Costa Rica, 2010, 4

Thu., Oct. 21, 2010 at 4:10 p.m.

Sat., Oct. 23, 2010 at 4:19 p.m.

Nothing much happened Friday, yesterday.  I took a walk in the Children´s Eternal Rainforest.  It´s quite extensive with narrow trails that hug the side of the mountain.  The trees are smaller than in the cloud forest, because it´s a different microclimate.  I was the only person there save for one other visitor whom I passed.  At one point I was surrounded by capuchin monkeys picking guavas in the trees above me.  They seemed very gentle, quiet apart from the odd squeak.  Very human looking but for their long prehensile tails.  I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we humans had tails.  But for the long walks I seem to be slowing down quite a bit, spending more time in my rented bedroom and kitchen, sometimes working on a painting, or making something to eat, or resting on the couch or looking out the window at the trees and the tangled growth outside. Last night was cold so I borrowed a space heater for my room.  One would never imagine it getting cold here but up in the mountains it does sometimes and my room is often a bit chilly. Saturday I walked again to Santa Elena and back.  It´s about four miles each way, but with the hills it can feel more like ten.  Very good workout.  And boy, do I sweat a lot here.  It´s embarrassing.  I checked out a farmer´s market held inside a huge corrugated metal building the dimensions of a hangar.  There wasn´t much there.  I stopped at the cafe bookstore.  The table I sat at was crawling with tiny ants so I moved.  They can´t really do a lot about the insects here so up to a certain point one lives with them.  The presence of the people who live here, seeing them go about their daily lives exists in a certain dissonant counterpoint with the natural beauty of the area, but this also makes a good reality check.  I think this counterpoint, this dissonance actually adds to the wonder and magic of this place, though there are limits, for example, the van with the megaphone just behind me blasting a recorded advertising message for a store.  They have these throughout Costa Rica and the noise pollution is atrocious.  This one was moving particularly slow behind me, at a pedestrian´s pace, and I knew if didn´t do something this annoyance would be dogging me for some distance, not what I came to Monteverde for.  So I stood at the side of the road with my fingers in my ears. When the driver saw me he sped off, then returned from the other direction but at a decent speed and I wasn´t bothered by him again. It seems that none of the many dogs and cats here get spaded or neutred.  In front of one cafe there was a small group of tourists with a Tico man, possibly a tour guide and two little dogs attempting to go at it right at their feet.  One woman said, ¨Hey, no sex on the sidewalk!¨´ and I remarked ¨Vete al vetinario!¨ The Tico man grinned sheepishly and when I translated for the tourists ¨¨Go to the vet!¨ the tourists looked just a little bit embarrassed. I´ve been seeing quite a few motmots lately, including the one perched just outside my window this morning:  Here´s what they look like     The weather´s been pretty uneven.  Sunny and beautiful in the morning, then a couple of cloudbursts, then rain.

Yesterday was kind of uneventful so I haven´t written anything.  Mostly I felt sore all over from the previous day´s hike so I went on another long hike to cure it (try it some time. It works!) The walk took me along four or five miles worth of side roads with plenty of forest, fields, butterflies, and valley and mountain views.  Then I stopped for a cold drink in a cafe, Stella´s, and walked from there to Santa Elena, a distance of about three miles where I browsed around and stopped in a small bookstore with a funky little cafe upstairs where I stopped for a coffee.  Afterward I walked back to the Mariposa for lunch and some time to work on a painting and already the rain was pouring down.  I had a nap, painted some more, took a brief walk in between aguaceros (or cloudbursts), then spent the evening inside listening to the thunder and pelting rain and watching the lightning. This morning, while the sun shone I went up to the Cloud Forest Reserve.  I stopped in the Cafe Colibri (Cafe hummingbird) where I talked with Roberto, a local artist who shows his paintings in the cafe.  His style is quite similar to mine, so he must be pretty good, eh?  Like many others he tried at first to talk to me in English until I convinced him ¨Si quiera hablar ingles, puedo permanecerme en Canada´¨ (If I want to speak English I can stay in Canada.) El es amigo de Alejandro, el patron de la cafeteria.  (oops, switched to Spanish by accident.  I meant to say, he is a friend of Alejandro, the owner of the cafe.)  My Spanish already seems to have improved a bit and it´s getting easier to understand what people are saying here. Then, I went into the cloud forest, a bit expensive at 15 bucks, but worth it.  Once again, words fail me to describe the incredible tangled diversity of life in that place.  Everything is programmed to grow and to flourish here.  The forest is very silent, and the feeling I get whenever I enter is that I have stepped inside a sacred space.  I think that I walked for a little more than an hour. I only ran into three people, two of them from Hawaii and California respectively) I took it easy on the steep stair climbs this time since two years ago I pulled a thigh muscle here, and this while nursing a sprained ankle.  The mosquitoes were the only annoyance but there is no problem of malaria or dengue fever here so I´m not going to worry.  I have a theory that we tend to reflect back to others whatever we look at, hear and absorb, so I am hoping that from this trip I will be able to reflect back to you and others something of the rich beauty of this place that I will have absorbed.  When I left the Cloud Forest a hummingbird had bounced off the window of a parked bus and fell to the ground wher she lay paralyzed.  I went to Alejandro who came down with me to rescue her.  She was beautiful, a shining golden green all over.  I thought he should pick her up and not me because he feeds them outside his cafe, where they are always abundant, so she knows him and likely feels safe with him.  No sooner did he pick her up than she flew off, so she was likely just a little bit stunned. Later I walked up to Santa Elena to buy some more groceries.  You know, not even here in Monteverde does one escape the small of auto-exhaust.  It´s all over the country.  They don´t have strict emmissions controls here.  In the supermarket I ran into a young Canadian couple from Nanaimo who are staying at the Mariposa and are celebrating their first anniversary here.  They gave me a lift back to the bed and breakfast and told me a bit about their travels in Southeast Asia, where I have not been yet.