Lovely weather for a Ventrac ride together with you

This January has been satisfyingly snowy.

Grandpa was thrilled to fire up ye olde Ventrac and host a sledding party.

 

One wish

 

Q: What is your only comfort in life and death?

A: That I am not my own,

    but belong with body and soul,

    both in life and in death,

to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ…

He…preserves me in such a way

    that without the will of my heavenly Father

    not a hair can fall from my head.

Heidelberg Catechism, Question 1

It’s fun when you have something wrong with you, say, inexplicable pain in your hip and opposite shoulder, for example, and you finally decide you should do something about it besides text your friends and Google it, so you go to a doctor, and then another doctor, and then another doctor, and they all say different things—not only is their diagnosis different, but what they say you should do to fix it is different and, indeed, incompatible with what the last doctor said, and furthermore, all the other doctors are quacks.

Me: my body hurts

Obstetrician: It’s menopause. Take supplements.

Me: still hurts

Nurse practitioner: That’s ridiculous, it’s not menopause. It’s inflammation. You need blood tests.

Me: It hurts. Also new parts hurt.

GP: Those supplements are useless. You were out of shape and you overdid it. Stop overdoing it. But also get in shape. So do stuff, but not too much stuff. Just the exact right amount of stuff. And do these ten pages of special stretches.

Me: ….

Massage therapist: Don’t stretch it! It’s your fascia. Everything we’ve learned about pain is wrong. 

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

~John 18:38

I would remind you that I live in a world of good mattresses, ibuprofen, ergonomically correct car seats, washing machines, and imported oranges from Florida.

It’s not like I carry buckets of water on my head for miles barefoot, eating only rice with no vitamins or air conditioning. 

It doesn’t seem like my body has an excuse to hurt.

Refreshments laid out for Halfway Day

When we were in Costa Rica, we became quite familiar with the national slogan, Pura Vida. Its translation and usage can be roughly translated as follows:

A literal translation would be “pure life,” but we heard it used to mean anything from “this is great” to “you’re welcome” to “cheers.” The Costa Ricans we met were very proud of their laid-back, hospitable culture and fully committed to embodying Pura Vida.

Grandma and Grandpa oohing and aahing

On the way back to the hotel on slothie day, our guide was telling us about different swimming holes/hot springs that are open to the public, and how you can park for free on the side of the road there. But there are certain charlatans that come around and act official and take money from unsuspecting tourists, telling them that there’s a parking fee—so we should be advised that it’s free to park and we don’t really have to pay it. He shook his head at the shamefulness of this practice and said soberly, “That’s not Pura Vida.”

Apparently my body didn’t get the message that it has nothing to freak out about. Calm down, body. Pura Vida, man.

I’d prefer not wondering what’s wrong with me. But Proverbs 4:7 says,

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,

    and whatever you get, get insight.

In other words, if I could have one desperate wish, I should wish for wisdom—not a pain-free life. 

That’s the real Pura Vida.

What is our hope in life and death?

Christ alone, Christ alone.

What is our only confidence?

That our souls to Him belong.

Matt Boswell, Matt Papa, Keith Getty, Jordan Kauflin, & Matthew Sherman Merker, “Christ Our Hope in Life and Death”

Buck pretty well embodies Pura Vida

Slothies

Our last day in Costa Rica was a short day but an early morning start: we were scheduled for our Slothies and Birds tour, which is how it appeared on our itinerary.

Friday dawned lovely and lush and, of course, rainy.

We met our tour guide in the hotel lobby at 7:55am. He told us about our destination during the brief ride. We were skipping the commercialized Slothland park just up the road, which guarantees sloth sightings only because they capture sloths and unnaturally bring them in for display. 

We scorned such artificial things and traveled instead to a working family farm, the owners of which discovered that they can make more money from selling access to sloth-seeking tourists than they ever could from deforesting and producing crops. Our tour guide told us this inspiring story, concluding with the moral that we tourists are saving the rainforest, and thus, by implication, the world.

You’re welcome for that.

The rain-soaked tour started in a yard with approximately one of each type of cultivated plant, which was presumably the “working farm” part of the tour. But he also pointed out numerous birds along the way.

 

This horse (more evidence of a real farm) is standing next to a small tree, the berries of which our guide split open and showed us the pigment inside, which ladies used to use for lipstick and other cosmetics. I was willing to demonstrate, and indeed, it was quite effective, as it rained enough that most of my facial features were melted off by the end of the tour, but my lips were still a lovely coral color.

Our guide then led us into the forest, where he has us stand in a very specific spot and then look up, where we saw:

a cluster of sleeping bats right above our heads.

I was ok with stepping out from under the big leaves and standing in the rain instead.

Soon we came to our first sloth sighting (not counting the one we saw on Tuesday).

We stood gazing up at the sloth, blinking out raindrops, while our guide told us all about them.

First of all, sloths are slow because they eat the kind of leaves that don’t offer much nutrition. These leaves are also hard to digest, which is why sloths like to hang out in the sun, because the warmth makes their tummies feel better. Thus, this sloth has chosen the tree with the least leaf coverage, so it can soak up the sun.

However, it’s pouring rain.

It really begs the question, why don’t sloths make different life choices? Try some Wheaties for breakfast and you might feel better?

Apparently when it rains, they just hunch up and wait it out.

They also move slowly so algae can grow on them, which turns them green, so they blend in better and predators can’t see them as easily. This algae is so special that it’s found nowhere in the world but on sloths.

As we tramped along through the forest behind our guide, I did wonder a little bit what God was thinking when He created sloths. Why did he give them such necessarily difficult lives that their tummies hurt all the time, they can barely move, and their survival depends on never washing their hair?

But then another guide flagged our guide down, telling him something in Spanish that got him really excited. He hushed us all and we crept off the trail and looked where he was pointing.

With the awe of an explorer discovering the lost city of Atlantis, he explained to us that there’s a sloth on the ground pooping.

In muted tones, our guide discoursed on the thrilling excretion habits of sloths. They only pee and poop once a week, and they descend from the trees to do it tidily, and then expeditiously ascend into a different tree, moving away from their scent so predators can’t locate them as easily.

This weekly event is when the sloth is its most vulnerable, so they climb back up as quickly as they ever move. 

I don’t know what was going on with that sloth at the tubing river, but this guy was an athlete. He got from potty to the top of a new tree in four minutes flat.

Our guide was so excited. Apparently sloths usually make their bathroom run at night, so getting to see one during the day was exceptionally rare. 

And here I think it’s a hardship to have to walk around the end of the bed to get to the bathroom.

We continued our tour and found several more birds, but nothing could top the extraordinary experience of the pooping sloth.

The slothie tour being relatively short and close by, we were back at the hotel well before lunch. 

We decided Maddie didn’t have enough selfies of Ears, so he did several poses around the grounds.

It mostly stopped raining so we hung out in the pool/hot tubs for a while.

Then we walked to a cafe in the village for lunch.

It had been a very full week and our pickup time to shuttle back to the airport was 8:30am, so we spent a quiet afternoon hanging out in our rooms and trying to dry our stuff out.

For dinner, we decided we wanted more pizza from Vagabondo—plus it was raining again so we didn’t want to go far, and we had had enough adventure so we didn’t need to strike out for something new.

But first we needed to shoo this little lizard from our room. Cute though he was, I didn’t really want him falling on my face while I slept.

We made the three-hour shuttle ride the next morning. While we waited, we wondered what our shuttle driver’s name would be. Pablo? Jesús?

He was a very nice gentleman who introduced himself: “My name is Alberto. You can call me—” 

[Say it say it say it say it!!]

“—Beto.”

That was the only disappointment on the way, though. Beto was very kind and knowledgeable. And when we stopped halfway for a pit stop at the same place we had stopped when we arrived in Costa Rica, we were astonished to run into none other than Raphael, of tell-us-all-about-the-history-of-the-Iran-Contra-scandal-and-the-rest-of-Western-civilization-and-also-cultivated-coffee-and-deadly-snakes-and-local-cuisine fame.

We were only somewhat less excited to also see an agouti at the rest stop.

Happily, our arrival at the airport, navigating security and boarding, and the flight home were smoothly uneventful.

The last Ears selfie

Thankfully, because two days later we woke up to this:

Ada needed help to get a vehicle out to go to work.

But at least it wasn’t raining anymore. We’ve seen more sunshine in just a few days here in America than we did all week in the rainforest.

What an adventure we’ve had! It’s good to be home.