Learning to Ignore Lonely Planet~

Last Thursday we continued our trip around Costa Rica during Tropical Storm Alma. This is not our first adventure traveling in rough weather. The most memorable trip was in 1998. We left Portland, Oregon that fall, headed for the warmth of the Caribbean as we did every year at that time of year.

Our flight had gone well, although the weather was a bit rainy when we arrived in Dallas, Texas. From there we boarded an American Airlines flight listed as non-stop from Dallas to San José, Costa Rica.

The flight was bumpy and we really didn't think much about it, but about an hour into it the flight attendant asked us to please fasten our safety belts as we would soon be landing in Guatemala City. She said there was quite a bit of rain and the landing might be a bit bumpy.

The last pass the flight attendants made down the aisles was more attentive to seat belts and trash than I'd ever experienced before. They clung to the seats backs to keep their balance as they struggled down the aisle and actually lifted blankets from people's laps to check if the seat belt was buckled. Sheets of rain pummeled the sides of the airplane.

As we approached the airport in Guatemala City, the rain was so heavy it looked like thousands of bullets streaking past the windows. Out both sides of the plane I could see city buildings as we hurtled toward our fate. The plane bucked wildly as the pilot tried to put the plane down. It was too rough. He pulled up at the last moment just before the wheels touched and we lifted back into the sky, banking off and to the right.

The pilot came on the intercom and mumbled something in Spanish, which I could not understand. It sounded as though he was speaking into flannel blanket. I was white-knuckling my way through the experience while Alan sat peacefully by my side reading his book.

A Costa Rican sitting across the aisle finally translated the pilot's comments for me.

With a reassuring grin, he said, "He says he is going to try to land again."

The pilot continued to bank and buck until we were in position to make another attempt at landing. This time it was worse than the first. The same buildings flew past at supersonic speed, the rain streaked past, and we pulled up at the last minute again making the now familiar banking turn. Again, the muffled voice of the pilot.

"He's going to try agian and if he can't land then we'll go on to San Salvador," my personal translator informed me.

"Let's just do that now," I said

It took a total of three times before the pilot finally got the plane down onto the tarmac and we skidded and bumped up to the terminal. My armpits were soaked and fingers numb from clutching the seat arms. All I could think about was the take off, which, as it turned out, was much easier than the landing.

We arrived safely enough in Costa Rica later that night.

Over the next few days we discovered, from the papers and the TV news, we had just flown through Hurricane Mitch, a hurricane so violent it is remembered everywhere in Latin America as a benchmark for major disaster and loss of life.



So, Tropical Storm Alma, last Thursday, wasn't too bad as we motored on toward the northern part of the country. Alan read today that it had sustained winds of 55 MPH, so it wasn't really a cyclone.

The day's travel took us up to the Nicaraguan border and through some beautiful cattle country with enormous pastures where white Brahman cattle grazed under Guanacaste trees, the national tree of Costa Rica.

From one of Costa Rica's northern most towns, La Cruz, we took a secondary gravel road that was like driving down a riverbed. It took us through backcountry blanketed in citrus orchards and working subsistence farms. The road was rough and we could see where torrents of water had washed out the ditch banks along the way, but it was clear, and we made it to Upala in about three hours.

We arrived around five in the afternoon.

Upala may be beautiful but it is not an epicurean's destination vacation spot. We wandered around the zocolo, or Central Square, where we were the focal point of the entire town. I don't think they'd seen any tourists there in some time. After a five-minute tour of the town we made for a hotel.

Lonely Planet recommended Cabinas Maleku, "The best place in town. Big, high-ceilinged rooms with colorful cartoon murals have folksy furniture, including cute Sarchi-styled rocking chairs in front of the rooms."

Tour books are a bit like reading descriptions of real estate, I think. The words "cute" and "folksy" being the dead giveaways, here. Our room did have high ceilings, but it resembled more chicken coop in the pitch than the vaulted ceiling image the tour book brings to mind.

The cartoon mural of two horses was indeed there, hanging on a vast wall of institutional green in the only location where we could not see it, over our heads. Lying down on the bed we were able to stare straight up at the only light in the room, a 60-watt incandescent light bulb that created a hippy strobe effect when the fan below it was turned on.

There was one small table in the room, a rickety wooden affair with half the drawer bottom missing. The tour book also promised cable TV, hot water, and AC. Yup, they were there. Alan referred to the TV as The Highboy situated, as it was, about 6' 4" off the floor on a swivel platform so we could direct it at the opposing wall like a search light. I know it was that far off the ground, because Alan is 6' 3" and he could barely clear the thing on a pass by to the bathroom.

In the bathroom there was a cold-water sink, a functional toilet (if you jiggled the flush handle so the chain didn't hang up in the outlet), and a shower, complete with the infamous Latin American suicide showerhead. This gizmo is essentially a ring of heating elements encased in an oversized round plastic showerhead, directly wired to 120V and the plumbing. There is a little on/off switch on the plastic housing of the showerhead, and another to adjust the temperature. Yahoo, cowgirl up!. Even though I would have used it, it was broken and we took cold showers the following morning.

Once settled in our cozy, cute cabina we set out to look for food.

Lonely Planet, again: "Right off the main plaza and far more atmospheric is this romantic restaurant with red tablecloths, mood lighting, and a nice bar. The specialty is steak, and chances are it was born, raised, and slaughtered right here in Upala."

It took us awhile to find Rancho Don Horacio. Once there we entered a dungeon-like Quonset hut so dark I almost tripped over a break in the cement floor at the entrance. The tablecloths were there and they were red… sort of. In fact, I think they were the same red-- now maroon-- tablecloths mentioned in the Lonely Planet printed in 2006. There were no diners, only a few drunks dimly outlined at the bar at the far end of the place.

Once our eyes adjusted to the movie-house darkness, Alan suggested a table next to one of the two windows in the joint.

"Nice view," he remarked pleasantly, after we were seated. I looked out through the bars and noted the cement block building across a narrow alleyway full of weeds.

"Definitely better than the other one," Alan said. That one had a block building about two feet from the window. I was admiring the ceiling that someone had meticulously formed into an arcing chessboard of red and darker red squares above our heads when the waitress/bartender arrived with menus. We ordered a couple of Bavarias to give ourselves room to discuss our options.

My mother, who traveled the world in her day, had a hard and fast rule when eating out: If one person has a gut feeling about the place and decides to leave, the other will not argue but simply get up and leave. There is time to talk about it later.

We drank our beers and decided that the homegrown and slaughtered beef should remain at Rancho Don Horacio's. We found a cheap but good plate of food close to the market and settled into our room for the evening. We carry our own reading light, so life was good.. or better.

The next morning the sun was shining, the storm having moved north to Nicaragua and Honduras. A few miles out of town we got a beautiful view of Volcan Arenal. It is rarely seen without a shawl of clouds around its shoulders, so this was a treat.

Camarones, Por Favor

We left San José on Wednesday morning, headed for Puntarenas on the Pacific coast. This area of Costa Rica was originally developed during the colonial period and for most of the 19th century, Puntarenas was the only means of exporting the country's products. Coffee was brought down out of the Central Valley by ox cart and sent by ships around Cape Horn to towns all over Europe.

In the mid 19th century things changed for Puntarenas. The government decided to construct a railroad from the capital to the Caribbean coast and contracted the services of the North American entrepreneur, Minor Keith, in exchange for some 300,000 hectares of land in the Caribbean lowlands.

After building the railway, Keith brought banana plantations to Costa Rica and established what was to be the precursor of Standard Fruit Company. Because it was much closer to Europe and ships did not have to pass around the treacherous Cape Horn, Puerto Limón became the premier shipping port and Puntarenas' heyday was over.

It is still a bustling port town, but now it is largely a fishing town although recently there have been efforts to raise the economic standing with (oh, the dreaded word) tourism. Several large cruise ships now dock regularly and the once quiet promenade becomes infested with cruise ship denizens with their pasty white skin, plaid Bermuda shorts, and running shoes all shopping for gewgaws and plastic mementoes.

We arrived in town about noon. It was raining heavily, which is not normal for the Pacific. We drove around the deserted town looking for a likely restaurant to have a few shrimp. The boulevard was dark as rain whipped against the shuttered bars and cafes. Most of the places we knew from other visits were closed, all the chairs upturned on the tables. We finally found a small restaurant down toward the center of town and made a dash for cover.

The menu was extensive. There was even something called Fletucini Especial de la Casa. I adore the misspellings and the skewed syntax of foreign menus translating into English. As much as I might have liked the "fletucini," we weren't in the mood for pasta; we had shrimp in mind. I asked the waiter if they were fresh.

"Si, si," came the upbeat reply.

We weren't at all sure and so ordered the shrimp ceviche, figuring the lemon juice would at least kill any bacteria from a less than fresh catch. It was a wise move. The shrimp had been cooked in the lemon juice for so long they were like little rubber bullets.

We also ordered the maricos, or seafood, soup, which turned out to be the right thing to do. It was delicious and we ate it gratefully as the rain poured down outside.

We left there and drove north toward Liberia and the cowboy part of Costa Rica. The rain continued to hammer the windshield as we moseyed along. We took the new bridge that crosses over to the Nicoya Peninsula, replacing an ancient ferry, and arrived in the town of Nicoya in the late afternoon.

Nicoya, according to the Lonely Planet, has the dubious distinction of being the hottest place in Costa Rica (and they are not talking about the sex lives of the residents there). The Pacific side of the country is hot; I mean it is brick-oven hot with summer temperatures often reaching into the hundreds, and there is very little rain on that side of the country. We kept thinking how fortunate we were with all this rain and cool temperatures.

We found a nice hotel and concocted ourselves a rum drink to relax before finding … more shrimp. Alan flipped on the TV and channel surfed until the local news came up.

"Costa Rica gets hit with first tropical storm of the year," the announcer said. "Torrente Alma golpe el Pacifico muy fuerte."

The storm path on the weather map stretched from Golfito in the south to Peñas Blancas in the north--the entire Pacific side of the country. We picked our vacation to coincide with a huge tropical cyclone.

Dinner was at a huge roadside restaurant. Lonely Planet says, "The best place for a drink and delicious bocas (appetizer) is the consistently packed Guaycan Real." We decided to give it a go. We arrived about 6 PM and the place was dark, but the chairs were down--always a good sign. It looked open… barely. We inched forward into the parking lot and someone flipped on a light, presumably to encourage us to come in.

That night we were the only diners in a restaurant that would probably seat 50-60 people, and we ate some of the best shrimp I have eaten anywhere. They were large, they were plump and pink, they had their tails still on (the only way to properly eat shrimp), and they were smothered in garlicky butter. They rested on a lettuce leaf and were accompanied by a crisp salad of cucumber, lettuce, and tomato and a few French fries. After a bit all the things on the plate began to taste of garlic; you can't go wrong there.

I picked up a single shrimp by its tail and placed it in my mouth. An explosion of sweet garlicky sauce covered my entire palette. One bite and the soft yet firm flesh of the shrimp revealed the savory taste of the ocean. When I finished the shrimp I sucked the buttery juices from the tailpiece and laid it carefully on the side of the plate. I repeated this seven slow times and was crestfallen when I reached the end. I can't say it was better than good sex, but it was close.

Alan, who is forever more practical than I am, simply ordered another platter and ate them too. We slept like stones that night.

It was still raining in the morning, Thursday, as we headed north toward Liberia and points unknown.

Chirm, Wiggly, Penholder~

Alan and I are on vacation, traveling Costa Rica for a week. Alan says he loves traveling with me because I journey by my nose like a hound on the hunt. He swears by my ability to pick a good restaurant as we drive along.

We left home yesterday and spent the night in the capital, San José. We did that for one important reason: a meal at our favorite Italian restaurant, El Mediteraneo, run by an Italian expatriate whose food is always superb.

Yesterday we had their ensalada capresa, a wonderful mix of bright red sliced tomatoes, basil leaves, and a large ball of mozzarella cheese. This is not just any old mozzarella, but mozzarella made from water buffalo milk. It is a soft, smooth and subtle cheese with a slightly salty taste that melts in your mouth. Ambrosia.

We also had grilled mixed vegetables, including eggplant, zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes, asparagus, butter beans, pickled onions and other little treats, all drizzled with balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. To accompany this we had a basket of fragrant, crusty bread we dipped in olive oil and the drippings from the vegetables.

While we were eating our main course, a home made pasta with a spicy tomato sauce and sirloin tips, a man arrived wearing a big black backpack and carrying a big, black plastic garbage bag. He also carried a small toy that was twittering in his outstretched hand. We are conditioned to ignore these people. Hawkers are a frequent annoyance here. They stalk diners countrywide and if you make the slightest eye contact with them, they are instantly at your table hawking their wares until you are forced to buy or leave, often with your dinner uneaten. I kept my eyes on my plate.

The man made his way past our table and to the bar where the owner sat. But this toy of his interested me.

It was a small bird perched on a limb. When the man clapped his hands, the bird twittered, its beak opening and closing as if real. It switched its tail in a very birdlike fashion, and ruffled its feathers. The sound was also as birdlike as you can get.

I was thunderstruck with desire and had to see it up close. I started to get up from the table to go to the bar, but the owner gave me a stern look and shook his head, no.

Finally the waiter took pity on me and brought it over. He showed me how it worked and it looked as real as it had across the room.

"My mother calls these 'idiot toys,'" I told him.

"Mauricio (the owner) has one that repeats what he says, but in his very own voice," the waiter told me.

"He has a parrot at home?" I asked.

"No, an idiot toy," the waiter said, assuming this new term he just learned as though it were his own.

The Idiot Toy was Chino, but then you knew it, didn't you?

The plastic bird was so realistic as to be fantastic. I think it could be accurately described as a cardinal of sorts, or perhaps an oriole, but it was the packaging that really sold me on the thing.

The box says:

Chirms
Wiggly
Penholder

Well, yes, the last is a bit difficult to decipher. I had to investigate. And, in fact, one of the tree's branches that the birdie sits on is hollow, allowing the owner to put a pen or two (or perhaps a pencil) in the afore mentioned penholder.

I love the "chirms" part.

But there is more. The toy is called "The Heartful Bird." It says right on the box:

"The birdie's bright chirping will relax your body and mind and bring you back to the great nature, where you can entirely freed from worry and enjoy a moment of placidity."

Well, that is going on vacation with us is all I can say. How can we go wrong?

It was only 5000 colones, which sounds so much cheaper than $10.

I bought one, on the spot!

A Chance Meeting~

Cephalapod: from Greek kephal? ‘head’ + pous, pod- ‘foot.’ A class of active predatory mollusks comprising octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish.

The other day my husband Alan and I took our usual morning walk. It takes us down along the Caribbean where soft tongues of salt water lick tirelessly at the shore. There we shed our shoes and walk barefoot, scrubbing the soles of our feet and getting some exercise along the mile or so of little bays lined with palms.

Our dogs usually scavenge out ahead on the off chance of flushing out some buzzards or shore birds minding their own business. Most often they nose about and stir things up before we get a chance to see them, but their world is on land; they seldom get their feet wet, preferring instead to mark various logs strewn about the beach or the thick underbrush between the coconuts.

It was for this reason that we had the rare opportunity to see a small octopus in the shallows as we walked along the edge of the sea.

He (or, in all fairness, perhaps it was a she) was submerged in about ten inches of water and so well camouflaged I'm not sure why he caught my eye, but perhaps it was the movement.

When we first spotted him he was a mottled sand color with flecks of black, making himself appear like a bit of coral he moved through. He inched himself along using his long tentacles to finger his way forward, sideways, or backwards in his hunt for food.

We could clearly see his eyes that alternately bulged out of his head and retracted completely out of sight. According to Scientists their vision is acute, able to distinguish the shape, size and horizontal plane of their victims. They are also extremely intelligent.

I saw a National Geographic program about octopuses recently and the documentary demonstrated their ability to learn and remember a very complex maze in order to get to the treat at the end. The final step of the maze actually made the octopus go completely out of the water, if only briefly. He paused at the brink momentarily, felt about with his tentacle and then... bloop, he bridged the gap, swooping to the end of the maze to collect the tasty morsel as a prize. Incredible.

I also watched an amazing video, filmed by David Miller, of an octopus problem solving off the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The octopus in question reached out on either side of himself to pull two large shell halves toward him. Fiddling about with them for a moment he tucked his head into one half and then pulled the other half over his head like a sandwich, effectively hiding from any predators that might pass.

Our octopus didn't have to perform for anyone; he was simply hunting and we were fortunate enough to be allowed to observe him for a time. Eventually the bigger of our two dogs, Campeón, came down to see what we were staring at and plodded out into the water. In a split second the octopus changed from his coral coloring to a deep brownish purple, enlarged his mantle, squirted a jet of ink and sped off to safety about 12 feet away. They move by jet propulsion, taking water in through gills and ejecting it out the back. However it works, he was very very fast. We moved down the beach while our dog snuffed at the inky fingers left in the water. The octopus was busy burying himself in the sand and had already changed to mimic the color as he disappeared from sight.

It was a brief encounter, as are most encounters with wild things, but a most enjoyable one.

Good Junk Books~

These days I read nonfiction almost exclusively. If I read fiction at all it is seldom a murder mystery that I choose, but at one point in my life I devoured them like candy bars. My mother calls them Junk Books, a bit like watching TV but more active for the brain, and we both agree that there are good Junk Books and bad Junk Books. Of the good variety, I think I have read all of Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, the MacDonalds- both Ross and John D––, Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block and many, many others. These days I find the real world at least as twisted and gripping as any mystery.

So it was with great pleasure that I encountered a writer of mysteries that I enjoyed again. The author's name is Arturo Perez-Revete. He is Spanish, and one of the most widely translated of that country's contemporary authors. He was a journalist (how many times have we heard this as a valuable background for a writer), as well as a war correspondent before he took up writing fiction. His favorite subject is finding mysteries surrounding ancient documents.

I recently finished his mystery, The Flanders Panel. Published in 2004 it is the story of a young art restorer, Julia, who has been commissioned to document and restore a 500-year-old painting going to auction. Working on it in her studio she becomes engrossed with the subjects of the painting, the Duke of Flanders and his knight locked in a game of chess while a lady in a dark dress sits in the background, reading. Julia also discovers a message hidden under all the paint, left by the painter himself. She is determined to solve the puzzle and it takes her on a mysterious and dangerous journey.

All this is par for the mystery writer. What I enjoyed about Reverte's writing is his use of language. Granted the book has been translated from its native tongue, Spanish, but the imagery is really lovely. He is also a complex thinker, delving into art, chess, and human nature as the story progresses. He also describes in detail scenes not particularly central to the story. I liked this one where Julia is wandering through a flea market:

After a while she went back down the steps and stopped at a shop full of dolls. Some were clothed, others were naked; some were dressed in picturesque peasant costumes or complicatedly romantic outfits complete with gloves, hats, and parasols. Some represented girls and others grown women. The features of some were crude, others were ingenuous, perverse. Their arms and hands were frozen in diverse positions, as if surprised by the cold wind of all the time that had passed since their owners abandoned or sold them, or died. Girls who became women, thought Julia––some beautiful, some plain, who had loved or perhaps been loved––had once caressed those bodies made of rags, cardboard, and porcelain. Those dolls had survived their owners. They were dumb, motionless witnesses whose imaginary retinas still retained images of scenes long erased from the memories of the living: faded pictures sketched among mists of nostalgia, intimate moments of family life, children's songs, loving embraces, as well as tears and disappointments, dreams turned to ashes, decay and sadness, perhaps even evil. There was something unbearably touching about that multitude of glass and porcelain eyes that stared at her unblinking, full of the Olympian knowledge that only time possesses, lifeless eyes embedded in pale wax or paper-mache faces, above dresses so darkened by time that the lace edgings looked dull and grubby.

I could go on with this passage, but I will stop. It does relate to the story in the end, the philosophy behind that passage. Reverte weaves these throughout the book slowly building the tension and the underlying theme so subtlety. Gorgeous writing, I have to say.

On the down side, I was a bit disappointed that it was one of those mysteries so complex that the writer finds it necessary in the end for the villain to confess and then explain his motive in the crime. I really didn't mind, in this case, because the writing is so good. My only other minor complaint is that our heroine, Julia, happily smokes like the proverbial chimney whilst stripping varnish off a 500-year-old painting. But Spaniards do smoke like campfires, God love them, so it is probably in character for her to do this.

I will try another of his books; fortunately he has many.

Mother's Day Quotes~

Hello Mothers of the world.

I don't know about Spain or Costa Rica or Australia or Japan, but in the United States it is Mother's Day on Sunday. I am sending every mother I know, and love, a greeting and a few quotes about mothers which I thought were nice (I particularly liked Aristotle's take on it).

Some of you may be new mothers, some of you may be old(er) mothers, and at least one of you may be an expectant mother. We are all tied by a common thread and so,

Happy Mother's Day!


God could not be everywhere and therefore he made Mothers
~old Jewish Proverb~

My mother had a slender, small body, but a large heart - a heart so large that everybody's joys found welcome in it, and hospitable accommodation.
~Mark Twain~


Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
~Elizabeth Stone~


Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate.
~Charlotte Gray~


Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
~Aristotle~


The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
~Henry Ward Beecher~


You may have tangible wealth untold;/Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold./Richer than I you can never be -/I had a mother who read to me.
~Strickland Gillilan~


Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
~William Makepeace Thackeray~


A mother understands what a child does not say.
~Jewish Proverb~

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.
~Spanish Proverb~


~When a woman is twenty, a child deforms her; when she is thirty, he preserves her; and when forty, he makes her young again.~
Leon Blum


Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same; and most mothers kiss and scold together.
~Pearl S. Buck~

And one added by my daughter's mother-in-law:

Children hold their mother's hand for a while, but her heart forever.
~Anonymous~

I hope all of you mothers do something nice for yourselves this weekend.

Lost Souls & Infant Potty Training

I am home in the jungles of Costa Rica and I returned with a cold. I think two 15-hour flights inside of a week is not healthy for a person's health. My soul, if I have one, is probably still flapping its wings somewhere over the Pacific, trying to catch up with my body.

But it is a small price to pay for a wonderful trip and the chance to get to see my daughter and her new son, Morgan. Now I have to figure out a way to get to Japan to see the other grandchild, Hannah, who must be almost grown up by now. Hopefully I will get there before the summer ends.

Both my kids are immersed in Infant Potty Training with their babies, something I would have been very skeptical about had I not seen the results for myself. It requires a great deal of personal attention but it does work. There are Web sites on the subject complete with parent forums, supplies, and the like

Essentially it requires the mother (or father) to be aware of cuing signs from the baby, be alert enough to get their diapers off, and place the baby over a pot. The pot my daughter uses for Morgan resembles a stove top hat, only it's red. Her baby happily nurses in the nude and takes his poos and pees when he is finished. One thing for sure, Morgan hates wet or soiled diapers and will make no bones about it. He wants OUT of those immediately

It's nice to see my children as parents. It provides another layer to the casserole of life and gives the relationships another depth.

Here is a picture of me with my newest grandchild. He loves this position; it probably builds strong brain cells.


I am also glad to be home. Now for some chicken soup with lemon and red pepper.

More blogging later... when my head clears.