Moving Day In Costa Rica
By Frank Scott
I am a professional photographer in Costa Rica. The experiences on my tours are many since I never know what my group and I will happen upon. Let me tell you about one of these surprising events.
One of the pleasures of living in Costa Rica is that I can conduct Costa Rica Photo Tours for folks who want to visit and photograph exotic locations. Indeed, one of the destinations on the tour is the beautiful Osa Peninsula, the “most biologically intense place” on earth according to the National Geographic Society. We drive to this location through the little village of Ojochal, which is very close to my home.
Let me tell you about a unique way to move that some rural Costa Ricans still use. One day, when my photography group was passing through the village, we noticed a most unusual way of moving. But, to help you better appreciate what we saw, let me provide you with some background on the man who was moving.
Our only neighbours when we moved to Costa Rica were Ticos (that is what the Costa Ricans call themselves) and one of them by the very Spanish name of Wilson came calling with a house warming gift of some flowering plants. It was very comical to see him standing at our driveway waiting to be invited in onto the property so that he could give us this gift. He was too polite to come to our door without an invitation.
We were not sure what he wanted and after a “conversation” with him speaking Spanish and us speaking mostly English, I realized that he wanted to give us the flowering plants. I guess it was a sort of a house-warming gift from “the neighbours.” You need to appreciate that the fellow did not own a car. He lived at least a hour away up the mountain and had carried the plants the whole way.
With the passage of time, Senor Wilson has given me flowering plants many times. Often he stands there waiting to see where I will plant it. I would probably do the same thing if I lugged it down a mountain for an hour. However, there are so many things to do that planting this gift is never one of my priorities. Certainly, I never thought that I would be tested on my ability to choose a location and plant something when I moved to Costa Rica from Canada.
One day Wilson arrived at the house with another plant, accompanied by his two sons who were going swimming in the river beside our house. He gave me the new plant and then asked where I had planted the others that he had brought.
Well, they were still in the pots (these pots are not the plastic pots that we are familiar with but old aluminum kettles with drainage holes made by stabbing the bottom with a machete), would you believe it? Wilson saw this and decided that he not only would bring the plants but he would plant them in our little garden. That tells you all you need to know about this good man.
Back to moving day. As my photography tour group and I were driving a dusty Ojochal road, we saw a man walking his horse. It was Wilson. We stopped the van and I saw that the horse was carrying two huge white bags filled with what seemed to be clothes and household items. There was also a broom wedged between one of the bags with its blue bristle extending between the horse’s ears. For the life of me, it looked as if the horse had a bristle blue tiara on! Poor horse, not very macho!
And there was Wilson standing by the horse with a bridle in one hand and a birdcage in the other. A horse, a crown, a man, and a birdcage. What a sight! Moving day.
Wilson and I start to chat as the group hurriedly grabbed their cameras. I greeted him with “Hola, que tal?” (how are you?) and jokingly asked he was moving. Well, to my surprise, that was exactly correct. The horse was his moving van or, as my group called it, Wilson’s 4 X 4.
He explained that he, his wife (a tiny lady who looks 14), and the 3 kids would be taking care of a B&B while the owner returned to Germany during Costa Rica’s rainy season. They were very pleased about this arrangement because living in the pueblo brought the kids closer to the school, saving them from walking two miles down and back from their mountain home.
I thought that it was rather interesting that he was carrying the birdcage. I would have thought that on one of the previous trips down to their new digs one of the children would have wanted to carry the cage.
Carting flowering plants and birdcages is all in Wilson’s job description. He told me and the group that the little bird was very young (parrot or parakeet, I don’t know), that it just loved to talk and knew many words. As though he understood, the bird started showing off, chattering away while we are talking about it. I would tell you what it said but my command of bird Spanish remains very poor to this day. Sorry.
You can imagine that my group was very excited about taking pictures of a crowned horse, chattering bird, and Costa Rica family walking down a mountain, worldly possessions carried by their trusty steed. Moving day in Costa Rica. One never knows what one will see or experience on my photo tour of Costa Rica.
Frank Scott writes from sunny Costa Rica where he is a professional Costa Rica Photographer offering unique photography tours. Some of his work can be seen in Costa Rica Vacations, a very popular travel guide to this unique country.
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