Thursday, January 2, 2014

the generation of disenchantment

In the 1980s, Costa Rica abandoned realism.

This is in the words of Wikipedia; I was not born yet.

The farm in which I am staying is a part of this movement. Abandoning the real. It is at the end of a very long, winding road that requires finesse with four wheel drive and manual transmission that I cannot imagine. Our cabin is on the top of the mountain. Top. There are sloths, toucans (en masse), tiny frogs that fit on your fingernails. There are large fluffy dogs that almost make me wish that there were snow (so that they could pull me along in a sleigh to the beach.)

All of the food is raw vegan... and amazing. You can pick all of your fruit off of the fruit trees, and use holy basil as insect repellant, and if you want to swim in a waterfall--you have at least 5 options (though all of them require some pretty serious hiking. Which is okay by me.) When I want to peel an avocado and eat it whole with sea salt on it, I do it, because there are at least ten other avocados (it's all-inclusive room and board for both of us for $75 a night,) and nothing bad ever happened by eating an avocado. I do yoga at 7 am in a "yoga pagoda," on which thousands of leaf-cutter ants also do yoga, because they are made of steel and their meditation involves lifting foliage six times their size.

Spanish is mostly useless in the hippie mountains. Fortunately, I had a two hour cab drive during which to practice when Julian and I traveled here from Quepos--and the driver told me all kinds of interesting things about the area and palm trees and caracaras. Quepos was neat, mostly because we were able to stand on the roof of the hostel and see fireworks in literally all directions (the closest of which were only 50 yards away... and enormous, and hot.) Manuel Antonio National Park had monkeys and raccoons with nefarious intentions, stunning beaches with the warmest water I have ever felt in not-a-jacuzzi, and an interesting accompanying beach town. Our shuttle from San Jose to Quepos was laden with strange and informative conversation. The Marriott near San Jose was... a Marriott. Really really really pretty (it used to be a coffee plantation) and relaxing, but that's about it. Free chocolate chip cookies! Wishing I had smuggled some here a little bit... but that's the old me. New me is strangely tempted to move to a tropical location and build an orchard/teepee/greenhouse.

For some reason, I can't email myself photos from my phone right now... and I forgot my photo transfer camera stuff. So! Imagine a number of fascinating tropical creatures here!

:)

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