Snake and Eggs y Semana Santa

We’ve got company. The crazy kind. Jon Bross is cooking up late-night nachos and trying to rally Chris and Neddy into going snake hunting. “Let’s grab a spotlight and go! We can have snake and eggs for breakfast!” Ummm….The boys don’t remove themselves from their cocktails until the next night when Jon finally convinces Chris to grab his machete and spotlight and go looking for whatever slithering creatures might be residing in our small slice of jungle. Neddy and I play it safe and stay in the front yard throwing Frisbee by moonlight, stopping every once in awhile to chuckle at the muffled voices and the light bobbing around the property. After a half-hour or so of earnest weed whacking, light shining, and knee-high grass tromping, the Bross boys return without having had a snake encounter. This makes me feel at ease that they do not have a good snake story to tell. Maybe there aren’t as many around here as we think! Then again, I’m sure that if a snake wanted to be found, it would find us first.

So goes one of the many small adventures that comprised this week. We also went 4-wheeling at the base of Volcan Arenal, soaked in the hot springs, ate up some tasty guapote that Chris and Jon caught on Lake Cote, and did a whole lot of nothing but hanging out, relaxing, and shooting the proverbial s**t. Wilder loved having Neddy and his Uncle Jon here – they indulged him with lots of play and music. One or both of them was always strumming on the guitar and singing. One night, we had an all-star jam outside and Chris and Wilder accompanied them on the drums, and, at Wilder’s direction, I danced along. We rocked!

Jon and Neddy left this morning and we had a pretty tranquilo day playing outside and soaking up the sun, which has come in full force! It is Semana Santa here, Costa Rica’s equivalent to Easter Vacation or Spring Break, though it’s not spring but the pinnacle of summer. When the rains take a break from keeping everything green, the sun is high and hot and STRONG (Chris has a sunburn to prove it). Everyone is out enjoying the weather and their time off from work or school. All banks and governmental offices and many stores are closed and, in addition, all the liquor in the country is on lock-down by the police for the next 48 hours – from Wednesday night through Good Friday. The cops go to every store, restaurant, and bar and slap official looking tape across coolers, shelves, and tavern doors to enforce this temporary prohibition. Apparently, however, it's still OK to sell and drink red wine. We’re not sure why they make this exception. Maybe it’s because of its special place in the Catholic church as the blood of Christ. Who knows. In any case, this governmental-cum-religious mandate surprises, confounds, and frustrates many a tourist, as it did Chris and I when we visited here during Semana Santa back in 1998. Luckily, most people and many establishments prepare for the drought and secretly stock up in advance. I recall no shortage of ice cold beer at the beaches. Chris just read today, however, that the government is thinking of stopping this tradition because a large portion of the country is not Catholic, and because of the large amount of binge drinking that typically happens the day before everything is shut down. Ah, just let ‘em drink and skip church, those heathens!

Other than having company and pondering the nation’s lack of separation of church and state, not much has happened since we’ve returned from Los Estados. Most of our excitement is local or homebound – feeding the fish in Lake Stanley (our neighbor’s newly dammed river), hunting for bugs and digging up worms, planting new seeds in the garden (Chris and Wilder’s plot now boasts cucumber, sweet corn, tomatoes, radishes, carrots, peas, broccoli, squash, basil, chives, onion, cilantro…), visiting friends and neighbors. And tonight, just watching the volcano, bright orange lava coursing down it’s side, lit up by a full moon in an uncharacteristically cloud-free sky. Sigh. I give my thanks and blessings to Pele and Artemis and head off to slumber. Buenos noches. Hasta la proxima vez.