22nd november

Bites still itch but I’m really getting the hang of this sleeping lark even though there was plenty of thunder and lightning last night. Milk has gone off and I’m not sure the hot dogs are ok. I know that storms tend to turn milk pretty quickly. The bananas are looking pretty manky now. Nothing is staying dry because the relentlessly high humidity permeates everything eventually. It seems a one-litre carton of milk will be drinkable for two or three days, a block of ice lasts three days. I will have to buy more stuff in tins. Even this page is damp (the original diary of course, not the pc world A4 stuff that I’m typing on now) and it’s awkward to write on at the edges because the ink doesn’t run from the pen. Does paper come in tins?
As I’m feeding Negra, a guy goes past on a bike and shouts ‘hola’. I shout the same back. You wouldn’t get two strangers doing that in Willesden! It used to happen when I lived in Killingholme, a small village, but not anywhere else. Maybe they are genuinely friendly, maybe they are desperate for conversation, and maybe everyone wants to say that they’ve spoken to the gringo in town.
I hope the sun comes out today.
Have just a touch of the runs today – maybe because of the milk yesterday. Nothing too bad. I don’t really need milk – I can do without. I could put up with drinking coffee and tea without milk but without sugar – forget it! Need my fix!
I go for a wander down one of the other trails that Over showed me – I follow it and lose the trail somehow, having to work my way through dense jungle for about forty minutes before coming out at the old loggers track again, but much closer to where it narrows. I follow that too again and come out near the vanilla plantation as before. I need to familiarize myself with these trails if it’s me that will be taking the tours.
And I’m not doing it again wearing shorts. Sod that! My thighs and shins have red welts from the whipping of the branches twanging back at me and worse than that was the amount of time I spent scratching at them to rid myself of insects, spiders, cobwebs and just bits of spore or whatever they were that settled on me. I didn’t get many bites on my legs but that was only because of the time I dedicated to slapping my thighs and scratching behind my knees. Jeans for me from now on!
I have a wander around the vanilla plantation inspecting as I went. There are still no flowers that I can see but then I didn’t really expect to see any. I look further around and slightly past the vanilla and that is where the cocoa trees are. They are smaller than I thought, or bigger, I can’t decide which, and there are no flowers or pods here either.
Somewhere during my expedition through the forest, the sun has come out and it is very warm indeed. The air seems to have become stove-heated in an instant and nothing is making any noise which I find strange.
‘The very flies forget to hum…’
I return as yesterday by way of the footbridge but rather than take the roadside route, I take a chance on a break in the wall of foliage and head through it. It turns out to be a trail of sorts but a difficult one to traverse as it rises up a hillock, the water seems to flow across the trail and even along it in some places so it is very sloppy and puddle-strewn. One slip and down the hill I go tumbling.
I do some sunbathing – chair and stool method! (Bum on chair, legs on stool – nothing touching ground.) Unfortunately, I have discovered – through traditional scientific methods of trial and error – that this method has a drawback. When the soil on the lawn is wet, which predictably is most of the time, the legs of the chair sink in and the chair is quite often in danger of topping over, with me in it, before I get my balance. Next time I come out, I will bring a plank of gavilan with me. It is wide enough to accommodate all the legs of the chair and the weight will be distributed and ‘Davey no sinky’!
At least it’s a good drying day so far…
Have been practicing my Spanish verbs … just running them over in my head. It’s not as useful as speaking and listening but it’s a start.

FGGM
A guy comes past at about noon. I’m sitting there, contemplating my navel in the sunshine, trying to finally nail the age old conundrum – why is lint always blue – when I see a guy with a backpack coming down the road. ‘I pay him no mind,’ as they say in all the best Yankee westerns.
He has a backpack and seems to know Negra and vice versa. (Negra does not have a backpack!) He stops at the gate instead of continuing past and begins patting Negra so I approach and say “Buenas Dias”.
He has long baggy shorts on and a white T-shirt (braver than me.) About 5ft 10, short cropped dark hair, he seems to move as though his motion was decided twenty minutes ago and now the sequence of events is finally ready. Very deliberate in everything he does. He looks up and says “Hey David”.
I’m thrown. “How do you know my name?” I ask him, then realise almost immediately that I’m speaking to Blair. I unlock the gate and invite him inside.
“Blair! Want a coffee?”
“Do you have any? Yep, that would be cool, thanks. How are you keeping?”
“Yeah, ok. Get a little bored sometimes?”
“Yeah I guess so. What are you actually doing?”
“I’ve been doing a bit of work on the footbridges but really I can’t do too much until Jim returns? Do you know Jim?”
“Yeah, he was here earlier in the year. He stayed here for a couple of days.”
“Here in this house?” I’m surprised.
“Yeah, right here. We were here for a while too?”
Blair and Harmony are the FGGM dudes that Jim is so fond of and their organisation have an ‘adopt-a-tree’ programme for the Almendro trees that are the trees that the macaws like to nest in. “What do you actually do?” I ask him in all seriousness.
“Well, we live in Puerto Viejo now and the charity pays for the house but they didn’t use to. We spent some time here in the forest looking for the Macaws and their nests and logging the Almendro trees. You can see some of our movements in the forest.” That would be the orange tags that I had seen attached to some of the trees. I decided that their presence would explain some of the last vestiges of civilisation that I had found scattered around the house, such as insect repellent, and probably the bird and botanical books in the bookcase.
“What’s the adopt-a-tree program all about, Blair? Do I get to take it home?”
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter? What is the story behind the adopt-a-tree program?”
“Well, The most recent nest survey in the country only revealed about fifty great green macaw nests and they nest almost exclusively in Almendro trees that need to be mature (100 years old before they of any use). So, if they are chopped down it’s a long time before there is a suitable replacement.”“ That is what the program is for,” he continues, “to protect these trees, to give the landowners a reason to keep the trees.”
It seems that the landowners receive $100-$200 per year to protect the tree and are honoured at something called the Great Green Macaw Festival where they receive a trophy and a certificate recognizing their assistance with the conservation of the Great Green Macaw. In the ‘adopt a tree’ program, the rainforest biodiversity group assign you a nest and tell you of its history, details about the landowner and tree etc and updates about the macaws and their use of the tree. “Do you have captive animals?”
“No.”
“Oh, I sort of assumed you were a bird sanctuary and you spent some time rescuing or looking after injured birds.”
“No, we don’t have those facilities. If we find any injured birds, they are better off with a facility that can cater to them properly. I think it’s probably illegal to have a macaw in captivity without reporting it to the government anyway, even if it is injured.”
“Do you get paid for what you do,” I asked him.
“No. Harmony gets a small stipend but I don’t get anything. She’s in the States at the moment.”
“How long did it take you to get here?”
“About two and a half hours, I guess.”
“Two and a half hours. Nice walk.” After a while, I’m actually wondering why he has come, especially with such a big rucksack that seems empty. I don’t want to ask in case he has come to see me and I seem unwelcoming.
Blair and Harmony have been sounded out about conducting tours through the rain forest for the tourists. I suppose they are the best people for the job since they know the trails, some of the trees and wildlife. I ask him about the bats in the area and he informs me that the one in my cupboard is a fruit bat. We chew the cud for about an hour when he gets up and walks around the kitchen, toward the rucksack. I assume he was getting ready to leave but he pulls out a plastic container full of chicken noodles and proceeds to get out a frying pan and cook them on the stove.
He gave me some. He was here for a full hour and didn’t tell me he had chicken noodles? What’s that all about? Was he waiting for me to leave?
“The gas stove leaks, David. You need to disconnect it while you’re not using it to stop the gas escaping.”
Yeah right! But at least he washed up. I offered him a banana, hoping he would refuse because if he accepts, I have to hand him something quite manky.
“You know what, I’m gonna decline. I know how difficult it is to get supplies this far!”
Thank goodness. Blair didn’t seem particularly well travelled and I wondered whether he wanted to be here at all or whether he had been dragged here by Harmony, or whether as is more likely, he just came along for the ride. He said he had qualifications in marketing and would like to work in the UK. I told him that I enjoyed Egypt and he said he would like to go would be didn't dare go to the Middle East because he was American which is something that had not occurred to me. Imperatively, he gives me crucial clues as to how to find English news on FM (world service for seven minutes per day.)
Around early afternoon, he proceeds to fill his backpack up with the nature books and set off on the two and a half hour walk back to town. That’s a big rucksack, it’s full of books, and it’s a long walk! I tell him he’s crazy.
After he’s gone, it occurs to me to have a look at the mission objectives of the organisation. It’s on the sheet pinned to the window frame. The Friends of the Great Green Macaw – yeah, dead snappy. Jim was right. What a name. There must have been other things they could have called themselves.
I suppose my daily pattern is asserted now. I get up at around 5.30-6am and go to bed around 9.30pm. Just because I wake up at 5.30 doesn’t mean I get up then and nor do I necessarily go to sleep when I go to bed. I might just lie there, clear my head, reflect on stuff or just listen to the radio, or better still the rain. By the time I go to sleep, my mind is clear and there is nothing on it at all.

And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares that infect the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as quietly, steal away.

At 11pm, I have a hunger pang so I get up to make a sandwich. I go back to bed with it and twenty minutes later, I get really bad stomach pains so I go to the toilet and poo diarrhoea like an aerosol and it goes away – then fine again. Dodgy bread? Dodgy marmite? Maybe if I like marmite, I deserve everything I get! Maybe my body is readjusting. As the politicians would say to hide their ineptitude when the economy is ill – ‘we’re undergoing a necessary economic adjustment!’ Or, then again, maybe I’m turning into a bug like Gregor wotsit in ‘Metamorphosis’ by Kafka, or more slowly into a fly like Jeff Goldblum in the film.