After a few weeks with folks in Panama and Guatemala, I was headed into Corcorvado National Park in Costa Rica, and met Heike Karcher. We spent the next four or five weeks together. She was a nurse, on holiday from Germany, bicycling for 8 months throughout Central America!

Day two; Golfito. Dinner. Next morning,,, off to the wilderness of Corcorvado!

Here we were taking a lunch break during the 8 hour backpack along the ocean to the ranger station outpost, and the first night's lodging up in the rafters over the ranger station. It started raining late in the afternoon, so we said "...to heck hiking another hour to get to dinner at the ranger station...". We set up camp and lit a nice campfire. We struggled to keep it going for almost an hour in the warm rain, just long enough to cook dinner. Early the next morning the monkeys came out of the trees to pick up the fruits and flowers that the heavy rains had knocked out of the trees overnight! They were looking at our tent and wondering what it was!

Two years later, one fine September day, Heike phoned me from Oregon. She was biking for 4 months from Vancouver to Mexico. She said "howdy" and that she would phone me again from San Diego. Sure enough she called me two days before Christmas, and on her flight back to Germany, she stopped off in New York for a week. We spent that week together enjoying the sights and sounds of NYC at Christmastime. One of the week's many highlights was my first show on Broadway; we enjoyed an excellent performance of "Phantom..." from the tenth row!! Heike, you are truly one of the world's Most Special People! I will never ever forget your wonderful smile!!!

page by td, 5/2000 (updated: 2 February, 2001)