420 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



We rode straight on to the schoolhouse where two of the 

 class rooms had been cleared and fitted up each with three 

 canvas camp beds or "tijeretas" for our use. With a tap 

 of running water in the patio we were much more comfort- 

 ably placed than we would have been in the Hotel Josefino 

 where we had meals. The schoolhouse was two-storied on 

 the front with a one-storied wing running back on each side; 

 one wing was for boys, the other for girls, and the patio was 

 divided down the middle by a wall. The class rooms were 

 high, well-lighted, with wooden floors, while the "corredor" 

 had a cement floor. This building was said to be the best 

 schoolhouse on the Pacific coast from Mexico to Panama 

 and Senor Obregon added that Lima had not as good a 

 school building. 



Soon after our arrival the Governor of Guanacaste called 

 on us — don Antonio Alvares Hurtado, a pleasant, unassum- 

 ing man less than forty years old, who later walked around 

 the corner with us to the hotel where we ate our first Li- 

 berian meal. 



Next to the schoolhouse on the west was a fairly large — 

 but as usual one-storied — house, with a shower-bath in a 

 separate room which was placed at our disposition — and very 

 glad I was to avail myself of it while here. The garden of 

 this house contained some royal and cocoanut palms. While 

 we were still in Puntarenas Professor Tristan had bought 

 two cocoanuts, unhusked except for a small segment, just 

 enough to expose an area of the white pulp about the size of 

 a quarter dollar. With their husks, each cocoanut was as 

 large as a man's head and I suppose almost as heavy. How 

 the traditional monkeys manage to throw them with ease 

 at the veracious traveler below I don't quite understand! 

 However that may be, with a penknife we cut through the 

 circle of white pulp and poured out the "milk" into a glass 

 and drank it, and later drained our cocoanuts directly into 



