Tim Høiland

For the past four months, until last week, I was living in northeast Washington, D.C. in what was admittedly not the safest neighborhood. It’s the sort of neighborhood with a liquor store on every corner and bars on the windows of some homes. I eventually began venturing out at night on foot, but it was always a little spooky. I’d purposely empty my pockets of valuables and make it a point to pay attention to my surroundings. It was a matter of using common sense to mitigate the risks without being paralyzed by fear.

So now I’m here in rural Costa Rica, far from the dangers of the North American ghetto. As I mentioned before, I’m staying at ADE’s education center, a work-in-progress tucked into a valley in a little clearing in the rainforest. It’s really beautiful – in the daytime, at least – but I have to admit that the first couple of times hiking down there at night have been a bit spooky.

I walk with a flashlight which lets me see about two feet in front of me on account of the insanely thick fog, which feels like rain on pause. There’s a German shepherd that barks up a storm but has so far resisted its apparent urge to rip me to shreds. That’s been nice. But rumors of coyotes and vampire bats (seriously!) have warranted my complete vigilance and visions of acting quite unlike Gandhi should I encounter such beasts along the way.

On top of that, there have been a couple of close calls with cows – which, take my word for it, are much scarier under the aforementioned conditions than one might otherwise expect – and their many droppings interspersed along the trail of deep mud make me glad to be wearing crude rubber boots.

So this is life in San Rafael de Vara Blanca. Cows and mud and fog and breathtaking beauty and, perhaps, vampire bats. It’s really something else.