23rd december

Dave goes to check the vanilla, over to Over’s, and then goes home, dropping me off in the town. This is the fourth time in four days that I have been in town so as you can expect, I almost feel like a native. As usual, he leaves the excess beers. We have to tie Negra up because she keeps jumping in the back of the pick-up with the other dogs when she saw us both getting in the jeep - she did not want to be left on her own. She has been to the house in Alajuela before and likes the company –why shouldn’t she. Also, a poisonous snake has bitten her while she has been resident here and perhaps doesn’t like it much.
Sometimes, Dave looks at me in strange way. It’s nothing bad but it’s almost as though he is assessing me, trying to suss me out. It’s a sort of ‘what exactly are you doing here’ kind of thing. I think he feels partly responsible for it all and perhaps he feels sorry for me, I don’t know. He shouldn’t. If I wanted to go, I would go. I’m not in any hurry to get anywhere and I do feel myself gradually unwinding. And I’m writing at last. I am chilled. I said to him that I would like to stay until my travel visa expires in February and then I would probably return to the UK. He agreed to that.
Do I feel bitter about the whole thing? Definitely not. Life sometimes throws these weird things at you and you make the best of it. It would have been cool to have driven the jeep down from Alabama and I would have loved to have a motorcycle to ride. C’est la vie as they say here in Costa Rica (in the French quarter.) On the other hand, people like Jim shouldn’t be let loose where he can mess other people around. It may have been that I could have been in the position where I had given up something really substantial to be here or spent weeks agonising over the decision, or needed it for some purpose of study etc. Other than that, sometimes life takes you where you don’t expect to go and long may it continue doing so.
Dave drops me off in Puerto Viejo and I spent one hour on the Internet. There has been no reply to the email that I sent Jim on Monday so I send another one today, an altogether harsher version. Dave has not heard from Jim either. There really doesn’t seem too much point in me staying here too much longer if Jim isn’t coming up with the spondulicks or a plan of action. In an email to Linda, I ask her if she fancies meeting me in Spain in February half term.
As I wander through the town, the blue skies rule the roost over the white fluffy things. It’s a warm day and I sadly come to terms with the thought that it probably won’t snow for Christmas. Nevertheless, everything is festive and the shops are hyping it up with navidad this and navidad that. There were even more than a few references to snow and frost and stuff like that, which surprised me a little. The vast majority of people here will never have experienced it until I then realise that it’s all the magic of Christmas and reality is a spoilsport that we don’t entertain. After all, I fully expected some guy in Lapland to be responsible for delivering to billions of children overnight, you’ve never ridden a sleigh through the night sky and I’ve never seen a fat guy stupid enough to try to get up or down a chimney.
I saw one or two signs for the canoeing and I am tempted. Never done the rafting thing so it might be fun, although according to Dave Jnr, this river is a fairly mild one as rapids go. I’m one of these who doesn’t get motivated enough to do these kinds of things on his own – I need someone else to prompt me. I’ll ask Dave Jnr if he fancies it.
I get some choccy ice cream, check out souvenir shop, and get a taxi back. The bottom of the taxi hits every bump but the road was really bad today. I felt for him. the torrents of rain had washed away various degrees of road in several places and it was worse than ever. I tell him to stop at the slippery slope and check to see if he can get back but he is confident that he can and so down we go, sliding sideways nicely. Still, he descends the piste and carries on regardless hitting everything there is in the road. I felt good that I had warned him. I got him to drop me off at the back of the farm and then HE ASKS ME how much. Stupidly, I say “Tres? Cuatro?” Naturally, he says ‘cuatro’ but I don't begrudge it. Four thousand colones, four pounds fifty pence for a thirty-minute ride on a road like that - they deserve it. London cabbies – you don’t know when you’re spoiled rotten!!
When I get back, Negra has broken out of her ties. She appears later in the day, following Over around.
There is some mincemeat left so I do myself another burger in the afternoon and one of my teeth breaks off - that is the second one to break while I have been here.
Evening, and here is a weird thing. I am doing some writing by candlelight on the table in the kitchen. It’s the usual scenario with a candle, ashtray, writing pad, drink within reach and working away in a puddle of light the size of your car. The mirror is leaning against an empty bottle behind the candle to give me more light. Caveman see? But a curious flying thing comes along and doesn't know whether it prefers the candle image in the mirror or the real thing. Inevitably, it eventually burns itself on the flames of the real thing and can't fly any more. The scientist in me tells me that it therefore is more interested in the heat than the light.
It then tries to climb the reflected image of the candle in the mirror but obviously no matter how far it goes, it will never reach the flame because it can never get close enough. The image will always keep moving. Faced with this conundrum, or merely due to previous singeing, it stops, sees itself, falls a couple of times and eventually decides to climb the candle itself halfway. It seems happy and it clings there.
Looking closely at it - it really is an ugly thing and does not bear close scrutiny, rotating its head like that. One of his wings is singed off. I move the pen close to it and the antennae follow the pen as though they are magnetised. After a while, it falls off the candle and appears to be really struggling. It remains facing me, is aware of me and I think that maybe I am more interesting now than the candle.