Category: Art

Many years ago, I was first introduced to Cuban music by my wife, who was a Dance major at the time, and I remember loving the Buena Vista Social Club album. On the album there’s a song called “El Carretero”, and the refrain from that song goes “A caballo vamos pa’l monte”, which roughly translates to “On horseback we’re going to the mountain / hill / forest”.

A couple years later, I became very familiar with the term “monte”, when I practically lived in the “monte”, as a Peace Corps Volunteer in La Cruz de Abangares, Costa Rica, close to the famous cloud forest area called Monteverde. The “monte” is what I imagine Africans refer to as the “bush”. It’s the brush, the vegetation, the forest, the jungle, the mountain, etc.

I remember the first time that I went into the monte, “a caballo”. My neighbor friend Franklin, who we called “Franquilino”, loved horses and owned a few of them. So, “a caballo fuimos p’al monte”. The fresh mountain air, the panoramic views, the loud roar of the howler monkeys, and the incredible array of plant species, makes riding on horseback through the rural mountains and forest an awesome experience.

When I heard the song El Carretero recently, I was transported back to the times that I lived in the monte for 2 1/2 years!

Last night, I had a particularly poor night of sleep. I went to bed at 10pm and fell asleep around 3am. The little ones woke me up around 6:30am.

When I stumbled down into the kitchen all “zampaguado” (a very rural slang term that I learned in Costa Rica, which essentially means groggy), I said this:

Then I said this to my wife: “Oh, I should put that on a shirt”.

So there it is.

After 2 cups of coffee, I feel a little better.

Going back to that word “zampaguado”…

When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer up in the mountains of Costa Rica, in a little small town called La Cruz de Abangares, I lived in a cinder block house, and across the street lived a family with a dog that lived outside its house. This dog was keen on barking non-stop, starting around 2am every morning. One night, around 4am, while it was barking, I went outside and threw some rocks towards it to get it to shut up. This sounds very mean, but: 1) I didn’t hit the dog, nor intend to, and 2) this is very customary in rural Central America, where the concept of having a dog is totally different than in the USA.

The dog shut up. As I was turning to go back in my house to go to sleep, I noticed someone walking up the dirt street my way. It was Deibys, a boy who was around 14 at the time. He was up early to go milk cows. I said hi, and he said “ay mae me siento todo zampaguado”, which I learned translates to “aw man I feel so groggy”.

So 13 years or so later, I still use that word when I’m feeling groggy. Back then I didn’t drink coffee (though I lived in a coffee-growing region!). If I did, I may have said “Give me coffee, or give me death”!

This Formentera, Spain painting was inspired by a bike ride through this gem of an island, the smallest of the Balearic Islands. The particular location of this scene is on the northeast tip of the island.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been there, but I have to say, it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to!