"Crossing Paths"

I guess that we forgot to include our most important claim to fame. A taxi drove us to catch a San Jose bus, and we headed to Monteverde crossing a poor enough road that even Val flinched, wondering how our bus would stay on track,

arriving just outside the Casa Tranquila after dark.  Our bus driver was not smiling when he pulled our bags out in the middle of an intersection.  But it really was closer to seven p.m. than 11, and there were no cars coming one way or the other, so we decided it would be all right to just let him feel grumpy.  We were simply happy to disembark.
  

As you can see, hot water is a luxury, and the less you use, the happier you might end up!

Here is a translation for "Tranquila"

The next morning we rushed through breakfast to await the next 7:15 a.m. bus.  No bus. After maybe a 20 minute wait, a young man invited us to join him with his boss in a sports utility vehicle to where he was helping to renovate a Trapp Family Lodge (which we learned later is only a distant relation to the Maria von Trapp we sing about.  Sorry, Carma.  But they did have Amber's favorite blue hydrangea, and other nice sights.)

And we were saved half the bus fare to Monteverdi Reserve.  A sweet Ukrainian "soltera" post-college student, Svitlana Sokurenko

coached us through changing coins and invited us to hire a tour guide with her.  ("My friends who have come here recommend sharing the tour...[please, please]")

Our host, "Carlos Vasquez," my scribbling reads

I imagine we would have gone it alone without our new friend Lana's encouragement, and may have missed some of the following:

Above is a rare bird called the Quetzal, found in Costa Rica.  The telescope and guide helped us "see" what otherwise we would have only heard.  And this is my camera! (With the help of our host's scope.)

 

From 1/2 a football field away, we also got to see a two toed sloth with her baby.  This shot (above) is our camera.  And we saw mom lift her baby, presenting the word "slothful" in friendlier terms.

Here are a few other photos I found online
to give a flavor of what we saw, just a little closer

For the grand kids, to show live a bit of what we saw through the magnifying glass, I also found a sloth baby video from the national aquarium.  

Here is a white nosed coatí, walked right up to us (above--my camera is on "museum" and not focusing)

This one is a little clearer, from another camera in Costa Rica.  The coatí is a member of the raccoon family, and ours was doing its best to ignore us.

 

This tree is called a strangler tree.  It gives a new caution to "family roots!"  Our guide used our camera to show the hollow center of the tree.

We finished our tour, asked advice on bus routes, ate seafood at Kukis (delicious, across from our hostel) and then found ourselves at a little strip mall with this mural waiting for another bus, for destination "playa" (or beach.)  

Val liked the many hummingbirds in the reserve.  Here is an artist's version near the bus stop

Peering in some of the nearby windows of shops, a group was practicing their native dance. I  got a video, but maybe a still version will tickle your funny bone.  

Val and I are reading D. Todd Christofferson about women and balance.  This adds another gender to the picture! Sometimes all we need is a warm body to fill in the place, may it be pink or purple. :)

We boarded a bus for Liberia, met a school teacher, Ronny Brennan, who taught us a little geography and told us about his job teaching at a country school, commuting from Puntarenus every week to mentor several students in a rural area.

 
 

Above is a taste of the scenery.  Our favorite part, however, happened to be the people:

I am rooting for this type of hairstyle soon!

Now to record a few tender mercies:  When we arrived in Liberia after a five hour journey out of the mountains, the sky had darkened, and our motel, (though the clerk had explained it as blocks away) was not in sight.  Some eager men at the curbside explained a walk to Hotel Guanacaste 

would be at least eight blocks.  A taxi would be in order--our three bags were large enough to merit help. Val readily agreed, and we began to load our luggage into the back of what looked like a gray-toned sedan.  (Two warning signs we were too tired to recognize—the taxi was not red, the car was not marked with a number—it was a simple grey sedan.)  Eight blocks.  What could happen in eight blocks?  We closed the doors and traveled  four blocks north, one block east, then four more blocks south.  Funny, we were closer than we thought--to that motel that we heard was next door to the bus stop!  It was time to recollect suitcases, backpack, and was there something else?  I headed to the trunk, Val got a backpack from the back seat, and we inquired at the front desk to learn what they offered.  The attendant led us past an eating and drinking area and a group of rooms, to find a quarter with the cinder block walls, 10 feet by 10 feet.  I had the presence of mind to inquire if the water was hot.  You want hot water?  That is $10 USD extra--back to the office to find another key, another room nearer the eating quarters, which by then was starting up dance music. 

Temperatures were 85 degrees, 6:30 pm and sticky.  Would there be air?  Yes, a fan.  Reluctant to search for new quarters, we settled our things, accustoming our ears to the music.  Maybe we would look for another place and call with the phone…where was the phone?  A check through pack and periphery lent no clues.  Val suggested a prayer.  Good idea…with the prayer finished, I decided we should walk back to the bus stop (really two blocks away) to scout out our "helpful taxista."  It was an inexpensive phone, only $25 plus the SIM card we added in San Jose.  But it functioned, and we had no idea how to replace it.

As we walked by the McDonalds (landmark where local and international buses board and unload) we looked ahead. Sure enough, there was the gray-toned sedan, waiting.  “Hola!  Senor, pienso que se me olvido una cosita en su carro.” (Hello, sir.  I may have forgotten something in your car.)  Before he could answer, I helped myself into the back seat, where beaming in a welcome and wonderful bright green light was the cell phone, which I retrieved quickly with a smiling, “Gracias!”

“Buena Suerte!”  He piped.  But it wasn't luck, I explained--we believed in prayer, and it was very soon time to pray again, a thank you,  glad to have our emergency communication restored.  Heading into the hotel, Val seized the moment to invite me to some swing and cha cha at the eatery.  It was our most agreeable moment of the night before bedding down, working to disregard the sounds that crept into the window, opened to fight the heat. Noisy neighbors celebrated the weekend early, singing Karaoke--and we resolved all night--morning would bring quieter quarters!

The drapes were not soundproof!

Tender mercy number “two:”  Checking our Lonely Planet guide (we have decided that only singles eager to try the hostel stays should consult the lodging part of this book) we meandered four blocks north and a few blocks east, asking about water, air, noise, price, when we looked across a street to see a place not listed, but clean.

The outside wall are made out of newspaper shellacked--I call it Hotel de Papel (really, Casa de Papel)

A clean cut, animated young man, invited us to look at his air-conditioned room with hot water and Val estimated eight times the space.

“It is a deal!”  When the young man, Vladamir, noticed my Liahona, he told us that he was in the process of preparing his papers for an LDS mission.  He found a taxi to bring us to the bus station to travel to Playa Hermosa, where we found water, sand, and friendly faces.

 

When we returned, we found a sight that feels almost ordinary in our Central American intersections--entertainment...pay as you go!  The girl in the rear is juggling a machete.   

Val spoke with a passerby indicating that her papaya macaroon looked tasty.  She promptly went inside the nearest bakery and bought him his own.  (Anyone that knows Val can guess what a quandary that proved for his sugar buster temperament.) 

The next day, trying to find the ticabus station, I called to find out that I had mistakenly reset our tickets for Friday and it was now Saturday.   Our hotel manager, Vladamir, walked us next door to speak with a bus ticket sales person.  Sixty USD for new tickets and a six hour wait—however, there is another choice, a little more “peligoso” (in Honduras, we learned that word early on —“dangerous.”)  But, arriving before dark sounded good.  Narrowing our loss to $20 looked attractive.  When we said “yes” to this choice, we had no idea that we would arrive at the bus stop in time to see it depart.  “Would you like to chase the bus (or wait another hour)?”  I am learning a new phrase “¿por qué no?”  (This means, “why not?”)  A good set of words, a good thing to learn.  But it can lead to adventures you would never imagine.  Our taxista chased the bus from the city outskirts to the green of an outlying village area.  A stop appeared within maybe 10 minutes.  Vladamir and taxista helped us unload our bags, and the bus driver loaded them on, requesting a few dollars.  Vladmir shared his email, asking us to send a “we got here” note, and off we went.  

 

I met a lady who runs a finca, or little farm.  Her husband worked in town as a policeman, schedule of three days on, three days off, and she takes care of the animals while he is away.  The small towns we passed had a different feel to them than the city of San Jose or outskirts.  And we chatted with our neighbors an hour plus until we reached the “frontera”—the border.  





No problem.  Show your passport, pay maybe $20, change your money (Val suggested doing this at a bank, located in a mobile truck with customers attended to one by one, different than the dozens and dozens of heckling money changers outside the fence) then walk ½ mile from Costa Rica to Nicaragua.  Only one glitch—it had rained and the road upon which we rolled our bags affored 2 inches of “lodo” or mud.  Val enviously eyed the bicycle rickshaw offering, and young men continued to offer to carry our luggage.  But Salt Lake security suggested keeping bags close.   (They may have raised eyebrows at this leg of our trip!)  


And close we kept them, until a kind young woman and her friend helped me lift the big bag and walked us to the Nicaraguan customs, where we paid again, then walked across the unpaved mud in search of another bus.  No problem.  "Masaya!  Masaya!"  Cryers for the buses herded us to the closest school bus.  My assignment would be to watch luggage in the back.  Val moved near middle to ease the bumps on his neck.  The vinyl was gone from the seats—replaced with burlap. 

A young man named Lester toyed with a cell phone in the aisle just next to mine.  And the phone was a carbon copy of mine. (See, in his right hand.)

“Could you teach me how to use mine?”  "Por supuesto!"--Of course!  And a few minutes later, I knew how to play road rage, make a call, and best of all, pick a language—English.  It is still Greek to me, but I love our young friends who can figure out anything with buttons and lights!  When I told Lester about where we were heading, he introduced me to Gabriella, a member of the Church, and shared his story of “still thinking” about the gospel.  I reassured him that Brigham Young studied for two years prior to his baptism.  “Thinking” can be a good thing.  So can “doing.”  

As I shared mormon.org cards and our temple address with bus friends, a very noisy man began to preach from the middle of the bus.  It sounded something like fire and brimstone, until he started passing out vitamins.  We did not need vitamins, we passed them on.  But then he wanted everyone to pay for them.  Our bus neighbors reassured us they would tell us when Masaya came along.

It came along, but it must have been the evangelist distraction that got us nearly to the other side of town before someone invited our bus driver to dump us out at a Uno gas station.  

Our friend Maria from the temple was going to meet us, 
but we were not at the station, and we were in Nicaragua now, so the Costa Rican SIM card was void.  Five taxistas wanting our business tried to help us find connections, to no avail.  Finally, one walked us to a little pulperia vendor in a gas station garage who shared his land line.  The list Elder Alvarado printed for me came in handy.  We called every number that worked.

Finally, a friend Fernando Garay, we had met just days before in our temple guest house, met us at the station.  “Great!  Where shall we go?”  “I don’t know, I came in a taxi.”  He looked at our list, supplied another phone number, and climbed with us into one of the waiting taxis to visit Alegna and her mom

 who suggested a motel a block away—on our way to the Masaya Stake Center, to which we walked in the dark another half mile.

A stake activity was happening at that very moment.  

Pre-missionaries were getting haircuts.  They were walking from house to house, learning to talk to people, to share a message of Jesus Christ, meeting again at the chapel for a video with Elder Holland and President Eyring addressing challenges in our lives and on our missions, with the back drop of the Lamb of God video, depicting the final days in the life of the Savior.  If we follow Christ, our missions will likely have some difficult places--sometimes where we are misunderstood, not treated kindly, and where we have to stand alone. 

Maria Ligia is in the presidency of the Masaya Stake Sociedad de Soccorro (Relief Society) and found us as we walked in with our other friends.  "Can you stay with me?  Maybe Monday!" We watched young men and women dance traditional dances,

including Christopher, a young man I had gotten to know when his family was sealed in July.  His  

papers were in, and he was waiting.  Flashing pictures and videos of the beautiful artistry, I tried to count the young people being hosted. 

I stopped counting at 70.  Kind of amazing…these are future missionaries ready to go out and do what Val once came here to do—sharing a seed that has taken root and grown.  Where Val served as companion to the Branch President in a branch of 17, where there are now thousands.

  

In five years, church membership has doubled in Nicaragua.

The next morning, we sat with our Ruiz friends, who invited us to their home after church. After sharing our phone miracle, Val wondered if they had a prayer story they wanted to tell us.  Jenifer (15) fell, and hurt her leg.  The doctors did not realize how serious the injury was until it was too late.  She ended up in the hospital with surgery after surgery, including grafts—for a year.  (How did you pay for it?!  We did not.  It was donated.)  Jennifer came close to death.  The oldest brother Jonathan, with just months left now on his mission to Costa Rica was a member.  Missionaries were invited.  Jenifer was given a blessing.  She lived.  The rest of the family had a change in their heart, an appreciation for healing, and a willingness to give back.  Jonathan’s brother, sister, mother and father joined the Church.  Jose, father, now serves as Elders Quorum President and Johanna, the mom, as Relief Society President.  Christopher (18) has since received his mission call to El Salvador.  He leaves 8 January for the MTC.  His road will not cross his brother's for a total of nearly four years.

Each of their paths include "taking up" a cross, responsibilities that they are choosing to bear, with cheer, with thankfulness, with arms outstretched toward fellow beings, including wayfaring strangers. Thank you for stretching out your arms today, this week, and this month, for watching for those crossing your Jericho paths. Blessings today and throughout this month...Laurene and Val Starkey

This is from our visit to Hotel Monimbo--in case you are looking for a new talent to welcome those who cross your way!

Sorry Kristen that this is so long...I had to say it.  And then, you like to read!!