I have returned to rural Costa Rica and so much has changed! It is April, the end of the dry season and the hottest month of the year. Just like during our winters in the north, many plants are dormant: enormous trees are bare and dead-looking having lost their leaves--not to cold and lack of sun but to conserve moisture. Other plants have died back entirely waiting underground to be awakened by the first rains in May that mark the beginning of the wet season. Much of the landscape, colorful and verdant when I left it last is now brown, desiccated, parched. Under the blazing midday sun, almost everyone and everything hunkers down waiting out the heat of the day, and life seems suspended as if the landscape is holding its breath waiting for the rain to return and release it.
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| Deciduous trees on the peninsula nearby |
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| The lot next door is now brown. |
Other parts of the landscape remain the same despite the lack of rain: butterflies still float about and find flowers somehow blooming in the heat, birds and monkeys still hoot and holler from the trees and the house toad still plops into the pool for her nightly swim.
Marie and Hank have departed for to the States to visit family and friends for a month and I am happily house-sitting once again in their fantastical house without walls, perched between two spectacular beaches in the middle of the least developed stretch of coastal western Costa Rica. I can’t wait to tell you more about it!
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| From the plane flying in, looking south towards the tip of the Nicoya Peninsula: the house I am staying in is the small red rectangle on the ridge upper left of photo. Playa San Miguel is behind, Punta San Miguel (the peninsula) is center and the south end of Playa Bejuco and the fishing village is at bottom |
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| The dining area with kitchen beyond and pool beside. View to north overlooks Playa Bejuco. |
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| One of the covered patios and the door to my bedroom. View to the south overlooks Playa San Miguel. |
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