Critters large and very small

Monday Mar 10,

Today was a quiet day. I had an unexpected visit from Montezuma last night and he was looking for revenge! Funny because we have been very careful with our drinking water and washing our food in treated water. Everyday Charles purifies enough water for drinking, coffee, ice cubes, and cooking in general, but some bug must have snuck in there.

This is a very hot place to be feeling yucky. I spent the day cooling off in the shower and snoozing in front of the fan. I must say I’m feeling much better this evening. Charles, so far is fine. We do expect him to have problems soon though. He had a giant fruit and water drink today. Very refreshing until he found out that the fellow who made if for him stopped using the town water, which could cause problems on it’s own, and had a well in his back yard.

We’ve been seeing this strange creature in the jungle beside our cabana. Charles claims it’s a bunny/duck or maybe a bunny/pig. Today I wanted a picture of a bird in one of the trees so I wandered over there and stood still, hoping for a bird to land. Soon I noticed movement on the ground and the critter that we haven’t really been able to get a good look at, wandered by. I took his picture, and then I left in a hurry. It may well be a bunny/duck/pig, but by my way of thinking it is the biggest rat I have ever seen!

Charles says stuff to try to make me feel better like, “Oh honey, I’m sure it’s nothing more than the local variety of ground hog.” Ya right! A ground hog that looks like a giant rat! A rat/hog! Ha!. Luckily he didn’t like the look of me anymore than I liked the look of him.

Charlie's Day

Despite what the tourist books tell you, Cahuita has not 1, but 2 paved streets. They are actually paving bricks, not concrete or blacktop, and they do not actually go anywhere useful. As you come into town, the main road forks into these 2 bricked streets. The left one goes past the bus stop and ends at the main street, the right one goes past mostly nothing and ends at the main street – a block further south. The main street, which gets 90% of the local traffic, has two small grocery stores, a couple tourist shops, two bars competing for the nightlife crowd, and several restaurants. It begins at the footbridge entrance to the national park to the south, and ends four blocks later, at the post office / police station to the north. Because of the traffic, it’s a pretty dusty stretch of road, and people spray it down with water in front of their home or business most days.

The point of this rambling is to contrast where I work with where I live. When I leave the computer center, I walk about six bocks along this dusty, hot, sometimes noisy, route and then turn into an amazing garden. The temperature immediately drops ten degrees, and, because I’m usually along between 4:30 and 5:00, this amazing perfume is released by some flowering plant that that wafts on a gentle breeze and relaxes beyond anything I’ve ever known. A quick shower, an excellent meal with a pretty girl (don’t tell her I said that), some beer on ice, and all is right with the world. We sometimes listen to radio on the deck until the mosquitoes get too bad, sharing our respective days, then read or watch a carefully rationed video on the laptop when we discover it’s only 7:00 PM.

The computer center is a block east of the main street about half way along, and, while still pretty dusty, is a bit quieter, but only be cause the traffic is a different sort.

Every day several kids come by to play games or work on projects. I think the entire primary school was there yesterday. We’ve had several requests for internet access to look up information for school projects. I’m still hopeful it will be reconnected this week – the paperwork is done, now we just need a truck roll.

The computer center makes a bit of money from repairing computers for local businesses, and a few private individuals. It becomes increasingly clear the internet would help there too for security updates, virus scans, missing drivers, etc. etc. The school computers need this too. And of course we still need to raise some cash for the back rent. Manana.

Wednesday we visit some schools, and I get to try out the bus. The bus looks like and adventure in itself! I’ll keep you posted…