Baers,

This morning I emerged towards wakefulness here in the Sámara Beach ( = ‘Playa Sámara’) community of Costa Rica to the sound of howler monkeys making their ‘growling’ sound. I think they’re misnamed, as their angry-sounding territorial sounds aren’t anything like any howl I’ve ever heard (not that I’ve ever had the occasion to become expert on the topic of howls).

Then this odd phrase formed itself into my half-asleep mind as clearly as the iguana on our neighbor’s roof that I’m looking at right now:

‘Daniel and the jury deliberated for twenty minutes before convicting the monkeys of howling.’

I’m not making this up. I have no idea who the Daniel in question is. Was it perhaps the arrival of Daniel Jon Quezada to Erni’s, Becky’s, and James’ family that spurred this strange declaration? Or the fact that yesterday I finished my annual reading of the biblical Book of Daniel?

I honestly have no idea.

But I get ahead of myself, and we have much to catch up on first.

Our last two days at The Home of the Whitehawk, near Arenal Volcano in the heart of the Guanacaste Province, were the best of all of them. And that’s saying something, because we loved our house there and the people we met very much from the start.

On one morning, five-year-old Dayana trotted in perkily behind her breakfast-making mom Lillian, wearing her promised dance outfit from her church. I don’t know if I told you that Junior and I were regularly put to work assembling Dayana’s Barbie Doll puzzle. I think there were five Barbies in the finished product, which seemed to emerge frequently as an important piece, especially when we were struggling to fit it all together.

Hey, if any one of you finds him or herself struggling to put together a Barbie puzzle, Who ya’ gonna’ call?: 317-809-0483

Somewhere in there, Dayana donned her beautiful little dance outfit and put the worship music from her church on. I was summoned to dance with her, which I heartily agreed to do (repressing the internal ‘Oh, dear …’ that wanted to show itself on my face). But the look on Dayana’s face grew less and less satisfied with my performance and eventually I was told to ‘just sit down’ while she handled the dancing. Junior has this all on video. J was moved to tears, actually, by the sight of this little Nicaraguan-Costa Rican girl dancing to a Spanish-praise-version of the recently deceased Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’. The ironies run about as deep as ironies can run, as this late secular Jewish musician’s most famous quasi-lament was repurposed in this way without many asking ‘What just happened here?’.

Karen and I must have been suitably encouraging, because soon Lillian reappeared from a brief disappearance from this fine frenzy, dressed in her church dance outfit. She put some beautiful  music of her own onto the phone (actually, we switched to my laptop at one moment, the better to raise the volume to audible levels) and did her church dance routine for us. It was remarkable. I have decidedly mixed feelings about this liturgical form in Latin American Pentecostal churches. My own hunch is that it was invented by a lecher, for his fellow lechers, all under the guise of innocent piety. But to see this remarkable woman from the most painfully deprived of backgrounds across the border in Nicaragua, having found her place among God’s gathered people, and now offering this almost angelic gift to us friends of just a few days … Well, Junior was in tears again and their were lots of post-performance hugs, from which I daintily abstained.

A little later, Junior berated me into saying ‘Well, OK, then …’ to walking the colorfully named ‘Monki Man Trail’, which we had read in our house manual is ‘much longer’ and ‘much harder’ than the trail down the other direction to the river and the waterfall. Since that trail had been plenty tough, I wasn’t excited about the MMT (as we veterans like to call it; please refer to the prior sentence to dispel any confusion). But we went. First, we couldn’t find the trail—it seemed to just disappear a few yards into the jungle—and had to walk back and ask Lillian’s husband (a truly fine man named Adán = Adam, whom we instantly liked and respected) where the trail went after a certain point. He seemed to find it slightly amusing that we couldn’t figure that out on our own, but he was gentle and polite about it. With his more detailed references to ‘el árbol caído’ = ‘the fallen tree), we tried again and—sure ‘nuff—found our way.

It was amazing. Almost vertical at places, very tough to manage, lots of little rivers to cross without falling and cracking one’s skull, copious amounts of bird song, no monkeys. We had been told we had maybe a 65% chance of seeing monkeys, but better if we were to go early in the morning (but Dayana and Lillian were dancing then and, besides, there was breakfast and sleeping late and other emergencies). We made it all the way to the end of the trail (here it definitely does disappear into the jungle), feeling quite proud of ourselves and pretty stinkin’ tired. We made our way back and, as we emerged from the jungle into a steep cow-pasture that is the last thing to cross before hitting the rough road that leads back to ‘our house’, I noticed the branches in some very high trees on the edge of the jungle moving. It was too much movement for birds and too high for people, so what else could it be but monkeys?

In fact, it was two (or maybe three) Howler Monkeys. We had a good pair of binoculars and the dudes entertained us for about half an hour as they ate fruit way up there. It was wonderful, and right at the end of our Monkey Quest, when we thought that monkeys were for other people and it was all about getting home and getting that shower and a nap.

Then, as we were almost home, the recently widowed Janet (also from Nicaragua) emerged from a nearby house to meet us, to tell us how sorry she was that she hadn’t had the chance to get to know us yet, and to give us a tour of a large and beautiful home they rent out on AirBnB, just next to the property where we stayed. We knew something of Janet’s story from others. Her North American husband, who by all accounts was a man of large personality and formidable creative giftedness, had died of cancer exactly a month ago. She was clearly still grieving, but spoke with deep poignance of her husband and the circumstances of his passing. We prayed with her and she joined in, simultaneous praying aloud in that Pentecostal way. We felt like long-time friends, not for the first time on this half-way-house journey back from North America to Colombia by way of much more familiar Central America. Janet’s story is of being rescued by the deceased Charlie from a story of suffering in Nicaragua that is almost too much to bear even upon just the hearing of it. Survival, redemption, true grit, and extraordinary grace.

Junior is experiencing the way in which Latin American people of a certain kind ‘go deep’ very early in a conversation or friendship, especially when the language capabilities are there that assure them that they’re being listened to and, indeed, heard. She loves it. I reckon it fits the shape of her own soul. It looks to me as though she’s discovering something new out here that is actually already familiar and inside of her. It’s a beautiful thing to stand by and observe.

On our last morning at the Home of the White Hawk, we saw more new kinds of birds from the home’s balcony than we had any reason to expect: Blue Tanagers, a pair of rose-colored birds of which I can’t remember the name (we look’em all up), a tree full of beautiful (if doves can be beautiful) blue-gray doves, a Yigüirro (Costa Rica’s beloved, simple, little brown Robin, which I absolutely love) that came and sat for a moment right there  in front of me … and a gorgeous Toucan that flew from way over there on the left right in front of me and off into the jungle on the right. It was like something right off of the Fruit Loops boxes we ate from (well, not directly from …) as kids, only alive and flying in an amazingly straight line, a gorgeous hawk perched in a tree with a yellow face and a yellow tail (not yet able to identify which kind of hawk he was). Etc. It was as though Arenal was giving us a loving send-off and promising to show us more of its secrets if we ever return.

We drove all the way around Lake Arenal at the beginning of our five hours or so of road time to the Guanacaste beach called Sámara. I am simply astounded at the good quality of the roads, the enormous developments in what appears to be largely good-quality tourism, the towns that were little tiny farm towns when I was teaching the gritty and very rural pastors of their churches via ESEPA Seminary’s extension back in the day. The Costa Rican narrative is very often one of decay of services and quality of life. On my recent visits, I sense a very strong counter-narrative to that, a very positive one, probably with the benefit of a long time having passed while I was paying attention to other things in other places.

The rains have lingered long this year, past the normal date when the country is transitioning to its dry season. The landscape is as lush as I’ve ever known Guanacaste to be.

We stopped in the town of Cañas for lunch, at the same Hotel Cañas where I used to seek a bit of air-conditioned respite from the breathtaking heat (though it’s cool at this moment) and a gallo pinto (Costa Rica’s exquisite simple breakfast dish) when I was driving the four or five hours down here to teach ESEPA courses to Guanacaste pastors who would gather at the church just across the street. It’s still owned by the same family, though a new generation of it, and the gallo pinto is still just as good. It would be perhaps impossible to describe the feeling of ‘displacement in time’ that I experience when I see these places and talk with the people here now who have little or no access to the memories that are being stirred up in my mind and heart as we travel.

We took a route from Cañas out to the Guanacaste coastline on the Pacific that I’ve never driven before. It rained most of the way, but was still gorgeous. Mountains and sea mingle so nicely in Costa Rica, and the Nicoya Peninsula of Guanacaste Province is Exhibit A in the argument. Junior dozed off while I luxuriated in the slow-to-middlin’ path through this second country of mine that unfolded in front of our capable little Daihatsu Terios SUV.

I don’t like Costa Rican beach towns. They draw the seamier side of the Costa Rican people, who then assume a pose that says this is what Costa Ricans are like. I know better.

Still, Junior loves water and especially that water which makes its unceasing and repetitive charge at a beach. It’s only fair that we’re here now, since I’ve had more than my share of mountains in which my soul reposes so effortlessly.

When it wasn’t raining after we arrived, just two hours before sunset, it was threatening to rain. But we made our way down to the beach for a walk, a lingering conversation with a Flemish woman who lives here with the three hilarious dogs that were wearing themselves out chasing (but never catching) water birds, dinner at a pizza restaurant where we made the acquaintance of a delightful Italian man who’s been here three years while the populist results of the Italian referendum on constitutional reform played themselves across the screen of the TV that was tuned to an Italian station, the discovery of ‘local’ cheese in a tiny little ‘Super’ (= corner store) that couldn’t possibly have had cheese …

After some peaceful reading hours, we went to sleep to the sounds of thundering rain, the very best of sleep aids. We awoke to the sound of Howler Monkeys growling.

And then that odd declaration: ‘Daniel and the jury deliberated twenty minutes before convicting the monkeys of howling’.

And a blue Costa Rican sky, an iguana on the neighbor’s roof, butterflies and large orange dragonflies flitting past our balcony and … somewhere out there … a plate full of gallo pinto, with two soft fried eggs, a slice of Guanacaste ‘local’ cheese, and a mound of fried plantain.

And maybe, just maybe, if Junior plays her cards right, an afternoon down by the waves.