Where have I been? (Well, where am I now . . .)

Once again my blog settled in for a long winter's nap, so long that it dozed into spring. (I think it was sleeping with my muse; she hasn't shown up for a while, either.)

Why so long away? Who knows . . .  holidays, too many music commitments, friends' needs, whatever. Lame explanations with only one decent excuse: a chunk of this time was spent someplace warm and sunny, and a portion of that well off the grid.  But I'm here now, still feeding the dust mites, still taking up space and burning fossil fuel. Exactly where 'here' is, however, is under consideration.

Before I left for Costa Rica, which is where the warm and sunny was, I tried to look up the street addresses of two hotels in the city of San Jose. The first lodging was where I would be after some weeks of hiking and birding. The second was where I would meet up with seven other volunteers with whom I'd be working on a humpback whale study, the off the grid part. In between, I'd have some time on my own. Being more of a Spanish-mispronouncer than a Spanish-speaker, I wanted to have these addresses in writing ready to hand to cab drivers if necessary.

What I found for the first hotel was "5km from the International Airport, Paseo Colon," for the second, "south of Parque de la Paz." I called the travel agent who had helped set up the first leg of my trip.

I could hear her computer keys clicking away. "That's all I have," she said. "There doesn't seem to be any numbered address for either. But I'm sure any cab driver in the city will know where they are."

I learned that indeed any cab driver does know where those hotels - and everything else - is, as did the guy driving the bus for the birding group, even though there were few street signs and almost no names or route numbers to be seen on roads outside the city.

"We don't use numbers," I was told when I asked about this. "We go by landmarks." My source illustrated this with his former address: "Jaime T-C, behind the fruit stand, Sarapiqui."

What if the fruit stand closes? I wanted to know. Or moves across the street? What if it sells out to a gas station or is taken over by a chain store?

He laughed at me. "Don't worry," he said. "The guy who delivers the mail knows where we are." Well, the guy who delivers my mail knows where I am, too, but he has a street name and house number to give him some clues. Without those, I wondered, where is 'here'?

My address could be "300 yards from the city ball field behind the Discount Drug Mart." It might also be "thirteen doors from the railroad tracks on Avenue French." So far, though, the best Costa Rican-style address I've come up with is "two blocks south of the lake, next to the house with the singing greyhounds." If you decide to come visit, just turn down my street and drive very slowly until you hear the dog duet. They do really great harmony.