Hey, everybody, greetings from Costa Rica!This is the first time I’ve had a chance to sit down for a few minutes and type something.Lest you all think that’s because I’m on vacation mode, let me correct that:I get up at five every morning—everyone here does—because the damned roosters start to crow in earnest then.(They crow all the time, but five a.m. seems to be their favorite hour.)If I lived here, I’d eat them.I can tell that I will have developed a pathological hatred of roosters by the time I get back.I like all the otros animales, though:horses, stray dogs, cows, cats, monkeys, iguanas, hummingbirds, etc.They all roam freely all over.Whoa, and the insects are huge—one just flew through my room.I came back from the scorching hot beach to hang out in my not-as-scorching-hot room.With all windows and the door open and the fan on, it’s only about 92 degrees.Air-conditioning doesn’t really exist here…
Then I have four straight hours of Spanish classes every day.I placed into the highest-level intermediate class, which means that I should be able to complete all the levels by the time I leave.Muy wunderbar.This also means, however, that it is definitely a challenge.It’s me, four Swiss-Germans, and a Norweigan who looks like he’s from Columbia.???On the first day, I didn’t have my Spanish-English dictionary, so I used the Swiss guy’s Deutsch-Spanisch one.Today the Norweigan guy used mine.It’s nice to swap.
Tonight I’m going to hit the paradise-beachside tropical bar again with Luoc, my French-Canadian buddy.Shaker Joe’s has big couches to lie on and hammocks under the palm trees.It’s amazing how many stars you can see when you’re not in the city.And they have a pretty darned decent local beer in the form of Imperial.Tastes like a German wheat.
The beach is insanely gorgeous, although a serious surfer would probably be disappointed—the breezes are pretty much on-shore, which means that the waves are smushed down and little.Great for a beginner like me, though!I’ll probably hit the waves this weekend.
I’m staying in a modest little home (one room with a few curtains subdividing it into one main room and two bedrooms) with my Tico family:the mom, two sons, and two daughters.That makes six of us altogether, but somehow the one-bathroom thing works just fine because nobody lingers in it.And fortunately, I have my own little closet-sized bedroom at the front of the house.The kitchen is entirely outside underneath a tin roof that extends past the main house.Very al fresco.People in the States pay a lot for that!
The roads in Sámara are just like they are in Detroit:full of potholes.At first, I thought everyone was driving drunk.Then I realized that they’re just trying to avoid having their cars become a permanent part of the roads.(Although that might fill in the holes…)
The school and beach are about a mile away, which makes for a sauna-style walk ‘round about mid-afternoon.It makes the cold shower (there is no hot water—with this heat, I don’t miss it at all) feel fantastic when I get back to the house.
I gotta say, the comida here is great!Everyone told me that the only thing they did not like was the food, but I disagree.It’s not as spicy as comida mexicana, but I happen to really like rice and beans prepared in a plethora of different ways.And the salads are served without dressing, so everything is very fresh.My Tica mom made a great lasagne the other night with peppers and mushrooms and the local cheese.!Muy rico!
There’s definitely a slower pace to life here, that’s for sure.The school, though, seems to operate very much on time and is very professional.Interestingly enough, one of the hermanas in my Tico family is also mi profesora.For this week, at least, I’m guaranteed to have good help with my homework should I need it.
Hope the weather is better in Detroit!I’d love to see the reactions of these folks if they were ever faced with snow.They’d either be appalled or think it was the coolest thing they’d ever seen. Literally.
There is a particularly large rooster outside my window right now.Looks damned tasty…maybe I’d better close my door…
!Buen día!This is your cultural explorer reporting in after a full week in a place that’s a cross between rural third-world and modern civilization.I thought I would write while it’s still under 97 degrees (10:30 a.m.—haven’t hit the p.m. heat wave yet) and my laptop is not in eminent peril of dying of heatstroke.Then I’m going to go down a calle I haven’t gone down yet to see what the beach looks like on that side of town.
I’m feeling very immersed right now:there is a a vendor on the street is currently trying to sell us something (they come up to the casas and call out “!buenos dias!” until someone comes out and shoos them away), the canciones on the radio are slow enough for me to understand them, and this morning I had my first hand-made tortillas.My Tica mom is very quick at making them entirely from scratch.They were awesome with the eggs and tomatoes, obligatory rice and beans, and tropical fruits.The food here is really, really good.Now that I can understand more Spanish, I’ve started hanging out in the cocina to watch her and see how she makes things.Today she showed me the powdered corn mix she uses to make one of the best drinks I’ve ever had.I’m going to bring some of it back with me so I can make it in the States.
Also, a personal record:haven’t spoken English since 6 p.m. last night.Went to Las Olas for the world’s best daiquiris (I’ll get to that in a minute…) and wound up chatting with a guy whom I’d met a couple nights ago whilst walking to town.The Ticos are super-friendly and always say “Hola!” or “Buenos noches!” when they pass you, whether it’s on bike, motorcycle, or on foot.Even the guys in cars wave and stick their heads out the window to say “Hola!”I’ve never been someplace where the people were so friendly.Yesterday a big truck went by with three guys perched on the very top of it, over the cab.I waved at them right after I dodged the bull that was standing on the bridge.(Lotta traffic that day with cattle and horses roaming around.)Anyway, I spent three hours straight speaking Spanish last night and enjoying my fav local beer (Imperial) on the beach.I felt very native by the time we’d walked back to my house and I said buenos noches.
Swiss update:these people are taking over the world.I danced salsa with a guy on Thursday night, and his Spanish was so good that I assumed he was a Tico.Guess what?Yup.Another aus der Schweiz.They trip out that I can understand the gist of what they’re saying.“An American who speaks German AND can understand Swiss-German?”Really cool folks, though.I’m so glad I speak German, because that’s the second-most-spoken language here.
Ah, yes, the daiquiris.I asked for a bebida tropical, and the barman suggested a daiquiri.I said si, por favor,even though I was dreading that nasty teeth-on-edge, sweet red stuff you get in the States.Then he asked if I wanted piña or limon, and my interest was piqued.I said piña and watched in utter amazement as he proceeded to haul out an entire pineapple, hack it open, cut it into chunks, and stick the entire thing into a blender with a liberal portion of rum and some ice.Now THAT, my friends, is a daiquiri!
Mi hermana just shut the gate to the house.Guess she got sick of the Saturday vendors making their rounds…
The roosters have been mercifully quiet today.Makes me paranoid that they’re going to really let loose tonight, when I’m coming back from Tutti Frutti.(A bar on the beach that’s supposedly THE dance spot in town on Saturdays; I hope I can find somebody who can dance as well as the guys in Detroit.I have high hopes for the Colombian street vendor whom I met yesterday.)
I took a tango lesson on Thursday.The teacher is fabulous:from Belgium, speaks six (!) languages, has a degree in Anthropology (!!), and loves Latin dance.We have a ton in common, and I kind of hope I’m her only student again next week.Very elegant lady.And I’ve come across two guys who do martial arts, so we’re exchanging impromptu lessons.I was up first with kung fu, and the capoeira guy is next, and then the t’ai chi guy.First time I’ve ever taught anybody martial arts—I gotta say, it’s quite satisfying to be showing a muscular California surfer dude how to throw a punch.They’re both from Cally, actually—the t’ai chi guy’s comment was “that’s bitchin’!”Gotta love it.
It’s getting a lot easier to understand people, especially the profesoras.The first two days of school were kind of tough (up at 6:45 every morning and then a mile-long walk), but now I’m really digging it.It feels damned awesome to be able to understand a new language.I’d forgotten how cool that is…Though I have to pay a lot of attention when people are talking to be able to catch on.
Okay, time to head to the beach, the fruteria, and the little tienda to check out more local foods.I love browsing through to see what the locals eat—yesterday I hit pay dirt in the form of Swedish lingonberries. ????What the hell are Swedish lingonberries doing here???I laughed a lot over that one.And the ketchup comes in Capri Sun packaging.Very interesting.Might also bring back some salsa lizado with me.It’s the local variety of Worcester; they use it all the time.
I hope there is no snow anywhere in your vicinity while you’re reading this.
P.S.A gecko landed on my head during dinner last night.
Your Latin-American correspondent signing out…!Adios, muchachos!
Well, today I went to my first Costa Rican “big city.”At least, the people here in Sámara think of Nicoya as being a big city—that’s where they go when they want to go shopping.They talk about the stores in somewhat reverent tones and imply that you can find whatever your heart desires in Nicoya.That’s true to an extent, assuming that what your heart desires is tacky T-shirts, lots of cheap jewelry made in China, and random things for your house in the style of April Morning or TJ Maxx.Nicoya does, however, have a rather pretty central park (1/1000 the size of NY’s) and a historic church that is quite beautiful in its simplicity.I sat at the base of the back pew and watched an unseasonable rainstorm stain the red flagstones at the main door of the church an even deeper shade of red.Preparations for a wedding were being made at the same time, so it was interesting to be stuck there for a while.Then I went out and found more tacky T-shirts.
I will say, however, that the bus ride was far better than I’d thought it would be.When I asked my Texan buddy if there would be A/C (he has considerable experience with the buses in CR), he just started laughing.I assumed the worst:sweltering heat, stagnant air, hard, uncomfortable seats.For those of you who have ridden the trains in Italy, you know exactly what I’m talkin’ ‘bout!Well, FerroVia it weren’t, I’m happy to say.The buses here—while they don’t have A/C—have nice plushy seats and windows that fully open.Really not bad at all.My Texan bud has ridden trains in India and thinks that the CR buses are Nirvana in comparison.I’m just going to take his word on that…
Now that I’ve gotten a chance to see a bit of the countryside and get my feet wet, so to speak, I might venture farther afield, maybe to the southern tip of the Nicoya peninsula.(Also, my Spanish has improved and I can now chitchat with strangers without having to actually think about every damned verb conjugation.What a relief!)It is stunningly beautiful to travel the roads here, especially the ones that consist more of roads than potholes.I’ve never seen such green places:hills, mountains, gorges, rivers, palm trees jutting out in random places, etc.And this is the dry season!There are little tall, narrow structures called mirandoles scattered throughout whose purpose is specifically to give people an opportunity to enjoy the view.This would most definitely be one heck of a place to make a road trip!
My Spanish is getting better, and nowadays I can figure out what the Swiss girls are saying more than half the time. (Swiss German is really not very much at all like standard German, but I’m getting the hang of it.One of the girls jokes that I’m going to also have learned Svis-Duutsch by the time I leave.)Today during dinner it was just my Tica mom and I, and we chatted throughout the entire meal.Landmark evening for me!I’m also beginning to follow the conversations between the family members, which is much harder to decipher since they talk to each other a helluva lot faster than they do me, plus of course they have their own inner-family slang/shorthand.And I interpreted for the Texan guy when he came over and needed to borrow a bike pump.
Went to a family dinner a couple nights ago and got to see another typical Tica casa.(Cultural note:Costa Ricans refer to themselves as “Ticos.”There will be a quiz on this later!)Turns out that the house I’m living in is actually a bit bigger—having the entire kitchen and laundry area outside makes a huge difference.I’m lucky.It was fun to hang out with all the family members.And the student living with them is also a really cool guy.He wants to stay in CR for as long as it takes to get fluent.Kudos to him!That’s a pretty awesome commitment.He’s going to have his own apartment right next to his family—adjacent to their house—and will only have to pay $250/month for some pretty nice accomodations by local standards.As he says, (he’s a surfer from southern Cal), he’s “stoked.”Since we live with the same family (albeit the extended version) and are therefore Tico cousins, we might try to make an American meal for everyone once his kitchen is up and running.I think that would be a fun way to thank them for their wonderful hospitality.
Tomorrow I'm going to go rock- and shell-hunting at Buena Vista.It’s an absolute treasure trove of those sorts of things if you can handle walking over the VERY pointy stones that stand between you and the beach.Might try a different pair of shoes this time…wish me luck!
Hope you’re having fun!As the Ticos say, !Pura vida!
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!
Lamoñtana 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!
This is your hasn’t-stopped-sweating-yet correspondent checking in.I have retreated to the relative coolness of the outside kitchen/laundry room/dining room to write this.It’s already ten o’clock, so that means we’ve nearly reached the scorch-point for the day.It will be nice again around midnight…I shall never again complain about the heat of a Michigan August.
I was hanging out on the beach until about 4:30 a.m. Friday night/morning with a friend (not advisable to do so by yourself, so since I had a chaperone, I seized the opportunity), and he was actually cold.I thought the elusive breeze felt great.“But with the windchill, it’s gotta only be 72 degrees!” he protested.And here I thought New Yorkers had some backbone!
The beach at night is incredibly beautiful here:the silhouettes of the palm trees ringing the beach, the sheer volume of the stars, the partially-clouded moon.And there are enough fallen palms and huge pieces of driftwood on the beach to make for some nice midnight seating.Quite a show, really.I don’t think I could ever get tired of that.
I decided to hang in Sámara this weekend to have some chill-out time (or heat-out, as the case may be).Spent most of yesterday hanging out in a hammock at the school and studying with Jesse and John.(Cool California surfer guy and hilarious dude from Texas.If John ever headlines at a club in Austin, I will fly out there to see the show…)I actually even managed to fall asleep in the hammock, but then a damned squirrel peed on me and woke me up.Nasty little buggers—if they’re not throwing nuts at you, they’re using you as their public toilet.[…sigh…]But hey, better to get peed on by a squirrel than have a falling coconut hit your head.Or a palm frond…
Speaking of coconuts, I now know how to open them!Jesse and I went coconut-hunting on the beach and then he showed me how to rip away the husk to get to the nut.It is insanely difficult!Even with the pointed metal fence that we found to use, it still took a solid twenty minutes of sweat-inducing labor to tear off the fibers that surround the nut.Once you get them off, though, it’s easy—just smash it on the pavement and then make sure the meat isn’t slimy.(After all that effort, I turned out to have a bad nut.I was quite perturbed about that, but Jesse gave me his.Surfers are universally cool.)Once you have a good, cracked nut, then you just need a good knife to carve out the meat.You can even eat the inner shell—makes it taste like walnut.Fresh coconuts are really, really good.When Jesse and Steve and I made our fish taco dinner, we ate an entire coconut as an appetizer and an entire pineapple for dessert.Also the fish they’d caught that morning and tons of avocado and mango…I was so stuffed afterwards that I could barely ride my bike the however-many-miles back home.(The heat seems to exponentially increase the number of miles.)But there is a lot to be said for getting your lunch off the beach.The school also has a lime tree and an avocado tree.
Had a fantastic class this week.The instructor is hiLARious (think Vince Vaughn in “The Wedding Crashers”) and we spent most of the week cracking each other up.I’m so glad that I can understand his jokes and make some of my own now in Spanish.I’m getting there…but I still gotta think really hard about conjugating the danged verbs.Anyone who says that Spanish is easy obviously doesn’t speak in anything but the present tense:where English has six tenses, Spanish has fourteen, each with its own set of conjugations.Spanish speakers refer to this phenomenon as making the language “rich.”The students describe the situation a bit differently.“God%$#@^*, what a pain in the @#^$*#!!!!” is a common statement.(I include myself in this.)But I think I understand thirteen of them.Understanding them, however, is a far cry from being able to use them in conversation…
In other things of note this week, Jesse showed me the basic jinga in capoeira, which is a Brazilian martial art that makes use of very long, extended stances.It was fun, although my legs were complaining for days afterwards.And a different Jesse showed me the rudiments of juggling.It’s very perfect to have a lime-laden tree right there—they make perfectly-sized juggling balls, and your hands smell really nice afterwards.Figure I might as well learn what random things I can while I’m here…And then Juggling Jesse proceeded to suspend a rope between two palm trees and walk back and forth on it.I declined his offer of tight-rope lessons.
We also had a fútbol game between the students and the instructors.While the professors obviously play together on a regular basis, we had a secret weapon:Swiss guys.Also an American girl who played really well, and another American who actually is in a league.The professors, though, were hard-core.I was exceedingly glad that I was an observer and not a player, because if the Vince-Vaughn instructor had been barrelling towards me like that, I would have run like heck in the opposite direction, ball be damned.I’m pretty sure I know the outcome of me vs. 200 lbs. of forward momentum.There was one particularly brilliant play where Tyrone (one of the school directors; he’s actually from Chicago) jumped up about three feet, whanged the ball off his head (ouch!) and over to Vince, who did a sort of backwards flip/kick and shot the ball right past the hapless American goalie and into the net.The game was actually a lot of fun to watch.End score:professors 18, students 17.!Que madre!Then we all walked the untold miles of dusty road back to the beach and went to one of the beachside bars.Very fun night.
This afternoon I have my first intercambio with a guy from Guatemala.It’ll be half him teaching me Spanish and half me teaching him English.Nifty!It’ll be fun to put my ESL-teaching skills to use again.Then afterwards, I’m going to cook with my Tica sister.I found Feta cheese (!) in the euphemistically-named “super” market (for three times the price it would be in the States; items that have to be refrigerated are at a premium in tropical countries), so we are going to make Greek salad and then something with chayotes.They’re my new fav veggie.
There was a bit of trouble in paradise this week:the actual municipal police from Nicoya (the local “police” mostly hang around their one vehicle and tinker on it) came riding into town and combed through houses to find any Columbia drug dealers who were dumb enough not to get out of town in advance of the raids.Apparently, Sámara is a haven for coke dealings.This would probably explain why the friendly Columbian guy who always said hi to me when I passed his roadside stand just up and disappeared ‘round about Tuesday.Interesting what you learn once you can actually converse with the locals.
On that note…I think I’m going to go shell-hunting at Buena Vista again.Maybe I’ll stop by the frutería and pick up a mango on the way back.In spite of the recent events, on the whole Sámara is a picturesque and friendly little town.I’m really enjoying my stay here.And during those precious daily seconds underneath the cold-water-only shower, I feel refreshed and cool.
P.S.:Just finished having dinner with the fam, and they loved the ensalada griega.Thank goodness—I wasn’t sure they’d be Feta fans.But they all said “!Que rico!”, and that’s a good thing.I’m so glad my dinner idea worked out!!
P.P.S.:My intercambio friend is great:he’s a gay Guatemalan Buddhist philospher who dreams of traveling the world.How cool is that?We had a really fun time hanging out and discussing the eight-fold path.Knew that class on Asian culture would come in handy one of these days…
!Hasta luego and enjoy what breezes come your way!
Something I really like about Costa Rica:agua dulce.It’s water that has been boiled for 15 minutes or so with a chunk of raw sugarcane.!Que rico!It’s right up there with the oatmeal drink.
Something I don’t like about Costa Rica:fire ants.Holy $#@&*!!Incredible that a creature that small can cause so much pain—and I only stepped on three of them.I will never again go outside without shoes.!Uy caramba!
I saw The Tourist yesterday on the main drag.(“Main drag”=the street that is marginally less dusty than most, although curiously even more rutted.)The Tourist was utilizing the ubiquitious and crippling double-backpack system (wearing one on the front and one on the back), and he was carrying his trusty copy of “Lonely Planet:Costa Rica” with the cover facing out as though it was his personal shield.The only thing that was missing was the “Burgle Me!” sign.His expression was a cross between confusion and fear—i.e., the cosmic counterpart to the saavy and tenacious gringo I met in Mal País.“Oh, dear,” I said to my friend Corine.“Exactly what I was thinking,” she said.
There was another soccer game on Wednesday, but owing to the fact that we no longer have any Europeans on our team, it was a slaughter, and we were on the block.It was still fun, though, and I enjoyed sitting in the professors’ section.(At this point, I know them better than most of the students—I’m a veteran now.Most students come for two weeks, not two months…)
Thursday night is the big night around here, so of course I headed to Las Olas, my favorite beachside bar and the home of the sacred pineapple daiquiris.It didn’t take me very long to sidle on back to the large, relatively flat concrete floor that constitutes the discotheque part of the bar.Although I’d given up on finding anyone who could really dance as a partner, if there is Latin music, I’m happy.And regaeton makes for an excellent opportunity to practice footwork.At least I can practice that, I thought.If nothing else.[insert sigh here] Imagine my transcendent delight when I FINALLY found a salsero!!The Vince-Vaughn-esque soccer player is also the salsa instructor at the school, and he finally showed his true colors that night.We absolutely tore up the floor for an entire set of ultra-fast, pull-out-all-the-stops, flashy salsa.(Well, considering the pebbly concrete floor, we probably tore up our shoes more than anything else…)I am truly addicted to dancing salsa, I think, because I was on a high for two days after having gotten my fix.It was the first time I’d really danced here.I think Vince and all the Tico onlookers were stunned that I’m not a latina.My gay Guatemalan buddy was shocked when I’d taught him some basic salsa steps earlier that day.“I can’t believe a gringa is showing me this!” he exclaimed.I was just glad he wanted to dance—after all, he’s Latin and gay.Goes without saying that he has a natural talent for it.
Last night I got shanghaied into another dancing scenario—random contest at a bar I went to.It included cumbia and rhumba, neither of which I know.I think they are next on my list, because I really enjoyed giving them a try.The night ended with a bottle of Costa Rican rum, a large chunk of driftwood, a sky full of stars, and a great conversation with a guy from Texas who originally hailed from Korea and who spoke Korean and Japanese.(I’m such a sucker for languages…)Plus, since he’s a military pilot, he’s been everywhere in the world and had some really interesting stories to tell.(For him, Costa Rica isn’t so hot—apparently, in Iraq at midday, it’s 130 degrees in the shade.There is a really good Spanish word for that:insuportable.I’ll take Costa Rica at high noon any day…)We sat on that log at the beach for hours and watched the tide creep up higher and higher and the occasional cow wander by.At least, I think they were cows—kind of hard to see on a beach only lit by starlight.I will really miss nights like that.You can see the Milky Way here.Gorgeous…
I was up at six-thirty yesterday morning despite having gotten home at five.(Got home at three-thirty the previous night…Sleep?What’s that?)Don’t want to miss any of the pura vida while I’m still in it.Spent the morning helping my mama and my hermanas (sisters) spiff up the house, then spent the afternoon alternating between napping and chatting with the locals at the beach.I’m happy to report that no squirrels peed on me this time.
As much as I enjoy living alone in the States, I have to say that it’s also nice to live with a family for a while, especially one as nice as this one.Somehow, having six people in a small house works out.I will really miss them.In fact, since they are so awesome, I decided to participate in an activity that I would normally never, ever, ever do, but I wanted to respect their culture and their way of living, so I did it.Yes, my friends, this morning found me standing in a church pew and trying to sing rock hymns in Spanish.It was quite an interesting experience to be the only American (and the only atheist) in a church full of clapping Ticos.Talk about the proverbial fish out of water…But everyone was super-nice and I got enough of the gist of what was being stand to stand up and sit at the appropriate times.It was interesting anthropogical experience, plus I got to hear my hermanas sing and Eric (boyfriend of the younger hermana) play guitar, piano, and drums.Churches here are quite lively and generally have an entire band on the stage.Also gigantic speakers, which I think is weird since the churches are tiny—they only seat about 50.But there seems to be a phenomenon in Latin countries that people like to have their music loud and their speakers turned up to the crackling point.There are even guys who are paid to drive around on the streets with a massive speaker tied to the truckbed that spews insanely annoying advertisements.That is even worse than the crowing roosters.
Time to go hit the beach, I think.Don’t want to take its presence for granted now that I only have a week or so left to enjoy it.It’s best at night, when you’re tramping through the sand in almost total darkness and you don’t know if you’re about to step onto coconut husks, fallen fronds, or scuttling crabs.Makes for a bit of a slip-sliding walk, especially when you’ve just finished a drink at one bar and are going off in search of another.Some serious legwork is required:John (the hilarious Texan) refers to this activity as “storming the beaches of Sámara.”John is an eloquent man.
May you all be enjoying fresh daiquiris and glorious sunsets—
I am sitting on my balcony in La Fortuna watching the sky shade into night. As if the spectacular soft hues of violet and rose weren’t enough, there is an active volcano in the background. !! Can’t see the lava flow right now because it’s a bit cloudy, but the immense hulk of it looms over the town. Got some stunner shots of the cloud-shrouded volcano with the church steeple in the foreground and the most intricate cloud-pattern that I’ve ever seen painting a canvas behind it all. This is a fantastic town for taking dramatic photographs! I must admit, however, that I am baffled by the “Super Christian #2” supermarket. ???? Is there a #1 Christian somewhere, and what is #1 doing that #2 isn’t? Very puzzling…
Had a brilliant last week in Sámara: went to a different (!) club on Wednesday and danced to everything from salsa to rap to techno (also did something called “disco fox” that my Swiss dancing buddy taught me; very fun) and then went to the standard-but-always-good Las Olas on Thursday for a second helping. My Disco Fox man was there again, so had another killer night. We wound up competing in an impromptu contest, but we got knocked out right before the final portion. (We came in as couple #4—obviously, we are not fit to open up a supermarket in these parts.) Still loads of fun. And got to teach my capoeirha buddy some salsa and my Guatemalan “I-can’t-believe-she’s-a-gringo!” pal more merengue. Also finally witnessed a coke deal go down at the bar—John the Texan clued me in just in time. He always sees at least five deals in any given night, but I’m usually too busy dancing to pay attention to anything else. “You’re kidding!” I said when he pointed out the Rasta handing a small clear plastic baggie with white powder in it to a beefy, sunburnt American tourist. “Well,” John said with a shrug, “it’s either that or the gringo is chafing and needs some talcum powder.” Touché, John, touché .
Friday night was the Last Supper with my Cally guys, Steve and Jesse. I love cooking at Steve’s house—I chop whatever needs to be chopped while Jesse cooks the fish and Steve hauls out his guitar and serenades us with live Enrique Iglesias songs. Very pura vida. Afterwards I went back to (surprise!...or maybe not, seeing as Sámara is a one-cart-horse kind of town) Las Olas with Jesse for one final beer on the beach. For whatever reason, drinking beer sparked a desire in him to go find ice cream, so we found the one place that was still open that had ice cream on the menu. I only mention this because of the irony of what happened the next day when we were hanging out at the school and a street vendor came by and tried to sell us jars of honey. (Vendors here sell everything from corn flour to gourds. Or coconuts. Yesterday I saw a guy shinny up a palm tree and gather some green ones. Amazing…) “No, sorry, I can’t,” said Jesse. “I’m a diabetic.” (Which he is.) “Ah, okay then,” said the vendor. “Have a good day.” He left. I just looked at Jesse with my eyebrows raised. “Sometimes being a diabetic comes in handy,” he said. I couldn’t help but snort at that one. “Uh-huh. And who wanted to go get ice cream last night? With whipped cream and chocolate on top?” More power to him, though, if he can get away with it…
The fam had a really nice lasagne dinner for my farewell evening. The guest list included Steve, Jesse, Eric (the very talented guitarist and singer boyfriend of my Tica sister), Beatrice (my Tica amiga) and an American from Albuquerque who is a friend of the family and just flew in last night. He stayed later than the other guests, so for the rest of the night, the scene was reminiscent of “An American in Paris,” except that there were two of us and we were in Sámara. It was a really fun evening. Eric even wowed us by composing songs on the spot in honor of me and Gabriela, my other Tica sister. What a talented guy! Amazing…the lyrics even rhymed.
I’m going to miss all of those guys and gals, especially my Tica family. I’m really glad I stumbled upon Sámara as a place to study Spanish. The professors were fantastic—I really hope I see all of them again someday. I had to give a speech at the graduation ceremony (in Spanish, of course), and although I was sweating bullets over it, I think it went pretty well. I was really, really happy when the Vince-Vaugh-esque professor announced that the graduating student of note (the professors chose one every week) was me. That is a really great compliment, and it made me feel like I’d done a good job with this whole crazy let’s-go-study-Spanish idea. I’m still far from fluent, but at least I have a good base. I actually got up to Advanced Level 5 (the highest class is Adv Level 6). So all in all, Costa Rica has been a magnificent experience and very much worth the effort.
Dang, I’m going to miss those piña daiquiris at Las Olas! Even though there weren’t many nightlife options, I really did dig that place. Sometimes a guaranteed good Thursday night is better than chancing it. There was kind of a running joke, though, about the sameness of it all. “So, guys, what’s new in Olas tonight?” somebody asked the group one night. “I heard they changed the toilet paper,” I said. “I think the coke dealers may be two barstools to the left tonight,” said John. “Or maybe they just moved over to try and get away from the crackling-loud loudspeakers.” [insert loud regaeton music here] Yep, Olas is definitely the place in town…seriously, though, it’s a really chilled-out beachside bar. Probably in my personal Top 3 list of bars/clubs, the others being Slattery’s Pub in Oldenburg, Germany, and Luna in Royal Oak.
Well, tomorrow I am off to see the waterfall! I’m very excited about this—one day a volcano, the next a cascada. Time for yet another adventure! …Speaking of that, I think I’m going to venture out in search of dinner…
The past week has been a whirlwind, folks.I’m sitting in my hotel room in Santa Elena feeling very happily tired.In La Fortuna, I hiked out to see the waterfall, and I have to say that it was vale la pena—worth the effort and then some!Very, very beautiful.Obviously a heckuva lot smaller than Niagara, but with the added bonus that you can swim in the crystal-clear pool at the bottom of the cascada.I’ve never seen water that clear before…I clambered over some rocks for a while before I decided that doing so in bare feet was probably not the best idea, so I wound up just sitting on a rather flat rock for a while with my feet in the water, the mist on my face, and the thundering sound of the water in my ears.Unbelievably peaceful!I hope I remember that feeling for a long time.
The ride to Santa Elena from La Fortuna was even bumpier than the ride from Sámara to Montezuma.(Remember that one?Insane!)I had the extreme fortune, though, of riding with four Spainards.Bonus time for me!#1, they spoke Spanish and not English, and #2, now I know that I can understand Spainards.You know what this means?I’m goin’ to Spain, baby!!!!This is why I’ve spent all this time and effort on learning Spanish.So I quite enjoyed the trip despite the noggin-crushing roads.
In Santa Elena, I saw the Jardin de Mariposas (butterfly garden) and the Jardin de Orquídeas (orchid garden).Both were sublime—I lucked out and got a one-on-one tour in Spanish with the mariposas and toured the orquídeas with two wonderful lady doctors from New York.The guides were fantastic and really made the tours interesting.Even got some good photos of those ever-flitting butterflies!That took some patience…
Santa Elena, day 2:toured El Trapiche.(The trapiche is the press they use to squeeze the juice out of sugarcane.)The tour included everything from a tour of the farm—sugarcane, coffee plants, banana trees, papayas, mangoes, chayote, you name it—to demonstrations of how coffee goes from the branch to your cup and how sugar is produced.We ate raw sugar cane and freshly-roasted coffee beans, drank fresh coffee and agua dulce (my fav!), made our own candy, and drank the freshly-squeezed cane juice.It was all very yummy and exceedingly interesting.Did you know that sugarcane is closely related to bamboo?Looks just like it.And your average plant is 50% sugar and 50% water, so you have to boil it down to extract the sugars.I love the smell of the cooking sugarcane!Very aromatic.After that tour, I went off to the cheese factory in nearby Monteverde, where I got to see how everything from cheese to sour cream is made.Included a lot of history of the Monteverde area and also the Quakers, because they were the ones who started the whole thing 55 years ago.The guide was (again!) fantastic, and he was stunningly bilingual due to the fact that his parents were Ticos but he had grown up in Wisconsin.Even though the other 15 people on the tour were American, he did parts of it in Spanish for my benefit, which was muy amable of him.I really enjoyed that tour.(And the cheese tasting at the end.)Quite the culinary day!
Yesterday I went hiking in the Monteverde Cloud Forest.It is way, way up there, so high that it is literally in the clouds.It’s a very dreamlike experience to hike through incredibly lush trees whose tops are shrouded with floating patches of mist.It’s also rather hard on your legs to climb up that high when you walked downhill 2.5 miles from the cheese factory to your hotel the previous day.(And when I say “downhill,” I mean Tico-style downhill, which is a 45-degree incline.)Turns out that walking downhill is much harder on your joints than walking uphill.Oiy.But the forest was so beautiful that I almost didn’t notice the unhappiness of my left hip.
Today I went hiking in the Santa Elena reserve.Smaller than Monteverde, but all the more personal because of that—rather than imposing suspension bridges, it has very narrow, winding trails and unseen, burbling streams.I liked both. And the only time I ran into anyone at all today was when I stumbled upon a German tour group.Another bonus language round for me!That was a nice surprise.
Throughout all of this, I perused various art galleries, sampled the best ice cream I’ve ever had (sorry, Breyer’s, the Monteverde cheese factory has you beat), had many insightful cultural conversations with taxi-cab drivers, and found a restaurant that rivals Casa Zen in Mal País:Moon Shiva in Monteverde. !Ricisimo!It’s Mediterreanean, which means tons of wonderful veggies and a lot of garlic.My salad came with an entire head of roasted garlic.I’d forgotten how much I miss that!Ticos don’t season their food as much as what we’re used to.I was in heaven in Moon Shiva…
I ventured out to the bar right next to my hotel last night and found a live cumbia band.As it turns out, cumbia is pretty similar to salsa. I also came across another Tico who could dance, though not as well as the Vince-Vaugh prof in Sámara.All in all, it was a really fun night, much better than I had thought it would be.There was, of course, the obligatory borracho (drunken sod) who was trying to dance with all the ladies, but I managed to steer clear of him.There was also another guy who tried to dance with me—the fact that his hat was bigger than his head was a bad sign—but I figured out a way to get rid of him, too:lead him.Latin guys do not like it when the woman takes over command like that.They won’t admit that you’re leading them, though, because that would be admitting that they don’t know what they’re doing.What a great way to get a bad dancer to never dance with you again!Why didn’t I think of that before?Fabulous!Just glad I found one after that who was fun.
Tonight I think I’m going to chill and pack for tomorrow’s trip to Libéria.I have accumulated quite a few extra items at this point, so this is going to have to be quite strategic.My textbooks alone weigh a fair amount.Good thing I like to organize things…
By the time you read this, I’ll probably be in Libéria and preparing for my flight back to the good ol’ U.S. of A.This has been quite the experience!Much, much different than Europe, and not just because it’s a different language.Latin America most definitely has a flair of its own; glad I got to experience a little bit of it.And learning Spanish has been a fantastic challenge for me.I was itching to go off on a new adventure!Wonder what the next one will be?Hmm…Panamá, maybe, until the Euro goes down and Spain is more afforable?Vamos a ver…(We’ll see…)
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my updates half as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.Thanks for tagging along!
I’m looking forward to seeing you all again!
And, of course, for the last time, the quintessential Tico sign-off:!PURA VIDA!
