Jaco, Costa Rica

Jaco is what I was told it would be – somewhat “risqué” and seedy. There are women of the night out in mid day and I am told you only have to stop a local and say the words, “I would like to see pink elephants” and a drug dealer appears in minutes. By the looks of the town it doesn’t seem a mere legend. Even the bathroom at a relatively upscale restaurant had a notice that read, “no sex workers aloud (sic)”.

Despite the local grit, I spent a lovely day today. I wandered into a barber shop. A young black man was sitting alone and when I asked if he would cut my hair, he nodded and looked at his feet. I believe he didn’t speak English. I sat for some time on the barber chair while he occasionally raised his eyes and smiled. Following an awkward silence, a white Costa Rican came in and gently led me out of the barber chair and adjusted it for my height, before reaching for a “pipe” that smelled both sweet and pungent. I smiled and told him it smelled lovely and when he passed it to me, I declined, telling him that I hadn’t smoked for years. He seemed at ease reached for his phone and played Bob Marley while sharing the smoke with the young black man. “I shot the Sherriff…” rang out and the barber stood back and looked at my hair from several angles before launching into a high speed hair cut with a machine, hand scissors, and even a fine blade. All the while, dancing, rocking and singing.

I have never had such a skilled barber and although he didn’t really do an excellent job, it was by no means his fault. I so marveled at a stoned barber plying his trade so efficiently that I had little interest in the style he cut. “the secret is to be stoned and still be good at your job” he said, when I mentioned that he seemed an artist with his tools – swapping various sizes of attachments on his machine like an artist switching paint brushes. Now I will live (as you can see) with a haircut that resembles the work of a stoned barber – somewhat uneven and a unkempt. He spoke at length about the state of the world and how it seemed to be going mad. Finally, after the last finishing touches he stood back and admired his work and muttered, almost as if to himself, “luckily all the things that happen in the world don’t come to Costa Rica for twenty years.”

At the Foot of Volcano

The hand that silently paints this world.. the hand that wordlessly wrote the Poetry of each sunrise and sunset seizes the pen that writes… and gently demands we put it away. What She writes.. we can only observe on bended knee.

When his finger moves.. the body stirs with aching need of his touch… knowing the heart only exists in the touching. Stirred into awakening.. the cavernous walls shake… rattling bones and sinew to the terrifying cry of love.

I victimize you with my melancholy for passing time, but I offer no apology. I see you now with the wizened eyes of my grandfather as he stood by the train that would take us from the village for the last time. Did they not reflect the soul stirring acceptance of the fickle nature of time ­ at once the acceptance of movement and arresting mortality. It was not a train he watched as it tugged each car from the station, but time itself, epochs and eras that carried his grandchildren wistfully away, while his feet remained rooted in the holy dirt on rice paddies and long pregnant moments in being. If melancholy exists where the past and future can be seen in the present, had he seen that each passing train would carry all his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren away along digital tracks into the silicon cities of Palo Alto, and Bangalore? Had he seen that we who left the village that day would be high tech entrepreneurs who would build those very tracks. It is with those eyes I see you now, as I long for a draft of the pines, mountains, and glaciers of Patagonia, the rain soaked forest of Monteverde, and the Arenal’s Volcano. To see freshly I place myself among unfamiliar grandeur but the media I am rooted in is of my own making ­ a blog, a cell phone, and you. 

The mathematics of seeing in inexplicable, its laws indiscernible, its manifestation unpredictable. It is the mathematics in which to empty oneself is to be filled with hope, where to give of oneself is to receive immeasurably more. To come again to grandeur, knowing the work of our hands begins in failure, yet, in increments, the soul will stir and see itself.

Patagonia, Argentina

Sweeping horizons of the Upsala Glacier and channel with rushing turquoise waters, mist covered mountains and racing clouds broken by beams of sunlight have the power to make the mind still and silence the travelers on the boat. The space is untouched by human works – save the lone low emission boat – preserving what is justly a human heritage. There are few thoughts, analogies, or words that could capture the sheer colossal artistry of this space. Perhaps the greatest poets of the world should be brought here to tell humanity of vast beauty and its power to transform and humble the human mind. If the body were a cathedral, the air as pure as the winds of Patagonia, and its blood as clean as the waters, and its being as still in the midst of movement as the sky, and soul as stirring as the deep blue icebergs and its limbs as profoundly quiet and strong as the glaciers, then mankind would count each of its days, its hours and seconds like deeply devote monks running beads through their fingers with love and care.

Patagonia, Argentina

The massive glacier, merely a hundred yards away is still reverberating from the great collapse of the glacial bridge on two sides of the 50 foot divide of Lake Argentina. It had been breaking every 12 years for several decades but now breaks every 4 years as the waters from one side become higher and pressure the bridge to collapse. We arrived the morning of the greatly anticipated event. And the force of the break still shook the supported structure which continues to crumble.

We can only clean the flute, care for it and prepare, and then wait. You, master flutist, may not come, yet, we begin and prepare and wait again and again. Perhaps you will come in an hour, a week, a year, or perhaps never. But what right have we but to prepare and wait. You have left us with little choice, other than to be a servant or slave. We strive to master the world only to surrender to a life of waiting for your breath.

Tilcara, Humahauca, Jujuy. Argentina

The restaurant, La Carmela, is nestled across the street from the main square where disinterested sellers man the native artisan stalls. The wind whips up the dust on the tiny main street that runs from the highway to the small cathedral. It is mid-afternoon, around 2 pm., and almost everything is closed except for La Cantina. Tilcara is an ancient native village on the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a narrow mountain valley of the Rio Grande.

Since the Quebrada had not been discovered by western tourists language is a significant barrier to communication. I had already mis-ordered -having received one cheese empanada for my wife but no chicken empanada for myself. The tamales I ordered with my mixed Hispanio-english-pig-latin for my wife was to be with corn and cheese but instead we got beef pureed into the corn, hardly appetizing for her vegetarian palette. The white wine thankfully arrived as ordered though it was unceremoniously dumped on the table in a small, chipped, deformed, glass jug along with an upside down drinking glass. The regional dish, Picenta Pollo (chicken) is bland and soupy with a yellow – golden hue. It is served with local rice and a mixture of vegetables that are largely indistinguishable and a boiled potato. It is not
unpleasant to the eye, and with each morsel, more of this dish became discernible. The vegetables seem to contain finely scrambled eggs, onions, small chunks of sweet potato, and green garnish – possibly parsley.

The occasional dog, omnipresent in Argentina, looked longingly through the open door and was driven away by the young waitress who should have probably been in school. A bareback horse rider galloped past followed by a cloud of dust and a retinue of dogs. The television is on but thankfully on mute so the mournful but pleasant sound of native flutes playing tunes from the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel waft over the square. The chicken dish, though mis-represented by the term “picante”, was satisfying. The taste and presentation could be compared to that of a well-made curry in North London to which the cook had mistakenly forgotten to add salt and chili powder and possibly any spices whatsoever. In the end the saving grace was the fact that the chicken was fresh, as if it had just minutes before run past the door like the horse and the dogs. The empanada was fresh as was the corn in the tamale and the husk it was wrapped in. The white wine that was poured from a barrel seemed pleasant after the three hour drive from Salta though sweeter than I wished. The proprietor’s attempt to close the frail and aged double doors is futile against the wind.

There is no sign whatsoever that the proprietor had any intention to make this restaurant as rustic as it is – the lamp shades are made of thin pieces of animal skin which are torn or missing, the “specials” board with an image of Coca Cola hangs tilted and absent of any specials. The flies that seem to appreciate the cool, dark, interior to the bright sunny street are lazy, possibly because they seem well fed.

The Quebrada is in the province of Jujuy (pronounced who-whoee) in Northern Argentina, and it is the least visited by foreign tourists. The hotels and restaurants are aimed at Argentine sensibilities, or more notably, sophisticated Buenos Aires sensibilities. The few hotels and restaurants are small and in minimally refurbished old buildings and those that are new are artfully integrated into the adobe style buildings of the villages.

There is visible evidence in the form of walls and irrigation system that dates it well before the height of the Inca dynasties in nearby Bolivia and Peru to which they paid homage. It is also the home of Pulcara de Tilcara, an ancient stone and mud fortress. The presence of tourists, mostly young couples from Buenos Aires, does not seem to affect its daily life and charm, as in more developed destinations such as Patagonia, Iguazu Falls, Mendoza and Buenos Aires – all worthy destinations and more easily accessible.