Geckos make little barking noises at each other, drawing lines, setting boundaries, establishing who gets which insects from what corner near the light that draws bugs near. Occasionally, some sort of night bird screeches, and I hear cooing from one of the trees in the garden.<\/p>\n
I talked to a woman who told me she and her family were so afraid of lizards that when one got inside their home, near San Diego, they all stayed outside. When the lizard ended up in the couch, they had a neighbor take the couch away. As a six-year-old, my daughter K.C. would have taken that lizard outside the house and put it somewhere in the sun to be happy, then brought it something to eat.<\/p>\n
This morning, a long-tailed bird with top feathers, it\u2019s a magpie or jay in Costa Rica style, lands on the chair on the opposite side of the table from me. He eyes my granola. I paid good money for this breakfast, I tell him, it\u2019s out of the question.<\/p>\n
This is by far the fanciest restaurant I\u2019ve been in on this trip. The waiter is deferential, even after he asks, \u201cAre you staying here at the hotel, sir?\u201d<\/p>\n
Um, no. I wandered up from the beach<\/a>.<\/p>\n He is still polite after I order the cheapest breakfast on the menu (but it\u2019s my first choice! Regardless of price! I want to tell him. But I stick to \u2018please\u2019 and \u2018thank you.\u2019 He knows I know.) It was a lovely walk through the sand, past tents where the nomads live, if you will, past elegant round huts with peaked roofs and just enough room for a bed and bathroom for upscale guests staying at the hotel.<\/p>\n I\u2019m on my fourth or fifth cup of Costa Rica coffee (I really should throw out all that Starbucks I brought. What was I thinking!?) when I finally arrive, late and out of breath, to a semblance of awareness.\u00a0I debate whether watermelon is a waste of red. But covered in yogurt and a sprinkle of granola, it serves as a vehicle, if not a fruit.<\/p>\n Papaya, now that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n Other guests of all ages slowly fill the veranda. The waiter treats us all equally, but he is starting to get behind as he brings fruit and yogurt, or French Toast, or pancakes or omelettes.<\/p>\n I can tell he’s not catching up by the way he asks the couple dithering over a decision of what to have for breakfast, as if world peace hung in the balance, if they needed just a little more time. He’s still a pro.<\/p>\n Some of these people can purchase anything on the menu, possibly purchase the hotel. But there is silence on the patio, even between couples. Especially between couples. No one seems to be particularly glad to be here, having breakfast. Maybe it\u2019s too early, but there was more laughter at the small bakery outside the back door of the cheap hostel where I stay in the middle of town, when I headed down the beach a little after dawn on my first walk of the day.<\/p>\n An ancient, tiny man, bird-like and nearly lost in the plumage of an expensive\u00a0Hawaiian shirt not that large, and red shorts, comes to the table with a full figured woman who is maybe a third his age. I want to believe she is his nurse, but her top falls open when she leans forward to sip her coffee and she makes no effort to conceal her breasts.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe we should buy some aloe body lotion,\u201d she suggests. \u201cShould I look for some After-bite?\u201d Both comments take me to a place I don\u2019t want to go. When the waiter comes, she flashes him a coy smile.<\/p>\n \u201cHow are you<\/b><\/i> today?\u201d she asks in a tone that is intimate all by itself. The smile lingers as she looks at her aged companion, as if gauging his reaction.<\/p>\n \u201cI am good. And how are you<\/i>?\u201d replies the waiter, just within a boundary that makes it seem he may be slyly mocking her. She has a small silk scarf that had been around her neck. Now she pulls it nervously between her two hands, twining and untwining it between her fingers. Eventually she wraps it tightly around the index and middle finger of her left hand like a bandage to staunch a bleeding.<\/p>\n Pelicans are masters of wave energy. As waves push air up on their way to shore, pelicans glide just in front of the curl, wingtips inches from the water, getting lift. \u00a0At the last second, just before the wave rolls over, they peel off and out from the land to hitchhike on the next set on their way up the coast.<\/p>\n If they see a fish, they quickly point up, do a wing over then dive, wings raked back and beak straight down, into the water to catch a meal. Sometimes they sit there and swallow, sometimes they miss and immediately take wing.<\/p>\n After writing all morning, I walk a hundred yards to a cafe looking over the beach to brave a lunch of bacon and chicken and cheese. A middle aged Tico collects sticks<\/a> and leaves left by the surf on the sand. He moves slowly in the hot sun; I wonder if he has been hired to clean up the beach or is scavenging firewood.<\/p>\n A young woman stands beside my table taking pictures of the shore. I look up and she says to me, \u201cIt\u2019s so beautiful, isn\u2019t it?\u201d I compliment her Nikon, trying to place her accent, different than most I\u2019ve been hearing on this trip but vaguely familiar.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m from Israel,\u201d she says. I ask what part. She says the north. I ask what town or kibbutz.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know Israel? Have you been there?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a volunteer in the Yom Kippur War, long before you were born,\u201d I tell her. \u201cThey called us \u2018Mitnavin.\u2019 The volunteers. \u201d<\/p>\n She says something to the others at the table and they look at me with interest.<\/p>\n \u201cHow did you go there?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in Greece when Syria attacked Israel. The leader of Israeli Defense Forces, Moshe Dyan, the man with the eye patch? said \u2018Haifez Assad believes it is 200 kilometers from Damascus to Tel Aviv. I\u2019m here to tell him it is also 200 kilometers from Tel Aviv to Damascus.\u2019 I said to myself, this is a war I can believe in, and volunteered.<\/p>\n “Because I wasn\u2019t a Jew, they refused me at the embassy in Athens, so I flew into Tel Aviv. Eventually I got a job driving a forklift in Kyriat Shmona, where Katyusha rockets had fallen. I watched Israelis retake the Golan Heights.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have given me goose bumps,\u201d she says to me, pointing at her arm. \u201cI have never met a volunteer who was not a Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n A large bird, it looked just like an owl but maybe it just had its head tucked tight to its body because why would an owl be out at noon in this heat, glided quickly past the corner of the restaurant. I stand to get a better look but it is gone, down and round the corner before I can see more. The girl takes a few more pictures, tells me she has to run, they are going to catch a ferry.<\/p>\n The trail up<\/a> to the waterfall is like walking along smooth rock trails that wind along the McKenzie or Deschutes, rivers of \u201cmy\u201d Cascades, though I wouldn\u2019t do those in flip flops. It\u2019s what I had on, I was wearing my usual black swim\/running shorts, the white shirt I live in but had wrapped around my waist. It took about 20 minutes and I was glad for the uphill workout, though it was not at all difficult.<\/p>\n At the falls<\/a>, two men sat on rocks, playing chess<\/a>. A man played a small Hang, the drum-like instrument I\u2019d been introduced to in Santa Elena, sounding more like a steel drum than anything else, hollow notes ringing in the rock amphitheater with a metallic harmonic that played with notes of the flute played by the man sitting in a hollow nearby. They were musical elves<\/a> where falls filled a pool deep and clear. Thirty or so people all clapped<\/a> when a young boy made a 40 foot plunge into the water.<\/p>\n Older, stronger men did not go nearly as high<\/a>.<\/p>\n Two girls from the falls were stopped on the road as I walked back to the main area of Montezuma. I asked what they could see.<\/p>\n \u201cA parrot, a tiny one,\u201d said the blond, pointing to a bird the size of a sparrow and not \u00a0much more colorful. She was from Newport, Oregon, about 180 miles from my home town but she\u2019d never heard of it, she moved to Newport only a year and a half ago from Alaska, she said, but spends winters elsewhere to get out of Oregon\u2019s rain.<\/p>\n We talk about salmon fishing in Alaska, where I had worked in South Naknek, and she said, \u201cI did salmon too, and squid,\u201d I think she said. \u00a0She had elegant tattoos, some from Mexico, others from Hermosa Beach, California, one tracking the vertabrae of her spine with either a pattern or letters in Chinese, I didn’t want to be close enough to look.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to get one in Costa Rica but I haven\u2019t met anyone here who does tattoos,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n I said goodbye because I wanted one more walk up the beach. There was a small outcropping of red rock I\u2019d seen this morning. The rock pure in color and smoothed by the ocean. I didn\u2019t know what it was, but knew it was something I\u2019d not seen ever before.<\/p>\n At the edge of the jungle, birds were singing about something that made them happy. Afternoon brought many people to the sand, to surf and swim and offer to the softening sun as much skin as they possibly could, which in some cases, was quite a lot.<\/p>\n The outcropping of red rock shattered the stone I brought as a small hammer, it was much harder than I thought, but a small piece came loose and I put it in my pocket \u00a0for the trip across the gulf to Jaco the next morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Geckos make little barking noises at each other, drawing lines, setting boundaries, establishing who gets which insects from what corner near the light that draws bugs near. Occasionally, some sort of night bird screeches, and I hear cooing from one of the trees in the garden.<\/p>\n I talked to a woman who told me she and her family were so afraid of lizards that when one got inside their home, near San Diego, they all stayed outside. When the lizard ended up in the couch, they had a neighbor take the couch away. As a six-year-old, my daughter \u2026 Read more\u2026