Wednesday 5.25

Montezuma, C.R.

Well darn it. This no picture situation is just not cutting it. If a picture is worth a thousand words then I owe you a book or two. After my nap I went to pick up my clothes from the wash lady. Yes, I did some wash! After a week even I need some clean shorts… I visited a little open air ‘restaurant.’ Frijoles, rice, salad, mashed potatoes, pork chop and a Pilsen beer. (a plato tipico – typical plate.) you can get this with chicken, beef, pork, fish, whatever meat. I didn’t have dinner. My breakfast of fresh fruit and wheat toast with coffee held me over till late. Tonight I had a snack I had been saving. On the northwest corner of Lake Arenal is ‘Tim’s Panaria’ a german bakery. I stopped there yesterday morning on the drive down to grab some breakfast. I ate the cinnamon roll and a fresh yeast roll during the drive. But I saved two coconut pastries. These were comparable to the old ‘Bama pecan pies’ I got as a kid. (individually wrapped small pecan pie deserts) only these were not wrapped. These came right out of the oven. Standing 1 ½” high and about 2” across, a pastry shell filled with coconut pie. Lightly glazed to a caramelized finish and moist inside with huge chunks of coconut. I saved them till tonight only because I had no idea just how good they were. Now I wish I had bought a dozen… I measure the distance from here back to the bakery at about 60 miles. It would take over 5 hours to reach it. Boy was I naive when I planned my driving down here. The map is not a scale for travel. Towns marked are often nothing more than a name on a map – no town at all. Often a small store and a couple of houses. Road signs are impossible to follow. I was lost 4 times driving from Jaco to Arenal. The roads are much worse than advertised. Any wash out, pot hole, bridge gone, earthquake rippled problem is merely marked by a sign and then a simple pole driven into the road to show you where the ‘problem’ is. Nothing is fixed. You are just given a warning. (this is why they say don’t drive at night) there are almost no guard rails anywhere. If you see guard rails you really must be in danger. Now complicate this by not being able to read the signs. (I had a gentleman explain to me last week in La Fortuna that I was going the wrong way down a one way. Thankfully his hand gestures were ‘kind’ and his pointing was a direction and not a wave.) it’s a very wild ride.

This morning at breakfast a large blue bird, resembling a blue jay on steroids, with a head dress on, landed on the table and ate food from my hand. The waitress explained that they eat sugar. You can pour out a package of sugar and the birds come and eat it. (I saw one swoop down and steal a single packet of sugar. Then he flew up on a telephone wire and ate the sugar.) this is a strange land. Dorothy we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Well im into my second book so I need to take off. Sorry to bore you with no pictures.

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