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.
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