The Quepos Bridge Club plays at 12 noon every Tuesday at Dos Locos Restaurant.
Armando and La Baula
by Jim Parisi
Armando is a young Tico boy who has lived his entire nine years with his family, just a stones-throw from Playa Real on the Pacific Ocean in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. He’s a smart kid with an active curiosity and Playa Real has continually offered him an abundance of different ways to explore and learn. Upon his request, Armando’s father allows him to spend the night alone on the beach on the evening of his ninth birthday because Armando wants to witness the phenomena of the Baula turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs. What transpires on that night has a huge impact on Armando: he does, indeed, see a Baula lay her eggs. In fact, the turtle introduces herself (Yes! She speaks!) as “Annabella”, or Bella for short, and has quite a story to tell the impressionable Armando.
Willow Zuchowski needs a hat rack simply to distinguish her many occupations: this woman wears a lot of different hats. First and foremost, Ms. Zuchowski is a botanist who has lived in the Monteverde area of Costa Rica for nearly three decades. She had come to Costa Rica a few times in the late Seventies as a vacationing botanist, then accepted a position in the early Eighties that allowed her to return to Monteverde to work as a field assistant on a hummingbird-plant interaction project and has called that area “home” since then. Willow is also a renowned author with four books to her name, as well as a booklet of Common Flowering Plants of the Monteverde Cloud Forest and a four-fold laminate covering the Cloud Forest of Montverde. She writes passionately about this area. Willow is also an adept illustrator and includes her work in each of her books. Truly, the culmination of these endeavors makes Willow Zuchowski a formidable teacher and instructor. Her works are detailed and specific enough to serve any advanced botany student and yet straightforward and digestible for any lay person, such as myself. For me, this is an indication of a natural teacher.
visitors since December 2009
