Fifth Time In Costa Rica, 2

I did very Little today. I had breakfast with a pleasant oouple from the Montreal área. They are here with their three kids. Now they are probably in Monteverde. We had an interesting conversation, among other things, about the connection between good nutrition and good mental health and the catch twenty´twos that a lot of our people get trapped in: too unwell to eat properly, and also unwell from not eating properly. Then I did another long walk, in a different direction this time, climbing up for around four miles or so to another small town up in the hills. I noted how full of coconuts the palm trees are around here, just laden with them. I also passed a small papaya tree with fattening and ripening fruit hanging from its trunk. Yesterday I also visited in the same bed and breakfast another nice couple from Ontario. I actualloy met them on the flight from Toronto and we had a really enjoyable conversation. As Christians we seem to share a lot in common though they are really involved in a church and I´m kind of nowhere church´wise that is. It felt like a constructive dialogue and I feel assured that even if I´m nowhere, I´m still in the right place at the right time. It was a nice surprise seeing them here at the bed and breakfast the next morning. They have two kids who hung out with me for a while in the breakfast patio while I was working on a drawing and they also showed me their sketch books. Funny, though I´m not huge on kids (but I´m not a kid hater either) I find it interesting how much I end up engaging with children during these trips, and enjoying it. Following a delicious two hour siesta at midday in my room, I went back out and visited a local secondhand bookstore, bought anoteher novel, then went and sat in the garden courtyard of the Cultural Centre again. the trees in that garden are just full of chattering parakeets, but I can only see them when they´re in flight since their green plumage blends so well with the leaves of the trees. The security guard there took an interest in me and my art and we had a couple of pleasant chats in both Spanish and English, since he wanted to practice with me, and since he was wearing the uniform, I was not about to argue with him. He told me he wants to move back to Georgia, USA to be with his mother who has lived there for a number of years. He says he´d like to leave Costa Rica because he doesn´t like the attitude of a lot of the local people (he is Costa Rican, or Tico) especially their disregard for the law and their poor driving habits. Quite honestly, even though they do need to learn how to drive properly and courteously here, they are far better than the ones in Mexico City and Bogota. He asked me why I don´t think of moving here, myself, and I replied that, besides being already comfortably fixed, more or less, in my own dear Vancouver, I really don´t know if I´d have anything to offer people if I lived here. This country does very well already, please and thank you, besides which, I am not comfortable about consumer immigration. I even ask people who want to live in Canada or are already getting settled here to please ask themselves what, besides their tax dollars, are they willing to contribute to the common good of the people in their new country. Whether it´s consumer immigration or consumer tourism, it still really indicates the huge multipolar culture of selfishness that has overtaken our planet. I never ask that question of refugees, by the way. That would be like hitting a child.