Tuesday, May 8, 2012

A Trip Down Memory River


Some of the better Graffiti in San Jose



Lis on the left, and Rachel on the right.  Lis is my new buddy from Florida, and Rachel is a cool chica from Canada who now lives in Panama.  We went exploring San Jose together.


Lis noticed this.


On the right is Anita, and on the left, Anita's baby, debora, and Juan's wife Sandra.


Juan is measuring the lancha (a big boat) that was almost destroyed when it sank to the bottom of the river.


Juan Ruiz, one of my best friends, holding baby Deborah.


The first rule of Costa Rica is that plans will change.  The second rule is that plans will change again. I kept this in mind when I left San Jose to visit Delta.  Ana Moshenek, a crazy missionary woman that I have known for years, asked me to come by her farm so that Juan could take me out to Delta, but when I arrived I found out that Juan would  not be returning to Delta for at least 4 more days.  It never occurred to Ana that when I said that I wanted to go to Delta and see Juan and my neighbors, that I actually meant it.  She decided that what I really meant was that I wanted to go to Palmas and spend several days working for her and visiting with Juan.  Well, at least she got the part with Juan right.

For two days, Juan and I sat side by side in Ana's boat, the "hospitalito" cleaning and rewiring a mechanism that controls the motor.  This would  have been a simple task except that the mechanism was full of dirt and sand, and that half of the wires had faded to the point of being an indistinguishable shade of white.  Nevertheless, after two days of tinkering and fiddling and trying things out, we succeeded in fixing the control.  

Apart from working, we spent quite a bit of time sitting around the comedor, an open air dining room and living space, enjoying the fancy new electric lights, and telling stories about sisimiki, the Costa Rican version of bigfoot, as well as playing with baby Debora and discussing the jaguar that came to the edge of the yard each night for a week.  

All in all it was a good trip, but I am glad to be off the river.  I came here on vacation, and time with Ana is never a vacation!