Patrick of the Jungle

I returned from the cloud forests of Costa Rica with a whopping head cold, so I did not post this as soon as I would have liked. I tried to post yesterday but blogger was, er, problematic. The system would not recognize my password. When I tried to change the password, the system wanted me to log in again using the password it didn't recognize. I went around with this for a while until I gave up and waited for another day. That day has arrived.

I will not bore you with all of the details of my trip to Costa Rica. To sum up: my wife and I spent about seven days there, some of which was spent on the Pacific coast in the town of Quepos and some of which was spent in the mountains near San Isidro. While on the coast, we stayed in a house my parents rented and hung out on the beach, ate a lot of beans and rice, and swung from tree to tree on a canopy tour. Our tour guide, Luis (aka "El Mono"), led us across cables that stretched as long as 380 meters from points as high as 90 meters. It was quite cool. At the end of the tour, we entered some helpful comments in the comment book supplied by our guide. A previous explorer stated it succinctly: "I trust in El Mono and Jesus." Amen, brother.

I was struck by the large expatriate community in Costa Rica and how "gringo friendly" the place was. Your humble correspondent can barely speak English, let alone Spanish, but he felt quite comfortable there. He picked up a few words here and there but most of the locals were quite patient with him. As long as he ordered the beans and rice, which he always got around to, sooner or later.

More on the mountain portion of the trip tomorrow.

I note that Stephen R. Donaldson returns to Thomas Covenant series in the fall with a book called The Runes of the Earth. You can read a sample of the new story here. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to read it.

More on the mountain portion of the trip tomorrow.