By Janice Lindsay
Contributing Writer
Being a warm-weather person, I find that January is a perfect opportunity for warm-weather memories. I’ve been thinking about the day my husband and I finally saw the iguana.
It’s also the day we met the unforgettable Elvin.
From the hilltop ranch where we were staying in Costa Rica’s tropical dry forest, we decided to walk to the mud baths, volcanic steam vents in the valley, rather than go by horseback with our hiking companions. Our guide went with them, so we were assigned a temporary guide. Elvin, a handsome young Nicaraguan ranch hand, spoke no English. We spoke no Spanish.
Imagine rustling wheat-colored grasses, bare trees in open fields, patches of green forest, big clear skies. Now imagine two pale hikers, hatted against the sun, bug-sprayed against black flies, in hiking boots, carrying backpacks, following Elvin in his T-shirt and jeans, nobody saying anything because we share so few words.
Envision Elvin leading us through the small, mucky corral to the start of the dusty trail. A dozen horses milled around us. We could not ask why Elvin took us through the corral rather than around it. We were beginning to suspect his eccentricity.
While we walked, Elvin peeled an orange with a little knife, whisking small bits of orange skin onto the trail. He jammed the peeled orange into his pocket. He scanned the ground and the tall trees.
He pointed to animal footprints in the dust. He leaned over, pantomiming a squat, four-legged animal with horns, or maybe big ears. “Pig?” we guessed. “Si,” he said. Close enough.
We saw squiggly lines cross the trail. He pantomimed a snake. He pointed out various birds. He patiently, carefully wrote their names in my tiny notebook. We passed small groups of grazing horses. He told us their names. Was he making them up?
Elvin spotted a howler monkey sleeping on a bare branch high above us. He pointed to his back. “El nino.” She was carrying a baby. “Whoop! Whoop!” he hooted, trying to awaken her so she would move and we could see the baby. Nothing. He hooted louder. More nothing. He grinned and shrugged and we carried on.
A broad shallow stream crossed the trail. Elvin stooped, flattened his hands on the stream bed, hoisted his legs high in the air, and walked through the stream on his hands.
As we hiked through an open field, Elvin pointed to a limb near the top of a leafless tree about 30 feet high and about 80 feet away. “Iguana,” he said.
Iguanas are large, grayish, brownish, knobby lizards, designed to look like the limbs of a leafless tree, maybe a foot long, and fat. We could not see the iguana.
Elvin removed the peeled orange from his pocket and pitched it toward the iguana, hoping to inspire movement. Nothing.
He strode through the tall grass, banged on the tree, shook it. Nothing. We could not see the iguana.
He began to climb the tree. About halfway up he pointed. We could not see the iguana.
Elvin stood on a branch below where we supposed the iguana to be reclining. He stretched his arm. A dark hand rose against the sky above and behind the branch, index finger pointing downward, apparently directly at the iguana, which we could not see.
Finally, Elvin grasped the iguana by its tail. He held it high, then gently dropped it into the soft grasses below.
We saw the iguana!
We cheered and applauded. He raised his arms in victory.
We and Elvin didn’t speak the same language, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t communicate.
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