Matasapo, Mister Yamaha and other Jungle Tales
by Howard Kramer
Published by ZGO Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Howard Kramer
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Map Of The Mountains
Author’s Prologue
Custom Preferences
Ya Vamos
The Hat Trick
Denita’s Birthday.
Bees And Cholchopees
Snakes
Anything Is Possible
The Aftermath
Rainy Season In The Mountains
Stateside
Wet Dreams
Rhino Adventure
The Year Of The Lawyer
Happy Birthday
Femme Fatale
Black Crows
Community Relations
Solo Bueno
Rhino Recall
No Defeca Donde Está Comiendo
Matasapo
Mister Yamaha
Talking Shit
Sunday, Futbol Sunday
The Keys To The Kingdom
El Camino Trae El Futuro
Zaragoza...A hasta Z
El Mural
Author’s Note...The original printed edition of this book contains a Map of the Mountains, El Mural, and Zaragoza...A hasta Z, a captioned collection of 38 beautiful color pictures...all visually bringing to life the contents of this book. With all the options and limitations available for publishing ebooks...including the pictures in the format you are reading may not be possible but is required viewing for the complete enjoyment of Matasapo, Mister Yamaha and other Jungle Tales. I have included all the color plates below but should you find formatting problems viewing them, I will be glad to send you them in a PDF file. Also check their availability on my website, http://www.zaragozagreatoutdoors.com. My Webmaster is called El Gorila, so I can't predict exactly when they'll be on the site. Meanwhile...don’t be bashful... drop me a note, howie@zaragozagreatoutdoors.com, for the PDF file and with any comments. For any readers that are visiting the Central Pacific part of Guanacaste, Costa Rica...think about arranging a personal trip with me in the “Great Outdoors”.
Map Of The Mountains
The Mountains are located high above the beaches of Samara and Nosara, in the Central Pacific part of Guanacaste, Costa Rica. The Plaza of Zaragoza is at 1900 feet above sea level...the peak or Copetón is at 2400 feet. Cerro Pirital, now know as La Tortuga, is at 1600 feet. The Plaza of Los Angeles de Garza is directly West from Zaragoza. The colonial town of Nicoya and the beaches of Samara and Nosara can all be reached in 50 minutes by car.
Author’s Prologue
January 2010
Gotta crow...gotta fly...gotta fight...
Peter Pan
On my last visit to the States, September 2008, it was unfortunate that I was there during the economic collapse, hearing day by day, an accounting of complete fraud and larceny as the American people were robbed of their Future by unfettered capitalism coupled with political arrogance. I remember having breakfast one morning in a Greek Diner on New Jersey Route 9 and seeing on TV...just as my two sunny side up eggs, home fries and buttered hard roll arrived...this dickhead who was just hired 3 weeks ago to be CEO of Washington Mutual, a major mortgage company that just bellied up the night before. He signed a contract with them for a 21 million dollar severance package and was now going to collect the money after working only 17 days. You think the execs at Washington Mutual didn’t know that their company was in the shit house when they hired this scumbag? He was a mechanism to extract 21 million dollars from a failing public company...a company that will receive a Federal bailout from the 700 billion that Bush was robbing from the U.S. Treasury and giving to all his cronies. The Fire Sale had begun.
For me, the most impressive thing about this severance package was the arrogance, the lack of shame, that these “power brokers” exhibited during a time when the majority of retiring Americans were losing or had already lost two thirds of the value of their investment portfolios. Consider this outrageous scenario...the first Baby Boomers rolled off the assembly line in 1946...millions of them...and just a few months before they turned 62 and were ready to cash in their investments, the Stock Market collapses...the “power brokers” have orchestrated the collapse, buying everything back at 30 cents on the dollar while robbing the retirement dreams of a whole generation. An amazing scheme...the brokerage firms were all out of control... all living on the credit edge...now they didn’t have to come up with all the money when the 62 year old Baby Boomers showed up to cash out. Everything was now devalued... now more in-line with the actual cash position available at the brokerage houses. Actually not so outrageous after all...the American Dream turned into an American nightmare, the “Favorite Son” g-g-generation gypped out of their retirement. Our credo, growing up in Brooklyn during the 50’s and 60’s...the World was like a big prick...always trying to fuck you. Who could imagine how true that really was?
Last week, the day before New Years’ Eve, I met my friend Finn who wasvisiting from El Lay, and we played basketball that afternoon on a half court at a local Hotel. After playing intensely for about an hour, we were just about to quit when some young guy, early thirties I guess, shows up and asks, where’s the superstar that I’ve been hearing about? It appears that he’s looking to challenge me. I’m already exhausted from playing with 6 foot Finn...I’m only 5 foot 8. I look over and see that the challenger is barefoot...not wearing shoes of any kind. Let’s play, c’mon, let’s play...he says and moves onto the court. You’re not wearing any shoes...you want to play a superstar without having any shoes? Where you from? I ask. Montreal, he responds. I’m thinking...some young mope from a place that has zero basketball tradition wants to play a guy twice his age with over 50 years of playing experience and he wants to take me on barefooted...maybe so I might have a chance at succeeding? I’m puzzled by what is before me. OK, your ball, I say.
Within a few seconds, I’m able to dismantle his offense and he has to pick up his dribble and finally throw up an awful shot. I’ve been playing for an hour, a little tired but totally lubricated...I grab the rebound, dribble directly to the top of the key, and release a perfect swish from 20 feet. My opponent is frustrated, almost seems mad at himself for allowing me to score, and throws the ball back to me, high over my head into the giant leaves that are bordering the back end of the court...like a real sore loser...and just only after the first point was scored in the game. I retrieve the ball and give it back to him. He throws it off to the side this time...I move to receive it and the challenger is now right up in my face, his hand against the side of my body. No more outside shots for you, he says, guarding me closely, favoring my right side. I fake an outside shot... he leaves his feet and I immediately drive past him on the weak side, scoring an easy lay-up. He repeats the same sore loser behavior including an errant pass back into the giant leaves. What’s the score? he asks. There’s no score, I say...don’t even think about it...there’s no way you can ever beat me. I lean forward to make some room and use my elbow to brush away his hand touching my body. I fake the drive...he moves back a step...and I score with a standing in place 15 foot jump shot. I haven’t showed him any of my moves yet...I’m just beating him with basic stuff...the guy doesn’t have a fucking clue about anything. When he finally gets the ball again, he loses it executing a clumsy crossover move and I score 4 or 5 more baskets before he finally puts in his first point.
My shoeless opponent from Montreal moves into another mode, this time attacking me with his inside game, driving recklessly into me with his shoulder lowered, exhibiting the lowest form of basketball style. I constantly move into his path, colliding with him, shoulder to shoulder, forcing him to stop his dribble and put up an unwanted shot. He’s surprised by my body strength...I only weigh 135...he doesn’t know that I’ve played with Nicaraguans that practiced their game while serving jail sentences and pumping iron. My opponent is totally frustrated but hasn’t given up yet...he still thinks he can make the necessary adjustments to come out ahead. I punish him with my speed and ball control, taking full advantage of his barefoot condition. He says, it would be a different game if I had shoes on. I respond, don’t kid yourself...you don’t have the skills to beat me, no matter what the fuck you’re wearing. He’s playing more aggressive now and begins to slap my hand after I release the ball. He complains when I call a foul. I fouled you after the shot, he says. I remind him that he can’t interfere with the follow through of the shooting hand...a basic rule that I guess hadn’t arrived yet in Montreal...the concept of proper follow through is the secret to scoring. I’m not surprised he was clueless...he had scored only one point so far.
I’m starting to get mad now...how does this guy show up with no shoes, no real skills...he didn’t even have a basic crossover move...and expect to win playing someone who had the best reputation around...and ‘around’ being the Jungle, nine degrees North of the Equator...not exactly an easy climate to play basketball in. I dazzle him with a series of offensive moves...my offense is fine-tuned, reflecting all my years of experience. I‘m shouting at him now...Finesse! Finesse! Where the fuck is your finesse? Instead of coming here to crush me, why don’t you take the time to learn something? I’m fighting mad now but I decide to leave the court. Where you going? my opponent asks. I look at him from the sideline and I imagine myself back in the concrete schoolyards of Brooklyn. Where you going? You all done, I hear him saying like some schoolyard punk way back in my past. I’m done, I say...enough of this shit, and I grab the can of beer next to my backpack. You’re not playing anymore? I guess I win, he says. I look at him like he’s out of his mind...you win for playing like a pile of shit, I say...basketball is a game of athletic finesse...I’m tired of being challenged all the time by punks like you. Where do you get the idea that you have a chance of winning? Hasn’t it occurred to you that there are skills to master before challenging top players...there seems to be no limit to your arrogance, I say.
Finn asks me to calm down. He’s a good guy, he says...I met him the other day. Good guy? I repeat...in my book he can’t be considered a candidate for a good guy...he has no respect for age, more importantly...he has no respect for experience...who the fuck does he think he is? I’m shouting now...What fucking planet does he live on? I couldn’t deal with his blind arrogance, his total lack of respect for anything that existed before he was born sometime in the late 70’s. Blind arrogance...the same model of behavior that brought down the U.S. financial markets and created the Global economic crisis. This mope from Montreal was a candidate only for the Pecker Hall Of Fame. I’m going to nominate him along with a married couple that I read about in the New York Times...an article published May 5th, 2009 in the Great Homes and Destinations section, titled “Living On A Costa Rican Hillside”.
The article starts by saying...After building and selling four houses in Michigan, Mike and Karen Schneider thought they were ready for anything two years ago when they decided to build a house on Costa Rica’s northwest coast. They actually started to build the house three years ago...there was either a misprint in the article or it was written a year before and published a year later to fill up that uneventful Tuesday edition. The construction started in August 2006. The year before, the Schneiders paid $425,000 for a small, one acre lot in a gated community called Monte Paraiso in Playa Hermosa. Soon after the construction started, their contractor skipped with what Mr. Schneider described only as a “considerable amount of money”.
When the Schneiders finally moved into their semiretirement house in April 2008...20 months after the construction started and 10 months behind schedule...the Stock Market had already been swooning for the last six months...since October 2007, when it had peaked and continued falling for almost a year...resulting in Global Recession September 2008. During that free fall period, the Schneiders were doubling the size of the original house plans. The article said...The couple started with plans for a 2,400-square-foot home but ended up with 4,800 square feet when, as Mr. Schneider described, things “just kept expanding.” A self-professed “tech geek”, Mr. Schneider wanted to integrate music and video capabilities with the house’s lighting and security systems. But the workers had “never done a smart house,” Mr. Schneider said. “I learned a lot of electrical terms in Spanish.” Now most of the rooms are connected to a central server, complimented by a 400-DVD changer and Internet-based music systems. Local crews were unfamiliar with many of the ‘custom’ features that the Schneiders wanted to install, like the 12-foot-high mesh screens that are motorized to open and close between the living room and the back patio.
Costa Rica has one of the highest electric rates in the World and they punish bigger users with an accelerated tariff...use more, pay more per kilowatt hour. Sounds like the Schneiders actually built a very dumb house under the circumstances...and there’s the new Luxury House Tax, since October 2009, punishing once again people who are using a larger share of the remaining, dwindling, natural resources left on our Planet. The finished house has marble and granite floors, large rooms filled with dark wood furniture and a 30-foot-high entranceway. The Schneiders use one of the five bedrooms as a gym and there are three full bathrooms and two half-baths. All the furnishings, from the bookcases to the coffee tables, were custom designed in the United States and made in Costa Rica. There also are individual touches throughout the house, like the round shower stalls and ceiling-mounted speakers in the gym that rotate for optimum sound quality at each of the workout machines. “If you’re doing a custom home, why not do something different?” Mr. Schneider said.
Having lived in Costa Rica full-time since 2001, I can guarantee the Schneiders that their 400 disc DVD changer will be the home for an incredible assortment of living things...and I’m not sure who gets to clean all the spider webs hanging from their modest 30 foot high entranceway. Total cost for all this madness...about 2 million dollars and I’m not including the “considerable amount of money” that was stolen from the get go. Imagine what this Superhouse would have cost if built in the United States. The Schneiders were just expressing themselves, spending their wealth without any real consideration for what or who was there before...imagine the native population seeing the 30 foot high entranceway...the whole concept embarrasses me big time. Gringos, like the Schneiders, need to have more feeling for native Ticos, for native populations all over the World...they need to respect cultural differences. The World may now be considered global but the individual populations are still local. Cultures rule...not greenbacks. The Schneiders have further set back the Gringo image and are creating the fuel for future discontent when the World goes berserk somewhere soon down the road. Two million dollars...I’ll bet that if you added up the Municipal budgets of all the small pueblos in Guanacaste, you wouldn’t arrive near that figure. God, that’s a lot of money to pay for the right to express yourself. I can hear Captain Hook saying...Bad form, Peter...particularly in a foreign country where there are vast cultural differences.
My book, Matasapo, Mister Yamaha and other Jungle Tales, is not about the Great Retirement Fund Conspiracy...nor of the modern dynamic of whole generations evolving with a different headset...possibly living in a more ‘virtual’ world...one where it is possible to beat a superstar without having many skills. Oh, Oh...the New Boss different than the Old Boss...the World has changed with all the unfettered mania for wealth without any social responsibility. The book is about starting over...encountering challenges more simplistic...your Wealth measured in the natural quality of the place you live in...Power, maybe in your ability to control more the simpler circumstances of your Life. My idea has been to go back to the Future, so to speak...back to a place where life is still like it was a hundred years ago, looking for a future by going back in time. I am a time traveler, escaping the Destiny ahead. For me, the World is moving forward precariously and I take shelter in the Past...away from most of the moral and physical slickness that technology has brought to our lives. Three years ago, while the Schneiders were beginning the construction of their Superhouse, I moved to a remote mountain community centered high above the beaches of Samara and Nosara in Guanacaste, Costa Rica...a remote area that had just received electric service for the first time. A place called Zaragoza, where only some 50 years ago, people arrived from the Mountains N.W. of San José and other areas void of new opportunities... arriving with virtually nothing...starting their lives from scratch...advancing little by little...bit by bit...in an area so remote, the rights of squatters ruled. The book is about some of my experiences and perceptions as I attach myself to the Future of this somewhat delayed mountain hamlet.
I think I’m on the right track now. Some ‘think tank’...the NEF...New Economics Foundation...rates the World’s happiest countries. Costa Rica has won each of the two years that the NEF has compiled their Happy Planet Index. Without considering all the criteria used in reaching that conclusion...I find more interesting the larger picture...that 10 of the top 11 countries were from Latin America or the Caribbean. Only Vietnam was in the middle of this group at number 5...an indication that people who live with less “stuff” are happier than those who have responsibility for more...you are happier for what you don’t have. All the countries offered abundant natural beauty and a simpler lifestyle away from the maddening crowd. The United States was ranked 114th out of 143 competing countries. The Index was comprised of three factors...life expectancy, life satisfaction and global footprint. Costa Rica was tops in satisfaction (how the fuck did they figure that out?), second in life expectancy...winning first place even though their “sustainable” footprint was slightly above the range for ‘one-planet living’, where the amount of productive land available on the planet is divided by the World’s total population to determine who is using an unfair share. The figure of 2.1 global hectares, a little more than 5 acres, was established as a standard. Little Luxembourg was at 10.2, indicating that each person needed a ‘mere’ 25 acres to do their thing, the United States 9.4 and Costa Rica barely over the standard at 2.3, possibly victimized by the rash of Superhouses and Spa Hotels built in their country during the last few years.
In August 2007, less than two months before the bubble burst, I wrote the following letter to one of the partners that had invested in a large tract of land directly in my view, on the other side of the Rio Frio Canyon. I called the property, Los Dedos, the fingers...its form was in separate hills, almost like lava flows with good access to the Canyon below and spectacular waterfalls.
Hola Alfonso...
Hope this letter finds you well and relaxed after your Summer in Maine. It is raining LAMF here in the Mountains and I have plenty of time to stare out my window and consider the beautiful place I live in.
Cuzzu and I discovered two hidden waterfalls the other day on the property of Carlos Chavarria. We had to descend 250 meters to arrive at the top of the larger falls and then rappel down to a place that was the intersection of 3 separate water flows, creating an incredible natural shower area that you could just walk into. We left rapidly as the clouds approached and rain was eminent. There was just too much water in a narrow place to hang around. We didn’t want to be headline news...another group of tourists swept away by a sudden cabeza de agua. What an exciting place. We used ropes for the 250 meters of descent and hauled our asses up arm over arm, using the ropes to take most of the stress off our legs...in both directions. Can’t wait to go again. A great adventure...we saw howlers the size of gorillas watching our progress from the trees above.
Staring out the window, I imagine the possibility of unifying the properties of Santos, Carlos, mine and Los Dedos, creating 169 contiguous hectares...a place of extreme natural beauty...over 400 acres to create a world class Mountain destination. Maybe a major sporting goods company wants to create a large scale, well executed Mountain Center. Or a Nike or an LLBean? Who the fuck knows? It seems to be the way things are working nowadays with corporations out of control, needing to dump money into ‘growth and development projects’ or places that promote their image.
You and your partners should be thinking about the big money, keeping the land intact...not busting your butts making lots to sell and spending tons of money on construction and infrastructure. You have four main partners...each expecting to build a house, but not one has shown any real ganas, any desire, to spend much time in Costa Rica. Your project is too personal and it will be hard to find lot buyers...people buy land in the Mountains for privacy and to get away from it all. The Mountains appeal to individuals and families who want to endure all the challenges alone. Your project is a form of gated community...I don’t think Jeremiah Johnson wants to live there...the idea seems too suburban.
You’re invested at 80 cents. Your neighbor is asking 3 dollars a square meter. If you choose to continue with your development, spend all the money, spend all the time with all the bullshit and busy work involved in putting it all together, I’ll bet you will never realize, in profit, the difference that exists right now, $ 2.20 a square meter. You have that now without doing a thing...break ground and sell just one lot...you’re stuck with developing your community and it will be your responsibility for the rest of your life. No big money in your future.
It is not easy to succeed in Costa Rica. Your idea is not unique...possibly too risky considering the pace of development here and that there is more of your type of project every day...closer to the beach, all around the neighboring hills of Samara. It is easy to lose a lot of money here. You guys need to spend a considerable amount of time here in the future to protect your investment. Sending in the Construction Specialist will probably not suffice. Think about the commitment that you need to make in order to succeed here...a commitment of time and money with no certainty of the future.
The more development around the area...the more value for the protected land. I told you guys from day one to go slow and get a feel for what’s going on...not to come with a completed idea ready to be executed with no previous experience for where you are. You guys arrived with your final ‘product’ ready to be executed. Are you still bullish on the whole idea? or do you have the patience to do nothing and probably realize more money in the future? Right now, you have the pressure of spending all the money and then more pressure trying to get that money back. Get rid of the pressure. Do nothing. Your project is just total busy work. You guys are playing around and you could lose lots of money.
There are already too many ‘products’ in this World.
One day, soon before I moved to the Mountains, while paying my American Express cards via the Internet, I entered their portal and was rejected for not having a Flash capable computer. My Internet service in Costa Rica is very slow, always resulting in a laborious session. American Express’ site had been the best, most efficient for paying by computer, but now they were remodeling and adding Flash...and the ability to incorporate lots of video noise, moving objects, and bursting highlights all over their web pages. Not to mention the added time waiting for all this new shit to load. You had the best website...why did you have to mess with it? What was wrong with the site that worked perfectly? It didn’t look enough like SportsCenter or E.ntertainment? I got a message on the screen telling me that I couldn’t “enjoy the American Express experience” without upgrading my computer. I just wanted to pay my fucking bill...I didn’t want to have an “experience”...that was the word that they used. I had to click for non-Flash and I encountered problems right in the middle of my electronic payment. I’ve been pulled over to the slow lane...the slicker world is moving faster, almost at breakneck speed, Flash capable, with the attention span of twits. There are millions of Flash capable people out there...when I see Flash, I run...now running in the slow lane, watching it all whiz by.
I hope you enjoy the book and that I have not offended any individuals or groups referred to in my writing. I’m just reporting what I have experienced here in the Jungle...trying to make a little sense out of my own life...trying to be able to feel again after jousting for many years with the responsibilities of success and owning many things. And I’m finally feeling free...
H.K.
Custom Preferences
Before I moved to Costa Rica in the middle of 2001, I lived for 18 years in Coastal Rhode Island...a little town on a cul-de-sac road called Little Compton. I moved from one Blue Zone to another...in Little Compton you were either a Blue Blood or a Blue Collar...the place had a ruling class mentality. The Blue Bloods all came from descendants of the original land grant holders from the Plymouth Colony...they arrived in Little Compton in 1653 to fish, hunt and graze cattle...the area had beautiful pasture land running right down to the Ocean and the mouth of Narragansett Bay. The Blue Collars were mostly Portuguese...some still fishing but now mostly...painting houses and cutting lawns. It was a Blue Zone for sure...even though not many people lived to be 100, like around my area in Costa Rica. Phyllis and I moved to Little Compton in 1983...it was like moving back 50 years in time...we bought a house that was constructed in 1690, multiplying the whole time warp effect. We were the only Jewish couple when we first moved there...the area hadn’t accepted new applications for membership for some time. As a couple, we successfully penetrated the two Blue groups...although Phyllis’ specialty talents in house and garden design captivated the Blue Bloods...and my obsession with basketball endeared me to all the Blue Collars...we would play in a pretty intense League twice a week...Little Compton was a basketball town even though there were no black players around.
Our garden was featured in the February 1993 issue of House Beautiful...and a few years later the garden was cited by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for excellence and received a Gold Medal. Phyllis was the only Jewish member of the GCA...the upper crust Garden Club of America...her ability to inspire the members superseded any previous tradition of exclusion. The creation of a magnificent historic Colonial garden and the restoration of one of the oldest houses in the area earned our entrance into the Club, so to speak...it was a rarefied area...we were given a rarefied opportunity...and we didn’t even have to hide our horns when we left the house. Phyllis designed a sweeping flower bed surrounding a beautiful Colonial style rose arbor...the entrance to a restored apple orchard and an adjoining ‘outdoor room’ featuring a long rustic pergola supporting wisteria and a sitting area among four rectangular cutting beds with a bird house on a pole, right in the middle. There had been what they call a “green garden” before we got there, beautiful lawn with specimen trees and bushes all surrounded by stone walls of fieldstone blocks... flowering dogwoods, graceful crab-apples, huge rhododendrons, majestic pines, trimmed boxwood and yew hedges...and two incredible American Elms, a weeping variety...now laughing because they’re still alive when most have died...there are very few American Elms left anywhere. It was a visual Paradise...it was an aesthetic dreamwork.
We bought the house in ‘estate’...it was called the Hoban House...The Hobans had just died the year before...one after the other...we inherited their lives, their furniture, their old clothes up in the attic...everything was so old. On the day we moved from New Jersey, Phyllis’ mother, crazy clean Edna, came with us to help us get organized in the new house. I remember we arrived late that night...the trip was slow and we had to wait for the moving men to finish packing...one of them had jumped off the top of the truck soon after he arrived and crushed his foot upon impact with the ground...leaving only two to do the work. From behavior that I’ve witnessed in Costa Rica...he could have easily been Latino...I wasn’t paying much attention at the time. We made a left hand turn on Peckham Road and drove a full mile without any house lights...just fields and forests...finally reaching a cluster of houses...a small hamlet framing an intersection...and we turned into the Hoban driveway. Edna was in shock that we had driven into such solitude...not a house light for a mile...she was wondering, where the hell are we? Once inside the house...she was exclaiming, what the hell have we done? She was aghast at the age of the house and she almost dropped dead on the spot when she saw all the ancient Hoban shit all over the place. Edna was miserable for the whole eight days that she spent with us. Not only was she troubled by what she thought was a terrible choice buying the house...the Spring climate was wet...the nearness to the Ocean made it colder...more penetrating to her arthritis. The old place was not properly insulated...you could actually see the cold mist arriving inside the house, passing through the old plank walls. You had to be doing mushrooms to actually see the mist moving but it was happening all the time, I can assure you.
Edna was totally depressed...she couldn’t imagine any bright side to our purchase. At that time, to use a computer term, her Preferences had been set and none of them matched up to any of the existing conditions that were present all around her. Her Operating System had shut down...for the eight days...Edna was incapable of any new input. The shut down could have been triggered, as well, by the fact that her daughter was moving 4 hours away by car instead of one...whatever the reason...she chose to exclude herself from any chance of a positive experience. Instead of going into her Control Panel and opening up Preferences...changing the way you ‘always like it’...her Control Panel was locked...she was incapable of digesting any of the new circumstances. By the time Edna died...the Hoban House was her favorite place...I could see her sitting on the couch looking at the roaring fireplace, the oriental rugs, the warm wood panelling, all the authentic antique accessories...an incredible setting among all that green garden...beautiful trees and flower beds. We would always laugh about her experience during that first visit...I think she actually had learned something from it all...I remember her as a much mellower person than when we first met, when I started dating Phyllis...Edna had finally adjusted her Preferences to reflect being mellower, more open to new and different experiences.
Her favorite time to visit was for Thanksgiving...what could be more ideal than to spend the holiday in an authentic Pilgrim house...the exact same design and construction that the famous John Alden lived in...further North in Massachusetts. The whole family would come...both sides...and Phyllis would set a table unequalled by any Pilgrim chick. The food was plentiful...totally delicious...and everyone would drink and chow down to the max for a couple of days...finally rolling out to their cars to go home. Sometimes it would snow...an early Winter Coastal storm...and this elfin setting would become even more magical...the visual effect of snow lying on beautifully pruned and clipped trees and bushes...snow covering the whole roof...the house blanketed...the fire roaring inside...the smell of apple and pumpkin pies...it doesn’t get any better than that. There’s nothing like Thanksgiving in New England! I’m glad and lucky to have had 18 years of that experience...not many have...those who came to visit had a special place to go and relax...they were lucky, too.
I loved working on the property...being in a beautiful setting...being outdoors for large chunks of the day...I felt more conditioned, physically as well as mentally, to play in the Blue Collar league. There is nothing like working to create something beautiful...to render it all with your own hands...and maintain it like it was your own child...a logical extension of yourself. Our scope became larger...more maintenance was required to control the broader creation. Finally, Phyllis put in a greenhouse and I remember paying $600 a month to heat the fucker during the coldest Winter to arrive for many years. The total cost of our garden commitment was now reaching the point of no return...don’t forget about all those specimen trees and bushes including the weeping American Elms...they all needed special handling...bucket trucks to prune out the dead, professional spray equipment to reach their heights...we were totally preoccupied with preserving everything knowing full well that we lived in the Northeast...knowing full well that anything lost is gone forever...we didn’t have the luxury of waiting 40 some odd years to see its replacement. Every week a crew would descend upon the property and cut two acres of lawn...most were players in the League...the monthly bills for all these services were getting larger each year. It was a big financial responsibility...add in all the money spent for house repair and authentic restoration...it was an expensive dream...the complete antithesis of my present experience in the Mountains.
Although I had traveled to Costa Rica every year since 1988...usually for a two month visit...my Preferences were still set for the Northeast when I arrived to live full-time. I wish I could relive the first few years I spent after the move...it took me awhile to figure out how to reset my Preferences. Pink Floyd has a song...Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun...sounds like a recipe to incinerate something...an easy thing to do living full-time in Nosara if you have the wrong headset...the wrong Preferences. My Northeast settings for Costa Rica were for vacation mode, 15 beers a day...coming home at night from Clubs totally fucked up...just like I had been doing in Rhode Island...coming home from Newport or Providence. It is a challenge to live in an area that depends on Tourism to survive...especially in a surf and sand setting where everyone is shit faced and in full vacation mode. I remember the first night I went out to Nosara Centro after I moved...I had dinner at Rancho Tico, and then met some friends and moved on to the Bar Mon Rio to continue the party. When I hit the street, much later that evening...I couldn’t find my car...there were no cars on the whole street...I was convinced it had been stolen. Totally blotto...now totally depressed, devastated and confused to say the least...I dug deep down into my sinking mind and remembered that I had left the vehicle parked in front of Rancho Tico and had walked over to the other side of the Nosara Plaza with my friends. A couple of years with experiences like that...you start to get the message...until finally your body can’t take the physical punishment anymore...and you need to change your party Preferences in order to survive.
I spent five years at the beach before I moved to the Mountains. I woke up one morning and realized that I hadn’t been in the ocean for two years...there seemed to be no reason left for me to live there. I had been buying spectacular properties around Zaragoza...I needed to be there full time...my future was up in the Mountains...I liked spending time in what I considered to be the “Great Outdoors”...the area for me was totally inspiring. I was also fascinated by the Mountain people...how much they actually had...without really having anything. Now, three years later...in the face of the world economic crisis...many people who meet me and spend time with me...wonder how can I be so happy...money is running thin and there is no good news yet on the horizon. Living with these Mountain people has changed my priorities...we are moving closer toward a World where luxury exists in the quality of the place you live in...not in the quality of the things you own. Imagine a pastoral world like The Shire in The Ring Trilogy or Brigadoon, a private world in the mist. Zaragoza is still that undiscovered magical place where it is always cool, the air always fresh, the water always pure and a delight to touch...just make sure you’re upstream from the cows.
When I moved from Nosara to Zaragoza, I left a ton of clothing in the closet there...all bad mail order purchases made in Rhode Island from catalogs that had beach/adventure clothing for use in Costa Rica...one incredible hall of shame for the ugliest collection of clothing...nothing resembling the catalog pictures printed... everything too square, too awkward...too unusable for its purpose. Just a closet of mail order shit...all lying in the darkness on a small mountain above the beach. During the last year, the majority of my clothing...my day to day essentials...started to disintegrate...I was looking like shit everywhere I’d go...you can’t stop the rot once it settles in...rot beats fabric. With the prospect of renting the beach house, I had to remove all my stuff...carry it to Zaragoza or discard it. Faced with the reality of my present wardrobe in complete disarray...I was forced to examine every item for the last time...keep it or give it away. All of a sudden all these losers...these bad purchases were taking on a new life...colors and looks that I walked away from 9 years ago...all junk that I carried in the move from Rhode Island and had cast into the dead zone of my closet...immediately upon arrival. Now some of the stuff was beautiful, there were no holes in the garments...they weren’t frayed, rotting...worn to the max. I changed my Preferences...opened up my mind to accept that all this ill fitting shit in such terrible fucking colors was a ‘good thing’, totally sufficient for how I live...what I do...what my life is all about. Remove Fashion...check the box for Utility/Comfort in your Preferences.
With Thanksgiving coming soon...it was decided a few months ago to have a family reunion...Phyllis’ brother and wife, their daughter and boyfriend were making the trip to Costa Rica. Everyone was on a tight budget...a sign of the times...it would be a short trip, a trip essentially to meet five month old Jonah...share a festive Thanksgiving table with guaranteed great Phyllis food...and possibly heal an old wound...Ira and Barbara have not visited us since we moved, something about not being able to deal with seeing Phyllis and I together knowing that we have been separated...not living together...for the last nine years...maybe not wanting to confront our separate lives. Ira and Barbara have been married for nearly 40 years now...Phyllis and I married a few months after them...we have always been, not only family, but best friends. Our lives took us to seven places since then...Ira and Barbara are still living in the same house in Brooklyn...same colored walls...all the same furniture...I always admired their sense of ‘dedication’, their smaller footprint. In Latin America, they always say, todo cambia, everything changes...a concept ingrained into the culture...a fact of life...one of the Latin Ten Commandments...”Don’t get too attached to all your stuff”. Preferences set for the Past encourage failure...here you can’t even buy the same floor tile twice unless you pick a style extremely básico...almost always available. Bonus time in Costa Rica...another good example.
During the last week, the whole expedition turned South...some members of the visiting group balked when it became evident that our beach house overlooking the Pacific Ocean was not available to use for the week...we rented it out so we could afford to make a gala dinner in the first place. Nobody lived there anymore...it was just a great place...for Ira and Barbara, only a memory from their last visit, more than 15 years ago. I thought it best if only my niece, Amelia and her boyfriend came...a series of e-mails passed around...reading each for what it said and what it didn’t say...trying to pinpoint exactly what kind of lunacy we were talking about here. It was way aggravating to turn over all this in our minds...but we managed to make a joke of the whole thing...thinking about their names which were actual words in Spanish...ira and bárbara...the first meaning anger, wrath...the other, barbaric, awful. We spent a week declaring, Que bárbara! with the accent on the first syllable. The fact that the name Ira was the word in Spanish for anger, wrath...that was too scary to comment more on... but it was decisive in determining our resolution that Ira had to change his Preferences before visiting us in Costa Rica. He had to remove ‘Past’ and put ‘Future’ in the box for Motivation...that would improve his chances for a great trip considerably. He hasn’t visited Costa Rica in 15 years...doesn’t have a clue where I live...where his own sister, Phyllis, lives...how I live my life...what she does all day long...what we have both accomplished in the last 9 years living separately. And to see Jonah, the Future incarnate...and what a great job that my daughter,Jerusha is doing...taking care of him...attending to all the needs of a newborn adorable child. That’s abundant recompense for making a trip to visit family in Costa Rica, no?
Everyone is telling me that Costa Rica was #1 on the Happy Planet Index, whatever that is...meaning the Ticos were considered the happiest group, population...in all the World. There’s all these facts, information published on the Web...most everyone faceless...hiding behind their computer screens possibly just making it up as they go along...who knows? Maybe Happy Planet is run by the Costa Rican Chamber of Commerce...the results of the Index skewed a bit in favor of the overwhelming sponsor? Or maybe it’s all scientific...the real thing...the Ticos are the happiest people on the whole Planet. If that’s true...I think there’s a possible explanation...the Ticos have no Control Panels, no Preferences...they are the only group of people I know that can actually tolerate a 3 or 4 hour traffic jam...many times the cars are just turned off...lined up for miles...going nowhere soon. This group is pretty easy to please, huh? No wonder they’re so fucking happy...they haven’t tried to figure it all out before it is ready to happen...they haven’t left their houses with many preconceived ideas or expectations...they have no Preferences...they can take it as it comes...it’s all good... solo bueno...and they live where there’s Pura Vida...enough Nature to always keep it interesting...even if they’re only sitting in the shade of a big fucking tree...only sucking on an orange.
And one other reason...a big one...Ticos don’t have a lot of ‘stuff’. Please count me among them...por favor...ghu ghu ghu ghu ghu ghu hu...I’m appealing in the three languages that I know. I want to enter the zone of minimum or no Preferences...I’m just looking for a chance to enjoy some of the rest of my life. For everyone that still wants to have it only their way...like they ‘always like it’...their Control Panels are locked and Preferences set...for the heart of the Sun.
Postscript...My experience working in the garden in Little Compton will be something I’ll never forget...it strengthened me physically,mentally...helped me develop more patience...more maturity. Pruning flowering trees was my favorite activity...each was like a sculpture...you had to search, find and restore the right form. There was technique to learn...you had to make the right cuts in the right way...trees in the Northeast were more prone to disease if you left bad cuts that might not drain well or wounds in the bark that permitted entry for foreign invaders. All this care was essential in a place where things grew very slowly...lose a tree once and it’s gone forever. For many years, while vacationing in Costa Rica and still living in Rhode Island, Phyllis and I were horrified to see how trees were handled by local Tico gardeners. Their tool of choice was a machete...whack...usually one chop was enough...the branch was gone...they always left an ugly stump...the rule in Rhode Island was to leave the minimum without penetrating the main trunk. When they finished working, many gardeners would just ram the blade of their machete into the central column of the tree...breaking the bark and giving it an unnecessary wound...just for the sake of storing their machete while they ate a little gallo pinto from a plastic container. Que bárbaro, we would always say...maintaining the New England standard to judge the Tico behavior.
Our problem was not that the trees were being mutilated and now more susceptible to disease...it was that we never spent more than two months a year there...never saw the big picture...never witnessed year-round the miracle of life that is Costa Rica. This is a tough place to destroy...one Tico with a machete can’t make a dent in the landscape...the more you cut the more it grows. Leave an ugly stump...it’ll be alive again before you know. Top the whole fucking tree...it’ll look like a perfect lollipop in a year...and better every year after. I was an expert tree pruner at 40 degrees Latitude but I didn’t know shit about life closer to the Equator...even though I had been coming to Costa Rica for the past 12 years. I was quick to judge something that I didn’t even understand...that I had diddly squat experience with. Sounds like classic white man’s burden...giving the locals no credit for who they are, what they’ve done...a glaring fault that has capsized numerous Gringos...fortune hunting here in Equatorial Costa Rica.
Ya Vamos
There is nothing like a national emergency to show the strengths or weaknesses of a given country. After the dismal failure of the Bush Administration during Hurricane Katrina, what could we possibly expect from countries not considered the greatest show on earth? The experience of New Orleans during the assault and aftermath of Katrina points us to the fact that nothing really works...the world is full of only eyewash and lip service.
During the last week, Costa Rica was surrounded by four hurricanes, three out in the Atlantic and a huge tropical depression in the Pacific sitting directly over the province of Guanacaste. A sandwich of week long rain, never ending...all you can eat. After the fifth day of rain, I decided to bolt from Zaragoza and make a trip to Nosara. I needed to print out some important notes and fax them to my lawyer in San José. The rain appeared to have eased up just a bit and leaving seemed like a good idea. The mountain dirt road was still in good shape as I descended to the paved road in Cuesta Grande. The slope of the mountain road affords good drainage and is usually always passable. The paved road is always very slippery, especially the section which I was driving. Cautiously I maneuvered my car on the paved section and arrived at the intersection where the dirt road resumes for 30 kilometers to Nosara. I have avoided using this road for sometime, always going to Nosara through the mountains, using my Rhino and reducing this minimum one and a half hour trip to only a half hour. But with all the rain and forecast for more rain, the Hilux was my vehicle of choice. Two thirds of the Nosara access road is in lowlands where there is very little drainage and tons of potholes caused by the water accumulating and receding. The road is lined with rice fields. If you know your horticulture, I need to say no more. The condition of the road after 5 days of rain was horrendous. My car is groaning the whole trip as I drop into every fucking pothole along the way.
There are some famous parts of the road where car destruction is more inevitable...parts of the road that are constantly repaired and always reclaimed by Mother Nature. Approaching the worst of these areas, I see a new Volvo Cross Country pulled over by the side of the road. You never see a Volvo in this part of Costa Rica. I am approaching a huge pothole, a washout covering the entire width of the road...a small lake with 10 to 12 inches of water. Not a problem for my Hilux. My pickup works the old fashioned way...no computers aboard to tell the engine what to do...no sensors to smooth out the luxury ride. The $80,000 Volvo XC made it about two meters out of the water hazard before it ground to a halt and died. The rear hatch was open and the driver was sitting inside taking advantage of his fully carpeted wagon interior. He had a rain poncho folded in half and draped over his head as if his sprinkler system had malfunctioned and it was pouring inside his vehicle.
It took me over two hours to make the trip and I arrived in Nosara totally exhausted but happy to be still dry and out of my car. The unavoidable potholes just get to you after a while. Within a few hours, after printing out my notes, sending them off by fax to my lawyer, and wasting sometime on the Internet, I’m in bed and thinking about getting back to Zaragoza the next morning. It rains LAMF all night...a constant downpour. I barely sleep...Little China Girl is doing her bedtime coughing routine...a series of 3 short coughs followed by 6 more exaggerated ones and culminating with a horrible retching sound as she tries to finally clear her throat sometimes expelling foamy sputum. This can go on for a couple of hours. Of course I have to wake up a few times to bring her some water which she always refuses or physically remove her from bed and try to ‘burp’ her to help relieve whatever is the problem.
It’s raining lightly in the morning. I’m eager to return to the Mountains. The 30 kilometers of dirt road from Nosara to the pavement is still a pile of shit. I didn’t expect any improvement with the monsoon we had last night. The Volvo XC is gone and a backhoe is trying to drain the area, excavating a large ditch to improve the runoff. I try to avoid the potholes but after a while you just give up and bang your way to the paved road. Boom! Boom! Boom! I stop for gas as I reach the pavement and I’m aware of everybody looking at maps and getting directions. It hasn’t dawned on me yet that my local world is in chaos. Ten minutes from the gas station and I realize there is a problem. I’m passing an outdoor restaurant, usually totally vacant, and I see a bunch of cars, mostly European tourists, everyone sitting outside under a big roof, chairs all turned to watch a TV mounted high on the side of the building. The place is bustling with activity...I’ve never seen more than one car at a time there before. Five more minutes up the road I join a line up of stopped traffic. There are large spaces between groups of cars, signaling that ignitions are off and the spaces represent vehicles that have already turned back and are possibly eating and watching TV or asking for directions at the gas station. I’m only five minutes away from Cuesta Grande and my turn off to Zaragoza but my trip has ended. The road ahead is closed. The steady relentless rain has caused a massive mudslide that has blocked passage on the main road. I leave my vehicle to check out the damage a few hundred meters ahead. There is a 4 foot wall of mud and debris across the road blocking passage. I return to my car and decide to retrace my tracks to the gas station and continue on to Samara, a twenty five minute trip from the scene of destruction. The main paved road from Nicoya to Samara has no cell phone signal for the total distance...an hour of driving, more or less. The mudslide occurred almost in the middle of that distance. No communication was available in both directions without returning to either location. Surely someone had called in the problem at the hard line available at the gas station. There was no point waiting here without cell phone signal...I would return in a few hours and continue on to Zaragoza.
I pass the outdoor restaurant again and see more cars, more activity. The gas station has the same people sitting around waiting for the road to open up. I continue on to Samara and the rain picks up in intensity. Samara is saturated with water. The beach is deserted, the Plaza flooded. I pull up to a Pharmacy and the rain is pouring off its roof. I stay in my vehicle and wait for a let up. I wait for a half hour. My car is now parked in a small lake. I lower my seat and lean back. Soon I’m asleep. I wake up to find a neighbor from Zaragoza staring into my window. His name is Rigo, short for Rigoberto and he is totally soaked. He is carrying bags of oranges and limes which he is selling to restaurants and grocery stores in Samara. The wind is blowing hard, the rain is continuing with the same intensity. I lower my window a few inches to communicate with him. I don’t want to get too wet. He asks me when I’m leaving to return to the Mountains. I tell him about the mudslide and we set a time and place to meet in about an hour. He continues off to a restaurant in the corner of the Plaza, carrying four plastic bags filled with produce, probably all robbed from neighboring fincas in Zaragoza including my own.
I leave my vehicle and get soaked walking under the roof line of the Pharmacy. I specifically ask for a tube of ‘dexametasona con neomicina, oftalmico’ for my eyes. The girl attending the counter has to call for a consultation and then presents two products that contain the word dexametasona. I look at each package and say that these are wrong, that each product is not ‘oftalmico’, not specifically for use with eyes. She moves to another part of the store and comes back with a small package which says ‘dexametasona con neomicina, oftalmico’. That’s the one I say, but these are drops. Don’t you have a tube, a gel or cream? She returns again with exactly the product that I asked for when I arrived. Why the fuck couldn’t she go directly to that product in the first place?
There are two explanations for this behavior. One is that the Ticos think that all Gringos are fucking assholes and when they go into a store, it is all right to overcharge them or sell them products that are not what the customer is asking for...sort of like dumping all the losing merchandise. While I was in the Pharmacy, there was another Gringo who wanted to pay with dollars and asked what was the exchange? The other girl clerk said 500 colones to the dollar. I turned and told her that was the exchange rate a year ago. She said that she knows but it’s still 500 in the Pharmacy. The other explanation is more philosophical and deals with the concepts of ‘Pura Vida’ and ‘Solo Bueno’. Everyone talks about Pura Vida like the expression of the good life, the pure nature that abounds in Costa Rica. The Ticos are all portrayed as this amiable group of middle class people, all exponents of Pura Vida and Solo Bueno, literally, only good. But in reality, these two expressions are rooted in the sometimes total ineptness and mediocrity of the culture. Pura Vida is another term for what the fuck, another fuck up. What can you say? Only ‘Pura Vida’, that’s the way it goes.