Montezuma, April 21

La moñtana rusa: literally, “russian mountain,” but it’s Spanish for “roller coaster.” I learned those words this weekend. That’s what the roads are around here. If you get motion sickness, have back/neck problems, really don’t like going down very steep rutted roads, or have a phobia about driving non-amphibious vehicles through rivers, then I would suggest not driving on roads in Costa Rica. Particularly to Montezuma. There seems to be one nice paved road that the buses take, but if you deviate from that at all, you’re pretty much on the set of an Indiana Jones movie. I loved it!!! My Belgian girlfriend and I rented a Daihatsu Terios and went south for the weekend with her Tico boyfriend. (Whose company was welcome because he doesn’t speak English, so I got some practice time in.) From an American perspective, the roads were insane. Amazingly, we only got one flat tire—though we had to change it out under the scorching-hot midday sun; it was brutal—and we made it through about ten rivers with no problem, including the really deep one where water went up onto the hood. All of those SUV advertisements make sense to me now, though I still think it’s the height of ridiculousness to drive one in metro Detroit. Fording Costa Rican rivers is a far cry from plashing through puddles in Birmingham. (Seriously, “plash” is a word, I swear…) Also, I now really see the point in wearing seatbelts, because if you don’t wear one on these roads, you’d liable to be jounced up so high that you’d smash your head into the ceiling. Driving here is a blast! Especially when listening to electronic Argentinean tango music over and under the sound of flying rocks and scrunching tires. Awesome…

Aside from the sheer joy of twelve hours’ worth of moñtana rusa, we also saw some pretty cool nature parks. We climbed a heck of a lot of rocks to get to the waterfall in Montezuma (I am so happy I went rock-climbing before I came here!), hiked for about three hours in the Cúru reserve, hiked a blistering EIGHT KILOMETERS yesterday in the primordial jungle that is Cabo Blanco (I had not sweated that much since my last kung fu test—holy be-jeezus, Batman), and saw a LOT of gorgeous beaches. We stayed in Montezuma the first night and saw its crazy little downtown, then went to Mal País the second night. While I can see the appeal in Montezuma—waterfall, gorgeous beaches, cute stores/restaurants, I can’t so much see the draw for Mal País. One word: dust. I thought Sámara was bad, but Mal País is a trillion times worse. The streets are a constant cloud, and there are bridges without rails, indicators, or signs, bridges that are simply a narrow piece of cement (bridges here are only wide enough for one vehicle at a time) that pretty much invite accidents, especially at night. (No streetlights, either, for the most part.) Met a phenomenally interesting guy at the hotel that night in Mal País who had been sleeping on the beach the night before when a car did go off one of those types of bridges and nearly landed on him.

This guy was the best part about Mal País by far—he had more stories than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s an American who’s lived and walked (without shoes) in and through most of Central and South America. His Spanish is awesome, he sleeps on the beach because he chooses to (he’s not an indigent at all—had a normal American job and a normal American life and decided to throw it all to the winds and just go), and he has had some crazy experiences. Also knows some first aid, so he helped the people in the crashed car. Then we saw him again yesterday morning at the hotel (he was friends with a really cool couple who was in the room next to ours; we spent Saturday night chatting with all three of them) and he had yet another insane story about how that very morning he’d woken up to four guys pointing a shotgun at him. We all gasped. “What did you do???” at least two of us said at once. “Aw, heck,” Steve said with a shrug, “I knew it wasn’t loaded—didn’t make the right sound. I just grabbed the shotgun and jerked it away from the leader. They all ran away.” Shrugged again. “It’s all in the attitude. When I was living with the mountain tribes in Guatemala, everyone thought I was a drug dealer. I milked that impression as much as I could—walked around with a machete most of the time—and nobody messed with me.” Shrug. Wide grin. “Makes for a good story now, though, doesn’t it?” Whoa… I love traveling. You meet the most interesting people!!

And we even found an awesome ethnic restaurant. While I like Costa Rican food and even went so far as to order rice and beans for breakfast yesterday (and then guess what we had for dinner? uh-huh…), I really miss having different ethnicities of food available. They seem to stick to what they know around here—if you look at the menus from ten different restaurants in Sámara, they will have the exact same things. But in Mal País, we found a fantastic Thai place! Ricisimo!! I had a veg coconut curry and sweet bananas crepes with mangoes for dessert. It was by far the best meal I’ve had in a restaurant here. Plus, the restaurant itself was wonderfully whimsical and fun. If you’re ever in Mal País, I utterly recommend Casa Zen. We all loved it.

I went two whole days without rice and beans! I really was missing it by the third day, though. Guess I’m starting to go native…

Hot diggity, it’s gotta be over 90 degrees and it’s only 8:47 a.m. Time to go to the beach and enjoy some natural air-conditioning…after I go wash some laundry using a Tupperware container as a bucket and a washboard as a manual sort of washer. The good part is that clothes dry in a day here on the line because it’s so flippin’ caliente!

May your roads be smooth and undusty…

!Hasta luego!