Gerry goes to Mardi Gras

How did he manage this one? Well, he’s got to go to court at the end of the month to face civil and criminal charges (let him blog about his trials and tribulations), and he needs a suit. Trouble is we’ve got all his suits in storage until the Finca El Tigre house is finally remodeled. And he can’t just walk into the storage container and pull a suit out of a box, because he would have to sort through 284 boxes to find the suit and then the shoes and then a white shirt. .

It would be a lot easier to just fly up to New Orleans and pull a suit and accoutrements out of our closet in the flat. And it just so happens that the flat is located in the French Quarter. And coincidentally, he arrives the Sunday before Fat Tuesday and would depart the day after the start of Lent. And no, I doubt very much you will find him in the Cathedral on Jackson Square. So there it is. Gerry’s leaves Sunday for New Orleans and I will remain here in Costa Rica to sort out the construction.

Or will there be any construction? Yesterday afternoon, a bus from the University of Peace knocked a gaping hole into the rickety wooden bridge that connects El Rodeo with the rest of the world. Now, only cars can cross the bridge with great caution. So how do the delivery trucks get to Tigre now? Will the construction workers show up? What about all the mountain of debris they were supposed to haul out this week? I heard a truck arrived at Tigre before the bridge got whacked and they removed all the recyclable steel, plastic and iron. Well that’s great. But they left the rest of the debris in a huge mess worse than before. And now the bridge has a big gaping hole in it. What more can happen to delay construction? What could possibly be worse than finding the Finca completely cut off by a broken bridge? And when will they fix it? Remember: We are in Costa Rica. Nothing gets fixed until, well, until the bridge is completely unpassable. That's just about now. Just about. Cars can still get through so nothing much will get done until some unlucky chap breaks through and plumments down to the river. Then maybe.

So guess we'll be spending even more time here at Hotel TexMex. We have some whacky guests in here at the moment to keep us amused. There’s this crazy German fellow: “I am German and I vil stay a veek!” Oh lucky us! He’s either psychotic or on hallucinogens. He actually believes he can advise us on our Federal Tax Returns. Now is that crazy or what? Then there are the two gals from Arenal. They do everything from selling horse-tack online to producing music events. Was it Bob Dylan they wanted to bring in? I can’t recall. Much of what they said was this stream of consciousness. Then there’s the stunning blonde traveling alone with her baby. Came from way up north near the border with Nicaragua and en route to Chicago. What was she doing up there in nomad country? Was she a Peace Corp volunteer who became infatuated with a Costa Rican cowboy? We didn’t ask. We pretty much stay to ourselves here at Hotel TexMex.