Wouldn’t you know that as we set out to take Ruby to Monteverde, one of us—I don’t remember who now—had left the lights on the night before, and the battery was dead. Luis kept jumper cables in his jeep, but he was out running errands, and neither Jane nor Horace had them in their cars. Ruby was parked on a little two-car asphalt apron at the bottom of a hill, and so I got into the driver’s seat while Richard, Paul, and Barbie tried to push the car up the incline so that I might be able to roll-start it.

 

Not surprisingly, we could barely budge the thing. It was pitiful. Everyone strained and heaved and grunted and shoved, but I think it rolled all of about five inches before coasting stubbornly back to where it started. Everyone took a break, leaning against the car, panting, and at that moment, Don Marcos strode around the corner. He must have been watching our puny efforts because he marched up to the side of the car and shooed everyone out of the way.

 

 

We had heard stories about his strength from Lijia, who told us about a night in Cartago, when her father had had too much to drink on too little sleep. He became paranoid about something and went on a rampage, tossing men aside like they were dinky Lego figures as they tried to subdue him. Someone finally called the police.

 

As they were familiar with the prodigious strength of Don Marcos, they sent eight officers in a jeep to quell this one-man riot, but when they came squealing up to the front of the bar with their sirens blaring, this enraged him even further. He stomped out, crouched down, grabbed the bottom of the jeep, and flipped it over on its side! This was not just the jeep that he pitched, mind you. It was a jeep containing eight men! Well, they finally managed to get him under control (the sight of eight policemen struggling to get out of the jeep as it lay on its side must have been interesting) and he spent the night in jail. Hopefully, there he had a chance to get some sleep.

 

Anyway, this was the first time that I’d ever seen his muscle in action, and it was impressive. It was abundantly clear that I never wanted to get on his bad side—or, probably, startle him in the middle of the night.

 

Thanks to Don Marcos, we got the jeep started, so we piled in with all our stuff and took off for Monteverde. As soon as we arrived, I talked Richard into going out into the cloud forest for a walk, partly to get the kinks out from the drive, but primarily in hopes of catching a glimpse of a howler monkey. They were around. We could hear their eerie, echoing cry; but as the sound carried for miles, there was no telling how close they might be. Besides, the canopy was so high, you would need binoculars to see them if they occupied the top layers. And for some reason, binoculars are one of those things that Richard and I never seem to remember when we’re going somewhere that we might want them. We have three pair that sit at the ready in our hall, strategically placed to catch our eye, and there they sit. It’s the same with pictures. Even if we do remember the camera, we never remember to take pictures. We went to Hawaii for the first time last summer and we didn’t even finish one roll of film. Richard thinks that I should take up photography, while I think that he should. Almost all of our photos are duplicates that friends who do take pictures send to us.

 

We walked until dusk began to fall, and then we turned around and headed back to the hotel without having seen any howlers. We did spot a fat, bronze-colored fer de lance oozing stealthily around the base of a tree, an extremely poisonous snake that fortunately, is not all that aggressive. Some poisonous snakes are very aggressive and will go out of their way to bite a person, a thought I find absolutely terrifying. In fact, Richard has a story about a green mamba that he encountered in Africa when he was in Liberia looking for diamonds with his boss at the time, a geology professor. This part of Africa has both black and green mambas, and not only does their venom kill you within minutes, they are highly territorial. Richard was sitting in a walled garden with the geology professor, the head man of the village that they were negotiating with, and a couple of servants who worked for the head man. He noticed the mamba inching along the overhanging branch of a tree that dangled into the garden, but he was totally unprepared when all of a sudden the snake launched itself and came flying right at him! The head man glimpsed the mamba out of the corner of his eye and grabbed one of the servants, throwing him into the path of the oncoming snake. Fortunately for the servant, he had been standing at the ready with a shovel—I guess this snake-launching behavior was common—and he batted it down out of the air.  He then tried to beat the snake to death, but it escaped, gliding swiftly up the wall and back into the trees.

 

I’m perfectly happy to restrict my travel to parts of the world where poisonous snakes attack only when personally threatened.

 

At any rate, the next day, we had business to attend to. We were meeting with the craft cooperative of Monteverde, which was made up of Hispanic Costa Ricans. None of the North American-descended ladies in the area were members, for some reason. Perhaps they were too busy farming or making their wonderful cheese. Paul and Barbie decided that they wanted to ride to the coop, so they rented a couple of horses from a nearby stables, and Richard and I drove Ruby. We had set a time for the pick-up, of course, but only a couple of women were there when we arrived. We had spent enough time in the Land of the Lotus Eaters to realize that we were just supposed to hang out while the word got around that we had arrived. Since there was no phone, I’m not sure how they passed the word, but as we sat at a rough-hewn wooden table in a small, dark room, one by one ladies began showing up with their goods.

 

A couple of elderly women shuffled in with their crocheted tablecloths, while some younger women brought some embroidery. A comfortably pudgy, soft-spoken, middle-aged woman delivered some macramé belts and another lady brought some multi-colored woven wool ones. The most striking member of the cooperative turned out to be a petite young woman dressed in a black leather riding outfit, complete with hat and cape, all trimmed with silver studs. She looked like something out of a Zorro movie and she was absolutely gorgeous. She had thick, straight, silky dark hair, perfect, olive skin, and fathomless hazel eyes that, honest to God, flashed in the dimly lit room. I almost expected her to produce a pair of pearl-handled derringers and hold us all up.

 

She didn’t, of course, although she regarded us gringos rather contemptuously.  It became clear, however, when Paul counted out the money we owed them, that we were paying them more than they had probably made the previous three years. They all beamed. We got the impression, in fact, that they had nursed a fear that we would renege for some reason, and when we came through, they felt thrilled and greatly relieved. Purchasing the materials for these wares was no small matter to these women, and if we hadn’t kept our part of the bargain, it would have taken them a long time to recoup their costs. As we left, they were all smiles, and it felt very, very good to give this community an economic shot in the arm. Now we got to feel like the fairy godmothers!

 

We loaded everything into the jeep and then Paul and Barbie decided that they didn’t want to ride back to the stables, so Richard and I climbed up on the horses. We were delighted to have this opportunity, even though as we took off, it began to rain. I hadn’t ridden in years, ever since I was an adolescent when my friends and I would talk our parents into taking us to a stables on the outskirts of town. There we would ride gentle, plodding mares through the forested trails and come home smelling like a horse stall, which made my mother not want to get within twenty yards of me. Not a horsey woman, my mother.

 

The mount I rode today was no thoroughbred, but he was a nice animal, a lovely dappled gray. At first, he didn’t want to be in the rain any more than I did—not to mention the fact that we were headed for the barn—so he responded enthusiastically when I nudged him into a canter, and we loped along majestically in the cloud forest. This was quite a thrill, I can tell you. However, he soon tired and resumed his ambling gait while the rain came down harder and harder, and no amount of prodding could persuade him to do more than pretend to speed up his walk for about two or three steps. When I squeezed the heels of my hiking boots against his belly as a cue to pick up the pace, he would prick his head up and look more alert for a moment, bunch up his muscles as if he intended to use them and then sink back to his leisurely pace, head nodding drowsily, while I became more sodden by the minute. I was squishing in the saddle by the time we arrived at the stables.

 

 

We were scheduled to leave the next day, so early in the morning, Richard and I roused ourselves so that we could take one more trip into the cloud forest to see if we might spot any animals. Dawn and dusk were the best times, apparently. But though we wandered several miles through the chilly mist and gigantic flora, and we heard all kinds of tantalizing sounds, we didn’t see any animals. No howlers. I was developing a new respect for the filmmakers who put together those wild animal documentaries. The more time I spend in nature, the more I marvel at what they’re able to capture on film. Most wild animals are incredibly elusive. They don’t want to be seen and they’re perfectly adapted to this purpose in their habitat. A lot of times, you’re lucky if you see a furry blur zooting through your peripheral vision or something moving far in the distance. The fact that it’s moving clues you in that it’s an animal, but it’s so far in the distance that it looks like a dot. And a lot of times you don’t see any creatures at all besides plants and insects. Like this morning.

 

So, we would just have to be patient and try again sometime. Just because I wanted to see howlers didn’t mean they felt the same way about me.

 

 

 

*Intro:

 

At the end of 1982, both Richard and I had been out of work for a year, despite constant looking, and the best we had been able to come up with was scrounging for odd jobs. It was an economic climate much like the one we’re in now, and we were feeling both dejected and panicked about what the future might hold for us. We certainly could never have imagined what happened next: a dream job in a dream country for a dream boss.

 

This is Chapter 30 of the memoir I wrote about the year-and-a-half that Richard and I spent living in Costa Rica. It was quite the adventure, living with a an eccentric and flamboyant heiress** from Dallas, her elegant and erudite husband who wrote Westerns, and their handsome, bad boy son, whom Richard used to babysit. Oh, yeah, and next door resided the safe house for Eden Pastora, aka “Commander Zero,” leader of the Contras who were waging a civil war with the Sandanistas in Nicaragua at that time.

 

This was a particularly golden era in Costa Rica’s history, before it became “discovered,” even before the introduction of television there, really (it started coming in during the time we lived there). It was wild and exotic and magical and amazing.

 

 

**Jane, sadly, passed away not long ago, but she left a legacy as colorful as she was. In 1984, she commissioned one of the largest environmental sculptures in the Western Hemisphere, a set of standing stones in Arlington, Texas that were designed and built by sculptor Norm Hines. Caelum Moor has been a source of enormous controversy over the years, which I’ll write about one of these days. In the meantime, feel free to Google “Caelum Moor” and see what turns up. It’s fascinating.