Out in the World

We are here in Costa Rica and we are having the time of our lives.  After just a few days we are falling into the routine-- early rising but late departing, slow but decided traveling interspersed with patchwork conversations in Spanish, lots of cooking, little spending, and a wealth of experience.  

We are living about half-way up a mountain in a house that overlooks Escazu and San Jose and we are looked-over by Tiquicia, the mountain-top community.  Yesterday, we walked down the mountain in the rain to see something of the city and today we walked up.  Yesterday traffic increased to a nerve-wracking and constant zoom of trucks, taxis and cars as we descended (pedestrians do not have the right-of-way here in Costa Rica and the roads are very small with no sidewalks in many places) and the smell of food cooking, car exhaust, and general human activity filled our nostrils.  Today on our hike upwards traffic all but stopped completely when the high roads became unnavigable paths, the people were most scarce and spread out, all busy within their occupations solitarily picking berries from coffee trees nestled in mountainside groves, or slowly ascending a path home with a sac or basket in hand.   One woman sorted bottles for recycling in her kitchen and two men worked a tomato and pepper farm under long strips of plastic that create a greenhouse.  Some invisible people called down from a neighboring mountainside dense with vegetation.  Who knows what work they were doing.  

We met various tios, tias, una mama, muchos amigos, y primos y primas of the people working and living where we are staying; we made awkward and choppy conversation in Spanish and then rehashed the conversations later in English.  Almost everyone has been very nice-- all except a taxi driver who tried to swindle us for not even taking us anywhere the other day!  

It's worth mentioning that since we've been here the three of us have eaten about six avacados, a load of beans and rice, fresh local huevos bought at room temperature and home-made tortillas from a vendor down the road.  We have also been drinking local coffee.

It's also worth mentioning that I have seen a species of hummingbird that I do not recognize at all, several butterflies and birds that I have never seen, a ton of lush floral vegetation that I have no name for (I feel like an infant sometimes in this country!)  Even as I have been sitting here writing this post we had a species emergency.  We both had to drop everything to stand at the window and gawk at a flock of about 50 bright green parrots or parakeets swooping around just outside of the house.  Vultures are regular patrolers of our view, some bright blue bird likes to play in a tree in the yard, and we've even seen the occasional seagull, even though there are no beaches around here.  Our environment is a caucophany of birdsong day and night which mingles with the goat bleeting, dog barking, and occasional cow-moo of the other local creatures.  

Somehow electricity and city water make it all the way up here.  Any higher, in Tiquicia, for example, there is still electricty but instead of city water, huge trucks haul up to fill tanks in people's yards .  How the people at the top get water?  No se.  Although I have to say that I have been constantly amazed at the wide variety of trucks, buses, and manual-shift vehicles that negotiate the perilous steeps all day long.  I wouldn't be surprised if water trucks somehow do make it to the top.  From my window I shake my head as I see long buses and weighed-down trucks huffing slowly upward, practically perpendicular to the tiny road they drive on.  I am equally amazed at how fast the local boys speed down the same tiny roads on their motorbikes, whipping around no-visibility turns without the slightest hesitation, even knowing that they might be rudely greeted by the grill of a truck or bus.  

This is where I feel at home.  Even though I feel completely conspicuous, totally naive and utterly inept at communicating, I feel at home where I get to see another culture in action.  I am constantly wondering and speculalting about people's lives, histories, futures, and passions.  I feel totally invigorated by the challenge of making sense out of a culture that I do not understand.  I revel in the paradoxes and desire to know more and more.  

I know this will be a great vacation; I know it will be too short.

Pura Vida!