Moving Day In Costa Rica

As a Costa Rica professional photographer, encountering new experiences is the norm, not the exception. My tour group never knows what is around the next corner.

Some Costa Ricans in rural communities have an unusual method of moving. As one of my groups was passing through the village some folks started pointing to something ahead of us. It was a fellow moving. But, before telling you this story, let me give you a little background on this gentleman.

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 andquot;conversationandquot; 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 andquot;the neighbours.andquot; 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.

Over time, neighbor Wilson has walked to my house many times with plants. Now, it often happens that when he gives me his gifts he stands there waiting for me to plant them. Of course, sometimes I may already be on another project and cannot very well stop what I am doing so the plants get put into the ground later but my good neighbor sometimes drops by to find out where and when I had planted them. I never imagined that when I moved from Canada to Costa Rica.

A couple of days after Senor Wilson gave me plants one time, he came to the house with still another plant and visited while his two boys swam in the river by the house. Of course, he asked me where I planted the others that he had brought the last time he came.

Oops! They were still in the pots on the terrace (these pots are certainly not decorative in any way as they are old aluminum kettles with drainage holes stabbed in the bottom of the pot with a machete). When Senor Wilson saw that his previous gifts were still in the pots, he decided he needed to plant the gifts he had given me since I apparently did not know how to do it. I hope you are getting an idea about what kind of fellow my neighbor is.

Now, back to my photography tour group and the day they met Wilson. As we were driving along, we saw a man walking a horse. It was neighbor Wilson. What a sight! The poor horse was carrying two huge, not big–huge, white bags filled with clothes and household items. To add insult to injury, Wilson had propped a broom between the bags so that its blue bristle appeared between the horse’s ears. It looked just like the critter was wearing a bristle blue tiara! Not a very macho horse, I must say.

Wilson was holding the horse’s bridle in one hand and a birdcage in the other. A sight to behold. A man, a horse, a crown, and a birdcage. Moving day!

We greeted each other with the usual andquot;holaandquot; and started to chat as the cameras were brought out and the clicking began. Just joking around, I asked Wilson if he were moving and to my surprise he said he was. Turns out the crowned steed was the moving van or shall we say Senor Wilson’s andquot;4 X 4.andquot;

He explained that he, his wife (a tiny lady who looks 14), and the 3 kids would be taking care of a Bandamp;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.

The birdcage was quite interesting. It seemed to me that on one of the previous trips someone could have brought the cage down to the new digs.

However, seeing that he also carries flowering plants down the mountain, I guess carrying birdcages is not so far off the mark. He told me that the bird was young (parrot or parakeet, I’m not sure) but that it was very talkative and knew many words. To show off, it started to chatter while we were talking about it but as I have not yet mastered Spanish, I certainly did not understand bird Spanish.

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.