The days of 2014 are almost gone.
As each day concludes, it flies off the calendar like a free bird. What started as a novel is now looking like a memo.
Today, I climb a trail that runs in open space in the Albuquerque foothills where we hiked as kids. You follow the trail and it takes you around a knob of a hill called Star Mountain for Christmas lights that used to be hung on it, in the outline of a star.
Some people have the gift of memory. They can close their eyes and remember events just like they were there. Others of us have to write things down.
When I travel people ask me what is wrong with the place I am from.
I tell them ” nothing ” which is mostly true, most of the time.
It is just that my feet get itchy and travelling scratches them.
Fort Lauderdale is to Pompano Beach as Cadillac is to Ford.
Fort Lauderdale has location, money, reputation, retirees. The boulevards are a little bigger, the canals a little deeper, the yachts a little bigger, the bling a little brighter, the stories much much more full of deception.
Pompano Beach seems more comfortable, more downscale, more livable. Pompano Beach seems like an old pair of beach shoes that fit your feet perfect, don’t care if sand gets on them, and fit on the floor of your car like they were made to be there.
At Sand Harbor there is an ancient hotel that retains the charm of the fifties, a bar and restaurant that serves great fish sandwiches, plus a nice view of the Intra-coastal Waterway.
After lunch Ruth and I walk the beach and it reminds me why half the east coast moved to Florida and stayed. Ruth moved her 90 year old mom down to Florida from New York into a second floor condo above her.
It is a slightly cool afternoon and at a little snack bar on the beach folks are gathering to chat, have coffee, eat, lounge under palm trees and be glad they don’t have to work at jobs they did ten years longer than they should because their kids were in college.
Pompano Beach, this afternoon, is one of those old fashioned postcard shots that tells everyone you are in Florida and having a great time, and eat your heart out.
The bond between mothers and daughters is sometimes tenuous, but, more often, tough and durable.
Love and duty are inextricably linked.
Tomorrow, I fly back to the desert.
You stay in Florida too long, you start to get webbed feet.
According to Ruth, we are in a Mob Bar.
Everyone in the place is well dressed and it is questionable whether I should be let inside with Levis, a nice dress shirt, hiking shoes and uncombed hair.
South Florida is a place with comfortable weather this time of year and an inclination towards leisure and decadence. There are banks, mortgage companies, pawn shops, tattoo parlors, restaurants and hotels, strip clubs, car dealerships, lawyers and anything else you might want or need to keep your equilibrium.
Once you drive away from the Fort Lauderdale International airport you are welcomed by wide streets, manicured lawns, palm trees and canals, million dollar yachts, almost cloudless night skies and a full moon this evening. The parking lot of Ruth’s favorite lunch place is full and Coral Springs is a long way from Miami Beach, West Palm Beach, or any beach.
On Wednesdays and Thursdays, Travelino’s features live music or live comedy. Tonight, on a Monday, they don’t have a dinner that fits so our fall back choice is chocolate mousse.
When served, the dessert reminds me of Roman orgies.
The waiters in this club wear white shirts, black slacks and black ties. The bartender shows us a new tattoo on her left wrist. When tattoos appear on middle aged bodies one has to wonder how much longer our Republic is going to survive?
On second thought, maybe it was Al Capone I saw in the washroom talking to his accountant, smoking a Cuban cigar.
I didn’t see any bodies on the washroom floor with bullet holes in their forehead, but the night is still young.
While I enjoy mousse, my ears are cocked, listening for slamming car doors in the parking lot and someone saying the name , ” Vinnie. ”
Ruth brings her mom here for lunch, so it can’t be all that dangerous.
In fact, Ruth and I decide, after consideration, that this is the kind of place Al Capone would bring his own mom.
She would probably not have tattoos.
Florida is close to being underwater.
It is incredibly flat, incredibly wet, incredibly dense with vegetation, increasingly populated by people coming to paradise to restart lives, escape boredom, find wealth and prosperity, or just escape the cold. In the summer the humidity here nears a hundred, the temperature nears a 100, and citrus orchards are the only ones who think it is a paradise.
The canals are a necessity and you see them in most residential neighborhoods along with the nature that goes with them. They give water a place to be, catch runoff, hold flood waters and keep residential homes high and dry. There is grass everywhere, plants, oranges and grapefruits, palm trees, flowers. Tropical plants grow in empty untended lots that gardeners elsewhere would kill for.
Spanish explorers came here seeking the Fountain of Youth. Florida does have fountains and a lot of youth so those old Conquistadors were definitely in the right search area.
Florida, one of our fifty states, protrudes into the Caribbean Sea like a giant nose and doesn’t seem to belong in the U.S. Most everyone here comes from somewhere else and Seminole Indians stay close to the Everglades, out of sight and hearing.
The state is more likely to bite you than bless you, more likely to sunbathe and drink margaritas than sit in church, more prone to faith healers and spas than cold hard science.
Florida Isn’t underwater yet, but, in the next hurricane, things could quickly float away.
If this state weren’t attached to the U.S. mainland, I would be worried about it.
In a La Quinta hotel room in Coral Springs, Florida I am distracted with television, something I haven’t been distracted by in over a month on the road.
On TV is a show called “The Basement Tapes,” about long lost recordings by Bob Dylan and friends shortly after Woodstock.
A music legend, Bob Dylan has entertained for decades with a distinctive and recognizable voice.” The Basement Tapes ” are an early experiment by 60’s musicians to break away from record companies. They are home recordings of jam sessions live from a friend’s basement when that idea was becoming technically possible and affordable.
One is surprised when returning to the U.S.
Streets are wide, neighborhoods are affluent, trash is picked up. landscaping is immaculate.
You can find any kind of food you want and it is fresh and affordable.
The U.S., that many of us Baby Boomers grew up in, is like living in a house where all the plumbing works, the refrigerator is full, riff raff don’t camp out on your front lawn, bills get paid.
When you come back home you see all the things you like about our U.S.
When you leave, you only see the bad.
Towards the end of any visit, many travelers sort through high points, low points, things that didn’t work out, things that went well.
If you keep a journal, write a blog, take photos, or go with someone, you have a way to remember what you saw,did, thought during a domestic or international sojourn. Traveling solo is tricky because you get off the beaten track, waste time and energy, spend needlessly, don’t see or do things you should. You miss the pleasure of other’s company and chances to share memorable experiences.
This morning, on a wall in a local San Jose coffee shop, just under the cash register, is comic strip wallpaper. The wallpaper is a series of square boxes with pictures and words in each square. This comic strip features a hard boiled detective narrative and has gangsters shooting each other when words fail to change behavior. Each little square, on the wall, advances the story towards a dramatic end.
Scotttreks tells its quiet stories the same way as this comic strip, one post at a time, one square at a time, a hundred to three hundred words maximum,building a little encapsulation of each travel locale, it’s people. places, things and happenings.
When I look back at the places I go and things I do, they don’t always remember the same.
My memories, it is clear, don’t always change in the same direction as my mind wanders.
Costa Rica is far from a prosaic gangster story.
This country is much more a nature poem.
In walks, I see other places I might like to stay in San Jose, Costa Rica.
This Inn has been passed before and always merits a second glance.
From the outside, it appears Hemingway really might have resided in one of the upstairs rooms and composed at a little desk with an old typewriter and pages of manuscripts edited and reworked with handwritten notes in the margins. From the outside, I have always thought this place would be expensive but a yard sign says rooms start at forty dollars a night. As much as I like the Hotel Aranjuez, this little Inn, even by peeking through the front door at a winding stairway and a front desk with photos and paintings on the wall behind it, seems grand.
The Hemingway Inn requires research, so, on line, back at the Hotel Aranjuez, I do my study..
Reviews of the Hemingway Inn go from enthusiastic, to lukewarm, to cold. You always find that, but somewhere in the middle you find that this Inn is clean, old, the staff is helpful and accommodating, the decor is quirky and the location is close to things to see and do in an older part of San Jose , rough around the edges.
Reading reviews, its owner is mentioned as a writer and a room inside is named after Hemingway.
Some night, when I lodge here, I can sit at the bar late and listen to stories of other travelers, then go upstairs to bed and wake in the morning to the sounds of sparrows and roosting birds in the trees outside my window.
If Hemingway didn’t stay here, he should have.
Tourist season is blooming and booming.
Tour companies pack avid nature lovers into Costa Rica’s National Parks, visit rain forests, hike deep into volcanic arenas, provide vivid sights for photographers, bird watchers and naturalists. You can do zip lines, ride up and down aerial trams, trek up steep mountainsides, or river run to your heart’s content in a natural paradise.
Yet, there is trouble in paradise too.
This morning, early, my bed moves unexpectedly. .
Earthquakes also visit Costa Rica throughout the year.
Some call Costa Rica a Garden of Eden.
When my room shakes, I don’t think about Paradise.
I think about finding the closest exit.
This rainbow is out early.
It is Sunday and two tourists with big cameras are walking in the middle of the street ahead of me with lens in the shooting position, talking French.
This rainbow is beginning to lose its colors but you can still see its bands; yellow, blue, green and pink semicircles. It is difficult to see the precise end of the legs of the rainbow’s arc with the city in the way. If you were a cowboy you would just lasso the rainbow, climb up,ride, and then slip off with a whoopee.
This rainbow is gone in a half hour, and a little man in a green suit and bowler cap, ahead of me, carries a bag of money in each little hand.
I hear him laughing as he clicks his heels down the street looking to buy a round of drinks for everybody at his favorite pub.
The Costa Rican National Museum is not world winning architecture. It is a renovated Spanish fort, and, for that reason, has little frills. Inside you see thick walls, peer through lookout holes in towers, pass through heavy wooden doors with huge iron hinges and visualize old days of conquest.
From our guide, we learn that Spanish dominance in Costa Rica was limited because there wasn’t much gold. The gold that did exist was placer gold from rivers and streams, not the huge deposits mined in Peru or Mexico. There was no Inquisition here and the Costa Rica fight for independence was short.
Costa Rican life revolves around weather, nature, rain forests, co-operation, community, family. There is no standing army and the police force doesn’t disappear people.There are over a million students in the free University system, the population is literate,their government provides a safety blanket.
One of the exhibits in the fort is an old Spanish jail, where misfits and law breakers, political prisoners, and trouble makers were confined. When you want to hurt someone, you take away freedom of movement, put them in a non-stimulating environment, control the food they eat, when they sleep, who they see.
You are always going to need jails but graffiti on the cell walls say you won’t ever be able to shut people up by locking them up.
Even Ancient Rome, powerhouse of the ancient world, couldn’t stop dirty jokes and rude pictures scratched on public bathroom stalls.
Hearing just what we want is not always what we need.
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