I Am Curious Gecko

Our driveway

Joy, oh joy! Layne is home! My heart went pitter-pat Wednesday night when at about 9:35 p.m. the lights of the taxi came shining down the driveway. Good grief! You’d think we were teenaged sweethearts heading for the prom instead of lovers for some 32 years now. And yes, we do know just how lucky we are to still be so happy together.

The best news about his return is that the medical prognosis for his sister, as the doctor reported to them on Tuesday, was much better than we had feared. At this point they are doing no treatment, just watching the situation to be sure she has no further problems.

Independence Day parade last year

So we are back to our Pura Vida life here in Costa Rica. Yesterday, after uncharacteristically sleeping in, we went out for our morning walk into town to pick up a few groceries and get our exercise. Along the way we saw a Tico friend Marciel, whose excellent Italian sausage (yes, I know - Italian?) is all the rave around town. After putting in our order for a half-kilo of the spicy version, we learned that Marciel is planning an Independence Day celebration at Roma Vista, reputed to be a beautiful resort up the mountain a few minutes out of Atenas. He showed us his flyer and asked for our help in spiffing it up a bit to attract more Gringos, adding a graphic and scanning in the map he had drawn. As former publishers/editors ourselves, Layne and I were only too happy to assist. And we’ll definitely be in attendance next Thursday, the 15th, to help celebrate the 190th year of independence here in Costa Rica.

--------------

One of last year's little dancers

Well, the rest of yesterday got away from me so now it’s Friday afternoon and I’m trying to finish this little post. We met up with Marciel at the feria this morning and gave him our new and improved edit of his Independence Day flyer; he seemed quite happy with it. Now we’ll send around some emailed invitations and hope for a good crowd next week. It sounds like a festive afternoon with barbeque, ceviche, corn-on-the-cob and typical Tico comidas (foods). Plus, with DJ music and dancing, you know we’ll be there!

A gecko audience of one

As a dancer since the age of five, I love moving to the music. And I believe in stretching before any strenuous exercise. So one morning recently as I was doing my stretches prior to a walk, I looked up and noticed that I had an audience of one. A curious little gecko was perched on the top edge of a painting and was eyeing me closely as I stretched my arms overhead or dropped down to touch my toes. I stopped and looked at him; he cocked his head and looked back. I moved closer and picked up my camera; he took a few cautious steps along the picture frame but didn’t run away. Instead, he continued to observe my actions for a full ten minutes as I did my warm-up and took pictures of him. Needless to say, it gave me a giggle to think my athletic efforts were of such interest to the tiny creature.

Other creatures in our neighborhood are less impressed with human activities than the resident gecko. Wandering up the wooded hillside behind our apartment one day while Layne was still away, I noticed dramatic movement in the trees above me and suddenly realized there was a troop of white-faced monkeys leaping through the branches, unconcerned about the human on the ground below. As I watched and took pictures and videos, they balanced effortlessly on narrow limbs as they munched on some kind of fodder. It almost looked like corncobs with the husks hanging loose and perhaps it was since we have several cornfields nearby, all ready for harvest. Occasionally one more dominant monkey would push another away, hoping to keep the food to himself, but in general they appeared familial and gregarious, as they scurried from tree to tree. Having capuchin monkeys migrate through our backyard is one of the best things about living here. They are adorable! I just hope they don’t steal the ripening bananas from our front yard tree. I have plans for those myself!

Tropical Sunset

Sunday, February 28, 2010

         A blustery wind is blowing through here today in a flurry, with gusts up to probably 30 or 40 mph. It’s exhilarating in its own way but for me, still nursing this persistent sore throat, it means another day indoors. Our Villas here sit so high up on the side of the mountain that a very fine mist is being pushed down from the cloud forest above, not enough for an umbrella (in fact, forget an umbrella in this wind!) but enough to dampen my spirits, literally. Looking on Google Earth, I see that the mountain above us climbs to more than 11,000 feet, all the way to the peak of Irazu Volcano. Layne and I took a drive up to the Irazu crater during our last visit to Costa Rica and it was very cold! Hardly what you expect in Costa Rica. The smaller crater is unusual, containing a lake filled with water that changes color from deep green to rusty red, due to the minerals present. Irazu is one of the quiet volcanoes here, although it’s not dormant since it last erupted in 1963 on the day President John F. Kennedy visited Costa Rica. Volcan Irazu was calm following that eruption until some noticeable activity in 1996, hardly long enough past to provide great comfort regarding this sleeping giant. 

(Photo courtesy of www.traveladventures.org.)

         Up the slope to the east toward Irazu, the mountaintop is constantly wreathed in clouds. Our neighbor Denis, the science teacher, paid a visit recently to some friends of his who live up there and they told him they rarely see the sun. I don’t know, there may be some attraction to it, but that’s not why I came to Costa Rica.

         Yesterday’s sunset, however, is one good reason to be here. Late in the afternoon, I looked out front and noticed a golden glow, a kind of ginger-flavored haze that colored everything. I grabbed the camera in hopes of catching some semblance of the flaming clouds above. Traveling very light on this exploratory trip, we only brought my rather antiquated digital camera, opting to leave Layne’s professional-level gear for a future visit. As I stood composing my shots, Denis called to me and identified the glowing, almost bubbling clouds as “pre-tornadic,” adding the reassurance that they were unlikely to create a tornado here. This formation of billowing clouds, he explained, was such that in other circumstances they could lead to the whirling vortex of a tornado but were blowing apart even as we watched. Dennis was also taking photos. With a very strong lens and his high-end Canon camera, he has gotten some great nature shots on his various tourist outings. He offered to send some of the day’s shots to me for use in this blog and this afternoon invited me over to choose which ones, not an easy job for sure. But here are his just slightly colorized efforts. (Photos courtesy of Denis Carnochan.)

         On Friday night, we got our first taste of one of the more colorful aspects of “the real Costa Rica.” In reading expat blogs and other reports of life in Costa Rica prior to our coming here for this extended visit, we had learned that noisy parties, loud music, barking dogs and other disturbances were commonplace in a Tico neighborhood. But since moving from the apart-hotel down the hill with all the traffic noises and fumes, life here in Villas Roma has been muy tranquilo, with only the lowing of the neighbor cattle, a few dogs and a distant rooster or two greeting the dawn to mar the peace.

         But apparently, we have some new Tico neighbors in villa #10 next door to us, and as we walked through the grounds after our dinner out, we saw several cars parked along the drive and a crowd beginning to form on the neighbor’s front porch, with Latin music playing inside and laughter filtering out. It actually looked quite inviting and if I hadn’t been nursing the initial stages of this sore throat, we might have wandered in to introduce ourselves as the Gringo neighbors. As it was, we strolled on to our villa and settled in for the night, enjoying the occasional burst of music and laughter.

         I really was under the weather so I headed upstairs to bed with a book. But a quiet night was not in the cards! The laughter grew raucous with a loud shriek now and then and soon the music gained in volume. As the evening wore on and the crowd grew even more exuberant, the musical offerings changed to karaoke, with several excellent voices taking the microphone and a few others serenading rather off-key. Clearly, everyone was having a great time! It was all quite festive and I truly wished I could have participated. Instead, I took a couple of Excedrin P.M. and closed the doors, blocking out as much of the noise as I could. Later that night I awoke to find the party over and the noises back to normal: a steady tropical breeze through the trees and the pre-dawn quiet of a Costa Rican village. Muy bueno, muy bien.