The morning after El Dia De Suerte, we awoke to the sound of Matt coming home at 3:30 AM. I yelled at him for waking us an hour too early, then couldn’t get back to sleep. Katie and I proceeded to get changed and prepared, and to have a very early breakfast of guava jelly on toast. At some point while we were getting things ready in our room, we heard a loud crash and a couple of minutes later, Matt was knocking on our door and asking, “Do you guys have a needle and thread?”
“NO!” Katie responded. “What do we look like?” A valid question.
“Actually, I have some!” he realized.
It turned out that Matt had fallen prey to the fake chair in our living room. For some reason unknown to any of us, our family has a “show chair” next to the living room couch. It is the frame of a wicker chair with chair pillows on it, but no actual seat. On my second night here I sat down in it and was utterly mortified when I proceeded to just fall through, in front of my host dad and little brother. So Matt went to put his shoes on at four in the morning and fell through the fake-out chair, ripping a huge hole in his pants. Needless to say, Katie and I thought it incredibly amusing that the chair had caused him to rip one of his four clothing items (Matt brought an absurdly little amount of clothes), and also that he had actually brought a needle and thread with him to Costa Rica, in case of pant-ripping situations such as these. As I stood at the counter in the kitchen eating more guava jelly, Katie ran out of the bathroom exclaiming, “Chrissy, do you have your camera?” “Yeah, why?” I asked. She said, “Matt’s in his bedroom, sewing his pants!” Indeed Matt was. I snapped some pretty excellent photos, and we proceeded to walk out into the pitch-black morning with all of our packs.
The morning was a surprising success. Flo and Mike actually made it into the cab with us after only sleeping for about half an hour each. Flo told a rousing tale from the front seat about how he’d made the amazing discovery, a couple of hours before, that cab drivers in Costa Rica have no problem going through the McDriveThrough to pick up a Big Mac, Fries, and a 10 piece chicken McNugget. at all hours of the day and night. Matt and Mike seemed very interested in this crucial piece of information. We hung out at the bus station waiting for Adam, who needed to bring his surfboard and therefore couldn’t fit into the cab. As I mentioned before, Adam is a very quiet, chill person, and honestly he had planned on going to Nosara by himself to surf, before Katie and I accidentally picked the same weekend destination. Because he’s a bit shy, we like to draw attention to him. So there the five of us stood at 5:15 AM in the bus station with about thirty Costa Ricans looking on, applauding Adam as he walked through the door with his surfboard, massive hair covering his eyes, sheepish grin on his long-bearded face. Miraculously, the three additional boys got the three final tickets on the bus. We climbed on board, and settled for another LOOONG bus ride. But this time, our teeth were clean and I had my trusty huge bottle of water. Later, after the rest stop, I also had guava empanadas and these delicious salty limy corn chips that I love, so I was really quite content. Sometimes Katie and I read or talk or stalk our friends with our cameras on the bus, or sometimes I tell her to shut up and I fall asleep. Usually she finds it amusing to use her camera to videotape me sleeping, as I’m often seated on the outside, allowing my head to fall over and over again into the aisle.
The hotel we were to stay at was called The Guilded Iguana, and because we’d ended up with six people (People REALLY go for us), we’d all only have to pay about ten dollars a night. This was the only information we had. As the bus ride turned slower and more rural, I kept asking Katie, “So, do you know where we’re going?” “To the Guilded Iguana!” she’d respond, exasperated. That was all. At some point someone told us that if we wanted to go to the Iguana, we’d have to get off and walk left. So we trekked down the long dirt road, while beachy-looking people rode by us on four-wheelers, wearing nothing but bathing suits. The Guilded Iguana was totalmente perfecto for our crew. The suite had a room with a double bed for Katie and I (the lesbians), a connected room with a double bed and two single beds for the boys, and our own bathroom, something we hadn’t yet experienced in Costa Rica. It also had a big porch outside, perfect for lying around on during the evenings.
Just a few minutes down the road was a very pretty beach that was kind of like a cove. Each day there were tons of people surfing in the water, and when we first arrived Adam was eager to get out there and show us his stuff (and by this I mean he was simply eager to surf and probably the opposite of eager to have a bunch of people watching him). Flo and I pretty much immediately rented surfboards and got into the ocean. At first Adam refused to surf with us because the waves were crap for people who actually know how to do it, but he insisted upon coming into the water with me to give me a lesson. Adam taught me so much more about surfing than I’d learned during my first lesson in Samara. Obviously I’m still terrible, but it felt great to learn more. Adam surprised and impressed me by how vocal and irritated he got when he was trying to teach me how to surf. I would be catching my breath and wiping the salt water out of my eyes, and he’d be yelling, “Paddle, paddle paddle!! Here comes a wave! NOW!” Finally I yelled, “You’re so BOSSY in the water, Adam! It’s very out of character for you. I LOVE IT!”, to which he responded by becoming embarrassed and quickly paddling away from me.
Eventually Adam got his own board and paddled way out to where the real surfers surf real waves. Flo and I paddled out with him, and proceeded to WATCH the real surfers catch their real waves. Eventually I got injured, of course, when I got caught in a spot with a huge wave crashing over me, and forgot that to hold the board in front of you with your arms draped over it is the absolute worst possible action when a wave is about to crash, because the wave catapults the board right into your face. Hence, I really really messed up my nose. And my shoulder. Standard procedure. Katie and Flo and I chilled on the beach for a bit when Flo and I had had enough, trying to watch Adam surf like a champion, then coming to the conclusion that we must force him to buy a bright neon yellow rash guard in the near future, as he and his hair and his black attire just blend him in with the waves. Adam stayed surfing until it was almost completely pitch black, and by the time he returned to the pool at The Guilded Iguana, the rest of us were already lying there fully clothed, listening to music and drinking cuba libres.
We enjoyed a nice dinner together, chatting with a pair of sisters, one of whom blows fire on the beach. We then headed to the beach to watch her practice and to look at the stars. I think that Friday night was the first night when the six of us really became a sort of unit. Since then we have rarely been apart for very long. Katie and I both ended up falling asleep to the sound of the boys being dumb and playing poker, me just sprawled on their double bed wearing Katie’s long pretty dress I had decided to wear that night to dinner. There is something I love so much about being comfortable enough to just fall asleep in a room full of people. This only happens when I really know and enjoy those I am with, and when I know that they won’t care if I just choose to fall asleep while they’re laughing and talking. At home I have trouble falling asleep, but here, with the breeze coming through the window, and especially with friends around me, when I’m tired, I simply go to sleep.
The next day Katie and I had some great girl-time by the pool, chatting and swimming and meeting people. It was so hot that I knew I didn’t want to surf until later in the afternoon. Adam had suggested sunset surfing, and I really liked the sound of that. When the late afternoon rolled around, I put on my surfing garb and left Katie, Mike and Matt poolside to trek down to the beach to find Flo and Adam. Flo was easier to find than Adam because his board was red, and because he was often much closer to the shore. I got into the water, and just went for it. There’s something about surfing that is therapeutic, because you clear your mind of anything that’s in it, just falling into the rhythm of trying to catch waves, and then trying to get back out past them again, over and over again. At one point I got caught in a riptide, and got out of the water because I was scared, to find Katie and Mike and Matt chilling on the beach. I thought I was done for the day because I was thoroughly exhausted, but something about the sun setting and the way the waves had calmed drew me back again, and Flo and Adam and I kept surfing until we really couldn’t see anymore. So much fun. So relaxing. I can’t wait to do it again.
Saturday night we ate dinner then I tried my hand at poker. It did not go well. Mike and Katie and Adam passed out, so Flo and Matt proceeded to take advantage of the fact that I really didn’t know the specific rules of Texas Hold ‘Em, and to take a lot of my money. After losing, I became the dealer, something that made me think so much of my mother because I never could figure out how to do the bridge while shuffling, no matter how hard she tried to teach me. And because I love to play cards with my mom’s side of the family. I have yet to find someone to play cribbage with here in Costa Rica, but don’t worry Uncle Dave and Uncle Dave 2, I will do so before I leave, and I will make you proud! After poker the three of us lied out on the porch feeling the crazy wind that had descended upon us, and I ended up sleeping on the porch for half the night, because I just couldn’t bring myself to leave it. On Sunday we made an executive decision to be irresponsible by staying another night! Mike bailed out at the last minute and took the bus home alone, so the five of us stuck it out. Katie and I had really started to feel like it was our home, being friendly with all the staff at The Guilded Iguana, and meeting the newcomers each day by the pool. We enjoyed some more sunset surfing, and I swear I have never seen a sunset like Sunday’s. My God, it was beautiful. El Hermano Matt cooked us a delicious spaghetti dinner and the night ended far too soon.
On Monday we returned to San Jose, but not without some memorable bus conversations. I really really love talking to new people on the bus rides home, especially if I can do so in Spanish. Our crew enjoyed a final dinner together in San Jose, and then Katie and I collapsed into our beds, talking about the events of the weekend before finally falling asleep. The weekend was so excellent simply because of the amount of laughter. I think I was smiling and laughing much more often than not. I have not felt that way in quite some time, and I’m so glad that our plans fell through and we all ended up together in Nosara. And that I had a rash guard. That rash guard really was key.
More to come,
X-tine.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Guava Jelly y El Dia De Suerte.
I think I need to begin this entry with a discussion of guava jelly. It seems ridiculous that I have yet to mention guava jelly, as it’s the most crucial of Katie and my four main food groups, along with rice and beans, smoothies, and unknown Costa Rican snack items that we buy at rest stops and our local grocery store ‘Mas Por Menos.’ Guava jelly is absolutely delicious. In the mornings Maybell puts out an assortment of jellies for our toast, usually including guayaba (guava), pina (pineapple), and mora (blackberry). Guava by far takes the prize. Katie and I will put it on anything we can find. This past week we went as far as to buy our own guava jelly and three boxes of whole wheat crackers, which we just carry around with us in a plastic bag everywhere we go. The other day we went to the movies and Katie asked, “Chris, can we fit the guava in LPJ (L-Pack Jr.)?” “No, there’s no room,” I said. “Ugh fine,” she answered, “I’ll just go for carrying it.” I think we are now known at Maximo as the weird girls with all the crackers, because we are constantly offering an individual pack to everyone who walks by us, opening the guava jelly and saying, “Here, go for dipping.” Anyway, guava jelly is a revelation. We have already discovered our favorite brand and have grand plans to send cases upon cases home to New York before we return, in the interest of never having to go a day without eating it.
So after returning from Dominical, life in San Pedro continued as it does. John went home to the States, which was a little sad, but Katie and Beth started coming to my project for the week, so the long bus rides to and from became very entertaining. I have really started to be comfortable at the Guarderia, as I now have a great rapport with the women who run it, and am able to communicate with them much more easily than I could when I first began volunteering. Additionally, the kids know me well and expect to see me every afternoon. When we get off the bus each day and walk to the gated front of the building, the kids are normally “afuera” (outside) in the back, and we wait for Leticia, the old lady who runs the place, to unlock the front door and let us in. As we wait, I call past the building to the kids on the swing, “Hola ninos!” When one of them notices me, they all run over in droves to the other gate, and I start saying hi to each of them individually. “Hola Azael! Hola Genesis! Hola Emily! Hola Jon Carlos! Como estan? Como fue su dia?” They get very excited and usually begin chanting, “Cristina! Cristina! Cristina! Cristina!” until the door is unlocked, I enter, and am attacked with about fifteen hugs from fifteen little kids, very deserving of my love and attention. I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t serve as a nice daily ego boost.
Thursday was El Dia De Suerte (The Day of Luck), though it didn’t seem so in the morning when the day began. Katie and I had planned for that weekend to go back to Samara, the first beach I visited, and to leave on the Thursday night bus. On Thursday morning we arrived at Maximo to find that the bus to Samara was full. Naturally I let my irritation get the better of me, huffed and puffed, then chose to act completely irrational by stating that I didn’t care to try and figure something different out, but would rather just stay in San Jose. Katie, knowing me well, said she would plan something, and went to researching other beach towns we could get to by the following morning. She finally made the decision that we would go to Nosara, a spot close to Samara but with bus service very early on Friday morning. Each weekend Katie and I make a plan for the two of us, yet we maintain an open door policy. If anyone wants to join us, they are more than welcome, and if they don’t, the two of us will go and have a great time together. But the thing is, we’re really fun. And people usually end up tagging along, even if they don’t make the decision to do so until the very last minute. So Katie decided to get a room for six, saying that if worse came to worse, we would pay for it ourselves, but that chances were pretty good that people would join us in the end. “Chris, people go for us,” she explained. I agreed that indeed, people do tend to go for us, and we booked the room, crossing our fingers that there would be tickets left at the bus station.
Katie and Adam and I then went on a trek downtown to the bus station. We made the mistake of following Adam, who thought it would be a funny chiste to lead us astray. He decided to cut through the San Jose market, which is really, really cool. It’s a roofless indoor space with tons of different tiny shops, each one very close to the next. You can buy spices, fruit, rice, meat, shoes, clothing, sandwiches, jewelry, anything you can think of. It’s very fun to walk through and look at everything, unless Adam is leading you in circles through it and you can’t find your way out. Finally he let us escape and we got to the bus station. There were plenty of tickets left for the bus to Nosara (where Adam had decided to go beforehand), so Katie and I came to the conclusion, then and there, that we hadn’t been meant to go to Samara that weekend, and that it was better to try a new place anyway. Our spirits high, we then went on a mission to buy me a rash guard, because of my aforementioned surf clothing dilemma. I planned on surfing that weekend, so I wanted to be prepared. Rash guards are those really tight wetsuit looking shirts. So the three of us went to a surf shop where Katie insisted I try on and buy a bright pink rash guard, and Adam went for picking up a bunch of them, then forcing me to try them on in the dressing room. Finally, after the two of them had opened the door numerous times to hand me things while I was half naked, including when Katie threw me a skimpy white see-through tanktop accented with gold buckles, and said, “Adam says this is the best thing for you to wear surfing. Listen to him Chris, he knows things,” I found a rash guard that I could handle wearing, and we skidaddled.
So I had a rash guard and we had tickets for the bus for the following morning. Then Katie found two pairs of sunglasses she liked, after having been looking for a week for cheap non-ugly shades. We then made our way to the project and for the first time since I’ve been in Costa Rica, the bus was at the stop when we got there, and it left immediately after we got on. The project was a ton of fun that day. We ran around and got really sweaty with the kids, then it rained, cooling us off, and we spent the rest of the time chilling, drawing and chatting with them inside. When Katie and I left the project, we thought we were witnessing a miracle because the bus was AGAIN pulling up to the stop across the street just as we walked outside. We hopped on and started chatting. I then felt my phone vibrate, and looked down to see that I had an email from Columbia University letting me know whether or not I’d gotten into the School of Social Work. I couldn’t check it on my phone, so I had to wait until getting back to Maximo, a trip that involves switching to yet another bus, and normally standing the whole time in a sweaty rush hour crowded bus. Needless to say, I was anxious. We hopped off the bus past the large angel statue that serves as our landmark, and walked across the street to wait for the Pereferica, the last bus in the journey. To our utter shock, the Pereferica came around the corner just as we reached the stop! And it wasn’t crowded! And it only took ten minutes to get back when it normally takes thirty! “I think you’re gonna get into Columbia, because today is the day of luck,” Katie told me. I forced her to sprint back to Maximo with me after getting off the bus, and I ran past Adam and Flo, who were confused as to why I was acting so manic. In the computer lab, the internet was down. “UGGGHHHH!” I screamed. Luckily, Katie was on the case in the front of the school. Nate, who pretty much runs the place, was on his special-person computer behind the desk, assumedly working. “Nate, does your computer have internet?” Katie demanded.
“Yes,” he replied.”
“I’ll be needing it,” she said. “CHRISSY!”
I ran out from the computer lab, leaned over his desk, and typed in the annoying code thing, which took about ten minutes, especially considering the fact that the keys on computers in Costa Rica are completely different than those in the United States, and finding the correct way to punch a symbol is quite the task. As the page loaded, many of my friends gathered around to wait for the verdict. Finally I saw the words, “Welcome to the Fall 2010…” I proceeded to jump up and down and do what I can only imagine was a really embarrassing ugly dance, while Katie flailed about with me, laughing her head off, and Nate and Mario (another guy who works at Maximo) looked on, extremely amused and possibly a little frightened. I received congratulatory hugs and then Flo said, “So, we go and have a beer, no?”
So we went and had a beer. There is a sushi place around the corner from school, where we all gathered and I received many cheers. It was an outing during which I have never before felt so happy and content. An extremely heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders, I was being rewarded for all of my previous hard work, and I had new good friends to share the moment with. I missed my family a little though, and, as I do each time I miss my family, I took out the wallet-sized school pictures of my little siblings and showed them to everyone at the table. When Flo got a hold of them, he smiled and said, “They are looking like rabbits, no?” Everyone at the table burst out laughing, and I explained that yes, they have very large teeth, like my mother and even more so, like my grandfather, ‘Smilin’ Bob.’ Flo explained that calling children bunny rabbits is like a term of endearment in Austria, but it has not stopped all of us over the past couple of weeks from every once in a while doing our Flo voice and saying, “They are looking like rabbits, no?” The night ended with Katie and I on the street in front of our house with Matt and Mike, being told by them as they left to go out that they had changed their minds about their previous weekend plans, and would be coming with us at 5:30 in the morning. Flo had also come to this conclusion. Katie and I, having learned from the mistake of our previous Thursday night, bid them goodnight and went to sleep at a human hour, fully packed, clothes laid out, not allowing ourselves the opportunity to be sloppy and smelly on the bus the following morning. I fell off into dreamland excited for the weekend’s adventure, and very very thankful for La Dia De Suerte.
So after returning from Dominical, life in San Pedro continued as it does. John went home to the States, which was a little sad, but Katie and Beth started coming to my project for the week, so the long bus rides to and from became very entertaining. I have really started to be comfortable at the Guarderia, as I now have a great rapport with the women who run it, and am able to communicate with them much more easily than I could when I first began volunteering. Additionally, the kids know me well and expect to see me every afternoon. When we get off the bus each day and walk to the gated front of the building, the kids are normally “afuera” (outside) in the back, and we wait for Leticia, the old lady who runs the place, to unlock the front door and let us in. As we wait, I call past the building to the kids on the swing, “Hola ninos!” When one of them notices me, they all run over in droves to the other gate, and I start saying hi to each of them individually. “Hola Azael! Hola Genesis! Hola Emily! Hola Jon Carlos! Como estan? Como fue su dia?” They get very excited and usually begin chanting, “Cristina! Cristina! Cristina! Cristina!” until the door is unlocked, I enter, and am attacked with about fifteen hugs from fifteen little kids, very deserving of my love and attention. I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t serve as a nice daily ego boost.
Thursday was El Dia De Suerte (The Day of Luck), though it didn’t seem so in the morning when the day began. Katie and I had planned for that weekend to go back to Samara, the first beach I visited, and to leave on the Thursday night bus. On Thursday morning we arrived at Maximo to find that the bus to Samara was full. Naturally I let my irritation get the better of me, huffed and puffed, then chose to act completely irrational by stating that I didn’t care to try and figure something different out, but would rather just stay in San Jose. Katie, knowing me well, said she would plan something, and went to researching other beach towns we could get to by the following morning. She finally made the decision that we would go to Nosara, a spot close to Samara but with bus service very early on Friday morning. Each weekend Katie and I make a plan for the two of us, yet we maintain an open door policy. If anyone wants to join us, they are more than welcome, and if they don’t, the two of us will go and have a great time together. But the thing is, we’re really fun. And people usually end up tagging along, even if they don’t make the decision to do so until the very last minute. So Katie decided to get a room for six, saying that if worse came to worse, we would pay for it ourselves, but that chances were pretty good that people would join us in the end. “Chris, people go for us,” she explained. I agreed that indeed, people do tend to go for us, and we booked the room, crossing our fingers that there would be tickets left at the bus station.
Katie and Adam and I then went on a trek downtown to the bus station. We made the mistake of following Adam, who thought it would be a funny chiste to lead us astray. He decided to cut through the San Jose market, which is really, really cool. It’s a roofless indoor space with tons of different tiny shops, each one very close to the next. You can buy spices, fruit, rice, meat, shoes, clothing, sandwiches, jewelry, anything you can think of. It’s very fun to walk through and look at everything, unless Adam is leading you in circles through it and you can’t find your way out. Finally he let us escape and we got to the bus station. There were plenty of tickets left for the bus to Nosara (where Adam had decided to go beforehand), so Katie and I came to the conclusion, then and there, that we hadn’t been meant to go to Samara that weekend, and that it was better to try a new place anyway. Our spirits high, we then went on a mission to buy me a rash guard, because of my aforementioned surf clothing dilemma. I planned on surfing that weekend, so I wanted to be prepared. Rash guards are those really tight wetsuit looking shirts. So the three of us went to a surf shop where Katie insisted I try on and buy a bright pink rash guard, and Adam went for picking up a bunch of them, then forcing me to try them on in the dressing room. Finally, after the two of them had opened the door numerous times to hand me things while I was half naked, including when Katie threw me a skimpy white see-through tanktop accented with gold buckles, and said, “Adam says this is the best thing for you to wear surfing. Listen to him Chris, he knows things,” I found a rash guard that I could handle wearing, and we skidaddled.
So I had a rash guard and we had tickets for the bus for the following morning. Then Katie found two pairs of sunglasses she liked, after having been looking for a week for cheap non-ugly shades. We then made our way to the project and for the first time since I’ve been in Costa Rica, the bus was at the stop when we got there, and it left immediately after we got on. The project was a ton of fun that day. We ran around and got really sweaty with the kids, then it rained, cooling us off, and we spent the rest of the time chilling, drawing and chatting with them inside. When Katie and I left the project, we thought we were witnessing a miracle because the bus was AGAIN pulling up to the stop across the street just as we walked outside. We hopped on and started chatting. I then felt my phone vibrate, and looked down to see that I had an email from Columbia University letting me know whether or not I’d gotten into the School of Social Work. I couldn’t check it on my phone, so I had to wait until getting back to Maximo, a trip that involves switching to yet another bus, and normally standing the whole time in a sweaty rush hour crowded bus. Needless to say, I was anxious. We hopped off the bus past the large angel statue that serves as our landmark, and walked across the street to wait for the Pereferica, the last bus in the journey. To our utter shock, the Pereferica came around the corner just as we reached the stop! And it wasn’t crowded! And it only took ten minutes to get back when it normally takes thirty! “I think you’re gonna get into Columbia, because today is the day of luck,” Katie told me. I forced her to sprint back to Maximo with me after getting off the bus, and I ran past Adam and Flo, who were confused as to why I was acting so manic. In the computer lab, the internet was down. “UGGGHHHH!” I screamed. Luckily, Katie was on the case in the front of the school. Nate, who pretty much runs the place, was on his special-person computer behind the desk, assumedly working. “Nate, does your computer have internet?” Katie demanded.
“Yes,” he replied.”
“I’ll be needing it,” she said. “CHRISSY!”
I ran out from the computer lab, leaned over his desk, and typed in the annoying code thing, which took about ten minutes, especially considering the fact that the keys on computers in Costa Rica are completely different than those in the United States, and finding the correct way to punch a symbol is quite the task. As the page loaded, many of my friends gathered around to wait for the verdict. Finally I saw the words, “Welcome to the Fall 2010…” I proceeded to jump up and down and do what I can only imagine was a really embarrassing ugly dance, while Katie flailed about with me, laughing her head off, and Nate and Mario (another guy who works at Maximo) looked on, extremely amused and possibly a little frightened. I received congratulatory hugs and then Flo said, “So, we go and have a beer, no?”
So we went and had a beer. There is a sushi place around the corner from school, where we all gathered and I received many cheers. It was an outing during which I have never before felt so happy and content. An extremely heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders, I was being rewarded for all of my previous hard work, and I had new good friends to share the moment with. I missed my family a little though, and, as I do each time I miss my family, I took out the wallet-sized school pictures of my little siblings and showed them to everyone at the table. When Flo got a hold of them, he smiled and said, “They are looking like rabbits, no?” Everyone at the table burst out laughing, and I explained that yes, they have very large teeth, like my mother and even more so, like my grandfather, ‘Smilin’ Bob.’ Flo explained that calling children bunny rabbits is like a term of endearment in Austria, but it has not stopped all of us over the past couple of weeks from every once in a while doing our Flo voice and saying, “They are looking like rabbits, no?” The night ended with Katie and I on the street in front of our house with Matt and Mike, being told by them as they left to go out that they had changed their minds about their previous weekend plans, and would be coming with us at 5:30 in the morning. Flo had also come to this conclusion. Katie and I, having learned from the mistake of our previous Thursday night, bid them goodnight and went to sleep at a human hour, fully packed, clothes laid out, not allowing ourselves the opportunity to be sloppy and smelly on the bus the following morning. I fell off into dreamland excited for the weekend’s adventure, and very very thankful for La Dia De Suerte.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
"You Really Go for Going for It."
So a couple of weeks ago, Katie and I started to really go for it. Allow me to explain what I mean by this. The two of us have recently adopted "Go For It" as a sort of life mantra that can be applied to anything and everything. Un ejemplo: "Wow Beth, you're really GOING FOR drinking that smoothie." Un otra: "Does Matt like that girl?" "Yeah, he really GOES FOR her. He went for talking to her all night at the bar." If a friend of ours isn't sure of whether or not they'll do something, we say, "Just GO for it!" Anyway, back to my original point, which was that Katie and I really started going for everything. Normally, we save money and utilize our time wisely by coming straight home almost every weeknight after the project to eat dinner with Maybell and then hang out/read/write/drink canned Imperials on the street in front of our house, and then talk in a loud and irritating fashion, before going to sleep. But all of the sudden, this was not the case any longer.
I think it all started with Matt, our hermano. Matt's an American from Connecticut who moved into the other spare room in our house about a month ago. Matt's been living in Hawaii for the past couple of years, and has traveled extensively around the world. Matt knows things about things. In the beginning we didn't interact very much with Matt, other than while eating breakfast with him and walking to the bus in the mornings, because from the first moment he arrived here Matt was ALWAYS out, with FRIENDS, DOING THINGS. Katie and I would sit at the table chatting with Maybell in Spanish over dinner, expressing our confusion with this situation. "Amigos?" we'd ask. Who were these amigos and how had he possibly acquired them so quickly? Where did he go with them every night? Didn't he wish for his dinner to eat? Didn't he have books to read? Maybell explained to us one night, after a guy named Mike came over to the house looking for Matt (who obviously wasn't home because he was out with these mystery friends), that boys always have an easier time making friends than girls. We considered this and accepted it as truth, not allowing ourselves to entertain in our minds the possibility that perhaps we were simply being losers.
So on Monday night a few weeks ago, Matt accompanied Katie and I to the grocery store to pick up our standard six-pack of Imperial Light to be enjoyed on the street in front of nuestra casa. It was there that we ran into Mike, the guy who had come looking for Matt the week before. Mike is from Canada and is like a big sweet teddy bear. Therefore Katie and I take advantage of his sweetness by making fun of him all the time. He responds by laughing. Mike invited us back to his house to hang out on the patio with him and the other seven or so students who live with his host family. So, we went for it. Hanging out with other people on a weeknight was an interesting and exciting change! We met Mike's roommates and enjoyed a night of talking with one another. Mike lives right down the street from us, so on Tuesday night we picked up some beer again and started discussing, during the bus ride home and on the walk from the bus past his house, whether or not we should just go for it and knock on his door, inviting ourselves in. After being attacked by the three small dogs on our road that always bark like maniacs every evening when we walk by their houses, we neared Mike's house, slowing down, contemplating. Then from behind us we heard, "New York!" It was Tim, a thirty-year-old southern History teacher who lives with Mike. He is extremely funny and Katie thinks he looks like Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit. Tim invited us in, and we enjoyed another very late night on the patio with the fine folks down the street. (Dare we call them friends?) That night we played a game called, "Why is your life a joke?" Katie began, naturally, and then we went around the circle, taking turns telling one another something about our life that makes it a really large joke, i.e. embarrassing stories or situations, failed romantic attempts, etc... When it came around to me, I discovered that the things I find to be funny about my existence are, in actuality, more tragic than anything else. I even received a special cheers just for having such a sad life story, which I had tried to make humorous, but clearly failed at doing, despite my best efforts. So very early on Wednesday morning, Katie and I found ourselves collapsing into bed again, another weeknight social endeavor under our belts.
Wednesday night, we decided to swap our regular activity of watching a cheap movie for actual human interaction with our girlfriends. We went out to dinner and then later I met up with my new friend John. John and I became fast friends one day when we were the only two students in class and had to practice Spanish vocabulary with one another, under the tutelage of El Profesor Teddy (whom I truly adore). The exercise was to pick up a card with a Spanish word on it and then describe the word, in Spanish, to the other person until they’d guessed correctly. The outcome of two intermediate Spanish speakers from America trying to succeed at this exercise was, I believe, one of the funniest things Teddy had ever seen in his many, many years of teaching. After a lot of laughing and the occasional ridiculous question for Teddy such as “Como se dice ‘spazz’ en espanol?” we finally emerged from the game with a little less dignity, but more importantly as amigos. My class with Teddy is so excellent, so much so that I never dread going. Though I am improving every day, sometimes when I’m speaking for long periods of time, especially when I’m explaining something that I’m passionate about, I pretty much improvise words I don’t know by simply adding o’s to American words and changing the pronunciation of a few of the consonants. When I do this, Teddy stops me to remind me that though he wishes to congratulate me on becoming fluent in Spanglish, I will not find this talent of mine all too useful when conversing with native Spanish speakers. Anyway, the point is that I don’t dread Spanish class, but this was true more so when John was still here being dumb and American with me. Since he’s left, I am in class only with Lina, who speaks something like twenty-seven languages, and has somehow managed, after spending only three months in Central America, to surpass me in Spanish-speaking ability. Therefore, I shall never forgive John for leaving me here, the lone American ranger swimming in a sea of intelligent, experienced Europeans and Ticos.
So Wednesday night John and his girlfriend Merrick suggested going out on the town in San Pedro. I said “por que no?” and planned to meet them after dinner with my crew of ladies. The five of us guffawed our way loudly through a meal and then moved on to the second portion of the evening; the Kristy dances like a wild woman at a club under the watchful eyes of her non-Morman counterparts portion. I stole away from the dancing scene to have a quiet beer with John, Merrick, and Lina, my class nemesis whose skill in learning languages does not constitute grounds enough for overlooking how cool of a person she is. Then the dance party made its way to our bar, and our female contingent was reunited in harmony. Wednesday night ended late just as each of the previous nights had, and Thursday, our final day of the week, began soon thereafter.
On Thursday, Flo arrived. Flo is from Austria and has quickly become one of my best friends here in San Pedro, along with Matt (mi hermano), Mike (el Canadian), and Adam, a long-haired, bearded, shy but smiley Californian, who is almost entirely silent until you crack his shell and he becomes…a little less silent. Because Flo is from Austria, he has an interesting accent that, I have informed him, causes him to sound just like every villain who has ever tried to kill Harrison Ford or Steven Segal in an action movie. Every once in a while I illustrate this point by doing my best Flo voice and saying, “I do thees for my country!” to which he often responds, “yeah, yeah, just go with the Flo.” We both find ourselves to be quite funny. Flo moved into the house where Deanna and Adam live, and on Thursday Deanna brought him along to visit our project. He and I talked about life throughout the bus ride and quickly became pals. I asked him, thinking he would say no because he’d only just met Katie and I (And because we’re extremely strange people), if he wished to accompany us on our weekend vacation to Dominical, another beach town we wished to explore. He surprised us by accepting the invite.
On Thursday night, we went for it yet again. A group of our friends traveled to Ciros Jr., which has become my favorite Santa Marta weeknight location (besides, of course, the street in front of our house). Ciros Jr. is small and simple, and the super nice employees who man the bar are always playing great nineties tunes or eccentric Latino pop on the bar’s TVs. Ciros Jr. is about a fifteen-minute walk from our casa, and therefore it is the perfect location for an after-dinner outing with friends. Chatting and walking my way there with Matt and Mike has become somewhat of a weekly ritual for me. The crowd on Thursday included many volunteers from Maximo, and by the end of the (very late) night, Mike had decided to join Katie and Flo and me on our excursion to Dominical the following morning (AKA three hours later, as the bus was to leave at 6 AM). I instructed Mike to be outside his house at 5:05, and Flo at 5:10, explaining that if they weren’t there we would leave without them. Katie and I went to sleep with the lights on, thinking we would be more likely to wake quickly from our post-cerveza slumber, and I set my alarm for 4:45. I awoke to the sound of Maybell knocking on our bedroom door and telling us our taxi was outside, then looked at my phone to see that it was already 5:30. It’s a good thing that my host family doesn’t speak any English because I think the stream of profanities that flew from my mouth as Katie and I threw on whatever clothing was lying around, grabbed L-Pack and L-Pack Jr., and ran out of the house without brushing our teeth or washing our faces, might have shocked them to the point of considering kicking me out of their house. Gracias a Dios for Leo, the Maximo cab driver, because I have never before in my life seen such incredible and death defying stunts. He picked up Mike and Flo at separate houses and still managed to get us to the bus station with almost fifteen minutes to spare, and without killing any pedestrians. So the four of us climbed onto the crowded sticky bus, wishing we were sleeping in comfortable beds with air conditioning blowing on our vertical, cushioned bodies, instead of sitting on rubber-encased stained bus seats, our sweaty faces clinging to the dusty windows.
The six-hour bus-ride was pretty torturous. At the rest stop, Katie and I bought gum and popped about nine pieces into our mouths, then proceeded to drink a thousand bottles of water and to apply deoderant. We felt a little better. Towards the end of the trip we made friends with a really nice Tico who gave us excellent tips on where to go, what to see, where to surf, what types of monkeys to avoid, what to do if we ever got arrested, etc… I have so much fun having long conversations with Costa Rican people. They are generally extremely nice and patient, and so in love with their country and their culture that they are eager to share it with visitors. By the end of the bus-ride I had quickly gained the reputation in the eyes of Mike and Flo as being the group’s “Mom.” Throughout the bus-ride I frequently asked the boys and Katie if they wanted some type of snack, brandishing my plastic bag filled with a various assortment of Luna and Cliff bars as well as Costa Rican Galletas y Dulces. “Thanks mom!” they’d say before leaning back onto their seats. Flo has continued viewing me in this way, as over the past couple of weeks since he arrived here, I somehow always find myself holding his things or waiting for him to do something or helping him with his Spanish homework. Today he told me that he was missing his dog from home a bit, but then he added, “It’s OK though. I don’t have my dog, but I have my mom!”
At Dominical we checked into our hostel, which I have to say, was pretty gross. I have stayed in hostels before, but this one wins the prize for general dirtiness. We threw L-Pack and L-Pack Jr. on the bed that Katie and I were to (naturally) share, then laughed with Mike and Flo about the fact that the only room available for them was also a double bed to be shared. We walked to the beach to find Beth and Kristy, who had come the night before, and were just finishing a surf lesson. After lunch we went to the beach for a bit, and though it was a gloomy day we had a lot of fun laying in the cool water and stretching out our stiff tired bodies.
The great part about the hostel was an outdoor porch area that had these fantastic large wooden tables, perfect for playing cards. That night we played some cards and drank cocktails, then got to know one another a little better through a rousing game of “two truths, one lie,” which incidentally I had played a version of in Spanish class. It is much easier to play when its permissible to speak English. Dominical is a cool town, filled with young people and very, very guapo surfing men. It’s known for a laid back atmosphere, killer surf, and lots of marijuana smoking. Katie and Kristy and I amused ourselves all weekend by pretending to take pictures of one another or of one of the boys when a surfer at our hostel was standing behind the fake subject. So Friday night, we went for it again, making our way over to the bar that was open that night. We went for dancing together, until a pair of Ticos offered to salsa dance with Kristy and I, and I embarrassed myself fully and completely by attempting for about three minutes to ACTUALLY learn how to dance, something I will never make the mistake of doing again. I have about nine left feet. Kristy of course danced like a star with her partner, while I apologized profusely in Spanish and ran outside to sit with Flo and Mike.
At some point that night, we made our way to the beach, something that has become my ritual, whether friends want to come with me or not, every weekend when we’re in a beach town. I love to be at the beach at night, looking up at the stars, feeling my feet in the water. That night Katie and Kristy were chatting with some guys while I walked to the shore and stood letting my feet get gradually more and more buried under the sand with each gentle wave. At some point, I became fully overwhelmed with sadness. It hit me like a ton of bricks, and I felt a way I have not felt since April. I became absolutely paralyzed with sorrow, looking out over the ocean and up at the stars, wondering where my mother is and why I can’t be with her. I felt at that moment that I would rather leave this place to be where she is, but I don’t know where that is, and I don’t know how to get there. Sometimes it just seems impossible to go on living a life that is without her. But these moments come and go, usually not remaining for too long, and this time it was made better by having Katie with me. I thought I could pull myself together without crying as I walked up the beach to meet them, but as I leaned down to find my shoes, Katie looked at me and forced a hug upon me, causing me to sit down on a log and weep uncontrollably. I am very very grateful to Katie and Kristy for being there for me. When I felt better, I thought it only appropriate that we return to the bar and continue to go for it.
At the bar, I regrouped by sitting and chatting with Flo a bit. Katie and I realized upon arriving in Dominical that Flo and Mike would do their own thing and the five of us would be together when we were together. Flo in particular is a person who marches to the beat of his own drum. Oftentimes his response to inquiries is, “I am just living my life.” His consistent advice to me when I am upset or worried about something is, “I think you should just live your life.” So Flo and I chatted about how to go about living my life without my mom, and then I hit the dance floor once again. The night ended at about four in the morning on the beach, with Katie and Kristy and I sitting on a tree that stuck out of the sand, listening to some guys play the guitar and eating pineapple empanadas, which are delicious.
On Saturday I attempted to surf again with a board lent to me by the hostel, but quickly realized that there’s a reason surfers are pretty specific about what they wear in the water. A girl really can’t surf in a normal bathing suit without coming up from below the water topless or bottomless at one point or another. The waves are so strong and you move around so much on the board, that you are bound to be made nude by the elements while trying to stand up, and this creates an awkward situation, not so conducive to learning the new skill. Entonces, I let the surfing go for the weekend, and just chilled on the beach with my friends. Mike and Flo and Flo’s friend Sebastian and I played some soccer for an hour or so, which was so much fun. I’d forgotten how much I miss just messing around with a ball. Of course, I managed to give myself a black eye. How a person can do so with a soccer ball is beyond me, but if any human can, it’s clearly me. Saturday night was extremely chill. We all went out to a nice dinner, and I invited an old friend of my dad’s to join us. He lives in Dominical for part of the year, and is an extremely cool photographer surfer guy.
After dinner we chilled with some new friends at the hostel, and went to bed like normal people at a normal time. When Katie and I crawled into bed, she pulled out the package of Milanos from L-Pack Jr., and began eating them one after another, while lying back on her pillow. When I said, “Ugh, Katie! You’re gonna get crumbs all over the bed, and then bugs will come,” she looked incredulously at me, then pointed around the room, at the holes in the sheets, the ants crawling across the floor, andthe layer of grime covering every surface. “Are you kidding? Our bodies are covered in bugs as we speak! I brush my teeth out the goddamn window rather than going into the bathroom, you think Milano crumbs are going to make a difference?!” She had a point. By Sunday night Katie and I were both covered in unknown suspicious marks and bites, which I am certain were from the various insects crawling over us and biting us in our sleep. Thank God I recovered from my germaphobia a good week before going to Dominical.
Sunday was insanely hot, about ninety-five degrees, and none of us looked forward to getting back on that %^$*ing bus, but we had no choice. For some reason, from certain playas the only possible bus to San Jose comes at noon or 12:30, which is the absolute most horrendous time of day to be sitting in a crowded non-air conditioned slow vehicle. So we stood drenched in sweat at the bus stop, being annoyed with one another and searching for a good shady spot to put L-Pack on the ground for collapsing upon. I told Flo to meet us at the bus stop at 1:30 PM, and as we stood around, he came walking slowly around the corner, still wearing his wet bathing suit, completely covered in sand, barefoot, work boots in hand, and with a French Canadian guy from the hostel in tow, carrying his backpack for him. “You didn’t shower?” we asked him. “Where are your pants?”
“I don’t want to shower. And it is too hot for pants, no?” he countered. We continued eating pretzels and sweating for a little longer, as the time the bus was supposed to have arrived came and went. At some point Flo looked across the road to the outdoor shower at a surf shop and said, “I think I will shower now.” Katie and I giggled until he returned to the bus stop, covered in water.
“Now you’re just soaking wet!” I said. “You’re gonna be wet on the bus.”
“Yeah, but I don’t care,” he said.
Katie looked at him and then exclaimed, “Wow Flo, you really go for going for it.”
He took a drag of his cigarette, shrugged and said, “Yes, I think so.”
I think it all started with Matt, our hermano. Matt's an American from Connecticut who moved into the other spare room in our house about a month ago. Matt's been living in Hawaii for the past couple of years, and has traveled extensively around the world. Matt knows things about things. In the beginning we didn't interact very much with Matt, other than while eating breakfast with him and walking to the bus in the mornings, because from the first moment he arrived here Matt was ALWAYS out, with FRIENDS, DOING THINGS. Katie and I would sit at the table chatting with Maybell in Spanish over dinner, expressing our confusion with this situation. "Amigos?" we'd ask. Who were these amigos and how had he possibly acquired them so quickly? Where did he go with them every night? Didn't he wish for his dinner to eat? Didn't he have books to read? Maybell explained to us one night, after a guy named Mike came over to the house looking for Matt (who obviously wasn't home because he was out with these mystery friends), that boys always have an easier time making friends than girls. We considered this and accepted it as truth, not allowing ourselves to entertain in our minds the possibility that perhaps we were simply being losers.
So on Monday night a few weeks ago, Matt accompanied Katie and I to the grocery store to pick up our standard six-pack of Imperial Light to be enjoyed on the street in front of nuestra casa. It was there that we ran into Mike, the guy who had come looking for Matt the week before. Mike is from Canada and is like a big sweet teddy bear. Therefore Katie and I take advantage of his sweetness by making fun of him all the time. He responds by laughing. Mike invited us back to his house to hang out on the patio with him and the other seven or so students who live with his host family. So, we went for it. Hanging out with other people on a weeknight was an interesting and exciting change! We met Mike's roommates and enjoyed a night of talking with one another. Mike lives right down the street from us, so on Tuesday night we picked up some beer again and started discussing, during the bus ride home and on the walk from the bus past his house, whether or not we should just go for it and knock on his door, inviting ourselves in. After being attacked by the three small dogs on our road that always bark like maniacs every evening when we walk by their houses, we neared Mike's house, slowing down, contemplating. Then from behind us we heard, "New York!" It was Tim, a thirty-year-old southern History teacher who lives with Mike. He is extremely funny and Katie thinks he looks like Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit. Tim invited us in, and we enjoyed another very late night on the patio with the fine folks down the street. (Dare we call them friends?) That night we played a game called, "Why is your life a joke?" Katie began, naturally, and then we went around the circle, taking turns telling one another something about our life that makes it a really large joke, i.e. embarrassing stories or situations, failed romantic attempts, etc... When it came around to me, I discovered that the things I find to be funny about my existence are, in actuality, more tragic than anything else. I even received a special cheers just for having such a sad life story, which I had tried to make humorous, but clearly failed at doing, despite my best efforts. So very early on Wednesday morning, Katie and I found ourselves collapsing into bed again, another weeknight social endeavor under our belts.
Wednesday night, we decided to swap our regular activity of watching a cheap movie for actual human interaction with our girlfriends. We went out to dinner and then later I met up with my new friend John. John and I became fast friends one day when we were the only two students in class and had to practice Spanish vocabulary with one another, under the tutelage of El Profesor Teddy (whom I truly adore). The exercise was to pick up a card with a Spanish word on it and then describe the word, in Spanish, to the other person until they’d guessed correctly. The outcome of two intermediate Spanish speakers from America trying to succeed at this exercise was, I believe, one of the funniest things Teddy had ever seen in his many, many years of teaching. After a lot of laughing and the occasional ridiculous question for Teddy such as “Como se dice ‘spazz’ en espanol?” we finally emerged from the game with a little less dignity, but more importantly as amigos. My class with Teddy is so excellent, so much so that I never dread going. Though I am improving every day, sometimes when I’m speaking for long periods of time, especially when I’m explaining something that I’m passionate about, I pretty much improvise words I don’t know by simply adding o’s to American words and changing the pronunciation of a few of the consonants. When I do this, Teddy stops me to remind me that though he wishes to congratulate me on becoming fluent in Spanglish, I will not find this talent of mine all too useful when conversing with native Spanish speakers. Anyway, the point is that I don’t dread Spanish class, but this was true more so when John was still here being dumb and American with me. Since he’s left, I am in class only with Lina, who speaks something like twenty-seven languages, and has somehow managed, after spending only three months in Central America, to surpass me in Spanish-speaking ability. Therefore, I shall never forgive John for leaving me here, the lone American ranger swimming in a sea of intelligent, experienced Europeans and Ticos.
So Wednesday night John and his girlfriend Merrick suggested going out on the town in San Pedro. I said “por que no?” and planned to meet them after dinner with my crew of ladies. The five of us guffawed our way loudly through a meal and then moved on to the second portion of the evening; the Kristy dances like a wild woman at a club under the watchful eyes of her non-Morman counterparts portion. I stole away from the dancing scene to have a quiet beer with John, Merrick, and Lina, my class nemesis whose skill in learning languages does not constitute grounds enough for overlooking how cool of a person she is. Then the dance party made its way to our bar, and our female contingent was reunited in harmony. Wednesday night ended late just as each of the previous nights had, and Thursday, our final day of the week, began soon thereafter.
On Thursday, Flo arrived. Flo is from Austria and has quickly become one of my best friends here in San Pedro, along with Matt (mi hermano), Mike (el Canadian), and Adam, a long-haired, bearded, shy but smiley Californian, who is almost entirely silent until you crack his shell and he becomes…a little less silent. Because Flo is from Austria, he has an interesting accent that, I have informed him, causes him to sound just like every villain who has ever tried to kill Harrison Ford or Steven Segal in an action movie. Every once in a while I illustrate this point by doing my best Flo voice and saying, “I do thees for my country!” to which he often responds, “yeah, yeah, just go with the Flo.” We both find ourselves to be quite funny. Flo moved into the house where Deanna and Adam live, and on Thursday Deanna brought him along to visit our project. He and I talked about life throughout the bus ride and quickly became pals. I asked him, thinking he would say no because he’d only just met Katie and I (And because we’re extremely strange people), if he wished to accompany us on our weekend vacation to Dominical, another beach town we wished to explore. He surprised us by accepting the invite.
On Thursday night, we went for it yet again. A group of our friends traveled to Ciros Jr., which has become my favorite Santa Marta weeknight location (besides, of course, the street in front of our house). Ciros Jr. is small and simple, and the super nice employees who man the bar are always playing great nineties tunes or eccentric Latino pop on the bar’s TVs. Ciros Jr. is about a fifteen-minute walk from our casa, and therefore it is the perfect location for an after-dinner outing with friends. Chatting and walking my way there with Matt and Mike has become somewhat of a weekly ritual for me. The crowd on Thursday included many volunteers from Maximo, and by the end of the (very late) night, Mike had decided to join Katie and Flo and me on our excursion to Dominical the following morning (AKA three hours later, as the bus was to leave at 6 AM). I instructed Mike to be outside his house at 5:05, and Flo at 5:10, explaining that if they weren’t there we would leave without them. Katie and I went to sleep with the lights on, thinking we would be more likely to wake quickly from our post-cerveza slumber, and I set my alarm for 4:45. I awoke to the sound of Maybell knocking on our bedroom door and telling us our taxi was outside, then looked at my phone to see that it was already 5:30. It’s a good thing that my host family doesn’t speak any English because I think the stream of profanities that flew from my mouth as Katie and I threw on whatever clothing was lying around, grabbed L-Pack and L-Pack Jr., and ran out of the house without brushing our teeth or washing our faces, might have shocked them to the point of considering kicking me out of their house. Gracias a Dios for Leo, the Maximo cab driver, because I have never before in my life seen such incredible and death defying stunts. He picked up Mike and Flo at separate houses and still managed to get us to the bus station with almost fifteen minutes to spare, and without killing any pedestrians. So the four of us climbed onto the crowded sticky bus, wishing we were sleeping in comfortable beds with air conditioning blowing on our vertical, cushioned bodies, instead of sitting on rubber-encased stained bus seats, our sweaty faces clinging to the dusty windows.
The six-hour bus-ride was pretty torturous. At the rest stop, Katie and I bought gum and popped about nine pieces into our mouths, then proceeded to drink a thousand bottles of water and to apply deoderant. We felt a little better. Towards the end of the trip we made friends with a really nice Tico who gave us excellent tips on where to go, what to see, where to surf, what types of monkeys to avoid, what to do if we ever got arrested, etc… I have so much fun having long conversations with Costa Rican people. They are generally extremely nice and patient, and so in love with their country and their culture that they are eager to share it with visitors. By the end of the bus-ride I had quickly gained the reputation in the eyes of Mike and Flo as being the group’s “Mom.” Throughout the bus-ride I frequently asked the boys and Katie if they wanted some type of snack, brandishing my plastic bag filled with a various assortment of Luna and Cliff bars as well as Costa Rican Galletas y Dulces. “Thanks mom!” they’d say before leaning back onto their seats. Flo has continued viewing me in this way, as over the past couple of weeks since he arrived here, I somehow always find myself holding his things or waiting for him to do something or helping him with his Spanish homework. Today he told me that he was missing his dog from home a bit, but then he added, “It’s OK though. I don’t have my dog, but I have my mom!”
At Dominical we checked into our hostel, which I have to say, was pretty gross. I have stayed in hostels before, but this one wins the prize for general dirtiness. We threw L-Pack and L-Pack Jr. on the bed that Katie and I were to (naturally) share, then laughed with Mike and Flo about the fact that the only room available for them was also a double bed to be shared. We walked to the beach to find Beth and Kristy, who had come the night before, and were just finishing a surf lesson. After lunch we went to the beach for a bit, and though it was a gloomy day we had a lot of fun laying in the cool water and stretching out our stiff tired bodies.
The great part about the hostel was an outdoor porch area that had these fantastic large wooden tables, perfect for playing cards. That night we played some cards and drank cocktails, then got to know one another a little better through a rousing game of “two truths, one lie,” which incidentally I had played a version of in Spanish class. It is much easier to play when its permissible to speak English. Dominical is a cool town, filled with young people and very, very guapo surfing men. It’s known for a laid back atmosphere, killer surf, and lots of marijuana smoking. Katie and Kristy and I amused ourselves all weekend by pretending to take pictures of one another or of one of the boys when a surfer at our hostel was standing behind the fake subject. So Friday night, we went for it again, making our way over to the bar that was open that night. We went for dancing together, until a pair of Ticos offered to salsa dance with Kristy and I, and I embarrassed myself fully and completely by attempting for about three minutes to ACTUALLY learn how to dance, something I will never make the mistake of doing again. I have about nine left feet. Kristy of course danced like a star with her partner, while I apologized profusely in Spanish and ran outside to sit with Flo and Mike.
At some point that night, we made our way to the beach, something that has become my ritual, whether friends want to come with me or not, every weekend when we’re in a beach town. I love to be at the beach at night, looking up at the stars, feeling my feet in the water. That night Katie and Kristy were chatting with some guys while I walked to the shore and stood letting my feet get gradually more and more buried under the sand with each gentle wave. At some point, I became fully overwhelmed with sadness. It hit me like a ton of bricks, and I felt a way I have not felt since April. I became absolutely paralyzed with sorrow, looking out over the ocean and up at the stars, wondering where my mother is and why I can’t be with her. I felt at that moment that I would rather leave this place to be where she is, but I don’t know where that is, and I don’t know how to get there. Sometimes it just seems impossible to go on living a life that is without her. But these moments come and go, usually not remaining for too long, and this time it was made better by having Katie with me. I thought I could pull myself together without crying as I walked up the beach to meet them, but as I leaned down to find my shoes, Katie looked at me and forced a hug upon me, causing me to sit down on a log and weep uncontrollably. I am very very grateful to Katie and Kristy for being there for me. When I felt better, I thought it only appropriate that we return to the bar and continue to go for it.
At the bar, I regrouped by sitting and chatting with Flo a bit. Katie and I realized upon arriving in Dominical that Flo and Mike would do their own thing and the five of us would be together when we were together. Flo in particular is a person who marches to the beat of his own drum. Oftentimes his response to inquiries is, “I am just living my life.” His consistent advice to me when I am upset or worried about something is, “I think you should just live your life.” So Flo and I chatted about how to go about living my life without my mom, and then I hit the dance floor once again. The night ended at about four in the morning on the beach, with Katie and Kristy and I sitting on a tree that stuck out of the sand, listening to some guys play the guitar and eating pineapple empanadas, which are delicious.
On Saturday I attempted to surf again with a board lent to me by the hostel, but quickly realized that there’s a reason surfers are pretty specific about what they wear in the water. A girl really can’t surf in a normal bathing suit without coming up from below the water topless or bottomless at one point or another. The waves are so strong and you move around so much on the board, that you are bound to be made nude by the elements while trying to stand up, and this creates an awkward situation, not so conducive to learning the new skill. Entonces, I let the surfing go for the weekend, and just chilled on the beach with my friends. Mike and Flo and Flo’s friend Sebastian and I played some soccer for an hour or so, which was so much fun. I’d forgotten how much I miss just messing around with a ball. Of course, I managed to give myself a black eye. How a person can do so with a soccer ball is beyond me, but if any human can, it’s clearly me. Saturday night was extremely chill. We all went out to a nice dinner, and I invited an old friend of my dad’s to join us. He lives in Dominical for part of the year, and is an extremely cool photographer surfer guy.
After dinner we chilled with some new friends at the hostel, and went to bed like normal people at a normal time. When Katie and I crawled into bed, she pulled out the package of Milanos from L-Pack Jr., and began eating them one after another, while lying back on her pillow. When I said, “Ugh, Katie! You’re gonna get crumbs all over the bed, and then bugs will come,” she looked incredulously at me, then pointed around the room, at the holes in the sheets, the ants crawling across the floor, andthe layer of grime covering every surface. “Are you kidding? Our bodies are covered in bugs as we speak! I brush my teeth out the goddamn window rather than going into the bathroom, you think Milano crumbs are going to make a difference?!” She had a point. By Sunday night Katie and I were both covered in unknown suspicious marks and bites, which I am certain were from the various insects crawling over us and biting us in our sleep. Thank God I recovered from my germaphobia a good week before going to Dominical.
Sunday was insanely hot, about ninety-five degrees, and none of us looked forward to getting back on that %^$*ing bus, but we had no choice. For some reason, from certain playas the only possible bus to San Jose comes at noon or 12:30, which is the absolute most horrendous time of day to be sitting in a crowded non-air conditioned slow vehicle. So we stood drenched in sweat at the bus stop, being annoyed with one another and searching for a good shady spot to put L-Pack on the ground for collapsing upon. I told Flo to meet us at the bus stop at 1:30 PM, and as we stood around, he came walking slowly around the corner, still wearing his wet bathing suit, completely covered in sand, barefoot, work boots in hand, and with a French Canadian guy from the hostel in tow, carrying his backpack for him. “You didn’t shower?” we asked him. “Where are your pants?”
“I don’t want to shower. And it is too hot for pants, no?” he countered. We continued eating pretzels and sweating for a little longer, as the time the bus was supposed to have arrived came and went. At some point Flo looked across the road to the outdoor shower at a surf shop and said, “I think I will shower now.” Katie and I giggled until he returned to the bus stop, covered in water.
“Now you’re just soaking wet!” I said. “You’re gonna be wet on the bus.”
“Yeah, but I don’t care,” he said.
Katie looked at him and then exclaimed, “Wow Flo, you really go for going for it.”
He took a drag of his cigarette, shrugged and said, “Yes, I think so.”
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
L-Pack, Toto, and other Important Players.
So, I’ve been slacking. I sincerely apologize to you, my multitude of fans, as I know you’ve been waiting on bated breath for an update about my Costa Rican life. Let’s see, where did I leave off? Oh, two weeks ago. So the week was pretty normal and scheduled, like I said. Wednesday nights are half-off movie night in San Pedro so Katie and our three girlfriends and I headed to see “Valentine’s Day.” Seeing movies here is really fun because A) movies are really cheap (normally 4 dollars, 2 dollars on Wednesdays), and getting to do things that usually cost four times as much at home is exciting in and of itself, B) seeing a movie is a good activity here if you’ve simply become overwhelmed with the humid weather and want somewhere cold to sit for a couple of hours, and C) Watching them really helps me to learn Spanish, because the movies are in English with Spanish subtitles. I find that I learn or recollect a few new words upon each exit from the theater.
For the weekend, we chose to go to Tortuguero. Tortuguero is a small Island on the North East Side of Costa Rica, on the Caribbean coast. Tortuguero National Park is a rainforest, home to some really incredible wildlife, so the girls and I decided to have a rainforest safari adventure weekend! On Thursday night after our projects, we all went home to our separate houses to pack for the getaway. Katie and I tweak our packing habits often to try and reach maximum bus travel efficiency, so that night we made the executive decision to pack just my large hiking backpack for the two of us and to then share my smaller day backpack for on-the-bus items (books, snacks, wallets, cameras, napkins for the gross bus station bathrooms that don’t have toilet paper, etc.). This system allows for fewer bags altogether, less stuff in our hands while boarding and transferring buses, and generally less hassle. While packing our bag together in our room on Thursday night, Katie suggested that our cohabitation and simultaneous activities had led us to begin to seem like lesbian lovers, and that perhaps everyone around us (including the family we live with) may assume we are a couple. When I countered that this suggestion was insane, she responded, “Look at us! We’re packing our stuff into one big lesbian backpack!” And thus, my hiking backpack acquired the nickname ‘L-Pack.’ My small day backpack was soon thereafter dubbed ‘L-Pack Jr.’ L-Pack and L-Pack Jr. have now endured much with us, and they’ve become staples in our lives. Each of our friends are familiar with the names of our beloved satchels, and will forever address them accordingly. This past weekend, I had a moment of panic in my hostel with Katie and Kristy during which I screamed, “Where’s L-Pack Jr.?! Oh, its in the corner.”
So with L-Pack on one of our backs and L-Pack Jr. on the other, we piled into a taxi with Beth, Deanna and Kristy, and headed to the bus station on Friday morning for a 9 AM bus to Cariari- the first leg of our epic journey to the rainforest. Have I introduced these girls yet? Allow me to do so now. Deanna is from Rhode Island. She’s very small, yet eats like a 300-pound man. She enjoys dancing salsa, eating ice cream at all hours of the day, reading books about vampires on the bus until she gets too carsick and then complains about how unfair it is that she gets carsick, and a good laugh. Obviously there are other things she enjoys, but I can’t think of them right now. Beth is from Cape Cod. She has very white teeth and is always tan, which Katie and I see as a big unfair chiste, but we love her nonetheless. She enjoys planning really good weekend activities for all of us, chatting about all the gossip around Maximo (or settling for ‘hammock talk’ a new phrase we’ve coined which refers to when you simply come up with many various hypotheses for a situation or person when you truly have no idea whatsoever as to what’s going on), eating the small mini chocolate bars that they give you at the movie theaters here with your popcorn and soda, and laughing at Katie’s mean comments about me or my mean comments about Katie. Sometimes she enjoys going for a mean comment of her own. Kristy is from Salt Lake City, and yes, she’s a Morman. She has freckles and dark hair that always dries shiny and straight and perfect. The fact that Kristy is a Morman means that, indeed, she has to endure frequent questions about Mormanhood from us (mostly Katie and I), which she fields with grace and a smile on her face, even when these questions are really, REALLY dumb (i.e. ‘is it true there’s special Morman underwear?’ and ‘What exactly is meant by no sex…exactly?’) Kristy enjoys getting down on the dance floor. If there’s anyone out there who thinks that Mormans can’t seriously cut a rug, you have not yet encountered this girl in a Costa Rican bar. She also enjoys drinking Diet Cokes while the rest of us imbibe our Cervezas, eating Pringles on the long bus rides, and singing along with me when I belt out annoying songs from the 90’s during our walks around San Pedro.
The five of us get along swimmingly. On our Tortuguero weekend, we discovered the advantage of getting the entire back row of a bus. The back rows of buses here consist of about six seats all in a row, elevated, providing the seated with maximum legroom. This is key, as bus rides tend to take…well, forever. So we occupied the back row on the bus ride to Cariari, and proceeded to enjoy our little section to ourselves by taking a thousand dumb pictures of each other, eating various forms of Costa Rican junk food, telling each other about our home lives and our childhoods, and of course, interrogating Kristy about being a Morman. In Cariari, we switched to another bus that took us deep into what seemed like was already the rainforest. During a torrential downpour, we stared out the windows at miles of lush greenery, fields of banana trees, and donkeys standing out in empty fields. It became a little nerve-wracking when we realized that our bus wasn’t exactly driving anymore, but rather floating through huge puddles of muddy water, partially submerged. At one point, remembering that we had put it in storage beneath the bus, Katie said, “Oh no! Do you think L-Pack’s getting wet?” It turned out that L-Pack was fine. The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and we arrived at the river where we were to pile onto a long banana-boat type vessel filled with a bunch of other people looking just as confused as we probably did. We then embarked on the hour long trip to Tortuguero.
It was amazing! I felt like I was really on some sort of African safari. We powered through narrow muddy water canals, greenery hanging above our heads. The boat went ridiculously fast, turning swiftly around corners, and L-Pack, resting on the top of a large pile of bags, was again in danger of becoming soaked should it fall off and into the water, but it survived. When we made it to the dock of our hotel, we had been driving for an hour, had made a transfer from our boat to another and then back onto the original boat so it could make it over a tree that had fallen across the river, and had stopped to drop a woman off at her house on the side of the river, where young children in jean shorts, along with their dogs, swam out of their front doors and into the murky water.
Our hotel was very very cool. It had a dock looking out over the water, and was run by a really amazing Canadian scientist man, who knew all about the wildlife at Tortuguero. Tortuguero, not being a popular destination for young partiers in Costa Rica, was populated that weekend mostly by locals and older couple tourists, many of whom became our old people friends at the hotel. We explored the Island (which takes about 20 minutes because its so small), then enjoyed some cocktails on the dock before going to dinner together at one of the oldest and most staple restaurants in Tortuguero, where the food was good, but the waiter was a bit of a creep. He pretty much wouldn’t let us leave without promising to dance and sing with him at the bar later. Then he called me “arrogante,” to which I obviously took offense, prompting him to try and explain to me that arrogant has a different, more positive connotation in Spanish than in English. This I didn’t buy. Finally he gave us our check, and we went to one of the two bars on Tortuguero, a strange cement-floored big open dock space, where the main attraction was a projector playing music videos from the late 90’s…or Shaggy music videos circa now. Does everyone remember Shaggy? Evidently he is HUGE in Costa Rica. Here I was thinking he had died after “Mr. Boombastic,” but apparently I was mistaken.
Have I mentioned Toto yet? Toto is my Tortugueron dog. He is a mangy T-Bone hound. He has completely matted gray hair, though I’m not sure if gray was its original color, and he seems to be sort of like the type of dog as Toto from The Wizard of Oz. He is in love with me. The thing about dogs in Costa Rican beach towns is that they just roam free all the time. The dogs that do have homes and owners roam free, and the homeless mangy dogs roam free, all the time. They are happy and dirty and loved by all. My guess is that Toto was one of those homeless ones. He fell instantly in love with me, greeting me at the dock upon my arrival and hardly leaving my side throughout the entire time we were in Tortuguero. If he did disappear for some time to take care of canine business, he would reappear not too much later, as if out of mid-air. So Toto found us outside the restaurant and walked beside me to the bar, where he proceeded to lay at my feet under the table, and follow me to the bar for every new Cerveza. When we finally returned to the hotel, Toto slept outside our door. It broke my heart, and if I could have, I would have washed him and shipped him home to my Aunt Suzanne, who would not have been able to say no to giving him a nice home.
At 5:30 AM, we awoke. That’s right, 5:30 AM. Apparently, this is the best time to see wildlife. So we piled onto a small motorboat with Daryl, the aforementioned Canadian genius hotel-owner, and a large mass of old people (AKA our best friends). The sun wasn’t even fully up yet, and I had only had a chance to get a couple of sips of coffee in before boarding the boat. Needless to say, I was tired. Katie and I have realized that each and every morning here in Costa Rica, one of us is always really tired and cranky and the other is quite lively and extremely capable of irritating the tired one with her upbeat demeanor. On the morning of the boat tour, Katie was lively. So, as she sat behind my large dredlocked mane looking out over the water, something else caught her eye: a sort of bright green goo on the side of the boat. Being the mature adult that she is, she decided it would be funny, in light of my mood, to grab the goo and put it in my hair. So she went for it. And as she did she realized it was not, in fact, green goo, but rather a very rare and endangered Costa Rican tree frog, bright green with red markings, and incidentally the animal that is on the front of most Costa Rican travel books. She screamed and Daryl turned to see the creature, shouting, “Oh my goodness, this is amazing! What a great way to start the tour. Everyone, gather!” So Katie sat there stunned, and most likely relieved that she hadn’t smooshed an important endangered species onto my skull during a wildlife tour. The tour was amazing. We saw three different types of monkeys, a sloth, a few very pretty birds, and a dangerous snake. I looooved seeing monkeys in their natural habitat. It was seriously an amazing experience to be able to see a monkey sitting on a tree not ten feet away from us, without being surrounded by a bunch of obnoxious, loud teenagers on a high school field trip to the Bronx Zoo. It down poured a couple of times throughout the tour, so we all got the awesome opportunity to don special Casa Marabella Hotel rain ponchos. They were sweet.
Upon returning to the hotel, we promptly fell asleep. Seeing as Katie and I have known each other since the age of eleven, when a sleeping situation presents itself wherein two people in the group must share a bed, we are always the default choice; yet another reason Katie believes we may be misconstrued as a lesbian couple. So Katie and I sprawled on our lover’s bed, and the other three girls on their single beds, and we napped until the afternoon. At around 1, we donned high rubber boots and walked our way to the entrance of the National Park so we could try and see some more wildlife all on our own. Walking through the rainforest was incredible. I have never seen so much green in my life. The trees were gigantic, reminding me of the Banyan trees I saw in the Bahamas. I was so in awe of the plants around me that I didn’t even care if I saw any more animals, but then we stumbled across a bunch of spider monkeys hanging out in the trees above us. Moms and their babies were lounging, eating and running around on the branches. One of them was carrying her baby on her back!
At some point along the walk, Deanna got seriously attacked by a pack of wild mosquitoes. I’d say twenty to thirty mosquitoes were swarming all around her head and body. We realized then that she was the only person who had decided to make herself smell like a girl the night before by putting on perfume, and that she’d yet to shower. The bugs were definitely digging her scent. When the attacks became unbearable, she ran to the Caribbean ocean about ten yards away while I screamed, “Just jump in! Jump in with all your clothes on!” She flung her gigantic rubber boots and all her belongings into the sand and hurled herself into the really tumultuous stormy ocean. I decided to do the same, and then the others followed suit. So five fully clothed girls swam in the ocean during a rainstorm and then trudged back to the village, soaking wet, barefoot and carrying large rubber boots.
Dinner that night was fantastic, complete with TONS of food (sometimes we just forget to eat here until we are absolutely starving), a few Rum and Cokes (the official cocktail of Costa Rica—they even come pre-prepared in cans here!), and of course, Toto at my feet. We spent the rest of the evening playing cards on the porch of our hotel and looking at the pictures of the wildlife tour that the old couples had already uploaded onto their computer. I spent much of the evening telling Deanna that she had most likely contracted malaria from one or more of the evil mosquitoes and that whatever she was experiencing at the time was probably a symptom of malaria. “I keep getting such shitty cards!” she’d yell. “I’ve heard that’s an early sign of malaria,” I’d counter. The jury is still out on whether or not she has it, as with further research we found out that it can be about seven weeks before the onset of symptoms. I’ll keep you posted.
The next day it was another loooong trip home, and we stepped off the bus in San Jose into one of the hottest afternoons I’ve experienced here yet. So naturally we trudged our sweaty, tired L-Packed bodies to the movie theater and enjoyed a couple of blissful air-conditioned hours watching a movie. This time it was “The Hurt Locker,” a movie I’ve already seen but thoroughly enjoyed seeing again, especially with the Spanish subtitles, because they were so inaccurate or incomplete that it was comical. A movie like “The Hurt Locker,” which consists almost entirely of profanities and strange military slang is very difficult to subtitle in Spanish.
All in all, a fabulous girl’s weekend. I’m still about a week behind, but I will catch you up, don’t fret. Love from the land of sunshine and stray dogs,
X-Tine.
For the weekend, we chose to go to Tortuguero. Tortuguero is a small Island on the North East Side of Costa Rica, on the Caribbean coast. Tortuguero National Park is a rainforest, home to some really incredible wildlife, so the girls and I decided to have a rainforest safari adventure weekend! On Thursday night after our projects, we all went home to our separate houses to pack for the getaway. Katie and I tweak our packing habits often to try and reach maximum bus travel efficiency, so that night we made the executive decision to pack just my large hiking backpack for the two of us and to then share my smaller day backpack for on-the-bus items (books, snacks, wallets, cameras, napkins for the gross bus station bathrooms that don’t have toilet paper, etc.). This system allows for fewer bags altogether, less stuff in our hands while boarding and transferring buses, and generally less hassle. While packing our bag together in our room on Thursday night, Katie suggested that our cohabitation and simultaneous activities had led us to begin to seem like lesbian lovers, and that perhaps everyone around us (including the family we live with) may assume we are a couple. When I countered that this suggestion was insane, she responded, “Look at us! We’re packing our stuff into one big lesbian backpack!” And thus, my hiking backpack acquired the nickname ‘L-Pack.’ My small day backpack was soon thereafter dubbed ‘L-Pack Jr.’ L-Pack and L-Pack Jr. have now endured much with us, and they’ve become staples in our lives. Each of our friends are familiar with the names of our beloved satchels, and will forever address them accordingly. This past weekend, I had a moment of panic in my hostel with Katie and Kristy during which I screamed, “Where’s L-Pack Jr.?! Oh, its in the corner.”
So with L-Pack on one of our backs and L-Pack Jr. on the other, we piled into a taxi with Beth, Deanna and Kristy, and headed to the bus station on Friday morning for a 9 AM bus to Cariari- the first leg of our epic journey to the rainforest. Have I introduced these girls yet? Allow me to do so now. Deanna is from Rhode Island. She’s very small, yet eats like a 300-pound man. She enjoys dancing salsa, eating ice cream at all hours of the day, reading books about vampires on the bus until she gets too carsick and then complains about how unfair it is that she gets carsick, and a good laugh. Obviously there are other things she enjoys, but I can’t think of them right now. Beth is from Cape Cod. She has very white teeth and is always tan, which Katie and I see as a big unfair chiste, but we love her nonetheless. She enjoys planning really good weekend activities for all of us, chatting about all the gossip around Maximo (or settling for ‘hammock talk’ a new phrase we’ve coined which refers to when you simply come up with many various hypotheses for a situation or person when you truly have no idea whatsoever as to what’s going on), eating the small mini chocolate bars that they give you at the movie theaters here with your popcorn and soda, and laughing at Katie’s mean comments about me or my mean comments about Katie. Sometimes she enjoys going for a mean comment of her own. Kristy is from Salt Lake City, and yes, she’s a Morman. She has freckles and dark hair that always dries shiny and straight and perfect. The fact that Kristy is a Morman means that, indeed, she has to endure frequent questions about Mormanhood from us (mostly Katie and I), which she fields with grace and a smile on her face, even when these questions are really, REALLY dumb (i.e. ‘is it true there’s special Morman underwear?’ and ‘What exactly is meant by no sex…exactly?’) Kristy enjoys getting down on the dance floor. If there’s anyone out there who thinks that Mormans can’t seriously cut a rug, you have not yet encountered this girl in a Costa Rican bar. She also enjoys drinking Diet Cokes while the rest of us imbibe our Cervezas, eating Pringles on the long bus rides, and singing along with me when I belt out annoying songs from the 90’s during our walks around San Pedro.
The five of us get along swimmingly. On our Tortuguero weekend, we discovered the advantage of getting the entire back row of a bus. The back rows of buses here consist of about six seats all in a row, elevated, providing the seated with maximum legroom. This is key, as bus rides tend to take…well, forever. So we occupied the back row on the bus ride to Cariari, and proceeded to enjoy our little section to ourselves by taking a thousand dumb pictures of each other, eating various forms of Costa Rican junk food, telling each other about our home lives and our childhoods, and of course, interrogating Kristy about being a Morman. In Cariari, we switched to another bus that took us deep into what seemed like was already the rainforest. During a torrential downpour, we stared out the windows at miles of lush greenery, fields of banana trees, and donkeys standing out in empty fields. It became a little nerve-wracking when we realized that our bus wasn’t exactly driving anymore, but rather floating through huge puddles of muddy water, partially submerged. At one point, remembering that we had put it in storage beneath the bus, Katie said, “Oh no! Do you think L-Pack’s getting wet?” It turned out that L-Pack was fine. The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and we arrived at the river where we were to pile onto a long banana-boat type vessel filled with a bunch of other people looking just as confused as we probably did. We then embarked on the hour long trip to Tortuguero.
It was amazing! I felt like I was really on some sort of African safari. We powered through narrow muddy water canals, greenery hanging above our heads. The boat went ridiculously fast, turning swiftly around corners, and L-Pack, resting on the top of a large pile of bags, was again in danger of becoming soaked should it fall off and into the water, but it survived. When we made it to the dock of our hotel, we had been driving for an hour, had made a transfer from our boat to another and then back onto the original boat so it could make it over a tree that had fallen across the river, and had stopped to drop a woman off at her house on the side of the river, where young children in jean shorts, along with their dogs, swam out of their front doors and into the murky water.
Our hotel was very very cool. It had a dock looking out over the water, and was run by a really amazing Canadian scientist man, who knew all about the wildlife at Tortuguero. Tortuguero, not being a popular destination for young partiers in Costa Rica, was populated that weekend mostly by locals and older couple tourists, many of whom became our old people friends at the hotel. We explored the Island (which takes about 20 minutes because its so small), then enjoyed some cocktails on the dock before going to dinner together at one of the oldest and most staple restaurants in Tortuguero, where the food was good, but the waiter was a bit of a creep. He pretty much wouldn’t let us leave without promising to dance and sing with him at the bar later. Then he called me “arrogante,” to which I obviously took offense, prompting him to try and explain to me that arrogant has a different, more positive connotation in Spanish than in English. This I didn’t buy. Finally he gave us our check, and we went to one of the two bars on Tortuguero, a strange cement-floored big open dock space, where the main attraction was a projector playing music videos from the late 90’s…or Shaggy music videos circa now. Does everyone remember Shaggy? Evidently he is HUGE in Costa Rica. Here I was thinking he had died after “Mr. Boombastic,” but apparently I was mistaken.
Have I mentioned Toto yet? Toto is my Tortugueron dog. He is a mangy T-Bone hound. He has completely matted gray hair, though I’m not sure if gray was its original color, and he seems to be sort of like the type of dog as Toto from The Wizard of Oz. He is in love with me. The thing about dogs in Costa Rican beach towns is that they just roam free all the time. The dogs that do have homes and owners roam free, and the homeless mangy dogs roam free, all the time. They are happy and dirty and loved by all. My guess is that Toto was one of those homeless ones. He fell instantly in love with me, greeting me at the dock upon my arrival and hardly leaving my side throughout the entire time we were in Tortuguero. If he did disappear for some time to take care of canine business, he would reappear not too much later, as if out of mid-air. So Toto found us outside the restaurant and walked beside me to the bar, where he proceeded to lay at my feet under the table, and follow me to the bar for every new Cerveza. When we finally returned to the hotel, Toto slept outside our door. It broke my heart, and if I could have, I would have washed him and shipped him home to my Aunt Suzanne, who would not have been able to say no to giving him a nice home.
At 5:30 AM, we awoke. That’s right, 5:30 AM. Apparently, this is the best time to see wildlife. So we piled onto a small motorboat with Daryl, the aforementioned Canadian genius hotel-owner, and a large mass of old people (AKA our best friends). The sun wasn’t even fully up yet, and I had only had a chance to get a couple of sips of coffee in before boarding the boat. Needless to say, I was tired. Katie and I have realized that each and every morning here in Costa Rica, one of us is always really tired and cranky and the other is quite lively and extremely capable of irritating the tired one with her upbeat demeanor. On the morning of the boat tour, Katie was lively. So, as she sat behind my large dredlocked mane looking out over the water, something else caught her eye: a sort of bright green goo on the side of the boat. Being the mature adult that she is, she decided it would be funny, in light of my mood, to grab the goo and put it in my hair. So she went for it. And as she did she realized it was not, in fact, green goo, but rather a very rare and endangered Costa Rican tree frog, bright green with red markings, and incidentally the animal that is on the front of most Costa Rican travel books. She screamed and Daryl turned to see the creature, shouting, “Oh my goodness, this is amazing! What a great way to start the tour. Everyone, gather!” So Katie sat there stunned, and most likely relieved that she hadn’t smooshed an important endangered species onto my skull during a wildlife tour. The tour was amazing. We saw three different types of monkeys, a sloth, a few very pretty birds, and a dangerous snake. I looooved seeing monkeys in their natural habitat. It was seriously an amazing experience to be able to see a monkey sitting on a tree not ten feet away from us, without being surrounded by a bunch of obnoxious, loud teenagers on a high school field trip to the Bronx Zoo. It down poured a couple of times throughout the tour, so we all got the awesome opportunity to don special Casa Marabella Hotel rain ponchos. They were sweet.
Upon returning to the hotel, we promptly fell asleep. Seeing as Katie and I have known each other since the age of eleven, when a sleeping situation presents itself wherein two people in the group must share a bed, we are always the default choice; yet another reason Katie believes we may be misconstrued as a lesbian couple. So Katie and I sprawled on our lover’s bed, and the other three girls on their single beds, and we napped until the afternoon. At around 1, we donned high rubber boots and walked our way to the entrance of the National Park so we could try and see some more wildlife all on our own. Walking through the rainforest was incredible. I have never seen so much green in my life. The trees were gigantic, reminding me of the Banyan trees I saw in the Bahamas. I was so in awe of the plants around me that I didn’t even care if I saw any more animals, but then we stumbled across a bunch of spider monkeys hanging out in the trees above us. Moms and their babies were lounging, eating and running around on the branches. One of them was carrying her baby on her back!
At some point along the walk, Deanna got seriously attacked by a pack of wild mosquitoes. I’d say twenty to thirty mosquitoes were swarming all around her head and body. We realized then that she was the only person who had decided to make herself smell like a girl the night before by putting on perfume, and that she’d yet to shower. The bugs were definitely digging her scent. When the attacks became unbearable, she ran to the Caribbean ocean about ten yards away while I screamed, “Just jump in! Jump in with all your clothes on!” She flung her gigantic rubber boots and all her belongings into the sand and hurled herself into the really tumultuous stormy ocean. I decided to do the same, and then the others followed suit. So five fully clothed girls swam in the ocean during a rainstorm and then trudged back to the village, soaking wet, barefoot and carrying large rubber boots.
Dinner that night was fantastic, complete with TONS of food (sometimes we just forget to eat here until we are absolutely starving), a few Rum and Cokes (the official cocktail of Costa Rica—they even come pre-prepared in cans here!), and of course, Toto at my feet. We spent the rest of the evening playing cards on the porch of our hotel and looking at the pictures of the wildlife tour that the old couples had already uploaded onto their computer. I spent much of the evening telling Deanna that she had most likely contracted malaria from one or more of the evil mosquitoes and that whatever she was experiencing at the time was probably a symptom of malaria. “I keep getting such shitty cards!” she’d yell. “I’ve heard that’s an early sign of malaria,” I’d counter. The jury is still out on whether or not she has it, as with further research we found out that it can be about seven weeks before the onset of symptoms. I’ll keep you posted.
The next day it was another loooong trip home, and we stepped off the bus in San Jose into one of the hottest afternoons I’ve experienced here yet. So naturally we trudged our sweaty, tired L-Packed bodies to the movie theater and enjoyed a couple of blissful air-conditioned hours watching a movie. This time it was “The Hurt Locker,” a movie I’ve already seen but thoroughly enjoyed seeing again, especially with the Spanish subtitles, because they were so inaccurate or incomplete that it was comical. A movie like “The Hurt Locker,” which consists almost entirely of profanities and strange military slang is very difficult to subtitle in Spanish.
All in all, a fabulous girl’s weekend. I’m still about a week behind, but I will catch you up, don’t fret. Love from the land of sunshine and stray dogs,
X-Tine.
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