April 12th

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Dear all. So, I have only two days left in San Francisco and six in Costa Rica. It's a shame to leave the school just as I feel more comfortable - the opposite feeling to getting into the swing of things (e.g remembering that few 10 year olds speak Aristotle) in the weeks before. I don't doubt that it deserves its reputation as one of the best schools in the north of Costa Rica - the children have the opportunities, facilities and standard of teaching of a good UK primary school (in fact there seem few differences). I've been taking classes of my own, and games make the children very enthusiastic - it's rewarding to see how much those children who say little in a larger class can be livelier in a smaller group. The most popular game - trying to draw a body part by part while blindfolded - tripled my class size with others who wanted to try this too! Tomorrow shall be the Sorting Hat's Song from Harry Potter.

Last weekend Victor and I took the bus to his sister's house in Tilaran around the stunning lake Arenal (formed from a hydroelectric project which involved forcibly moving over 3000 people - Victor pointed to a patch of lake where the village he grew up in used to be). As I was being sized up (or felt that way) the talk turned to religion. 'But people who don't believe in God do bad things' his sister said, very unhappily. 'He doesn't believe in God, but he's a good person' Victor replied. My dubious gratitude at such a conditional defense was reduced when Victor suddenly burst out to me 'But you're not an ateo (atheist) are you?'. I think 'ateo' has more immoral connotations in Spanish than English so said I wasn't - thankfully conversation shifted and it became clear that the family was very welcoming. Their bathroom contained one bottle of hair substance, which claimed to be 'Cholesterol and Placenta' - can someone please, please tell me whether this is normal?

Tilaran was hosting a big fiesta, the main feature of which - as is the case with the april fairs of most cities - was the corrida (bullfight). I must add that this wasn't a Spanish bullfight - no capes or deliberate injury to the bull, but instead a chance for young, worryingly inebriated men to cross-dress and run around with a bull, and also for bucking broncos. A bull is a terrifying thing. The young men ran as close as they dared, torn between the prestige and entertainment value of a close shave on the one hand and caution on the other. I refused the offer from my host dad to join them... Doubt my insurance yet alone the will to live would have covered that. Three were stretchered off in the course of the afternoon. Victor was phoned by a friend to say he could see us on national TV. Another joke of the cross-dressers was to sit flirtateously next to people in the crowd and have someone else take a photo, then come round afterwards demanding payment for this. The montadores (riders) attempted to ride some of the champion bulls in Costa Rica - the bull currently topping the league had gone 31 appearances without a montador being able to stay on.

I remain unsure of how to evaluate it. On the one hand the bulls are greatly respected and theoretically not harmed. A teacher has said to me that many are maltreated, but it's surely miles away from either the glorification of the bull's bloody demise in the bullfight that I saw in Seville a couple of years ago or from the ´out of sight, out of mind´maltreatment of factory farming. If the bull symbolizes chaos or danger in wider life, and if facing it in the arena is a way that the culture teaches its members to face these things elsewhere, does it symbolize these things well, or is the bull too impotent to do so effectively - after all it´s not exactly meeting humans on its own terms? In the small arena and with so much provocation it's hard to say whether the bull is attacking or defending itself.

There is a boy of about 5 called Ryan next door, who often talks to me delightedly and unintelligibly. He has two apparent modes of being - riding his tricycle and carrying his pet chicken. The chicken may be the most docile animal I've ever seen - it allows itself to be whirled like a discus (as much as Ryan can, given that it must be half his weight) and even thrown into the air. I think that if these were more generally available teddy bears would become defunct.

Last week was a surprise party for Billy's 60th. He and his wife Marty are US Americans who moved here a couple of years ago and teach in the preschool. The guests, consisting of teachers and their children, turned up at their house as a surprise and danced very merrily in in a carnival troop of drums, cymbals and party hats. Out came a barbecue and Billy pressed several different drinks on me, including the local guaro (very strong and made from sugar cane) - thankfully I had very little of each as the combination wasn't happy. Bill and Marty speak no Spanish, yet get by, even with the children. Dollars are almost as commonly used in Costa Rica as the national Colon (after Cristobal Colon, i.e. Christopher Columbus) - and a dollar goes a very long way, so this is another reason attracting people from the States to move here.

Friday was the major Costa Rican national day, Juan Santamaria, in which this armyless and pacifist country celebrates the defeat of maybe the biggest baddie of Costa Rican history, the renegade American William Walker, who invaded in 1856 having already captured much of Central America in the name of the US. After some light hymn singing and flag waving the teachers geared up to act out the events. 'Hey', it seemingly occurred to someone, 'let's make the foreigner play William Walker in front of the kids!' So the Costa Rican army lead by Eolin the headmistress drummed triumphantly to cheers, and then I predictably failed to enlist their support for the opposition. Armed with wooden rifles my forces - one fellow teacher only, against an unhistorically larger army - were driven back to behind a huge cardboard box covered with dry reeds and smelling very flammable, on a patch of grass in the middle of the school. Then Profe Luis, aka Juan Santamaria the heroic drummer, set fire to our fortress. My sole soldier deserted me, for the almost certainly unhistorical reason that termites were biting her feet, and I was gunned down by a ravening 6th grader. Definitely my most image-ruining piece of acting since some malevolent spirit inspired me to draw Harry Potter's scar on my forehead with board pen as one of the mimes whilst explaining JK Rowling, or doing an impression of a person set on fire. Somehow I can't imagine many UK primary schools allowing a very large and petrol-aided unprotected fire within 3 metres of excited children? Afterwards a teacher asked rousingly 'Who is willing to die for their country like Juan Santamaria?´. This turned out to be an envirnomental message, from caring for nature to picking up litter.

Saturday and Sunday were more days of river walks. Every walk has had a timeless, perfect quality for me that I´ll remember vividly. All barefoot, Victor walking stoically in front with a machete and harpoon gun, and Yancy a pink jungle river sprite tumbling down the rapids or challenging me to swimming racers. Her transformation from couched potato mode to this amazes me - suddenly, her moods and very being cannot be expressed without, or separated from, the river. Pouting is accompanied by curling up into a ball and bobbing in a pool. Playfulness means rolling downstream with the skipping cataracts and playground rocks. Laughter is also expressed through splashing. There are a thousand games that can be played with a small waterfall. (Incidentally, it would be very useful if there were an english or spanish word for 'small waterfall', by which I mean the drop between pools). My favourite is snorkelling inside and looking at it from below. Yansy went river walking in her pyjamas. Also had a go at horseriding with Victor at a friend's farm - I can now proudly make at least one horse go where I want without another rider present, but still sit like a sack of potatoes.

On the Sunday Victor and I went fishing (harpoon gun and snorkel as normal) at night near the house. I caught my first fish - it was admittedly dopey, which is why hunting at night is easier. While Victor was fishing I sat on a rock being bitten by mosquitos and watching the pitch black jungle around, occasionally jolted by the large bag of fish attempting escape. Strange dreamy green lights like giant fireflies floated high between distant trunks. As we were just emerging onto the road, a car drove passed and Victor hissed 'get down´, which we did until it passed, while he clutched his machete. ´Why did we do that?´I asked. ´That's a friend of mine, and if he saw me with fish he'd want some' Victor replied. When I use mosquito repellent Victor asks me if I'm allergic to mosquitoes.

Last Monday I had the chance to do something I'd been holding my breath for - taking a trip with Victor to the indigenous national park, where the last 200 or so of the pre-Colomban Guatuso live. Victor had lived there 30 years ago, and so instead of going the tourist route we simply got a local bus and walked into one of their villages. It wasn't hugely different in appearance from elsewhere in Costa Rica (though most had old wooden huts next to their newer concrete houses) nor were the people, however the relative poverty was evident. We paid a visit to the house of someone Victor had known. As with most people we met, it took a while for them to work out who Victor was, but when they and he realized we were warmly welcomed. At the house we stopped at, the man told the story of how in the 19th century much of the Guatuso's land was taken by exploitative Europeans who would persuade them to exchange huge areas of land for a dog or something equally cheap on the part of the Europeans. Guatuso numbers were decimated in the 20th century when an American rubber company found rubber on their land and employed Nicaraguan mercenaries, who used guns against the spears and arrows of the Guatuso. For our host, this was all in the past and forgiven. However, exploitation continues he said - most of the money from the tourism that the Guatuso need (looking round their village and buying their crafts) goes to external companies, and the national organization for the protection of indigenous rights is useless. The government forbids the Guatuso to hunt toucan and monkeys in the numbers which they had done so in the past, and so they are forced to turn to alternative food sources - rice and beans, but also sugary and salty food which, according to our host, has lowered their life expectancy.

The relationship between native medicine and that of the hospitals seems much like that in Britain. In his garden our host gave us several different medicinal plants to smell and taste - many were smells familiar from shampoos and spas in England. One I discovered was an anaesthetic only after it had put my tongue to sleep with the sensation of it dissolving. The man had built a hut to host tourists, and wanted to make a brochure, so I took photos of the plants and hut to leave with Victor. In return he gave me an intricate hunting spear he'd made. Thankfully it's unsharpened so it should make it back on the plane.

After lunching with a troop of howler monkies overhead, Victor and I headed back to the bus stop to wait for two hours eating guava. There is something very cinematic about bus stops on a long, straight road in the middle of nowhere with a large horizon to view, like a brooding pause in life where a chance meeting is bound to start an epic or where new mirage are bound to appear on the horizon, but I still wasn't prepared for what followed. Victor got talking to a young woman about some of the stories that he had hinted at to me before - they were filled out by her, and when she had gone by an old, gnarled man (both Guatuso). I couldn't get everything, but here is what I thought I heard. The first story was about a sacred lake, near the Volcano Tenorio where the waters are famously sky-blue. Everyone who has tried to fish in it has apparently died or been lost - the lake has a god, the old man said, that lives in the middle at the bottom. The old man himself when he was younger claimed he had gone there to try to fish, but been confronted by the figure of an ancestor hovering above the lake, saying 'what are you doing here?´ - he turned back. The power of the gods and spirits is, claimed the old man, retreating, because white people who have no respect are becoming more influential.

Another story, which our host earlier also confirmed, was that a few members of the tribe know where a huge deposit of gold is on their land, but keep this very quiet to save it for a time of need, passing the knowledge on only to a trusted few before death. Similarly secret medical lore is passed on - the fear is that if the gold were found it would be squandered whereas this way it is saved for a time of need, and the medicine would be all stolen by outsiders. The gold is guarded by a colossal snake spirit. Victor chimed in at this point - he had seen the snake himself, he said. When walking with a Guatuso friend 30 years ago he had seen it in the forest and stumbled across a huge cave in the ground, full of gold. 'We're millionaires' they said, but didn't go in and moved on instead, because they were afraid of the snake. But they marked their trail and later came back to the same spot, only to discover that the cave had vanished.

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