From Costa Rica with love, written by Syl

This will tell you about our recent trip to Costa Rica where we stayed, visited and ‘played’ with Damian, Samantha, Stéphane and their wonderful parents Ghislaine (my very dear and only cousin) and her soul-mate and hubby Dominique...they are all some of the most endearing and efficient people one would eve meet and the Damian, Samantha, Stéphane gang (‘dem kids) could/should rule the damn Nicoya peninsula (and produce the best Costa Rican film) for the next 20 years....see below for some script starters....

Essential Quote: from Damian Geneau (son of Ghislaine & Domi’ , World Class Chef, explorer of his universe...

“the beans, Mum, the beans, they have to go first...the beans...the water...Over the beans...you Must keep the water...”

We had an absolute fabulous time in Costa Rica at my cousin's house in Malpais, in the Nicoya peninsula, home of some of the best surfing in the whole region, continent, world...we ate, we drank, we had fun running around the countryside in Quads (ATV's), fishing, swimming, watching iguanas, monkeys,birds of all colors n’ shapes...etc...etc...and with three of their four kids (past the growing-up age all of them...the oldest is about 28), who all live there and who all work in some of the good resorts there (yoga/meditation/surf/fancy food)...and they are all about to open a fishing store in the town of Santa Teresa for oysters, lobsters and fish....and part the heavenly waters with their good and sharp souls... and with the expert and kind help of Dominique’s (cousin’s hubby) almighty knowledge, savvy, business knack, and overall technical know-how....and Ghislaine (allmighty dear cousin)’s drive, elegant forcefulness, keen eye and tongue, design elegance n’ taste, savvy n’sharp man-handling skills n’ socio-linguistic otherwise sharp tongued subtleties....

We could move there tomorrow and be happy for the rest of our lives...and I so damn happy I speak fluent Spanish to this day!!!!

Back in Michigan now where it is 6 centigrades, when yesterday we were in 35 centigrades!!!...pheeeeww...

By the way Costa Rica is great, very very “civilized” (neat and nice people/open atmosphere) and yet completely wild/frontier in other ways with small, very dusty roads, little shops and tiendas along the 'caminos', iguanas running about, birds of all colors, warnings about scorpions in your shoes in the morning, howling monkeys in the trees, gigantic manta rays by your fishing boat, electrical power failures with your fish soup... absolutely beautiful countryside, mountains and valleys included...a very very refreshing place...one of the most endearing places I ever saw, along with Arembepe in the State of Salvador in Brazil, some years ago, and the little village of Soulan, in the Ariège, a few years before that....where I spent enlightening, wonderous days...

This tropical sweltering purgatory is blissful .

Never saw a soccer game in Costa Rica, but I saw the fields and they were like the ones I played on as a kid or in 66 in Villaseca, Cataluna: dirt, burned grass, plummer-pipe goal posts, shovel-dugged lines, faded Imperial Beer ad on scoreboard...off-blue painted plaster latrines a throw from motorcycle dust - you can already imagine the smell on match day - pure heaven in my book....hopefully, I’ll see one of those games right there....and piss my Imperial in that latrine...

While in Costa Rica read another book by Ken Bruen, Irish noir/crime writer...the best of the best in many, many years...read “The Guards,” the book that made him famous...in Ireland, in UK and now he has a following here [although I doubt it would ever go outside of the ‘crime stories ghetto’ in the US, where they basically want their entertainment to be ‘religious’ i.e...no more than Presbyterian (if you see the French sexual joke in the word????...presse-bite....)]...the book is gorgeous and should be required reading anywhere in the English speaking world after 10 y.o.....here’s tha exam/baccalauréat: once you’ve uncovered all layers...you’ve graduated, you done, cooked, blessed....whatever your releegions’ gotta be...get it next week Rich and read it...ESSENTIAL!...after that...nothing and absolutely everything matters...which is the way is has to be....so you can ride that 328 longer and faster...

Went to Cementerio Island in Nicoya peninsula over there (look on you map west of the town of Montezuma, east of to Cabo Blanco....Mont-Saint-Michel for the conquistadores...an istmus washed in 30 C bath water...you gotta get in at low tide and fuck-off, before you’re trapped...You walk in in the bath water, you drag up the hill through the cementerio gate, glance about at the white stones...the lives, the people, the shit they endured... and Papillon (the movie) is crawling in... “feu-follets” dance around your nostrils (check this if you don’t know what they are: http://www.geocities.com/old_time_time/feu.htm), pure heaven, pure heat, your lungs burn and you wanna walk in that bath water forever...endlessly....for some taste of their hell...
Woke up real early the next day to Werner Herzog tunes and...checked for them scorpions in my shoes...

Friend, your news are good and I’m about to down some casado we cookked up since we bean back...(black mean beans and rice...etc...etc...)...I hope you were here to share it all for your upcoming B’day....You’d like them ticos’ (the people of Costa Rica)...and ‘dem iguanas would climb up your pants...

Brother Damian, son of Ghislaine, master of the Heaven’s furnaces, a yakuza type painted man himself, (he was the Exec. Chef of a major resort here for eons, after ruling the taste buds of the top Vancouver eatery through many seasons), a true seductive bon vivant, surf sea & snow master, fearless explorer, original map drawer and straight-fast talker/dealer and prolific poker gambler (a character close to Cusacks’ Roy Dillon’s from Frears’ screen rendition of Jim Thompson’s book)....Damian, cooked, sliced, & slithered, for us all a mean sushi dinner, in less time than we all bake-a-potatoe....the food, the style. the colours, the layout, the sauces....all swats of the cooking sword that d’Artagnan would have been proud of....Damian dazzled and his words still rule...

The fish came from our own fishing...blue boat...darting eyes of the captain/owner/master scamming the rollers, jiggling bait, dervish on steroids....with the sad eyes of a fado singer....

We will talk to our cats about the iguanas...they must be prepared...we’re on the way...

Love and muchissimas gracias from this frog...and from ‘la familia’....