Just one more day in Costa Rica. I will fly statesward early Monday morning.

I am sinking into the culture here again. I still have not confronted the reality of returning to the United States of Vengeance after four months living la pura vida, but it is bound to be a shock. At least I'm going back to Seattle and not Mumbai or Hong Kong or Cairo.

This morning I caught a bus back from Pavas, a sprawling suburban community up the hill from San Jose. I spent the night there at a friends house, after plenty of dancing at a discotheque in the vicinity. On the way to the bus stop, I passed through a small park with little papyrus-like plants that sport pure white flowering clusters, like snowflakes or tiny supernovae. They were growing in among the weeds below the tulip trees, whose fiery orange blossoms littered the ground like scraps of construction paper blown in after a parade.

The people on the bus are friendly. They watch the tall skinny gringo get on and give the driver way too much money, receiving a solid, heavy handful of change in return. I put the change into the twist top sealing plastic baggie that has been serving as a wallet since my stupidity paid off in the internet cafe a few days ago. I drop a coin accidentally onto the floor of the bus and it spins away, settling under the seat of some wise old Tica woman, who lifts her foot out of my way as I reach down to pick it up, and smiles.

Back in San Jose, kiosk vendors are selling any number of different things on the street corner next to the bus stop, including batteries, umbrellas, and plastic action figures of popular children's characters. Sunglasses, lottery tickets, telephone cards, and outrageous fruits are piled, stacked, layed out, hung, and generally displayed for observation. Just in case you don't see them, the vendors hawk their wares loudly. "Nance! Aguacate!" wails a sinewy gentleman of about forty, promoting his avocados and a strange, vomitous-tasting, yellow fruit called nance that I have never seen in the states. The tall skinny gringo passes him up for a different vendor selling grapes. The sweet bubbles of juice and seeds pop pleasantly in my mouth, somewhat easing the pain of the hangover headache I'm dragging with me through the exhaust fumes clouding the way to my hostel.

A taxi driver at the corner runs a red light. No one even blinks. The light changes, and people in the street scurry to get out of the way before the onslaught of vehicles displaces them involuntarily. The motorcycles are always the first in line, weaving through the cars while they are stopped and then gunning the motor at the first sign of green, accelerating so fast it's hard to gauge how quickly to get out of their way. They fly past the next block before the taxis have even made it halfway there, leaving a vapor trail and ringing eardrums in the heads of all the people close enough to their unmuffled motors.

The trees in the park don't seem to mind the pollution. Several colossi grace the square, casting lovely shade upon the man sweeping the stone walkways and the lovers kissing and mumbling to eachother on the stone benches. Three stocky mahogany trees tower over the entrance gate, over one hundred years old and as many feet tall, with trunks as thick as a VW bus. The tufts of leaves on the tips of their thick, muscly branches rustle in the breeze. A Plumeria tree stands nobly next to the rotunda in the park centre, shedding its perfumed blossoms to the breeze.

One monolithic strangler fig, across the park opposite the mahogany trees, long ago lived up to its Spanish name of tree killer by overtaking a smaller tree. Now nothing remains of the host tree, long ago squeezed out of existence by the matapalo seedling growing roots down through its hosts branches. The regal strangler has become a monarch, dominating an entire section of the park, sprawling skyward with long, straight branches covered in clouds of deep green leaves. Its roots like searching tentacles bind themselves into the ground, writhing and twining around themselves and every other immobile thing within reach. These inexorable, magnificently deadly plants give me the creeps. Their murderous behaviour is so explicit, so effective it cannot be ignored. Between their tentacle roots and glossy green leaves, I can catch a glimpse inside the dark, mindless, and deeply competetive nature of plants.

The stories end as I enter my hostel, and walk through the entrance hall, past the wall of living greenery, on my way to the reception desk to pay. Tomorrow I am La Selva bound to collect the remainder of my stuff and hopefully duplicate one of the CDs I gave to Cat last quarter so that I will have some version of my data and paper to bring back to the states.