Since 1987 I've been studying Spanish on the side, one course each semester. By the spring of 1991 I was getting fairly good at it. Judy and I decided that we should go to Costa Rica at the end of May to test my language skills and see how much loot we could drag back through customs.

I should mention that my last trip to Russia was in 1989. I had trouble getting people to sign up in 1990 and had to cancel. After that I stopped planning trips there. However, I am going to Russia alone from March through May of 1992 to do research. Probably I can locate a few large green glass power insulators (like the one show on page 10 of the November 1989 Crown Jewels of the Wire) in my spare time.

Toward the end of April I had to write a research paper for my Spanish class. I chose the subject of insulators so as to sharpen my vocabulary in that area. I produced a lengthy composition illustrated with 75 photos, under the title, "Los aisladores electricos devidrio, como objetos de coleccion." I was ready!

We arrived in San Jose on Wednesday, May 29. It's a nice little city on a rather high plateau that keeps it from being at that time of year hot or humid though it did rain every afternoon. Because this was the rainy season, prices were low. But the modest amount of rain never really bothered us, and during the five hot days we spent on the Pacific coast, it never rained at all.

We woke on Thursday to squawks of two wild parakeets who were perched on incoming power lines scarcely a foot from our window. The birds were great, but the nearby insulators were no good. Nor were any good in the whole city. There were all brown porcelain or common U.S.

After a couple of days of driving around the plateau in our rented car, we headed for the town of Puntarenas, located at the head of a broad bay reaching north from the Pacific. This city happens to be the western terminus for the only railroad in the country -- a narrow-gauge line that offers one round-trip daily, the eastern terminus, 120 miles from Puntarenas, being Limon, on the Atlantic coast (a site of a recent bad earthquake). In addition to the one passenger train, the railroad also carries freight. I looked for telegraph poles along the tracks, but found none in the Puntarenas area. I did, however, get a lucky look at the passenger train as it came rocking into town with all the windows wide open. I promised myself to ride that train the next time l hit Costa Rica, almost certainly in the spring of 1993. After checking out the miniature train yards and taking pictures, I set out to explore Puntarenas for insulators. Almost at once I spotted something fantastic: miles of wooden power poles carrying six high-voltage lines. 

There were six large green glass insulators on every pole. (But not a single one on the ground). They appeared to be of the size and shape of the CD 326 type (Pyrex 453). They were really striking. I thought they might have been made in France. I was certain I could get one of these from the power company, but unfortunately, it was a Sunday. And we had reservations for the next two days for a small hotel high in the mountains at the edge of a cloud (or rain) forest. We were going to look for rare birds. And from there we were going to the northwest coast. Puntarenas should be out of the way, I felt pretty frustrated. Also, we had to leave right then.

Four large green glass power insulators (very similar in size and 
shape to CD 326 Pyrex 453) appear in this photo: One, upper right, 
three, lower left. The letters "ICE" in the transformer are the initials
 of the national Costa Rican electric power company.

The next morning we managed to get a really good long look at a quetzal bird and his mate in the rain forest. The male is green, red and white, with a tail three feet long; sometimes the dominant green color of the bird changes to an iridescent blue right while you are looking at it. There are only about five hundred of these birds left in the world.

But on to more important things. I managed to convince Judy that it would only cost us about an hour and a half to swing by Puntarenas before heading north on Tuesday. She said okay. Good. Now all I had to do was let the power company know we were coming. This I did by explaining everything very carefully, with pictures, to the hotel clerk and persuading him to make the necessary calls and preliminary requests. Finally I talked to the head of the company myself. He was gratified by my interest in insulators. He gave me directions to their main office. And he said his chief engineer would take care of me when I arrived in the morning.

Indeed, everything worked out as planned. I was told right away that I could have any insulator I wanted. However, the engineer said he doubted there were any of the large green ones left; he also referred to them as two part types. I could hardly believe this. From the ground they looked seamless and new. Finally the engineer assigned a foreman to take me to their storage buildings. We drove over in our car; Judy ended up doing quite a bit of waiting around with the temperature in the 90's. We went through six big sheds. There were tons of insulators -- most of them huge, porcelain and boring. There were many suspensions or sombrero types. I made a pile of different ones of these. But all I could think about was the horrible weight. What to do? I finally ended up taking just two of these, but I wanted them all. In back of one of the sheds was a huge mound of broken insulators and other debris that had periodically been burned over. There was not much chance of finding what I wanted there, but it was the last place to look. There were no green glass power types in the sheds. After 15 minutes of rooting in the mound I discovered several rather large pieces of green power type similar to the one I wanted, but about a size smaller. I could see where two parts had been cemented together. I reluctantly refrained from keeping the pieces. The foreman verified that the insulators I craved were similar to the smaller type. He said that after 15 or 20 years all were long gone from the storage sheds. However, he cheered me up, sort of, by giving me a unique green glass stacker (in three parts, cemented) that was about a foot high the weighted maybe 25 pounds. I felt like a real jerk throwing that into the car, along with the two suspensions and a double handful of interesting small porcelain pieces for luck. I didn't want to think about how I was going to get all this stuff into the plane and back home. But basically I was happy. 

However, there was a good deal more to this vacation than insulators. There was also sea shells. I collect them fairly seriously. We spent the next five days on the Pacific beaches. I personally walked at least fifty miles in that time, dragging home huge bags of shells and all but drowning in the rivers that intersected the beaches. I laid out all the shells in our last hotel room, throwing out half and keeping the rest. By actual count there were a thousand keepers. A dozen were of good size, three of them "uncommon." (Money in the bank!) These shells completely filled a sturdy little suitcase, packed in there by an expert. And heavy, too, by God! I forgot to mention that in all those fifty miles I walked as a beachcomber, I met no more than a dozen people and none of them were collecting shells. This was EI Dorado, man.

Near the end of our second week, we explored some volcanoes south of San Jose, returning by way of Cartaga, a small city situated on the one and only railroad. This time I managed to find two telegraph poles, each with metal cross arms filled with insulators. There were no wires. On each pole there were maybe two quasi-interesting insulators. The poles were right in the center of town. One was about a foot away from the side of a house. The insulators were easily reachable from the roof -- but I would need a ladder and the permission of the home-owner. I rang the door bell, but no one answered. It was Sunday, a holiday, people were everywhere. Judy and I walked back to our car. I wanted to pick up my dictionary and then look for a cop who might help me grab those insulators. But before I ever got to our vehicle I spotted a patrol car with two cops in it and waved them over. Hardly had I begun explaining myself when a second patrol car pulled up. All four cops got out of their cars and listened to me carefully. I wanted my dictionary bad, but I managed to tell my story without getting arrested.

Actually, the cops seemed to adore me. The five of us all walked together back along the railroad track to inspect the telegraph pole near the house. This was an inherently interesting spectacle; numerous onlookers crowded around. I was sorry to have opened up this particular can of peanuts. But I carried on to the end. "Get me a ladder," I demanded. But nobody volunteered one. Then quite unexpectedly the house owner showed up. Even though the cops were completely on my side, this guy refused to let me up on his roof without permission from the railway company (or whoever owned the poles). And, naturally, it was a Sunday, so there was nobody to call. However, the guy did give me his name and phone number in case I wanted to return the next day and pursue the matter. I said I would probably not be able to come back. The cops shook their heads, very sorry about the way things had turned out. Two of them returned to their car and left. The other two said they had an idea about getting me some insulators. Judy and I followed them in our car to what turned out to be the main electrical station for the city. The cops banged on the gate till the guard appeared. They persuaded him to accommodate me. He took me to a great heap of broken insulators, among which were four or five that I pretended I wanted a lot. I thanked everyone profusely. We all smiled and said Adios! 

That was pretty much the end of our vacation -- though I forgot to describe how we found a tree full of howler monkeys once and spent a good long time admiring them. We were to depart at 7 a.m. on Tuesday. I spent the whole day Monday building a crate for the insulators and ingeniously packing and repacking all our stuff so that we could somehow cope with it. Amazingly, we got through, and did not have to pay any extra, either. American customs really did not like the crate at all but decided not to make me open it. When we got back home, we found that not a single thing had broken -- not one sea shell, not one insulator.