Category: Travel Bob

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Return of the howlers

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

Sunday, October 21

One of the howlers I was hanging out with on Saturday.

I’ve been struggling mightily with a section of The Book, and yesterday morning I started to hit stride, making more progress than I had in a few days.

Then the howlers showed up. Monkey business ensued.

I noticed two of them in a tree about 25 feet from where I was writing. They’ve been scarce since the days became bloated with rain, and I guess yesterday’s nice weather convinced them it was time for a feeding frenzy. I still act like a little kid at the zoo every time they come around, so I promptly abandoned my computer and went over for a closer view of what turned out to be a mom and baby munching leaves and seed pods from a tree about 15 feet above me. They seemed completely unfazed by my presence.

That’s when I noticed two more. In the same tree. And three more in a nearby tree. The sound of dropping leaves and branches prompted me to spot another handful making their way toward the bar area of PurUvita. Within 15 minutes about 15 or 20 of them emerged, hanging out in the nearby trees.

So much for momentum on The Book. But I did get to spend a quiet hour watching the monkeys move gracefully through the trees, and the alpha male even unfurled a magnificent series of howls. That’s the first time I’ve actually seen one screaming. Very impressive. Even cooler, there apparently was another band of them over behind La Jungla Ferretería (The Jungle Hardware store), so their alpha started shouting back at our guys.

I also had a really strange coatimundi encounter on Friday. I was in the Treehouse reading Jennifer Egan’s incredible “A Visit from the Goon Squad” when I heard a racket that sounded like the distress call of some bird that had been nabbed by a predator. When I hobbled out onto the deck to see what was up, I saw a swarm of coatis hopping around in an extremely agitated manner. There were easily 15 or 20 of them, and as I watched closely I realized there was a larger, darker one who was the center of their ire. I assumed it was a male, and it wasn’t backing down. I pulled up the Wikipedia entry on coati’s and found this:

Males over two years become solitary due to behavioural disposition and collective aggression from the females and will join the female groups only during the breeding season.

I’m betting that’s what was going on here. They’re a lot like raccoons, and they can be just as fierce. After snarling at each other for a while, the entire pack ran in unison up the hill and disappeared into the jungle.

Last night, I took Gian and Sara out to dinner at a wonderful Mexican place here in Uvita to thank them for their help and friendship. If you ever find yourself in Uvita, I highly recommend Carlito’s, especially the shrimp enchiladas and the pineapple margaritas with jalapeńos. ¡Que sobrosa!

My first time atop the property in about 6 weeks. Stunning.

This morning, I decided to take the steadily improving ankle for a test drive. I toyed with going to the beach but opted instead for a walk up to the top of the property, which I figured would be lower impact. Th ankle did well and the view was breathtaking. I’d forgotten how much I love it up there.

Banana update: I’m not sure I see a lot of difference sine the last photo, but they do seem to be doing well. I suspect they’ll be ready after I’m gone. Something for Jeff to look forward to …

The bananas continue to grow.
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El Gringo Feo Travel Bob

The scorpion’s failed attempt at revenge

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

Thursday, October 18

The Sibu dog waiting patiently for something worth begging for.

I made my weekly run to el supermercado today, and as is my custom, I locked up my valuables in the bodega, a secure, gated part of PurUvita, before I set off to torture the Ticos with my mangled Spanish. I have the key to that area hidden on site, tucked in a magnetic key holder that’s attached to a strategically located piece of metal.

I’m of a paranoid nature (see above), so I always take a good long look into the crevice where the key is stashed before sticking my hand up in there to dislodge the magnet. Never know who might have decided to call it home since the last time I checked in.

When I returned from the market, bristling with enough food to last me a week or so, I looked up into the crevice, and retrieved the key. But I noticed something way up in there, a bit farther back, that I thought might be those odd pods that contain spider eggs. So when I went to return the magnetic key holder I carried my trusty broomstick, stuck it in there and gave it a quick stabbing motion.

The first scorpion I dispatched here in Uvita …

A bad-ass scorpion promptly plummeted to the ground, no doubt kith and kin to the one I encountered and terminated in the kitchen not too long ago. I proceeded to bash the bugger with my broomstick until it stopped moving, which took a surprising amount of violence. After I swept him off the patio and into the jungle, I got ready to put the key back in its hidey-hole, and paused. Maybe not. I now have a new location. Just as concealed but easier to assess before I stick my paw in there like a drunken bear digging for honey …

Anyone who has Suffered the Benz knows what an insufferable creature of habit I am.

  • Evidence, exhibit 1: When I go in to the supermarket, I always stop for lunch at a place called Sibu, which has been consistently excellent. Today was no exception. I had their Sibu salad and a red snapper burrito that were superb, as well as a papaya-banana smoothie. As an added benefit, there were several dogs milling around, including one Gian once told me is a fixture around town. She came up to let me pet her and then went on her rounds, showing no interest whatsoever in the salad I was shoveling into my mouth. But when that snapper showed up, she suddenly materialized in front of me. Smart dog. I also see her ranging around the parking lot in front of Sibu at times, and she’s clearly street smart. That stretch of the Costanera Sur is almost always congested, and the truck drivers like to barrel through as if it’s a stretch of Kansas Interstate.
  • Evidence, exhibit 2: After lunch, I always swing over to the catercorner side of the intersection, trying to be as traffic-aware as my canine friend, and buy a kilo of mamon chino from a guy who sets up there. That 1,000 Colones (about 2 bucks) is the best money I spend each week. So I’m sitting here cracking those buggers open and eating them like a hungry howler as I write this. I love market day.
  • Evidence, exhibit 3: As I hopped out of the taxi (a crewcab white Toyota pickup, more accurately) my driver, Michael, grinned and said, “¿Hasta la próxima semana, no?” (Until next week?). Sí, hasta la próxima semana. Like clockwork.
Is that snapper I smell?

This morning was gorgeous, which was much needed after the ceaseless rain we’ve suffered. The howlers were in full flail and the jungle was buzzing with yellow flycatchers and a bunch of blue, finch-like birds I couldn’t ID. The agouti were out, foraging for scraps of papaya I’d tossed them earlier. I flock of parrots flew high overhead, chattering noisily, paired up, maybe 20 or so total, and I heard a macaw or toucan somewhere out in the jungle, but I didn’t get a look. Several insanely beautiful butterflies flittered through. It was sublime.

When I returned from the store it was cloudy, but I still managed to steal an hour or so in the hammock before a light rain started to fall, chasing me inside to read Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot on my Kindle. But several hours later, as I write this, the relámpagos y truenos are raging, the rain is falling and the electricity is being incredibly fickle, flashing on and off, pitching me into sporadic bouts of blackout. It’s amazing how inky it gets here when the lights fail. Really eerie with the lightning illuminating the jungle in flashes like a B horror movie.. When the lights die, the glow of my computer screen becomes a magnet for swarming insects. And when the electricity comes back up, bats zigzag through to snatch the bugs that regroup around the restored lights. The bats don’t bother me at all. They come and go all evening while I type. I’m assuming one of them is BatBoy, who spends his days snoozing above the doorway of the Treehouse. I always stop to say hi to him when I’m coming and going. I’m sure he’s told his comrades I’m cool, for a human.

Oh well, light or dark, rain or shine, at least I have my mamon chino.

Munching mamon chino between lightning strikes.

Last, but certainly not least, Happy Birthday, Lara Edge. I can’t put into words how much I miss you or how utterly happy I am to have you in my life. I love you. Only two more weeks and we’ll do Costa Rica in a more decadent way than the Tarzan life I’ve been leading for the past two-and-a half-months …

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Who’ll stop the rain?

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

Wednesday, October 17

It’s been raining nonstop for 36 hours here in Uvita. So I figure if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

As long as I remember
The rain’s been comin’ down
Clouds of mystery pourin’
Confusion on the ground

Good men through the ages
Tryin’ to find the sun
And I wonder, still I wonder
Who’ll stop the rain
— Credence Clearwater Revival

It’s Raining In Love
I don’t know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot. 

It makes me nervous.
I don’t say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying. 

 If I say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?”
 and she says, “I don’t know,”
 I start thinking : Does she really like me? 

 In other words
 I get a little creepy. 

 A friend of mine once said,
“It’s twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them.” 

I think he’s right and besides,
it’s raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That’s all taken care of. 

BUT 

if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
“Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and I say, “It beats me,”
and she says, “Oh,”
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think : Thank God, it’s you, baby, this time
instead of me.
— Richard Brautigan

Bleak House
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
— Charles Dickens

Rain Travel
I wake in the dark and remember
it is the morning when I must start
by myself on the journey
I lie listening to the black hour
before dawn and you are
still asleep beside me while
around us the trees full of night lean
hushed in their dream that bears
us up asleep and awake then I hear
drops falling one by one into
the sightless leaves and I
do not know when they began but
all at once there is no sound but rain
and the stream below us roaring
away into the rushing darkness
— W.S. Merwin