look if you want to be reminded.
I stopped in the slightly pricey Italian restaurant and ordered more pizza than I could eat so the leftovers will be tomorrow´s dinner. I have just noticed that I´m hungry again, but I´ve just fortified my supply of trail mix with nuts, which I am munching right now. I have found that travelling on a low budget while vegetarian I have to adapt strategies to keep myself well fed on limited means, so the trail mix with extra nuts works wonders. I guess you could say I´m more a traveller than a tourist, kind of like an aging backpacker I suppose.
While paying my bill in the restaurant I was a bit annoyed when the fellow working there repeated himself in English when I didn´t quite understand him the first time. The problem is, his voice was very low so I wouldn´t have even understood him at first in English. Also some people here speak a rather garbled form of Spanish, like a local dialect and I simply don´t have a clue what they are saying. I just asked Esteban and he has explained to me that it isn´t a different dialect, but that they just tend to talk faster, run their words together and use slang and colloquialisms that I´m not necessarily going to get. But so it goes when you speak a second language. You are always going to have to work with it a bit harder than with your mother tongue. Dammit!
On my way back to the bed and breakfast I saw an orange breasted trogon
He flew right above my head and perched on an overhead branch. He was so close, I could almost reach out and touch him. He was very calm, showed absolutely no fear of me. I might have sworn he had just come over to say hi to me.
Just now, while typing this blog, I saw a summer tanager in the big azalea bush. Here´s an image to refresh our memory.
I´ve said this before and I´m saying it again. What separates me from bird watchers is this: I don´t feel the need to go out looking for them. They always seem to come to me, or somehow we stumble across each other along the way. I find this so much more gratifying. This way the sighting feels much more like a gift and I appreciate it more as just that, a gift from the bird and a gift from God.
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