Now and then in a reflective mood, I wonder what ever happened to Glorianna Sanchez. And, of course, as the saying goes, therein lies a tale.
I met Glorianna on an Elderhostel visit to Costa Rica a couple years ago. She was our guide. She and Umberto, our driver, traveled all over Costa Rica with us in a 20-passenger bus from San Jose to the border of Nicaragua and almost to the Caribbean coast.
Along the way we became well acquainted with one another, certainly well acquainted with Glorianna, less so with Umberto. Umberto couldn't speak English, but we still managed to convey a lot through sign language and fractured English and Spanish. Glorianna spoke excellent English; she had been born in Washington, D.C. That meant she enjoyed dual citizenship; she belonged both to us and to Costa Rica.
All the men on the trip fell immediately in love with Glorianna, who had dark long hair, big brown-black eyes in which one could easily lose one's self and a collection of funny stories about herself, Costa Rica and life in general. For instance, one day when a flock of buzzards flew over in search of carrion, she said, "There goes the Costa Rican Air Force."
She called stops to perform vital functions "happy stops."
She liked to laugh, and she liked to make us laugh.
Glorianna was somewhere between 25 and 35--it was hard to say where--and she had a master's degree in biology, but the Costa Rican economy being what it was, she was working as a tour guide while trying to decide where to go to school to get her Ph.D.
She had worked for a year or so as a taxi driver in San Jose--Costa Rica, that is--which judging by what we saw of San Jose must have been no mean feat. She had been near death from intestinal ulcers, but had recovered handsomely so far we could tell.
For a while she had been a research assistant on a project studying caymen, those creatures which look like alligators but have shorter snouts and seem less aggressive. Glorianna's job was to feed the babies as they crawled across a shallow pool. She had imprinted them so that they followed her like a mother across the pool as she scattered food behind her. They thought she was their mother, I suppose. When she left the project, her successor tried this stunt, only to find that the caymen had not been reimprinted by her or him and took after the feeder, intent on making him or her into feed.
Glorianna lived two hours outside San Jose up in the mountains with a menagerie of animals including dogs, cats, sheep, cattle and a variety of other critters. She loved animals. Whether she loved humans as well was less plain. As nearly as we could determine, she had no current male friend, although why certainly wasn't clear. One look into those black eyes was enough for the males on our trip. They thought she was wonderful.
But don't get me wrong; the women on the trip loved Glorianna, too, and admired her skills at getting us through the Costa Rican revenge, similar to that dropped on visitors to Mexico, getting us all to laugh every day and getting us all on board the bus on time every day. She also knew every bird, plant and animal we saw and where to find food, first aid and refreshment.
By the time the trip was over, we had all come to depend on her as if she were a mother, and when we got to the airport in San Jose to fly home, it was as if we were going off to college without benefit of her gentle guiding voice.
We all promised faithfully to write, but of course we didn't. I've often wondered whatever happened to Glorianna. I've wondered if she came to the United States as she planned to get her doctorate or if she is still guiding tours in Costa Rica. I've often wondered what it must be like to be a semi-permanent resident of a small Central American country like Costa Rica with ambitions to be something more.
Glorianna always said she loved her country. I think she meant it. I think she wanted to stay within its boundaries somewhere, something that's not too easy, since Costa Rica geographically is not much bigger than Santa Clara County. She was proud of being a Costa Rican, as are most Costa Ricans. Costa Ricans generally are beholden to no one, they have a more egalitarian society than much of Central America, and they are striving to maintain the charm of their environment while providing a better living for everyone in their nation.
So I guess some of Glorianna's charm was the charm of all Costa Ricans. It's not without reason that the country has been called the Switzerland of Central America or that a lot of North Americans have elected to settle there in retirement. Much of the country is high enough to be pleasant even though it's close to the equator. Most Costa Ricans outside the capital live in casitas, small houses in small villages. Almost all of them wave and smile when they see you. All in all, Costa Rica is a great place to visit. I'm not so sure how it would be to live there, but when I think about that I think of Glorianna.
I also think fondly of Costa Rica.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, March 26, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.