This morning I attended the local Quaker meeting, which is just down the road from the bed and breakfast. I think I have already mentioned that there is a strong presence of American Quakers here in Monteverde. They seem to have been quite a beneficent influence and it is they who first encouraged the local people to save the cloud forest for posterity. I arrived early and wondered if I was in the right place because I was the only one there for a while. Then an American lady, Carol, who has lived in Costa Rica for the past twenty-five years came in. She owns a coffee plantation with her husband and I think it´s the same place I sat and rested in when I walked down to San Luis, where she lives, Tuesday. While we were chatting a bird flew against one of the windows. We went outside to see if it was okay. It turned out to be a young thrush, whom like our own human adolescents has a tendency of crashing against windows and other hard surfaces. The bird seemed stunned but okay, but we stood vigil over it for about fifteen or twenty minutes in case a cat should try to get it. Carol told me about another local thrush, the clay coloured robin which is also the national bird of Costa Rica. It is really a drab looking bird, all grey in appearance. I saw one on my first visit here in `94, and I mentioned to Carol about the close connection I have with this bird, because on my first visit in the Coud Forest I was threatened by a venemous snake that took a lunge at me. Then, a few feet away, was a clay-coloured robin walking just ahead of me on the trail, and in a way he felt like a kind of guardian or protector to me. She also told me a story about two wrens that ganged up on a poisonous snake here once, and using team work, eventually blinded it. Seriously, one would act like prey, and while the snake was moving toward it, the other would attack its eyes.
The Quaker service was made up of about forty or so, mostly older, almost all white North American or British-European, and all appeared to have graduated in arts and humanities. Most of the service, apart from the hour of silent prayer, was in English (though I tried to be silent in Spanish) I was a little disappointed about the lack of Tico presence but I can´t imagine a lot of these people being quiet and still for five minutes, let alone for an hour. They seem like nice people, and one of them, an American named Bob, works nearby at the Monteverde Institute, which among other things does studies and education programs about the local biodiversity. Tomorrow he will be taking me on a tour there.
I did a walk afterward and stopped for a cold drink in a local restaurant. The lady who served me seemed disappointed that I didn´t want anything to eat but gave me a big smile when I tipped her. I walked back to my place here, and had lunch only to realize that the jam I bought yesterday has mold on it. A bit later, while walking up to the reserve to watch the hummingbirds and hang out and talk Spanish with Heiner, the guy who
works at the cafe there, I bumped into Bob again with his wife and another lady I saw at the Quaker meeting. They advised me to take the jam back and get an exchange since the coop that runs the store needs to know these things.
We had another really dramatic storm last night, beautiful sunshine in the morning with clouds, some rain and mist all afternoon. The luxurient vegetation here never ceases to amaze me. It is as though life has been mandated here and everything commanded to live.
I am getting my fingers greasy with some lovely empanadas that they are feeding me here while I´m at the computer. Not a lot has been happening the last couple of days but I´ll fill you in. Yesterday I exchanged the moldy jam, and the young lady at the coop and I opened several other jars to discover they were all moldy, that is the papaya-pineapple, so now I have a jar of pineapple jam, which is very nice by the way. Afterward I walked up the hill to the Monteverde Institute. It is an educational and research facility for studying the biodiversity of Costa Rica and promoting sustainability, and they also have English and Spanish classes. I am thinking in the future of possibly volunteering teaching English, but not yet. Again I wore myself out walking to Santa Elena and back. It´s the steep hills and the relatively thin air here I think, but it hasn´t exhausted me and so I´m toughing it out. This morning I went up to Cafe Colibri which became swarmed with tour groups, from the US, Italy, Mexico and Argentina, according to the guy working there. Then I did a walk in the cloud forest, this time Refugio Colibri. Alejandro, who lives on and owns this reserve has allowed me free admission for the time I´m here, so it does pay off making friends with people around here. It´s on the slope of a mountain and once again the tangled beauty is nothing short of amazing. Later, Heiner, the guy who works at the cafe, and I got into an interesting conversation where I was telling him all about Canadian politics and suchlike. Then on my way down the road back to the Mariposa, these two guys driving by in a garbage truck stopped to ask me if I live in ¨la republica socialista de Canada.¨ (they had overherad some of our conversation in the cafe, I think) I replied that actually we´re pretty centrist, tilting sometimes to the right (these days a little too far if you ask me) and other times a little to the left. When I returned to the bed and breakfast I finished my current painting, and took a nap and simply watched and listened to the storm passing overhead. The rain was so hard and so loud that it sometimes almost drowned out the the thunder. I have seldom felt such a strong sense of awe, and of how small we humans really are in the whole cosmic scheme of things.
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