By Russell Johnson

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 Scenes of Costa Rica
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Souvenirs. When you travel, you both take them and leave them. I think about this as I sit on my deck at home scraping Costa Rican mud off of my boots. Who knows what is in this stuff: maybe anteater scat, or some seeds dropped from the bill of a three-wattled bellbird that will plant themselves in my garden, thrive and perhaps (oh dear) eat my cat.

I took a hike through Costa Rica's Monteverde Cloud forest with Danilo Wallace, a park ranger born and raised in what is now one of the world's foremost rainforest preserves. He said that when he was a child he shot Toucans with a slingshot, cut off their bills and made necklaces. For his parents, the forest was a servant, from which they extracted building materials and food. That has changed.

or Deja Bu All Over Again

Story, Photos and Audio by Russell Johnson

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Ok, excuse the French/Yogi Berra pun but it's the tequila talking. I have drunk here before, even though I physically haven't.

I am in a restaurant/entertainment venue called Carlos n' Charlie's in Cancun, Mexico. If you have been to one of Mexico's tourist enclaves, or Los Angeles, or New York, or any larger US city in the 70s and 80s, you have probably been here too, in spirit(s). Years ago there were lots of like establishments around. Thrift shop junk like old telephones, saxophones and posters adorning the walls, a stratum of peanut shells covering the floor like the skulls of dinosaur-chomped voles, and teeshirts for sale celebrated super or perhaps sub-human feats, usually associated with the consumption of alcohol. And while most of these places have faded in the US, they still live in party lovin' Cancun.

 by Russell Johnson

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Fog-faced, pale-faced San Franciscan, you shouldn't have done it. Half an hour in the Bahanian sun and skin reaches flash point. With the raw pain of linen scraping parched flesh, I bumpity-bump down steep cobblestone streets in the back seat of a VW taxi, knees nearly touching my nose. Brazilian pop music, gargles through a torn speaker behind my left ear.

From the palmed beaches, where climate-controlled high-rises stand like huge aerosol cans, cabbie runs slalom between rows of pastel colonial houses to the heart of old Bahia, dodging horses, carts and citizens with all manner of commerce balanced upon their heads. My eyes grab for scenes, images I have never seen before, anywhere. but must let them go.

Cabbie sees a shapely Bahiana in a halter top. He slows down, puckers up, and makes kissie noises. She ignores him.

Salvador is the legal name of this bay-side, ocean-side city halfway up the coast of Brazil, but most people call or sing it Bahia. Bahia was the first city the Portuguese founded when they forced the native population inland in the 16th Century and was Brazil's capital for more than 200 years. Gold, diamonds, sugar and slaves passed through its port.

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I had long considered Acapulco a tired "Elvis" sort of place, the kitschy kind of tourist trap that was once featured in Elvis movies. A place where even the best hotels were close but "sin cigaro." Acapulco had lost its luster as the Mexican Riviera where Jack and Jackie, Bill and Hillary and Elizabeth and I forgot whom honeymooned.

But I hadn't been there in 15 years.