Como un pescado

The sea is like a sheet of mirrored glass which was shaken as it cooled so that the liquid glass set and hardened - the ripples, waves and seacrests all frozen above the silvered surface. The sun blinds you as it shines relentlessly on the splendor.

The palms stand sentinel. The breeze just brushes the fronds with nary a backward glance. Just a breath and gone, but another breath follows and another, so that the palm moves, always in motion as it stands still.

The streets are hot and dusty here in Monterrico. A step along the back street raises a little puff of dark volcanic sand, and a dog fight which has dogged our steps the length of the street causes a dust cloud to engulf the snarling, snapping animals which bare their teeth, bark at each other defiantly, then pull away back to their indolent life in the dirt, stretched out, barely alive in the enervating heat.

In the tienda up by the mangrove lagoon we stop for a cold drink and ask the tiny old woman "¿Como estas?" "How are you doing?" "Como un pescado, como un pescado", she replies. "Like a fish" as she waves her hand in and out as if she was swimming through a stand of reeds. "Como un pescado!" - A fish alive and leaping in the humid air of Monterrico. She is grey-haired, tiny and wrinkled - her thin arms reaching for the cool bottle of Coke in the non-freezing freezer.

I see her skipping effortlessly through the limpid waters through the mangrove roots, two eyes looking down to watch the bottom, two looking up for hungry birds. So a fish she dreams as she sits in the heat and humidity of another day while the palms stand sentinel and the mirrored sea gleams in an impossible light.