Nefarious, Dave, and I went white water rafting today — on the Balsa River (I was wrong about yesterday, which was actually on the River Blanca) — for my and Nefarious’s first time, so I think the choice of class three rapids was about right. It was plenty bumpy with the occasional risk of falling overboard into the river or flipping the raft altogether, and lots of slides down mini-waterfalls with big crashes at the bottom with violent waves splashing over the side, and the more-than-occasional crashes into boulders in our path. The ride itself took two and a half hours and Nefarious did great, not just holding on tight, but listening to all the instructions from our guide on when to shift her weight around. She — and all of us — had lots of fun, and were completely drenched by the end of it. Well, not by the end of it. By the first five minutes, and then again, over and over and over! It sure was nice coming back to shore with fresh pineapple and watermellons waiting for us, and then a hot meal of rice, fish, veggies, beans, plantain, and goat cheese. Not that it was the focus, but on the smoother class two stretches we had time for some sightseeing, not just of egrets, herons, eagles, kingfishers, vultures, and other birds, but also the many bright green lizards skittering over the rocks along the shoreline. All in all a super adventure that I will remember fondly and I hope is one of Nefarious’s childhood highlights.
Also on the ride (split across two rafts, as well as a rescue guy with stretched lobes sans-jewelry in the rescue raft) were a couple of adventure travel dudes from Hawaii, and some Bush-loving Christian Republicans from North Carolina, accent and all. We were talking to the guide about Costa Rica, and he was proudly speaking about how self-sufficient it is, with massive exports of all kinds including renewable power (they have wind, water, and geothermal generation, as well as lots of biofuels, with a real emphasis on sustainability and long-term health of the nation and environment) and food of all sorts, and how they have great free education and healthcare, and so on… He really started losing them when he talked about how in Costa Rica, people look not to the person who’s richer than them (and then live a life of envy and greed as they try and get rich themselves) but to the one who is poorer (both to remind them of the riches of the simple and stable life they already have, and to show them that they need to help those around them), but when he talked about how Costa Rica was a nearly two century old democracy that had dissolved their military sixty years ago, they couldn’t get it at all, blurting out, “but what will you do when you get invaded?!?!?”
As if!!!
He tried to explain to them that Costa Rica aims to spread peace, and that their nation’s leaders travel extensively throughout the world encouraging other nations to stop being so warlike, but they thought it was completely bizarre. I was about to get in an argument with them about healthcare — even though the guy’s job was in the bankruptcy industry and he agreed that healthcare (or as he put it, “it’s not the insurance companies fault, it’s just bad luck”) was the biggest cause of bankruptcy, he thought the current for-profit US system was the best they could get — but decided it wasn’t how I wanted to spend my day, so I had an interesting chat on the ride with his wife, who homeschools their four children. Now, I like homeschooling because I’m into unschooling and freerange kids, whereas I guess they have a problem with queer teachers and evolution, but still, we found plenty in common and avoided black eyes and it was quite pleasant chatting with people who are fairly alien to me in their life views.
And RIP to WWF surface piercing pioneer Captain Lou Albano, who almost always wore rubber bands through a piercing on the surface of his cheek, making him arguably the inventor of flexible jewelry (predating by a decade things like Tygon)… I wrote about him ages ago on BME at my friend Saira’s suggestion. I see these notes about how BME is looking for someone to take over running it and want to put up my hand and say “I’ll do it!” because I’d love to be blogging about bodmod again, but I’m quite certain that it wouldn’t be worth jumping through the legal hoops to achieve. I suppose I’ve had my turn, and am in a different line these days. But what good memories, even if I can’t turn back time!
Tomorrow morning it’s off to the sloth rescue!
