Author Archives: Tom Cox

Happy Earth Day. Woo-hoo.

To live in the Tropics is to live on the front line of climate change, which just means that things tend to hit our delicate mountain cloud forest first. Most of it seems to do with water. The amount that falls, the droughts or floods that result, the animal life that changes patterns to findContinue reading “Happy Earth Day. Woo-hoo.”

If a tree falls in the forest…

She stood straight and tall, an elder of the bosque for who-knows-how-many decades. Because she towered head and shoulders above her neighbors, her sparse branches were a favorite for the bell birds and toucans who prefer unobstructed vistas. Monkeys in search of water loved to bury their heads in the epiphytes that grew high upContinue reading “If a tree falls in the forest…”

‘Tis la temporada

Allow me to let you in on a little secret. Holidays (be it 4th of July, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, or the mother of them all, Christmas) aren’t real. They are a construct we fabricate in an attempt to make a certain moment of time more special than another moment of time. TheContinue reading “‘Tis la temporada”

Back in the Saddle

So, it’s been a minute, hasn’t it? It’s been about six weeks of minutes. I could blame my absence on some travel, an editing project I accepted, my struggle with irregular verbs and the past tense in the Spanish class I’m taking, or simply the ubiquitous fear of the blank page–and all that would beContinue reading “Back in the Saddle”

Pura Food

I never had high expectations for the food in Costa Rica. I figured there was probably a reason I had never been to a Costa Rican restaurant in my life. When I started this journey, I would not have been able to name a Costa Rican dish. My greatest hope was that there would beContinue reading “Pura Food”

This Last Year Has Been, Well, You Know…

This week is filled with mileposts. Monday marked one month since we first arrived in Costa Rica. The time has gone fast. But it has meant some serious adjustments to the pace of life. One thing I like about this life is that the focus of each day is very much on the needs ofContinue reading “This Last Year Has Been, Well, You Know…”

Pura Vida in the Time of COVID

“So how is Costa Rica handling COVID?” you ask. Good on you for asking. Same as every other country: it’s a mixed bag and ever changing. Hang with me, this post involves statistics. No getting around it. Just over 5 million people live here. There have been 406,814 infections and 5,030 coronavirus-related deaths reported inContinue reading “Pura Vida in the Time of COVID”

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

It’s down the mountain, over the pot holes, and through the construction. Saturday we made the one-day round trip to San Jose. Not the one in California. The OG (older than the one in the US by 40 years). The capital of Costa Rica. As part of our residency application, we need to be fingerprintedContinue reading “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”