LIMON SEA, VERY PRETTY…

It is now September and, totally off my usual migratory schedule, I’m back in the north. Home in the Hammer, enjoying brilliant blue skies – even Hamilton Bay, the maligned body of water that shares its shores with steel companies and suburbia, has an aqua shine to it these days. I couldn’t ask for a better homecoming. My buddy with a bosom, Cocky, was at the airport to meet me, after her own month of travels. A treat to come home to, but now she’s gone too. I may get a chance to go for a sail on that same water if this weather holds for the Labour Day weekend which it is supposed to.

 

My last two weeks in Costa Rica were spent down in sweet calypsolandia, Cahuita. Although it rained lots in July on the Caribbean coast just as it had been up in Monteverde, I ended up being followed by beautiful weather from the green mountain to the seashore. There were some casual showers of course, and maybe one night of insistent rain, but the month of September in Cahuita means dry weather. Hard to fathom how, when it is hurricane season just to north, but I stopped trying to figure out weather a long time ago.

We got a lot of hot sunny days that sent us to the beach, but we mostly stayed at home. It was glorious to be back basking under those big trees, bathing in the cool water, being serenaded by the howlers and bailando with Roberto.   I was amazed at how much the papaya seedlings we had planted in July had grown in the four or so weeks I was away.  But then the growth of vegetation in Costa Rica always unnerves me a bit – you just don’t want to sit in one place too long if there is a vigorous-looking vine nearby.

 One afternoon we went up to the Port of Limon, a place I really only have known as a bus-changing town.  We walked around the ‘malecon’, the boardwalk that follows the seaside. Limon is one of the oldest cities in the Americas, having been visited by Christopher Columbus in 1502, so if it seems a little worn that should be understandable.

Development in Costa Rica by the Spaniards took place from the Pacific side, and so the Atlantic coast was left to fend for itself against all that crazy rainforest vegetation. In the mid-1800s the government decided to build a railroad and connect Limon (particularly its port) to the rest of the country. They brought in Chinese and Jamaican workers to build the tracks and thus the Caribbean coast is very much an extension of Afro-Caribbean culture with lots of chop suey houses around. 

There is no denying racist elements that existed (and unfortunately still do.) When the railroad was finished and the banana plantations became a major employer, the black population provided the workforce.  They weren’t encouraged to travel throughout the country, couldn’t afford it anyway, and the fact that they were foreigners themselves made it able to control their movements through their documents.  Eventually they went to work in other parts of Costa Rica as laborers were needed and Afro-Caribbean families settled elsewhere in the country. But the heart of the calypso-blooded community will always be Limon. 

The city developed once the railroad took off, but government money was never pouring their way.  In the last year or two, there has been a move by the Costa Rican government to bring economic development to the area although people are waiting to see the proof.  There was an attempt at revitalizing the waterfront of Limon several years ago, but earthquakes and storms destroyed much of the expanded boardwalk as well as what must have been a great little outdoor concert theatre in its short life. As Limon grows into a bigger cruise ship port (it is already a large commercial harbor and a popular cruise ship stop)  hopefully some of the wealth that visits its shores will be spread in the area. Although Limon is known for its poverty,  its richness of spirit and culture is as much a part of life there. The biggest threat to that, after poverty,  is the drug trade which feeds on the poverty and changes the spirit.

The city has a funky flair to it and lots of local color, from the bright hues of the buildings to the cacao skin of the residents. When you take the highway east of San José, over the mountains of Braulio Carillo National Park, and through the miles of flat banana and pineapple fields, over the wide rivers coming out of the mountains and arrive in Limon province, you know you are in a different culture than in the rest of Costa Rica. The food changes – instead of arroz y frijoles, you are now eating rice and beans cooked in coconut milk; the music changes – from salsa and merengue to calypso, soca and reggae; and the language is English-based Limonense-Creole rather than Spanish. It seems that most people are fluently tri-lingual – speaking Tico Spanish and British English as well as their own Caribbean-tongue.  It is a disappearing language as are many of the indigenous languages that are being used by less and less natives of Costa Rica. My experience being there with Roberto is that every plant, bird and insect has a different name in Limon than elsewhere in the country. The words are English-based, but the names are distinct to this region. I can get very lost trying to follow the lilt and tilt of the language used in Cahuita.  

We had some beautiful days and were out on the ocean as often as we could force ourselves to go for the walk through the forest to the beach.  There was another hot night spent in Puerto Viejo, which has a number of bars that cater to different crowds – we go to Maritza’s, which has a live band on Saturday nights and always plays a great variety of music for dancing from soca to salsa.

In the middle of all this it was my birthday and Roberto promised to go out in the sea and get me lobster for dinner.  So we spent two fine mornings on the beach under a big sun, the sea a calm shiny turquoise stone.  Roberto used to be a diver (snorkeler) and caught and sold octopus, fish and lobster, but quit a number of years ago as he saw the population of these sea creatures diminish. The banana plantations in the area have caused lots of pollution – from their chemical effluent to the silt run-off to the plastic bluebags that they put over the banana bunches – all this stuff ends up in the ocean and, along with a bad earthquake or two, things have never been the same.

 

But it didn’t take him long to get four nice-sized lobster for dinner and we were thankful for the bounty. We were blessed with the warmth of the sun and the beauty of the sea and took advantage to walk through Cahuita National Park’s shady trails, sharing our time with the monkeys. 

 

 

 

Cahuita’s beaches are stunning and the National Park is one of the most beautiful in the country. Between the white sand beach, the reef off the point, the hours of hiking, the constant presence of birds, insects and animals, and the fact that you can enter for a small donation from the town access point, it makes for one of the nicest parks to visit in Costa Rica. They have built bridges over some of the swampier areas (where before there were submerged wooden walkways), using the same recycled-plastic material that the Monteverde Reserve has been using on its trails and signage for a few years now. It was interesting that we could smell the plastic off-gassing in the very hot sun – something that I’ve never noticed up in the cooler cloud forest.

 

 

We also continued taking care of Roberto’s little farm. We seeded corn and within three days it was two inches out of the ground – when I head back there in November I should be eating elotes, the young corncobs.

 

 

 

 

 

Roberto climbed up his castaña tree, the glamorous cousin of the breadfruit, to chop off the top limbs before it gets too tall and he won’t be able to harvest the fruit.

 

 

 

 

This tree is also growing on the bank of his stream and, knowing that it will fall one day, he has been concerned that if it is too tall it will fall on his casita.  So I took pictures as he shimmied up the trunk and took his machete to the big elegant leaves and chopped off the top.

 

 

 

 

Afterward he said he was getting too old to do this stuff – between the possibility of falling, wasps, snakes, and other risks he felt lucky to get the job done in one piece – but my guess is he’ll keep climbing and chopping as long as he needs to, for as long as he is truly able.  His age is just making him realize how vulnerable he is and that when it hurts, it hurts harder.

 

 

 

We went back through the mountains to San José for my last two days in the country. There was a full day of music awaiting us and we took advantage.

 

Wandering around the city, we caught the Lubin Barahona orchestra outside of the National Museum.  It was big band music and boleros being sung by old timers.

 

 

 

The crowd was mostly older couples who were happy to be dancing on the street while the music played on and the rain held off.   Like in most cities, there is live music playing for free to be found most weekends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then caught a gospel concert in the Melico Salazar Theatre at night – a contest between three local gospel choirs (won by the University choir) with Master Key (a five man acapella group from Costa Rica now working in the US)

with Manuel Obregon, a musician I’ve known for years in Monteverde (and seen him play here in Toronto twice). He’s one of the most experimental composers in the country – here he was playing gospel with our friend Tapado, the country’s top percussionist, at his side. Manuel never fails to amaze me with where his music takes him and he takes alot of other musicians along for his musical rides. The Let It Shine concert was presented by a gospel choir group and held to celebrate Black Culture Day, August 31. It was a great way to extend my time in the cultural richness of the Afro-Caribbean community.

 

The inevitableness of leaving woke me up early on the last day of August and when it is time to go, it is time. It makes saying goodbye easier when you know you are going to return within a couple of months (si dios quiere.) Heading to my happy home in the Hammer also makes things easier. I can still feel the Caribbean sun on my skin and if I listen hard enough, the gentle arrival of the waves lapping the beach and gently rocking my soul.

 

The mellowness of life in the jungle and on the sea exists in stark contrast to the busyness of my life back here in the city as I prepare for a trip to the northeastern US, continue overseeing the Spanish translation of Walking with Wolf, work on the historical record of Bosqueeterno S.A., and catch up with my northern friends.

Stay calm, Kay, stay calm – but keep that ball rolling, there is lots to do.

THE KUKULAS OF CAHUITA

 

 

I spent the last week on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, living a very slothful existence. It isn’t hard to do that – the place is sleepy and the pace is slow. The week was rainy – it drizzled, it poured, it spit – and then the sun would shine and all would be forgiven. My friend Leila had her first taste of the towns of Cahuita and then Puerto Viejo – and, like me, finds herself a Cahuita girl.  I wrote about this last year – how people are drawn to one of these communities more than the other – and once again lethargic Cahuita has won out over quaking Puerto with one of my friends. We spent one night – Leila and our friend Largo, and Roberto and I – listening to live music and dancing in Puerto – but were happy to leave the next day and head back to Cahuita were life is as slow as a sloth’s jig.

 

 

Sometimes life doesn’t work out as we think it will. I have told the story here of my friend Roberto Levey, a man I have loved for years and was reconnected with last June after a few years passed when I didn’t go to Cahuita. I have written of how he was united with his eighteen-year-old daughter from Australia in October and though plans were started for him to go there following the loss of his jungle home in the floods of early November, he decided that he didn’t want to go that far away from his home. Instead he has been rebuilding his little shack in the jungle (after a second flood took some more of his possessions, he finally gave up the spot that he was on and moved to higher ground where the flood waters didn’t reach.)

 

And though there was a connection made between him and his daughter and her mother that almost took him far away, when he decided not to go it opened the door to our relationship that has simmered for many years. Now it is a pot started with friendship and filled with chemistry that has boiled over with love and respect. So Roberto and I have started something, and only time will tell if it can endure the tests brought by long distance and cultural differences.

 

 

In our favor, we are both bush people as well as dancers, thinkers, talkers and naturally positive people who have cared for each other for years and know each other’s history. We both believe in the Dalai Lama’s philosophy of kindness. Roberto lives his life proudly with few possessions and refuses to fret about what he has lost – something I admire since I think that consumerism and desire for material comfort is one of the greatest demands placed on our earth. To be able to live so simply is a challenge but Roberto proves it can be done with grace and humor. He loves deeply and lives passionately and he has lost plenty in his life. As have most. And he endures. 

 

The fact that we are both bush people cannot be undervalued – I don’t think Roberto ever thought he would know a woman who could live in his humble little shack on his wild piece of tropical rainforest. But when I spent my first night there last week, I told him it was just like camping – something I have done all my life, not excluding my years of living in a funky log cabin in northeastern Ontario without running water or electricity. Here, however, there are monkeys in the trees and the possibility that a poisonous snake may have moved in under your bed.

 

The mosquitoes weren’t as bad as they would be much of the camping season in the north but there’s a whole other buncha bugs here that cause nasty problems. The leaf cutter ants march on their employment lines everywhere, taking down the best of the vegetation. Then there is the botfly, the torsalo, whose eggs are deposited by a mosquito and grow into fat larva and eventually into another fly unless you squeeze the buggers out.

 

 

This is what I squeezed out of one of the bites. There was also a white maggot elsewhere… after a visit with some biologists in the know, I found out two importants things: if you put iodine on a suspicious bite right from the offset, you may prevent the growth of the eggs inside you. If you have a torsalo larva growing, put some oil on it – it will suffocate the beast and make it impossible for it to brace its little arms and hold on while you are trying to squeeze it out – instead you have greased its way.  Zepol also works (sore muscle ointment) as an irritant for the the little intruders.

 

 

 

There are the sand flies (or maybe mosquitos) that cause papalomoyo (leishmaniasis) whose bite won’t heal and continues to grow into a huge scar of eaten flesh on your body. I’ve now experienced papalomoyo myself and have also had the intense pleasure(?) of extracting both the larva and the grown botfly out of Roberto’s backside. It is hard to explain the sensation of seeing the little hairs on the head of the creature appearing and then the fat maggot coming out. It is hard to squeeze the flesh of the person you love while they try not to scream in pain, but quite satisfying when the little bug pops out as if exploded from a cannon. Roberto has some great stories about these bugs but I don’t think I need to share them here as I can feel you squirming already. My work here is done.

 

 

The stream of water that flows through Roberto’s finca is fresh and clean and teaming with his little fish friends, his piranhitas, who clean his pots in a frenzy and nibble on your body when you sit in the aqua pools. He has seen a jaguarundi skulking about the banana plants and wild pigs rooting about as well as domestic ones that have come wandering down from a neighbor’s property. The bird, insect and amphibian songs fill the atmosphere throughout the day and all night long, coming at you from the tops of the trees to the forest floor, reaching a crescendo at dawn and dusk, songs I’ve never heard before. And the monkeys come to keep an eye on his progress as Roberto rebuilds his little hut.

 

One overcast gloomy day, we went for a walk north of town to where a friend of Roberto’s lived until he passed away recently. It was a sad day for Roberto who will miss his friend Jerry Lee. We passed the grown over ruins of Cahuita, houses that either had served their time and were abandoned, or which were never completed beyond someone’s dreams. The lush vegetation crawls everywhere and strangles everything it can.

 

We returned by the Black Beach, named for its black volcanic sand (that alone its great Reggae Bar), which was full with the flotsam and jetsam vomited from the sea after the weeks and months of rain. The beach was almost non-existent, replaced by mostly soggy organic refuse and the ubiquitous plastic bottles that wash up from everywhere. I couldn’t help but think of Roberto’s father, Bato, who lived much of his life in wild constructions on the beach made by materials the sea had deposited at his feet (see East Coast Pleasures post). It was a melancholy day already and the waves of debris that we walked through kept us quieter than usual.

 

The wet weather of the last few months seems to be affecting the wildlife. On the trail through Cahuita National Park, a lovely path just a few feet inland from the beach where you can walk in the shade, I saw two eyelash palm vipers one morning. I have only ever seen these in pictures yet by the end of the week I had seen four. Whether they were the same two seen twice or not, I don’t know, but they were sitting so close to the path, wrapped around small bushes, that a tourist, intent on watching a bird up high in the trees, was warned by the passing park ranger to move out of striking distance as they are quite venomous. The poor birdwatcher hadn’t realized how close he was to this bright yellow serpent. They are usually a little further back in the forest, not so noticeable, but the wet swampy land must have driven them to the drier ground of the pathway.

 

For three days and nights, sodden by intermittent showers, the howler monkeys roared.  Well, they didn’t just roar, they moaned and groaned and lamented and pleaded and cried and chanted and carried on in a way that even Roberto, who has lived here most of his life, had to admit was very strange. I have certainly never heard them go on like this. We started getting a little paranoid when they seemed to react to our every move though we were inside the cabin we had rented (at Villa Delmar, a quiet grouping of cabins with kitchens on the edge of town, very sweet place.) We started looking out the window to the branches where the monkeys were perched, to see if they were watching us with binoculars they had stolen from some distracted tourist. I will never forget this chorus of primates and how they provided a mournful soundtrack to our own restlessness throughout these wet dreamy days.

 

 

A highlight of the week was heading up to the Sloth Sanctuary just north of Cahuita. Also known as Aviarios del Caribe, a bird sanctuary created in 1972 by a couple from Cahuita, it has become better known for its rehabilitation services for injured and orphaned sloths since receiving its first infant in 1992. This sloth is still there, Buttercup is her name, and I think she may have been Spielberg’s inspiration for E-T.

 

 

 

 

Roberto and his daughter had taken a baby sloth there that they had found in October and he knew that I would be fascinated by the place. So we went up and met the babies left behind when their mothers have been killed, the amputees whose limbs were lost to electrical wires or road accidents, and the long-term residents whose luck brought them from whatever danger they had encountered to the tender loving care of the Arroyo family.

 

Besides nursing the injured back to health and reintroducing the strong back into the wild, the center is very much a place of knowledge and information about sloths (also known as kukulas in Cahuita or peresozos in Spanish, from the word that means lazy.) There is much misinformation and falsehood spread about these gentle animals and the center makes it their duty to correct that as they study and amass understanding about the Bradypus and the Choloepus families (three and two toed sloths). It is well worth a stop at the Sloth Sanctuary, even if you never thought about these beautiful, humble soft little creatures before. There is perhaps a lot to be learned by their vegetarian, pacifistic and slow-moving ways. The world could no doubt benefit from their example of simple non-aggressive living. I think the Dalai Lama would be proud of the sloths as well as the people at the sloth center who have taken on their rehabilitation and protection.

 

I will be returning there in a couple of weeks to take some copies of Walking with Wolf to their gift shop. I look forward to spending a little more time amid their gentle ways and graceful movements. I’ll then walk back into the vibrant green forest to Roberto’s little humble shack and count my blessings. And suspend myself, in true sloth style, in a hammock, slung between trees, and contemplate my next very slow but deliberately pacifistic move which, I think, involves writing another book.

 

DOGS’ DAYS OF SUMMER

 

I’ve settled into my life as a dog nanny here in Monteverde. I’m sure that the three dogs, Chiqui, Betsy and Cutie Pie, must know I’m a dog lover, they can sense it, but they also must wonder once in awhile just who this crazy woman is that their family left them with. Bless their little muddy paws, they have driven me to the point of verbal insanity on too many occasions. I have taken it as my duty to add a little discipline to their lives and have made it my goal to break some of their bad habits by the time Veronica and Stuart return.

 

Cutie Pie, aptly named though I’ve taken to calling her La Negrita, is both a champion football player and a chronic chewer. Whereas the other dogs can be trusted to sleep in the bedroom at night, on their doggie beds, Cutie is confined to the main room of the house where most chewable things have been removed or already chewed up. In the exactly three minutes I helped Veronica carry her suitcases to the driveway to meet the car coming for her when she left last week, Cutie had managed to chew a corner of the wooden arm of the chair she sleeps in.  So then I felt that I had to take the whole chair out of the room, along with everything else. This just seems crazy to me. A dog, even a very cute one, can certainly learn better habits. So I keep a keen eye on her and am all over her when I see her chewing. I also smeared hot chili all over the arm of the chair to deter the behavior. She seems to like it.

 

Betsy, the youngest of the three, maybe seven months old, is a barker and a sharp one at that.  If something gets her started, the barking goes on till I wanna scream which, of course, only adds to the noise. So I keep trying the dog-whisperer techniques (a show I’ve watched when in houses with cable TV), and bit by bit Betsy is understanding that she can do a bit of barking but when I get that crazed look in my eyes and my voice rises, it is time to stop.

 

Being a pack of three, if one gets going, they all do. La Negrita is the first to stop, and the elder, Chique, is older and wise enough to back off quickly, but Betsy, well, let’s just say that I hope she ages a lot in the next few weeks. I don’t want to insinuate that I don’t love these little dogs – they greet me with all that canine love when I walk up the path, they look at me with as much tenderness as any man I’ve ever known (well, maybe), and they are quite entertaining when not chewing and barking and jumping up so they can drag their claws down my now-bruised thighs.

 

My best investment in 2009? A thousand colones ($2) for a water spray bottle. Appropriate technology – the only weapon I’ve used in the struggle to great effect.

 

Fortunately I’ve had company here – Marilyn and Gerardo from San Ramon/Sarchi were here for a couple days and then Roberto came up from the Caribbean to see Monteverde. I’ve decided that it is a tribal thing going on here – when the dogs outnumber me, they have the definite cultural advantage. However when other humans are here, we collectively have more power.  Bit by bit, the dogs are learning some manners. Less things are being chewed, the barking is slowing down. We’ve all joined in playing soccer with them – La Negrita is a great ball handler and Betsy is nothing if not enthusiastic and will actually bring the ball back once in awhile. An hour of soccer helps to wind these little energizer-bunnies down.

 

When not at home doing the canine shuffle, I’ve been doing the book selling thing all over the area – the local stores all needed more copies of Walking with Wolf. Wolf and I can sell well if seated at the entrance to the Reserve when the tour groups come out of the forest mid-morning. It is fun to sit in the often drizzly, windy weather (we retreat to one of the restaurants when it is really bad) and even nicer on the sunny days under the beautiful tree canopy, with a variety of bird and animal sightings ranging from black guans and quetzals to pizotes, monkeys and olingos. We’ve had wonderful conversations with interested tourists and I’ve made some great contacts for possible future presentations of the book in North America.

 

People report seeing quetzals in the forest but the blue-crowned motmots have been here, there and everywhere. They are a beautiful, simpler alternative to the elegant, elusive quetzal, being one of the friendlier and consistent birds around.

I’d really have to say they are more deserving to be designated the Monteverde mascot than any other bird.

 

I was at a local restaurant to see the inauguration last Tuesday but had to meet the bus at the same time so I missed Obama’s speech (but not the fashions – loved Michelle O’s dress & Aretha’s hat). I’ve seen some lines from it which made me think it was a beautiful beginning to the next stage of life in the USA and thus the world. I’m actually glad I’m not in North America during this period – here on the green mountain I miss so much of what is going on internationally by not having steady access to media and I would just as soon believe that things are going well and not know the details. I’ll be back in the thick of it again soon enough.

 

Instead I’ve been wandering around the dusty roads and back trails of Monteverde, filling my soul with the magic of the woods while showing my visitors some of the local highlights. My spiritual center here is the bullpen up on Campbell’s land, a medieval St. Augustine pasture hidden in an open forest where the gigantic trees left standing can stretch their branches wide. Roberto appropriately renamed it the wolfpen when I explained that Wolf had been the main traveler over the years through this hidden park-like land.   

 

The other day Wolf and I stopped in at Historica  Monteverde. This was the dream of Lindi, his former daughter-in-law who passed away two years ago after a long battle with health issues, cancer being the ultimate victor. We talk about Lindi in Walking with Wolf – she was married to Tomás Guindon, Wolf and Lucky’s second son, and was always a strong presence in the Monteverde community. I knew her from early in my time here, and got to know her better when I lived with a university group from Evergreen College in 1995 and she was the Spanish and culture instructor. Lindi was a tall statuesque woman whose robust physicality didn’t suit her chronic illnesses.

 

The last time I visited with her was a few months before her death, before I returned for Canada, and she was still fighting but already at peace with whatever eventual ending was being designed for her script. Since I had had cancer, she appreciated the frankness with which I spoke (being quite direct herself), but of course, I’m a survivor. It was already clear that she probably wasn’t going to be much longer. One of the things that held her interest until the end was the idea of building this museum of Monteverde artifacts on a corner of her property. Although she didn’t live to see its completion, her daughter, Kayla, saw that it was finished and went on to celebrate its opening at the end of August this past year.

 

At the time, I had a beautiful email from my friend Mary Stuckey Newswanger about what a wonderful day it was, despite torrential rains, when the community gathered to honor the completion of Lindi’s dream, the history of this special place, and the spirit that keeps Monteverde whole. One of the highlights that day, as well as for me on this one, was the very large model map of Costa Rica, apparently the largest in the country. It sits in a pool of water, representing the oceans, surrounded by a fence that spectators can gather up to. A slide show with images collected from all over this beautiful land is punctuated by lights on the topographically-correct map that show where the images are located.

 

 At the end of the show the map’s volcanoes, those magical cones of fire and brimstone that wander down the spine of Central America, are lit up like flowing lava and smoke gushes out. When a door was opened to help clear out the smoke, the haze lifted and swirled and flew off to the horizon, just as you could watch sitting in La Fortuna after the rumble and roar of the Arenal volcano has passed.

 

So good for you, Lindi, but also for Kayla and Robin and everyone else who helped bring this dream to its completion. As someone said to me recently, the fifty-plus year history of Monteverde is expansive, covering about 200 years of progress – it was very much a pioneering community being cut out of the forest in 1951 and is now a pretty modern one regularly receiving international guests and linked worldwide through technology in 2009. 

The other day I took this photo of the various methods used for transporting milk to the dairy plant each morning – from the original oxen and cart to the big shiny modern tank truck, all lined up, waiting their turn to unload the stainless steel jugs of fresh milk.

 

Fortunately you can still get held up in a bovine traffic jam in downtown Monteverde. Even with all the changes that have come to the mountain and the immense pressures put on the community by development, Monteverde holds it own when it comes to its charms.

 

Learning how to get along, adapting to change, realizing dreams and appreciating the beauty around us – and bringing a little order to the chaos – the continuing themes of life as it plays out on the green mountain.