Costa Rican Memoir #2, part 3

glassyintercoastal
Originally uploaded by Randuwa.

At just before 4 AM we awoke -- anything BUT bright eyed and bushy tailed! Mr. M. asked to join us, and we added him to the shared cost of the long boat, the captain of which was waiting for us down by the little dock on the inter-coastal side of the strip of land upon which Tortuguero resided. We boarded and sat two by two. It was still dark and the world was so mysterious and calm. Then our captain fired the outboard motor and we were on our way.

The journey took about 3 hours, and all along the way the deep darkness of the night was slowly illumined by the rising sun. Much of the previous day's journey had taken place in narrow, man-made canals, but this leg of the journey was on a broader, natural waterway. The surface was like polished glass and the wake of our boat the only disturbance to its perfect reflection of the jungles on both sides. I remember the flight of a great blue heron, disturbed from it's rest by our noisy motor; it paralleled our boat for quite some distance skirting the edge of the verdant jungle until a wider pool of water gave us each room to take leave of one another without fear. We made the journey in relative silence. It was no doubt a combination of our awe and sleep deprivation! But it worked. This was a world best experienced in the silence of our own hearts.

When he arrived the sun was fairly well on its way to its mid-morning station. We were greeted by a family who offered to provide us with breakfast for a price, and we agreed. They had a little screened in patio with a couple of tables in it for this purpose, and we entered to discover another couple from the states who were already enjoying their morning repast. The fare was almost identical to our dinner the night before (and for about .50¢ a person, no one complained!)

The one addition was biscuits. And while we ate on plastic plates, the butter arrived on a substantial and lovely pewter butter dish with cover. Mr. M. and I sat adjacent to one another. As it turned out, the other guests hailed from Denver, and so did Ms. B. of our party. So at the end of the meal the conversation took a turn toward their shared experiences of that city. I realized that the cover remained off of the butter and so grabbed it in order to recover the softening oleo. No sooner had I lifted the heavy metal cover from the table than I noticed something long, and hair-like extend itself from inside the cover. I turned it over to reveal a HUGE cockroach whose antennae had caught my attention. After showing it to Mr. M.,on the sly, I gentle replaced the cover (mammoth insect included) on the butter dish. Clearly the creature had been there from the beginning, and everyone had placed some butter on his or her biscuits. So what would have been the point in sharing my discovery with the entire group? To create bedlam? It's a secret that Mr. M. and I have kept, low these many years....and no one died, no one even became ill. Discretion can really be the better part of valor. Believe it. And I promise to wrap this memory up in the next post.