Aprendo muchas palabras pero no tiempos

One of the things you get used to when learning a new language is returning to the realm of a 4-year old, in which there is no past or future but only the eternal present. Which is what a vacation is mostly about anyway. Thankfully, Karolina and her family are used to talking to gringos and are very patient and skilled at speaking slowly and using only simple words.

The first and most important word I learned yesterday is paisaje, or countryside, which allows me to say Me gusto mucho el paisaje. The road from Nicoya to Samara is a constant delight to the eyes, mixing lushly forested hills and grassland with picturesque farms and houses, pretty white cows with long neck wattles that swing gracefully when they chew, and handsome people living simple lives close to the earth.

Some pictures of the countryside between Nicoya & Samara:

Some women making tamales to celebrate the construction of a new church in their village:

Yesterday Cesar and I took a road trip with his friend Julio to two marvelous little-visited beaches: Playa Barrigona y Playa Carrillo. Barrigona is famous for being where Mel Gibson had a home, recently purchased by Lady Gaga, and Britney Spears has been photographed there. It{s remote, reached by an unsigned dirt road off the road to Samara, with a number of unsigned turns. It was also deeply rutted, and at one point Cesar chose wrong and got stuck in a deep pool, and Julio & I had to get in the mud and push the car out. Two men passing by helped by watching and giving advice. Julio waded through the pools and guided Cesar along the side and Cesar drove skillfully and got through.

From there we drove up the side of a mountain on a road so deeply rutted that Cesar laughed with relief when we got to the top.

Playa Barrigona is stunning: a perfect watercolor crescent of aquamarine sea and sable sand, hidden by cliffs and ringed by delicate trees, with a waterfall to rinse off in after swimming in the warm and salty ocean, and no-one there. Our whole time there we only saw four other people. I walked down the beach a ways and played in the waves by myself, leaving Cesar and Julio to play in the waves together. I could have stayed a good long while but Cesar wanted to move on to Playa Carrillo, just south of Playa Samara.

Playa Barrigona:

Cesar en cascada

Julio y Cesar

We stopped for lunch on the way at a boca, a little bar that provides free bites (bocas) with the beer. They gave us all small bowls of spicy soup with rice, beans, a crab the size of a silver dollar like those I had seen scurrying on the beach, and starchy platano and yucca. The platano tastes like a chestnut, while the yucca is softer and blander. I added a couple of tiny pickled peppers from the jar on the table, and nearly choked: mucho picante. I looked more closely and think they may have been habaneros or scotch bonnets. It was very dark and close inside the boca - all the nice tables out front were taken by turistos extrajneros - and there was a sort of jukebox playing music videos on the television, an interesting assortment of vintage soul - Barry White, Marvin Gaye - interspersed with home videos set to folk music (musico conjuntos). Listening to Barry White singing Can{t Get Enough of Your Love Baby, Cesar seemed to become pensive, and I wished my friend were there to dance with me. I met a handsome Colombian man who had lived in Oakland, by Lake Merritt, in the 80s.

It started pouring again, and the power in the boca went on and off with the thunder. When it goes off, the lights go dark, the TV goes black, and everyone sits quiet for a minute til it comes on again. We pay up - 4 beers, 1 soda, 4 bowls of soup, 1 bowl of carne con salsa and 1 torilla con queso (a strange request, generously fulfilled with a giant handmade corn tortilla roasted on an open fire and topped with 2 giant slabs of queso fresco), for 6,000 costillas, or $12.

I find Playa Carrillo beautiful too - Cesar loves it best because there{s no trash on it - but less wild and secret than Barrigona, so it moved me less. It{s also a perfect crescent of sand but much longer and more open than Barrigona, ringed by tall palm trees. Again, this perfectly beautiful beach, paradise by any standard, was deserted.

I walked down the beach a way, crossing a broad, shallow river running down from the hills above us. It was brown with mud and running swiftly but so shallow I didn{t think twice about wading across it. There was a colorful old house in a bay just ahead that I wanted to photograph, and it took me a while because I had to cross a long expanse of slippery rocks. I eventually turned back without getting close enough to photograph the house, because I knew Cesar had to get home by 4 for a class at 5.

When I got back to the shallow little river, it had gotten much bigger, and the water was flowing with great speed and power, making waves that came up to my waist. I saw that it was deeper but didn{t realize at first how powerful it was, and set out to wade it where I was. Halfway across, I realized the water could well sweep me off my feet, so I came back out and walked further along til I came to a shallower place closer to the sea. I got across okay, but it was a good reminder of why the rainy season is dangerous in Costa Rica, for hikers and drivers alike.