The Haunted Café

It’s very cold here each morning and there’s no heat, so people bundle up early and shed in the usually hot afternoons.

I saw little of photographic interest during my miles of walking. In fact, it’s kind of restful to have been here long enough that I’m not quite so visually and mentally over-stimulated all the time. Days are more prosaic, with grocery shopping and laundry high on my list.

Along a hundred-foot adobe wall near the parque central there are various magic-markered comments about W, including this one:

I went to my first Internet café ever. It was playing Irish music, so while everyone was clicking away at the keyboard, I was tapping my feet in fancy patterns. It was all I could do to keep from getting up and doing a light jig.

Maybe the place was haunted, because all sorts of random applications started opening up on my computer by themselves. I’d close them and they’d open again a few minutes later. Then half my blog entry just plain vanished. Twice my connection cut off mid-post and I lost all my writing. For the first time in three weeks I was mad.

In the midst of this chaos I had to dash away because of an appointment on the other side of town. I thought it would be interesting to have my horoscope read by a Mayan priestess. How accurately do you think her description reflects me?

• Ultra-sensitive
• Loyal, honest
• Obsessive, a perfectionist
• Inventive
• Always in motion, mercurial
• Lacking self-confidence
• Extremely guarded

Of course I’m not going to tell you the meaty stuff. Oh, but in Mayan tradition everyone has several guardian animals. Can you guess what my most prominent was? I’ll give you a clue: eight eyes, eight legs, despicable”¦

I also watched her do a divination using dried beans that were as bright, shiny and red as chili peppers.

Remind me to tell you about the other character analysis I received today, this one free of charge and noncommissioned.

While a ron (aka rum) and Pollo Campero (like Kentucky Fried) party is underway in the kitchen, I’m loading my backpack for the trip to Costa Rica. Starting tomorrow you won’t hear from me for a week or so.

Here’s what the Lonely Planet Guide says about Parque Nacional Corcovado where I’m going:

This unspoiled national park is the last great tract of original moist tropical forest of Pacific Central America. Remote and wild”¦ Paths are primitive and the hiking is hot, humid and insect-ridden, but the challenge of the trek and the interaction with the wildlife are thrilling”¦

And from Let’s Go: Costa Rica

The park is home to sloths, coatis, jaguars, white-lipped peccaries, monkeys, tapirs, anteaters and almost 400 species of birds (including the magnificent scarlet macaw and the harpy eagle), and National Geographic has called it “the most biologically intense place on Earth” “¦ [with] an estimated four million insect species … hundreds of species of trees overhung with bromeliads, orchids, and other epiphytes”¦

When I get there I have to buy knee-high rubber boots because of poisonous reptiles.

While I’m gone, please send me e-mails about yourselves so I can look forward to reading them when I get back to Guate. Okay? And to those of you who’ve left comments here: thank you! They make my day!

Aloha. Oy.

Next Central America entry >>

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