A Pre-Post, or Post-Post Apology, Depending on How You Read These

To my six dear, loyal readers.

I do apologize for the jumbled, discombobulated effort at an articulate post about my on-going bout with Dengue Fever, my Costa Rican Scam Artist of a Lawyer, and that Friggin‘ thief of a taxi driver whose window I had to crawl into to wrestle my change out of his grubby hands.

Anyone who reads my posts must know by now that I don’t re-read my posts before I post them, when it might be of some help…only after I post them, and then it’s usually my wife who tells me how badly written they are.

I have a completely valid excuse.

The mosquito that gave me this bout of Dengue Fever has given me a gift that keeps on giving, for a few months at least.  It seems that this more virulent strain I picked up this time causes such an internal buildup of heat on the brain that normal functions take two to six months to recover full operational mode….so, my last post contained even more misspellings, syntax problems, clarity trouble, and just downright nonsensical rambling.

I guess I should have given myself another couple of weeks before I subjected CyberLandia to the crap coming out of my over-cooked brain, but I wanted to see if I was back to my normal levels of poor writing now that I’ve passed though the hemorrhagic fever stage.

Guess not…..

Here’s to fully functioning brains…and to roasting that S.O.B. of a lawyer of mine…I’m coming for you, Pacheco !

Later….

Mosquitoes, Costa Rican Lawyers, Taxi Drivers to Huacas, and Other Blood Suckers

English: Stegomyia aegypti (formerly Aedes aegypti) mosquito biting a human. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just checked into my WordPress site and noticed I had not published anything in exactly three weeks.  I guess I have no real obligation to post anything, but my few followers have become somewhat of a social group – sort of.  I even saw a few comments from a week – or weeks ago – inquiring as to my health, or my degree of slow, degenerative demise.  How sweet.

About this Non-Posting thing.  It started out as a conscious choice – I Was Busy…with a Costa Rican residency lawyer who was backing out of a legal agreement when the going started getting rough.  The mosquito-borne Dengue Fever happened soon after, and the taxi driver thing…well…that’s been going on since the first gringo got off the plane in a Third World Country.  (Oh, yeah…the politically correct term now is Developing Nation, and since the Cold War was exposed for a colossal scam to fuel the ammunition and armaments biz…screw it – Developing Nation it is).

 

I am so pissed at my lawyer he is going to get his own post soon as I feel a bit more feisty, and it ain’t going to be pretty folks.  For now, though…let’s just hit the hi-lites.  There was a small glitch in our – my wife and mine – application for residency.  We put her down as the main name on everything.  Nothing much became of that during our initial proceedings, but when it came time to sign up for the socialized medicine aspect of our residency, our lawyer became one M.I.A. dodge of an S.O.B. – hanging out with his buddies in the pool at The Scamming Bastards Club in San Jose, no doubt.

The socialized medicine here is written into law, sometime around the new constitution of 1948 when Costa Rica abolished it’s military to focus on more important matters, such as education and free medical for all the citizens of this tiny, unimportant little Developing Nation.  But…something that hasn’t changed in this D.N. is that it is a patriarchal, Catholic-informed domain, and the man’s name should be on every document, application, or other such scraps of paper.  My wife and I were wondering why our lawyer had so expertly handled everything from our dealings with the American embassy to our finger-printing at the fortress-like San Jose police station.  All we got was an e-mail telling us to get hooked up with the CAJA (literally box, but an acronym for the Social Security here) for our medical, and a gentle demand for the rest of his legal fees.

Whoooooaaaaa, I thought.  Let’s see how all this plays out before we go depositing $1,200 in his account with no assurance of success in a land where anything legal moves glacially, and there’s always a hook or sixteen.  And why had he abandoned us at this seemingly simple (and final) step before we got our Cedulas which made us residents?  BECAUSE, grasshopper…with my wife’s name first on our application, and mine listed as a dependent, we had to get a letter from a Costa Rican accountant verifying that anyone would be silly enough to list a woman’s name first on their application.  After several trips to Manana-Land with our lawyer (we have no car, so we have to beg or borrow rides, paying for gas at around $6, or paying $50 taxi rides).

We finally got to an accountant in a small town down a muddy, rutted road to Huacas.  He wrote the letter out wrong, using one he had prepared for someone else.  The names were in the wrong places, and the occupation was wrong.  It took several rides to the Vientesiete de Abril CAJA office to get a human to talk to us (using up our goodwill and money each time) until we got a bitchy little man to laugh in our faces and tell me the accountant’s paper was useless.  (It was around this time I woke up one morning with a fever that had sweat dripping from me, my clothes as wet as if I had just got out of a swimming pool, and shaking from chills so bad I couldn’t push the buttons on my phone).

To make a long and painful story short, so I can get on to the next one, we had to make four trips to Vientesiete de Abril, two trips to the canton capital of Santa Cruz, and two to the provincial capital of Liberia trying to get someone to show up for the many appointments we made trying to rectify the bureaucratic problem of a woman’s name being on top of a man’s in the great paperwork pile of life.  $$$$$$$$ and GoodWill all gone, it was taxi time, folks.  The lawyer who dicked it up in the beginning…remember him?  The only replies to our e-mails for help was his Sincere disbelief that such things were happening to us, and calls for our final moneys to be deposited QUICKLY.  And, the accountant who could have repaired our application, but dicked it up worse?  He refused to answer his phone, and his beefy secretary blocked all attempts to enter his office.  And, you have to remember, each move costed…and costed…

A TEM micrograph showing Dengue virus virions (the cluster of dark dots near the center). Español: Partículas maduras del virus del Dengue-2 replicándose en un cultivo tisular de cinco días. La magnificación original es de 123,000 veces. Deutsch: Eine TEM-Aufnahme, welche Dengue-2-Virus Virionen zeigt (schwarze Punkte in der Mitte). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, this Dengue Fever thing.  It just got worse and worse.  Dengue Fever is transmitted by several types of mosquito within the genus Aedes, principally Aedes Aegypti, from Africa.  It is pretty much confined to tropical areas, but has been reported as far north as Southern Florida.  The virus has four different types; infection with one type usually gives lifelong immunity to that type, but only short-term immunity to the others.  I got the least of the virulent type almost one year ago exactly when I was living in San Jose.  It was a week of one of the worst flues most people will ever get, and then it was gone.  No big deal.  This was a different bug altogether. Subsequent infection with a different type increases the risk of severe complications, so Wikipedia says…and that’s what I got.

Dengue Fever is also called Breakbone Fever, since the muscles get so constricted that it has been blamed for broken bones in the very young, or very old and brittle.  Every bone in my body hurt…every muscle in my body hurt…the headache settles in behind the eyes, like the worst hangover headache time 100…chills rattled my bones….sweat poured from every pore, soaking my bed nightly…it hurt to turn my head…my fingernails hurt…my hair hurt…any sustained thought is impossible.

Most people, with insurance or family to pay for hospitalization do it, since it kills off the white blood cells, and when they drop from @250,000 count to under 85,000, the patient is in serious danger of a life-threatening stroke after it hits the hemorrhagic fever stage. No one is paying my doctor’s bills, and the insurance thing…that’s where I started this little rant about Bloodsuckers.

My self-prescription was staying in my smelly, sweat-soaked bed, drinking pure grape juice (builds up the white blood cell count) and trying not to move my eyes or touch my hair.  But, every few days the wife and I had to venture out and try to get the medical insurance thing straightened out…and write my lawyer a quick “Piss Off and Die” e-mail.

English: A positive tourniquet test on the left side of the image in a person with dengue fever. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m getting known in town a bit by now, but there are still a few taxi drivers who think every gringo can’t count when the colones get up into the tens of thousands.  One of these Bloodsuckers tried to take of with a few dollars of change after another ride back from another disappointing ride to a disappointing half-day spent in an non-air conditioned office where another gringo-hating hack laughed at me for having my wife’s name above mine on our application papers.  I guess the taxi driver was used to confused, passive gringos who think just because the money has lots of numbers on it, and pretty colors, and pictures of monkeys and toucans, that’s it’s not real.  WRONG !

Despite my debilitating disease, for which I should have been in the hospital for, under a doctor’s care, I climbed through his window, grabbed his skinny,

old wrist, and wrenched my money our of his hand…tossing him a few coins, before telling him to go and have sex with his mother in Spanish, which probably surprised him more than a man as sick as me doing what I had just done.  At least he had something to talk about that afternoon with the rest of the boys at the cab stand….and my standing as the craziest gringo on the streets of Tamarindo shot up like Apple stock after the release of the newest iPhone.

There’ll be more when I’m feeling a bit better…lot’s more…I promise.  Pacheco, you’re lawyering days are going to take a serious spike downward.  Don’t screw around with writers…they have audiences, and they’re articulate enough to cause a bit of a ruckus.

Later…

Monkey Business

Becoming known as a local in a small town is a long process, even with the Howler monkeys. It takes more than a year, usually, and you’ve got to learn the language. My wife and I were out jungling around the other day looking for monkeys, and finally gave up and went to the beach. Something unusual happened. A troop of about twenty Howler monkeys were there, and they were on the move, not liking the wind, the approaching rain, and the people gathering at the beach bars for happy hour. They walked, one by one, down a fence we were standing next to, then jumped up into a tree right above us. I’ve learned to bark, hoot, and gutterly grunt like they do, so they stopped to check us out. I guess we’re gaining local standing, if only with the Howlers. Then the daily flood started and they went swinging off into the higher trees. This place is a miracle a day, if you stay awake, pay attention, and learn the language of the locals.
Aoooaaaghhhh – uugghhh – ugghhh…
Later…

Hot Coffee, Same-Sex Unions, and Ohio – Running for Cover

Rust Belt (Photo credit: jenni from the block)

So, I’m still on the run…or on vacation, as some people call it.

Morning coffee…cigarette…all good to go – until I spilled that hot coffee on my bare foot, causing me to drop my cigarette in the folds of my cat pyjamas.  The fire was a threat to spread to the newpaper I was reading, those heartless black and white symbols of progress and knowledge all going up in smoke?  Not on my watch !  I should know betterthan to read the news – I should KNOW better !

Yelping for my wife in my usual exaggerated, animated, over-reactive manner, she didn’t know whether to respond to a flood, a forest fire, a visit from a deity, or just go back to bed – which is often her most sensible choice, and she can be sensible.  Despite all that, she rushed to the front deck, carrying a glass of cold water – which she doused my lap with…thanks, hon ! – then tossed a towel at me, then gave me her best scowl, disappointed there was no true emergency, since they usually suggest degrees of her superiority to me in such situations.  But, I was engrossed in the news of the day, and the reason for my latest morning histrionics was a bit of breaking news, and dysfunction from my adopted country, Costa Rica.  Try this on for size:

THE WORLD

Costa Rica:  Conservative lawmakers are mortified that they may have accidentally approved language making same-sex unions legal when they passed legislation this week and didn”t notice that the final version of the bill had changed earlier language that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.  President Laura Chinchilla signed the bill late Thursday.  She has refused to veto the bill.

Laura Chinchilla (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I do love these fumbling, bumbling attempts to restrict the private lives of human beings…they never seem to work out just right.  And, before anyone in some industrialized, “First World” country gets too puffed up about how screwed up those political posers in so-called “Third World” countries can get while trying to imitate the streamlined, well-oiled legislative processes of their betters, STOP !  I used to live in Ohio, the Mississippi of the North, as I’ve heard a few people call it.  It will always be the Buckle of the Rust Belt to me…but I am getting away from my purpose.

I survived Ohio for fourteen years, finishing a sort of education and teaching at a university there.  I was going to get married at one point, before I discovered it was illegal for me to do so….and it wasn’t because of my sexual preferences.

I was – and still am – an epileptic. My kind has a history with the conservative, uber religious set as being spawn of the devil, a danger to the pure gene pool.  Really…I’m not joking.  Religious influence in early law-making labeled epileptics as “spawn of the devil” and “marked by the beast as his” and were gently – sometimes not so gently – encouraged to not breed.

(These dim wits thought forbidding undesirables the right to marry would keep them from reproducing…”who you calling imbecile, imbecile?”).  I guess I haven’t got to the part about imbeciles and marriage yet, so, maybe I should…here:

In the stilted view of Ohio lawmakers of yore I was bunched in with a class of humans to be banned from that most public of pools, humans such as habitual drunkards, epileptics, imbeciles, or the insane.  These laws were pushed into being by eugenicists…conservative crusaders whose agenda was to cleanse their world of racial characteristics they thought unnecessary, and encourage those they thought needed preserving.  This marriage law forbidding licenses to unapproved persons was passed in 1904, and came into question during a 1925 push to ban interracial marriage.  Sterilization was a proposal included in cases such as these.

Sterilization and culling the herd using medical practices and procedures…proposed by conservatives?  Ohhhh, there are so many plot twists and twirling, swirling storylines in this Work in Progress most people refer to as the World.

Most of this nonsense was kicked around or ignored until it was repealed in a more sober moment.  Epilepsy was forgotten in the debate.  There has never been much of an Equal Rights for Injured Epileptics (ERIE) movement, and Che Guevara never made it far enough north to incite the social outrage and encourage the necessary civil disobedience that Henry David Thoreau did in his landmark work, Civil Disobedience.  I guess Thoreau didn’t excite people the way Guevara did…or the CIA was too lax to murder him when they had the chance.  (I jest…there was no CIA back then – hence, Thoreau and his kind).

Speaking of a lack of sobriety, political screw-ups, and Ohio – which are three topics nearly anyone can gracefully incorporate into any sentence, and, I think, belong in a special knowledge-base tested for in the public school system since the No Child Left Behind disaster –  listen to this: Ohio was not truly a state until 1953 !  It was another governmental clerical error, one on a much larger scale than Costa Rican lawmakers could ever imagine.

Thomas Jefferson signed an act of Congress in February of 1803 that approved Ohio’s state boundaries and constitution.  The debate over the sensibility of statehood had been carried out in a tavern…whatever…more heinous crimes have been hatched in kitchens, garages, boardrooms and Senate chambers.  Any Way…Some How, Congress never passed a resolution formally admitting Ohio as the 17th state.  The paperwork was misplaced during the excitement over the Lousiana Purchase and the War of 1812.

The rules for such recognition changed in 1812, during that excitement over the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812, and the oversight was not discovered until 1953.  Ohio congressman George H. Bender frantically introduced a bill in Congress to admit Ohio to the Union, since the state was in the process of arranging for the 150 year anniversary of their statehood – or non-statehood, as was the official case.  Anticipating inquiries, outrage, and paperwork problems concerning taxes paid to the Federal Government, relatives killed in wars, prison sentences served, and other such rewards and/or penalties of statehood, Ohio’s formal admission to the Union was made retroactive to March 1, 1803.  The new petition for statehood was delivered to Washington D.C. on horseback.

(I have neighbors in Costa Rica who, until fifteen years ago, got their power bills delivered by horsemen).

President Dwight D. Eisenhower postponed his usual tee time on August 7, 1953, and scrawled his signature across the dotted line at the bottom of the bill…and Ohio’s anniversary plans went on as planned.

My answer to this sort of nonsense is, pour another cuppa coffee – Costa Rican only…light another Cowboy Killer, rearrange the sodden pages of the neighbors’ newspaper before I put it back into the plastic covering and replace it on their porch, and just carry on with the more mundane and managable aspects of life.  But, I hear rumblings from the locals…tales of sneaky legislation trying to regulate the pursuit if happiness, pertaining to others only, of course – others those regulators don’t know.  I hear Ohio is still a state, and I guess there’s nothing I can do about that.  So…I guess the boat floats, for the moment.  Be back soon….

Later….

Ten Plagues Upon Playa Tamarindo

English: Second plague of Egypt. Frogs. Picture from popular bible encyclopedia of archimandrite Nikiphor (1891 year). Русский: Вторая казнь Египетская – жабы. Иллюстрация из иллюстрированной библейской энциклопедии архимандрита Никифора (1891 год) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A wet season downpour drove me inside yesterday, and the usual internet problems left me with little to do besides…read books.

My latest acquisition is a Bible, courtesy of some Evangelicals who are trying to pester the loyal Catholic mobs to cast their culture aside, and slide into social anarchy before being redeemed by the Cult of Speaking in Tongues and Snake Handling.

I have read this book before, and know to skip Genesis…that first page always gets me, where God is a singular sky god for a while, then a plural land god when he says, “Let us make man in our image” before becoming a singular sky god again.

Bad editing and no consideration for continuity always drive me to close a book, or go directly to the end and find out what happened, allowing me to feel like I read it.  That’s been my approach in the past, go straight to Revelations, and read a few chapters in reverse order.

Now, if you’re looking for some tough talking, action-packed, tightly written words with the power of a literary locomotive, that’s a good place to start.  I usually get bored by Kings or where everyone is begatting, so I’ve never read Exodus.  I should have, since that book seems to hold the secret to the Wet Season torments that drove me inside in the first place…the Ten Plagues that Moses allegedly brought down on the Egyptians.  If I go over them one at a time you’ll see what I mean.  “Fasten your seatbelts – it’s going to be a bumpy night,” as Bette Davis advised her entourage in the film “All About Eve.”  (Another Biblical reference…hmmmm).  Don’t let me digress…here are the plagues I missed in Exodus, but am living out now:

1) Plague of Blood – when it rain here in Central America, it rains.  And, since the roads are not paved and there are no ditches or water channels, they become rivers of mud…in the case of western Costa Rica, where the earth has a red tint to it due to iron and other volcanic minerals, the rivers running by my front door are Red as Blood.  Torrents of knee-deep water come down the hill behind my place, carrying boulders the size of bean bag chairs.  A good friend of mine has scars on his shins from sliding down one of these roads a couple of years ago…a good reason to stay inside.

2) Plague of Frogs – I heard this trumpeting sound the other night.  The lonely little EMS vehicle always parked outside the main market, I thought.  I’d never heard it, since it hasn’t moved in the eight months I’ve lived here.  But it sounded like geese…big geese, the volume of their calls bringing to mind visions of madness.  But, as usual, I was wrong.  It is the rainy season infestation of frogs, a friend told me.  He also told me if I wanted to see them all I had to do was go down to our pool, which they take over for the month or so they’re in their rutting period.  So, I went.  Frogs were in the pool, and around the pool on lounge chairs, puffing up and emitting a terrifying sound from their froggy mouths to advertise their sexual potency.  But they were hand-sized creatures, hardly large enough to emit so much noise, but what do I know…I retreated to my apartment building, toweled off, and slammed the door in case any of the croakers followed me and tried to slip in after me.

3) Plague of Lice or Gnats – hasn’t happened yet…but I know where the EMS vehicle is now.

4) Plague of Flies or Wild Animals – Wet Season does bring on an unusual amount of flies, and the animals are coming back down out of the hills.  The Howler monkeys have set up shop across the street and in the patches of jungle beside and behind my apartment building.  I saw a juvenile yesterday, hanging by his tail, using a tree branch like a switch as he tormented the dogs howling beneath.  I felt better after that, knowing I wasn’t the only creature suffering these plagues.

5) Plague of Pestilence – I forgot what pestilence means…and, everyone has their own definition, so I’ll let this one sit.  I’ve got enough to deal with already with Rivers of Blood, Frog Gangs and Switch-wielding Howlers.

6) Plague of Boils – there is usually a boil alert when water starts washing the sewage and garbage down from where the Nicaraguan and Columbian illegals have set up their shanty towns.  I already knew this…not plague worthy in my book.

7) Plague of Hail – I haven’t seen any hail yet, but the rain is falling so hard that a piece of the roof fell in not long ago.  Not a large piece of roof…just enough to damage an iron railing, or bust a head if anyone had been walking beneath it.  Fell on the steps just outside my back bedroom window, where I was reading Exodus…I think I should have stuck with the wickedly fierce prose in Revelations.

8) Plague of Locusts – Locusts, Schmocusts…I have grasshoppers the size of magic markers coming in and out of my place all the time.  They take over the coffee pot when they please, and licked the cream my wife spilled right off the floor.  They crunch under foot when I step on them on my way to empty the garbage…a sound similar to when tap dancers toss sand on a stage before they start their steel-bottom shoed shenanigans.

9) Plague of Darkness – hasn’t occurred as of yet, but it would be a relief.  The Howlers shut up, it never rains at night, and it would be convenient if those frogs got run over by the drunken, brain-dead surfers that race around on the mud-slickened roads after a hard day of Flor de Cana rum and the head-high, right-breaking waves I hear crashing against the shore.

10) Plague of the First-Born – being a first-born, I don’t even want to hear about this.  I’m definitely staying away from this Old Testament mayhem…going back to the ferocious idyll of Revelations, thank you.  I’ve learned my lesson for the day.  And, if I end up going to Hell for any perceived insolence, I’ll go with the words of Mark Twain on my lips –

“Heaven for climate, Hell for company.”

Later…

 

A Mother’s Day Visitor

Cats are not popular pets in Costa Rica.  Dogs are the most valuable, since they also serve as security systems.  Cats, such as this little kitten, are often killed or fed to dogs to get them comfortable and used to killing and attacking.  Cats usually have the fear in their eyes, if you even see one, and avoid most human contact.  This kitten was hyper-vigilant and in fight-or-flight mode for about half an hour, but soon calmed down once my wife got to feeding her…making bed spaces in every room…and crawling around on the floor with her.

 

 

 

We had nothing to feed her but cheese, bread, and finally a plate of scrambled eggs.  My wife, being allergic to cats, has never had a kitten, and surely wasn’t prepared for this one.  She knew she was going to suffer swollen ankles, watery eyes, and probably a whopper of a migraine headache, but she was full of Oxytocin – the mothering hormone – and she played the role of mama cat for a couple of days like a trooper.  But, we immediately started looking around for a home, and in a small, spread-out community like ours, looking for someone to take a kitten called for a bit of social media mining.  Tamarindo has two different websites for socializing…Tamarindo Social Network and Tamarindo Garage Sale.  She got going with both of them, posting photos and going on and on about how cute, spirited and playful she was.  It worked.  A family from Playa Langosta, a few kilometers south of here, called and said they wanted her.  Since cats aren’t very popular, kittens are rare…and they WANTED HER !

 

 

Meanwhile, she had discovered the couch.

Her belly was as full as it had probably been in a while.

She was relaxed and safe in the company of her rescuers.

She still had more to explore, and she got to it in no time.

 

 

 

I was so worn out from our pet rescue operation that I went in the back bedroom to take a siesta while one of the first rain storms of the Wet Season was whipping down out of the hills…the perfect sound to go to sleep to.

But, our visitor had other plans.  She discovered me – I think it had something to do with my wife putting her food dishes next to the bed.

After the kitten cleaned up her cheese, bread, and scrambled eggs, she discovered the bed, and then what beds are for.

It was a fun few days.  I’ve had cats all my life…my wife had never been around the craziness that a little minx like this brings into the lives of their humans.

 

I have, and I knew that once I let her up on that bed my rainy afternoon siesta was over…she would be dozing off, and I would be nothing more than a back-stroking and chin-scratching machine.  So be it.  Thanks to my wife’s efforts, and the power of social media, our three-day kitten’s new family came and picked her up yesterday.  After the family left with the kitten I heard a sniffling sound…my wife who was going to pay in allergic reactions was having a small case of separation anxiety and feelings of loss.  That’s what saving a kitten and giving it a couple of days of your life will get you…and a few pictures.

Road Tripping Down the Dead Road

I’ve got these back problems, you see.  When I was working as a tour guide in Mexico I broke my back.  It never gets better, but I got some advice from a local directing me to a “real chiropractor” out on the barren road to Langosta Beach.  And, this local said she was cheap.  We all have different standards.

My wife and I got lost, finding ourselves on a side road.  I asked a fisherman about a doctor for backs, and he pointed to a walled compound where a sign warned of dangerous dogs.  Walking around to the front of the chiropractor’s office I came across the dangerous dogs, asleep in the heat.

A metal pad at the side of the doorway had an “Empuje” sign above it, so I impujed.  An elderly woman appeared, told me she was with a client for the next hour, and to come back later.  One dangerous dog opened an eye, the other raised his head, looked me over, then let his head loll back against the iron fence.  What to do?  The Tamarindo Municipal Park was across the street.

I loved the name of the park…in gringo…Mangler Park.  The park was a desolate, dry, dead place, as every place is during the dry season.  The sign advertised a Fitness Course, and I’m always in need of some more fitnessing.  We wanders in to find the only two creatures in the park other than ourselves were two full-grown Turkey Buzzards.  They weren’t leaving, no matter how close we got to them, and I urged my wife forward with her camera…telling her they must have some carcass they were working over or they would have flown.  She got within ten feet of the pair before she started complaining of the smell.

 

The male had been standing guard…the female was busy mangling what was left of an Iguana.  The male flew up into a tree, but the female was not going to leave her small, smelly piece of the food chain.  She kept to her mangling.  We decided to wait outside on the dead, dusty road to Langosta and the Ghost Hotel.

 I began to have second thoughts about our little health excursion down the Dead Road, and suggested we walk back up the road to where I had spotted some ancient ruins…ancient for Costa Rica.

Yes, the remnants of a long-dead culture.  The ruins of the first building boom brought on by the gringo invasion of the 1970s, gone bust when the colonists abandoned their dreams, deciding that dry seasons, rainy seasons, high season for tourists, and low season for tourists were not the extreme variations they were looking for in their search for Paradise.  The strong – Los Brovos, survive here…the weak go home, if they have one to go to.  I don’t.  I’m thinking of changing addresses from the Ghost Hotel to the Ancient Ruins by the Beach.

Stealing My Wife’s Gold

I’m working today. Thought I’d put up a couple of my favorite sunset photos my wife takes every night. This is one of my favorites…golden, golden, golden. Later….

Beach Angel Blessing

This is a re-working of a Sand Art photo my wife took two weeks ago.  We thought it needed a little something, so she manipulated it with a few added touches of color.  The original is below.

 

 

 

Some difference.  This Sand Art thing is something we’ve been working on for a while.  The model is willing, and always available…the sea and sand and wind will never complain, show up late after a late night of partying, and no wages.  And the combination of sand, sea, and wind seems to leave us enough abstract drainage patterns every day, twice a day, we will never run out of subject matter.  And, the sweet little bonus…it’s a bit of the wife and husband activity thing that gives us something constructive and artistic we can do together.

Later…

My Undefeated Champion

Monday…a good day to chill at the beach and race hermit crabs. Chainsaw, my find for the day, went undefeated in four races. Moving on to the Playa Conchal Invitational.

New York Soda Ban Dealt Severe Blow

New York city’s mayor Michael Bloomberg brought his campaign to ban super-sized soft drinks to Costa Rica. Fearful residents flooding airport in anticipation of violence as communications cut.

Mad Dog Terrorizes Small Beach Community

My wife and I were combing the beach yesterday afternoon, as we often do, looking for photographic opportunities, unusual shells, and absorbing our daily dose of vitamin D.  There are rarely many people on the beach at mid-day.  The tourists have mostly retreated to their hotel rooms, restaurants, or beach bars where they can cuddle up to air conditioners.  The beach vendors can be found in the shade of palm trees, discussing the current crop of cheapskates who aren’t buying their bird whistles or Chinese-produced Costa Rican handicrafts.

It’s hot here in the afternoon…hot enough to drive just about anyone or anything to fits of unusual behavior.

So, we’re walking down the beach and we see a black beach dog out in the waves pawing at something floating in the water.  My wife thought this interesting behavior, and took a photograph.  The dog noticed us, and rushed out of the surf, dropping a coconut shell at our feet.  Yelping and growling, the creature batted the coconut about with his paws, knocking the nut into submission.

My past experience with mad dogs made me think I should back away from the scene unfolding before me.  My wife – such a brave soul – started clicking away, hoping to record the carnage for mass distribution and edification. The vicious animal began ripping away at the helpless fruit, pawing at it and pinning it to the ground.  In the rush of the moment my wife didn’t notice her shadow in the frame.

 

I tried taking on one of these tough nuts on Playa Negra once, smashing the coconut against the edge of a concrete bench.  The bench suffered some, chipped pieces of concrete flying in all directions,  but the husk of the coconut suffered little more than a dent.  I gave up.

But this dog was not to be deterred.  He growled, and barked, and pawed, and tore at his defenseless victim.  I felt helpless as the shredded pieces of the body were strewn about the beach before us.

 

As quickly as the vicious attack had begun, it ended.  The black beach dog sniffed at the dismembered coconut, looked up at us to gauge our response to his show of power.  Then, he turned and calmly walked away, head swaying from side to side, snake-hipping his way down the beach to confront and vanquish any other insolent nuts that looked as though they needed a reminder who was truly the King of Playa Tamarindo.  The torn flesh of the beach nut before us was the only evidence that anything out of the ordinary had happened, so we made our way up the beach.  Calling the police into the situation would only have complicated our day.

 

Back on My Beach

Semana de Santa is over…the tourists have gone home. I have my beach back. All is well…all is well.
Later…

Cleaning Up My Corner of Costa Rica

 

 

 

I read a post by a WordPresser who goes by the title inoniamartin in which she spoke of a young man named Ryan who had decided to take  it upon himself to clean up an area of beach.  She went on to say how inspired she and her two children were by his actions that they went out and cleaned up a park they frequent.  She sent out an  invitation to followers to do the same, then make a blog post about it.

This is something I do already, since I like my beach enough to pick up the refuse left by people who don’t like my beach enough to keep it clean, I asked my wife/photographer to come along and take a few shots of me doing what I do.

 

Some of what I often find left on the beach is bio-degradable, like pieces of pineapple, coconut shells which vendors sell with a straw to drink the juice, which they call “pipa.”  These sorts of items are a part of the eco-system here, and I usually leave them since animals eat them, or live in them, or hide in them.

Then, there’s the stuff the sign was for…the things people leave on the beach that will be there forever.  And, much of it can be dangerous to people who like to walk on the beach barefoot…people like me.  I picked up several pieces of broken glass from beer bottles, something that can send the unsuspecting beachcomber to the hospital, or the nearest beach club for a little first aid.  And then, there’s the junk that is just annoying.

 

Yes, Coke is the real thing, so I’ve heard…but not part of the ideal beach experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the bag…along with a plastic container, empty of cans and left floating on the tide.  Some of the beach vendors have garbage bags attached to the sides of their carts, but there’s still plenty of garbage to keep someone like me busy…busy enough to fill one bag with garbage, and then another.

 

 

 

 

 

The results of an hour or two of cleaning my small corner of a Costa Rican beach…

 

 

A clean beach the next morning, for me…for my wife…for my neighbors…for the tourists here for only a few days…and for you, Ryan.  It may be a beach you will never visit, and I may never visit the beach you cleaned up, but we did something good for the world, and all the people and animals that share it with us.  There are some sea turtles here called Leatherbacks, which are an endangered species that only come ashore and lay their eggs here on this beach.  I’m sure they would appreciate people like you if they spoke anything but turtle.  Good luck in your effort to keep your beach clean, I’ll continue to do what I can to do the same.

 

Sea Turtle on beach in Costa Rica (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

Jatropha – The Little Bio-Fuel Fruit that Could…Scare the Oil Gangs

 

 

I met Rogelio Murillo, a Costa Rican businessman operating a wind farm in the Vulcan Arenal area, and Hans Haeberer, a German engineer and partner in Clean Fuel and Energy for Latin America (C-Fela), when I moved to San Jose, Costa Rica a year ago.  They told me of a model Jatropha plantation they were involved with…Murillo contributing his knowledge of renewable energy, and Haeberer funneling investment and applying his expertise as an engineer.  The plantation was the brainchild of Eduardo Acosta, a Cuban who grew up in California.  The three are pictured above – Murillo, Haeberer, and Acosta, left to right.  The plantation has been featured on television programs on bio-fuels, and Acosta regularly updates his advancements in the propagation, harvesting, and processing of the plant for clean, sustainable use as a bio-fuel on his website www.greenacrescostarica.com.

Research has showed that oil from the crushed seeds of Jatropha make an excellent bio-fuel.  The plant has an advantage over other plants being used for bio-fuel production in that it not only tolerates, but grows well on dry, rocky soil unsuited to agriculture…such as the over-farmed, then over-grazed lands readily available in Costa Rica and nearly every Central and South American nation.  And, since most of the land they are purchasing, or interested in purchasing, is nearly useless to farmers or ranchers, it’s inexpensive…millions of hectares have been, or are in the process of being purchased.

European companies, lined up by Haeberer, have small-scale production machinery based on a model developed by Acosta, one he put together from a bicycle and spare parts, as well as a cooking stove fashioned specifically for Jatropha oil.  Acosta, along with C-Fela, has been addressing the problems encountered by others who have attempted to utilize Jatropha in the past, difficulty in seeding, harvesting, and the toxicity of the wild plant.  Planting Jatropha in conjunction with Coyol Palms, Bamboo, and other bio-fuel producers have made for more bio-diverse plantation planning, and when possible, are arranged in what Haeberer calls “bio corridors” providing migration routes and living space for wildlife, some species on the endangered list.  The day I visited Green Acres Costa Rica we found Acosta photographing Scarlet Macaws, a once plentiful species, now threatened due to loss of habitat.

The media in the United States has generally lined up against Jatropha as a viable source of bio-fuel:

A 2007 article in the New York Times warned that cultivation of Jatropha on a scale broad enough to make bio-fuel production financially attractive would infringe on fertile land currently producing food crops.  A March 2009 article in Time Magazine focused on the Myanmar government‘s efforts to encourage Jatropha cultivation, and raised a warning that decreased food supplies were inevitable.  Another Time article, from October, 2009, claimed the Kenyan and Indian governments were being bamboozled by shady speculators pushing farmers into Jatropha farming with little reliable information that it could work, leading them to certain devastation.  A 2009 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found  that a natural breed of Jatropha used more water per gallon of biofuel than many other biofuel crops. This study was later contradicted in a letter from other scientists who claimed PNAS’s findings “too simplistic” in their calculations of estimated water consumption.

Then, there’s the plain greedy and larcenous.

A March 15, 2012 article in Bloomberg Businessweek gave several examples of the dangers of investing in Jatropha plantations.  In 2006, BioShape, a Dutch company approached the Tanzanian government with tales of jobs, economic aid and fortunes to be made if they would allow the company to create and operate Jatropha plantations among 11 rural villages.  Tanzania allowed…BioShape logged the land…2006 became 2010…BioShape’s telephone, disconnected…a spokesperson for Eneco, a Dutch backer of the project, declined to comment…attorneys from the Lawyer’s Environmental Action Team, advocating for Tanzanian workers who were left unemployed, and jungle-less, claimed, “The company was not interested in Jatropha, they were interested in timber.”  Jatropha took the blame for the failure.

The same article related accounts of Worldwide Bio Refineries – seven men connected to the company convicted in a British court for fraudulently claiming to be producing biodiesel from Jatropha, as well as Sun Biofuels, a British company, and Viridis, both who failed to hold investor confidence.  Viridias shifted its operations to mining, making it a safe investment.  Gem BioFuels and D1 Oils (in a joint venture with BP) also proved unprofitable, citing lack of investors.  Tales of theft and disappeared investments have their effects.

Where profits are involved, every organ serves a purpose…it seems media outlets, many owned by corporations which are also heavily invested in the oil industry, seem to be serving theirs.  So it goes.

But, there have been recent successes with Jatropha-based bio-fuel, the flashiest, an Aeromexico flight between Mexico City and Madrid, Spain,in August of 2012.  The airline industry is the one that will benefit the most, and the quickest, from the use of bio-fuels utilizing Jatropha.  Boeing is quietly involved, financing and supporting research and development of Jatropha oil.  Cuba recently used Jatropha-based bio-fuels in an experimental automobile, reporting the engine to be in better condition after using the bio-diesel than it was before.  So, it seems that the countries that have the most to lose – those whose economy is based on petro-chemical fuels, are lined up against Jatropha, while those not dependant on oil-based economies are busy refining the cultivation and utilization of other options.

The energy and environmental future of the world could be decided in Latin America on plantations that look like this…