In Costa Rica, safe and sound!
We're here and the whole place is wonderful. There's a hammock out on the veranda of the house I'm staying at and next to it grows a tree of tart little mamones chinos. I love them already, for all that they're hard to eat. And a little further away there are great papaya and mango and orange trees. And we drove for about four or five hours through Costa Rica; we drove by the Pacific Ocean and a volcano (though it was shrouded in mists) and a lowland dry forest and a bit of rainforest and tall windmills and I caught a tiny baby chameleon in my hand and watched it turn colors!
The countryside is beautiful. There are tall hills covered in greenery--so many different colors of green, you don't even know. And the clouds were deep and silver-gray and hung almost like veils over the tops of the hills, including the volcano. It was like looking at a great green stage with the curtains about to rise. Below those hills was a giant lake (once a valley, filled with water by the order of the govt), and it reflected everything back up because it was so still and calm. In the shallows it grew a bright greenish-blue. I'm told there are other places where the water is like turquoise and still others where it's like sapphires.
We also passed sheep and cows and horses and chickens who were allowed to roam along the street. The roads are very narrow (terrifyingly so) and when you leave the more urban areas, the plants and things grow right up to the edge. We could have reached out the window and picked flowers and fruits as we drove if we'd wanted.
My favorite thing (thus far) are the fence posts. Rather than cutting down trees to make into posts, they hew living branches off the trees, set them in the ground, and wrap barbed wire around them. The branches take root and continue to grow, so eventually, the fence is held in by little trees! They have to be tended, because if they grow too big, they can distort the line, but I love the idea of a living fence of trees.
Costa Rica's just kind of like that--they're very ecologically-conscious. Something like 90% of their energy comes from wind, water, or solar power; in fact, we past a bunch of wind turbines on our ride. There's an oil well somewhere in the country, but the govt refuses to sell it or drill for it.
It's about 5pm here (we're 2 hrs off EST, though Costa Rica doesn't do DSL), and though it's raining, it's still pretty light and warm out. The heat can get oppressive, but when the wind blows (and, here anyway, it smells of glass and flowers and cilantro, because it grows wild on their property), it's comfortable enough for me. I'm on the back porch, wearing a tanktop and jean shorts, completely barefoot. And even though the back porch is inside walls (I'll have to take pics, the setup is hard to explain), I'm still surrounded by plants, including a big aloe plant and several pots of ferns.
Internet connection is a little slow, but it's available, at least in certain parts of the house. But with so much to see and do (horseback riding, eeee!) I don't know how much I'll be on. I've also brought a ton of books with me, and as soon as it's done raining, I think I'll wander out to the hammock and the mamones chinos.
Beware my return when I will bear ALL THE PICTURES.
The countryside is beautiful. There are tall hills covered in greenery--so many different colors of green, you don't even know. And the clouds were deep and silver-gray and hung almost like veils over the tops of the hills, including the volcano. It was like looking at a great green stage with the curtains about to rise. Below those hills was a giant lake (once a valley, filled with water by the order of the govt), and it reflected everything back up because it was so still and calm. In the shallows it grew a bright greenish-blue. I'm told there are other places where the water is like turquoise and still others where it's like sapphires.
We also passed sheep and cows and horses and chickens who were allowed to roam along the street. The roads are very narrow (terrifyingly so) and when you leave the more urban areas, the plants and things grow right up to the edge. We could have reached out the window and picked flowers and fruits as we drove if we'd wanted.
My favorite thing (thus far) are the fence posts. Rather than cutting down trees to make into posts, they hew living branches off the trees, set them in the ground, and wrap barbed wire around them. The branches take root and continue to grow, so eventually, the fence is held in by little trees! They have to be tended, because if they grow too big, they can distort the line, but I love the idea of a living fence of trees.
Costa Rica's just kind of like that--they're very ecologically-conscious. Something like 90% of their energy comes from wind, water, or solar power; in fact, we past a bunch of wind turbines on our ride. There's an oil well somewhere in the country, but the govt refuses to sell it or drill for it.
It's about 5pm here (we're 2 hrs off EST, though Costa Rica doesn't do DSL), and though it's raining, it's still pretty light and warm out. The heat can get oppressive, but when the wind blows (and, here anyway, it smells of glass and flowers and cilantro, because it grows wild on their property), it's comfortable enough for me. I'm on the back porch, wearing a tanktop and jean shorts, completely barefoot. And even though the back porch is inside walls (I'll have to take pics, the setup is hard to explain), I'm still surrounded by plants, including a big aloe plant and several pots of ferns.
Internet connection is a little slow, but it's available, at least in certain parts of the house. But with so much to see and do (horseback riding, eeee!) I don't know how much I'll be on. I've also brought a ton of books with me, and as soon as it's done raining, I think I'll wander out to the hammock and the mamones chinos.
Beware my return when I will bear ALL THE PICTURES.