ENVIRONMENT

In Costa Rica there are only five trees, but they are huge, reaching up so high that the upper branches are weighted down with snow nine months of the year. From the central trunk grows every kind of tree the world has ever known, and a few that are purely imaginary. Once every two years the trees of Costa Rica drop gigantic spiky seed pods the size of SUVs. The pods smell like hair salons and the wind from a clothes dryer. After a few months the pods split open to reveal the year's latest appliances, which the people haul away in their pickup trucks. The appliances are so new that manufacturers won't have replacement parts available for at least six months. The pod husks ignite spontaneously within 48 hours after moulting, and the smoke causes women to ovulate, men to burst into song and pigs to drop dead on the spot.

André Castonguay, Costa Rica's hero of independence, attempted to climb the tallest of the five trees. He wrote a book called Una Cuenta de mis Recorridos en el �:rbol M�s Grande de Costa Rica y de las Cosas Extra�as que Encontr� All�, in which he described the strange societies he found living at 6,000 feet, treehouse villages of beautiful people who wove clothes from gigantic leaves and lived without benefit of money or the wheel. He did not mention that those peaceful tree-dwellers sprouted leathery wings in their adolescence, and at night they spiraled downward through the cooling air and snatched travellers on the coastal road from Caldera to Puerto Quepos.

AGRICULTURE

The staple crop of Costa Rica is rocks. Farmers plough the soil once a year and harvest the rocks, which are usually eaten with salt to mask the rocky taste.

HEALTH

No one dies in Costa Rica. Instead, they move to the next town over. No one ever visits their old town, and all their letters and phone calls are maddeningly vague.

EDUCATION

Costa Ricans have a secret name for their country. That name is Belgium. The penalty for saying "Belgium" in public is immediate forcible eviction to the next town over. Geography and European history have suffered as a consequence.

ECONOMY

Costa Rica's basically stable economy depends on tourism, agriculture, and electronics exports (CIA World Factbook, 2003).

MUSIC AND CULTURE

The people of Costa Rica enjoy the music of John Lennon.

parode - exode