PANAMA PART 1 "Bus or Ark?"

Wednesday afternoon, Feb 4, it started raining, and, as usual, I put out my 5 gallon, 18 inch high rain gauge. It poured all night and at dawn , the bucket was overflowing. For those of you that might be slow at math, like me...that's 18 inches of rain overnight. And it continued to pour. I was leaving for Panama that morning, and I sure wasn't going to let a little thing like a flood bother me.

At 6 AM I did a check to make sure everything was packed...money, camera, paints, deodorant, passport. Passsport? Passport? PASSPORT!!!! I frantically checked all the usual places. I just had it at the bank, the day before...did I leave it there? I unpacked my suitcase. Twice. At a quarter of 7 I located it. I won't tell you that it was in one of the 28 zippered, velcroed, hidden pockets of the shorts I had on...I wouldn't want you to think I was a Bozo or something. Ten to 7...it normally takes 15 minutes to make it to the highway where you catch the bus to the Panama border. The Bus comes at 7. Since Costa Rican buses are seldom on time, I wasn't too concerned as we pulled up to the pick-up point at 3 minutes past 7. Wasn't too concerned that is, until the bus barreled by 150 mph. The bus is a straight through to Limon, and you DO NOT catch CR bus drivers who think they are in the Indy 500. We returned to the farm in the pouring rain.

The next bus was at 11. As I watched more pouring rain, I painted a big sign that read "SIXAOLA"...the border town destination. We got to the pick up point at ten to 11. It would have brought tears to the eyes of most compassionate people to observe an old man like me standing in the pouring rain in a bedraggled straw hat, holding a soggy Sixaola sign waiting the 45 minutes I did to catch the bus...a bus that did not want to stop. It did though....100 yards or so from where I was waiting. All those physical fitness programs, stop smoking projects, lose weight diets that I meant to take flashed before my eyes as I jogged that 100 yards in the mud, toting a 250 pound overnight case. Arriving at the bus, it's full. They did manage to stick me in the rear stairwell, amid 30 or 40 hung-over backpackers from the UK. Two delightful young ladies befriended me though, and made the next 50 miles painfully enjoyable. Painful because their accent was so thick, I could understand only one word in 20...painful because they talked continuously...but enjoyable because they were just so darn cute.

This is a sloth...very common in these parts. What is uncommon is to see him not in a tree. While the bus was stopped for the fallen power lines, I noticed this poor fellow traveller and snapped a shot of him trying to figure out how to get back to some tree somewhere.

We had a 15 minute stop in Limon, where I had a Milky Way and 4 cigarettes for lunch as I watched it rain. Boarding the bus and on the road again I fell into a little catnap that was more like a deep coma. Jostled awake by some bloke standing on my hand, I noticed people getting off the bus. My first thought was that the bus was on fire. My second thought was that we were having a bus robbery. My third thought was that I sure was snoozing good. A tree roughly the size of the Eiffel Tower had fallen over some power lines. Aha, another 3 hour delay! But no...about 20 guys with long bamboo poles lifted the lines and let the bus sneak under and around. As we edged by, I couldn't help but reflect...pouring rain..wet poles...a billion volts of electricity going through the wires...probably not a good idea. But nobody else seemed concerned. This method of handling problems in Latin America is ever so common and reminded me of the photo I posted below.









This also concludes Part One of my little odyssey tale. I'll continue with "On Your Own In Bri-Bri" in a liitle bit.

Arenal and Poas

Costa Rica is a land OF volcanoes because it was made FROM volcanoes. Within 50 miles of my doorstep are six volcanoes...four of them active. Arenal, Poas, Irazu, Turrialba, Barva, and Cache Negro. I am working on a series of volcano paintings, but I thought I'd show you what wonderful subject material I have to work with. I have included two shots with my picture on them, not to show off my mug, but to show you how brave I am.

The top two are Poas. Poas is now a gurgling, belching composite volcano, having nine distinct craters. It's being a good boy now, but back around 11 million years ago, Poas and its buddy, Barva, started coughing up enough stuff to form the floor of the entire central valley. And it has remained active ever since, with an occasional flare up. On January 25, 1910, it spewed almost a million tons of ash into the atmosphere...nearly as much dust as piles up behind my refrigerator each week. In 1989, they closed the whole park for the year. And nowadays, it's rather serene. It is actually in a cloud forest region and the clouds do come and go very unpredictably. The last time I was there, nothing was visible...like being in a cloud and looking into another cloud. But you could hear it. Sounds like a bunch of bulldozers working at a distance. There's some great hiking trails and overlooks, but you're pretty high up, so it pays to be in shape.

Arenal is the attention getter. Around 1200-1500 AD, Arenal was quite active. Then it abruptly quit smoking and folks classified it as inactive. Then, just as abruptly, it erupted in 1968 in a huge pyroclastic explosion, killing 78 people in a very sparsely populated region. There were no seismic instruments of warning then, so no one knew it was coming. But the old-timers tell tales...livestock and pets acting nervous...hot rocks around the mountain...the Tabacon river running warm...even an evacuation of insects and wildlife from the mountain. It has remained active ever since and spawned a tourist Mecca and hot springs spa business. It is beautifully awesome at night. Only once have I been there when it was quiet and not showy. For 2 days, not a glimmer. Then about 10 A.M. the morning I was leaving, there was a terrific sound like a big jet fixing to take off, and POOP, a big billow of smoke came out and rose about 2 miles into the sky. Then it went back to sleep.

Egret on the Rocks

Though living in rural Costa Rica allows me to have access to many of the fascinating creatures I like to paint, it doesn't allow me to have access to the skills of using a camera. More times than I feel comfortable to mention, I have ventured into the rain forest with a good digital camera, an empty chip and a handful of batteries, only to return with some superb shots of my belly, or my feet, or a blurry image that could possibly be an elephant. Or a hummingbird. Can't tell for sure. So I rely on photos from pros with permission, friends who can use a camera, and an occasional shot I lucked out with. My friends at MINAE, Costa Rica's Ministry for Energy and the Environment, have supplied me with some priceless photos. When they encounter wildlife of interest, endangered or not, they photograph it and log its location. And give me a copy. Bless em.
Normally I wouldn't post my reference photo and my finished painting, but occasionally, I think it might be interesting. This photo was taken of a lone egret sunning himself on the banks of the Sarapiqui River. By no means endangered, the egret, with its snowy white feathers, often provides quite a striking visual display. I loved the image and composition, and, to me, it represents the best of rainforest nature...a haunting serenity, uncomplicated and unafflicted by human presence.
This is in acrylic on a 16 x 24 canvas, and is available for sale.