3: WHERE THE WILD THINGS REALLY ARE
To cut the story short and so no doubt warp the truth in the process it was time to leave Costa Rica and its animals and go to Guatemala in search of something different altogether. Actually, that’s too much of a contraction. Becky and I spent a few lovely weeks travelling the Nicoya Peninsula (north pacific coast of CR) visiting empty beaches and looking for turtles and watching the sun set and sleeping in hammocks and hiring a 4x4 and crossing rivers and eating freshly fallen avocados and all of it under big blue skies but that is our story. We even went on a zip line across the tops of the jungle canopy: massive wires tied between tree houses way above the jungles leaves, 500 metres long. They harness you up, clip you onto the wire and then send you flying through the jungle like a sack of potatoes. At 30mph. Hopelessly un-ecological but too much fun to worry about that.
(Weirdly enough, in a thrush-type irony, the Wolverhampton family turned up on our zip tour. We had to laugh. ‘Right Ben-ben’s, do up your harness tight, we’re going FAST and we’re going HIGH!’ Before they took their rides father-father took a photo of them all in their helmets ‘IN THE JUNGLE ON A ZIP TOUR!!’.
Thankfully they were sent to the front where father-father, and Ben-Bens were strapped together, hung like a bundle of old clothes on the washing line and then pushed off at high speed into the bowels of the jungle. The last I saw of them was father-father, at 30mph trying to get out his video camera and screaming ‘WE’RE OFF BEN-BEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNSSSSSSS!!!!!’ before the jungle fell ominously silent. I waited to hear the cartoon crash of glass from stage-left followed by a great release of squawking birds into the sky but I wasn’t indulged. We were, however never to see them again. Please is you do see them, say hello.
At this point I should shift tone. Before I pollute things with stories of disastrous tourists and other mishaps I should clear the air and say this: there’s magic in Central America. Please smell the whiff of roses in my blog. There’s magic in the impenetrable jungle canopy, there’s magic in the pacific sunsets and there’s magic in the birds that dive into the waves near the horizon. There’s magic that will never be touched by any amount of video filming and screaming kids and fluorescent windbreakers. When we dropped off the back of the walk through the night jungle we came to a clearing from where we could look out into the night sky (when Ben-bens passed us looking up he said to his dad ‘What are they doing?’ to which father replied ‘Oh, they’re just a bunch of Greeks’, which neither of us quite understood.) But the stars feel closer over here and the night wraps up the day tighter than at home. After 7pm the crack on the horizon.
From where we stood we could look across the top of the jungle and see the leaves lit by moonlight and stars. Anything could have been hidden beneath the tops of the trees in the distance.
‘In the distance’. In other words far enough away to reach by imagination but not by foot. You hear noises ‘in the distance’ and you’re not sure where they come from and what has made them and its better that way, its better not to get the photograph of the creature that is calling to the moon because then its colour and shape and sound will live in your mind and not in the branches. Our minds are big jungles. Sometimes we have monkey minds, full of chattering thoughts and thisandthats, and sometimes we have bird minds, full of nightsong and dreams, but whatever is making the noise I reckon its OK let the animals be. That’s where the wild things are, over there, out of reach. Max sailed the seas and tamed them, but I always think it a shame that he did. Better not to know. Let a small island be where the wild things roam. No need to have their picture. That way you will never have to face the fact that noise was in fact a thrush, and that the thrush was probably singing: ‘Do you know the way to Uckfield, young sir?’ and that your photography project has not worked out at all. Instead you can imagine the noise was the mysterious Quetzal bird and that it has colours to make an oil painter cry and you will imagine the bird is calling for the crimsons and violets and nightgreens of its lover and then…then, you will imagine the lover has been away for months on … some sort of excursion, a business trip to Birmingham perhaps.
Someone once told me that a romantic is never happy because they always dream of someplace better than here.
Is that true?
Surely we all need to look to places we can never know: stare at parts of the jungle that are out of reach. I’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t live without a sense of magic in your life. I say this, I suppose, because I so often lose touch with it. Then when I taste it again (and it is like a taste or perhaps a scent) from a walk at night, from being with someone at the right place and right time, from a passage of music, during a film or from arriving in a new city at dawn, I remember again what its all about. It can come when you least expect it (in fact I think this is a condition of it coming) and then it goes with equal independence. I think of it as the Bisto Gravy smoke, invisible until it crosses your path and then ….ahhhhh, bisto! Ahhhh… life!
If only we could buy it in cubes, if only we could get it when sitting with the family and eating cheap casseroles. But not so easy. If you try and grab it is disappears but if you don’t try at all you won’t get it either, so what do you do? You write blogs lamenting about it.
Normally the scent is accompanied by a faint association of another time, like how certain smells can transport to a particular time and place (a cheap brand of suncream from the early eighties takes me back to family holidays in Germany and the inevitable sunburn we all got– it was factor 2 as was typical in the day : ‘Mr Zed’s Hawaiin Coconut Cream’ or something equally cancerous) I reckon we are transported because magical moments are tinged with that wide eyed wonder we had as kids but which we seem so intent on losing as we grow up. I don’t know what to do about that and it pisses me off. We’ve got to remind ourselves that this world is bigger than us and we can’t understand it otherwise we’ll leave behind the playground of our imagination. When me and B came across that view across the jungle it was like that. A bisto ahhhhhhh! You’ve got to keep your nose open I suppose. And your eyes.
Look! There’s even magic in the electric showers over here.
The wires come straight down into the water to heat it up. How you don’t get electrocuted is total magic to me - and no doubt also to the electrician that installed it, now sitting in a bath heated up with his electric stove.
After Becky had to return home to work and I was left very lonely and sorry on my own I decided that I could leave the Quetzal bird at the back of the jungle and pursue other things. So I went to Guatemala and found the cheapest hostel I could and met some white people with dreads. So that’s why I came here. More magic and mishaps awaited me.
(Weirdly enough, in a thrush-type irony, the Wolverhampton family turned up on our zip tour. We had to laugh. ‘Right Ben-ben’s, do up your harness tight, we’re going FAST and we’re going HIGH!’ Before they took their rides father-father took a photo of them all in their helmets ‘IN THE JUNGLE ON A ZIP TOUR!!’.
Thankfully they were sent to the front where father-father, and Ben-Bens were strapped together, hung like a bundle of old clothes on the washing line and then pushed off at high speed into the bowels of the jungle. The last I saw of them was father-father, at 30mph trying to get out his video camera and screaming ‘WE’RE OFF BEN-BEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNSSSSSSS!!!!!’ before the jungle fell ominously silent. I waited to hear the cartoon crash of glass from stage-left followed by a great release of squawking birds into the sky but I wasn’t indulged. We were, however never to see them again. Please is you do see them, say hello.
At this point I should shift tone. Before I pollute things with stories of disastrous tourists and other mishaps I should clear the air and say this: there’s magic in Central America. Please smell the whiff of roses in my blog. There’s magic in the impenetrable jungle canopy, there’s magic in the pacific sunsets and there’s magic in the birds that dive into the waves near the horizon. There’s magic that will never be touched by any amount of video filming and screaming kids and fluorescent windbreakers. When we dropped off the back of the walk through the night jungle we came to a clearing from where we could look out into the night sky (when Ben-bens passed us looking up he said to his dad ‘What are they doing?’ to which father replied ‘Oh, they’re just a bunch of Greeks’, which neither of us quite understood.) But the stars feel closer over here and the night wraps up the day tighter than at home. After 7pm the crack on the horizon.
From where we stood we could look across the top of the jungle and see the leaves lit by moonlight and stars. Anything could have been hidden beneath the tops of the trees in the distance.
‘In the distance’. In other words far enough away to reach by imagination but not by foot. You hear noises ‘in the distance’ and you’re not sure where they come from and what has made them and its better that way, its better not to get the photograph of the creature that is calling to the moon because then its colour and shape and sound will live in your mind and not in the branches. Our minds are big jungles. Sometimes we have monkey minds, full of chattering thoughts and thisandthats, and sometimes we have bird minds, full of nightsong and dreams, but whatever is making the noise I reckon its OK let the animals be. That’s where the wild things are, over there, out of reach. Max sailed the seas and tamed them, but I always think it a shame that he did. Better not to know. Let a small island be where the wild things roam. No need to have their picture. That way you will never have to face the fact that noise was in fact a thrush, and that the thrush was probably singing: ‘Do you know the way to Uckfield, young sir?’ and that your photography project has not worked out at all. Instead you can imagine the noise was the mysterious Quetzal bird and that it has colours to make an oil painter cry and you will imagine the bird is calling for the crimsons and violets and nightgreens of its lover and then…then, you will imagine the lover has been away for months on … some sort of excursion, a business trip to Birmingham perhaps.
Someone once told me that a romantic is never happy because they always dream of someplace better than here.
Is that true?
Surely we all need to look to places we can never know: stare at parts of the jungle that are out of reach. I’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t live without a sense of magic in your life. I say this, I suppose, because I so often lose touch with it. Then when I taste it again (and it is like a taste or perhaps a scent) from a walk at night, from being with someone at the right place and right time, from a passage of music, during a film or from arriving in a new city at dawn, I remember again what its all about. It can come when you least expect it (in fact I think this is a condition of it coming) and then it goes with equal independence. I think of it as the Bisto Gravy smoke, invisible until it crosses your path and then ….ahhhhh, bisto! Ahhhh… life!
If only we could buy it in cubes, if only we could get it when sitting with the family and eating cheap casseroles. But not so easy. If you try and grab it is disappears but if you don’t try at all you won’t get it either, so what do you do? You write blogs lamenting about it.
Normally the scent is accompanied by a faint association of another time, like how certain smells can transport to a particular time and place (a cheap brand of suncream from the early eighties takes me back to family holidays in Germany and the inevitable sunburn we all got– it was factor 2 as was typical in the day : ‘Mr Zed’s Hawaiin Coconut Cream’ or something equally cancerous) I reckon we are transported because magical moments are tinged with that wide eyed wonder we had as kids but which we seem so intent on losing as we grow up. I don’t know what to do about that and it pisses me off. We’ve got to remind ourselves that this world is bigger than us and we can’t understand it otherwise we’ll leave behind the playground of our imagination. When me and B came across that view across the jungle it was like that. A bisto ahhhhhhh! You’ve got to keep your nose open I suppose. And your eyes.
Look! There’s even magic in the electric showers over here.
The wires come straight down into the water to heat it up. How you don’t get electrocuted is total magic to me - and no doubt also to the electrician that installed it, now sitting in a bath heated up with his electric stove.
After Becky had to return home to work and I was left very lonely and sorry on my own I decided that I could leave the Quetzal bird at the back of the jungle and pursue other things. So I went to Guatemala and found the cheapest hostel I could and met some white people with dreads. So that’s why I came here. More magic and mishaps awaited me.
posted by Martin Usborne at 4:12 PM
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