Friday May 24, 2024 6am

I’m sitting on a giant outdoor futon by a turquoise pool in La Fortuna, Costa Rica. The sun is a smudged glow behind clouds, just above the trees that edge the river that runs along the property. The air is full of bird cries. High twee-twits, a melodious whistle twee twittle twee, a laughing cacacacaca, the cluck of chickens, the cock a doodle doo of a rooster, the hoowa hoowa of something dove-like.

The pool is edged with yellow and green variegated plants, and red and green ones too, along wtih something like a bird of paradise except that the flowers dangle and look like toucan beaks rather than lifting up to look like long sharp bird bills. At the end of the pool are broad-leafed plants almost my height and with giant showy iris-like flowers in lemon yellow and flame orange, and hummingbirds drank from them last night as I floated in a donut inflatable in the pool with a cold glass of white wine.

By the river, the trees drip with lime-green bromeliads and dangling vines that drop all the way from the treetops to just above the water’s surface. Insects whirr. A yellow leaf falls gently into the moving water and drifts downstream.

When we arrived yesterday and piled out of the Suzuki, we went straight to the pool and saw it sparkling in the afternoon sun, filled with inflatable floaty toys that drifted around its edges: two beach balls, two pink-frosted donut inner tubes, a fun noodle, two long lounging floats, and a giant pink flamingo you could lay your whole body on and be a foot above the water and stay completely dry. And a basketball hoop! Our son immediately began looking for a pool basketball.

This morning, when I came out here, the flamingo was dressed up. One donut was around its neck like a necklace. The other was around its back end and had the fun noodle stuck through it to give the flamingo a long arching tail. It had a lounger float under each wing like skis, and the yellow frisbee was on its head like a halo. The flamingo floats around the pool in this getup in the morning sunlight, and each time I see it, I’m tickled all over again by what I assume is Brian’s doing after the rest of us went in last night.

Saturday May 25, 2024. 6:15am

I swam laps for 10 minutes in the pool this morning. The water was too warm and I felt like I was overheating, even at 5:30am. It got me moving, though, which was better than not swimming. Now I sit by the water in the rising sunlight. The volcano is straight ahead of me, La Arenal. Black birds, probably grackles, squawk on tree tops. The monkey masks on the little cabanas around the pool look creepy with the sun rising on them.

Sunday May 26, 2024. 6:24am

I’m on a bench by the pool. Roosters crow from the farm across the gravel road. The sky is heavy with clouds. I can’t see the volcano or the surrounding mountains. It hasn’t rained at all since we’ve been in Costa Rica. We expected rain every day.

We saw sloths yesterday! After lounging by the pool most of the morning, and after Brian and I went into town to eat at Lulu’s soda for a casado, a local meal of rice, black beans, plantains, salad, a tortilla, a small wedge of cheese, and grilled fish, we drove over to a nature sanctuary, the Bogarin trail in town, where we took a mile hike through a forest and saw leaf cutter ants carrying leaves and flowers in long trails along the path. We saw lizards and a giant moth that was not alive but was posed as if it were; I wondered if the guides had put it there. The place we went offered guided tours for $50 per person; self-guided tours were $16. We did the self-guided tour.

The hike started pleasantly in terms of temperature — we expected to be sweating buckets, but in the shade of the green forest, the temperature was surprisingly tolerable. As the minutes ticked on, though, and my backpack smothered my back, I became slick with sweat. We went in the afternoon, maybe around 2pm, and we walked slowly to look for sloths. The sun sets at 6pm, and by 4, the light was getting low. Mosquitos began to emerge, and I soon was covered in bug bites and was ready to come home. Our stomachs were growling, too. So after seeing the first little sloth, then near the end of the loop seeing a message drawn in the dirt of the path, “SLOTH look up,” and looking up to see a big sloth, then going back to see the little sloth again, we hiked out.

Our son wanted pizza — “something smothered in cheese” — so we stopped by the Papa Johns that was on the way home and that we had previously laughed about looking so out of place. I drank chilled white wine and we ate pizza in front of the TV while we watched F1 qualifying for Monaco.

Now it’s time to move Airbnbs again. This time we move from the jungle house with the pool to the beach house with the pool in Tamarindo. Only 3 more days in Costa Rica. I’m ready for it to end and not ready for it to end.