al anochecida

Pablo took us on a trek as dusk approached.

Maggie, Hailey, and I followed Pablo over and under barbed wire fences, through rocky terrain and bushes, up small peaks and down the following valleys. Across Pablo's fields where we picked orange-tinged limes from his trees, past cocoa plants and banana trees, and between bushy stalks where crimson, ripening coffee hulls grew, each containing a slimy, cream-colored bean inside.

Maggie is a Peace Corps volunteer who works with Pablo to protect nature reserves and solve environmental or pollution problems like the dumping of fermented coffee waste into the waterways.

Pablo knows everything along the way, from the biology of all the vegetation to the symbiotic nature of some plants. Even a shrub with a spiky, orange orb covered in a fine hair; it's called huevos de gato or cat balls.

Descending to the waterfall, climbing up on the rocks, and perching atop as small, black specks circle above our heads in the ever-darkening blue gap between the trees.

Las golondrinas, for which the falls are named, start to dive. Time to nest. Sparrow after sparrow shoots through the narrow chasm past our heads to hover just before the crashing chute of water. With skill and agility the sparrows maneuver expertly into the crevices in the porous rock. Burrowing into their dens for the night. Then they momentarily reappear, chattering and darting between houses, floating in front of the cascading falls.

The string of golondrinas going home for the night surges and slows continuously, seemingly endless. It's now getting quite dark and I'm thinking we should begin the hike back. But the ever-accomodating Pablo has brought a can of manzana juice for each of us and a snack of Sour Cream & Onion Pringles.

We make our way over the dark trail avoiding cow piles and uneven ground up towards the road, a simpler route back in the night. Crossing a stream the cacophony of croaking drowns out the gurgling tributary. Maggie's sure they are an endangered species and we spy the pulsating throats bulge and flutter casting bulbous shadows on the rocks behind.

The road back passes cows grazing in slivers of moonlight and the cemetery outside San Marcos. Why not take a stroll through? Colorful tombs, extravagantly decorated in a way unique to Latin American countries, contain multiple corpses. When the plots fill up, the old bodies are moved but by then the bones are so fragile that they disintegrate into dust as soon as they're touched.

Back onto the dirt roads of San Marcos and home we go.