Sunday Nov. 2 Nice to be Home

I awake to a beautiful Nosara morning, bright and cool. I have coffee and will leave a little early for my rental car return, maybe to drive into the village. My first stop is the beach, where there is a good number of cars in the lot, 10 or so, and the waves are nicely formed and head high. I see Darren, who catches me up on the music scene and asks if I’ve heard anything about Juan. He and the drummer John John are in the process of forming a new band, along with Steve the guitar player, and splitting off from the Medicine Show in order to make a little more money than from the Medicine Show gigs, managed by Bill MacPherson. There’s also going to be a new guitar player in town trying to make a go of it, a black guy with a European background who Darren said is really good and will be back in three weeks.

Also at the beach with his dog and golf cart, having arrived too late for the good early surf, is Jeff, a regular barbecue customer. We exchange a little gossip about a rumor about Britany Spears renting a house in my neighborhood for a trip this Christmas, which makes me think about how easy it is to start rumors or spread tales in Nosara that need not bear much relationship to verdad, the truth.

Jeff is an architect who has two baby girls with his Tico wife, and builds houses that his son Ryan sells. I tell them that I’m going to get busy with the barbecue pronto. Darren says he thinks that the barbecue pit on wheels that Mark and Frank have built has been a project in Mark’s garage for five years, and is excited that I am taking possession of it.

I drop the car off at the Economy office, which is close to the forest trail connecting the Café de Paris rooms and the Nosara Yoga Institute. It passes by Coconut Harry’s rental house, and I am dismayed to see two more houses crammed into that space, another example of developers and property owners trying to squeeze as much as possible onto their small lots.

I step through construction debris in order to find the path, and am able to enjoy the solitude and naturalizad on the walk home.

While Rourke and Sandy reported continuing internet problems, I carefully reset the modem and wireless router in the morning, and got a steady signal. I measured the speed and it came in at about 300 mbps, more than twice as fast as when I left. It was fast enough to watch video clips, for the first time, and I saw snippets of McCain’s appearance the night before on Saturday night live. Finally it’s clear that Barack Obama will be our next President. Hooray! High speed internet Hooray!

Next I’ll have to plug in the Vonage phone and see if that works, but I don’t want to push my luck yet. It’s very tranquilo here on my deck this morning with my cats.

A short while earlier, I stopped to watch eight ants working perfectly together to carry away a dry catfood nugget. They had it most of the way down the hall toward my bedroom. They were lined up perfect with four to a side, and it even appeared that another ant hanging out nearby went in to relieve one of the others and take his place. In our fractured society, I don’t think you can get eight people working together with such intelligence. Certainly, with their ant intelligence they could understand the wrongness of invading Iraq, or of taking on excessive debt just because their banker or broker said it was a good thing.

I pondered the ants’ fate, since they were heading toward the bedroom and their trespass was not something I felt I could allow.

I just went back in the house to see if the ants or their catfood nugget were still around, and they had disappeared. With regret, though, and somewhat concerned about karmic consequences, I had put a drop of ant poison on the nugget before leaving them on their journey. Such a shame, but it’s a jungle out here. Que lastima!

Later in the afternoon I drive the quad over to visit Emi and Nico. Nico is in San Jose having some prints made for a client who likes his artwork. Nico creates images using photographs and programs on his Mac computer, including Photoshop and I’m not sure what else. They are quite striking and impressive, and he did well at a special exhibit at the Harmony Hotel last summer.

Emi and I speak in Spanish for a bit, both because I tell her it’s important for me to practice, but also because she has kidded me a bit in the past regarding my slow progress. But when we start to talk about the gasoline station she is ready to switch to English because it’s a complicated topic. Basically my suspicions are confirmed. It appears that the owner of the bomba has likely brought in the inspectors to close down the two small operations, to impress upon everyone the need for his big station. Emi says that some people are blaming him for the situation, and his need to show off his power, and others are blaming the Nosara Civic Association for precipitating the situation. We discuss a lot of topics, including their three week stay at a spiritual retreat, which was very profound for them. Our discussion also covers whether or not there is a conspiracy by the Bilderberger cabal, the crisis financiero and nature of reality. Returning home on my quad as dusk approached, a distance less than a mile, the engine began sputtering and finally gave out, near a convenient driveway to get it out of the road. Kate had warned me that there was little gas left, but my visual inspection of the tank, since there is no gauge, had been deceiving.

Fortunately I had picked up a five gallon gas can in Nicoya and filled it on my way back Saturday, and walked back to retrieve it.