Sorry about the long blogging absence, Seven Readers, but I was getting settled back in after my trip to beautiful Costa Rica. Myself, LSD (Law School Dropout), and two other couples stayed in a house, formerly owned by one of the Go Go's, right in the jungle and just off the beach, and we had the craziest caretaker-lady ever, which is what I want to tell you about.
She was waiting on the front porch when we got there for what she told us was 5 hours, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. She was a pleasant enough looking woman if not a little weathered and haggard, but it was nice that she went right in for hugs, even rubbing HLP's (Heterosexual Life Partner) wife's pregnant belly immediately upon meeting her.
She then began her tour of the place, which was extensive and intense, bordering on meth-infused, complete with far too in depth instructions of which light switches did what. She went on to make the bold claim that we were guaranteed to see monkeys, sloths, and pumas right outside the place. She also said that you could go down by the river/waterfall and see shrimps at night, that is if we packed our infrared goggles. I'm afraid we did not have the foresight for that.
Not only did this woman say we'd see fun animals, but there was a guestbook full of entries of people saying how many critters they saw. We saw no animals we couldn't have seen variations of in Chicago. One time while on a hike, a monkey tried to pee on HLP, but he barely got a good look at him. Other friends of ours saw a sloth while zip lining, but we missed that one too. Some other friends of ours said they were having breakfast outside by their hotel, and a bunch of howler monkeys could be seen and heard just going bananas and ape-shit all over the damn place. We searched high and low for fun animals, and these monkeys were just coming over to their damn breakfast nook to perform. Totally unfair.
The tenants in the guestbook said that "Sammy the Sloth" came to visit them every morning, and more than one entry spoke of the monkeys that showed them their babies, like they were dangling them over a balcony like Michael Jackson or hoisting them up like Simba in Lion King. What animal waves their babies out for a bigger species to eat? Pretty selfish, like, "Eat this little fucker and let us go. Cool?"
One night I thought for sure I heard monkeys, so I put on my slippers, went outside, and frantically circled the whole veranda . . . nothing. LSD said I was beginning to slip into Monkey Madness. I was. She also said that the guestbook and the caretaker made it sound like the monkeys would want to be our friends, but they didn't. The little pricks. Caretaker-lady said that when you look outside in the morning, you'd see anywhere from 5 to 100 monkeys. What? 5 sounds perfect to me, but 100 sounds more like a hostile takeover like in "Planet of the Apes."
HLP thought of the perfect entry for us in the infamous guestbook, and it was as follows:
We didn't see a God damned thing.
-Chicago, 2011.
I really do hate all those monkey-seeing jerks . . .
