Lewman's Drop.

Piece 4 > email
MAY 22, 2001
Montezuma, Costa Rica

Subject: itching head

Now I feel like I finally know what Thomas Campbell was always giddily talking about as he traipsed and tripped around the world. Free. We are getting our world so rocked -- some of it great, some of it unsettling (withdrawl after years of comfort and stability?)

One of the best things so far is we are living with the exotic animals in a zoo. Stuff you could never imagine interacting with in the US, you wake up and it's sitting there on your front porch.

Restaurants here are very good, like Mexican food but they use more vegetables. It feels healthier, anyway. $3 will get you stuffed.

We are finding joy in simple things. You truly appreciate the miracle of refrigeration in the tropics. Pluck a pineapple from the bush, run into the house, chop it up and throw ice in a blender and savor giant cups of sweet slush.

One the other hand, the cream cheese here sucks. It's like mayonnaise--very runny. A lot of the pre-packaged store bought foods have a weird flavor. Stuff that looks like Funions taste like Cornions. Warning, toast eaters: the spanish word for margarine is the same word for "lard" in Costa Rica.

One of the first words of Spanish I learned is Quidado -- "careful". The safety standards here are sometimes enough to raise the hackles on your neck. No seat belts, kid in the lap, taxi careening down the dusty mountain road.

We had our first gigantic spider sighting in the house last night. It was the size of Rick Howard's hand, with the body like a chicken egg. Not a slow-moving, fuzzy, muppet-like tarantula. This was a spindly, high speed DSL creature skittering up walls and behind furniture as I tore after it, throwing shoes and kicking aside empty water jugs and backpacks. You could HEAR it running. I have come to deal with the bugs here, but this was terrifying. I hit it so hard with a flyswatter it exploded. The creepiest part was, it was clinging to the underside of the table as we ate dinner. I moved a chair to get up, and it came shooting out.

Ten minutes after I had swept the carcass out the door, 22,000 ants had formed a porch-top chop shop and completely disassembled the thing.

Anyway, I have to go make travel arrangements to see a volcano. We may take a cessna, or a boat, or a bus, or a cab. So much to figure out. Another update soon. Have fun in Amsterdam, dammit. That's going to rule. We want to check out Europe again too--we may try to squeeze a trip in somehow.

-- Lew

PS: That is shitty about Milk possibly getting soured from the Jackass compilation. Are you sure it's the lyrical content and not the quality of the song/recording? I can't believe that we are more controversial than Danzig and Manson.

Piece 3 > email
MAY 21, 2001
Montezuma, Costa Rica

Subject: land crab limbo

The animals and bugs are all around us. We live with them, they live with us. We're visiting a volcano next week, one of the few in the world where you can get up close to the rim (safety regulations, anyone?). It rained fucking ridiculously hard last night. The power went out this morning. We walked to the beach and there's a pair of five foot deep trenches where the raging water coming down the mountain tore through the beach in the middle of the night.--one creekbed at each end of the beach. The rain and mud bring out the wasps. The wasps bring out the birds. The birds shitting bring out the ants. The ants attract spiders. The spiders attract geckos and lizards. Some crazy lizard with huge birdclaw feet ws scampering around in our house last night for a few minutes until I got it out. It was about the size of a shoe, and incapable of climbing walls. It was thin though--like a wingtip shoe, not a skate shoe (boat shaped). I don't know what it was.

Piece 2 > email
MAY 18, 2001
Montezuma, Costa Rica

Subject: stinking gringos

We rented a two bedroom flat in a sort of farmhouse across from the beach yesterday. The place used to be a bar, and a disco, but now it is a farm. it's about 20 minutes walk from Montezuma in the broiling hot sun, across two rivers and through hills. Very pleasant, but when scurrying along trying to make sure the bag of ice in your backpack isn't melted before you get home, it presents a challenge. Ditto when carrying a 40 pound, squirming, sweaty child. The heat here is thick, T-shirts are soaked through to the skin by 9:00am every morning. The humectant atmosphere does wonders for the local bug population--you name it, it's crawling somewhere in our house or lurking under the bed. Millions of land crabs are making their way through the forest and toward the sea, so the roads and trails are alive. Last night I had to throw one out on its ass at 4:00am after it breached the perimeter and was clickity-clacking under the bed. Other wildlife spotted: coati snuffling around for food on our front porch. A lot of crazy birds. Monkeys up and down the trees all day and night--howler monkeys and capuchin (white faced). Giant lizards, iguanas, etc. When we moved into our house yesterday they had just caught a 6 foot boa in the tree right outside the door and it was sleeping on our bed--to keep it away from the dogs and cats that roam the property in a sort of animalanarchy.

The town of Montezuma is a good place, lots of people with kids. Everyone seems be under the age of 30. We need a car.

More later. I gotta get some noodles at the store.

Piece 1 > email
MAY 12, 2001
Montezuma, Costa Rica

This morning our 5am wake up call was the sounds of screeching howler monkeys right outside our window hucking fruit and shit at each other. The entire tribe was warring. They are Jason Acuna-sized [Wee Man] beasts and dangle precariously holding on with only one kung-fu gripping hand while they conduct business.

The ground here is littered with thousands of fruits -- mango, papaya, coconuts, bananas, and sometimes it smells like trash can alcohol in various places where the fermentation is heavy. Costal breezes quickly blow the foul odors away, however, as we are staying about 200 yards from the ocean, in the village of Montezuma. The hotel is nice but we are getting das boot in a couple of days because the entire hotel is being rented out by a band. We have a two bedroom house on a hill overlooking the beach, with dual hammocks, a sprawling porch and hottub on the deck. $75 a day. Full kitchen too. Iguanas the length of my arm chase each other up and down the sides of the house and scare the shit out of you as you walk up the trail, and you scare the shit out of them.

By 10 this morning every fiber in my T-shirt was soaked through. It's hot here.

We left San Jose (grossest city ever, but the children's museum is the best one we've ever been to) yesterday and took a two hour cab ride to a two hour ferry ride across the Gulf de Nicoya. Then, the paved road ended. We got in a 4X4 taxi and drove another hour through the countryside as the trail went under the canopy; fjorded a couple of running streams and did the mud rut rally, then up over a small mountain and down the hill into town here. Besides being a long day, it was hassle-free getting here. Some of the roads wash out from landslides or rivers when the rains come, but we didn't run across any of that.

Yet.

Montezuma is small, maybe 25 different businesses total in town, but a good variety. Counterculture retreat type town, health food store, used bookstore, natural botanical hair care product place, meatless cafe (excellent). I am in an air conditioned tree fort typing on a brand new blueberry imac on a fast connection, looking out the window at the ocean listening to some throbbing dub CD.

Holy shit. This rules.

-- Lew

PS Oh, uh, yeah. And I've been hard at work writing, too.



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	Piece 4 > email MAY 22, 2001 Montezuma, Costa Rica Subject: itching head Now I feel like I finally know what Thomas Campbell was always giddily talking about as he traipsed and tripped around the world. Free. We are getting our world so rocked -- some of it great, some of it unsettling (withdrawl after years of comfort and stability?) One of the best things so far is we are living with the exotic animals in a zoo. Stuff you could never imagine interacting with in the US, you wake up and it's sitting there on your front porch. Restaurants here are very good, like Mexican food but they use more vegetables. It feels healthier, anyway. $3 will get you stuffed. We are finding joy in simple things. You truly appreciate the miracle of refrigeration in the tropics. Pluck a pineapple from the bush, run into the house, chop it up and throw ice in a blender and savor giant cups of sweet slush. One the other hand, the cream cheese here sucks. It's like mayonnaise--very runny. A lot of the pre-packaged store bought foods have a weird flavor. Stuff that looks like Funions taste like Cornions. Warning, toast eaters: the spanish word for margarine is the same word for "lard" in Costa Rica. One of the first words of Spanish I learned is Quidado -- "careful". The safety standards here are sometimes enough to raise the hackles on your neck. No seat belts, kid in the lap, taxi careening down the dusty mountain road. We had our first gigantic spider sighting in the house last night. It was the size of Rick Howard's hand, with the body like a chicken egg. Not a slow-moving, fuzzy, muppet-like tarantula. This was a spindly, high speed DSL creature skittering up walls and behind furniture as I tore after it, throwing shoes and kicking aside empty water jugs and backpacks. You could HEAR it running. I have come to deal with the bugs here, but this was terrifying. I hit it so hard with a flyswatter it exploded. The creepiest part was, it was clinging to the underside of the table as we ate dinner. I moved a chair to get up, and it came shooting out. Ten minutes after I had swept the carcass out the door, 22,000 ants had formed a porch-top chop shop and completely disassembled the thing. Anyway, I have to go make travel arrangements to see a volcano. We may take a cessna, or a boat, or a bus, or a cab. So much to figure out. Another update soon. Have fun in Amsterdam, dammit. That's going to rule. We want to check out Europe again too--we may try to squeeze a trip in somehow. -- Lew PS: That is shitty about Milk possibly getting soured from the Jackass compilation. Are you sure it's the lyrical content and not the quality of the song/recording? I can't believe that we are more controversial than Danzig and Manson. Piece 3 > email MAY 21, 2001 Montezuma, Costa Rica Subject: land crab limbo The animals and bugs are all around us. We live with them, they live with us. We're visiting a volcano next week, one of the few in the world where you can get up close to the rim (safety regulations, anyone?). It rained fucking ridiculously hard last night. The power went out this morning. We walked to the beach and there's a pair of five foot deep trenches where the raging water coming down the mountain tore through the beach in the middle of the night.--one creekbed at each end of the beach. The rain and mud bring out the wasps. The wasps bring out the birds. The birds shitting bring out the ants. The ants attract spiders. The spiders attract geckos and lizards. Some crazy lizard with huge birdclaw feet ws scampering around in our house last night for a few minutes until I got it out. It was about the size of a shoe, and incapable of climbing walls. It was thin though--like a wingtip shoe, not a skate shoe (boat shaped). I don't know what it was. Piece 2 > email MAY 18, 2001 Montezuma, Costa Rica Subject: stinking gringos We rented a two bedroom flat in a sort of farmhouse across from the beach yesterday. The place used to be a bar, and a disco, but now it is a farm. it's about 20 minutes walk from Montezuma in the broiling hot sun, across two rivers and through hills. Very pleasant, but when scurrying along trying to make sure the bag of ice in your backpack isn't melted before you get home, it presents a challenge. Ditto when carrying a 40 pound, squirming, sweaty child. The heat here is thick, T-shirts are soaked through to the skin by 9:00am every morning. The humectant atmosphere does wonders for the local bug population--you name it, it's crawling somewhere in our house or lurking under the bed. Millions of land crabs are making their way through the forest and toward the sea, so the roads and trails are alive. Last night I had to throw one out on its ass at 4:00am after it breached the perimeter and was clickity-clacking under the bed. Other wildlife spotted: coati snuffling around for food on our front porch. A lot of crazy birds. Monkeys up and down the trees all day and night--howler monkeys and capuchin (white faced). Giant lizards, iguanas, etc. When we moved into our house yesterday they had just caught a 6 foot boa in the tree right outside the door and it was sleeping on our bed--to keep it away from the dogs and cats that roam the property in a sort of animalanarchy. The town of Montezuma is a good place, lots of people with kids. Everyone seems be under the age of 30. We need a car. More later. I gotta get some noodles at the store. Piece 1 > email MAY 12, 2001 Montezuma, Costa Rica This morning our 5am wake up call was the sounds of screeching howler monkeys right outside our window hucking fruit and shit at each other. The entire tribe was warring. They are Jason Acuna-sized [Wee Man] beasts and dangle precariously holding on with only one kung-fu gripping hand while they conduct business. The ground here is littered with thousands of fruits -- mango, papaya, coconuts, bananas, and sometimes it smells like trash can alcohol in various places where the fermentation is heavy. Costal breezes quickly blow the foul odors away, however, as we are staying about 200 yards from the ocean, in the village of Montezuma. The hotel is nice but we are getting das boot in a couple of days because the entire hotel is being rented out by a band. We have a two bedroom house on a hill overlooking the beach, with dual hammocks, a sprawling porch and hottub on the deck. $75 a day. Full kitchen too. Iguanas the length of my arm chase each other up and down the sides of the house and scare the shit out of you as you walk up the trail, and you scare the shit out of them. By 10 this morning every fiber in my T-shirt was soaked through. It's hot here. We left San Jose (grossest city ever, but the children's museum is the best one we've ever been to) yesterday and took a two hour cab ride to a two hour ferry ride across the Gulf de Nicoya. Then, the paved road ended. We got in a 4X4 taxi and drove another hour through the countryside as the trail went under the canopy; fjorded a couple of running streams and did the mud rut rally, then up over a small mountain and down the hill into town here. Besides being a long day, it was hassle-free getting here. Some of the roads wash out from landslides or rivers when the rains come, but we didn't run across any of that. Yet. Montezuma is small, maybe 25 different businesses total in town, but a good variety. Counterculture retreat type town, health food store, used bookstore, natural botanical hair care product place, meatless cafe (excellent). I am in an air conditioned tree fort typing on a brand new blueberry imac on a fast connection, looking out the window at the ocean listening to some throbbing dub CD. Holy shit. This rules. -- Lew PS Oh, uh, yeah. And I've been hard at work writing, too.