Would you like to hear about my trip to Costa Rica?
Oh no, not another composition about how I spent my vacation.
Yup!
I got a call from a “very old” (in both senses of the words) friend who asked if I wanted to go with him to Costa Rica where, 50 years ago, he’d served in the Peace Corps. My household generously granted permission. All I knew about Costa Rica was that it got rid of its army in 1948.
Just prior to our arrival at a mountain hotel, a sloth had been moved out of the entry road. Days later, I actually saw a sloth. I also saw spectacular birds, including four kinds of toucans. Nothing is cooler than a toucan, gawdy birds with enormous colorful beaks.
I also saw zillions of different hummingbirds (we only have one species of hummingbird in the eastern U.S.), oropendolas with bright yellow tails who build two-foot long nests that hang from trees like socks, and crested guans, a turkey-sized bird that produces a monotonous, obnoxious squawk.
I walked on jungle trails as well as country roads winding past fields of grazing cows with volcanoes in the distance.
One trek took me to a pond containing the world’s most ungainly boat, essentially a 10-by-5-foot box with a roof. It was meant for two people, one to paddle and the other to steer. Since there was only me, I had to paddle on one side then slide to the other to go in a straight line.
Hotel guests were eager to share their life stories, from California cokehead surfers to tamer folks who owned half of Belgium.
We visited the nearby town where, in the 1960s, my Peace Corps pal had engaged in “community development” which meant figuring out how best to improve local living conditions. The town appeared quite prosperous which, due in part to my friend’s efforts, was now served by a two-lane highway instead of a rugged rocky road.
After four days in the mountains, we drove to Playa Hermosa on the Pacific. Pelicans and frigate birds flew over the ocean. Brown Boobys plummeted out of the sky to catch fish.
The first iguana sauntering by the breakfast table was a thrill. By the tenth sighting, it was clear they were as common as pigeons.
More remarkable was finding a live yellow-bellied sea snake washed up on shore. Although it’s venomous with a powerful poison that attacks skeletal muscles, it’s not designed to move on land and apparently is only a threat to fishermen far out at sea who try to extricate the snakes from their nets.
Using a palm branch, I tossed the snake into the ocean and watched it swim gracefully away. An hour later, either the same snake or another was on the beach having been crushed by a cinder block. The next day I came upon a similarly slain snake. On another day, hotel staff reported the killing of a boa constrictor on the next block.
Really, folks, unfortunate events involving a serpent in the Garden of Eden happened a long time ago. It’s time to move on.
Another seemingly exotic, but common, creature in town were howler monkeys infesting the trees and making ghastly sounds, sort of like a revving engine. And they were ugly. A woman sold t-shirts on the beach, “100% of all funds will be contributed to the program for injured monkeys.” No chance. How about a T-shirt reading, “Be nice to snakes”?
One day, we foolishly consulted Google Maps for the best route to Santa Rosa National Park. The road became increasingly challenging and desolate until it stopped suddenly at a river. Although only a foot deep, we did not risk getting stuck in the middle and dying of heat and starvation.
Two days later, we got to Santa Rosa using a real road. The park contains a memorial to the defeat by Costa Rican forces of William Walker, a 19th century American “adventurer” (aka power-maniac) who repeatedly tried to set himself up as a Central American dictator. Among his achievements was re-introducing slavery to Nicaragua, where it had been abolished. Walker was deservedly executed in 1860 at age 36.
Before leaving Central America, I bought T-shirts and coffee for my family. To make room in my pack, I donated four Hopewell Clean-up T-shirts to the people of Costa Rica.
At the airport, it was announced, “the plane to Newark will be delayed.” I made a wise-ass remark about no one ever being in a rush to go to Newark. Immediately, folks who knew Hopewell flocked around me wanting to talk about closed restaurants and the high cost of home-ownership in the borough. I was home, and the plane hadn’t even left.
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