We are now in our third week in our new home in the Barrio Pueblo Nuevo. Since they don’t have street addresses here you give directions to the taxi driver like so: please take us to 100 meters south of the Community Hall, opposite the Movimiento Missionero Mundial church and next to the bamboo stand. Being on the main drag of this neighborhood means there is a fair bit of street traffic around the clock. Instead of trucks hauling containers we now go to sleep to the hum of buses, motorcycles and ATV vehicles, mostly without mufflers. We also have a rooster next door who often gets startled awake by street noise around 2am and then intermittently crows until 6am. He sounds like a toad with laryngitis. Occasionally the neighborhood dogs weigh in with six-part harmony. People use their horns here to say hello or I’m passing you or do you need a ride or nice wheels or I love you, which results in an ongoing chorus of horns 24-7. Even now I’m listening to the joyful strains of a song coming from the Pentecostal church across the street as they celebrate a christening. It may sound like I’m complaining about the noise here. It’s really more a matter of acclimating to all these new sounds and understanding what they really mean.

What sets our new home apart is a posterior chamber devoted entirely to entertainment. There is the usual set of lounge chairs in front of a flat screen TV; then add full wall & ceiling murals, a tiki bar, a fully equipped band stage and did I mention strobe lights and disco ball? Each evening we get to decide which light show will best accompany dinner.

As I hinted at earlier, we have now taken four weekend excursions to explore the coastline to the south. Gorgeous beaches stretch for miles, some with black sand and others white. The jungle fringes the beach in many places. You are as likely to spot wildlife on the side of the road as you are in a Nature Preserve. Thus far we have seen sloths, snakes, butterflies, raccoons, monkeys, geckos, anteaters, pigs, owls, deer and a gazillion ants.

The beach villages for the most part are laid back with a mixture of ex-pats, tourists and Costa Rican farmers. Because we’re halfway between the Americas, everything grows here. Back in Limón, on Friday & Saturday an enormous farmer’s market, spanning close to an acre, offers beautiful vine-ripened fruit and vegetables. You can sip from a fresh coconut while you walk the aisles taking your pick from mountains of pineapple, mango, papaya, plantain, avocados, cilantro, lime, sugar cane and produce I’ve never seen before. I think I’ve eaten at least 4 avocados a week since arriving here.

Anyone who has traveled to Costa Rica has encountered the phrase, Pura Vida. A strict translation means Pure Life. However, to Ticos it means much more. It’s been in popular use for the last 50 years and depending on the context can mean any of the following; hello, goodbye, it’s all good, take it easy, we’re in it together, life is short, it could always be worse. Talk about a versatile phrase!

Kessler has been filling us in on the language nuances of apologizing. You can say you’re sorry in at least three different ways. Are you trying to get past someone on the bus (permisso)? Did you actually bump into someone (perdóneme)? Are you showing empathy (lo me siento)? Talk about a polite people!

Enough italics from me. It’s over to you, Captain Dan.

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1)    An official-looking car went by with the following slogan elegantly arced across the span of the car door. It read “Ministerio de Saludes”. My unquenchable thirst for knowledge led me to look it up. According to my Spanish-English dictionary, this man is employed by the Minister of “Cheers! Let’s have a Drink!” Nice work if you can get it.  

2)    From my perch in a city bus I looked down into the bed of a large open truck stopped at the same red light that brought my own progress to a halt beside the local cemetery. In the bed of the truck was a baker’s dozen of sturdy, straight, wooden chairs of a type that was gradually being replaced by metal-polymer-desk-chairs as my elementary school days wound down in the late 1960s. The chairs in the truck were arrayed in three rows of four, as if awaiting a congregation, or the graveyard scene from “Our Town.” That left one extra chair. It was there.  Way in the back. In it sat a West Indian man, age 59, hands clasped behind his head in a pose of relaxation, looking straight ahead. Like me, he was waiting for the light to change.

 3)    As I came home along the busted sidewalk this evening a man on a motorcycle pulled over to make a cell phone call. Rig after rig of eighteen wheelers carrying containers from the port barreled past, punctuated by the occasional bus, followed by a flurry automobiles. The sound was deafening. Yet the man persisted, hollering into the small black device. Just then, a really pretty girl came along and that was the end of that. 

4)    They say that travel is stimulating. They are right. You see the same damn stuff wherever you go but when it isn’t in your own backyard it looks different. That, in turn, makes you look differently at your own backyard. Costa Rica has wealth disparities. Disparity in wealth is a fact of life, no matter where, or in what age you live. Some people start with nothing, and become wealthy. Some people start wealthy and end up with nothing. Some people stay more or less the same. Some people are forever looking up at those who have more. Some people are forever looking down upon those who have less.  As noted earlier, travel is stimulating.

5)    Kim and I rose early to enjoy the beach before check-out. The water was delightful. I caught a few combers and glided into shore. I went back out for another ride and, not thirty feet away, a fin broke the surface. The day was young.

Pura vida!

Los Parrotts