"Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world." ~ Oscar Wilde

Tucurrique is the next left after the middle of nowhere, where Alan and Patri have an animal sanctuary home to eleven dogs, two pigs, a horse, a goat, a chicken and a cat.  Aside from 4 dogs and the two pigs we are all sharing the same space and it is pretty exceptional.  Mornings mean starting at 6am to the vibrant ensemble of crickets, ribbets, grunts, snorts, barks and birds.  There are frogs here too, tonnes of them, I know because they fill the night but I have only seen a handful.  There are toucans clacking around too but I'm still waiting to see one.  Then it's all systems go; Gumby and Peppo the pigs are fed and cleaned out, Palomo and Goaty get fed, the dogs are walked iver the hill to the river where we linger just a little as they sniff the rocks, then it's back for feeding time.  Dogs first then humans.  We sit down to fruit, oats, coffee and chat until we eventually get round to the plan for the day.  The jobs vary and I delight in the fizz as we all mission about in the glorious heat; sweaty, dirty and content, occasionally helping ourselves to mandarins and water apples ripe off the branch between tasks.  Feeding, playing , walking, washing, brushing, building, cleaning, harvesting...inspired perhaps by the ceaseless efforts of the leaf cutter ants, endlessly ferring their green snippets.

Smashing out the morning from sunrise til late lunch then ambling lazily through the citronella-scented afternoon and doing anything we please til it gets dark is just what I need right now, with the added bonus that my fondness for and aptitude with a machete was quickly noticed.

The only jolt I've experienced so far has been when I was asked about my post-C.R. plans and it dawned on me that I have no plan, no job and no particular place to go, which might worry me if May 2019 didn't seem so very far away.  For now at least I have high hopes, low expectations and am entirely at the mercy the Universe.

P.S. It has become apparent that cockroaches are the last bastion of my speciesism. No small revelation, you understand. They creep me out for no good reason at all other than (I think) societies persistent reinforcement of a bad reputation. A side project while I'm here will be to educate myself, mindfully observe, perhaps start a photo album (a sort of cockroach catalogue, if you will) and entirely rewire myself so that the feeling they evoke before I even have time to think is no longer a strange sort of grossed-out fear. Wish me luck.