Costa Rica sans pictures

I can see our popularity ratings are going to take a plunge since we left our camera cable in our Eurovan in Houston. You'll just have to believe without seeing for now.

We are bringing our body temperatures down in the air-conditioned internet cafe in Puerto Jiminez after three nights in the jungle. This particular jungle ("the most biologically diverse place on earth" - National Geographic) resides on the Osa Peninsula in the south-western corner of Costa Rica. It teems with wildlife. I mean, it feels like you're wandering around in zoo; they're that easy to spot. Only they're all real, wild, free-range beasts of the forest.

We faced a set-back on arriving in Puerto Jiminez - the departure point for Corcovado National Park. The main station in the park is closed for October. And on a two-week schedule, we didn't have time to hang around. So we had to put our plans to trek across the park on ice and make others. We camped for two nights on the park's boundary hiked a day hike into the park. We saw toucans, scarlet macaws, black birds with red heads that even Mark didn't know the names of. We saw raccoon-like cuartis, spider monkeys and an anteater. Our eyes were on stalks. We returned to our camp with serious dehydration headaches, even though we drank water all day. You just pour sweat in the jungle. Well, Mark pours sweat, I pour 'glow', of course.

Last night we spent a deux in a remote 'hostel' (sleeping platform) in the jungle. I woke Mark up to check he wasn't being eaten by a fer de lance - one of the world's deadliest snakes - but other than that it was a beautifully peaceful night. We were woken up by howler monkeys this morning and ate papaya and bananas for breakfast.

Gotta go as we're due for dinner with two Dutch travellers we've met. Off to the Caribbean tomorrow.

R

Texas and spare thoughts

Of all the state caricatures that filled my mind,
perhaps the best defined was that of Texas.
Wide, brash, big hair, chiselled cowboy under a stetson, oil. Also that big belt buckle. So with some eager anticipation we floated down from our happy farm in New Mexico into west Texas, replete with cacti and prongorn antelope plodding along in a far away haze. Evening caught us in the fading light of Pecos where home was the wasteland on an RV park next to a big interstate. No matter as we travelled into our 16 wheeler dreams with plates of wonderful Mexican food in our bellies.




The following day's travels took us through a vast plane populated with oil pump jacks and tired old towns worthy of many a photographic anthology. Sky everwhere with a mere bump of hill many wagon days trail away. Those were my thoughts as I imagined myself on my steed wondering what I would have been thinking of were I that chiselled cowboy with my red bandana. I would certainly have noticed the road runner that scuttled across our car's path.






Then as though slipping through a door we emerged into the green and sea gifted breezes of Austin. And to see the shiny face of one Don Broyles who like a Scarlet Pimpernel dropped out of the sky to spend a wonderful 24 hours with us. Austin is an enticing city- lithe river runners, Dell, a university, green, vast clouds of bats, music and good food. But perhaps just the happy cloud of seeing Don again....drinking a beer and listening to great live music.

Onto Houston where we met the city on steroids (via 2 south africans and one bemused american eating a McDonalds (block your ears Tylers) meal on the lawn outside of said emporium). Vast with now what feels like terrifyingly highway driving. But from the hospitality of Don we drifted into the happy home of Cyndy and Howard (parents of an Alaskan friend) for more Mexican, great ice cream and a late night of packing before the adventure of Costa Rica.

-M

Eclectica

After spending the morning in Santa Fe in a coffee shop with wireless, we encountered this beetle. I snapped these shots quickly and then voiced my appreciation to the owner. I said, “Hey, we should admit to this stuff more often.” A passing gent who saw me get the picture said, “if only it was that easy to carry around”.

R

Dragonfly and Infinity Farms, New Mexico

We’ve been living off the earth and learning what it means to farm organic vegetables in this corner of New Mexico. It means a passion for growing things. It means knowing whether a lonesome cloud in the sky signals a thunderstorm with hail or just an aesthetic change. It means living enmeshed in the local environment. Both partners, Sheilah and Armand, moved to Ribera from the North East to join a neighbourhood of mostly white and some hispanic people living in their valley. The biggest annoyance in their lives at the moment is a landowner who has won the right to close part of the county road for his private use. This road is used by the public and they are outraged. It is a convoluted issue involving a local bully, nepotism and racism. We’ve had a good dose of local politics with our dinner on a few occasions. Along with a good dose of good ‘ole laffs.

I am really enjoying this experience. I love the naturalness of a daily routine which has in-built exercise and a good cycle of a big appetite and satisfying meals. The work is physically challenging and at times mentally too. I’ve used a power drill for three different tasks on three different settings – a first. It is fun to look up from your work to see a bird swooping low over the trees in the golden light of late afternoon. There are bugs in the earth and plants of every colour in the rainbow. The earth is dry as bones without irrigation and thorns and burrs proliferate. Sheilah and Armand grow nine varieties of tomato: big beef, yellow taxi, newgirls, Japanese blacks, orange blossoms, green zebra, amana oranges, German striped, Cherokee purple. Most of these are heirloom varieties. These are carted off to three different markets every week, accompanied by many other vegetables in Armand’s zebra striped van. When the supply outweighs demand, they bottle ‘summer sauce’. We had a very rainy day yesterday and helped with cooking and bottling the tomatoes.

Our week has ended with eight vegetable beds picked, weeded, turned over and stripped of irrigation tape and two new greenhouses erected. We’ve worked the ground when it was hard as a rock and, after the storm, as muddy as the Somme. We’ve been to market and to the river. We’ve met Spanish-speaking neighbours and Italian-Americans from Massachusetts. We’ve shared life with good people and we are bigger for it.

Now for Costa Rica – via South New Mexico and Houston, Texas. We return to Houston on 9th November.

R

Georgia O'Keeffe and the Light

Not that I had the guts to sit out "No Country for Old Men", but there a shots of landscape in that film where you can feel the wind blowing and each sage bush stands clear and the sky removes you from your seat. That is how the landscape sits here. Light everywhere and the beginning and end of days are well marked.In the valley the cottonwoods cut a swathe of yellow while the mesas are dotted with juniper and low pine.

On our way into Taos last week the day was empty and the desert was blue and grey and wind heaved our car. Ghostly earthships emerged out of the plain, wind turbines spinning, windows and solar panes worshipping the sun's southerly
travels. Nights are crisp with each passing bringing Orion higher above our heads and the Big Dipper lower in the heavens. Days herald clear with solitary clouds threading their way above the mesas, suddenly find their way into UFO shapes for which Roswell and Area 51 lay dubious claim. So true are the days that Georgia O'Keeffe could scarce staunch the flow of paint in attempting to call the hours of each day. It was a happy few hours we spent wandering about the Santa Fe gallery of her work, looking at her vivid reds and raucous florals.She moved here from New York, tired of too much green and work needing fresh impetus, spending her last 50 years here, inspiring a legion of artists looking for their muses amdist the mesas.

It is good to be here. We have stopped on a farm about
an hour's drive from Santa Fe. We are workers. We till, hoe,
pluck, fold pipes, build greenhouses and also wander around in circles. We generally delight in the ordered bliss of a shower and an oven that bakes bread and a cat brushing up against your leg. (Last night an owl took an interest in one of the farm's cats and then sat defiantly on the fence as one of us moved closer, before floating off into the dusk). And of course we listen and watch the fields as the sun ends a working day.

Culinary and cultural delights in New Mexico

From Moab we began to inch East via Mesa Verde National Park and into New Mexico. We have stayed in Taos and now Santa Fe and tomorrow we will begin our week-long volunteer stint on an organic farm in Ribera, just south of Santa Fe.

New Mexico is a whole different world. It was always an enigma to me when I pondered the map of the States. Just what will one find in New Mexico? I wondered. More malls and highways? Cacti and cowboys? Injuns? It turns out that New Mexico has specialised in turf wars and art since the 1600s. The indigenous Pueblo people have suffered similarly to the aboriginal people of Australia - forced off their land, made to live in reservations with their enemies the Navajo and Apaches, sent to mission schools at the age of three to have their culture beaten out of them (literally). However, they are a proud people and their leaders are constantly trying to forge a workable identity and place for them in the post-modern world. The Hispanic people have found themselves in turn citizens of Mexico and the United States depending on which treaty has been most recently signed. New Mexico became the 47th state in 1912 after a good few years of the federal government humming and haing over whether to admit such a 'Mexican' and poor territory.

Nowadays, it is a haven for mainstream dropouts and greenies. It has a distinctly Mexican feel, but don't ever call the natives Mexicans. One finds it hard to untangle the knot of European, Pueblo and Hispanic cultures. This is a good thing, no? In Taos and Santa Fe you can't walk down a street without passing at least four art galleries. It is vibrant, colourful stuff and expresses the tangled knot in a fascinating way. I still find the ubiquitous cheeky skeleton depictions baffling, but apparently they relate to the Mexican festival, The Day of the Dead.

The cuisine is similar to Mexican, but without the heat that you might expect. Don't get me wrong, the chile is excellent, just not very hot. We have partaken of blue corn enchiladas, burritos, chimichangas and nachos. Think lots of cheese, beans and chile sauce. Orlando's restaurant in Taos (featured in video) was where we supped on two evenings. It is so popular that on any given evening you can find ten or more people sitting around a fire in the courtyard sipping Marguaritas. We were happy to oblige and met some more interesting people in the process.

The pics represent the attractive adobe architecture which is standard, a typical Catholic church and, of course, a Marguarita made with REAL lime juice.

R

Two Moabites on bikes

"In this active and outdoorsy town with legendary slickrock mountains, it seems as though every pedestrian clutches a Nalgene water bottle and every car totes a few dusty mountain bikes. Moab bills itself as Utah’s recreation capital, and it delivers." (Lonely Planet)

"Believe the hype: Moab has phenomenal singletrack, challenging slickrock, and some of the most spectacular vistas on the planet." (National Geographic Atlas)

We are reticent to believe the hype, even when it’s in the reputable Lonely Planet and even more reputable National Geographic. But in this case, we couldn’t agree more. Moab has scenery that reminds us of the Augrabies area in the Northern Cape. Massive sandstone rocks sprawling as far as the eye can see. We camped in Arches National Park and marvelled at the sandstone bulging out of the ground and forming 2300 named rock arches. When the wind finally died down, the sunset-viewing rivalled Clifton 4.

Slickrock is the local name for large areas of smooth rock with no vegetation growing on it. Ideal mountain biking surface for those in the know. We weren’t in the know, but were game to give it a try anyway. We got jolted, shaken, stirred, bumped, jarred and generally beaten-about for three hours on the single-track trails on the slickrock just outside of town. We limped back into ‘Poison Spider Bicycles’ to return our 2010-model fancy bikes only to hear that we’d done the kindergarten route and there were three more levels of difficulty beyond our small adventure. Pish, we say. Adventure is in the eyes (and joints and muscles) of the adventurers.

R

More Rocks and Flagstaff, Arizona

Beaten but not broken, our merry wagon found it's way across a dream desert of colours, bright sun and Navajo horses in the scrubland. Crossing the Colorado River we made our way over the San Francisco volcnanic field to the town of Flagstaff, our oasis in the desert for a few days. I think we both craved the press of people, the lure of well made food and perhaps, as I found, the simple stimulation of walking into a large clean supermarket with its array of sensory delights. Checked into the Le Beau Motel next to the old Route 66 and now on the doorstep of one of the busiest fright train lines in the US. Oh yes brothers and sisters, all night that most evocative of sounds, a freight train giving it horns at all hours of the night at the crossings nary a hundred yards away. If not for them, then it was the bed bugs ("Have you been travelling in South America?"-proprietor before apologetically offering full refund) on walk-about in our bed.

But there was beer and mounds of delicious fries and sushi and coffee and lovely fried rice and...and... Second night in bona fide motel replete with deep ochre coloured walls and black bedclothes. Just couldn't shake that naughty feeling. Movie for Robyn- smiles all round.

Via a recently blown volcano we made our way to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park where all the scenes from a dozen Westerns met us. The visit to the Navajo tribe run park sparked an animated discussion about the contrast between what I perceived to be a thinly veiled commercial racket and what may be my sniffy ideas about how a stunningly beautiful piece of natural earthscape should be looked after. Banks of tour buses with their passengers herded into flying guided tours about the park. No one was spared- agents stalk the parking lot and dream catchers spin their charms. My own tribes legacy perhaps even here.

We wended our way around the 17 mile loop amidst dusk lined great totemic pieces of rock with the most improbably balanced slabs of rock. The light was delicate, the breeze blowing and as the crowds and mad tours filtered away, ethereal set in and the moon found its home in a silver bedecked land.

That gentle breeze turned into a typhoon and by the witching hours, what had been a grim hanging on turned into a rout as we bundled our tent and made for our wagon. Out on that patch of dirt, as the wind howled and dust filled our airways, I harbored my first ignoble envious thought about those merry people in their fine RV's alongside. Brief, but true.

The Worst Hike Ever

Just when you thought you were going to gag on all our effusivity (?), I thought you needed to know that things are not always rosey on a dream road trip.

After departing Zion with one pair of aching, unwalkable feet (RLT), we thoroughly enjoyed sitting in a car for 4 hours travelling to the Grand Canyon. Mark was then "led tenderly by the nose as asses are" (Willem Wikkelspies, 1594) with his eyes shut to the edge of the abyss. It was a treat to see his countenance on opening his eyes to behold what is one of the most awesome views on earth.

I can hear you're about to gag again, so let me hurry on to misery...

We spent the night camped by the side of the road as the National Parks campsite was full. Fresh and bright in the morning we presented ourselves to the backcountry desk to apply for a permit to hike a modest 5 miles to a remote place on the canyon rim to spend the night away from the crowds. All gung-ho and intrepid we set out at 3pm from where we'd parked our car in the spot that we guessed was the trailhead. This is a little-used path recommended because no-one else would be there. Oh we do love getting away from it all! Little did we know that no-one else had been there for about 5 years. The path was overgrown, a cold front was blowing in and picking up all sorts of millenia-old dust and throwing it in our faces, my feet were still killing me despite trying to be brave and all we saw for 3 hours was ponderosa pine trees as far as the eye could see.

When it was nearly dark, with one member of the party threatening mutiny and marital disharmony (ahem), we stumbled upon the canyon rim. We knew we weren't in the right spot as the view was not breathtaking as promised, that prerogative was left to the dust. Mark manfully set up the tent andI applied my mind to pasta and sauce to keep mutinous thoughts at bay.

The wind howled all night. I got a good chunk of my book read. Mark slept peacefully and awoke to remark on how much sand there was in the tent and then bounded out to look at the sunrise. He also, manfully again, offered to fetch the car. We hiked down and up a gulch to the road where I waited while Mark walked the 13 kms back to the car.

We have sinced been recovering in Flagstaff which has been thoroughly pleasant. We have eaten sushi, drunk micro-brewery beer, watched a movie (R), shopped, showered twice a day and slept in a bed. Ah, modern conveniences.

Vague itinerary from here is back up to Utah and then into New Mexico where we are volunteering on an organic farm for a week from 15-22 October.

R