To Manzanillo

We caught the noon bus to Manzanillo on Mon. Got a place--$30/night with screens, fridge, fan & a even a 12" TV that will let you watch whatever channel they happen to be watching on the owner's TV.

On my first night, or should I say first morning, I got a reminder of what roosters are like in these little villages. Let me first say that I'm not a city guy--I've lived around chickens. Though I've never had them myself, my neighbors have. The difference is in these villages it seems everyone has chickens, along with the requisite rooster. Sometime after midnight Tuesday morning I was awoken by what seemed like a plane crash, but was actually a rooster crowing. I immediately thought, "Why is there a rooster making all this noise right next to my bed?" Waking a bit more I realized said rooster was not actually in the room. My next thought was: Why in hell is this goddamned rooster crowing into the window 2 ft. from my pillow? I lay there in the pitch black, the only sound between crowings being the gentle swoosh of the ceiling fan and the frog and wild bug/bird noise somewhere outside. Each crowing was answered by other roosters of various distances. I eventually realized he was not at the window, but merely in the yard outside. The whole bit about cocks crowing at dawn is bull. There was not a lumen of sun anywhere within 1000 miles. These guys seem to have a competition to see who can crow loudest and earliest. Hey even the Gospel writers couldn't get the bit right about how many times the cock was gonna' crow before Peter was gonna' deny Jesus . Ya' can't really blame them. Anyway I went for my 6 a.m. beach run which took me on to the Manzanillo-Gandoca Forest Reserve. There was a small strip of sand between the reef and jungle I could run barefoot on. (Shar had admonished me not to run in the jungle because of fer de lances.) I posted pictures. This may be the most idyllic running course I've ever had!) In the afternoon I saw the rooster that had woken me. He was the size of your average beagle. I told Shar that maybe she should go talk to him in that wonderful way she has of explaining the unfathomable, obtuse and esoteric that perhaps he does not have to get the last word in. If another rooster thinks it's dawn at about 1:05 a.m., maybe he doesn't always have to be right, he should just let it go.

I also posted a picture of a bird I shot the other morning at Rolf's. I don't have a bird book. There are some 800 bird species that live or migrate to Costa Rica, and I think I might be able to name about 6.

We caught Rolf's truck back to his place again--back in Puerto Viejo. Tomorrow we'll rent a motor scooter & go into the Bri-bri Indigenous Reserve so Shar can do some shopping for whatever they make.