On the road…again!!!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek

 Langouste and Turtle Eggs for Breakfast

Without the dreams, conjuring up a chronicle these days becomes more infrequent. Usually, the dreams are only stimuli to pen a chronicle but they contain enough clear memories to warrant the attempt. The latest dream is a reflection of the days when the Footloose Forester was in Costa Rica with an Organization for Tropical Studies group of graduate students with various interests in natural sciences. There were only 6-8 of us, all from different universities but all of us with an interest in the tropics.

The group traveled to witness the ecological differences on both the west coast of Costa Rica, facing the Pacific Ocean, and to the east cost facing the Gulf of Mexico. The 2-3 day stop on the East Coast was a most pleasant and richly rewarding educational experience. We got to see and better understand the management of banana plantations near Blue Fields, the economic vitality of the small city of Limon, and the loading and transport of bananas at its port facilities. We even got to enter a ship’s hold where bananas were being on-loaded. In addition, we visited a few of the farms where cacao was grown as a cash crop and sold to brokers involved in cocoa marketing. Later on, the Footloose Forester set off alone to study the buttressing of Pentaclethra macroloba trees in the Atlantic Coast Forest type sites.

Pentaclethra macroloba

The modest headquarters for the forays was a private residence owned by the Director of the Tropical Science Center in San Jose, Dr. Les Holdridge. Its location on the shoreline, about 10 miles south of Limon was overlooking the placid waters of the Gulf of Mexico and looked inviting to the most adventurous in the group. Since Dr. Holdridge even accompanied us on that leg of the study tour, and he also made snorkeling equipment available to us. As Footloose Forester recalls things now, four of us opted to go snorkeling for breakfast langouste at about 7AM one morning. As equipment was limited, two good free divers took charge of the fishing spears and two of us became the bag men to collect the langouste in net bags. It was a joyous memory and an eidetic adventure.

After only about 20 minutes in the water, we four langouste hunters returned to shore with 10 langouste in the net bags. About an hour later, we sat down to breakfast to enjoy coffee, steamed langouste, and fried turtle eggs.