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El Gringo Feo Travel Bob

Sun dogs and sunsets chase away the blues

(To read El Gringo Feo’s Costa Rica Diary from the beginning, start here.)

Friday, August 24

Yet another sublime sunset …

My first “down” day. Two things conspired to mess with my head. The first was Spanish. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon working on exercises and listening to a few audio resources, and it was daunting, to say the least. In addition, the water was out all day, and my typically pessimistic-paranoid nature turned to what happens if it doesn’t come back on. It went off once while Jeff was here, too, and I think it was exactly a week ago. But it came back on relatively quickly. This time it was all day, and I started worrying about what I’d do if it didn’t come back on before it got dark. Somehow I doubt this is the kind of place where it’s easy to get things fixed on weekends, even if you speak the language and know whom to call to report it.

So as sunset neared, I did the only thing that made sense — hiked up to the shack to watch the show. It worked. Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. And when I returned to The Treehouse the water was back. ¡Que Milagro!

I think my down day also was driven by how much I miss home, especially Lara and Sunny (and yes, even Sydney). I caught myself looking wistfully at photos of the big dog after a friend on Facebook posted a challenge to upload dog photos. I found the perfect one. It’s from when I was walking Sunny and a little girl wanted to pet her. Sunny is timid and quickly shies away from strangers, but the little girl walked right up and presented Sunny a dandelion. It was a really sweet moment that made me a tad misty.

Sunny is a shy, timid great Pyrenees rescue who generally retreats when a stranger approaches. This little girl walked right up and presented the gentle giant with a dandelion. Melted my heart …

A few random things … I saw a beautiful black squirrel outside the treehouse yesterday. Haven’t seen one like him since we lived in D.C. And then I saw a pair of strange rabbitlike critters hopping around as I walked up to the shack. Best I can tell from the resources I have at hand, they were agoutis but I want to do a little more research before I’m firm in that conviction.

Tomorrow I plan to insert my U.S. SIM card into the phone for a few calls home. And since I can leverage my U.S. data plan when I do that, I’m also planning a flood of Internet surfing.

I finished the day on the deck with my AirPods stuffed in my ears, blasting Wake Up to Find Out, the Grateful Dead’s Nassau Coliseum show (3/29/90) where Branford Marsalis joins for several numbers, including transcendent versions of “Estimated Prophet” and one of my favorites, “Eyes of the World”:

There comes a redeemer, and he slowly too fades away

And there follows a wagon behind him that’s loaded with clay

And the seeds that were silent all burst into bloom and decay

And night comes so quiet, it’s close on the heels of the day