The Mural, Take II

Keneth put in a long day to add two extra coats to the background, and to outline everything in black. . . He showed up at 5:30 a.m., and aside from a quick break for an hour in the afternoon, he was here until 6:30 p.m. He even enlisted his cousin, Darleen, to give the background an extra coat. Darleen wasn't thrilled with the picture taking, but enjoyed getting her Rembrandt on.

As darkness fell, Keneth was looking for extra inspiration, so he strapped on a bandana, a beanie and painted himself up like Salvadore Dali, one of his favorite artists.

This is. . .

An ear . . . This is an ear all hopped up on something. . . Get the picture?

While out whacking brush in the jungle the other day with the machete, something large and black landed on my neck. I swatted it away. A few seconds later, I felt a sting in my right ear lobe, which grew progressively more painful as I clawed at it.

I have never had my ears pierced, but I would guess that this must be kind of what it feels like. After sleeping on it, the next day it was swollen to twice the size of the other lobe and was cock-eyed like a drunken weatherman leaning into a hurricane, sticking out at a pretty good angle.

No idea of what got me, but I would guess it was a wasp. There are a lot of them down here, and I may have ticked one off while I was cutting through the grass and the other jungle junk to clear the area by one of the fences.

The distended lobe was, of course, a source of great amusement to everyone here at Tree Houses. Disney will be pleased to note that Dumbo is well known in at least this part of Costa Rica, judging by the comments from Keneth and Darleen.

It still doesn't hurt all that much (don't think there are a lot of nerves in the lobe) but it looks goofy and feels like I've got a weight dangling from my right lobe.

Jungle mystery. . .

Mini-B is recovering nicely, thanks for the e-mails, etc. We now think that our original premise, that she was swiped by an iguana, may be wrong. According to the locals, iguanas get defensive with their tails, and Mini-B had a pretty good-sized divot, just one, down her nose. What are your thoughts on what got the little bugger?

Sloth--very long claws

Iguana--we hate to be proven wrong

Jaguar--a stretch, as it would have killed her

Feral cat--but one big divot doesn't explain a cat

Godzilla--a longshot, but would be cool

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The Mural, Take I

Keneth, one of the talented people who works here at Tree Houses, is painting a mural on the side of the house where we live. Previously, the side of the house was a lime-green color, but Keneth, a very good artist who has done a mural at the local elementary school, is going to spruce it up and add some color to the place.

This will be a regular feature on the blog until the mural is completed (and when we get around to taking pictures and putting them up). . . It may take a while, as it is a large area to cover, but we cannot wait until it is all wrapped up.

This is what happens. . .

When you're a little runt, yet don't act like it. . . Mini-B and Bejuca took off into the jungle this morning, after some dogs were heard on the outer boundaries of the property. . . About a minute later, we heard a frightening screech and yelp (much louder and sharper than previous screeches when Bejuca has stepped on her) and we took off running and looking. . .

We couldn't go through the jungle, so we ran down to where a back road that rings the hotel property is at. . . After a couple of minutes, Mini-B came bounding out of the jungle and started running toward us. . . As she got closer, I noticed something was amiss, and the entire front of her left side was covered in blood. She was dragging her face along the ground, trying to wipe it off. Lucy quickly scooped her up, and we took her to the house, where we rinsed her off.

There was a 2-inch gash down her nose, and she had lost quite a bit of blood. Luckily, after we washed her off and held a towel on her, the bleeding pretty much stopped.

We called the vet and headed up to Quesada. Mini-B kept wanting to go to sleep (the vet said that this was because she lost a fair amount of blood), but Lucy kept waking her up. We got to the vet, and he predicted 1-2 stitches, and wasn't concerned. We went to run some errands while Mini-B was stitched up. When we came back, the doc said he ended up putting 4-5 stitches in, as the wound was much larger than it appeared. He took pictures with his i-Phone and showed them to us (kind of gruesome).

Now, as you can see, Mini-B has a silver nose, some stitches, and another halo. She goes back in a week to get the stitches out.

We're theorizing that an iguana got ahold of her, as it's one long, deep scratch. Another dog would have left more damage, we're guessing. And Lucy has spotted an iguana in that general direction the past couple of mornings.

Sadly, Mini-B probably hasn't learned much from this episode. Later this afternoon, when she had more spunk, she followed Lucy down to tree house no. 2 and Lucy had to grab her from going into the jungle again.

Whacking a branch. . .

The other day, while Miguel and I were tromping through the jungle, we noticed a pretty large branch that was hanging over the power and phone lines from the road to the hotel. This is not a good thing, considering that we're in the middle of the rainy season, and storms are the norm, especially in the afternoons. The branch was about 30-plus feet up and was roughly 50 to 60 feet long.

Miguel, who had just built a ladder out of metal purchased from the local ferreteria (hardware store), was chomping at the bit to try it out. He welded together a ladder from steel bars, and each section is 3 meters long, so it will now be long enough--provided all three sections are hooked together--to get to the top of the tree houses. We needed two sections to get up high enough for Miguel to get to the crux of the problem.


The whole process took a couple of hours, and it was just Miguel, myself and Keneth at times, along with the ladders, a machete and some rope. Miguel shinnied up the tree, strung a rope around the branch that was going to be cut down, and then we pulled the ladder up to the level that he could stand on. The ladder is one heavy bugger, so we couldn't just prop it up against the tree (and besides, the grown down below made it really tough to move it around).

After whacking away at several smaller branches, we tied a rope around the big section and pulled on it, while Miguel cut away with the machete. The branch, at its base, was about 10 inches around, and when Miguel cut the main part away, the metal ladder that he made and was standing on, shot about 5 feet in the air and bounced. Miguel was about 30 feet up, riding it out. The ladder, roped to the tree, was hanging about a foot off the ground at this point, and Miguel was having a hoot and a holler.

At last, it was time to cut the branch away from the base of the tree, about 20 feet was left of it. I had ahold of the rope attached to the branch while Miguel cut away at it. Just before I gave it a final tug, Miguel told me to stand to the side, as the branch was going to come my way (the opposite direction of the power lines). Good call. I moved about 6 feet to my left, gave the rope a final tug, and the branch came barreling down, leaving a hefty divot in the turf near to where I had been standing.

One down, another two to go . . .

Persistent purchaser of pooch products poll. . .

Is it bordering on "crazy cat lady" status (there are no cats involved, but who has ever heard of a "crazy dog lady"?) when you buy a pooch a new collar every three weeks? We don't want to give away the identity of the persistent purchaser of pooch products, so you can draw your own conclusions from the "lady" part.

Yes

No

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Hotel Las Delphines. . .

This was the place we were encamped for our three-night stay in San Andres, Colombia. It's the smallest of the Decameron Hotels (there are six or seven, I believe) and it's close to the center of town. There was a bar, small pool and restaurant at Delphines. We lucked out and got the only room on the ground floor that looked right out onto the water. We could hear the ocean lapping at the bottom of the lanai.



The pool was nice, the bar was just like you see at Sears and you set up in your basement, but the bartenders were friendly, and the restaurant was right on the water, which was very nice. The food in the restaurant was good, though nothing special. We had to make reservations every morning for where we wanted to eat lunch and dinner for that day.

When we checked in, they gave us each a bracelet that we just had to flash at any or the restaurants/bars/discos (we didn't hit the disco) to get in and since it was all-inclusive, there was no extra money necessary.

The other hotels had the discos and the nightly shows. Las Delphines, being the smallest, didn't have either, which we didn't mind.

One hitch: the elbow joint under the bathroom sink was missing, so every time turned on the sink, our feet got wet. . . Compared to the story of the folks we met who stayed in another hotel, we were in a pretty sweet room.

Aquarium Hotel

This is one of the larger Decameron hotels, and it was just a five-minute walk from Las Delphines, so we spent more time here than we did at our own. There's five restaurants, several bars and a larger pool area and you can sea kayak, wind surf, kite surf, snorkel or scuba there (which is included in the package price--if you want to do motorized water sports then there's an extra charge).



The way the rooms are set up at the Aquarium is pretty nice, as almost all of them have ocean views. They have 15 towers, and each is about six stories, I believe. Probably 90 percent of the rooms are right on the water, which is nice. The restaurants there are pretty nice as well, and they have the lone swim-up pool bar that we found.

We would likely stay there if we do return to San Andres. It's nice to be close to the town and walk around, and have all the amenities of the large resort nearby.

Question. . .

When jogging/slogging through the jungle/rain forest in Costa Rica, is it OK to strap on an Ipod? It's a route that we have traveled many times before and we know it well. Still, the music is turned down while running, in order to hear the monkeys, toucans and other wildlife sounds, but is this ruining the experience? Keep in mind, this is 80s' music, good stuff for the middle-aged plodder.

Yes

No

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San Andres

For a place I didn't even know existed until a few months ago, we had a great time in San Andres, Colombia. I'm pretty sure it's smaller than Oahu, and we heard population estimates from 100,000 to 200,000 folks. As Johnny No. 1, our cab driver told us, if people speak English, they're locals, if they speak Spanish, they're from Colombia. In the schools, Johnny No. 1 said -- a very nice fellow who played professional basketball in mainland Colombia for 13 years -- they teach English and Spanish, and in the homes, the locals speak a sort of Creole.



Johnny No. 1 says there are too many people on San Andres now, and from the looks of the traffic, we would have to concur. There are probably 25,000 motorcycles/scooters on the island and families of four or five will hop on a motorcycle and cruise around. The side streets are just clogged with parked motorcycles.

Overall, it's a very nice island. One thing we were pleasantly surprised to discover: no bugs or mosquitoes. We both got pretty chewed up in Bocas Del Torro, Panama, but didn't even need the bug spray in San Andres. The beaches were great, and there's several small islands (that look like they could have been used as backdrops for Gilligan's Island) a mile or so off-shore of San Andres.

We're back. . .

From a great time in San Andres, Colombia. . . Very nice little island, only a 45-minute flight from
San Jose.

According to one of the taxi drivers that we rode with, the island was originally British, then was given over to Nicaragua and now it's with Colombia. This was explained as we were standing by the roadside while Colombian soldiers with automatic rifles searched the cab for drugs and arms--they came up empty. ("This is what they do, they are bored," said the driver.)

We had a great time and wouldn't mind going back at some point. It was kind of like a cruise on dry land, as all meals, drinks and activities were included in the stay.

We'll post more pics and tales in the next couple of days as time allows.