And now for the photos...
Topic: Costa Rica 2008

I've created a special site with photos from Molasses Avenue, Tamarindo, and from my motorcycle tours in Guanacaste province.

You're invited to view them: www.baggyparagraphs.com/tamarindo.

The Baggy Paragraphs Company homepage is: www.baggyparagraphs.com.

All best from Ann Arbor, where it's 30 degrees (-1 Celsius) and freezing rain has fallen throughout the morning.

Ronald

Motmots Making Nice

I chose Tamarindo because of its proximity to the Daniel Oduber international airport, because I’d heard about the Pacific beach, and the Hotel Chocolate offered a fine small apartment with wireless access. My two previous visits to Costa Rica hadn’t taken me to the northwest. I knew nothing about Guanacaste’s difference, with dry forests and the influence of the trade winds that hold back Pacific moisture, November through April. The roble sabana, or savannah oak, with clusters of pinkish trumpets, and the spectacular Cortez amarillo, were unknown to me.  

 

Also unknown, Tamarindo was in the midst of change. When the taxi rolled in Saturday, February 16, some sort of beach festival was under way. A surfers’ party, according to the driver. I checked into Hotel Chocolate and headed down in time for sunset and fireworks. Was this my welcome? No, the antidevelopment activists were wrapping up. Local people opposed to the proposed projects—the number two dozen keeps being repeated—are united under the slogan “No alta densidad en Tamarindo.” High-density development could choke this place.

 

During two and a half weeks here, I’ve acquired very few souvenirs: seashells for Susan and a Pura Vida leather bracelet for me. Pura Vida is the informal national slogan, expressing the preoccupations with environmental purity and individual liberty. Last Saturday I decided on something else and returned to Carminia Moncada’s Rasta shop to acquire one of the slash-through-circle stickers with boldly drawn highrises and the incisive slogan repeated at bottom. She said all had been distributed. But the 11-year-old neighbor girl hanging around the shop—who circles her forefinger around her temple when looking at Carminia—still possessed a couple and sold one for 1000 colones ($2).

 

In 1883 the Costa Rican government handed over seven percent of the country to an American businessman to get a railroad built to the Caribbean coast; the United Fruit Company’s subsequent activities resulted. As my history anthology explains, the situation “illustrates the ease with which U.S. capital was able to enter Costa Rica…the difficulties underdeveloped countries often experience in building modern infrastructure, and the continuing dependence of the government on a foreign company…” I think of Sunday’s Century 21 signs. Forty years ago the Nicoyan coastline was almost worthless; Guanacaste has always been sparsely populated. Imagine the present push for a better coastal highway.

 

Beyond this, the government wants to dock oil tankers near Puntarenas, on the central Pacific Coast, to supply the booming demand for (a) jet fuel at the Daniel Oduber international airport and (b) mixed transportation fuels for the growing Guanacaste population and (c) the 200-megawatt (another source says 160-MW) Garabito electrical generating station, which will be an oil-burner. “This [expansion] is due to the development of tourism and its related activities which translated into greater consumption of fuel and other types of energy,” the government oil monopoly’s project manager told the Beach Times newspaper. So good luck with carbon neutrality, Costa Rica. And God forbid a spill on these precious beaches of tortoise habitat.

 

The Tamarindo activists might at least have hope. Work proceeds slowly. Last week on Molasses Avenue, a tractor scraped up some mounds that now sit over yonder, enhancing the general dustiness. The chef down at Pachanga (named for the erotic Colombian dance) reckons this is supposed to be quite a throughway, wide, with sidewalks, the whole works, but admits that in Costa Rica one never knows the completion date.

 

Meanwhile, as the self-involved interloper, I’ve felt ridiculous in my Hilfiger Levi’s The North Face Tevas. How am I different from the beachwalking couple in their Nike and Titleist caps? And I’m stung by one reader’s chastening about this blog’s crassness:

 

“…I did see the hyper-observant tale-teller but also found myself cringing and wondering if the critical, leering, sarcasm really were your true voice. I kept thinking, ‘Ouch,’ (somewhat on Susan's behalf), and that if the blog were all I knew of you I wouldn't want to know you because you sound so harsh.

 

Either the self-parody went flat or she’s right, I’m a shit heel and shouldn’t be so hard on the pigs who blocked the crest of the hill in their fucking Land Rovers. Does it help to say the Land Rovers were old and battered? Does it help that I’ve heretofore not mentioned the Americans, two men, two women, roaring over the baywaters under the flag of an inflatable sex doll? Does it help that of the three nights I was out past 7.30 p.m., one gave me the lunar eclipse with the stoner surfers at Hostel La Botella de Leche, and the other two were visits to Pachanga with my book? All I know of the street life was relayed in Jimmy Danger's used bookshop. As for the beach fruit of last Thursday, maybe I shouldn’t have initiated the conversation with Isabel; maybe I should have packed up like a hermit crab when I saw those babes heading for my bit of shade.

 

I could have written about seashells and sandcastles and the sweet lady from Spokane: a Hallmark card instead of excoriation. But the folly, vanity, and avarice caught my interest.

 

Nothing like a wave breaking over the bald pate to remind me of life; also nothing like sighting down the wave’s crest and finding the sun puddled on the horizon, imbuing the froth and spume with orange and pink. Nothing at all like stepping out the apartment's front door as not one, not two, but three blue-crowned motmots alight 10 feet away in Sebastian’s tree.

 

Among themselves they gurgle, “How regal you look this day!”

 

“Yes, aren’t we all lovely?”

 

“Of course. It’s the majestic plumage!”

   

Birds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-crowned_Motmot, http://www.nicoyapeninsula.com/wildlife/motmot.html 

  

Oil tankers: http://www.thebeachtimes.com

Parched in Paradise (Rodolfo Revisited)

After being saved on last Sunday’s motorcycle trip by Rodolfo, I wondered how to express my thanks, one man to another. I kept thinking of him in his barn on the slope above the village of Paraíso. Paradise, my ass. When I’d ordered a plate of shrimp and rice for that day’s lunch, the owner of the combo market and restaurant that’s the only game in town sat there and watched me eat just to have something to do. As for Rodolfo, stranded four kilometers out of town at the very edge of the wilderness, all he had for companionship were venomous snakes and the legend of Donny Lalonde.

 

Yesterday I was on the road by 10.00 a.m. on another rented Honda 250 dirt bike. (This one actually had rearview mirrors, but the speedometer cable was disconnected and the rear tire was just as bald as last week’s.) I headed due east through cattle country for Santa Cruz. There were a couple of villages along the gravel highway, and smoke from the Sunday morning cooking fires, or leaves, or garbage, made my eyes run and I had to stop along the side of the road to blot them dry. After a while a nice paved surface commenced, like one of the county highways around home. Arriving at Santa Cruz, I used the bypass and stayed on the road over the mountains to Nicoya. The Spaniards had begun to enslave Indians here by 1523, although the New Laws of 1542 forbade this practice, which prompted the ever resourceful hacienda owners to make sharecroppers of the Indians and use that income to purchase black African slaves as farmhands.

 

By 11.10 a.m. I had arrived in Nicoya, a pleasant city of around 15,000 people, and found my way to the historic parish church. With its blinding white walls and prominent campanile and blocky vaulted sacristy, it dramatically stood out from the downtown’s commercial cubes: in particular, the Moorish accents were startling. The sanctuary was cool and dark inside, with a patterned brick floor. The dark wooden ceiling supported several big chandeliers. Mass is said on certain weekdays but not on Sunday. A simple info sheet attached to a post explained that the original cathedral, built in 1644, was destroyed by earthquake in 1822 and rebuilt nine years later. There really wasn’t much to see, but I didn’t leave without receiving grace.  

 

On the highway out of Nicoya a transit policeman stopped me for not wearing my casco. The rental agency provides a helmet suitable for inline skaters, and as soon as the motorcycle hits 30 kilometers per hour the helmet lifts in the wind, causing strangulation; I’d clipped it to my knapsack and was wearing a baseball cap to keep my bald head from burning under the sun. Boy, this would test my Spanish. I told the policeman I wasn’t even sure if there was a helmet law because half the riders on the highway aren’t wearing them, but he was a not-in-my-town kind of cop and said there was going to be una multa of 20,000 colones, or $40, and suggested I might experience problems with immigration when I got to the airport on Wednesday. He took my license and passport. I unavailingly explained my difficulty with the wind and strangulation. Maybe to exploit any inconsistencies in my story, should any appear, or maybe because he couldn’t believe anyone would really do what I was doing, he twice asked my destination and where the motorcycle had come from. OK, gringo, you’re staying in Tamarindo but you’ve come all the way down here, and next, making the second leg of a big triangle, you’re going southwest to the coast at Samara, and, seriously, you’re returning to Tamarindo by way of the shitty coast highway? But on the second run through all these details, I mentioned visiting the cathedral, which caused him to comment favorably. Nevertheless, our negotiation continued, and while it did I unclipped the helmet from my knapsack and put it over my baseball cap. This would by my new system, with the bills of the two hats splitting the wind’s drag. Sissy-looking, but it works on race cars. When he ultimately reiterated that I would have to pay right here, right now, I unfurled one of the Spanish language’s mightiest and most corrosive verb tenses, the pluperfect indicative, letting him know that the truth was, I’d been instructed never to give money to a cop on the highway. So there, take that. To my amazement, he said there would be no multa. He handed back my license and passport, assured me a gasolinera was open at Samara, and drove away—not without complimenting my Spanish.

 

The next 40 kilometers through the Nicoya Peninsula’s coastal highlands presented as beautiful and inspiring a ride as I’ve ever experienced. The undulant road’s paved surface reminded me of southeastern Michigan’s townline roads, narrow and often patched, but sufficient for brisk travel. Generous clusters of brilliant scarlet and fuchsia flowers cascaded over fences, the small tidy houses offered their own ochres and blues, and the landscape interspersed odd clusters of palms, groves of spreading broadleaves, and vivid verdant pastures. I stopped to wet my whistle, buying a grape pop in the little store where four Ticos sat watching a Premier League match. One had ridden over on his horse and left it tied to a tree in the side yard. I told these gents they live in a gorgeous place. No response besides a couple of weak smiles. What did the farms hereabouts produce? The horseman, older than the others, about 45 or 50, answered that they produced melons, sugar, rice, and of course groves of teca—and yes, irrigation was used. Hearing me assert that it looks relatively prosperous, he rolled his eyes.

 

I soon reached Samara, where the pump jockey at the gas station had major road rash on his right elbow. The kid said it was from a motorcycle crash. I replayed the whole business about the casco and the policeman, and he said, “I don’t wear one.” Samara itself was like a quarter-scale Tamarindo: a smaller but still lovely azure bay, some obvious but not all that obtrusive development, and quite a few Ticos picnicking in the shade of palms along a rather empty beach. One amenity Samara can boast over Tamarindo is a paved main street.

 

The coast road led north toward Nosara. Even in Michigan, this byway would be classified as an abomination, not a road. Almost as soon as the gravel surface carried me out of town, the way turned past a grass landing field and met a small turbid river. The crossing point wasn’t clear to me. The shortest crossing looked too deep. Upstream, a family was picnicking on a sandbar while pop washed his cattle truck in the middle of the channel. He mentioned un caracol, the shallower point slightly downstream where the ford required turning at midpoint, hooking around onto the landing. I rode the Honda in there, and of course the bald back tire just spun in the mud, so I got off and pushed.

 

The Nicoyan coast is an absolute wonder, with palm-dotted pastures and gloriously crowned trees embracing the blue sky in the heat. Most of this coastline has been for centuries, and still is reserved for, the exclusive enjoyment of cows and monkeys. As the first rocky headland yielded to level pasture, howlers greeted my photo stop, “Oh-arrr, oh-arrr, oh-ar-ar-ar, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” Translated: “We are the victors valiant, champions of the west.”

 

In the first seaside village I came to, the main street had received a fresh application of molasses for dust suppression. Two teams of men were contesting a soccer match on a nice field. I stopped to drink water and snap a picture of another gorgeous bay with a deserted beach. The midafternoon passed like this: dazzling views, difficult and dusty going, and fording several streams. Cresting one hill just before a deep crossing, I found the road blocked by Brits talking to each other from inside their Land Rovers; I had to squeeze the bike between them. I arrived at the water below at the same time as two Ticas coming the other direction in a brand-new (rented) Corolla and waved them through at the obvious place; meanwhile, the one Land Rover came downhill behind me and was going to blast through the ford till I motioned the thoughtless pig to stop. Finally I waved him onward to his exclusive vacation house, and then the girls did their crossing. At another place farther along the road, a car sat before the sign advertising a condo development, and while passing I paused long enough to look at the driver and say, “You should buy one.” To which his American voice replied, “We’re thinking about it.” Ticos know something the monkeys and cows don’t: the whole coastline is up for sale. Century 21 advertises at every bus stop. (Yes, buses do run this wretched route.) Real estate! Building lots! New Balinese-inspired community! An FSBO sign offers 60 hectares with ocean view. (Excellent for carbon credits!) Another sign mentions the completion date of a luxury hotel. Nosara even has a yoga institute. The Nicoyan littoral is done for.  

 

I made the 70 kilometers up the coast to Paraíso before 4.30 p.m., stopping there long enough to buy two cold cans of Imperial beer, figuring Rodolfo might receive this tribute more readily than anything as personal as new flip-flops. I also stopped at the little house at the head of his road where last week I had bought gas, and a kid of about 12 poured a couple of liters into the Honda’s tank. I didn’t want to chance running out in the 30 kilometers of wild country between here and Tamarindo. I paid them 2500 colones ($5) and hurried along, with monkeys howling just overhead on the first sharp curve. The dirt road was even narrower than I remembered, one lane and no joking around, but smooth. Rodolfo’s barn was just as far out of town as I thought. Any worry that he might not be around, out to a Sunday matinee at the ballet, was eased when I turned into his barnyard and found him sitting at his crudely fashioned picnic table, just watching and waiting: no paperback novel, no banjo, no whittling. No shirt or shoes, either. I climbed off the bike and we shook hands. Unremembered from a week ago, a singularly hideous dog with a brindled coat put its freakishly huge head in my lap when I sat down. Rodolfo repeated his name, and I forget whether it was Cabezudo (“big-headed”) or Calabaza (“Pumpkin”). Unzipping my knapsack, I pulled out the white plastic bag with the two cans of beer and put it on the table.

 

“Rodolfo waved his hand over the table top and said, “No tomo.”  

 

“Ah,” I said. Off the sauce, are you?

 

“It’s bad for the health,” he said.

 

I put away the beer, having ascertained so very much from so few words. After a couple of minutes I took off for Tamarindo.

Rude Texan, Mirthful Waitress, Gloomy Omahan

“Hey! You got any pens?”

 

The voice that boomed this interrogative, in English, in a Spanish-speaking country, belonged to one of the two idiots lined up behind me at Super 2001. They were Texans. Too impatient to wait till he got to the checkstand, he addressed the manager, who was counting down the other till.

 

“Plumas,” I said.

 

“Plumas,” he yelled to the manager, who merely pointed to our cashier. Super has just those two registers, with the front double doors between them.

 

“Think of feathers, plumage, quills,” I said. “Where are you from?”

 

“Dallas.”

 

It struck me that people in Dallas, especially nice suburbanites like him, would have a shit fit if a Mexican bellowed out, “Escuche! Tiene algunas plumas?” The grace of the Ticos, daily putting up with such indignities, extends beyond measure.

 

–—

 

Yesterday’s beach sunset was as beautiful and momentous as ever. And once again I noticed the international surf kids. Sitting in two neat rows parallel to the water’s edge, they passed around a liter of rum. I didn’t see the English or Scottish lads I’d spoken with the other night, but the blonde American hellion with the great tattoo on her left shoulder recognized and greeted me. I said, “It’s the sunset club.” The girl at the end of the back row held up a can of alcoholic refreshment called Bamboo and with an American voice said, “The Bamboo Club.” Another American girl took great delight in explaining how her father keeps on his desk a picture of her extending her middle finger at the sunset, and she zestfully pantomimed.

 

Afterward, having already dined in the apartment (homemade potato salad, Mexican sausages, half an avocado), I went to Porto Fino, ordered a beer, and read al Día, one of the national dailies. Maria was once again my waitress. Friday was supposed to be her day off, but she’d traded with another staff member. Maria is from Bogotá. As for so many other Latin Americans—the Argentine woman who’s managing Hotel Chocolate, the Nicaraguan construction workers, the Colombian and Nicaraguan prostitutes—Costa Rica is the Land of Opportunity. I’ve had the “Costa Rica” breakfast two or three times at Porto Fino (beans and rice, scrambled eggs, glop of yogurt, fried banana), so I know Maria opens up the place at seven o’clock. She works fifteen hours, till ten o’clock at night. Six days, 90 hours per week. Dealing with American tourists (she doesn’t speak English). And her dark eyes still sparkle.

 

On my last evening visit to Porto Fino I’d ordered a Hawaiian pizza. When finished, I asked for the leftover slices to be wrapped and then pointed to the illuminated Briko popsicles display, which looks like a TV screen, and told her the program was getting old so would she mind having the management change the channel? Once she realized I was joking, she let loose with a real laugh.

 

Last night, after carefully studying the al Día page with pictures of models in skimpy costumes, I tore out the column headlined “Braided Cowgirl.” The picture presents a pigtailed lovely wearing a ludicrously frilled and beribboned blue bandeau top with a blue micro skirt trimmed in bicolor ribbon at the hem and heavily belted and extravagantly buckled just below the hips; the Pilsen beer logo is applied over her left nipple and just inside the uppermost part of the left thigh. I motioned to Maria.

 

“Otra cerveza?” she asked.

 

 No, I was fine on the beer. “Look, here’s your new work uniform.”

 

She shrieked hilariously and said, “You buy it for me, I’ll wear it. But it needs boots, too.”

 

I told her I was calling right away.

 

–—

 

This morning at the beach I greeted Luz as “the first light of the day.” Caramel wasn’t with her because a boy from the restaurant had taken her home for the weekend. Luz wore her usual scarf and dark blue skirt. Her sleeveless print blouse looked familiar from Thursday, when we had last met. I’ve noticed that Maria Josefina, the orange juice queen, seems to own just two blouses. These ladies would probably scoff at the contents of our closets. Just the number of jackets and coats would astonish them: jackets for working in the yard, for 50-degrees days, for 30-degree days, for rain, for dressing up, for motorcycle riding.

 

A group from Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo has been here since Wednesday night and is leaving today for Monteverde’s rain forest. I’d briefly met one of them on Thursday morning. Today I noticed a pleasant looking woman of about 30, rather primly dressed, chalk-white skin, gazing at the bay. Referring to her Canon Eos Rebel XSi digital camera and 18-to-55 millimeter zoom lens, I pointed to the bay and said, “Take a picture.” She said she’d taken plenty of pictures. She turned out to be a graduate of South High School (and presumably a local college) and works at Mutual of Omaha in customer service. I only identify her in this blog by the initial D., for disappointment. Despite her pleasant appearance, she was the gloomiest person I’ve encountered in Tamarindo: a lifelong Nebraskan unenthusiastic about the place and unintrigued by the chance encounter with another native Omahan. She had been frightened by crocodiles during the group’s boating expedition in Tortuguero wildlife refuge. And yesterday’s outing to Santa Rosa national park had merely been hot. I was out of film today, but seeing her nice kit, I asked if she would take a picture of me and e-mail it. “I don’t know how to do that,” she said.

 

I left the sand at 7.15 a.m., just as a bus labeled San Judas Tadeo unloaded Tico passengers of all ages. They were opening their beach bags. I asked a girl where they were from and she said Cartago. This city in Costa Rica’s populous central valley was settled by the Spanish in the 16th century. It’s about 300 miles away, not an easy drive through the mountains. "You must have left really early in the morning," I said. Several replied: Eleven o’clock last night. And eagerness in every face.

Beach Fruit

Thursday’s last breakfast dish had just been washed at 8.00 a.m. and I was about to deal with my inbox when the electricity went off, followed by the Internet and the water. I went onto the balcony and read about the “emergence of an agricultural semi-proletariat” in Costa Rica around 1930. It was windy, and Hotel Chocolate sits at the point of Molasses Avenue where the molasses application ends, so dust was blowing around. Checking with Chocolate’s administration, I learned this is the Thursday of the every-other-Thursday scheduled power-and-water outage till 2.00 p.m. The utility company is burying cable. My only recourse was to repair to the beach. 

 

After a refreshing dip in the surf, I found a spot under a tree at the boundary of one of the low-rise bayshore resorts. Logs had been thoughtfully arrayed here for comfortable seating. My expectation that the beach would be packed with Tamarindo’s finest— the power shutdown had closed many businesses—was profoundly erroneous, and in fact, with the low tide leaving a huge expanse of hard-packed sand, one guy took a speed run on his motorcycle. A few people crossed along the water's edge. I settled in the shade, pulled out my yellow tablet, and worked on a humor piece while also making the following important notes:

 

·         HOT LAPS: Walking for exercise, repeated passes, metronomic tossing of arms forward and back, marching by herself, carrying sandals, mature pale petite platinum (hair gathered in comb), wearing black sunglasses, wristwatch, very attractive in black one-piece

 

·         LIL SIS/ALL-AMERICAN TYPE: Pretty and shapely, 24, long brunette hair clasped at neck, sunglasses pushed onto head, no tats, solid jade bikini with semi-thong bottom and colorful plastic logo-clasps at sternum and hips; after swim, wrings water from tresses, drizzling onto shaved head of “Bruno” in resort's hammock

 

·         TALL AND SEXY: Long straight dishwater blonde hair, sunglasses, bright blue garment wadded in left hand, bounding along tideline with only companion, coal-black pit bull, leashed on yellow nylon rope, stopping every six or eight strides as tugging dog won’t release rope from jaws: multicolored, bias-stripe top, brownish boyish squarish trunk-style bottom leaving crescents of nalgas in view

 

·         MORENA, MORENA: Slender brown solo Tica, long straight glistening black hair gathered in neon azure scarf, black beach bag strung from shoulders, azure bra, deftly cut azure-waistband-and-coral panty

 

This valuable research was interrupted—I had just been about to write “most tasteful”—by the arrival of two gracious beauties in their 20s whose approach along the edge of the trees had gone unnoticed. It was impossible even to imagine, but they seemed to be adjusting their flaps and cutting their engines on approach for landing. If this were indeed true, my good fortune could not in any way have been exceeded. Merely to indicate a warm welcome, I said, “La pregunta esta sol o sombra.”  

 

But there really was no question between sun or shade; they settled five meters to my right in sombra. And then one stripped down to her black bikini and dashed into the waves. The other, especially attractive, busied herself with an indiscernible task. I rose and stepped over some logs and announced I had come to the beach today because Tamarindo’s power shutdown had forced me out of my apartment. I waved my yellow tablet with the bikini notes. When she appeared not to know what I was talking about, I asked if she was from Tamarindo. “Santa Cruz,” she said. Ah, that would explain it. Santa Cruz is about 45 kilometers inland, the nearest market town. The Toronto woman or maybe she was the Pennsylvania woman at the same table on my second or third day here said she goes to Santa Cruz because that’s where she can find chocolate chips—can’t do without brownies, you know—and then complained about being charged an arm and a leg for them.

 

I introduced myself to Isabel, who responded by handing me the open-face sandwich she had been making. On a long oval slice of bread textured like an English muffin, she had spread black bean paste, added carrot slices that she warned were hot, and a plump chili of a lovely light green. I was a little flustered but managed to thank her and had almost taken a bite when she said to wait. While doing so, I retreated to my knapsack and grabbed the rose woven from a strip of palm frond, sold to me by a beach vendor, and presented it to Isabel "for the table." She smiled and proffered half a hard-boiled egg, which was dropped open side up onto the sandwich’s empty spot.

 

This much I found incredibly touching. My first delicious taste was while she finished two other sandwiches; but then Guille—whom Isabel had said was visiting from México—returned, evinced disinterest in her sandwich, and instead opened a can of Rock Ice beer, asking if I wanted one. This was all like a dream, or better yet a commercial: two women showing up and seeing after me. It seemed best to let them drink their own beer, so I got the orange juice from my knapsack along with the package of chocolate sandwich cookies with chocolate cream filling (Galleta Sabor Chocolate con Crema Sabor Chocolate). I returned to guzzling Guille and offered one of the three remaining cookies. She accepted.

 

While Isabel and I devoured our sandwiches, I learned that Guille, from the state of Guerrero, is in Costa Rica for the first time and has come on some sort of business. (As she eventually said, I’m all right at communicating in Spanish; I readily confessed that my comprehension isn't as good.) She finds Costa Rica extremely beautiful and the Ticos unbelievably nice. I wasn’t sure how she and Isabel knew each other, probably a business connection. They had taken the bus from Santa Cruz, an hour-and-a-half trip for 300 colones apiece, or 60 cents. I told them about my usual routine here in Tamarindo: beach walk with camera at 6.00 a.m., followed by harsh journalistic labors in this (air-conditioned) apartment—yoked as I am to the Internet—before the daily sundown swim. I mentioned nothing about nighttime drugs and prostitution.

 

Sandwiches gone, mangoes were handed out. Guille took one. As we passed around a paring knife and held the slices to our mouths and tore away the flesh from the rinds, Guille’s piece slipped fleshy side down onto the dark sand. She and Isabel squealed over the result, which Guille displayed for their camera. They also laughed when I provided the caption: “Pimiento de la playa.” Beach pepper.  

 

I’d had a mango in my fridge at Hotel Chocolate ever since the first grocery expedition but finally ate it yesterday because, as good as they taste, they’re such a pain. Guille gave up on her mango and just flopped face down on the sand. Isabel took the place beside me on the log and we shared the knife, stacking our rinds into neat piles, which went into a plastic shopping bag. We walked into the surf to wash our hands and faces. She said the salt water is good for the skin, and I agreed, displaying my cuticles, which look the best ever; in the cold, I explained, they crack and split and it’s miserable. I also said my knees feel wonderful because of the heat. I didn’t know the word for sinuses, or I’d have thrown it in.

 

We returned to the shade. Lunch had not ended. Isabel next produced a chrome-yellow thing that looked somewhat like a bell pepper but with an odd stem that turned out really to be a seed, shaped like a lima bean but larger, that can be roasted by itself as a snack. She called this yellow wonder a marañon.

 

“Is it a fruit?” I asked.

 

“Yes,” interposed Guille, rising from the sand, “and they’re only grown in Costa Rica.” She flipped onto her back.

 

“And there’s just a two-month season for them,” Isabel said.

 

“Febrero y marzo?” I asked, and she said sí. “Do they grow on trees?” The answer to this question was also sí.

 

I bit into the exclusive delicacy, which was watery and tasted a bit of citrus in the same way as star fruit. I wasn’t crazy about it. Hers disappeared much faster, through full and sensual lips. (Reading Monique Van Vooren's novel did this to me.) I’m afraid I must have been hoarding Guille’s portion, because I don’t recall her taking one. Isabel was telling Guille that the fruit can be cut in half and stuffed with something, exactly what I didn’t get. Inside the marañon were long stringy fibers that wrapped themselves around my teeth, but I finished the damn thing, happy there wasn’t a fire going so we might've roasted the seeds.

 

Isabel accepted the cookie when I remembered to offer it. And afterwards—they were talking about moving on down the beach—I said I really should be going; but Guille asked what kind of magazines I write for, and the presentation of my portfolio took a while.

 

It was 1.45 p.m. and I was sunburned and electricity was promised at home at Hotel Chocolate: time to part with Isabel and Guille. The camera came out again; and we all posed with each other and exchanged direcciónes del correos electrónicos (e-mail addys). I told them everything had been fabuloso, which was an understatement. As I headed away, Isabel removed her bus togs. I turned back and waved. The sun's harsh glare obscured details of bikini color and design, but what a silhouette! She returned the wave and pranced into the surf.