Last night I slept with don pancho
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| Still not thrilled about the prospect of either losing Javier or spending more, much more, time in Guatemala, I set myself to the task of finding a spot to live that was close enough for Javier to take care of family affairs in Guatemala but safer. The answer arrived in a book auspiciously titled Choose Costa Rica for Retirement. It called the country the “Switzerland of the Americas” and noted its free and compulsory education. It was so peaceful it had a civilian police force instead of an army.
I looked at the map and although Guatemala wasn’t exactly close, it was a manageable one hour direct flight away. I convinced Javier we should check it out. On the plane, doubts began to surface. I remembered comments made by an outspoken photo-journalist during a press trip to Malaysia. He’d caused several scandals by his uncensored, inflammatory remarks. For example, when I asked him if he was married he’d answered “When I want sex I pay for it.” He was equally blunt when it came to George Bush Jr., people who walked in front of his camera and Costa Rica. “Ahh Costa Rica. If there was a vacation contest it would read First prize is one week in Costa Rice. Second prize is three weeks in Costa Rica.” At the time, I thought he was exaggerating. Now I wondered. It was pouring rain when we arrived. The airport taxi hydroplaned through vast lakes on the highway. We saw two rental cars half submerged in the muddy banks of a river swollen by water. “Tourists,” shrugged the driver as he gunned the engine. “No wonder there’s no crime here,” said Javier. “Criminals can’t make it through the highways.” Upon arrival in Samara Beach, I had to admit if a beach could have curb appeal then this one would get lots of showings. Waves rolled into a pretty bay where a curl of white sand was fringed by palm trees. Morning dawned sunny and we watched capuchin monkeys swing from the treetops as we sipped our morning coffee. This is more like it I thought. We walked hand-in-hand to our appointment at the real estate office. “Residential or commercial?” asked Peter Munte, the real estate agent, as though we were ordering a Big Mac. Originally from Austria, he was small and slight and spoke Spanish with clipped precision. He’d been selling real estate on the Nicoya Peninsula for 11 years and had seen it all – including price increases of 300%. A bell jangled, the office door swung open and a small, sweaty boy entered carrying a machete. “I’m finished,” he said, drying his face on his T-shirt as he collected his pay from Munte. Our first showing was ready. Enroute we passed a residential subdivision that looked like a lake. A mother duck and her goslings paddled past the half finished foundation of someone’s future home. “One of the advantages of buying property in the rainy season,” said Munte. “You get to see a property in its most natural state.” He parked at the edge of a deep ditch. I jumped across but my foot slid in the mud and I impaled my ankle on a sapling. White butterflies created a colourful cloud in a jumble of secondary growth trees. Although pretty, there were no fruit vendors, no church bells ringing, no cantina to pick up an icy beer and nobody to drop off steaming tortillas. We’d be quite alone. Javier and I looked at each other. The property wasn’t for us. For two days we looked at more land and even a few B & Bs, even though our imaginings of a B & B weren’t realistic. I was introverted to the point of anti-social and Javier, although uber-friendly, wasn’t much on the finer details of hospitality. I’d once caught him serving a house guest a glass of wine in a candle votive. We decided to split up and cover more territory. Javier headed to Jaco Beach while I went south to an eco-lodge on the Osa Peninsula. A stretch of lowland tropical rainforest in the southwest corner of the country, near Panama, the Osa is one of the most biologically diverse areas of the world, with 140 species of mammals, 370 birds, 120 amphibians and reptiles, 40 freshwater fish and 6,000 insects. “Make any phone calls or emails you need to, now,” said the guide who met me and a honeymooning couple at the airport, a strip of dirt enclosed in chicken wire. “The lodge has no internet or telephone.” It took an hour to travel the 17 bumpy but picturesque kilometres. We passed a tree so full of scarlet mackaws they looked like bright ribbons pinned to branches. A pair of yellow-billed toucans, cheerful as cartoon characters, sat on a fence post. Enveloped in a gardenlike setting of such benevolent beauty, our group was charmed beyond words. Much like the Donner Party as they began their fateful western journey across the mountain range, we had no inkling what awaited.
“I could stay here forever,” I mused, rocking dreamily on a white linen hammock. Enveloped in a mist of cheerful bird chirping, all I had to do was raise my head and I could snap a photo of wildlife on the rainforest superhighway. First it was a blue Morpho butterfly, then a pair of woolly pacas and finally a three-toed sloth. From time to time, a large branch fell, silent as though it had begun to decompose before it even touched the soft carpet of the forest floor. Dinner was served in the main dining room, perched on the hill’s highest point. I chose Osa Boullabaisse, the lodge’s signature dish. Chock full of shellfish, shrimp, red snapper and coconut milk – it was delicious. I washed it down with two glasses of wine. “Come look,” a waiter called, shining a flashlight so guests could see tree frogs in the underbrush. We all cooed appreciatively. “A boa constrictor once lived in men’s bathroom,” he said. “It stayed for two weeks.” The guests laughed nervously. I also enjoyed a hearty laugh – fuelled no doubt by the oxygen-infused air and wine. As I revelled in my alcohol-induced stupor, I failed to notice black clouds gathering. Thunder rumbled across the mountain valley and with a mighty bang, a tsunami of water poured from the sky. Hotel staff scurried to hang plastic rain curtains around the dining room. Buckets and mops sopped up puddles. This was my cue to leave. Darkness pressed its shadowy face from the stone stairway. Eco-lights shone weakly in the distance but the only other illumination was from the small flashlight I carried in my purse. I popped open my polka-dotted umbrella from Paris and took a step outside. The force of the rain almost knocked me off my feet. Bird shrieks interrupted the drumming of rain on the Matopalo (Killer) trees. Wind whipped the upright leaves of a banana palm like the slap of an angry lover. I felt very alone. When my flashlight illuminated the pale skin of an albino frog, the fuzzy glow from my dinner wine evaporated. I was stone sober and scared. I let out an involuntary yelp and ran as fast as I could down the stone path. Finally I reached the refuge of my room. Far from looking cheerful as it had by day, it now looked dark and ominous. Rain poured in through the screen windows and when I pulled down a bamboo blind an iguana fell out and scurried away through a crack in the floor. Lizard footsteps echoed from every corner of the room so I leaped for the safety of my bed. Two large beetles hung on the white curtain, the grooves of their underbellies visible through the gauze. Close to panic - I tried to talk myself down. Remember all those birds chirping so beautifully? They have to eat something. There’s no reason to get excited because all the insect food is in your bedroom. Flapping the curtain until I could hear the click-click of the beetle bodies hitting the floor, I jumped into bed and shone a flashlight on my pillow. An unblinking reptilian eyeball stared back at me. The welcome note read: Please let us know if there is anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable. I took two sleeping pills and slept fitfully, my sleep punctuated by piercing howls from the jungle. Waves of mist drifted through the screens until my mattress sagged with water. With the white bed curtains billowing like sails, I felt transported onto a ship in a nightmarish Land of Nod. Rain fell all night.
By the time the housekeeping staff arrived – holding buckets and wearing rubber boots as though ready for a crime scene clean-up -- I was sitting on a stool in the middle of the room my feet up around my ears. . “Thank God, that’s over,” I said, panting my way up the 220 steep stairs to the lodge. I was ready to check out. A crowd barred my way to the front desk. “What’s happening?” I whispered. “The roads are washed out due to the rain,” said an older couple. “People have to swim across a river if they want to catch their flight,” said another.
I finally reached the front of the line. “Good morning,” I said with little preamble. “I’d like to check-out. As soon as possible.” “Very sorry senora, but not today,” said the front desk clerk with a shrug. “Tomorrow?” I asked. “If the rain stops, staff will help you wade through the river holding onto a rope,” he explained. “A truck will be waiting on the other side.” “How deep is the water?” “About this high,” he replied, holding his hands to his chest at armpit level. “That’s not wading! That’s swimming!” I exclaimed. “We’ll carry your suitcase for you,” he said with unflappable confidence It would be impossible to keep your balance in a fast-flowing river that deep. I could see myself fall, lose my glasses, get caught in barbed wire from a farmers’ fence and get bitten by a sea snake. My bug-infested room sounded like the Peaceable Kingdom in comparison. . I prayed the weather would get worse – much worse – and that they’d call in the marines. I wished Costa Rica did have an army.
He plopped a scoop of rice and beans on my plate. “Have some more Gallo Pinto.” We went out for cocktails at a pick-up joint. Rows of taxis waited to ferry women and their clients to hotels. One man talked a woman down to $5.00 for an intimate service and then asked her to make change for a $100 bill. When Javier and I left in a taxi – the driver raised his eyebrow, thinking Javier a Costa Rican and me, a bespeckled Canadian tourist on the hunt. Costa Rica looked good on paper, but war zone or not, it was Guatemala that had my heart. We cut our visit short.
Chapter 19: Life in San VicenteBack in San Vicente, Mama needed cheese so she could make quesadilla, the traditional sponge cake. The family no longer owned enough cows to be able to make cheese in large quantities so Thelma. Lorena and I headed out to visit Dona Rosa on the other side of the San Vicente River. We carried an elaborately wrapped gift and a cake, regally poised on a glass cake stand to celebrate the birth of her new granddaughter. In order to control flooding, workers had built a dyke along the San Vicente River and we walked along its dusty top ridge until we reached steep stairs to a suspension bridge and crossed to the other side of town. Nicely shaded by fruit trees, Rosa’s garden was fragrant with herbs. A large dog lazed on the front patio. Elena shouted a holler of welcome from the doorway. She was middle-aged, with an apron wrapped round her middle and efficiency of movement which led me to believe she could accomplish a lot in one day. I could see how she and Thelma were friends. Inside, much like other homes in San Vicente, the dining table was covered with a plastic tablecloth and the china cabinet was stuffed with family photos and bomboniere from decades of quinceneras and baptisms. “Come, come,” she said, beckoning us into a back bedroom where a tiny baby lay wrapped in a bassinet. An exhausted-looking young woman—Rosa’s newborn daughter rested on a hammock surrounded by what seemed to be the entire stock of a Walmart baby department stacked around it. Mobiles, bassinettes, diaper pails, a mountain of gifts from family in the United States. “Que linda, la preciosa,” We cooed over the baby and went into the kitchen. Within the kitchen, a hutch which resembled a Canadian pioneer cupboard, was filled with rows of cheese in various stages of curing. Some were white with a crust while others were strapped into wooden frames forming the rounds. On the kitchen worktable, a milky liquid dripped slowly from a cloth bag suspended above a wooden trough. Rosa explained the process to me. “First, we take the curds out of the suero (whey). Then we put it into the bag and allow the water to drip away,” she explained, squeezing the bag so even more drops fell into the trough. “Then, we knead it like dough. I’m just about to start that now.” Thelma had already washed her hands and rolled up her sleeves. She opened a bag of creamy curds and began kneading, adding coarse salt, as she went. “Want to try?” asked Rosa. Thelma passed the ball of curds to me. It was soft but with a density that pushed back unlike a bread dough. As I added salt, the texture became grainier. “Take a bite” said Thelma, pinching a piece off the curd ball. I hesitated and then took a bite. It was quite mild. Rosa gathered together two rounds of cheese and a bag of curds called requeson, passing one bag to Thelma and another to me. I attempted to hand over the money Mama Tayo had given me. “No, no, it’s a gift,” said Rosa pushing the money back. “Business is business,” said Thelma as she intervened, taking my quetzals, adding them to hers and pushing it back into Rosa’s hand. Faced with Thelma in business mode, Rosa pocketed the quetzals. By the time we left, the evening light was fading fast. A skinny dog scurried past, hugging the sides of the dirt path as though expecting a kick in the ribs. Cavernous belching sounds echoed from the woods. “What the hell is that?” I asked. “Zappos (frogs),” said Lorena My night vision problems forced me to assume a shuffling step to avoid tripping over rocks or potholes. With no moon, it was utter blackness. We eventually reached the San Vicente River. ‘There’s no time to climb the stairs over the bridge,” said Lorena, “Let’s wade cross the river.” We approached the river where its charcoal surface made it impossible to see how deep the water was. Flat rocks the size of turkey platters glowed faintly and we tiptoed our way safely across. I kept my eyes focused on the floral print of Lorena’s blouse and hugged my bundle of cheese to my chest. She linked her arm in mine and propelled me along a little faster. I stumbled along until, with relief, I could see the glow of San Vicente. Booming distortion of merengue music reached my ears and as we grew closer, I saw it originated from a pick-up truck. Its door flung open- there were at least 10 guys – the dull glint from their rifles illuminated by a lone street lamp. Great – I thought – a gang of thugs. Then I heard a familiar voice. “Cielo, there you are,” shouted Javier. He’d come to track us down and met up with cousins. Recipe: Quesadilla (cheesecake)Chapter 20: Guatemala Solo
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