Manuel Antonio, April 13

Greetings, all!

I’ve just returned from my first solo excursion. It was such a blast!! I absolutely love traveling alone—I meet tons of interesting people that way, and plus, now I have friends to visit in England, Florida, and Switzerland. (Although I also met a truly horrible American man—idiot—who could write a book called “How to Not Be an Ambassador.” But I won’t give him any more time on this page…)

I left Friday morning to go to Manuel Antonio, one of the national parks located about five hours south of Sámara. We passed through Nicoya, Mi Finca (bus change), Jaco, and many other towns. I chose to go with InterBus, which is a quasi-private shuttle service that ferries passengers to and from select cities. The buses/vans are brand-new and nicely appointed and have A/C!!! Much better than the public buses, and also more direct. The five-hour trip cost $45 one way, which I thought was pretty good considering that I’d pay $60 to get to the Detroit airport from my house. And with only 6-8 passengers in the smaller vans, you get to know people. My favs were a gal from England and one from the States. We had a good time, and the American spoke Spanish well enough to have a conversation, though I was the designated interpreter whenever we talked to the drivers.

My hotel in Manuel Antonio was spartan, and I mean spartan. A room with four twin beds (?) and a plain bathroom. The shower vacillated between gouting water and stubbornly refusing to release it. A strange invasion of tiny little ants took place in the sink at some point, and I found out that the cheap plaster walls were not at all suitable to use as a bottle opener. (More on that later…) But you know what? I had it all to myself, and that was tremendously fantastic. Plus there was a long covered veranda/porch outside the room with plastic rocking chairs. The absolute best part about the whole thing was that it was two minutes to the beach and damn near within the park itself—I honestly felt like I was in a jungle. In fact, after I’d scoped out the beach when I first got there, I went to the souvenir shop next door and bought some gifts, some ice cream, and a wonderful Mexican magazine called Travesías: inspiración para viajeros (“Journeys: inspiration for travelers”) and then sat on the porch and watched the tropical downpour while I had my ice-cream dinner. Then I read a few articles—learned tons of fun new words relating to travel, very useful stuff—and wrote the beginning of what I hope will be a short story about a guy who finds himself stranded in the middle of a tropical jungle in a terrible storm. I was so inspired by my surroundings that I just started writing without having any idea at all of where it will go. Sometimes life is better that way, isn’t it?

At the gift shop I’d found out that there was a restaurant/bar in the nearby town that had live salsa music on Fridays, so you know where I went that night! Yup. Found a guy who was also there on his own and asked if he wanted to have dinner with me. Nice guy from Cleveland. We were just in the middle of tuna carpaccio and goat-cheese salad when guess who walked in? My favorite Swiss girlfriend who’d left the school a week ago to tour the country!! And she was with a gal whom she’d met the previous evening when she had asked her if she wanted to share her dinner table. The four of us solo travelers had quite a nice evening together. I taught Hank how to dance to merengue and then the basics of salsa, and he wound up buying my dinner in return. I guess now I can say that I danced for my supper. Then on the way back to my hotel, the Tico cab driver was hitting on me, which was a nice reflection on my burgeoning language skills—I can have conversations now!! So happy!!! I got back after midnight, after a nice evening of dinner for four, a bit of dancing, and a politely-worded no-thank-you to the taxi driver. Not bad for a soltera on the road!

After breakfast the next morning—wherein I met a nice Norwiegan couple who sort of knew a Norwiegan girl I’d known in my university days—I went to the national park. It was insanely tropical and verdant and utterly beautiful, even with all the tourists. I’m sure I’ll be torturing any masochists out there who want to see a billion pictures of the park later on, but for now, I’ll just say that an Indiana Jones movie could have been filmed there. Met a nice couple from Tampa on the beach and chatted with them for a while before I went on my way. The recalcitrant, ice-cold shower actually felt good after hiking in 90-degree heat with 100% humidity. (“Hot showers,” my @ss, Lonely Planet. You guys were a little bit off on this one, but that’s okay…)

After a shower, a nap, and a new, dry set of clothes, I went to the bus stop to wait around to see if one would show up. To my utter surprise and joy, guess who drove by and then stopped for me? Steve and Jan, my new friends from Tampa. They asked if I would like a ride into town (Quepos), and when I said yes, I was going to go have lunch, they invited me to dine with them at their very nice hotel up in the hills. !! What friendly folks! So we all lunched on the top of a hill, looking out over the whole coastline and towards the mountains. It was one of the nicest meals I’ve had here, actually, and the wonderful company made it all the better. They insisted on paying the tab, and then Steve and I went to an obscure park he’d found to take some pictures. It was a great setting: the rain had just passed through, and dusk was coming on. The park had an abandoned pool in it with graffiti, and there were some crumbling remnants of I don’t know what, yet it had killer views of the ocean. The luxury/ruin of it reminded me a lot of Detroit. Then Steve dropped me off in downtown Quepos, and I went on my way. What a great day! I will definitely be going to Tampa to visit them, and I hope they come to Detroit.

I walked around Quepos a bit to check it out. One of the street vendors recognized me from the previous night at the bar—“Puede bailar muy bien!” (“you can really dance!”)—and we chatted for a bit before I continued my roving. To my great relief, I found flúido para lensos de contactos in the pharmacy, and to my great joy, I found a bottle of Leffe Belgian blond beer in the Super-Más grocery store!! I squeaked when I saw it on the shelf. And it was only 1,000 colónes! ($2)

Armed with the beer, my favorite brand of mixed-tropical-fruit juice, dark-chocolate-covered macadamian nuts, and a banana, I went to the bus station to wait for the next one to Manuel Antonio. A deaf-mute guy tried to talk to me in a combination of Costa Rican sign language and mime expressions. Most entertaining, actually. The woman next to me was part of the three-way conversation; we had fun figuring out what he was saying. Then on the bus I met a guy from Oak Park and a girl from Northville. Small world! And we passed El Avión, which is an old commerical airplane that has been converted into a restaurant; the wings form the roof. My girlfriend from Argentina had just emailed me this week about having eaten there when she visited Costa Rica. Seeing an entire airplane parked at the side of the road with lanterns hanging from it was quite interesting.

Got back to the lovely porch/veranda and settled in a for a comfy night of reading Travesías and having another odd dinner. My stomach sank a bit when I realized that the bottle required an opener. Dammit! I thought, and started looking for something I could use. As previously mentioned, the wall didn’t work. I was determined to get at that Belgian beer—by far the best cerveza I’ve found since I got here. Finally figured out that the only thing in the room that was durable enough to do the trick was the metal latch in the doorway where the bolt locks in. It took some jiggling on my part, but I got it open! And with a minimum of sprayage. (Though it did shoot a surprising distance onto the porch.) Settled back in with my beer in my hand until one of the huge flying bugs got into my hair one too many times, at which point I squished the damn thing under my sandal (again) and retreated to the dimly-lit interior. (The outside light was three times brighter than the inside one. Ticos don’t go for high-wattage bulbs…) Washed more ants down the sink, finished the beer, read a really interesting article about volcanoes in Nicaragua, and when to bed. That was an awesome day.

Got on the InterBus at the crack of dawn today, and guess what? Lauren—my British friend—was back! We had a nice time all the way to Mi Finca (got to be the interpreter again), at which point I changed buses and got onto the one for Sámara. The only other two people on the bus were German, so guess what? Yup. I just love that I get to speak German around here. And the best part was, they had to ask where I was from because they couldn’t tell I was American. I got really excited when they told me that my accent was so minimal that they couldn’t figure out where I was from. Yet another cool day. And maybe I’ll visit Lauren across the pond someday…I hope she comes to Detroit. You guys would love her accent. Plus, it was really great to have seen Nina again, especially so unexpectedly. (The Swiss lady.)

Well, that about sums up my weekend! It was really fun to travel alone, and being able to do so certainly validates all that time I spent teaching myself Spanish. (And the 60+ hours of class-time I’ve put in here…) I am really, really enjoying this trip. Can’t think of anything better I could have done with my tax return!