Baggy Paragraphs

And now for the photos...

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:55:24 -0600

I've created a special site with photos from Molasses Avenue, Tamarindo, and from my motorcycle tours in Guanacaste province.

You're invited to view them: www.baggyparagraphs.com/tamarindo.

The Baggy Paragraphs Company homepage is: www.baggyparagraphs.com.

All best from Ann Arbor, where it's 30 degrees (-1 Celsius) and freezing rain has fallen throughout the morning.

Ronald

Motmots Making Nice

Sat, 8 Mar 2008 10:41:24 -0600

I chose Tamarindo because of its proximity to the Daniel Oduber international airport, because I’d heard about the Pacific beach, and the Hotel Chocolate offered a fine small apartment with wireless access. My two previous visits to Costa Rica hadn’t taken me to the northwest. I knew nothing about Guanacaste’s difference, with dry forests and the influence of the trade winds that hold back Pacific moisture, November through April. The roble sabana, or savannah oak, with clusters of pinkish trumpets, and the spectacular Cortez amarillo, were unknown to me.

Also unknown, Tamarindo was in the midst of change. When the taxi rolled in Saturday, February 16, some sort of beach festival was under way. A surfers’ party, according to the driver. I checked into Hotel Chocolate and headed down in time for sunset and fireworks. Was this my welcome? No, the antidevelopment activists were wrapping up. Local people opposed to the proposed projects—the number two dozen keeps being repeated—are united under the slogan “No alta densidad en Tamarindo.” High-density development could choke this place.

During two and a half weeks here, I’ve acquired very few souvenirs: seashells for Susan and a Pura Vida leather bracelet for me. Pura Vida is the informal national slogan, expressing the preoccupations with environmental purity and individual liberty. Last Saturday I decided on something else and returned to Carminia Moncada’s Rasta shop to acquire one of the slash-through-circle stickers with boldly drawn highrises and the incisive slogan repeated at bottom. She said all had been distributed. But the 11-year-old neighbor girl hanging around the shop—who circles her forefinger around her temple when looking at Carminia—still possessed a couple and sold one for 1000 colones ($2).

In 1883 the Costa Rican government handed over seven percent of the country to an American businessman to get a railroad built to the Caribbean coast; the United Fruit Company’s subsequent activities resulted. As my history anthology explains, the situation “illustrates the ease with which U.S. capital was able to enter Costa Rica…the difficulties underdeveloped countries often experience in building modern infrastructure, and the continuing dependence of the government on a foreign company…” I think of Sunday’s Century 21 signs. Forty years ago the Nicoyan coastline was almost worthless; Guanacaste has always been sparsely populated. Imagine the present push for a better coastal highway.

Beyond this, the government wants to dock oil tankers near Puntarenas, on the central Pacific Coast, to supply the booming demand for (a) jet fuel at the Daniel Oduber international airport and (b) mixed transportation fuels for the growing Guanacaste population and (c) the 200-megawatt (another source says 160-MW) Garabito electrical generating station, which will be an oil-burner. “This [expansion] is due to the development of tourism and its related activities which translated into greater consumption of fuel and other types of energy,” the government oil monopoly’s project manager told the Beach Times newspaper. So good luck with carbon neutrality, Costa Rica. And God forbid a spill on these precious beaches of tortoise habitat.

The Tamarindo activists might at least have hope. Work proceeds slowly. Last week on Molasses Avenue, a tractor scraped up some mounds that now sit over yonder, enhancing the general dustiness. The chef down at Pachanga (named for the erotic Colombian dance) reckons this is supposed to be quite a throughway, wide, with sidewalks, the whole works, but admits that in Costa Rica one never knows the completion date.

Meanwhile, as the self-involved interloper, I’ve felt ridiculous in my Hilfiger Levi’s The North Face Tevas. How am I different from the beachwalking couple in their Nike and Titleist caps? And I’m stung by one reader’s chastening about this blog’s crassness:

“…I did see the hyper-observant tale-teller but also found myself cringing and wondering if the critical, leering, sarcasm really were your true voice. I kept thinking, ‘Ouch,’ (somewhat on Susan's behalf), and that if the blog were all I knew of you I wouldn't want to know you because you sound so harsh.

Either the self-parody went flat or she’s right, I’m a shit heel and shouldn’t be so hard on the pigs who blocked the crest of the hill in their fucking Land Rovers. Does it help to say the Land Rovers were old and battered? Does it help that I’ve heretofore not mentioned the Americans, two men, two women, roaring over the baywaters under the flag of an inflatable sex doll? Does it help that of the three nights I was out past 7.30 p.m., one gave me the lunar eclipse with the stoner surfers at Hostel La Botella de Leche, and the other two were visits to Pachanga with my book? All I know of the street life was relayed in Jimmy Danger's used bookshop. As for the beach fruit of last Thursday, maybe I shouldn’t have initiated the conversation with Isabel; maybe I should have packed up like a hermit crab when I saw those babes heading for my bit of shade.

I could have written about seashells and sandcastles and the sweet lady from Spokane: a Hallmark card instead of excoriation. But the folly, vanity, and avarice caught my interest.

Nothing like a wave breaking over the bald pate to remind me of life; also nothing like sighting down the wave’s crest and finding the sun puddled on the horizon, imbuing the froth and spume with orange and pink. Nothing at all like stepping out the apartment's front door as not one, not two, but three blue-crowned motmots alight 10 feet away in Sebastian’s tree.

Among themselves they gurgle, “How regal you look this day!”

“Yes, aren’t we all lovely?”

“Of course. It’s the majestic plumage!”

Birds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-crowned_Motmot, http://www.nicoyapeninsula.com/wildlife/motmot.html

Oil tankers: http://www.thebeachtimes.com

Parched in Paradise (Rodolfo Revisited)

Tue, 4 Nov 2008 12:12:53 -0600

After being saved on last Sunday’s motorcycle trip by Rodolfo, I wondered how to express my thanks, one man to another. I kept thinking of him in his barn on the slope above the village of Paraíso. Paradise, my ass. When I’d ordered a plate of shrimp and rice for that day’s lunch, the owner of the combo market and restaurant that’s the only game in town sat there and watched me eat just to have something to do. As for Rodolfo, stranded four kilometers out of town at the very edge of the wilderness, all he had for companionship were venomous snakes and the legend of Donny Lalonde.

Yesterday I was on the road by 10.00 a.m. on another rented Honda 250 dirt bike. (This one actually had rearview mirrors, but the speedometer cable was disconnected and the rear tire was just as bald as last week’s.) I headed due east through cattle country for Santa Cruz. There were a couple of villages along the gravel highway, and smoke from the Sunday morning cooking fires, or leaves, or garbage, made my eyes run and I had to stop along the side of the road to blot them dry. After a while a nice paved surface commenced, like one of the county highways around home. Arriving at Santa Cruz, I used the bypass and stayed on the road over the mountains to Nicoya. The Spaniards had begun to enslave Indians here by 1523, although the New Laws of 1542 forbade this practice, which prompted the ever resourceful hacienda owners to make sharecroppers of the Indians and use that income to purchase black African slaves as farmhands.

By 11.10 a.m. I had arrived in Nicoya, a pleasant city of around 15,000 people, and found my way to the historic parish church. With its blinding white walls and prominent campanile and blocky vaulted sacristy, it dramatically stood out from the downtown’s commercial cubes: in particular, the Moorish accents were startling. The sanctuary was cool and dark inside, with a patterned brick floor. The dark wooden ceiling supported several big chandeliers. Mass is said on certain weekdays but not on Sunday. A simple info sheet attached to a post explained that the original cathedral, built in 1644, was destroyed by earthquake in 1822 and rebuilt nine years later. There really wasn’t much to see, but I didn’t leave without receiving grace.

On the highway out of Nicoya a transit policeman stopped me for not wearing my casco. The rental agency provides a helmet suitable for inline skaters, and as soon as the motorcycle hits 30 kilometers per hour the helmet lifts in the wind, causing strangulation; I’d clipped it to my knapsack and was wearing a baseball cap to keep my bald head from burning under the sun. Boy, this would test my Spanish. I told the policeman I wasn’t even sure if there was a helmet law because half the riders on the highway aren’t wearing them, but he was a not-in-my-town kind of cop and said there was going to be una multa of 20,000 colones, or $40, and suggested I might experience problems with immigration when I got to the airport on Wednesday. He took my license and passport. I unavailingly explained my difficulty with the wind and strangulation. Maybe to exploit any inconsistencies in my story, should any appear, or maybe because he couldn’t believe anyone would really do what I was doing, he twice asked my destination and where the motorcycle had come from. OK, gringo, you’re staying in Tamarindo but you’ve come all the way down here, and next, making the second leg of a big triangle, you’re going southwest to the coast at Samara, and, seriously, you’re returning to Tamarindo by way of the shitty coast highway? But on the second run through all these details, I mentioned visiting the cathedral, which caused him to comment favorably. Nevertheless, our negotiation continued, and while it did I unclipped the helmet from my knapsack and put it over my baseball cap. This would by my new system, with the bills of the two hats splitting the wind’s drag. Sissy-looking, but it works on race cars. When he ultimately reiterated that I would have to pay right here, right now, I unfurled one of the Spanish language’s mightiest and most corrosive verb tenses, the pluperfect indicative, letting him know that the truth was, I’d been instructed never to give money to a cop on the highway. So there, take that. To my amazement, he said there would be no multa. He handed back my license and passport, assured me a gasolinera was open at Samara, and drove away—not without complimenting my Spanish.

The next 40 kilometers through the Nicoya Peninsula’s coastal highlands presented as beautiful and inspiring a ride as I’ve ever experienced. The undulant road’s paved surface reminded me of southeastern Michigan’s townline roads, narrow and often patched, but sufficient for brisk travel. Generous clusters of brilliant scarlet and fuchsia flowers cascaded over fences, the small tidy houses offered their own ochres and blues, and the landscape interspersed odd clusters of palms, groves of spreading broadleaves, and vivid verdant pastures. I stopped to wet my whistle, buying a grape pop in the little store where four Ticos sat watching a Premier League match. One had ridden over on his horse and left it tied to a tree in the side yard. I told these gents they live in a gorgeous place. No response besides a couple of weak smiles. What did the farms hereabouts produce? The horseman, older than the others, about 45 or 50, answered that they produced melons, sugar, rice, and of course groves of teca—and yes, irrigation was used. Hearing me assert that it looks relatively prosperous, he rolled his eyes.

I soon reached Samara, where the pump jockey at the gas station had major road rash on his right elbow. The kid said it was from a motorcycle crash. I replayed the whole business about the casco and the policeman, and he said, “I don’t wear one.” Samara itself was like a quarter-scale Tamarindo: a smaller but still lovely azure bay, some obvious but not all that obtrusive development, and quite a few Ticos picnicking in the shade of palms along a rather empty beach. One amenity Samara can boast over Tamarindo is a paved main street.

The coast road led north toward Nosara. Even in Michigan, this byway would be classified as an abomination, not a road. Almost as soon as the gravel surface carried me out of town, the way turned past a grass landing field and met a small turbid river. The crossing point wasn’t clear to me. The shortest crossing looked too deep. Upstream, a family was picnicking on a sandbar while pop washed his cattle truck in the middle of the channel. He mentioned un caracol, the shallower point slightly downstream where the ford required turning at midpoint, hooking around onto the landing. I rode the Honda in there, and of course the bald back tire just spun in the mud, so I got off and pushed.

The Nicoyan coast is an absolute wonder, with palm-dotted pastures and gloriously crowned trees embracing the blue sky in the heat. Most of this coastline has been for centuries, and still is reserved for, the exclusive enjoyment of cows and monkeys. As the first rocky headland yielded to level pasture, howlers greeted my photo stop, “Oh-arrr, oh-arrr, oh-ar-ar-ar, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” Translated: “We are the victors valiant, champions of the west.”

In the first seaside village I came to, the main street had received a fresh application of molasses for dust suppression. Two teams of men were contesting a soccer match on a nice field. I stopped to drink water and snap a picture of another gorgeous bay with a deserted beach. The midafternoon passed like this: dazzling views, difficult and dusty going, and fording several streams. Cresting one hill just before a deep crossing, I found the road blocked by Brits talking to each other from inside their Land Rovers; I had to squeeze the bike between them. I arrived at the water below at the same time as two Ticas coming the other direction in a brand-new (rented) Corolla and waved them through at the obvious place; meanwhile, the one Land Rover came downhill behind me and was going to blast through the ford till I motioned the thoughtless pig to stop. Finally I waved him onward to his exclusive vacation house, and then the girls did their crossing. At another place farther along the road, a car sat before the sign advertising a condo development, and while passing I paused long enough to look at the driver and say, “You should buy one.” To which his American voice replied, “We’re thinking about it.” Ticos know something the monkeys and cows don’t: the whole coastline is up for sale. Century 21 advertises at every bus stop. (Yes, buses do run this wretched route.) Real estate! Building lots! New Balinese-inspired community! An FSBO sign offers 60 hectares with ocean view. (Excellent for carbon credits!) Another sign mentions the completion date of a luxury hotel. Nosara even has a yoga institute. The Nicoyan littoral is done for.

I made the 70 kilometers up the coast to Paraíso before 4.30 p.m., stopping there long enough to buy two cold cans of Imperial beer, figuring Rodolfo might receive this tribute more readily than anything as personal as new flip-flops. I also stopped at the little house at the head of his road where last week I had bought gas, and a kid of about 12 poured a couple of liters into the Honda’s tank. I didn’t want to chance running out in the 30 kilometers of wild country between here and Tamarindo. I paid them 2500 colones ($5) and hurried along, with monkeys howling just overhead on the first sharp curve. The dirt road was even narrower than I remembered, one lane and no joking around, but smooth. Rodolfo’s barn was just as far out of town as I thought. Any worry that he might not be around, out to a Sunday matinee at the ballet, was eased when I turned into his barnyard and found him sitting at his crudely fashioned picnic table, just watching and waiting: no paperback novel, no banjo, no whittling. No shirt or shoes, either. I climbed off the bike and we shook hands. Unremembered from a week ago, a singularly hideous dog with a brindled coat put its freakishly huge head in my lap when I sat down. Rodolfo repeated his name, and I forget whether it was Cabezudo (“big-headed”) or Calabaza (“Pumpkin”). Unzipping my knapsack, I pulled out the white plastic bag with the two cans of beer and put it on the table.

“Rodolfo waved his hand over the table top and said, “No tomo.”

“Ah,” I said. Off the sauce, are you?

“It’s bad for the health,” he said.

I put away the beer, having ascertained so very much from so few words. After a couple of minutes I took off for Tamarindo.

Rude Texan, Mirthful Waitress, Gloomy Omahan

Sat, 1 Mar 2008 14:31:42 -0600

“Hey! You got any pens?”

The voice that boomed this interrogative, in English, in a Spanish-speaking country, belonged to one of the two idiots lined up behind me at Super 2001. They were Texans. Too impatient to wait till he got to the checkstand, he addressed the manager, who was counting down the other till.

“Plumas,” I said.

“Plumas,” he yelled to the manager, who merely pointed to our cashier. Super has just those two registers, with the front double doors between them.

“Think of feathers, plumage, quills,” I said. “Where are you from?”

“Dallas.”

It struck me that people in Dallas, especially nice suburbanites like him, would have a shit fit if a Mexican bellowed out, “Escuche! Tiene algunas plumas?” The grace of the Ticos, daily putting up with such indignities, extends beyond measure.

–—

Yesterday’s beach sunset was as beautiful and momentous as ever. And once again I noticed the international surf kids. Sitting in two neat rows parallel to the water’s edge, they passed around a liter of rum. I didn’t see the English or Scottish lads I’d spoken with the other night, but the blonde American hellion with the great tattoo on her left shoulder recognized and greeted me. I said, “It’s the sunset club.” The girl at the end of the back row held up a can of alcoholic refreshment called Bamboo and with an American voice said, “The Bamboo Club.” Another American girl took great delight in explaining how her father keeps on his desk a picture of her extending her middle finger at the sunset, and she zestfully pantomimed.

Afterward, having already dined in the apartment (homemade potato salad, Mexican sausages, half an avocado), I went to Porto Fino, ordered a beer, and read al Día, one of the national dailies. Maria was once again my waitress. Friday was supposed to be her day off, but she’d traded with another staff member. Maria is from Bogotá. As for so many other Latin Americans—the Argentine woman who’s managing Hotel Chocolate, the Nicaraguan construction workers, the Colombian and Nicaraguan prostitutes—Costa Rica is the Land of Opportunity. I’ve had the “Costa Rica” breakfast two or three times at Porto Fino (beans and rice, scrambled eggs, glop of yogurt, fried banana), so I know Maria opens up the place at seven o’clock. She works fifteen hours, till ten o’clock at night. Six days, 90 hours per week. Dealing with American tourists (she doesn’t speak English). And her dark eyes still sparkle.

On my last evening visit to Porto Fino I’d ordered a Hawaiian pizza. When finished, I asked for the leftover slices to be wrapped and then pointed to the illuminated Briko popsicles display, which looks like a TV screen, and told her the program was getting old so would she mind having the management change the channel? Once she realized I was joking, she let loose with a real laugh.

Last night, after carefully studying the al Día page with pictures of models in skimpy costumes, I tore out the column headlined “Braided Cowgirl.” The picture presents a pigtailed lovely wearing a ludicrously frilled and beribboned blue bandeau top with a blue micro skirt trimmed in bicolor ribbon at the hem and heavily belted and extravagantly buckled just below the hips; the Pilsen beer logo is applied over her left nipple and just inside the uppermost part of the left thigh. I motioned to Maria.

“Otra cerveza?” she asked.

No, I was fine on the beer. “Look, here’s your new work uniform.”

She shrieked hilariously and said, “You buy it for me, I’ll wear it. But it needs boots, too.”

I told her I was calling right away.

–—

This morning at the beach I greeted Luz as “the first light of the day.” Caramel wasn’t with her because a boy from the restaurant had taken her home for the weekend. Luz wore her usual scarf and dark blue skirt. Her sleeveless print blouse looked familiar from Thursday, when we had last met. I’ve noticed that Maria Josefina, the orange juice queen, seems to own just two blouses. These ladies would probably scoff at the contents of our closets. Just the number of jackets and coats would astonish them: jackets for working in the yard, for 50-degrees days, for 30-degree days, for rain, for dressing up, for motorcycle riding.

A group from Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo has been here since Wednesday night and is leaving today for Monteverde’s rain forest. I’d briefly met one of them on Thursday morning. Today I noticed a pleasant looking woman of about 30, rather primly dressed, chalk-white skin, gazing at the bay. Referring to her Canon Eos Rebel XSi digital camera and 18-to-55 millimeter zoom lens, I pointed to the bay and said, “Take a picture.” She said she’d taken plenty of pictures. She turned out to be a graduate of South High School (and presumably a local college) and works at Mutual of Omaha in customer service. I only identify her in this blog by the initial D., for disappointment. Despite her pleasant appearance, she was the gloomiest person I’ve encountered in Tamarindo: a lifelong Nebraskan unenthusiastic about the place and unintrigued by the chance encounter with another native Omahan. She had been frightened by crocodiles during the group’s boating expedition in Tortuguero wildlife refuge. And yesterday’s outing to Santa Rosa national park had merely been hot. I was out of film today, but seeing her nice kit, I asked if she would take a picture of me and e-mail it. “I don’t know how to do that,” she said.

I left the sand at 7.15 a.m., just as a bus labeled San Judas Tadeo unloaded Tico passengers of all ages. They were opening their beach bags. I asked a girl where they were from and she said Cartago. This city in Costa Rica’s populous central valley was settled by the Spanish in the 16th century. It’s about 300 miles away, not an easy drive through the mountains. "You must have left really early in the morning," I said. Several replied: Eleven o’clock last night. And eagerness in every face.

Beach Fruit

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:47:24 -0600

Thursday’s last breakfast dish had just been washed at 8.00 a.m. and I was about to deal with my inbox when the electricity went off, followed by the Internet and the water. I went onto the balcony and read about the “emergence of an agricultural semi-proletariat” in Costa Rica around 1930. It was windy, and Hotel Chocolate sits at the point of Molasses Avenue where the molasses application ends, so dust was blowing around. Checking with Chocolate’s administration, I learned this is the Thursday of the every-other-Thursday scheduled power-and-water outage till 2.00 p.m. The utility company is burying cable. My only recourse was to repair to the beach.

After a refreshing dip in the surf, I found a spot under a tree at the boundary of one of the low-rise bayshore resorts. Logs had been thoughtfully arrayed here for comfortable seating. My expectation that the beach would be packed with Tamarindo’s finest— the power shutdown had closed many businesses—was profoundly erroneous, and in fact, with the low tide leaving a huge expanse of hard-packed sand, one guy took a speed run on his motorcycle. A few people crossed along the water's edge. I settled in the shade, pulled out my yellow tablet, and worked on a humor piece while also making the following important notes:

· HOT LAPS: Walking for exercise, repeated passes, metronomic tossing of arms forward and back, marching by herself, carrying sandals, mature pale petite platinum (hair gathered in comb), wearing black sunglasses, wristwatch, very attractive in black one-piece

· LIL SIS/ALL-AMERICAN TYPE: Pretty and shapely, 24, long brunette hair clasped at neck, sunglasses pushed onto head, no tats, solid jade bikini with semi-thong bottom and colorful plastic logo-clasps at sternum and hips; after swim, wrings water from tresses, drizzling onto shaved head of “Bruno” in resort's hammock

· TALL AND SEXY: Long straight dishwater blonde hair, sunglasses, bright blue garment wadded in left hand, bounding along tideline with only companion, coal-black pit bull, leashed on yellow nylon rope, stopping every six or eight strides as tugging dog won’t release rope from jaws: multicolored, bias-stripe top, brownish boyish squarish trunk-style bottom leaving crescents of nalgas in view

· MORENA, MORENA: Slender brown solo Tica, long straight glistening black hair gathered in neon azure scarf, black beach bag strung from shoulders, azure bra, deftly cut azure-waistband-and-coral panty

This valuable research was interrupted—I had just been about to write “most tasteful”—by the arrival of two gracious beauties in their 20s whose approach along the edge of the trees had gone unnoticed. It was impossible even to imagine, but they seemed to be adjusting their flaps and cutting their engines on approach for landing. If this were indeed true, my good fortune could not in any way have been exceeded. Merely to indicate a warm welcome, I said, “La pregunta esta sol o sombra.”

But there really was no question between sun or shade; they settled five meters to my right in sombra. And then one stripped down to her black bikini and dashed into the waves. The other, especially attractive, busied herself with an indiscernible task. I rose and stepped over some logs and announced I had come to the beach today because Tamarindo’s power shutdown had forced me out of my apartment. I waved my yellow tablet with the bikini notes. When she appeared not to know what I was talking about, I asked if she was from Tamarindo. “Santa Cruz,” she said. Ah, that would explain it. Santa Cruz is about 45 kilometers inland, the nearest market town. The Toronto woman or maybe she was the Pennsylvania woman at the same table on my second or third day here said she goes to Santa Cruz because that’s where she can find chocolate chips—can’t do without brownies, you know—and then complained about being charged an arm and a leg for them.

I introduced myself to Isabel, who responded by handing me the open-face sandwich she had been making. On a long oval slice of bread textured like an English muffin, she had spread black bean paste, added carrot slices that she warned were hot, and a plump chili of a lovely light green. I was a little flustered but managed to thank her and had almost taken a bite when she said to wait. While doing so, I retreated to my knapsack and grabbed the rose woven from a strip of palm frond, sold to me by a beach vendor, and presented it to Isabel "for the table." She smiled and proffered half a hard-boiled egg, which was dropped open side up onto the sandwich’s empty spot.

This much I found incredibly touching. My first delicious taste was while she finished two other sandwiches; but then Guille—whom Isabel had said was visiting from México—returned, evinced disinterest in her sandwich, and instead opened a can of Rock Ice beer, asking if I wanted one. This was all like a dream, or better yet a commercial: two women showing up and seeing after me. It seemed best to let them drink their own beer, so I got the orange juice from my knapsack along with the package of chocolate sandwich cookies with chocolate cream filling (Galleta Sabor Chocolate con Crema Sabor Chocolate). I returned to guzzling Guille and offered one of the three remaining cookies. She accepted.

While Isabel and I devoured our sandwiches, I learned that Guille, from the state of Guerrero, is in Costa Rica for the first time and has come on some sort of business. (As she eventually said, I’m all right at communicating in Spanish; I readily confessed that my comprehension isn't as good.) She finds Costa Rica extremely beautiful and the Ticos unbelievably nice. I wasn’t sure how she and Isabel knew each other, probably a business connection. They had taken the bus from Santa Cruz, an hour-and-a-half trip for 300 colones apiece, or 60 cents. I told them about my usual routine here in Tamarindo: beach walk with camera at 6.00 a.m., followed by harsh journalistic labors in this (air-conditioned) apartment—yoked as I am to the Internet—before the daily sundown swim. I mentioned nothing about nighttime drugs and prostitution.

Sandwiches gone, mangoes were handed out. Guille took one. As we passed around a paring knife and held the slices to our mouths and tore away the flesh from the rinds, Guille’s piece slipped fleshy side down onto the dark sand. She and Isabel squealed over the result, which Guille displayed for their camera. They also laughed when I provided the caption: “Pimiento de la playa.” Beach pepper.

I’d had a mango in my fridge at Hotel Chocolate ever since the first grocery expedition but finally ate it yesterday because, as good as they taste, they’re such a pain. Guille gave up on her mango and just flopped face down on the sand. Isabel took the place beside me on the log and we shared the knife, stacking our rinds into neat piles, which went into a plastic shopping bag. We walked into the surf to wash our hands and faces. She said the salt water is good for the skin, and I agreed, displaying my cuticles, which look the best ever; in the cold, I explained, they crack and split and it’s miserable. I also said my knees feel wonderful because of the heat. I didn’t know the word for sinuses, or I’d have thrown it in.

We returned to the shade. Lunch had not ended. Isabel next produced a chrome-yellow thing that looked somewhat like a bell pepper but with an odd stem that turned out really to be a seed, shaped like a lima bean but larger, that can be roasted by itself as a snack. She called this yellow wonder a marañon.

“Is it a fruit?” I asked.

“Yes,” interposed Guille, rising from the sand, “and they’re only grown in Costa Rica.” She flipped onto her back.

“And there’s just a two-month season for them,” Isabel said.

“Febrero y marzo?” I asked, and she said sí. “Do they grow on trees?” The answer to this question was also sí.

I bit into the exclusive delicacy, which was watery and tasted a bit of citrus in the same way as star fruit. I wasn’t crazy about it. Hers disappeared much faster, through full and sensual lips. (Reading Monique Van Vooren's novel did this to me.) I’m afraid I must have been hoarding Guille’s portion, because I don’t recall her taking one. Isabel was telling Guille that the fruit can be cut in half and stuffed with something, exactly what I didn’t get. Inside the marañon were long stringy fibers that wrapped themselves around my teeth, but I finished the damn thing, happy there wasn’t a fire going so we might've roasted the seeds.

Isabel accepted the cookie when I remembered to offer it. And afterwards—they were talking about moving on down the beach—I said I really should be going; but Guille asked what kind of magazines I write for, and the presentation of my portfolio took a while.

It was 1.45 p.m. and I was sunburned and electricity was promised at home at Hotel Chocolate: time to part with Isabel and Guille. The camera came out again; and we all posed with each other and exchanged direcciónes del correos electrónicos (e-mail addys). I told them everything had been fabuloso, which was an understatement. As I headed away, Isabel removed her bus togs. I turned back and waved. The sun's harsh glare obscured details of bikini color and design, but what a silhouette! She returned the wave and pranced into the surf.

Black on Positive, Red on Negative

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:53:42 -0600

My wife Susan’s vacation window closed after a Caribbean cruise in December with my mom and sisters, followed by a week at the St. George, Utah, home of one of her own sisters earlier in February. Because I wanted to get away from winter—especially as it nears its end, as a way of shorting it out—I scheduled this trip. (New readers are asking why I’m in Tamarindo alone.) Yesterday Susan arrived home from work and attacked four inches of fresh fluffy snow. Accounting for the one-hour difference between Michigan’s Eastern Standard Time and Costa Rica’s Pura Vida, I was successfully spreading my beach towel on the sand at approximately the same moment as she fired up the snowblower on the first pull. It was four o’clock here. The small fishing and sport fleet lolled in Tamarindo Bay. The tide was up. The late sun made the waves translucent.

I went in for a bit of body surfing, then parked on the towel and picked up my book. Of course I would let my eyes ride over the top of the pages when people passed between me and the water. One American belly guy looked more scalded than sunburned. The woman with him had obviously SPF-30’d herself; her problem was the print fabric of her bikini: what sick-o wants to go around with a hibiscus on her butt?

Before more than a paragraph of my book had fallen by the wayside, a big chunk of bearded bloated stateside bar trash who was walking with a Tica called out to me, “What powerful concentration!”

I couldn’t imagine how I looked any different from those on the beach who were reading David Baldacci thrillers. I held up the book, a tattered anthology from Jaime Peligro’s nice shop, and said, “Costa Rican history.”

Alas, it was not, as I’d hoped, the same as displaying a cross to a vampire. While the woman companion stared down the beach, he just gaped at me. “You must do work of the mind,” he said.

I shrugged, thinking of all the links I’ve followed on Nebraska Cornhusker football recruits and on Kurt Busch calling Tony Stewart fat in NASCAR. “Yes,” I admitted, “I’m a writer.” Hearing this, he went all Gomer Pyle on me, and I decided it was time to shift the focus of our conversation to him. “What about you? What do you do?”

“I’m an entrepreneur.” He probably noticed my eyebrows rise. “I build houses here and in California,” he said. There followed from his lips some platitude about life being short. His life couldn’t be too short. I was hoping a 2000-pound hammerhead would surge onto the sand and snap him off at the knees so chances could be sold on how long it would take him to wash out with the tide and sink to the bottom, if he would sink. Instead, I expressed my sincere belief that it is necessary to master the art of the working vacation.

Like a biting fly, he did eventually go away, gracias a Dios.

The history anthology acquainted me with the fact of Guanacaste province’s extreme difference from the rest of Costa Rica, and it perhaps cast a bit of light on Rodolfo’s arrangement, too. While the temperate highland area of central Costa Rica was the bastion of yeoman farmers who were amenable to democracy, Guanacaste, because of its long dry season—and of how the Indians’ slash-and-burn agriculture had created grazing lands—was only suited for haciendas like those in central and southern Spain. “The hacienda was the basis of an oligarchical and antidemocratic social order,” writes Carlos Melélendez Chaverri. The aristocratic landowners sucked up to the national power elite and maintained the status quo. Chaverri, who published this piece more than 30 years ago, contends that the “structural underdevelopment…of the northern Pacific region” is one legacy of the haciendas. I find “structural underdevelopment” an almost poetic phrase for Tamarindo.

Meanwhile, as far as Rodolfo goes (see Monday’s blog), Chaverri explains that when the rainy season came, making creeks and rivers impassible, the landowners decamped for town where they sure wouldn’t miss going to Sunday Mass, and the hacienda was left in an administrator’s care. The passage goes on to describe the isolation of the administrator and laborers, their primitive tools, and their recipies for jerky from low quality meat. Going to the beach had not yet been invented. (Costa Rica’s Pacific Northwest was actually settled in the early part of the 16th century, well before the art of surfboard ding repair was perfected.) So it sounded the same as Donny Lalonde, living here in Tamarindo—whether or not he goes to Mass—and Rodolfo, four kilometers this side of Paradise, hoeing chilies in his flip-flops and not seeing a soul all day.

I was in the water when the sun went down. As if he had expected otherwise, one of the three Canadians who’d just wanked, I mean, walked on the beach called out, “What a lovely sunset!” So I’m probably starring as the silhouette in his two-minute video. (Search YouTube for “lovely sunset.”) After the last of the giant orange sun disappeared, four green parrots chopped along the shoreline like windup toys, their strident gabbling calls sounding like machine noises.

On the way back to the apartment to shower and change, I couldn’t help but tarry to watch a Hyundai sedan with a Cristo Te Ama ("Jesus Loves You") bumper sticker get a jumpstart from a compact Nissan pickup with seven guys perched on the bedrails and two women leaning against the passenger door. Serving as the booster cable was a length of building wire http://electrical.hardwarestore.com/14-48-building-wire-uf/10-2-uf-wog-x-250''-building-wire--617977.aspx in yellow insulation. The Hyundai guy yelled, “Negro en positivo?” That is, “Black on positive?” The Nissan guy answered, “Negro en positivo!” Then the Hyundai guy yelled for the Nissan guy to wait before touching the wire ends to the terminals because he was still stripping away insulation with his teeth and didn’t want the wire to bite back. Finally, they again parried, “Rojo en negativo?” “Rojo en negativo!” I’ll be damned if the Hyundai’s engine didn’t fire up in short order.

Andy, Barry, CMac, Don, Homeless, Mike, Preston, Susan C., UN-O Students of Hugh R.

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:48:18 -0600

Today I woke up at 5.30 a.m. to three cats sitting outside my apartment yowling at each other. When I went out to capture them and skin them alive with the dull kitchen knife provided by Hotel Chocolate, the Nicaraguan construction workers who live up the hill in baches were already streaming into town in small quiet groups, and some individuals clasped their pliers or trowels. I washed my face and dressed, grabbed the camera, and headed for the beach. The first burst of pink was just appearing on the horizon. I found myself pacing alongside two young guys, the short one (about 5’2”) slightly trailing the other (about 5’6”). I said good morning and started interrogating them and learned they’re from León, Nicaragua, which I already happened to know is the second-largest city in that country; they work construction at Playa Langosta, which is the next beach to the south of Tamarindo Bay; and they work 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., 11 hours of toil with an hour’s rest for lunch (“They don’t pay us for lunch,” the taller guy said a little resentfully); and the work schedule is 11 days on and three days off. Then he asked where I live and whether I’m vacationing and although I don’t know the phrase “working vacation” in Spanish (it’s an oxymoron, if you think about it), I did say that I go down to the beach each morning but I’m a journalist and I come back and write for five or six hours—which once again must seem to them like some sort of lie or myth—and at night I go out in the streets of Tamarindo looking for drugs and pussy. Well, I didn’t really say this latter part. Nor has any pussy been offered; and, unlike home in Ann Arbor, there are no beggars on the streets; but Friday night I was downtown for a while and one guy on the sidewalk said in English, “Like some herb?”—the surprise and cheekiness of which made me laugh out loud—and later another queried in Rasta, “Ganja?” I talked to Susan on the phone Sunday morning and she wondered if I was tempted. The last thing in the world I’m going to do is go into an alley with someone and buy a joint; I’d rather cross a field of snakes without a machete.

For the second morning in a row I saw a fishing eagle at the beach, and there were also five frigate birds sailing around the south point of the bay, and it was amusing to watch them soar and occasionally when their paths crossed too closely, some midair nipping went on. As previously stated, I'm shooting film and won't have pictures added to this blog till after my return, so please wait for them.

I’m finishing up a magazine piece today: the working part of my working vacation. The e-mail interview responses I’d been awaiting have come in, and now I can write about the Detroit-Windsor passenger ferries of old, and given my present locale with banana trees and a blooming Roble Sabana tree (not as good as these) http://www.costaricaphotos.com/v/Nature/Flowers_Fruits/?g2_page=7 out my window to the right, it’s mind-blowing to write about vessels getting bound up in ice.

But before that, I thought I’d share a few responses to this blog and add a couple of comments of my own.

After yesterday’s “Rodolfo’s Machete, Crowbar, and Length of Pipe,” Andy S. wrote, “Sounds like quite the adventure. I once was on a tour bus that broke down in the Mexican Jungle. Ha! And I thought I was adventurous. I would have run the other way first monkey I heard. I had a bad experience once with a spider monkey, a petting zoo and an old Kodak box camera. I had been able to suppress the nightmares for 20 years until I read your last entry!”

My Theta Chi brother Mike B. wrote from Houston, “Not clear: Did Rodolfo speak English? Your chin is OK?”

My answer: “Thanks, I don’t mind the feedback and that’s what blogging is supposed to be about. If anyone else asks the same questions, I’ll rewrite a bit. But I did say last week that I’m speaking Spanish with Costa Ricans (and the Nicaraguans who've overrun Costa Rica) unless they happen to initiate in English. And Rodolfo, I’m sure, doesn’t know English. My chin just has a strawberry, which made shaving rather interesting today.”

Mike’s retort: “I am now quite impressed with your Spanish. How could I forget your Spanish of yore when you asked the cabbie in Tijuana to take us to the post office of bulls. I thought if Rodolfo is working for a Canadian, there would be a higher chance that he speaks (some) English.”

I think Rodolfo is being allowed to live in that barn for free and grow his goddamn chilies and he's basically hoping for some new underpants and flip-flops out of the deal. It’s true that my Spanish isn’t great, and yesterday (speaking of the post office) when Teresa, the maid, came in to clean, I ran over to the post office, which really is an office supply store and copy center, and because of my desperate need for a pencil sharpener, I asked for “un picador de lápizes,” which translates as “the horse-rider guy in the bullfight who sticks the bull in the neck so it will have to keep its head down…for pencils.” This went way better than last week’s conversation in which I asked Teresa to piss on the floor. The clerk knew exactly what I meant and led me to the shelf where there were at least three different kinds of pencil sharpeners, and I bought a nice one in a clear lemony yellow for 250 colones, or 50 cents. When I got back, Teresa was mopping the floor tiles, ahem, having wrapped a used towel around her broom. She had turned on the TV to the wild and wooly Mexican novella, or soap opera, titled “Dame Chocolate,” or “Give Me Chocolate.”

Before she went to Rome last week for spring break, CMac wrote, “Upon reading your e-mails from Costa Rica, I can't help thinking of Hemingway/Gauguin, and something along the lines of, I wonder if he's found the 'other' way to be—you know, soft vs. hard a la Levi Strauss, but I think I'm mixing metaphors that aren't exactly metaphors.” Worse than mixing metaphors, it took me two or three days to realize she wasn’t talking about jeans guy, but instead about the French manicurist Claude Levi-Strauss. There may be some of that other way going on, although I just came here for the weather and the beach.

Catherine also said, “You must be lonely—or else, you just love to write, which would make sense. I marveled at the list of your e-mailees.” Right. Well, (a) with girls walking around the beach in their underwear, please be assured I’m not lonely, and (b) I do like to write and probably average 1500 words of e-mails in the morning before turning my hand to remuneration, but I am glad to have a different subject although I wasn’t planning to blog until Susan C. suggested it (and mindful of Laura D.’s previous nagging); this big mess began innocently enough as letters home; and (c) I'm trying to figure out how to hide the distribution list from the notification e-mails, you nosey people!

Then I heard from my St. Pius X schoolmate Hugh R.: “Great E-mail. I’m saving it to share with my Literary Journalism class as an example of a Gonzo-Journalism Travel Story.” This caused sirens to sound and I really began to mind my manners and stopped saying fuck and generally battened the hatches, and now please let me extend a big howdy to Hugh’s students at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

Don S., my fellow contributing writer to Automobile, asks whether I’m being paid to blog. When I said (b, above), he said, “So you like to write but don't you like to eat and stay warm?” The answer is that (a) I’m completing and sending away assignments while here, thanks to the magic of the Internet, which even Nicaraguan construction workers seem to understand and (b) they will teach me how to prepare lizard if necessary; I can go live with them in a bache and (c) staying cool is the problem. (It’s 10.35 a.m. and already 88 degrees.)

Barry W. says, “I'm really enjoying the travelogue and think that maybe you should quit writing about boring vehicles and specialize in it. One thing about traveling—particularly to third-worldish destinations—is that it's always remarkable.”

Thanks. Except ferry boats aren’t boring.

And Preston L. says, “In the old days, you'd have to keep these in a leather-bound diary, hand-written, to be read by your heirs after your death and turned into a major motion picture with Brad Pitt or George Clooney playing you. Thank God for the Internet, huh?”

I’m afraid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verne_Troyer will be cast in the part of yours truly.

Finally, in reaction to Sunday’s misadventure, www.homelessdave.com says, “A bicycle, Ron, a bicycle. Next time rent a bicycle.”

Rodolfo's Machete, Crowbar, and Length of Pipe

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:08:58 -0600

I first glimpsed Rodolfo yesterday while rounding the gentle curve at the edge of civilization. The barn was in shambles, as it ought to have been in that place. Hearing the motorcycle, he stepped out of his makeshift living quarters and waved, wishing me well. A few kilometers inland from the coast, I was riding a rented Honda 250 dirt bike into the uplands. The tropical dry forest of Guanacaste was promised, and I had just crossed the threshold.

Rodolfo wore only a pair of long trunks. His bicycle leaned against the uphill side of the barn. I’d come about three kilometers from a sweat-soaked, butt-ass town with no significant services called—I kid you not—Paraíso. Yep, Paradise. In Rodolfo’s barnyard there was no car, no tractor, not even a rusty hay rake.

The gravel road was hardly more than one lane. I took another bend where rows of newly planted oil palms intermingled with bright red chilies in a raggedy field. The road leveled off before taking a steep downhill plunge with a very sharp left that led into standing water at the bottom. After fording the pool and starting up the opposite hill, I seriously goofed by looking back over my left shoulder, thinking about a photo-op. When I looked forward again, the Honda’s front wheel was heading for the ditch. I managed to keep it out. The problem was, somehow, the back wheel caught the edge and slid in.

So I was stuck with the front wheel still on the road. The rear tire, being nearly bald, wouldn’t bite and the wheel just spun uselessly in the rocky ditch. After a couple of attempts to blast out, I decided to pull the bike onto the road by yanking on the rear grab handle while also pushing the handlebar. It wasn’t easy but it worked, and in my brief moment of success I might have had the same facial expression as Wile E. Coyote when he realizes he’s forgotten to unstrap himself from the dynamite. Right then, with my last heave, my feet went out from underneath; I and the bike collapsed like a pyramid, my heels flying up behind me and my chin slamming against the road. I scrambled back onto my feet and felt around my jaw to see how many stitches I was likely to need, but it wasn’t split open and I hadn’t bitten my tongue or cracked any teeth. I hoisted the bike back onto its wheels and proceeded with that examination, finding a bent gear lever. On a motorcycle, gears are changed by manipulating a lever with the left foot. The Honda’s lever had bent underneath the engine’s crankcase, leaving the transmission stuck in neutral. I was in a total shit fix.

While I was putting the bike on its stand and finding a rock to wedge under the rear tire, a big lizard panicked and galloped up the hillside, perhaps having mistaken me for a Nicaraguan. (My Hotel Chocolate landlord says Nicaraguans think lizard tastes like chicken.) Then I heard the howler monkeys climbing around in the trees. It was the typical group of a dozen and a half members, including a couple of babies. A few lazies were completely sacked out, limbs dangling below the supporting branches. One mature howler about fifty feet away stared at me quite intently, as if desiring a look at my passport and rental contract. This one was slightly smaller than a chimp. Howler monkeys are like Amy Winehouse: they make a much bigger sound than their physical being would lead you to expect. Only one male was vocalizing, but that was enough to exacerbate my anxiety. Then I had an epiphany, realizing these creatures and I share 95 percent of the same DNA and wouldn’t the poor miserable primate bastards just love to know about central air conditioning? At least the troupe had stationed itself above the scant stream where it was a bit cooler through the afternoon. Before sunset, as the stifling heat abated, they would go a-faring in search of ripe fruit and flowers.

Sweaty and winded from my struggle, I left the bike and headed for whatever salvation Rodolfo might be able to offer. I supposed I’d end up having to walk all the way back to Paraíso, find someone with a truck, and pay for the service of returning me and the bike to Tamarindo. Now I noticed it was a mere buildup of leaves at the edge of the road that held back and pooled the trickling stream. This dam was solid enough to support me and my feet stayed dry. Finishing the crossing, I leaned into the grade and tried to think of the word for “tools.” Instrumentos seemed close enough. At the crest I rested and drank some water and was very pleased at having purchased the jumbo 1750-milliliter bottle back at Paraíso’s one open market. In another three or four hundred meters, I trudged up to Rodolfo, my knapsack like a termite mound and my hiking boots and white anklet socks just plain ridiculous. His facial features made him somewhat dashing in appearance, like a Vegas lounge singer. His bare chest glistened with sweat, and the pair of flip-flops on his feet were within moments of self-destructing.

We shook hands and he listened to my problem. After a moment he climbed up the couple of porch steps and disappeared through the doorway. A darling green parrot walked back and forth on the left porch rail, showing off for the visitor. To the right, a skinny dog lay in the dust inside a dark vestibular shed that extended from the front of the building. I looked through the main door and down the hall that led directly to another open doorway at the back, dividing the barn in half. The right side was an airy room with bags of feed neatly stacked up and four nice saddles mounted on supports. The left side was divided into walled compartments, and in the nearest of these was a bedstead with a bare mattress. I dared look no closer.

Rodolfo returned with a dirty polypropylene sack and emptied the contents onto a bench. There were four wrenches, including two of eight millimeters. There was also a hammer on a shaft of steel pipe, as well as a pair of identical heavy-duty wire cutters, two Vice-Grips, and a Phillips screwdriver. The flat screwdriver was worn and bent. The rest of the set was of no interest, but we put everything back into the sack. I remarked about the parrot and he said, “Wait till you see this,” went in by the feed sacks, and grabbed a box containing two baby parrots. Just before we started out, Rodolfo remembered something, stepped inside once more, and reemerged with a machete in a tooled and braided sheath. “Para las culebras,” he said. “They’re everywhere. I kill them all the time.” I asked what kind of snakes he killed. He named four kinds. This seemed like something I’d like to witness, Rodolfo killing a black coral snake, for example, and it would certainly be preferable to his using the machete on me, with the amount of cash on my person exceeding anything he might have handled in a while.

He carried the bag of tools as we walked to the bike. It was rather stunning to hear him reveal that all this property, more than 400 hectares, belongs to the Canadian boxer Donny Lalonde, who lasted nearly nine rounds with Sugar Ray Leonard in their 1987 title fight. Rodolfo said his employer plans to develop a hotel and housing development on the left side of the road. Maybe Rodolfo is in for a big cut of the action and will be able to afford new flip-flops. Before this wonderful gig as ranch manager, he had been working in construction in Tamarindo, which must not have been as lucrative. We started down the hill toward the water, and I thought about the trees that would be cut down. What about the monkeys? Rodolfo pointed across to the other side and said all that would be preserved. As we reached the bike I inquired how many cars use the road. Some days, he said, not a single one.

The 10-millimeter wrench removed the nut that held the shift lever in place, but hammering on it against an anvil of rock didn’t straighten out the piece, so Rodolfo suggested pushing the bike back to his hacienda. The fact that the tranny was stuck in neutral was a real blessing. I climbed onto the saddle, coasting the short distance downhill and getting all the way through the water before we started pushing; he had to remove his wet flip-flops, the first of our three rest breaks. He said he’s 50. He was roughly my size but stronger and his shoving from the rear got us over the top while I steered and pushed. The rest of the journey was easy. A jay squawked as we put the bike in the shade of a barnyard mango tree. Rodolfo went hunting for implements and returned with a notched crowbar and a length of pipe. The latter he wedged fast at a convenient working height between the tortured roots of a mangrove—a tropical vice—before inserting the gear lever into the pipe and effortlessly bending it back into shape with the crowbar. Success! We were both elated. I put the lever back on the input shaft and fastened the nut and once again had a working motorcycle. “You're an engineer,” I said, and he liked that. By way of further flattery, I pointed out that he had cunningly used mechanical force instead of human force. Offering payment for services rendered never occurred to me, but I asked if he'd like some water. The big bottle in my knapsack was still cool. He said, “Ah, agua fría,” and took a long guzzle.

It was three o’clock when I rode off. My misadventure had consumed only 90 minutes. Plenty of time remained to complete the journey, and I soon found myself at a summit amid an incomparable grove of Cortez amarillo trees, the broad forested valley below as big as my debt to Rodolfo.

More Ticos from Tamarindo

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:44:06 -0600

Alvaro and the gang rolled up to Restaurant Stella, the diesel engine in his Hyundai Grace Grand Saloon clattering resolutely. The Grace is a copy of the Toyota HiAce passenger van, and unlike Caramel, the beach dog, the name has no aptness for the design and appearance; Sea Slug would be a better eponym, or just Turd. I was heading downhill to the beach at a few minutes before six and waved to them. This was after I’d lain awake listening to the tasseled bluejay cry, “Rack, rack, rack,” like a car sliding to a stop on bare wheels. Today’s noisome crepuscular experience saves me any need of isolating the sound of magnesium as it oxidizes; I think I’ve got it. The neighbor here at Hotel Chocolate stepped out and cast something at the bird, maybe just an epithet and to no avail. I should ask whether he noticed bright white flashes emanating from the jay’s beak.

Alvaro, the mason crew’s foreman, is a rare example of a bearded Tico. He wears a white hardhat, blue pointed-collar shirt with a pocket protector, and crisp slacks. He sits and dawdles while his crew of three toils. He doesn’t listen to a radio, check his device, or even work puzzles. Sometimes he stands up and yells, “No!” Of the crew, I recognize a sleek young toffee-colored guy who always wears the same dark blue tank shirt and a surfer’s necklace, perhaps of wooden beads, and we acknowledge each other.

All week long I’ve greeted Alvaro with a wave and a buenos días, and yesterday I introduced myself and we shook hands. His fingers are as short as mine but his hand is heavier and rougher. It turns out I was wrong about their hours on the job being from 6.00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m. Quitting time is at five. They work 11-hour days, six days a week. I couldn’t help but comment that at home, people have an ataque nervioso if they go more than a couple of months without visiting a spa resort for an energy balancing hot-stone massage after a peppermint and sweet-orange foot-cleansing ritual. He smiled dustily. Costa Rica is a poor country, he explained. The people have to work long days because the pay is low, just 1200 colones per hour, or about $2.20. We’re talking $145 per week. Taking two weeks off for good behavior, it comes to $7,250 per year. Having the trim of my house painted last summer cost something in that neighborhood.

I’ve been watching the boatmen who ferry fishermen and their supplies from the shore in the morning and back in the afternoon with their catch. They run wooden skiffs of about 15 feet, with 25-horse outboards. Approaching the beach, they tip up the engine and let the froth swing the boat parallel with the strand. Jumping into the water, they wrench the stern around and drag the boat to a stop. The other day I caught one of these boatmen in a moment of equipoise and he said it’s a six-to-six, seven-day, nine-month job: the season closes in September and reopens in December. Do the guys work construction when the season’s closed? He said not really. Do they just sit around the house? “Sí.”

The woman in the scarf, white blouse, and long blue skirt who walks Caramel is named Luz, and she lives and presumably works at Nogui Restaurant and Bar, right on the beach. I took her picture this morning while Caramel disported himself in the sand. Luz’s white blouse was stained on the right breast. It could have been mustard.

On the way back from the beach I bought more orange juice from the couple who work out of their old Mazda pickup. The truck's cargo is a mountain of greenish-yellow fruit purchased from a farmer or wholesaler. The overwhelmingly sweet juice is sold by the glass or bottle: two liters for 2000 colones, or about $4. The couple set up by six, Monday through Saturday, near the gate of the agency that rents surfboards and ATVs: one dusty part of town: Carlos romantically designates it el Paso de Lora, or Parrot Way. A trickle of water from who knows what source usually flows through the shallow ditch, making iffy footing just beyond their site. They start by wiping bleach water over the outside of the truck and on the tailgate where the juice press goes. Carlos wears a moustache and has a deadpan sense of humor. To my inquiry whether the name of their business in Juices International, he said, “Just juice.” Maria Joséfina, una Guanacasteca, or Guanacaste native, smiled and counted back the change from a 10,000 colones note.

The link below is for Stella’s site, and be sure to look at the map accessed by “Where Is Stella?” Hotel Chocolate is two doors up the hill from this strange, stucco building with an inflated dunce cap of roof tiles. Between the establishments is the home of Sebastian and his family, my partners in eclipse viewing. And of course the Hostel La Botella de Leche is next-door to Hotel Chocolate on the other, uphill side. The map on Stella’s site shows an old location. Link: http://www.stella-cr.com.

Dutch Cleanser

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:42:57 -0600

I woke well before dawn, no car horns, no conversations on the patio downstairs, just a serene waking with the Spanish word ubicado frolicking around in my brain. It means “located.” Who knows what that was about? I located myself out the door by 5.45 a.m. Someone (the same K. whose eclipse alert I quoted yesterday) had told me to pack plenty of clean socks for this trip, to which I responded that my objective was to wear sandals as much as possible. Problem is, in the fall, my sandals were an end-of-season clearance purchase, a real bargain, but the leather hadn’t become supple. When I wore them to the beach after arriving last Saturday afternoon, blisters formed immediately. I’ve worked at it, and both sandals and blisters are improved. Instead of my hiking shoes with anklet socks, I wore the sandals today and then went barefoot on the beach.

Now for the third time at this hour on the beach, I’ve seen a local woman who wears a scarf, white blouse, and blue skirt to a length just below the knee. She walks a midsized dog that is very aptly named Caramel. I also recognized an American guy with a belly who wears only dark trunks and every so often drops to the sand and does ten pushups. The bearded guy from San Diego was out with his little toy dog. When not people-watching, I took close-ups of hermit crabs and white conical spirals of CaCO_3.

Ahead in the distance, a blonde woman was wandering rather aimlessly and, although I wasn’t explicitly trying to meet her, she took an odd turn and I happily realized our paths would intersect. When this occurred, we stopped and looked each other over. She was probably 26. Even though she wore a tube top and low-riding capris, I said, “A surf chick.” She asked me to repeat that. When I did, she smiled, thank God. I mistook her mild accent for German, but it was Dutch and she was Anna, just arrived last night, beautiful blue eyes and big white teeth. Her travel companion hadn’t yet gotten herself out of bed, so Anna went out exploring. She said that after a couple of days here, they’ll be going south to Malpais.

Malpais is just outside the Cabo Blanco wilderness area, where Susan and I hiked in 2005. It was a singular experience, with howler monkeys bellowing overhead and scaring us out of our sandals. We learned Cabo Blanco was Costa Rica’s first such preserve; the idea was initiated by Olof Wessberg, a Swede, and Karen Morgensen, a Dane, who were living nearby in the early 1950s. They were disgusted to see the forests cut down and got the government to designate this remote tip of the Nicoya Peninsula for preservation. It led to other preserves being established throughout the country.

Anna and I got sidetracked in our conversation, speaking of other things before I ended up wishing her well and starting on my way. About 100 yards down the beach, I realized I’d omitted something. She was still walking around in loops and hadn’t gotten anywhere. When I caught up she was panning the entire bay with a video camera.

“I forgot to tell you how the story ended,” I said. “The Swedish guy was murdered by a farmer who didn’t like the idea of a nature preserve.”

“Ah,” she said. “You didn’t give me the clue.”

–—

Two-thirds of Hotel Chocolate’s staff stood outside the gate this morning when I got back. Agustín and Teresa were quietly conferring, perhaps about the arrival yesterday of the owner, Michael, who flew in from Glendale, California. I interrupted them for an opinion about the groups of men who walk up and down Molasses Avenue. It’s pretty obvious they’re construction workers. Coming up the hill after 3.00 p.m., they’re covered with paint, plaster, grout, stucco, concrete, mud, and dust. Some have knapsacks. A few wear hardhats and boots. A statistic I'd heard made me figure they’re almost all Nicaraguans. Agustín confirmed it and estimated about half are here illegally.

“So,” I said, “where do they live, in the trees?”

He and Teresa laughed at this and introduced me to the word, bache, a dismal masculine noun. In a road, a bache is a rut. As a figure of speech, it means you're going through a bad stretch in life. A bache is a slump in the economy and un bache de aire is an air pocket. Agustín explained that a good example is just down the hill by the Hertz agency. In a large lot there, a plywood shanty has six or eight individual units, each the size of my kitchen at the Hotel Chocolate. The place has electricity, and where the door is often open at one unit, I always see a TV on a high shelf. I wouldn’t have guessed there’s running water, but Teresa assured me there is.

She came in to clean the apartment this morning, and I expelled myself with bag of dirty clothes, carrying them around the corner to Las Rosas laundry. One woman there was holding back a newspaper page against the gusts of an oscillating room fan. My quick translation of the headline yielded “Drunken Arab kills cyclist.” The series of pictures showed a bloody sheet over a corpse and the perp walk in progress: no presumption of innocence for the accused. Another woman took my bag, weighed it at 3.8 kilos, and promised the order by three o’clock. She handed me a ticket with my name, Ronaldo, and the price, 3420 colones, or about $7.25. The clothes will be washed, dried, and folded. There will be no loss of socks.