Let me step you through them:
The sound of bird begins within seconds of the sun peeping its head over the Sierra Madre Mountains. The parajos are loud but in a nice way; Beautiful parrots, parakeets and other song birds that greet the day with a variety of squawks and trills. It is a lovely, energetic sound that literally makes me want to spring out of bed and greet the day.
Intermingled with the bird song is the occasional motorcycle or scooter speeding down the road – a worker off to his job raking leaves, or building houses. Those are not too bad, but what sends a chill down the spine when you are still rubbing the sleep out of your eyes are the air breaks of trucks. You would think that you would only hear those on highways. Wrong. You hear them everywhere. I do think there are laws about using them in towns and cities, but really...laws? In Mexico? Who are we kidding?
As I drink my coffee on the patio, more sounds join the chorus…the raking of leaves. It is pretty non stop at this time of year. Fall comes to the tropics too – and the tropics gives all new meaning to the notion of leaf raking. The leaves are huge! Giant Adam and Eve type leaves…seriously, I could make clothes out of some of the leaves that fall! Every morning the repetitive chore starts over…the gardeners rake the blossoms and leaves that have fallen over night. Piles of Bougainvillea blossoms, and pods of various types lay on the ground waiting to be raked up over and over again.
As the neighborhood awakens, you begin to hear the sound of perros and more coches. You won’t hear roosters at this time of morning as they begin their choir around 2am. I am not sure who started the myth that roosters start cockadoodledoing at sunrise, because trust me on this, in every of the 40 countries I have travelled to, the damn things start squawking around 1-2 am! I used to hate it. I fought it. I complained, and cursed, and prayed they would all croak to death on their cockadoodledooing, but now I have embraced them. They are a part of the rhythm of life here. Their song says, “Back off Jack, these are my girls!” as they protect their flock of hens and tell the other cocks nearby, “back off Jack!”
Learning to embrace the poultrygeists of the night was not easy. I have literally cried all night for lack of sleep. The trick is to LISTEN to them. Instead of trying to shut out the noise with earplugs and pillows, and sleeping pills, and tequila (believe me I have tried them all), LISTEN to the sounds of the night! Now, instead of dreading the nightly wake up calls, I hear them, and I listen to see if I can count how many I hear. Sometimes, there are so many roosters calling out to one another, it sounds less like cockadoodledooing, and more like an orchestra tuning up before the show.
Then as the chorus of doodlers gets going, the perros of all sizes join in. Deep barks are answered by sharp quippy barks. Canine conversations compete with the cocks to tell the world that their territory is not to be tread upon.N ow, as I analyze the sounds, they have become a type of white noise that soothes and tells me all is well in the tropics.I n Costa Rica and many other places, along with the dogs and the birds are the howler monkeys – who add to the cacophony an eery howl that is unlike any other I have heard. Fortunately, there are no monkeys here.
The other sound that lulls you to sleep when you first crawl under the covers are the crickets. They are loud: louder than the dogs and the roosters combined. The crickets can be deafening, and you have no choice but to accept that night does not exist without this music.
According to Wikipedia there are more than 900 species of crickets in the world, with the greatest diversity being in the tropics. Crickets are mainly nocturnal, and are best known for the loud, persistent, chirping song of males trying to attract females. Now personally, if my mate was that loud when he wanted sex I would tell him to buzz off…
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