Fifth Time In Costa Rica, 26

It really feels like I´m winding down now. Today I purchased my bus ticket to Alajuela for Wednesday. Early Thursday I fly home to Vancouver and Friday I will be getting my ducks in a row. I can´t think of anything interesting that happened today, so I will try to fake it, just to have something to fill the page. I could say that I had a lovely walk, and saw three different morpho butterflies. I always feel blessed when I see them, they are so incredibly beautiful. There was one again hanging out at the entrance to the driveway to the Mariposa. He perched on a twig and folded up his wings. The undersides are dull brown with big eye-like spots to scare off would-be predators, so you can hardly see them. You can only really appreciate their full iridescent blue beauty while they´re in flight. I shook the twig to get him flying, and he did, then a car stopped so the people in it could also enjoy the beauty and one of them gave me a thumbs up, since I was also just standing there gawking. Then the morpho returned to land more or less in the same place as before. I am glad that I have my bus ticket now. This way it really feels like I am going home. Not that I´m in any hurry to leave. The beauty of this place never seems to pale on me. But I also accept that Monteverde is not, and likely never will be my home, and this for me is a good thing. You see, Gentle Reader, I cannot think of one single thing or talent that I would have to offer to the wellbeing of this community, which isn´t already happening here, and that for me is the litmus test for whether or not I should consider going anywhere. It seems that the first time I was here I was so enchanted by the place, and also so unhappy with my current living situation, that the very idea of resettling in a beautiful tropical country was downright seductive. I was thirty-eight at the time, and still living in Christian community, but it was also clear that our community was dying a slow and rather painful death. I was living with two rather difficult older women and we had taken on a very dysfunctional man as a roommate to help pay the rent. One of the women was particularly impossible, and one never knew what kind of curve ball or sucker punch she would be delivering next. When I returned from Monteverde following two weeks of bliss (being away from her was part of the enjoyment), she had imported her ex-boyfriend from the trailer park he was living in. Not a bad sort, but completely unsuited to our way of life, and unfortunately was being used by this woman as a pawn for gaining control over our community. And other stuff happened, which I will not go into. Well, needless to say, feeling that all my options at home were nearly exhausted, the idea of resettling elsewhere was very appealing indeed. Less than three years later, when a complete stranger gave me a Spanish-English dictionary on the street, not knowing a thing about my interest in learning the Spanish language, I took that as a sign from God that he still wanted me to move to Costa Rica and to learn Spanish. Well, I was half-right, and to this day I still strongly believe that he had guided that man to give me that dictionary, and becoming fluent in the language of Cervantes has definitely paid off in so many other ways. I still held dear the dream, or vision, of settling eventually in Monteverde, but my life was quickly going sideways instead of south. A huge cluster of trauma and bad luck left me unemployed, penniless and homeless in 1998. A year later, as I was slowly getting back on my feet, I seriously began to learn and study Spanish, and advanced quite rapidly in the language. I still held that dream of living in Monteverde. As my life began to move forward again, and I was enjoying decent housing and gainful employment, I also soon had a bank balance. I applied for a passport in 2007. The next year I returned to Costa Rica. That second trip cured me of my beautiful illusions, and I benignly accepted that I would likely never be living there, nor anywhere else abroad. Canada, and likely my expensive city of Vancouver, would always be my home, and that is a good thing. But I still wanted to explore other parts of Latin America as part of my exploration of the language of Octavio Paz. In 2009 I spent a month in Mexico City. The following year I returned to Costa Rica. I had a very curious experience staying in the bed and breakfast, the Mariposa (this is my third time here). I felt a connection of friendship to the family that runs the place, and definitely wanted to return there in the future. I returned to Mexico City and Chiapas in 2012 and Mexico City again in 2013, and Mexico City again and Puebla in 2014. The following two years I was in Bogotá, Colombia, twice, for a month each time. Feeling fatigued with holidaying in huge noisy cities and feeling like a crime target, I opted again for Monteverde last year. I stayed again at the Mariposa. It was even better than the previous time. This year I´m back. I like the people here at the bed and breakfast and would like to continue visiting. The natural beauty of this area still inspires and astounds me. I am also enjoying learning more about the people and the culture here. I will never live here. It is a nice place to visit. But, in a way, this place is becoming for me a second home. When I retire, I will not be allowed to live abroad for more than six months and still collect my pension, which also basically strands me in Canada. Worse things could happen. In the meantime, I can always come back here, every year, or every other year, as a (hopefully) welcome guest and friend.