Somewheresville

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There is order in the Costa Rican rainforest, but sometimes it goes all green and woozy and everything unravels until it all seems wild and chaotic, and I crave a garden (preferably a walled garden with lupins and hollyhocks). The manicured lawns and overflowing flower beds  and shrubberies of the hotel grounds are all the more beautiful for being an anachronism in this overwhelmingly man-free environment; something familiar in a place that is wonderfully strange.  There are no walls or hollyhocks, but tropical species, ginger, heliconia, frangipani, hibiscus, orchids, palms, acacia and so on, spruced up and kept in check, make up for it.  Marino, the gardener, is a happy man, always whistling, and the views – whether over the grass or up to the sky, are soothing.