Most colorful nation?

I wonder if anyone has ever ranked cultures by how colorful they are. Surely Guatemala would be at or near the top of the list. Not only do many people in the highlands still wear their traditional and very finely crafted garments, there is a plethora of colorful textiles and other souvenirs for sale. On our recent trip there, one of the pieces I bought was this beautiful table runner made out of a slightly used huipil or traditional blouse.

I not only bought textiles; I bought some number 8 mercerized cotton embroidery thread in the Panajachel market. These ladies, in their beautiful huipils helped me with some color suggestions. Mr. Rududu is such an enabler: he told me to buy one of every color the seller had. I was slightly more restrained than that because I was thinking about how heavy my carry-on luggage was already. Interestingly, this kind of thread is a fraction of the cost in Guatemala compared to what it costs in the US.

My thread looks like a boxes of candy. I've already started stitching temari with it.

Being festive

   In Costa Rica, we flee the neighborhood festival that is days and nights of over-amplified recorded music simultaneously booming over incredibly loud commentary on the bull riding. One memorable year it lasted 10 days, usually to midnight. Most of my tico neighbors join me in disliking the torture by sound that the festival brings us. Why don't they unite to do something about it? When I understand that, I will really understand Costa Rican culture.
   Contrast that to the Marquette Waterfront Festival that is very close to our Madison home. It's two days and it has amplified music too, but you can't actually feel the bass beat from inside our house. Music ends at the civilized hour of 8:30 and it's all live. True, there's lots of beer but there are lots of activities for kids too. Many of our neighbors have porch parties to share the music with friends. One of the coolest things about the festival is that most people walk or bike to get there. (Maybe that's because parking in our neighborhood is very challenging.) Here's just a portion of the bike parking.

   This year the highlight for me was the Portland-based  Marchfourth Marching Band. It's like no marching band I've ever seen before. It plays much more danceable music and the performers wear much more interesting costumes.

The stilt dancers were really tall. The crowd gets moving—and amazingly for Madison, many of the upraised arms are free of tattoos. Our beautiful lake and giant cottonwood trees make a wonderful setting for this joyful celebration.

 

Nicaragua take 3

  Yep, it was once again time for us to leave Costa Rica to get a new tourist visa on re-entry. This was our third trip to Nicaragua in eleven years and it has really grown on me as a destination. This trip we went with a couple of Costa Rican friends on their very first trip out of their country. It was fascinating to see their reactions, which boiled down to:
    1) This is really different from Costa Rica and has some really great things to see.
    2) Prices are really low.
 I agree with that and would add that Nicaraguan food is very tasty.
   Because we liked it so much last year, we returned to the Island of Ometepe and to El Encanto.  This small hotel has excellent food and is a relaxing spot for hanging out. One of our activities was a nice walk along the nearby Santa Domingo beach near sunset.

After two nights on Ometepe we went back to the mainland and proceeded towards Granada. We paid our taxi driver a bit extra to take us on a little tour along the way. We visited San Juan de Oriente, one of the Pueblos Blancos famous for handicrafts. At the Cooperativo Quetzalcóatl we picked up a couple of beautiful ceramic pots for shockingly little money and had a nice chat with the artist that was tending the store that day.
  Next stop was in Catarina to see the Laguna de Apoyo, a beautiful lake in the crater of a volcano. For a small tip we listened to some terrific marimba and guitar music. The marimba de arco is a local version of the instrument that is extremely portable. The arc makes it easy to carry and the player sits on the arc to play, eliminating the need for legs. A marimba expert informs me that they use a similar version of the instrument in West Africa.

   Nearby is Masaya, famous for its huge handicraft market. Unlike Costa Rica where many of the souvenirs sold to tourists are actually from Guatemala, there is a wealth of beautiful local handicrafts to choose from. If you get tired of looking at those, there is a very impressive fruit stand with massive papayas.

  Our tico friends were particularly impressed with Granada, which is a lovely colonial city with many churches and a fine central plaza. I knew from our first trip to Granada that it's very hot, so I was pleased to have AC in our room. We stayed at a sweet new hotel with just six rooms called Hotel Casa Barcelona. Thanks to our friends, we spent a lot of time exploring the fascinating local markets. Juan got his sandals repaired at an on-street shoe repair shop that doubled as a bike parking lot.

Also at the market, I paid a few cents to be weighed on a bathroom scale a guy was carrying around.
   While touring the churches we saw this funeral procession. (I held my camera down by my waist to be discreet in taking this photo.) A local resident told me that this is a standard hearse.

When we tired of being tourists we took a  coche for the living back to our hotel.

 The nitty gritty:
   We just found out that it's a myth that one needs to be out of Costa Rica for 72 hours to get a new visa. (That's only necessary if one has imported duty free goods into the country.) There are plenty of interesting things to do in Nicaragua but it felt nice knowing we were spending several days of our own free will.
   We took a Quality Transfers shuttle from Monteverde to the border at Peñas Blancas and then a private taxi onward. Since I blogged about the border last year they have been improving the immigration offices on both sides. Things seem to be moving more efficiently and even right before Semana Santa when everyone in Central America is on the move we made our crossing in about 40 minutes each way. Long distance buses now have an employee handle all the passports for their passengers. We were lucky and didn't get behind long lines of people who arrived on local buses. It seems that early afternoon is a very good time to go through. The restaurant is closed for remodeling, but fortunately we didn't arrive hungry. Important: have your airline ticket with you to prove you have a way out of Costa Rica within 90 days. If not, you may need to buy a bus ticket you will never use.

Imaginary friends

  My imaginary friends are very interesting people. That's what I call people I get to know on the internet such as other members of Ravelry or authors of interesting blogs. One of my favorite blogs about knitting is Asplund knits by a Swedish guy. Although we haven't met, we've exchanged enough comments and messages that I feel he is one of my realer imaginary friends.
  In a recent post, he had photos of an fantastic sweater he is knitting. The thing I appreciate about Mr. Asplund's knitting is that even if he uses a pattern, he makes many interesting modifications to it. (I also like it that he doesn't have the entire thing planned out in advance, because it makes me feel more normal to know that other people do that too.) This particular sweater features a detail at the shoulder of black and white checks. Since then, he has also posted pictures of a very cunning facing for the sleeve cuff that is also checkerboard. I love little semi-hidden details like that. He also put his initials in the gusset under the arm.
  His checkerboards got me thinking about how many cultures value checkerboard patterns. Mr. Rududu and I were in Peru four years ago and discovered that checkerboards have been very important there for centuries. There is a traditional religious offering cloth woven in Peru that consists of just 4 squares in natural alpaca colors. Here' an example I saw at El Centro de Textiles Traditionales del Cusco. Among the offerings are coca leaves, which don't give you a buzz but certainly do help with the discomfort of being at a very high altitude.

   Amazingly, these warp-faced offering clothes traditionally have no cut edges; all four sides are selvedges. They do this by making a discontinuous warp. This mind-bogglingly difficult technique involves using two sets of warp threads that loop together in the middle. Then they fill in all of the warp by eventually inserting the weft with needles as the space gets smaller and smaller. This must take a very long time.
   Aside from the somewhat magical aspect of weaving something with selvedges on all sides, Peruvian weavers don't like to waste their warp thread, which stands to reason since it's all hand spun and is a precious commodity. To clarify how they made these checkerboards, here is a photo of a weaver finishing up a piece by using every single bit of her warp.

You can see she has very little space left to separate the yarns (make a shed in weaver's parlance) and there is a needle laying on her weaving that she can use to feed the yarn through that space since it is now too tiny to use a shuttle. In the photo she is beating down the weft thread with a bone tool.
  Finally, here is a somewhat more elaborate use of a checkerboard design in an old weaving displayed at the Archeological Museum in Lima. It makes me want to polish off my double-knitting techniques. 

Lighting the long night

  Here in the north, the wonderful long days of summer are balanced by lots of darkness in the winter. The winter solstice is the day the sun stops its apparent journey to the north and starts heading south again to bring us longer days. It's no wonder that northern people are so happy get past the longest night of the year. This week we went to the solstice celebration in our local park. There were hundreds of people there by the lake, gathered around a huge bonfire, listening to some lively drumming. It was so dark, I never even saw the drummers.

 There were candles in ice that had been frozen in large buckets and many lanterns carried about on poles. I think most of the lanterns had LEDs in them: pagan ritual meets modern technology.

There was a tree walking around. It's over 9 feet/3 meters tall and two little boys ran up to it and requested permission to hug it. The tree agreed and hugged them back. This is a picture of the tree at a daytime parade on another occasion. (Night-time solstice festivals are difficult to photograph.)

    Having a cheerful green tree inside with lights also reminds us that life goes on, even if most of the trees outside look completely dead.

   Here in the north, we are happy to know that from now on, each day will get a little longer. Meanwhile, we gather around a fireplace and eat high calorie foods to get us through the cold and dark. Happy holidays to you all.

WWDD (What would Daruma do?)

I am fascinated by Daruma, the name the Japanese call Bodhidharma, a 5th century monk who was the founder of Zen Buddhism. Images of Daruma are very common in Japan and dolls and figures of him often allude to how centered he was as a result of all his meditation. Legend has it he meditated for so long that his legs atrophied and fell off. There are Daruma toys that due to a rounded bottom come back upright after you try to tip them over. I have a toy that consists of a Daruma figure on top of a stack of wooden cylinders. Using the mallet that is included, one tries to knock each of those cylinders out from under Daruma without upsetting him. This game is almost a form of meditation; one needs to concentrate and center oneself to succeed. The version I have is 15" (38 cm.)

One of my favorite things about Daruma is that although he is so centered, he is often depicted as rather wild-eyed and ill-tempered. So as I waited in line last week to rebook after my second cancelled flight of the day, I liked the fact that a famous holy man could be depicted like this a 3" (7.6 cm) figure.

Even if he felt ill-tempered I imagine he wouldn't have yelled at the ticket agent and neither did I.
   The next day when I got up at 4:30 a.m. for my third attempt at leaving town, I could identify with this small (1 3/4"/4.4cm) carving of Daruma yawning.

In the dry forest

   Some Tico friends just took us on a two day odyssey to the dry tropical forest on the Nicoya Peninsula. The cabin near Paquera where we stayed belongs to friends of our friends and is rustic in the extreme. The rooms are on the second floor and if anyone rolls over in bed, the entire structure shakes. We love going there not for sumptuous accommodations but because the cabins are deep in the forest near a river and we are the only people there when we stay. At dawn we awoke to Mantled Howler Monkeys roaring from the trees near the cabin. It's a wonderful wild sound. Some people find it scary, but one should keep in mind that they are vegetarians. During the day, Mr. Rududu took this portrait.

  On the ground level of the cabin is a cooking area. The essential piece of equipment for a trip like this is the electric rice cooker. Unfortunately the cord was forgotten at home, but with typical can-do spirit, Juan found a live wire up in the rafters and wired the cooker directly into the cabin.

You can see some of the drinking straw left after he cut pieces of it to use as little insulators where the wires were connected. The beans were cooked over a wood fire, a method that Ticos believe makes them much tastier.

   In the morning, we went for a long walk along the river. We must have crossed the river about two dozen times and Michael, the local friend who guided us there, kindly built a lot of bridges of stepping stones and helped us gringos across so we wouldn't get our feet wet.

We saw many interesting birds and this Kinkajou. It's a member of the raccoon family and difficult to see as it's mostly nocturnal.

After the hike, we went for a dip in the swimming pool filled with fresh river water that pours in so fast that there is a complete water change every hour or so. It's very hot there and it's wonderful to swim in such clean, chemical-free water.
   On the way home, we made a stop to get mangoes from a friend's tree. Our friends have a big family and lots of friends to share mangoes with. We're lucky to be among them.

The national bird of Costa Rica

Costa Rica has many incredible birds: over 800 species, many of them extremely beautiful and colorful. It must have been difficult to pick one bird as the symbol of the country. Consider the choices other Central American countries made for their national birds. (All of them also live in Costa Rica.) Guatemala chose the Resplendent Quetzal; it's much easier to see in Costa Rica and much better protected here.

Belize chose the Keel-billed Toucan, a common bird here that looks great on a postcard or T-shirt.

Both Nicaragua and El Salvador chose the Turquoise-browed Motmot which is common at Northwestern Costa Rica. Its more widely spread relative, the Blue-crowned Motmot is also very beautiful. Honduras chose the Yellow-naped Parrot. Costa Rica could have picked one of its own 17 species of parrots. Panama's majestic Harpy Eagle is rare in Costa Rica, as it is throughout its range. Personally, my choice might have been the elegant Swallow-tailed Kite, which used to nest as far north as the headwaters of the Mississippi. (Maybe some day we will have a movement to bring it back to its ancestral nesting grounds, as we did with the wild turkey.)
   What did Costa Rica pick as it's national symbol? Let's hear a trumpet flourish for the Clay-colored Robin.

It's drab and it's nondescript but well-loved through out this democratic country. Like most robins, it has a lovely song, which is sings tirelessly in almost everyone's garden at the beginning of the rainy season. As ticos say, it calls the rain to come and keep the country green. It reminds me that for many Costa Ricans, it's high praise to call a person humilde –humble or modest. Much as I love seeing Costa Rica's more colorful birds, I enjoy living somewhere the ordinary drab yigüirro is respected—and where many are working to preserve the more colorful and rarer birds that share the country.

A super mini-super

We are very fortunate to have an excellent small family-owned grocery store near our house in Monteverde: the Mini Super Montaña. It's only a three minute walk from our house and I'm there almost everyday to pick up something or other. I used to do a lot of shopping downtown where the prices are slightly cheaper, until I realized that after I paid for a taxi to lug the stuff up the big hill home, it cost more and was less fun. At the Mini Super Montaña you are always greeted by a friendly face, such as Victor's.

(Not only are the staff friendly, the store acts as something of a social center for me because I often run into someone I know.) Over the years, Victor and his family members have put up with numerous lapses in my Spanish. Once, instead of asking for cilantro (culantro), I inquired if they sold snake (culebra).
   The store has all the basic groceries and a miniature general store that sells everything from baby clothes to dishes and hardware. The selection of fruits and veggies is not large but they have all the basics, especially if you get there right after one of the frequent deliveries. This photo shows a time when the stock is getting a little low, but as you can see there were still excellent avocados, mangos and pineapples to be had.

Very few fruits or vegetables are refridgerated in Costa Rican stores. (The cilantro is kept in the cooler and that's why I didn't see it.)
  People often ask me if I cook Costa Rican food at home. I like the homemade tortillas that a neighbor makes but I tend to cook mostly Italian recipes. I can find many supplies I need for that such as pasta, canned tomatoes, and olive oil.
  I have to say that the most impressive section of our mini super is the laundry soap shelves. Ticos seem to have a lot of enthusiasm for cleaning products in general as reflected by their spotless homes.

   By far the best feature of the store is the high level of service. I once had one of the staff cheerfully looking for sewing needles for about 5 minutes. When it turned out you could buy them one at a time, I was a big spender and sprang for two of them. (Incidentally, there are quite a few things you can buy just one of—from a stick of butter to a single band aid or aspirin.)  Other services they do are numerous. Victor has been known to come in my taxi to carry a tank of gas into our house. They've let me have mail sent to me there because the mailman doesn't know where we are. I've taken knitting projects over and weighed balls of yarn and parts of sweaters on their scales. I like to feel I'm making their lives just a little more interesting by my odd requests. I know that they are enriching mine in more ways than I can count.

 

A winning Scrabble team

Why are all these Scrabble players so happy?

To explain, I first need to give you some background because we play Scrabble differently in Monteverde. (Hang on to your hats, Scrabble fanatics and please remember that it's only a game.) There have been regular Scrabble sessions here for many years—about 50. Some currently active players have been playing weekly for almost that long. Not surprisingly, over the years, some local variations of the rules have evolved.
   Several years ago Mr. Rududu and I started attending the Friday afternoon sessions and were introduced to Monteverde Scrabble culture. If you play competitive Scrabble or even just follow the rules on the box, you may be shocked to hear we play with eight tiles (not seven) and reuse blanks. For example, if a blank is on the board represents an N, and you have an N, you can swap it for the blank. You must, however, use the blank on that turn. While Monteverdean players are an exceptionally tolerant lot, a sure way to annoy people is to let them know you have a blank and then hold it in your rack for a long time.
   There is also a list of two and three letter words that are not legal Scrabble words anywhere else. They were found in the Oxford English Dictionary by a local Scrabble player who apparently felt there just weren't enough short words in the regular dictionary that almost no one knows the meaning of.  I think the list predates the use of the official Scrabble dictionary here. These special "Monteverde words" are listed in two little black books available during play. Speaking of that, the games are completely open book. There are numerous dictionaries and "cheat-sheets" available and fishing for words by reading a dictionary is common practice.
  To me, the most notable thing about Monteverde Scrabble games is how cooperative people are, perhaps because most of them are Quakers. Of course everyone likes to win and some people care about it more than others. Yet everyone seems to care a lot about the score you get when you add everyone's score together. The minimum goal of 600 is usually reached. Every once in a while we get up to 700. Last week the group pictured above got 814 on a single game! That involved two "Scrabbles" where someone played all eight of his or her letters and got 50 bonus points. As the game went on and it was evident they were going to get a big group score, there was more and more cooperation and brainstorming for what word each person should play.

   Here's a picture of the board. (Qri is a officially sanctioned Monteverde word, in case you're wondering. I have no idea what it means.) Here's part of their score sheet. Congratulations to the 814 team.

¡Viva las Fiestas!

Every year our neighborhood has fiestas. For the kids it's fun to ride on one of the three little rides. There are some interesting foods stands and a sort of horse parade that's fun to see. But for a very small carnival, it makes a lot of noise. Our house is less than 50 meters from the fiesta grounds and the music is so loud that it can be heard over 2 miles away. In our house we hear the commentary on the bull riding accompanied by feedback plus the dance music being run by someone who has serious hearing loss. At least this year the fiestas were only 5 nights instead of the 10 nights they had one year. Ironically, many people don't go because of the noise level. Here's a picture taken during the day before things really got started. 

Well, bah humbug.  So this year we fled from the fiestas and ended up having a really good time. For 3 days and two nights we were down in the peaceful, beautiful world of the San Luis valley, less than 5 miles from our house but an entire world away.

Then we spent two nights at a little place that belongs to some friends.  It's a couple of miles from our house up the mountain and is a lovely and well-run. I would recommend it to anyone that wants a very friendly place to stay for a very reasonable price. It's Mariposa Bed and Breakfast (506-2645-5013 or vmfamilia@costarricense.cr.  English is spoken.) Here's Russ relaxing on our porch.

There are lots of nice details, like these towels in the shape of mariposas (butterflies).

The Mariposa is only a mile from the reserve, and a nice walk. We spent the day there and saw monkeys and lots of interesting birds.

Then we had a wonderful dinner at Tramonti, a restaurant owned by an Italian. It has fantastic pizza but it's a long walk from our house so we don't go often.

So the fiestas got us out of our rut and we had a good time. Viva las fiestas.

What's unusual about this motorcycle?

Yesterday morning I was on my way to the grocery store near our house and was almost blinded by the reflections off this motorcycle parked near our neighbors' house. There are only about 4 miles of paved roads around here and that most roads are dirt--or mud on days like Sunday when it rained, so getting a motorcycle as clean as this is a lot of work.

But in fact, there is nothing particularly unusual about the fact that this moto is spotlessly clean, including the tires. As I ran my errands yesterday, I saw others that were about the same. Ticos are almost fanatical about keeping vehicles clean. Maybe it's that they cost about twice as much as they do in the U.S. because of high import taxes. With the annual income here much lower, a motorcycle or car is a huge investment.

Taxis are also very clean inside and out. One taxista told me that he washes his taxi as many as three times a day. Even on a rainy day, even the floor mats are often spotless.
Another cultural note--besides putting dirty shoes up where they shouldn't be in a spotless van, the thing that most bugs Costa Rican taxi drivers is when foreigners slam the car doors. Many of the vehicles here have fairly light doors.