Where Wonder Meets Wander

I guess because truth really is stranger than fiction. I try to look past what I think I see and see what is. Sometimes the results are unexpected, endearing or even mystifying. I think we have a tendency to see what we expect. For example, I live near a Tico town called Quepos. If you walk its streets, you will likely think it poor. The tin roofs are rusting. The streets are narrow and everything from dogs to golf carts to buses and delivery trucks, to segways (those funny looking two-wheeled, motorized things that you stand up on) whizzes past you. Street vendors sell empanadas, and cold coconuts, and frozen juice pops. Call girls swing their hips and moms with new babies run from the rain. The commotion combined with the hand scrawled signs and steep runoff ditches along the street sides makes you uncomfortable. You feel the third-world-countryness of the place. But what you may not notice is that every young girl walks with the guidance of her smart phone and every young boy h...

Its raining again. I guess that's why they call it a rainforest. I have red berry palm oil soup on the stove and hot cinnamon tea brewing. Lolli, my rescue dog from the Caribbean coast, is running around with one of my socks--a brand new one--but its ok. She's happy. Its hot and all the doors are open. The fans are running and a tiny trickle of a breeze is drifting in. My plan is to go to the market--the one that stretches out along the beach. But like I said, "its raining." Anyway, I am sure the market is not open yet. The farm trucks roll in around 4 or so and erect tents and lights and tables filled with yucca and onions and garlic and carrots and avocados and little red hairy fruits with sweet white innards and bottles of fresh pressed sugar cane syrup and coffee from the mountains in Terrazu. Ani used to pick coffee. He works for me now and I am amazed at his ability to do almost anything. He and his family moved here from Nicaragua when he was eight and ...