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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781467054478 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 12/05/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 140 |
| File size: | 748 KB |
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COSTA RICA'S STORIES
TALES FROM THE HOT TROPICSBy HARVEY HABER
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Harvey HaberAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4670-5449-2
Chapter One
It All Just Somehow Began
I have lived in Costa Rica for twenty years and have been writing about the eccentric nature of this developing country for all of that time: Not quite Third World, certainly not First World; Costa Rica is just something else.
When I first arrived here, because I thought I needed something to do, I started and ran a B and B. The guests at my B and B often became irrationally infatuated with the country, and would ask questions about buying property and the process of actually living here, and so much later, in defense, I became a (shudder) real estate agent.
All of it, the entirety of living here has been unplanned and thoroughly inevitable. One thing became the next thing and then the next thing became ... Things just happened.
At times it all seemed so impossible, so wonderfully out of the ordinary, the life here, and so I began a newsletter to talk about it: The unpredictable things that happen when creating a life in Costa Rica. The wonderful wacky weirdness of living and doing business and constructing a life in this small country.
As well as the newsletter, I wrote a column for Central America's English language newspaper, The Tico Times, as another outlet, another venue to talk about it all. There were days when I couldn't believe how fortunate I had been, in finding this place, in falling into a life here in Costa Rica, at this particular moment in its development.
This collection of stories is taken from my columns and newsletter. From observations on life in the small village where I lived, where my B and B was located, and the internal, ongoing conversations with myself on the parade of guests that passed through the B and B; these are stories of a life in the tropics. And they are as eccentric as Costa Rica itself.
Chapter Two
The Widow
My B and B, for some reason always referred to as a "country inn", is surrounded by high adobe walls. The walls separate the B and B from the highly animated and sometimes overly vigorous life of the village outside, and with the inn's magnificent tropical gardens, and impossible orderliness, these walls frame a highly idealized version of Costa Rica that the guests at the inn believe to be real. Inside there is only rarely the messiness of an actual life. Yet there are endless stories just beyond these walls, and occasionally those stories pass through to the gardens of the inn.
My neighbor, on the other side of the high adobe wall, is an older Costa Rican widow. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of her and though we have never spoken to one another, I believe I know her, or rather I feel that I know about her life. She appears bent by everything that has happened to her, saddened by things that I will never know about: unseen losses that the years have bequeathed. And, though I try to avoid seeing her, I find that just her unsmiling, forlorn presence is enough to darken the morning of an otherwise cloudless Costa Rican day.
I rarely see her. For the most part, she has succeeded in locking the world out, and in doing so behind those high estate walls, she has also locked herself in with the faded legacy of her younger life. The bowed body of the old woman, on those infrequent mornings when I see her in the outside world, at the Saturday farmer's market, or in the village silently going about her life, cries loudly of a dream gone sour. Her private, shrouded history suggests to me a sad tale of losses. Of lost family, wasted loves, squandered youth. When I hear her behind the wall shuffling around, moving her potted plants, puttering around her verandah, I imagine her life as a tragic story, a grievous account of what came to pass when she was blessed with the prospect of a lifetime in this luxuriant tropical Eden and how the promises all failed her.
Sharing this closed and darkly private world behind the wall with the widow is an ancient green macaw. And when the sun is shining and the air is pleasant and temperate, the large old bird is taken outside onto the patio and placed on a perch, from where it talks incessantly and loudly to and about departed household members: it mimics children that have long ago grown up and moved away; household employees that years ago left to attend happier families; it imitates a stern husband that has died. The macaw betrays all of the ancient family secrets. There are days when it takes on the persona of the family maid, loudly scolding the children, yelling at them to not run in the house, screeching at them to close the door, complaining that they don't eat all of their food.
And whenever deliveries are made to the side entrance, the bird imitates the long departed family dog and barks manically at the intruders. At other times the macaw summons up voices of the children, laughing, speaking loudly in street slang. And there are quiet times late in the day when the old bird becomes la señora and one can hear, even as the bird chatters in nonsensical phrases, the edges of melancholy as it intones her formal voice; her staid, decorous, upper-class social Costa Rican presence.
It's difficult for me to ignore the old green macaw. On mild, sunny mornings I find myself as an intruder, attending to the bird's chatter, an avid and enthusiastic listening-Tom, waiting to hear more of the family's concealed past.
On a recent clear full moon night, when the air was almost syrupy, I went out into the night to walk around the grounds of the inn. Not a breeze stirred the high palms and the moonlit night was balmy, still, and overwhelmingly full of the fragrance of white gardenia lilies. As I passed by the section of high wall between the inn and the widow neighbor's patio, I heard what seemed to be sleepy gurgling noises from the old macaw. The sliding door to the house had been left open and the bird, I was sure, was looking out from its cage into the night. It emitted what were for the macaw unusual sounds: murmurs, strangely sensual whimperings, and the bird's voice rose up, trembling into the thick night air, towards the moon. I recognized the soft, high inflections through the strangely tremulous voice. It was being "la señora."
The night air became quiet for what seemed like minutes. And then from out of the still darkness of the interior of the old house the elderly bird softly moaned. There was a quality to the sound that was disturbing, even unearthly; it was unlike anything that I had yet heard from the macaw.
Then I knew. The old green macaw was duplicating the murmurings of the mistress of the house, la señora, having an orgasm. The old bird groaned quietly and continuously into the night, increasingly louder, increasingly without reserve, for five minutes. And then, thundering and vibrating, the moaning became frantic and wild and the great old macaw screamed, "Aiyyy, dios!!" Then there was quiet. Only the silence of the hot sensual night, and in that subdued moonlit sweet night, I knew, I knew that the old widow had her moments, had her nights. And I knew that the next time I saw her, beyond the high adobe walls, poking around at the Saturday morning farmer's market, I would smile at her, smile a knowing smile, and would feel that we had shared something private, something just too wonderful.
Chapter Three
Best Kept Secrets
Sometimes it does seem that visitors to the country inn just pop in, without a warning, like Alice through the rabbit hole, wide-eyed and bursting with colossal energy, as members of some tribe of new age imperialists, appearing as though they have been forever racing across the planet in search of a mystical, budget-priced paradise. And they have just, finally, and at long last, found "it." This season, "it" is definitely Costa Rica.
Not so very long ago, the enlightened and super-hip were seeking secret places in the East. The well-worn trail stretched from Paris or Amsterdam to Kathmandu, detoured through Kabul or Denpasar or Jogjakarta, and then up and across Chengmai into the hills of Laos and Cambodia, over and up through Lhasa, down through Pondicherry and across to Sri Lanka.
Across Asia and South-East Asia, in addition to the hordes of North Americans, there were always great groups of Dutch, German, and Scandinavian students who inevitably spoke at least 25 languages each, including flawless Oxfordian English, hitchhiking, bicycling, usually singing and trekking their way across the world, smiling splendid smiles, bursting with magnificent, Nordic good health. They were bound for nirvana, and for them, this hemisphere to the South remained unknown, unloved, undesirable, and perceived as usually involved in revolution or chaos. Military regimes, dictatorships, strongmen, coups, assassinations, mayhem. In their perpetually young minds, Central America was a confused mental menage of burros, fiesta, siesta, and mañana; Indians chewing coco leaves, military madmen glowering behind mirrored sunglasses; the woman all Carmen Mirandas in white peasant blouses, with wriggling hips and huge painted lips beneath hats laden with bananas and mangos and papayas and hibiscus. Costa Rica? Isn't that an island off of war-torn Nicaragua? Everyone knew and agreed that it was very definitely not a land of bliss and ecstatic spiritual intent.
And then one day it all changed. One day it was no longer necessary to patiently point out Costa Rica on the map of the world, to indicate its location between Panama and Nicaragua, and then to indulgently explain that Costa Rica was different from its neighbors, that it was the Switzerland of Latin America, that its people were democratic and courteous and friendly and egalitarian, and literate; that there was no military, and that a large percent of its land mass was dedicated by its people as preserved space, as national parks and reserves. Somehow, Costa Rica has left the world of the unknown and had become known. It had become positioned in the mind of the international traveler and seeker as a beautiful, natural, peaceful, pastoral place. The secret was out: orchid land was lotus land. Costa Rica has become a sanctuary of the mind; a wonderful, intrinsically safe place, where one could simply look at nature and sit and be.
Costa Rica had always been one of those best-kept secrets. Except for a very few international cogniscenti, it had remained hidden between Panama and Nicaragua, unremarkable and ill-favored. And now, this once most esoteric of tropical places has become the central point where, as D.H. Lawrence wrote, "soul meets soul on the open road."
Looking around the country inn at the cast of characters, it was all too obvious that this year Costa Rica was the "place to be," and "everyone" was here: a slightly overweight tennis champion from Peru, now 20 years past his prime, here to visit Monteverde, but really, really, to see what all the fuss was about concerning Costa Rican women; a middle-aged woman from Colorado who never seemed to have to work and who had heard that somewhere in the Osa Peninsula was the source for the "perfect, life enhancing crystal"; a rugby player and his Ecstatically Energetic girlfriend who only wanted, just once, to see a monkey in the wild; a Belgian art gallery owner whose business was going out the bottom because of the international recession and who thought he should investigate eco-tourism as an alternative; three young male doctors from California who had wanted to see "the real Costa Rica," and had been booked by a travel agent into a large and innocuous international hotel, and then from there, had driven to filthy, foul Jaco beach; and, finally; a very sweet 74-year-old birder who been searching, trying desperately to see the elusive and mystical quetzal for over eight years.
Such were the newly arrived searchers for Paradise. And, though they hadn't found it yet, it was here. Right here. In the fields and hills and villages of Escazu, and beyond, too, just under the crisp blue December skies, just waiting there, as the Costa Rican day dreamed on, just waiting for them all.
Chapter Four
The season begins
A flock of small parrots circled over the country inn, jabbering about the events of the day. The group of European tourists strolling in the gardens look up to marvel at them, to see the flash of turquoise as the screeching birds swooped downward, to alight in one of the nearby macadamia trees.
"Why, you know, I always thought that parrots were only born and raised in cages. I never stopped to think that somewhere in the world they live as wild birds," says the sweet, plump Swiss lady. Xiomara, the Inn's general manager, sighs, looks at me out of the corner of her eye, and in Spanish says, "If I have to talk about how many species of birds there are here, and have to explain how Costa Rica can exist without an army, just one more time, I am going to die."
I say that we both need to experiment with going one full week without cynicism, and she nods in agreement.
High Season has begun, and the tourists and travelers and dreamers and naturalists and birders and wanderers and escapees from Northern Cold are starting to arrive in droves, migrating through the doors of the country inn, on their annual pilgrimage to Wonderful Warm Places.
A couple of weeks ago was Expotur, the most important of the annual conferences for the tourism industry, held just before the beginning of the season to indicate and signify the beginning of the tourist rush. There, on the convention floor, by the venerable Cariari Hotel, among buyers and sellers, retailers and wholesalers, operators and tour agents, in a universe of people whose job it is to see that people get from point A to point B and have a good time doing it, I actually heard a member of a group of Canadian tour wholesalers refer to tourists as "units of product." "We need to move at least 400 monthly units of product through here to break zero on the bottom line," he said. I thought, when I heard the comment, that having an eight-room Bed and Breakfast does not permit one to worry about 400 units of product, but rather focuses one on much more lofty and centered problems, such as, "Will the maid decide to show up today, or will I be making the muffins and rice and beans and eggs by myself, at 6:00 in the morning?"
The beginning of the tourist season in Costa Rica is inaugurated with some drama. Before Expotur began there were several pre-planning meetings for those who were going to be conference exhibitors, with briefings by the sponsors and coordinators of the event, explaining policy and procedure, and with more than ample question and answer periods at the end of every meeting. At the beginning of one of these question and answer periods, the Costa Rican manager of a wilderness lodge stood up to inquire as to whether or not he would be allowed to have a couple of large caged green parrots, as part of the background ambience of his booth. At this point, on the opposite end of the meeting room, another man in a rumpled suit jumped up to say that he was not going to allow the other man to have loud, screaming parrots, because last year his parrots made so much noise that he could not think, let alone close any deals with buyers. Then, in a third corner of the meeting room, a tall thin man jumped up, his face flushed red, and shouted, "You should talk about noise. Last year your video was playing at such a high volume that I couldn't hear anything else!!" There was a chorus of "Yeah!" from other people in the room, and loud murmurings and mumblings of agreement and protest, and while these three men, from opposite corners of the room, were politely shouting at each other, someone else stood up to announce that there would be no TVs or VCRs allowed at all this year, so the whole discussion was pointless. And with that, while everyone was choosing sides and flaying their arms in support or protest, a woman in a silk blouse stood up to loudly complain that it was her business to rent out VCRs for conferences, and just who was it that was trying to deprive her and her children from food on their plates by prohibiting all TV and VCR rentals at the conference. All of the pre-conference attendees paused for a brief moment to consider the significance of inhibiting TV usage, and thereby starving this woman and her children. Somehow the entire fracas was a microcosm of Costa Rican culture. Polite civility with a heady dose of Latin dramatization.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from COSTA RICA'S STORIES by HARVEY HABER Copyright © 2011 by Harvey Haber. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
1 It All Just Somehow Began....................112 The Widow....................13
3 Best Kept Secrets....................17
4 The Season Begins....................21
5 Looking for Paradise....................25
6 Old John....................29
7 Electricity....................33
8 Rays....................37
9 The Boxer....................41
10 Tourism....................47
11 The National Elections....................51
12 Doing Costa Rica....................55
13 Paradise Lost....................59
14 A New Place....................63
15 The Thief....................67
16 Pedro the Gardener....................71
17 Life at the Inn Continues....................77
18 The Bridge at Sixaola....................81
19 Planet Earth....................85
20 The International Dominos Tournament at Maxi's....................89
21 Tennis Shoes....................93
22 Bobby Fantuzzi....................99
23 Santa Marta....................105
24 Eccentrics....................113
25 Open House....................115
26 Why Costa Rica?....................119
27 Victor and an angel....................121
28 End of the Season....................123
29 Always Costa Rican, No Matter What or Where....................127
30 My First Real Estate Deal....................129
31 Costa Rica's First Guidebook....................135