El Sábado

The usual (I would guess) quiet week in Lake Wobegon ended with a quiet day here in Bribri. David and I sandwiched a barbecue at the house of one of his friends between two few-hour sessions of getting the loose ends of the week tied up.

Highlights of said barbecue for me included seeing Juan Carlo and Margott and the daughter she was carrying when they hosted me overnight during my visit in 2012.

I also got to speak French with a real French girl (to the left of our host, in the red shirt), but the closest I got to saying anything sensible was “My French is almost as bad as my Spanish.” In fact my fight-or-flight response shut down my frontal cortex so thoroughly (I think that’s what they say it does) that everything I said to everyone came out in PNG Pidgin. But the folks were friendly, food’s food, there was plenty, and I had a good time.

John showing another guest some of the bridges he builds in the bush and explaining why.

After the picnic broke up I wanted to walk home, and I’m glad I took David’s suggestion that I go the long way over the river (OK, through the creek) and through the woods. I heard and saw rustling in the brush about thirty yards away as I was crossing the creek, and couple of minutes later as I was on the road I realized I was seeing monkeys ’way up in the treetops – only tiny silhouettes, mind you, but I always felt cheated that our part of Papua New Guinea didn’t have monkeys, so now I’ve seen them in the wild.

Something else I’ve never seen in the wild: passion fruit vines. Alas, they won’t be ripe for another few weeks.

After seeing the monkeys I came to the neighborhood of The Falls.

The Falls is where good school buses, this one from Fredericksburg, VA, go after they die.

"Now is the time for change!" I guess "Change!" worked so well for us gringos the good folks of Limón Province figure they need some too.

I’m not sure what kind of church this is, but I like the idea of the "balloonist" that red and white make pink – they don’t in HTML.

Hamburgers, tacos, ice cream, milk shakes, cold sodas, and other sweets, and a 15-inch TV for when you run out of things to talk about.

My hero Joel Salatin would approve: free-range grass-fed beef with birds to clean up after them.

Tomorrow morning we will “attend” Moody Church at John’s place again and then head straight for Grano de Oro, in the mountains, where David’s brother Timothy lives.

The full range of my travels down here. The Aboterria Yuriela is Glady’s store at the end of David’s driveway in Cañasas, Panamá.

 More than halfway through February, more than halfway through this trip. Oy, how time flies!