February 16, 1997 Sunday - Early Morning (Alajuela, Costa Rica)

Fabio (yes, that's his real name) picked me up at the airport and we went to his "farm" from there. It's only about 15 minutes away from the airport so you can still hear the planes in the air. The farm is on a fairly large piece of property and the house has a very open feel to it. It's design to be more of a cool summerhouse.

In the center of the complex is an open space with the top opening covered by a grate. In that space grows a large tropical plant with leaves as large as an elephant's ear. There's also a living room there but it's covered overhead. It's a very breezy time of the year so the house is really cool from all the open windows. I joked around and asked if I should check the bed for bugs, but Fabio warned me that I should check since his sister got stung by a scorpion once while staying here. Needless to say, I checked carefully and didn't leave any of my stuff on the ground. I went to sleep right away afterward.

I woke up next day, only had to fend off 1 mosquito during the night. I took a shower and went outside to see what I could find around the area. A lot of cow dung covered the property and a large pond behind the house was drained to a puddle. I checked out the puddle and was able to spot some sort of livebearers, some non-descriptive Cichlids, and a lot of tadpoles. Rio Alajuela ran beyond the pond but it's more like Rio Muerto (River of Death), where I wasn't able to spot any signs of life except for one or two little livebearers and a Costa Rican sandpiper.

The scene was kinda depressing. In the Amazon during the dry season, you could see where the high water mark was by checking the tree trunks for the water mark. At Rio Alajuela, you could see where the high water mark is by checking where the tree trunks trapped the floating garbage. I was about to give up spotting any interesting critters after seeing a bottle of RAID floating in the river, but then I saw a large 10"x5" turtle slither into the river.

I also took a picture of a group of large ants, about 3/4 inch long covered with golden hair. As I was typing this journal on my laptop, a little spider-like critter was crawling up my tank top. It's about the size of a pinhead but I felt it. Fabio informed me that it was a tiny flea-sized tick. I went back in for a shower.

  February 16, 1997 Sunday - Night

Well, I didn't see any mosquitoes during the day surprisingly, but those little ticks were all over. I guess the Ticos and Ticas (What Costa Ricans are called) here are just used to it. The only other non-farm animals I saw around here were a foot long lizard and some hawks circling overhead. Nothing really interesting happened in the afternoon.

I hung out with Fabio and his family and friends. They had their monthly gathering here and 20+ people showed up. Most of them speak a little bit of English and some of them tried to converse with me exclusively in English, and they managed very well. Fabio's father made some comments to him that made some people chuckle. I found out later that he was making a joke about Chinese people and their pronunciations. In the USA, the belief was that they can't pronounce the letter "L" and usually pronounce it as "R"s (which was true in many cases). But in Costa Rica, the belief was different where they don't think Chinese people could pronounce "R"s and pronounce them as "L"s. I had a chuckle about it too.

I went back to my room and updated this journal, and fell asleep until 7:00. Everybody pretty much left the house except for Fabio's immediate family. One by one they wished me good night and to have a good time at the shore house before leaving. Fabio and I went to a chicken stand in a nearby town and ate dinner there. I had a seasoned and grilled chicken breast with some tortillas, a very small salad that looked and tasted like very mild salsa, fried bananas and refried beans. It was a typical Costa Rican dinner I was told. We went back to the farm after that and I read a little bit before going to sleep.