Pixie in Paradise

I’ve been away from my beloved Playa Negra for only four days and I will describe my mental state as something between an unnecessary pout, an about-to-happen toddler tantrum and a mini depression. I also feel that there’s some culture shock happening, not because I’m in Costa Rica, but because this is the first time I’ve been in a huge city in almost six months. I lived on a small island in Belize for three months, a very small one that didn’t allow cars and had few to no emergency response systems in place. There I happily shared the road on foot or bike with golf carts, no speeding, no sirens and luckily the one time a gun went off, I was at home and didn’t hear it and the bullet wasn’t meant for me.

For the last two months I’ve been on solid ground – I do not consider an island “solid” – and always within five minutes of the ocean and a coastline of dreamy beaches. I adjusted so quickly even with that first not so ideal living situation in Puerto Viejo, before moving to Playa Negra, finally accepting the living conditions were going to need to be better. I adapted but also accepted the fact that in order to stay productive I would need a more peaceful environment, with functioning plumbing. I found one and have never been more content and at peace in my entire life, not that I can remember anyway.

In a matter of days the powerful, grounding sounds of howler monkeys not only became normal, but something I craved hearing. Many of the jungle animals that Central American countries share were not prevalent or there at all on my Belizean island, only on the mainland, so I had never heard the sound of howler monkeys (monos congos) but I had seen them up close my first time in Costa Rica and Panama this past October. At a monkey sanctuary while I was petting a howler monkey and another one was messing with my straw hat no one let out that scary thunderous cry, thankfully. Without a doubt I would have peed my pants upon hearing that so close to my ears, and so would the eight children and 12 other adults next to me.

Howler monkeys live in troops, and each morning and night or when it is about to rain, one troop will loudly call out to let the other troops know where they’re settled in the trees for the time being. This thunderous noise, which can be heard from three miles away, is a warning to the other troops not to get close.

The first house I stayed at in Puerto Viejo was on the edge of town, close to the jungle and their noise was so powerful that I didn’t recognize it for what it was at first. I kept hearing a strange noise each time I sat out on the patio in my hammock. I can only describe it as if there was an overactive dog kennel nearby. It sounded as if someone was opening the kennel door then closing it quickly and all of the noise was then contained inside. I know it’s crazy but I was envisioning some kennel helper going in and out of the door to a huge, overpopulated dog kennel filled with angry, barking, aggressive sounding dogs. The noise disappeared as abruptly as it appeared and I’d never heard that sound before and had no idea what howler monkeys sounded like. People try to describe it but until you actually hear it, your brain cannot wrap itself around that sound.

I don’t know all of the animals in this tropical place but the ones I’ve seen are fascinating and beautiful and very unique, much different than the animals native to any of the places I’ve lived before. Not unique to life here are frequent bug bites from mosquitoes and sand fleas. It’s basically a constant here and while we don’t really get used to it, it is just sort of the small price to pay for living in a paradise. These pests were much worse when I first arrived to Belize. Sand fleas seem to really love a pale, caucasian foreigner, it must be something in our blood. Believe me, I have also prayed the “Dengue Fever Prayer,” – as I call it – so many times: “Please don’t let the mosquitoes that bite me carry dengue, amen.” I had heard of people in Caye Caulker that caught dengue once or even multiple times and they say it’s way worse than the flu. I took their word for it and didn’t want the experience. The weird tropical illness I got ten days after arriving in Central America was bad enough. To be honest, it could have been dengue fever the way it has been described to me but quite frankly I was too sick to care about what it was.

In awe of the ocean and this rainforest wildlife in southern Costa Rica, I asked a photographer to capture a few pictures of me in the jungle and the beach in my favorite place, Playa Negra. He was a wonderful person to work with and   before we started shooting he asked how I was with nature. I wasn’t sure how to answer that but the reason he asked was because he wanted me to walk   barefoot in the lush, damp jungle. Stupidly, I said I was fine with it, and lucky for me I didn’t think about just how many poisonous little creatures I could have surprised with my feet at 6:00 am that day. The photographer told me that before I take steps into the beautiful green that I should say, “con permiso,” “with permission.” In essence, I am asking for safe passage from the natural world around me as I crawl over, around and through branches, trees, leaves, and all its living matrix.

Madre Tierra gave me safe passage that day, thankfully and so far I’ve been protected – con permiso. I’ve previously mentioned a tiny visitor to my last house that caught me a little off guard but Mo and I took it in stride. I was hardly surprised that morning when having coffee (Mo was having milk) and we saw something cross the kitchen floor. As usual, my door was open to let the cat have his freedom but it was still relatively dark around 5:30 am, as the daylight was just starting to creep out. I took a sip of coffee and looked at the kitchen floor where something caught my eye. Still a bit dark, I had to flip on the kitchen light. As I walked over to it I thought, surely this isn’t what I think it is! Oh, but it was: a cute, brightly colored and VERY poisonous dart frog (dendrobates auratus). Not overly surprising, my door was open around 15 hours a day and there’s fairly large gaps between the door and the floor even when it’s closed. That sweet little casita was very open to the outdoors as it was designed to be that way, so it was best that we all became “one with nature” so to speak, or there’d be constant struggle. 

Speaking of struggle, I took a shuttle bus up to San Jose four days ago and now I’m really having a time of it. I’ve only been away from Playa Negra, Puerto Viejo, my sweet little house and my even sweeter stray cat, for four days. I got the bright idea at some point two months ago that I would spend my last three weeks in Central America up here in San Jose, as that is where I will fly out to return to the US. I reserved another Airbnb for this timeframe that looked quiet, serene and a good place for me to find some peace and quiet, and do a whole lot of writing.

I’ve been crying off and on since getting on that bus and while there is an   eerie quiet to being inside this underground earthen house, all my ears pick up are the obnoxious city noises that I left behind in August. I hear distant sounds of traffic on the freeway all day long, frequent sirens and even helicopters during the day. There must be a medical center nearby. This strange house is high up on top of a hill above the city and I am completely isolated, with the exception of the host’s beautiful dog. 

Her name is Luna, she’s mostly white Husky mixed with a touch of wolf. You’d never know about the wolf hybrid part because her temperament is as sweet as they come. She’s tied out on a long lead all of the time but has access to her own earthen home, smaller than mine, but a very nice shelter for her. Luna can lay in the house, on her dog bed outside or in the driveway where she frequently likes to stay and guard the property. I honestly wouldn’t know what to do up here without her. 

She and I both had a very rough night on New Year’s eve. I’ve never heard so many fireworks go off for so long. It sounded like we were at war and I’m not sure how it was possible up this high but I could hear shrapnel from fireworks hitting the roof of this bunker. All I could think about was poor Luna outside and if she chewed through her ropes to get free. That’s what most dogs would have done because being up this high on a hill the noise is so amplified. 

The fireworks started around 11:30 pm. Their intensity was matched by none I’ve ever heard before. The strong wind was howling over this underground house and with so many windows and decorative spaces open to the outside, there’s constant scraping and rustling from all of the surrounding foliage. An hour later, I heard an aggressive scraping at the huge metal door to my house. It honestly sounded like huge claws slashing at the entrance. A few seconds later I heard an animal panting and heaving right near an open window directly above my bed. The noise was incredibly unnerving, I almost completely lost my shit. To be quite honest, my first thought was that Luna had chewed or broken her way off the lead she was tied to and was trying to get to me for comfort. Grateful that’s where my mind went first because I can only assume now it was a stray dog or a Costa Rican werewolf. Do they even have those?

I couldn’t even go check on Luna until around 1am when there was the first lull in explosions. I couldn’t risk going out sooner, as I couldn’t tell just how close some of these fireworks were and I didn’t want to get hurt. I grabbed my phone to use as a flashlight and ran down the driveway. Luna definitely wasn’t happy but she’s such a calm animal and I could tell she would make it through the night okay. However, I did not anticipate what she did once the fireworks stopped, and that was to constantly bark for over two hours straight. To be honest it was a real bummer, like an ice pick to the ear since I’m a light sleeper, but I was grateful I still knew where she was. At some point around 3:30 am Luna and I passed out.

Luna was happy to see me late this morning and I let her off leash to run around and diffuse some of that nervous energy from the night before. It’s a pretty safe bet that both she and I will be taking an afternoon nap this New Year’s Day.