"Welcome to Central America."

I think it’s safe to say that my trip to Nicaragua was exactly what I needed to pull me out of whatever TV-watching, sick-feeling, halfway-mark, month of April rut I’d found myself drowning in. I was telling my stepfather that I was sure going to Nicaragua would jolt me out of my funk and he said, "Well sure. I've always found that extreme poverty and political unrest make me feel much better." But in all seriousness, there’s nothing like a genuine adventure to open one’s eyes to the glory of the world, and though short, my time in Nicaragua turned out to be one of the most interesting adventures of my life.

When traveling or living in Costa Rica for up to or over ninety days, immigration laws require you to leave the country and stay in another country for seventy-two hours before going back to Costa Rica. Katie and Adam were approaching their ninety-day marks, so we made the executive decision to travel to Nicaragua for about four days. Nicaragua borders Costa Rica to the North, and we’d heard that it had some really beautiful beaches for Adam to surf, and that it was also much cheaper than Costa Rica, the most expensive country in Central America. We decided to start in San Juan Del Sur, a small coastal village popular for travelers and surfers, and to just decide day by day what to do and where to go next. Going with the flow is a skill I’ve acquired since coming here. This may sound surprising to those of you who are familiar with the irrational and unyielding conviction I maintain to always be in control of the things and people around me. But when my friends and I are traveling somewhere together, I don’t really care where we go. Literally EVERYWHERE is beautiful, and when we’re experiencing new places and things, we’re always laughing and having a good time. So when Adam said he’d heard San Juan Del Sur was cool, Katie and I concluded, “OK, let’s just go for it.”

I know what you’re thinking: ‘Wait, Adam went with YOU TWO? And no one else? The poor thing.’ And you are correct in this assessment. Because Mike bailed on us last minute (in true Mike fashion) and ACTUALLY went home to Canada, and because Flo had to stay home to deal with some sort of stomach virus, the three of us were on our own, making this the smallest weekend traveling crew to date. So silent Adam and loud irritating us booked seats on the 6 AM Tica Bus from San Jose, Costa Rica to Managua, Nicaragua for Friday morning, April 9th.

I can’t say Katie and I slept much on Thursday night. We were pretty busy making millions of crunchy peanut butter and guava jelly sandwiches for the trip (nine, to be exact), as well as packing, as efficiently as possible, L-Pack Jr. and Katie’s backpack, which we now call “Danny Boy.” At 4:30 AM Leo met us outside our house, then we picked up Adam and his surfboard. I almost feel like Adam’s surfboard has somehow become a human being; another member of our group. I’m always expecting its presence and helping Adam maneuver or care for it, and Katie and I constantly take it into consideration. If someone suggests getting a cab for four people we say it won’t be possible, because of Adam’s surfboard. I think it needs a name, but I haven’t quite come up with one yet. I’m pretty sure it’s male. One of these days the perfect name will just come to me, perhaps in a dream. On second thought, it just came to me. Katie and I have officially named Adam’s surfboard Julius. Allow me to explain: Because the bus trip was international, we were required to bring our passports, and therefore we all got a chance to seriously study each other’s passport photos and information. Unfortunately for Katie and I, this meant we finally had to show other human beings the pictures of our fat ugly pre-teen faces. Katie’s is particularly embarrassing because in hers she is wearing, for some odd reason, a Burberry scarf and only one earring. Unfortunately for Mike (who was originally going to come with us) this meant exposing a passport photo that has an uncanny resemblance to one of those mug shots you see on True Crime documentaries about serial pedophile rapist/murderers. Unfortunately for Adam, it meant we all became aware of the fact that his middle name is Julius. So obviously, we’ve been making fun of him for this, at least once a day, since our moment of revelation. Katie thinks that since his surfboard is silent just like he is, its name should be something reminiscent of Adam---and what could be more fitting than his Roman middle name?

So the four of us (Adam, Julius, Katie and I) hopped on a bus complete with accommodations that put our usual weekend traveling vessels to shame. We were basically in the lap of luxury. Air conditioning! An absolute phenomenon. Cushioned seats! Incredible. Adam of course sat silently and separately from us for pretty much the duration of the trip, without feeling the need to converse. I slept for most of it (6 AM plus no way of drinking coffee equals me sleeping, as most of you know), much to Katie’s chagrin, because I tend to be napping when she’s wide awake on bus trips, pleading with me unrelentingly to play “TTT”, until I explain to her that no one over the age of eight should have the desire to play Tic-Tac-Toe, as no one over the age of eight can possibly lose Tic-Tac-Toe, and therefore there must be something wrong with her. “But I love TTT!” she says, then often proceeds to convince Adam to play with her, unless she moves on to reading whatever Nicholas Sparks/James Patterson novel she’s currently obsessed with, while I get to sleep a little bit. I woke up on and off, and five hours later, we’d reached the border.

There’s a lot of getting off the bus and getting back on the bus that occurs when crossing the border. It’s quite annoying, especially after your body acclimates to the air conditioning. Upon exiting the first time, we were immediately swarmed by about ten men holding huge wads of Cordobas (the Nicaraguan currency) and big calculators, offering us their exclusive exchange rate. It’s seriously a challenge just to get off the bus and pass by them. Then we waited in a line for about half an hour, which in hindsight wasn’t that bad at all, but I obviously complained because I had still yet to be caffeinated. Also, it was ninety degrees outside. Customs consisted of a stamp and a wave. No words were exchanged. It was honestly simpler than returning to NY from a foreign country, armed with my U.S. passport, a Yankees hat on my head.

We got off the bus again about half an hour later so they could process our passports and recheck the under-the-bus luggage. I sat on the concrete ground sulking because I didn’t understand what was going on. Did I say earlier that I no longer feel the need to have control over all things going on around me? I lied. So while I sweated profusely and searched for jugo de pina, Katie befriended a couple that would become two of my favorite people I’ve met since arriving in Costa Rica: Catherine and Tom. Catherine would later tell me that after getting to know me and seeing how eager I always am to really chat up with strangers, she will be forever offended that I didn’t try to talk with them immediately, and instead chose to sit quietly on the concrete drinking my pineapple juice in a pool of my own sweat. Obviously, she doesn’t understand the true horrors of caffeine and control addiction.

By the time we’d gotten back on the bus and traveled to Rivas, I’d pulled myself out of my funk and talked with Catherine and Tom, who were heading to San Juan Del Sur as well. Catherine is a Canadian and Tom is from England. Catherine could not fit in better with Katie and I. She really likes to chat, she has the same opinion as we do on life’s most important matters such as which types of people and things are either fantastic or annoying, and she enjoys a good interpretive dance at Nicaraguan bars. Tom is pretty much the British version of Adam. He enjoys being silent most of the time, making himself laugh with his own jokes, and taking absurd amounts of pictures of the sunset. We would discover each of these things about them during the next few days of spending genuine, solid, quality time together.

Rivas is a beautiful little city. There’s something distinctly different about it in comparison to towns I’ve visited in Costa Rica. The flat wide cobblestone streets are very clean, and the houses that line the streets are all brightly colored. There’s something kind of European about it. We trekked with Catherine and Tom about ten blocks to the Chicken Bus station. Chicken Buses are what they call the local buses in Nicaragua. They’re old American yellow school buses with brightly painted designs and pictures on them. From the few I’ve experienced, Chicken buses are usually packed and sweaty, and vendors are allowed to jump on and walk up the aisle, selling food to passengers in between stops. There is usually a man besides the driver who works on the bus, collecting the money and hoisting people in through the back door of the school bus that is always just dangerously ajar, or helping old women unload their live chickens or five pound bags of rice or whatever other strange and gigantic grocery items they’ve decided to bring on board.

San Juan Del Sur was absolutely gorgeous. I loved it. The beach wasn’t actually good for swimming or surfing because the waves were small and it was more like a marina, with sailboats and fishing boats anchored right off the shore, but we didn’t really care. On our first evening we walked alongside the ocean, watching groups of teenagers play soccer in the sand, and I immediately felt at peace. The town was small and tranquila and it seemed like a happy community of locals as well as travelers. There were a bunch of hostels and hotels all over the place, and about six bars and restaurants right on the water. The five of us checked into Rebecca’s Inn, a house owned by Marta, a woman in her sixties who really liked to chat up. It was kind of like staying with a Spanish-speaking grandmother. She cared about our wellbeing, but also enjoyed disciplining us and being aware of what was going on with the people in her house at all times. We were told once to quiet down in the common area because other guests were resting. One night a young woman was crying in her room after having argued with her boyfriend. Marta was very distraught, so she obviously butted in and tried to calm the girl down. Afterwards Katie and I gossiped with Marta in the kitchen about what had gone on, and then tried to offer the girl help, because she was American and Marta couldn’t speak English. When the girl was rude to us and basically told us to mind our own business, we proceeded to gossip with Marta more, this time about the girl’s bad attitude.

We met a lot of people during our three days in San Juan Del Sur, and really enjoyed chatting up with strangers and learning their life stories. Katie and I share a passion for doing this. We had a couple of dinners with Catherine and Tom that lasted about three hours, and I feel like I know them both so well after having spent only a few days together. I’ve found that there’s something about traveling and being consistently outside of your comfort zone that seems to give you an open-ness you don’t have in normal, everyday life. I think if you truly want to get to know new people and have real experiences and conversations with them, you have to simply cut the crap. With Catherine and Tom, and with other people I’ve met, I just put all of my cards on the table up front. The conversations that ensue tend to far surpass those that are surface and more guarded.

We met a ton of people at the pool. And by the pool, I mean the most beautiful pool I’ve ever been to. On Saturday upon waking up after a long day of traveling and a fun girl’s night out, Katie and I decided we’d prefer not to spend half an hour on a shuttle to the nearest beach. We pretty much knew we couldn’t even stand the sight of another bus. Instead we asked Marta where there was a pool we could just relax by for the day. She directed us to Pelican Eyes, a really fancy hotel at the top of a tall steep hill up the road. If anyone reading this is a real adult with real money, I’d suggest it for your next vacation. Getting to the pool required a trek. We could have taken two to three breaks on the way up those never-ending hillside steps, but we were so hell-bent upon submerging our sweaty bodies in water that we persevered without pause, and found ourselves finally in some sort of paradise. The large infinity pool overlooked the ocean in front and mountains on all sides. Vines and flowers grew all over the wooden poolside canopy, and twenty-somethings just like us who clearly couldn’t even dream of affording to actually stay at the hotel were swimming and basking all over the place. When we inquired about the situation, a Canadian guy told us that the new hotel owners had decided to just keep the pool open to the public, as most people end up buying a drink or two if they hang out long enough. So we were free to chill all day; and we did just that. We chatted up with tons of people, some of them travelers passing through, others those who had settled for the time being in San Juan Del Sur. I met a local guy named Josue who remembered serving us dinner the night before, and he and I ended up being friends for the remainder of my time there. So two days in a row, Katie and I hung out at that pool and didn’t feel the least bit lazy or bad about it. We go to beaches every weekend, and this place was simply too much fun and too visually gorgeous to pass up.

Fittingly, the most popular bar in San Juan Del Sur was called the Iguana. Evidently wherever we go, you can locate us somewhere with ‘Iguana’ in its name. There was also a bar just down the road that had a beachfront area, complete with chairs to sit on and look up at stars, in front of a fire. Katie likes to make fun of me for always “being creepy and alone” at night, looking up at the stars or dipping my feet in the water when we are in some sort of beach social setting, but I don’t care how creepy it is. Somehow I find the time to do this every night, no matter where we are or whom we’re with. There was also a bar called the Crazy Crab, with a large dance floor. This was where Katie and Catherine and I really went for things on our last night in San Juan Del Sur, while Adam secretly videotaped us with Katie’s camera. However, I’m seriously considering burning the evidence, as psychotic interpretive dance is a lot more hilarious and entertaining when you’re the one performing it with your friends, but rather horrifying to actually view, something I discovered yesterday upon watching them for the first time.

On Friday night Katie and I had a girl’s night out, as Adam and Catherine and Tom were all tired. So we just went for it at the Iguana. Shockingly, I ran into someone who went to my high school. In Nicaragua. What are the odds? He wasn’t a friend of mine by any means. In fact, I don’t think we ever once spoke to one another throughout high school. But to me it was funny and worth it enough to walk up to him and say, “Excuse me, did you go to Fieldston?” He and his friend got a kick out of what a small world this is, and we hung out a bit with them. Katie and I danced like spazzes, chatted with our New York friends, and met some other people as well.

The following night, Adam decided to man up and come along with us for some fun. Well, first there was a blackout. Adam and Katie and I were hanging out in the common area outside of our room when all of a sudden the lights turned out. The electricity was out throughout the entire town, though we were informed that some of the key bars and restaurants had generators. Marta went around the house lighting candles, and Adam and Katie and I decided to wait out the blackout before venturing out on the town. Marta let us know, however, that the blackout could last anywhere from forty minutes to four hours. So Katie swung in the hammock, I rocked in the rocking chair, Adam lied on the couch, we made some rum and cokes, and had a nice long talk. It’s possible that Adam opens up better in the dark. Anyways, eventually we decided we shouldn’t wait any longer for the power to go back on because it may never happen, and Katie and I conceded to getting ready for a night out by candlelight. Now for me, this entailed changing out of my bathing suit into jean shorts and a t-shirt, making Adam take a couple of digital photos of me, then looking at them to make sure I didn’t look wholly horrendous. Katie, on the other hand, insisted upon showering. I took full advantage of this situation by attacking her in the shower with my camera a couple of times while she shampooed in the pitch black. There was screaming involved, but the result was a couple really priceless pictures. Adam lied around on the bed while we “got ready,” most likely dreaming about having some sort of male companion.

So the three of us went back to the Iguana, where Adam watched us dance like idiots. I spent time talking to lots of different people that night, just sharing my experiences of traveling and of living in a different country with various world wanderers. Of course at the end of the night I found myself sitting on a beach chair alone in front of the bar, while Katie and Adam chatted it up with people, looking up at the stars and thinking about my mom. I swear I don’t consciously try to become melancholy and contemplative or just plain sad at the end of the night, but somehow, this just seems to be how it works out a lot of the time these days. Sometimes the melancholy is an OK feeling, like the kind of feeling you get from acknowledging what a great time you’re having somewhere, and thinking about the good things in your life and the good aspects of the world as a whole, but then reflecting on how sad it is that someone isn’t there with you to enjoy all the good things, or how sad it is that something in your life didn’t exactly work out the way you would have liked. You feel lonely even while feeling happy. This good kind of melancholy is a mix of happy and sad, a sentimental, yearning loneliness you feel while still wanting to have a smile on your face. But then sometimes I’m just plain sad; the kind of sad where I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without her, where the world seems empty. The kind where I’d rather just throw in the towel. I think that night, in front of the bar on my beach chair, it was the OK melancholy that I was feeling.

Anyway, as I sat there looking up at the stars, I felt my chair move a couple of times, but I didn’t bother to turn around because I assumed it was just drunk people accidentally bumping me. Plus, I was in my melancholy solitary zone. But when it happened a couple of more times I finally looked behind me and saw Josue. He was laughing at me and accusing me of being asleep. I talked with him in Spanish for a couple of minutes, insisting that I wasn’t asleep, just looking, but that sleep wasn’t the worst idea. He tried to convince me to go to the Crazy Crab, but I got Katie and Adam, and the three of us headed back to the Inn, where we made Adam have a girl slumber party with us. When we all crawled into our separate beds, Katie said, “Adam, we’re gonna chat up now.” Katie and I proceeded to spin our bodies around so our faces were at the foot of our beds, in order to look at each other closely. Adam didn’t budge.
“ADAM, FLIP YOUR BODY AROUND!” Katie insisted.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because we’re chatting up! Duh, whaddayathink?” she asked.
And that’s how we turned Adam into a girl. With forceful verbal commands. The three of us slept very well after a good long chat.

The next day we all went to the pool! Adam decided that because the waves weren’t supposed to be very good, he could spare one day of surfing to chill with us, and Catherine and Tom were more than happy to hang out by the pool. We laughed all day long together. At one point, Catherine expressed how much she hates being called Cathy, so Katie and I have referred to her as Cathy ever since. Because Katie’s name is Katherine as well, they have now become the two Kathy’s.

Later in the afternoon when I was reading my book and attempting to have some alone time (which is really not possible because any time I lay down to read my book, Katie says, “Chrissy, what do you think you’re doing? I really wanna chat up!”), Cathy asked me, “Chris, what do you think of houses that cost twenty dollars a night?”
I looked up from my book. “Well, in what context?”
“The context doesn’t matter,” she explained. “Just answer me this: how would you feel about staying in a house for twenty dollars a night? If that house was pretty much on a beach?”
“I mean, I guess I’d go for it,” I answered.
“Good! So it’s settled then,” Cathy concluded. “You guys are coming with us tomorrow.”
I didn’t really ask where, because I didn’t really care. A house near the beach sounded all right to me.

When we were pooled out, the five of us enjoyed an amazing cheap dinner and then sat beside the beach before planning on going to the bar. Katie and Cathy were drinking the rest of the rum we’d purchased the night before, but I really felt like a beer, so I told them I would run to the bar and purchase one, then come back. At the bar, Josue was working, though it was super slow so the two of us hung out at a table for a while and talked. I’ve really gotten to the point now where I can have full conversations in Spanish with people and truly get to know them and learn about their lives. It’s an awesome feeling, and so excellent because it means that I’m not limited by a language barrier in terms of the people I can get to know while I’m here. The two of us were talking for a while, and then my friends showed up. The rum was gone, and they had serious intentions of playing cards. So we went upstairs and after a few rounds of some sort of inferior card game that I can’t recall, I introduced everyone to Egyptian Rats. Anyone out there who has played this phenomenal card game knows that it is simply the best on Earth. And also that I am the master of it. I have no mercy on those I play this game with, not even my eight-year-old-sister. So after I’d beaten everyone (naturally), I went back to the bar to chat with Josue some more. At one point Katie came up to me and told me, half-kidding, that I needed to go for dancing with her or chatting with her or something. She jokingly said she was offended that I was chatting with a man at the bar instead of her and our friends. Because she was “mad” at me, she leaned in and whispered in my ear: “I just want you to know that if you weren’t wearing a dress right now, I would give you the worst wedgie of your life. Seriously….SUCH a wedgie.” Then she walked away, leaving me in hysterics, trying to explain the word “wedgie” to Josue, a word, I am sure, has no direct translation.

Eventually we all made our way to the Crazy Crab. This is where the interpretive dancing comes into the story. There’s not much I can say about it other than we REALLY went for something on the dance floor. I believe that there’s a sense of freedom like none other that comes from being in a different country, with new people, where no one really knows who you are. And this sense of freedom allows me personally to feel comfortable doing things I don’t do at home, most notably dancing. Actually, dancing is really the only example of this I can think of at the moment. I don’t dance at home. Let me be clear: I don’t dance ANYWHERE with men, not even in Central America, thousands of miles from home. Me dancing with a man is a disaster, because doing so usually requires some form of actual dancing skill set. But I will dance here like a complete crazy person with my girlfriends, and I have quite a lot of fun doing so. Anyway, the Kathy’s and I danced up a storm until it was extremely late and we’d scared everyone else off the dance floor. After Catherine was officially tired out, and Adam and Katie were ready to leave as well, I’d found myself sitting at a table outside the bar, talking to Josue again. So I gave my keys to Adam and Katie and told them I’d see them in a bit.

He and I ended up leaving the bar, walking to the beach, and talking for the rest of the night. I didn’t notice the time flying by, until I looked up at the sky and realized it was morning. Josue walked me back to the Inn, and as we reached the door I realized I’d given the one set of keys to Adam so many hours before, and was locked out. I dreaded rapping on the door and waking Marta up, knowing she would without a doubt judge me for coming home in the morning, as only a grandmother can. So I told Josue I’d sit outside for a little while longer. With any luck someone else at the Inn would wake up, and I could slip in without disturbing Marta. He sat with me for another half hour, then begged me to promise I’d knock on the door soon, explaining he really had to get home and sleep a little before work. We said goodbye and I watched him walk up the street, realizing I really liked him and was sad to see him go.
He turned around once and called over his shoulder, “Adios Cristina, el frijole!” (I’d explained to him earlier that my nickname as a child was ‘Christine the Bean’).
“Bye, Josh!” I called after him (He’d told me his name was the Spanish version of Joshua).
It’s strange meeting people you feel close to almost immediately, and knowing you most likely will never see them again.

Eventually I got up the courage to knock on the door to the Inn. Marta came to it in her bathrobe, looked me up and down in exactly the disapproving manner I had expected (seeing as I was still wearing my dress from the night before), accepted my stream of apologies, and went back to bed. Adam came to the door to our room still asleep, as far as I could tell, and I collapsed into bed, noticing the time: a little after 6 AM.

I awoke to Catherine bouncing up and down on my bed, and to a muffled yet forceful interrogation from the blanket-covered lump next to me.
“And what time did YOU get home, Chrissy?” Katie asked, an unmistakable mischievous laugh in her voice.
“Ugh, like two and a half hours ago,” I groggily responded, looking at the clock and wishing I was still in dreamland.
“Chris had sex with a local!” Katie cried.
“I DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH HIM!” I answered, indignantly. “He was just really nice. We walked on the beach…we chatted.”
Though Katie and everyone else in this world knows that I am not one to sleep with people I’ve just met, she seemed to think accusing me of doing so was TERRIBLY funny, and Adam, Catherine and Tom followed suit.
“You definitely went for something!” Catherine said.
“I didn’t! It was innocent! We just talked! En espanol!” I shouted.
“I bet Marta had no idea she was housing the town bicicleta,” Katie said, laughing hysterically. Katie really likes to crack herself up.
“Whatever, I need coffee,” I answered, giggling and throwing a pillow at her.

Catherine informed me that we had to be on our way to the 20-dollar-a-night house soon. In less than an hour we were to catch the Chicken Bus to Rivas, in order to meet some guy who would take us to our final destination. This did not thrill me. Sleeping for less than three hours, jumping out of bed to quickly pack and organize my things, and then standing on a sweaty crowded school bus is really not my idea of a fun set of activities...most especially not without the proper amount of caffeine. I could have gone back to bed for hours. Instead I told Adam and Tom and Catherine that if they wanted Katie and I to get a move on quickly, the best way would be for them to get the hell out of our room for half an hour. The place really looked like some sort of hurricane had blown through it.

So I endured a slew of jibes from Katie about “really GOING for things with a local,” a particular brand of teasing which has yet to cease to this day, and we ran to the café around the corner to buy a smoothie for Katie and a strong coffee for me. Then we dragged ourselves to the bus, beginning to sweat immediately, and hopped on through the open back door. My God, did that bus fill up. I stood in the back corner with Adam, our bags piled next to us, watching a couple of drunk guys get on, Tonas (the official beer of Nicaragua) in their hands. It was 10 AM on a Monday. As I finished my coffee and the bus started moving, I looked out the window, appreciating the breeze on my face and feeling happy. I had no idea where I was going, but I was ready to go there; ready for the next adventure.

One of the very drunk men, the one wearing dark sunglasses and a red man tanktop who had annoyed Katie by stepping on her toes so many times that she’d moved up to another seat, turned to Adam. He pointed to the speaker above Adam’s head and started explaining to him in Spanish to do something with it. When Adam looked confused, the man said, “The wires. Plug in the wires.” He took a swig of his Tona, and grinned at Adam. Adam proceeded to take the thin black wire and the thin red wire that protruded from the side of the dusty old speaker, mangled copper hanging out of both ends, and attempt to put the broken pieces together in some way, awaiting the man’s approval. I felt like I was in that movie Speed with Keanu Reeves, but this time Adam was Keanu Reeves and it was up to him to disable the bomb that was surely going to blow up the Chicken Bus and every person in it the moment we went slower than 50 MPH (A speed that in reality, the Chicken Bus driver has never even dreamt of exceeding). Instead, after some fiddling with the broken wires and much prompting from Red Mantank, loud music started blasting out of the speaker. Spanish hip-hop. A grinning Adam and I exchanged high fives and started bouncing around. Red Mantank smiled at us, raised his can of beer and said, “Welcome to Central America.”

Semana Santa, Aventura Style.

Beth left us! And so did Daniel. Both of them went back to the U.S, leaving Katie and I feeling a bit at a loss. We had a nice going away dinner for Beth at an Italian restaurant down the street from school, where Katie pretended it was her birthday so she could get a free piece of Tiramisu. Then Beth, Katie, Daniel, Adam and I went to the bar on the College Street that Katie and I had begun our journey in, and sent her off with a bang (AKA a very large “hulk” green beer). The next day Katie took Dee to the airport and said goodbye to him as well. But we couldn’t feel sad for very long, because only a couple of days later it was Semana Santa, and time for our adventure with Tio Pedro!

“Semana Santa” is Costa Rican for the weekend before Easter; Thursday through Saturday, to be exact. Semana Santa is an extremely busy weekend here because everyone has off from work and most everyone tries, if they can, to go away somewhere for the weekend. Katie and I decided we would celebrate Semana Santa by going to Monteverde with Tio Pedro! Monteverde is a little west of San Jose and high up in a group of visually breathtaking mountains. Monteverde is known for its adventure travel activities, most notably the wide array of canopy tours it has to offer. The original canopy tour (ziplining from platform to platform through the jungle) was invented in Monteverde, but since that time about six more have sprung up in the Monteverde, and hundreds more all over Costa Rica. A bunch of different people told me that the Selvatura Canopy Tour in Monteverde is hands-down the best one, so I booked it for the three of us. I was also told by Tio Pedro that he would be happy to pay for our lodging, so I booked us a sweet, eco-friendly, slightly fancy lodge as well.

So here’s the thing about Semana Santa. From Thursday through Saturday, it’s illegal throughout the country to buy and sell alcohol. This is the only time that buying alcohol isn’t possible in Costa Rica. I know this because I learned it the hard way: One Saturday, Katie and I were planning a lazy outdoor lounging session for the following day, when it suddenly struck me that perhaps it may not be possible to buy beer in Costa Rica on Sundays, as its even illegal to buy beer in New York on Sundays, and this is a country with a high percentage of Catholics. So I decided to ask my host dad Giovanni about it. However, I made a grave error. When I said in spanish, “Are we allowed to buy beer on Sundays here?” instead of using the proper word for Sundays (domingos), I accidentally said the word for breakfasts (desayunos). So Giovanni thought I was asking him if Katie and I were allowed to buy and drink cerveza for breakfast. This, of course, was quite embarrassing. I quickly cleared up the error, and then later told Maybell about it. She thought this was quite entertaining. Anyways, Giovanni eventually informed me that of course you can buy beer on Sundays here. “Cuando quieras! Pura vida!” he said to me. But not during Semana Santa. On that Thursday, the counters and fridges with alcohol are covered in sheets, and there is no getting around the law. The ironic thing is that because of this law, people stock up so heavily on the Wednesday before that they go overboard with their weekend stash, knowing they can’t buy any, and everyone ends up drinking much more during Semana Santa than they regularly do. Of course, on the Wednesday before leaving for Monteverde, Katie and I forgot to purchase alcohol for our trip, and this slightly distressed us. Tio Pedro, who does not drink alcohol, informed us that perhaps it was a bad sign that we had taken to drinking a cocktail or a beer almost every night. This we had not previously considered.

We enjoyed the three-hour road trip together, listening to Katie’s jams. We really went for the 90’s tunes that day in the car, singing along to all of the songs that brought us back to our middle school days. At one point, after listening to what may have been our fourth Nsync song and then discussing how endlessly wonderful Justin Timberlake is, Katie pondered: “It must have been pretty immasculating to be the other members of Nsync.” I agreed. Tio Pedro laughed at us. The last hour of the trip was truly amazing, as our trusty jeep climbed higher and higher and we looked out over the mountains, at the slowly setting sun. Tio Pedro pulled over a number of times so we could get out and take some scenic pictures. It’s started to really annoy me that none of the pictures that I take here will ever, ever do the real life images justice. They’re simply impossible to capture.

When we arrived at our hotel, we made a pleasantly surprising discovery! Sitting down to dinner together, we were informed that wine is permitted to be consumed during Semana Santa, but no liquor or beer. I tried to ask our waiter what the logic was behind this, but he had no idea. I assume there’s something religious going on there. Either way, Katie and I delightedly sipped white wine with our meal. We went to bed pretty soon after dinner that night because we had to wake up super early to do our canopy tour the next morning. Tio Pedro seemed quite happy to have his own Nsync-free room for the night. Katie and I fell asleep listening to jams and chatting up.

So the next morning we awoke bright and early and got a shuttle to the Canopy Tour headquarters place where they fitted us with awesome neon helmets and harnesses. Then we walked for a while through the woods to the first platform, where a couple of guys demonstrated how to properly sit in our harness and hold onto the cable, etc… A group of older Dutch people on some sort of nature tour were in our group, and they simply would not stop talking throughout the safety demonstration, until I actually felt the need to shush them. I don’t like shushing old people, but sometimes it just has to be done. When we’d learned all there was to learn, we climbed up the staircase that led to the first platform, and then we were off! There were EIGHTEEN different platforms, with eighteen different zip lines through the cloudy forest, each different and exciting in its own way. Some were higher up than others, some were faster, some went on for long, long distances. The final zip line was incredible. Katie and I had to be strapped together, and it went on for about a mile long, whipping REALLY fast over the top of the rainforest. It was beautiful.

After all of the zip lines were done, the final part of the canopy tour was a “Tarzan swing.” To get to the swing, we first walked through the jungle over this really cool old suspension bridge, then around the corner to where there was a tall wooden staircase leading up to another platform, this one very high up. When we got up to the top of the platform there were two men waiting for us to strap a thick rope to our harness, after which we were supposed to jump off, swing through the air while, if the mood struck us, making the “OWEEOWEEEOOOO” sound that Tarzan makes. After you’ve swung back and forth a bunch of times, two men standing on the ground below have the unfortunate task of stopping you by grabbing your legs or using this big rubber contraption that they stand in your way to keep you from swinging anymore.

So Tio Pedro went first, and when I watched him jump, standing behind him atop the platform, I realized for the first time how high up we were. I have no concept of heights and measurements, but suffice it to say that it was high. When it came to be my turn I had grown a bit nervous, and as the men hooked the rope onto my harness, I started questioning them about the correct way I should jump—should I aim to jump out, or just sort of fall off the ledge? They dismissed me completely and basically told me to just jump already. When I got to the edge and they did a countdown of “3-2-1”, I hesitated and asked for thirty seconds to get my nerves up. This is when one of the men, the one standing to my left, tried to PUSH me off of the ledge. Up until that point, I’d been speaking Spanish with all of the people working the canopy tour, but when that guy tried to push me off the fucking ledge I turned to him and said, “EXCUSE ME, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? DID YOU JUST SERIOUSLY TRY TO PUSH ME? GIVE ME A SECOND, PLEASE!” Katie and Tio Pedro thought this was absolutely hilarious. I, however, was not thrilled. Sometimes I just need a few seconds. Anyways, I did eventually get my nerves up to jump, and it was awesome! Quite the rush. I swung so high that I was again above the treetops, and something about it reminded me of being a little kid again, back in that first house we lived in on the lake, swinging on that rope swing my mom made that she’d hung from the tree at the top of the hill next to our house. As a four year old, when I swung on it, I swung all the way above the porch and over the lake, feeling like I was flying. Standing on the ground watching Katie swing was really funny because it was from a new perspective…and because she screamed like a girl.

After we had all done the Tarzan Swing, the three of us happily walked back through the woods to the lodge, anxious to remove our harnesses, and feeling surprisingly exhausted. Though it hadn’t required a ton of actual physical exertion, it definitely still took it out of us somehow. So we decided to go have a nice lunch together and to then relax back at our hotel for a bit. I felt like Katie really got an idea of what Tio Pedro and my dinner dates are like after having lunch with us. Though we laugh a lot, Tio Pedro and I also talk about very serious things a lot of the time. Like family and history and some of those harsh, tragic things people avoid talking about a lot of the time because they’re uncomfortable. Tio Pedro and I talk about these things nonchalantly, because its just better that way. We keep it real. Katie also has a tendency to keep it real, so we had a really nice long lunch talking about anything and everything, then headed back to our hotel, where Katie and I proceeded to nap. I never nap at home, and I think that’s the third time I can pinpoint that I have napped here in Costa Rica! I love it. Relaxation does the body good.

After our nap, Katie and I hit the hot tub and talked about how the weekend had been exactly what we’d needed. Quiet, tranquil, boy-free (except Tio-Pedro), sleep-filled, fun. Up until then, we had really had non-stop action, with the project and class all week long followed by some crazy trip almost every single weekend. We chatted about how nice it had been not to take a 6-hour bus anywhere that weekend, not to be lugging L-Pack on our sweaty backs, not to be organizing activities for a huge crew. For me, it was nice to see a familiar face from home, a family member who’d known me longer than just a couple of months. And we could strike Canopy Tour off our list!

Saying goodbye to Tio Pedro was pretty sad, as I’d started to get used to having him around, living my Tico life with me. As he and Katie and I sat outside the airport together chatting for one last time before he’d have to go inside, we watched a car pull up to the curb in front of us, and out stepped a very young, very pregnant girl, probably in her early twenties. A young guy with glasses was driving, and as the two of them got out of the front seats of the car, I watched an older woman who resembled the pregnant girl rush across the street to greet them. She gave the girl a huge hug, and they stood there embracing for what must have been five minutes straight. I got a sick feeling in my stomach, knowing I was saying goodbye to Tio Pedro in just a couple of minutes, and knowing also that I would never again hug my mother like that, would never be pregnant and in love, excited to tell my mom everything, anxiously awaiting her arrival outside the airport.

So basically, after hugging Tio Pedro goodbye, I was thoroughly depressed. Easter was the following day, my first Easter away from home and without my mom, and all I wanted was some chocolate and “the bed” as Katie and I say. Therefore, we headed home, stopping at the grocery store for snacks, and enjoyed our first night in our house without our host family, who had gone away for the holiday. We lounged around and for the first time ever, watched TV in Costa Rica. It turns out our family has a few good movie channels, and also that many of the stations are in English with Spanish subtitles. We came to discover as well that even though dubbed movies are often way too quickly-spoken for us to understand them, when the movie is something like “Clueless,” a movie you’ve seen at least ten times, you can still enjoy watching it without understanding the Spanish, as you’ve inadvertently memorized each and every line.

Easter came and went as we stayed in our beds for the most part, watching more TV. I realized that the month of April was upon me, and that that was why I was feeling a little funny, a little sad, a little sick to my stomach. April is a bad month, and somehow my body was reacting to April even though I’m in a place where I don’t recognize the season change, and where everything is new and different. I hoped to get out of my rut, and soon. Eventually our family came home from their vacation, and we looked forward to seeing our friends the next day, and getting back to a routine. I missed Tio Pedro already!

My Return to Mecca (Or: The Gilded Iguana, Round Dos)

Bright and early the next morning, Tio Pedro, Adam and I headed out on our road trip to Nosara. Adam and Tio Pedro hit it off immediately. I think the instant connection that formed between the two of them was due to the fact that they were both quiet guys who had somehow found themselves in the horrifying predicament of having to listen to me talk for a straight six hours, without any possible escape plan save jumping out of a moving vehicle. I imagine this is something like the unspeakable bond that exists between prisoners of war who have been detained together in underground caves and tortured mercilessly for years at the hands of the enemy, before finally being rescued and returned to their native country, physically restored to their old selves, but never quite the same again. Tio Pedro and Adam are now war buddies.

Adam and I had a pretty good idea about how to drive to Nosara from San Jose, but once again Tio Pedro enforced the GPS-utilization rule, despite my extreme aversion to the sound of its voice. As we drove further out of San Jose, we discovered something quite interesting. Each time we’d enter a new town or drive over a historic bridge or past some sort of important landmark, the GPS would dole out unsolicited information about our surroundings. She would start by saying, “You might have noticed that we’re now driving over a bridge.” The first time this happened, we were all taken aback, but then we began to welcome it as comic relief. “Yes, we had noticed, as a matter of fact!” one of us would exclaim. “This bridge was constructed…” she’d go on. At one point during the ride, after nearly being swept off of the narrow, curvy, mountainside road and sent to our maker by one of the hundreds of gigantic trucks we’d seen driving on the roads that morning, Tio Pedro said, “Wow, there are a lot of trucks driving around in Costa Rica! Is it like this every day, and everywhere?” And I kid you not, less than ten seconds later, the GPS chimed, “You might have noticed a multitude of large trucks driving on these roads.” We all gasped--it was truly creepy. She went on to explain that there is an abundance of products that need to be imported to Costa Rica and driven across the country in trucks, but at that point we’d stopped listening to her, because we were focusing instead on being fully convinced that the GPS was a living, breathing entity that could hear what we were saying to each other…and perhaps even hear our private thoughts.

Adam attempted to test out the theory, leaning forward from the back seat and saying in an uncharacteristically theatrical, loud voice, carefully annunciating each of his syllables, “I. Wonder. Why. They. Paint. The. Trees. White.” I turned around to the back seat and looked at him like he was out of his mind, until he repeated, “I SAAAAID. TREES. WHITE,” and I understood what he was up to. Sadly, we were proven wrong, as his prompting did not illicit the phantom GPS voice to offer us any interesting factoids about the trees in Costa Rica. This was honestly OK with me, however, because our GPS’s seemingly endless knowledge didn’t take away from the fact that her infuriatingly upbeat voice has the power to make you wish for nothing more than to hang yourself from the nearest white-painted Costa Rican tree.

Oh, and I got to drive! It felt amazing after being deprived of the opportunity for a couple of months. The final hour of the drive to Nosara is incredibly bumpy and unkempt, so I basked in the glory of racing in our rented jeep through puddles that could more aptly be named small lakes and over little hills, imagining I was that actor who played Crocodile Dundee shooting one of those Subaru Outback commercials from the 90’s, driving around Australia like a madman. We eventually came to a part of the road that was completely and utterly flooded to the point that we had to do a river crossing that immediately reminded me of playing Oregon Trail in elementary school and having to make the extremely important choice between fording the river or making your oxen walk through it. Tio Pedro and Adam got out of the jeep and surveyed the situation, mapping out how to maneuver the jeep as much to the side of the Great Lake as was possible. Unfortunately for me, Tio Pedro did not allow me to operate the vehicle through this leg of the adventure. In the end, he put the pedal to the medal, Adam and I cheered him on, and we emerged unscathed!

So we made it through our journey to the Gilded Iguana without having gone too crazy (though I guess I should speak for myself here because there’s no telling how emotionally and mentally disturbed Tio Pedro and Adam had become after being stuck in the car with me and my chatter for such a long period of time). The poolside reunion with my girls and Dee at the Iguana was fantastic, and the two men in our lives became fast friends. We all went to the beach, then swam around in the pool until long after nightfall, and ended the evening with a group cena. I had fun seeing the employees at the Gilded Iguana, all of whom remembered Katie and I from our first stay. That night, Tio Pedro and Daniel hit the hay while us kids went over to the hostel/bar down the road where they have live music and a pool table. And here’s where something really exciting happened. I was inexplicably and miraculously amazing at pool-playing for about fifteen minutes! Standing in for Deanna as Adam’s partner against a group of local guys, I brought us back from behind and we ended with a victory. It was a strange phenomenon. I sunk about five balls in a row without stopping or thinking about it. I have to say, it was one of the proudest moments of my life, and I wished Flo could have been there to witness the occasion, and to respect me as a competitor. It’s fascinating how being good at pool makes you immediately more attractive to the opposite sex. All of a sudden, as I started to beat them, the five Ticos we were playing against began to look me up and down, and to ask me what my name was. Afterwards, one of them bought me a beer. This wasn’t too terribly exciting due to the fact that these particular guys were pretty sleazy, but I vowed nonetheless to forever remember this important life lesson, and to practice my billiard skills in the very near future.

After the game, the girls and Adam decided to go clubbing, while I stayed behind and hung out with Jordan, one of the guys who works at the Gilded Iguana. I didn’t feel like allowing the owner of the bar, an American in his 50’s with an obvious drinking problem, to drive us to a club, even though he insisted he was the official cab driver of the area and that we wouldn’t be able to acquire an actual cab. Something about it made me uneasy, plus I was tired and enjoying talking to Jordan. We chatted for a while, then walked back to the Iguana where I basked in the rarity of sleeping in an air-conditioned room.

The following day, everyone but Adam (who obviously woke up at the crack of dawn to surf all day long), went on a day trip to Samara, our favorite beach, which is only about a half hour drive from the Gilded Iguana. We had fun showing Tio Pedro and Dee around Samara, drinking smoothies and hanging out on the beach. When we got back to Nosara, we found a pleasant surprise in the form of Matt, our hermano, who was working on a turtle conservation project nearby, and had decided to come visit us for the day. Initially I was panicked because I returned to the Iguana to find my rented surfboard was missing, and ran around like a psychotic thinking it had been stolen, until Katie said, “You didn’t look on the bed, you idiot.” I then glanced down at the bed of Katie’s hotel room to find a note from Adam written on toilet paper that said: “Matt’s here! I lent him Chrissy’s surfboard. We’re down at the beach.” When I got to the beach I immediately ran to Matt and embraced him, then took my surfboard into the water and enjoyed another glorious Nosara sunset surf. The sunset at that beach is still the most stunning I’ve ever seen. The surfboard I’d rented that time was easier to stand up on because it was longer and lighter than the previous ones I’d practiced on, so it felt really good to bea able to stand up and ride almost every wave! We had a great time hanging out as a group on the terrace of the Iguana that night, drinking cocktails and eating cheese and crackers. Then we had another nice dinner and hit the hay a little earlier than usual.

On Sunday, Tio Pedro got a surf lesson from Adam as I lied in the sun with Beth. It was her last weekend and I was beginning to feel so sad that she was leaving us. Beth is one of my favorite people to chat up with. We finished the day laughing and carrying on in the pool together and then Tio Pedro, Adam and I bid Danielle and the girls ado to head back to San Jose. Adam wanted to go to his project the following day, I had class, and Tio Pedro was to embark on his solo motorcycle trip in the morning. Our ride back was as fun as the trip there, especially because Tio Pedro allowed ME to ford the river in our jeep. We also drove up a road Tio Pedro had discovered the night before, in pursuit of a sweet view, which we found off the terrace of an amazing hidden hotel on the top of a mountain. We pretended we were considering coming back to Nosara and staying in the hotel, and hung out for ten minutes taking in the beautiful sight. We laughed all the way back to San Jose, and occasionally Adam and I congratulated Tio Pedro on his amazing and death-defying driving stunts, such as passing eight cars in the other lane with a motorcycle coming at us. At one point some really serious cyclists managed to go as fast as our car, riding ferociously alongside us, almost passing us..

“Those people are charging the hills!” Adam said.
I laughed and said, “I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means they’re really going for it,” Adam responded.
“On their bicicletas!” Tio Pedro chimed in.

For some inexplicable reason, I became very existential out of the blue as we drove past the beautiful beaches and the herds of cattle. Obviously, I started to verbalize this feeling, waxing philosophical about how there’s a part of me that would love to just drop everything and live here, for longer than four months, forgetting everything I want to do at home and just enjoying life in Costa Rica: going to the beach and making friends, working at a restaurant or a bar, feeling free. Tio Pedro assured me that though this may sound like an amazing plan in theory, I would never be fully happy if I didn’t return to New York to accomplish all of my life goals and to take advantage of all of the schooling and job opportunities I have in store for me. Adam agreed, but made a pact with me (REMEMBER ADAM?! A PACT. WE SHOOK ON IT.) that one day, no matter how many years down the line, we will both spend an entire year living in Costa Rica together, forgetting all of our responsibilities and troubles at home, and just taking a pause to live a relaxed Tico life. I will hold him to this.

So Mike had told me that he was having a little going away pizza party at his house down the street from me that Sunday night, as he was to fly home the following day. Originally I hadn’t known if I would be back in time for it, but Adam and I were really excited that we were heading home to San Jose and could help send Mike off. However, in true Mike fashion, this didn’t pan out. On the drive home I called Mike’s house and talked to Ivannia, my Tica aunt, who informed me that Mike had called to say that he would be staying for another week in Puerto Viejo. I don’t know why this surprised me. “Doesn’t he have a flight tomorrow?” I asked her in spanish. “I thought so, but I don’t know what happened!” she told me. “He was supposed to come home tonight for dinner, but he said he can’t, and that he’ll be home next Sunday!” I vowed to never, EVER, believe Mike again about his leaving to go home to Canada. I thought for a moment that perhaps Mike would turn out to be one of those people you hear about who goes to Costa Rica for a visit and never comes back. Though I was a bit annoyed, I smiled and thought how thrilled I was to know I’d be seeing him again in a short week’s time.

Mike's "Last Night"

Here’s the thing about Mike: he’s a big liar. Well, no, that’s extreme. A more accurate description of him and his ways would be to say that the kid can’t seem to make a decision to save his own life. Whether the choice is something as inconsequential as what kind of pizza he wants to eat or as important as from what country and on what day he plans to fly back to Canada, Mike’s simply incapable of making up his mind. This manifests itself in strange, funny and sometimes irritating ways, like when trying to reserve a hotel for our group to stay, yet never being able to know for sure if we’re including Mike in the equation, or when saying bye to him before getting off the bus because he has decided to stay on and go somewhere different with another group of people, then hearing his creepy stalker footsteps behind us two minutes later after changing his mind at the last second, or having to stand outside his house for ten minutes on our way to lunch, waiting for him to stop hemming and hawing over whether or not he’s hungry enough to stop watching a basketball game. This quality of Mike’s doesn’t often bother me, because I truly love him and he’s one of my favorite humans on this earth. But when it does bother me, I just say, “whatever Mike, I don’t have time for this.” One time I hung up the phone on him during one of these moments of irrational indecision as it was getting in the way of my changing outfits and applying makeup before going to the bar that night. Instead of calling me back, he simply wrote on my Facebook wall: “I cannot believe you just did that.” Which only made me laugh.

So Mike had initially intended to return home from Costa Rica sometime in March. But just like Katie, he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Unlike Katie, however, he did not set a clear future departure date, but instead left it open ended, and kept paying Maximo for each additional week, unable to decide when exactly he wanted to leave. With each new week, Mike would announce that it was definitely his last, but after being told this for the third time and then seeing him at Maximo the following Monday morning, I eventually stopped taking these declarations of his seriously. The Thursday that Tio Pedro was to arrive, I was leaving school when Flo informed me that Mike would definitely be going home on Monday, and that since we were spending that weekend in different places, tonight was the last night for us to be together in San Pedro.
“Yeah, OK,” I said sarcastically. “Another one of his ‘last nights.’”
“No, man,” Flo said. “He really bought a plane ticket!”

I was immediately overcome with sadness. I couldn’t believe Mike was actually leaving us! Flo told me that he and Mike were only going out for an early beer in the evening because they needed to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning to catch a bus to Puerto Viejo, their weekend destination. I guessed they’d finally had enough of pulling all-nighters and getting on the bus at 6 AM smelling like bar. I was surprised at this, but for some reason I actually believed it, and I agreed to have a drink with them before going to pick up Tio Pedro at the airport. A big group of Maximo people went out to a bar around the corner from school, including Gaby, my old Spanish teacher! She and I have become amigas mejores throughout my time here, and she’s one of my favorite people to go out on the town with. Gaby, like me, refused to believe that Mike would actually leave us to go home to Canada. She said, “Con Mike, siempre es un negociation.” I agreed. Gaby, Flo, Mike and I branched off from the group and headed to the street in San Pedro where all the bars are in. This street is always packed with Tico college students from the three Universities in this area. I have still yet to learn the street name (as it seems that in Costa Rica when a street actually has a name it is out of the norm), so I just refer to it as “The College Street.”

So on the way to The College Street, Gaby and Flo ran into the supermarket to get something and I hung outside with Miguel (Mike’s Tico name), guarding Flo’s skateboard. Of course, because I am a glutton for punishment and apparently have a death wish, I mounted the skateboard, something I should never even consider doing again in my life after all of the injuries I’ve sustained on that thing.
This time, however, I didn’t actually try to move around on it, but rather just handed Mike my Camera and said, “Miguel, go for taking a picture of me on the patineta!”
Mike sighed as he took my camera from me and said, “Ugh, Chris, I’m so sick of you and your phony extreme sports pictures.” I laughed hysterically, then reminded him that when I’d forced him take all of those pictures of me posing with my rented surfboard in Nosara it was a more legitimate request, seeing as I actually do know how to surf. Ish. The skateboard thing, I conceded, was purely aesthetic.

The four of us enjoyed a cerveza on The College Street while Gaby and I engaged in some serious girl talk en espanol. Mike listened intently, intrigued, laughing along with us and occasionally asking us questions because he understands and can speak a good amount of Spanish. Flo on the other hand, kept trying to keep up with what we were saying, aware only of the fact that the subject matter of our conversation was fascinating and a little scandalous. But unfortunately for him, Flo couldn’t understand a thing.
Eventually he sighed and muttered, “Man, I really need to learn Spanish.”

When it was time to go pick up Tio Pedro, I hugged them all goodbye, but could not accept the fact that this would be my last time seeing Mike in Costa Rica, so I asked them, “Are you guys sure you’re going home soon?? Or can I meet up with you again later?”
“Yeah man! We changed our minds. We’re not going to sleep. We are just getting on the bus at five,” Flo said.

I laughed. This did not surprise me. There’s something great about knowing you can count on your good friends to make the same dumb decisions over and over again; something comforting in that consistency. So I headed for the airport to collect Tio Pedro, with a plan to meet up with Mike and Flo later that night. At the airport, I settled in for what I expected to be a nice long wait, with an out-of-this-world ice cream in one hand and my book in the other. I was then pleasantly surprised when I saw Tio Pedro walking out the sliding glass airport doors a mere ten minutes after I’d arrived, carrying his suitcase as well as the extra suitcase filled with goodies for me that I’d requested him to bring (i.e. more sundresses from Target, adult gummy vitamins, a carton of American Spirit Yellows, more ugly man mesh shorts, etc…). Tio Pedro is the man.

Trying to get Tio Pedro to a hotel for the night led me to the realization that in reality I don’t really know my way around San Jose. Or more precisely, I don’t know how to get anywhere unless I am taking one of my daily public buses. We rented a car for our epic journey to Nosara the following morning, and as I sat in the passenger seat, I realized it was only the second time I’d been in a car for over two months, and that the first time had been during a mere 5 minute trip from Santa Marta to Ciros Jr. with Mike’s host parents. It felt strange and exciting…that is until the reality sunk in that because I’d never driven through San Jose before, I had no idea where we were or where we were going. I truly only know my way around via bus routes. Luckily, we had a GPS. Or so I thought. I say this because the particular GPS that came with our rental car had THE ABSOLUTE most annoying voice I had ever heard from a GPS. Or any other automated recording. Or any real human being. I’ve heard a lot of really irritating voices in my day, but this one took the cake. Every time she told us what to do I wanted to gouge my eyes out with pliers.
“Shut up!” I would yell at her, as Tio Pedro laughed. “I really don’t think she knows what she’s talking about,” I’d add, as started to become overwhelmed with all of the random, nameless streets she was directing us onto.
“I’ve decided we need to have faith in her,” Tio Pedro responded. “Because really, what’s the alternative? You CLEARLY don’t know where we are.”
I couldn’t argue with him there.

So eventually The Voice from Hell led us to San Pedro and I breathed a sigh of relief as familiarity greeted me outside my window. I started showing Tio Pedro around, pointing things out, and then we went to the meeting spot I’d agreed upon earlier with Flo and Mike. The two of them were in rare form when they came running up to the front of the bar to see if I was still there. Luckily we’d all been just about twenty minutes late. I introduced them to Tio Pedro, forced them to smoke an American Spirit, (“Yeah, give me one of those things, you’ve been going on and on about them for months. I want to know what organic tobacco and a lack of additives taste like.”- Mike), joked around a bit, and then instructed them to meet me in an hour at the Bottle Cap Bar, yet another name I completely made up, based on the fact that the tabletops at this particular bar are shaped like gigantic bottle caps.

After getting Tio Pedro settled at a hotel, I went to the bar and found Flo and Mike in even more ridiculous shape than they’d been an hour before. I was beginning to worry about their wellbeing. I had become so accustomed to Katie and I making all of their weekend plans for them and leading them through the travel motions, that all of a sudden I was anxious about them traveling alone after no sleep, inebriated, and to an unknown location. Clearly I have care-taking issues. So we had a couple of cervezas together and shared some hilarious and utterly absurd conversation. The following is an example:

Flo: “Your hair is like a horsetail.”
Me: “Whatever Flo, some people go for it.”
Flo: “Yeah…and some people live on the street.”

It was a perfect “last night” with Mike. When we left the bar, me to get into a cab and head home for some sleep, Flo and Mike to go off on their final adventure of the night before getting on the bus to Puerto Viejo, I became incredibly sad about my future in Costa Rica without Mike. He and I hugged about ninety times.
Then I got in the cab, rolled down my window and yelled, “Be careful boys! Please take care of each other!”
“Thanks Mom!” they called back to me, laughing and stumbling down the sidewalk together.

The Men in Our Lives

No, this is not a post about romance. Katie and I didn’t meet the loves of our lives in Costa Rica. No, we don’t have Tico boyfriends. Calm down, this isn’t going to be THAT interesting. But I’ve been told I’m a pretty entertaining writer, so I urge you to keep reading nonetheless. The men I’m referring to in the title of this post are the only men in this world who love us enough to spend money on plane tickets to San Jose for the purpose of visiting Katie and I here in our new natural habitat. These men are Katie’s father, Daniel, who I have lovingly referred to as Dee or Danielle since the age of eleven, and my Uncle Pete, who from here on out will be known solely as “Tio Pedro.”

So originally Katie had intended to return home to New York on the 5th of April, but as we made our way through March, she decided doing so simply wouldn’t be feasible and that she’d need to stay for at least another month to bask in the glory of our Central American lifestyle. Because of her extended stay-time, she informed Daniel that he would have to come visit us, and then simply booked him a flight. The following is my favorite story to use in order to describe how easy-going Daniel is and how accommodating he is to his daughters and their needs: Katie, her sister Meghan, and Daniel live together in a two-bedroom apartment. Last year, when Katie and Meghan were bickering so much and having a hard time cohabitating in their shared bedroom, Daniel allowed Meghan to take his room as her own, and he has since been sleeping on a mat on the floor in the living room. Literally. Katie thinks this is extremely funny. Sometimes I forget that the living room has become Daniel’s bedroom until I am reminded of this fact when Katie and I return home to the apartment late at night acting like our usual loud and obnoxious selves, and a voice from the floor says, “Kate, what time is it? Keep it down.” I giggle and whisper, “Sorry Danielle!” while we grab the Double Stuf Oreos from the kitchen and tiptoe to her bedroom. I absolutely adore Daniel, and have always considered him, and the rest of Katie’s family, to be my family as well. So I was really excited that he was coming to hang with us in “The Rica,” as Katie so lovingly refers to our new “pais”.

Daniel was to come for about six days, and it just so happened that Tio Pedro, one of my most beloved family members, was coming to visit me during the same time! Tio Pedro isn’t actually a blood relative of mine, but he is my uncle nonetheless. I’ve known him since before I was born, and he has been one of the most consistent presences in my life for as long as I can remember. We make a good team, the two of us, because I love to talk and he puts up with listening to me. We have bi-weekly dinner dates at home in New York, during which I regale him with all of the non-interesting stories about my life, and he laughs at me. Anyways, I’m assuming that in judging by the fact that I’ve talked through the entirety of each sushi dinner and each short road trip we’ve ever taken together, without stopping, and that now I was in a new place with new people AND we hadn’t seen each other for a good two months, Tio Pedro must have been prepared for the verbal bombardment I had in store for him. Perhaps this is why he planned to break up his visit in Costa Rica with a little three-day solo motorcycle excursion. Sometimes a break from me is a wise choice. I recently met a new friend here, and after we’d hung out for a few days together we went bungee jumping. Well, in reality he went bungee jumping and I chickened out, which I’ll explain in a future post. The point is that days later, during a long bus ride together, he turned to me with a smile and said, “You do realize that four days after I met you, I jumped off a bridge, right?” I reminded him that he’d been harnessed at the time, but that I understood his point.

So Katie and I planned a trip to Nosara, home of the infamous Gilded Iguana weekend, for her, me, Daniel, Tio Pedro, Beth, Deanna and Adam. On Wednesday afternoon Daniel was to arrive at the airport, so Katie, Beth, Deanna and I waited patiently outside for him, holding a huge sign that read: “Welcome to Rica, Daniel!” After about ten minutes of standing around, Deanna said, “All right, I need an ice cream.” I have never once seen this girl not in the process of eating something. Have you guys ever seen the newer version of ‘Ocean’s Eleven?’ If it’s been a while, go back and watch it again and just take note of the fact that Brad Pitt is eating in each and every scene of that movie. He’s never not eating. Well, Deanna is our own little Brad Pitt. She’s also really hot, so this comparison is doubly fitting. Anyways, I’ve never seen her without some sort of food item in her hand, and that food item has hardly ever been something other than an ice cream. So she ordered her ice cream and it was then that we discovered how the ice cream at the weird little stand outside the airport is the most delicious vanilla soft serve any of us has ever tasted before. I took it upon myself to remember this, and the next night when I picked up Tio Pedro, I indulged in one myself. Anyways, Deanna ate her ice cream and we jumped up and down holding the poster, looking through the large glass windows like crazed lunatics, trying to read the departure city on the tags of people’s luggage, scouring the place for Dee. FINALLY we saw him, and I captured the father daughter reunion with the video feature on my camera. Having collected Daniel, I went back to San Jose while Dee and the girls headed out to Nosara in his rental car. I couldn’t wait to pick up Tio Pedro the next day!!!

"People really can't try to kill themselves in front of me."

There is a place called Esterillos Oeste, a beach town on the Pacific Coast. It takes only two and a half hours to get there by bus from San Jose. In this new life that I lead, traveling solely two and a half hours to my weekend destination seems like a simple snap of the fingers. And here’s the kicker: Katie’s friend from home, Meghan, has a friend who owns a house in Esterillos Oeste. The two of them were hanging out there for spring break. Case closed. So Deanna and Katie made their way to Esterillos Oeste one Thursday afternoon, and it wasn’t long before Flo, Mike, Adam and I followed suit, all of us finding ourselves together once again on a beach in Costa Rica. Meghan is really a gem of a human, and her friend Kinza was so generous to house our large, loud (save Adam) crew of sweaty, swearing (save Adam) youths.

Esterillos Oeste is small and tranquila. Upon arrival it became clear pretty quickly that our home base would be Low Tide, an outdoor bar right in front of the beach. Low Tide is run by a bunch of Americans, and the main reason I felt the need to spend so much time there was because it offered this irritatingly addictive game to its patrons, complete with the promise of a free cerveza should one manage to triumph. The game is very simple. An old rusty nail protrudes from the wall of the bar. From the ceiling hangs a long string with a metal washer tied to its end. You step back to the pillar, aim the string, and let go. If the washer catches the nail and remains, you win a free beer as well as infinite respect, and your name is written on a broken surfboard mounted to the bar’s wall. The list of winners. Clearly I was hooked from the get-go, and would not rest nor eat nor sleep nor think of anything else until emerging victorious. Of course, Flo was the first to prevail. Watching him write his full name and ‘Austria’ alongside it on that surfboard and then proceed to enjoy his free beer only made my obsessive desire to succeed burn more furiously, urging me to be the next to achieve glory and write my name as well. And so I was! Breathing a sigh of relief, I asked for a Corona with lime and sat down to relax for the first time since being introduced to the game roughly six hours earlier. Shortly thereafter Katie, Meghan and Kinza managed to succeed as well. Deanna would finally reclaim her dignity by doing it the following day, after remaining tight-mouthed and frustrated for the entire first day because she just couldn’t seem to get it.

The waves at the beach were pretty intense. Teddy had warned me about the riptide in Esterillos, but I honestly wasn’t prepared for what I experienced. Standing still in the water was simply impossible, as I was always being pulled angrily in one direction or the other, if not out to sea. As could be expected, Adam didn’t have any trouble surfing the waves immediately despite the strong riptide, and Mike had no concept of the state of the waves because he went straight to the bar upon arrival, shielding, as he always does, his very white Canadian skin from the harsh sun. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only person having trouble with the waves, because on Saturday three people almost drowned right in front of us. Katie, Deanna, Meghan, Kinza and me were lying on beach towels trying to catch some rays, chatting about dumb things and listening to the Backstreet Boys (yes, you read that correctly), when we heard a series of shrill whistles. Sitting up and looking out into the ocean, we saw two teenage boys flailing desperately in the sea out to the left of us, and also a woman a little bit deeper in the water, waving her hands above her head. We stood up to watch the action as a couple of the local lifeguards attempted to swim out and save the drowners. Now, Meghan is an ocean lifeguard in New York, and I could tell that she was having a very hard time stopping herself from running in and attempting to save some lives. She kept muttering to herself that the lifeguards weren’t doing anything correctly, and after a couple of minutes of watching them and realizing they were making literally no progress in getting anyone closer to shore, Meghan went sprinting into the ocean and assisted in rescuing the woman, who when they finally got her out safely, proceeded to collapse and pass out. I ran up to Low Tide and told them to call an ambulance. A bunch of the guys sitting at the bar asked me who my friend was and if she was a lifeguard. I told them yes, and one of them said, “Thank God for her. These fuckin' guys really don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” I had suspected as much.

The woman eventually came to, and Meghan, using her very limited Spanish, tried to instruct her to sit up and take deep breaths. At one point she got some ice from Low Tide to rub on the woman’s back, as this is a tactic she has used in the past to soothe and revive people. She'd asked Kinza what the Spanish word for ice was, and Kinza accidentally told her it was “helado” instead of “hielo.” So Meghan proceeded to rub ice on the panicked woman’s back, saying over and over again “helado, helado,” leading the woman to believe that some crazy American girl was rubbing ice cream on her back. Despite the whole ice cream slip-up, Meghan was truly a heroine, and I proceeded to buy her a beer to congratulate her on a job well done. Later on in the day, she was actually offered a permanent job working as a lifeguard in Esterillos Oeste!

That night we all relaxed in front of Low Tide and chatted with some new people we’d met. At one point, two girls who looked to be in their mid twenties came walking out of the bar, whispering with one another. Because I always have to have my nose in everyone else’s business, I listened intently to what they were saying.
“I know, I know, it’s really too much,” one girl was saying to the other.
“I just don’t understand why she has to act like that! But I really can’t deal with it anymore,” her friend answered.
As they strolled to the beach, another girl come running after them from the restaurant, yelling in what can only be described as a crazed, psychotic voice, “If you have something to say to me, why don’t you just say it to my face?!?”

A strange interaction ensued between the three of them, during which the rational girls spoke to Ms. Chemical Imbalance in a calm manner about what had evidently been abhorrent behavior on her part throughout the meal, while the lunatic proceeded to scream responses at them, until the two guys they were with eventually joined the conversation. As I have no shame, I snuck behind a tree that was just a few feet away from them, so as to get all the juice. I like being in the know. Eventually Crazyface started screaming at the guy who was apparently her boyfriend about how he never stuck up for her, and how he’d better make a decision: “Who’s it gonna be, huh!!?! ME OR THEM?” When he didn’t have a response, this un-medicated emotionally disturbed creature proceeded to sprint away from the group towards the ocean, yelling about how she didn’t deserve love.

I walked back to my friends to find Meghan standing up with a look of exasperation on her face, peering out into the dark, trying to see if the girl was indeed running straight into the water. “Oh shit,” Meghan said.
“Don’t worry about her, she’s just making a scene,” I said.
“No, but if she’s drunk and she goes into the water, she may drown,” Meghan responded, in a voice that didn’t convey concern, but rather extreme annoyance. “And I can’t ignore it when people are drowning, I’m not allowed to.”
“Should we go after her?” Adam asked.
“Ugh,” Meghan sighed. “People really can’t try to kill themselves in front of me.”
And with that, she and Adam started jogging out to the beach to search for the girl.

After a while, the other four members of the maniac’s group came walking up from the beach, and I ran up to them. “Hey!” I said. “Where’s your friend?”
“I’m not sure, we looked for her, but we can’t find her,” said one of the girls.
“Is she trying to drown herself?” I asked matter-of-factly.
They looked at me as though this was in some way not my business, so I reminded them, “I’m just wondering because MY friends went running after her to try to help her, and you don’t even care enough to know where she is.”
This shamed them.
“I think she’s just freaking out,” one of them said.
“You never know, I wouldn’t put it past her,” the other said.
“Well, hopefully MY friend is OK,” I said, indignantly. These people were really starting to bug me. It was their fault they had chosen to go on vacation with someone in need of intense chaperoning, but its my personal belief that if you want to be friends with such an unstable person, you should probably at least have the presence of mind to give a shit if that person wigs out and runs into the ocean in the middle of the night with reckless abandon. Anyways, eventually Adam and Meghan came back, soaking wet and armed with the tale of how the girl had been lying down in the water on top of jagged rocks talking about what a horrible person she was. Eventually they convinced her that she was just as deserving of life as everyone else on Earth, and successfully hauled her out of the water. A couple of minutes later, we witnessed the reunion between the girl and her boyfriend, complete with apologies and them walking off down the road, arms around each other. It would have been cute had the whole thing not been utterly absurd. So the point is that Meghan saved two lives within a 24-hour period. Quite impressive, if you ask me.

Soon, we all found our way to the beach for some lying around in the sand time, which is oftentimes just a solo ritual of mine, but always more fun when it includes my friends. Mike was really in rare form that night, and was cracking Flo and I up for a solid hour. At one point he came up with what he considered to be an unprecedented brilliant idea: skinny dipping. Flo agreed and I promptly declined.
“Come on, man,” Flo said. “It is fun, no?”
I told them that I would only consider doing so in my underwear and bra, but that seeing as the bra I had on at the time was particularly nice and had cost me a lot of money at Victoria’s Secret, I would sadly have to pass.
“I wouldn’t even let you do it in your underwear!” Mike announced. “All or nothing.”
“Well, I guess I’m gonna go have to go with nothing,” I laughed.
“All right then, Flo, as a unit…let’s go get wet,” Mike said, standing up.
I laughed for about five minutes, then sprinted to get Katie’s camera and to bring Adam along with me for some skinny-dip stalking. My plan was to snap a few naked pictures of Mike and Flo as they emerged from the water, to perhaps be used in some sort of near future friendly blackmail, and to maybe steal their clothes and hide them. I figured it would be creepy for me to do this alone, but acceptable and ridiculously funny if I could convince Adam to. Adam enjoys a good chiste, so we staked out a spot on the shore and waited for the distant nude shapes to come out of the water. In the end, all we managed to get were a couple of hilarious photos of me posing with their piles of clothes on the sand, laughing hysterically, along with one naked shot of Flo from behind which really showcased his severe sunburn lines. Not a complete success, but entertaining nonetheless.

Afterwards, we made our way to the “Discoteque,” which could be more aptly named the “Dark, Sad Bar,” where I played some pool with Flo against a bunch of guys from LA and watched Deanna try to teach Mike to salsa dance on the near-empty dance floor flooded with multi-colored strobe light.

That night Mike and Flo and I had gotten a room at this hostel that was shaped like a ship, because there wasn’t enough space in Kinza’s house for all of us to stay. Mike and Flo went back to the room to go to sleep earlier than I did, and when I got there, I laughed out loud at the sight of them passed out together on their double bed, Flo with a soda can in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. Kinza and Meghan were leaving really early the next day to go back to the States, and locking the house up, so I went to sleep on my little bed, knowing that Katie and Deanna would probably be knocking on the door at 7 AM and crawling into bed with us to sleep some more. The following is a journal entry I wrote the next day:

3/21/10

Got on the bus today by myself and realized it was the first time I’d really been alone in a while. I woke up this morning in the room in Esterillos to the sound of Katie and Adam and Deanna coming in the door. Katie said she got ALL her stuff stolen last night, and instead of feeling bad for her I was just pissed off that she’d lost the 4000 colones that we needed to get us back to San Jose. We’re having cash problems. I also realized that I left my bathing suit hanging in the shower of Kinza’s house and wouldn’t be able to get it back to wear to the beach. Katie got mad at me for failing to be sensitive when I told her she shouldn’t have been so reckless that she spent almost all of our money, then lost the rest, which she was right in being mad at me for because even though I was completely correct in this assessment, I probably should have been more sympathetic to her. She rolled up a towel and swiped me a couple of times with it, I laughed and apologized, she laughed and said, "Good, that's all I wanted to hear," and then got in the shower. So I lied down next to Flo, waved goodbye to Adam who was going to surf, listened to the sounds of Katie showering the late night off of her and to the rhythmic breathing of Mike, Deanna and Flo, who had already fallen back to sleep, and decided that with no money for coffee or that banana smoothie from the Low Tide I had been thinking about since I had a sip of Flo’s yesterday, no money to rent a surfboard, and no bathing suit to lie on the beach in, I should just get a move on and head “home.” Sometimes I think you’ve got to know when to call it quits. I took a gross shower, dried off with my sleeping shorts, put on the same dress I was wearing last night, and headed to the beach to get some bus info.

I ran into the group of guys from California who we were hanging out with last night and talked with them at Low Tide where I asked Chris, the bartender from Michigan, if I could us my pathetic 1-dollar bill to pay for a café con leche. He told me to keep my dollar, for which I was grateful. I went over to the men who machete coconuts by the beach and then sell them with a straw through the top and asked them where and when I could catch the bus back to San Jose, then said bye to the Cali surfer boys and headed down the street.

As I walked, I thought about what Flo and I talked about the other night lying in the deserted parking lot at one AM. He was explaining to me that though he’s really enjoying his time here, this is just the beginning of his two-year adventure, and that when he goes off to travel alone, that’s when he’ll truly be able to think and to write about his life. I think that’s how I felt today—I needed some time to myself to be here in this place that has become like my home, around these people who have become like my people, just thinking. It’s funny how sometimes our bodies and our minds just instinctively know what we need.

I had to flag the bus down and run to catch up with it, and as I sat down next to someone who was also clearly an American and clearly on his own I thought, “freedom.” I have had nothing but fun with my friends and I truly love them, I’m not saying otherwise. I just needed a day. I looked at the guy next to me and wondered, what if I were one of these lone travelers? Or, what if I were one of these ex-pats working at a surf shop or a bar? What would it feel like to have no one relying on me, and no one to rely on? What would it feel like to have no concern for my future, to have no specific life aspirations to fulfill…to just live to be?

Flo asked me Friday night as we sat on the beach looking up at the stars, “Do you think you’re more than nothing?”
“Most of the time,” I answered.

On the bus, as always, I fell fast asleep, and this time I had strange dreams, sometimes waking up and thinking I was with people I know and then realizing I wasn’t. This happened to me the past summer as I was flying out to Wyoming. I fell asleep with my head against the window and dreamt that my mom and I were on the plane together, that we were on our way to an important destination to participate in some sort of critical mission. When I woke up and looked over at her, it wasn’t her, but rather the 10-year old boy who had been sitting next to me when I boarded the plane and fell promptly to sleep. When I woke up on the bus today, I saw empty seats and strangers, but I felt content. It was the most comfortable bus ride I've had since coming to Costa Rica.

I got off the bus at the Coca-Cola station and was welcomed with the sounds of Costa Rican urban Sundays; songs being belted out of the doorways of churches, vendors yelling about how much their sandwiches or games cost, music coming from the TV’s above the counters at Sodas, little kids laughing. I felt at first as though maybe I didn’t know which direction I should go in, but of course my internal compass pointed me towards Avenida Central and I walked my way through the chaos in my dirty dress, with my backpack on my back.

So here I am in San Jose, eating a salad and drinking a Cappuccino. All of a sudden it looks gray and stormy outside, which I welcome because as always I have been sweating all day. I’ve gotten used to the sweat—it no longer seems strange and unsanitary, but rather natural and more importantly, unavoidable. I sweat consistently here—it’s very, very hot all the time. I’m simply over it.

Happy to have been able to clear my head today, now I’m heading to Maximo to see what the news is with the Health Care Bill at home. There was a big Senate vote today, which of course I didn’t remember until I was walking to the bus. Because I am truly living in “Mirage Land,” as Katie likes to call it. :)

P.S. I miss Mom.