Apologies for missing last week. I don't really have a good excuse, but I have more to write this week so all the better. Two weekends ago I opted out of my program trip because I didn't want to do any of the offered activities (ranging in price from $65-$95...no gracias) nor did I want to spend another weekend with the citizens of Blackout City. Instead I went to one of Costa Rica's many national parks with a friend of mine. The park was on the Pacific Ocean and was incredible. We spent 6 hours hiking different trails, one of which ended with a waterfall/swimmin' hole (my favorite) AND I saw two monkeys and a sloth. The monkeys here do not carry the Ebola virus, so I was very excited to see them.
The week was fairly uneventful. We had finals in Spanish classes (I am now in Intermediate 1!) and I went to the doctor and experienced the Costa Rican medical system. Although I didn't really, because my program director opted to take me to literally the most expensive hospital in all of Costa Rica. I told my Tico friend which one I went to and his response was "holy shit, the president goes there." I have seen time and time again that the general assumption is that all Americans have unlimited funds at their disposal. And while this assumption is not at all unfounded, I just have a problem with generalizations of any kind, because there is simply no way for a generalization to be right all the time. For example, my program director failed to mention to me that the doctor's appointment would cost over $200 because "she didn't think it would be a big deal." And true, it wasn't as big a deal for me as it might have been for a lot of people here or for many people in the States, I would have appreciated a heads up at least. As the appointment depleted a significant portion of my funds, I think I will be eating a lot of eggs in the next two months...which is fine, I like eggs.
We had a 4 day weekend this weekend, so I went to Nicaragua with my amigas Robin and Kim. It was quite possibly the best weekend of my life. Not only is Nicaragua beautiful, and the people are wonderful and the general attitude of laidbackness is infectious, and best of all, the whole weekend reaffirmed time and time again that people are good, and that if you trust in that, you will get far.
This weekend, my trust in humans got me from San Jose, Costa Rica to Nicaragua to the town of Granada to the Island Ometepe, one of the least populated places I have ever had the pleasure of encountering and back over the boarder. Literally none of that would have been possible without the help of people who I will likely never see again in my life. The series of events that contributed to the most magical weekend I have experienced are as follows:
We (a group of 7) left San Jose at 4am on Friday and arrived in Granada, Nicaragua around 12:30. We asked for directions to a hostel and got there without any problem. Friday afternoon was just spent walking around Granada. My friend Kim has family friends who own a bed and breakfast in Granada so Robin and I went with her to find them and they were wonderful.
The rest of our group left Granada in the morning on Saturday and we went to meet these friends for breakfast and afterward they took us to a market, which was wonderful (and cheap!) and after to a lookout point which overlooked a lake to the background music of a band playing lovely music, a mandolin was involved, need I say more? There were children playing and horses walking around, it was beautiful. Granada was super quaint and quiet. The buildings were colonial and brightly colored like different flavors of sherbet. There was a market in the town square and horse drawn carriages. The mode of transportation was either horses or bikes (I literally saw a whole family on a bike, with the dad pedaling, the mom and one kid sitting on the bar in between the seat and the handlebars and another kid on the handle bars) I did not know it was possible to fit so many people on one bike, I was going to make my friend Kevin try to give me a ride on his bike but we both decided that he would probably fall and both of us would probably a) get injured and b) look like idiots.
On Saturday afternoon we got a taxi and asked him to take us to the bus to Rivas (the port city to take us to Island Ometepe) This is where the trust in people begins. He took us to a lot with a bunch of old school buses painted different colors. He pointed to one and said that one went to Rivas. So we got on. Two hours later we were in Rivas. We got in another taxi and asked him to take us to the ferry. He took us to the port, where there were 3 ships. He pointed to the one in the middle and said that one went to Ometepe. So we got on.
The boat ride was beautiful. Once upon a time, Mark Twain went to Nicaragua and wrote essays about Island Ometepe. We are nerds and printed out the essays and read them to each other as the sun was setting behind the volcano. It was one of the most serene and peaceful moments of my life. After the sun set, the moon was orange and barely lit up the shadow of the volcano. In the words of Kim, it was the exclamation point on our day.
When we arrived to Ometepe it wasn't late, but it was dark. We had the name of one "hostel" from a flyer at our hostel in Granada. All we knew was that we needed to go to Balgue (a "town" on the island) and then walk for 15 minutes. We asked someone where Balgue was, and they pointed to a bus and told us to get on. I should mention here that Ometepe was real rural - there was a whole lot of jungle and not a whole lot of buildings, restaurants, hotels or people. So we were a little nervous but listening to people had gotten us this far.
After we had been on the bus for a solid 2 hours and were three of five remaining passengers, a white dude and a breathtakingly beautiful Brazillian (and magical we would soon find out - like I actually think she probably can do magic) woman got on the bus. The guy was clearly a gringo too, so we asked him how to get to the place we were looking for "Finca Bona Fide." Much to our delight, Kurt replied "Oh! We're living there right now! We'll take you!"
So we followed them through the jungle for about 45 minutes (NOT 15 as the flyer had claimed) and finally arrived at the farm. The farm was not in fact a hostel, as the flyer had claimed but was more of a hippie commune. We would have never found this place ourselves in a million years. There were 7 people living there and they worked on the farm with Nicaraguans during the week and basked in the magic of the farm and Nicaragua on the weekends. Even though it wasn't a hostel, they were warm and welcoming and let us stay there and cooked for us. The place was run by a guy named Chris, he wasn't there, so we slept in his bed which was made of bamboo and covered by a mosquito net.
In Chris' absence, Camilla, the mystical Brazillian woman we met on the bus ran the farm, along with her boyfriend Mitch. Camilla moved with the grace of a fairy, and her smile was absolutely infectious. We determined that bees do not in fact make honey, but rather Camilla smiles and does some sort of spin and honey as well as everything else good in the world just appears. Mitch was originally from Boston but has spent the last 4 years being a vagabond. He had dreadlocks and said things like "that meal was really beautiful, thank you everyone for sharing in it." When we arrived and saw that this farm was more of a commune than a hostel we apologized for imposing and he said "there is literally nothing you could do to make me upset." I believe him. Both him and Camilla seem like those hippies who are just so at peace with everything in their world that literally nothing could shake their joy. We later played a game called "what could we have done to make them mad" the best things on the list were a) have a food fight with all of their organically grown food or b) steal the dog that lived there, who Mitch seemed to be in love with.
When we woke up we saw the breathtaking view of the lake and the volcano (seen best from the farm's treehouse lookout.) We hung out there all morning, relaxing, talking with the hippies, reading, writing. The only slightly negative aspect about the magical hippie farm was that the "bathroom" was in fact a hut with a hole in it and a beehive in the roof of the hut. Taking a poo was a rather nerve wracking experience with bees buzzing under me in the shit hole (literally).
In the afternoon we decided to trek to a hostel closer to the main road, as we had to return to San Jose the next day. After hiking for 3 hours, we found another hostel. On our walk down we were followed for quite some time by a stray dog, who we named Dana. She followed us for the better part of two hours. She was skinny, but not sickly, and somehow regal. We think she is on the upswing, we determined that if Dana was a person she would live in a down and out town and possibly work in a diner but had big plans she was saving up for. At a certain point we looked down and didn't see Dana, she probably went out to follow her dreams.
We spent the rest of Sunday afternoon playing in the lake and generally basking the in the magic of Nicaragua. The owner of our hostel informed us that there were two buses to the port in the morning. One at 5am and one at 9am. We needed to get back to San Jose so 5am it was. To be safe, we left our room at 4:55 (even though everything is late in Latin America), as we walked out the door we heard the bus driving by. I have never run so fast in my life. We burst through the gate of the hostel and I threw our key at the door of the office and we hauled ass. The bus must have heard us yelling or seen us flailing because he stopped and we got on. The next two hours we spent on the dirt roads getting to the port. We ran into our friend and savior from the day before, Kurt on the bus, and I think we overwhelmed him with our chattiness at 5:30 in the morning.
We got to the boat and at this time were famished but this was the only boat for 2 hours, so we didn't have time to eat, and there weren't really any places around anyway. So we got off the boat in Rivas and got a taxi and asked him to take us to the bus station. Our taxi driver informed us that one bus went through Rivas a day, and it came at 10:45 (it was about 8:30) and we didn't have reservations, so if that one bus was full, we would be stuck in Rivas. But, he said, if we paid him $20, he would drive us (about an hour drive) to the boarder and we could find a bus there. Again, we'd gotten this far listening to people, so we figured why stop our streak. So Luis took us to the boarder and during our drive, we had a great time shooting the shit with him. When we got to the boarder he said to us "Okay, when you get out a bunch of guys are going to ask you if you need help getting across the boarder, but you don't need them, I'm going to tell you what to do. Go to this building, pay $1, don't let them ask for more, after that go to this building, pay $6, don't let them ask for more and after that go cross the boarder." It pays to trust people. It got us across the boarder and back to Costa Rica. Once we were on the Costa Rica side, we saw a bus going to San Jose, hopped on and we were on our way back. We also bought sandwiches. Turkey on white bread had never tasted so good. The sweet taste of crossing boarders.
Lesson of the weekend, people are good, people are helpful, people are kind. The world, with all of its problems, is a beautiful place. I think the hippies would be proud.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Dados de Queso
Last week I found myself sitting in RostiPollo, a Nicaraguan restaurant chain, trying to put my finger on what it reminded me of. When all of the sudden it came to me that RostiPollo reminded me TO A T of Chilie's. I have been avoiding American type food like the plague, but I felt okay about RostiPollo because it was a Nicaraguan food chain, even though I kept expecting to hear the baby back ribs jingle at any moment.
AND by far the best part of this adventure in mediocre restaurant chains of Central America was that I discovered "Dados de Queso" which means cheese dice. Which are fried squares of cheese. YES PLEASE. After many cheese dice I ventured to some new bars with my Tico friend/guide of the city. I am more and more in love with the absolute chaos of San Jose every day.
Like I mentioned before, San Jose is by no means a city that one falls in love with immediately (like say, Paris) but the more time I spend here, the more I am appreciating the exquisite chaos it has to offer. Downtown feels insane, there are so many people and so many things going on and so much noise that when you walk into a place that feels good (El Steinvorth) it is like a wave of relaxation falls over you. And I think that makes me feel even more at home when I do arrive to those places I have come to call "mine" here.
I think that a big part of why I like San Jose so much is because it is one of the few places I have been to that feels real or authentic. Tourism dominates so much of Costa Rica's economy that it seems like most places are built to cater to outsiders. And so I guess in a way that becomes a part of the culture. But it feels very odd to live in San Jose and have a Tica mom and Tico friends and then go stay at a resort where all the guests are from the States and all the employees are Ticos. More than odd, it feels dirty, like I am just playing into the age old norm of white privilege, and I don't like it.
Not only does the race dynamic bother me, but it makes me feel like even more of an outsider. In my previous travels even if I didn't speak a word of the language, I could keep my mouth shut and blend in. Not so in Costa Rica. I don't have to say a thing, the minute people see me, they know that I'm not from here and that is a feeling that is really new for me. I am still struggling with how it feels, but I think it is an important and worthwhile struggle.
Last weekend our group went to Volcan Arenal, the world's 16th most active volcano. It was pretty epic, you could see the whole volcano from our hotel and there was a small earthquake while we were there. We arrived Friday night after a rather nauseous time on the bus to a wonderful buffet. After dinner most of our group got schwasted and made asses of themselves in the pool. Notable examples included some dumbass girl who smashed a bottle for no reason on the side of the pool and another girl who made out with three guys at once. And I wonder why Americans get such a bad rep...because of people like the members of Fall II International Studies Abroad, also known as Spring Break Costa Rica.
On Saturday a group of about 6 of us went on an all day guided hike through the jungle. It definitely made it to my top 3 things I've done in Costa Rica, possibly ever. The hike was in the crater of another dormant volcano. We saw toucans and snakes. About 20 minutes into the hike a snake slithered across the trail and our guide said (very nonchalantly) "Oh, that's a type of viper, it's the most poisonous snake we have in Costa Rica." I also ate a bug. I'm not quite sure what happened, our guide showed us a bug and said it was edible and asked if anyone wanted to eat it and without really thinking about it, I volunteered. The taste was fairly neutral. I definitely wouldn't say it tasted good, but it didn't really taste bad either. The consistency was that of what I would imagine raw chicken would be like, and it had the same amount of protein as a 30 oz steak.
Our destination on the hike was Rio Celeste. It is a special (dare I say magical) kind of river only found in three places in the world: there's one in Brazil, one in Japan and one in Costa Rica. Rio Celeste is actually the meeting point of two rivers. One of them has a really high sulfur level and the other has really tiny pieces of jade in the water. When the two rivers meet, some kind of (magical) chemical reaction takes place and the water turns bright blue. Like neon blue. Think the color of the sky, perhaps mixed with a bit of vanilla ice cream. Like if the sky was a flavor of ice cream, the color of that ice cream would be the color of this river. It was nuts.
There was also a spot of water that we stopped at. Our guide told us all to think really hard about the most beautiful thing we could think of. We did and after about 30 seconds the water started bubbling violently. The guide (who I kid you not, seemed to know EVERYTHING about the jungle) shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't know why this happened. There might be some kind of scientific explanation but even if there is, I would rather not know it.
Our guide was the cat's meow. He is a biologist and tour guide. He informed us that he has discovered 3 new species in his 26 years as a biologist. I now have an abundance of knowledge of what plants I could eat if I were to potentially get lost in the jungle. It was like having a more awesome and less douchy Bear Grylls as our guide.
This weekend the Group of Idiots has another preplanned excursion, but Robin and I have opted out of this one. I'm not quite sure what the weekend ahead holds. Friday night there is a concert of a Costa Rican folk band called Malpais that we will be attending and Saturday, Sunday and Monday (a holiday from school) who knows...but todo bien, I'm down for a surprise adventure. I am thinking about everyone at home a lot, I love and miss you all, until next time, pura vida :)
AND by far the best part of this adventure in mediocre restaurant chains of Central America was that I discovered "Dados de Queso" which means cheese dice. Which are fried squares of cheese. YES PLEASE. After many cheese dice I ventured to some new bars with my Tico friend/guide of the city. I am more and more in love with the absolute chaos of San Jose every day.
Like I mentioned before, San Jose is by no means a city that one falls in love with immediately (like say, Paris) but the more time I spend here, the more I am appreciating the exquisite chaos it has to offer. Downtown feels insane, there are so many people and so many things going on and so much noise that when you walk into a place that feels good (El Steinvorth) it is like a wave of relaxation falls over you. And I think that makes me feel even more at home when I do arrive to those places I have come to call "mine" here.
I think that a big part of why I like San Jose so much is because it is one of the few places I have been to that feels real or authentic. Tourism dominates so much of Costa Rica's economy that it seems like most places are built to cater to outsiders. And so I guess in a way that becomes a part of the culture. But it feels very odd to live in San Jose and have a Tica mom and Tico friends and then go stay at a resort where all the guests are from the States and all the employees are Ticos. More than odd, it feels dirty, like I am just playing into the age old norm of white privilege, and I don't like it.
Not only does the race dynamic bother me, but it makes me feel like even more of an outsider. In my previous travels even if I didn't speak a word of the language, I could keep my mouth shut and blend in. Not so in Costa Rica. I don't have to say a thing, the minute people see me, they know that I'm not from here and that is a feeling that is really new for me. I am still struggling with how it feels, but I think it is an important and worthwhile struggle.
Last weekend our group went to Volcan Arenal, the world's 16th most active volcano. It was pretty epic, you could see the whole volcano from our hotel and there was a small earthquake while we were there. We arrived Friday night after a rather nauseous time on the bus to a wonderful buffet. After dinner most of our group got schwasted and made asses of themselves in the pool. Notable examples included some dumbass girl who smashed a bottle for no reason on the side of the pool and another girl who made out with three guys at once. And I wonder why Americans get such a bad rep...because of people like the members of Fall II International Studies Abroad, also known as Spring Break Costa Rica.
On Saturday a group of about 6 of us went on an all day guided hike through the jungle. It definitely made it to my top 3 things I've done in Costa Rica, possibly ever. The hike was in the crater of another dormant volcano. We saw toucans and snakes. About 20 minutes into the hike a snake slithered across the trail and our guide said (very nonchalantly) "Oh, that's a type of viper, it's the most poisonous snake we have in Costa Rica." I also ate a bug. I'm not quite sure what happened, our guide showed us a bug and said it was edible and asked if anyone wanted to eat it and without really thinking about it, I volunteered. The taste was fairly neutral. I definitely wouldn't say it tasted good, but it didn't really taste bad either. The consistency was that of what I would imagine raw chicken would be like, and it had the same amount of protein as a 30 oz steak.
Our destination on the hike was Rio Celeste. It is a special (dare I say magical) kind of river only found in three places in the world: there's one in Brazil, one in Japan and one in Costa Rica. Rio Celeste is actually the meeting point of two rivers. One of them has a really high sulfur level and the other has really tiny pieces of jade in the water. When the two rivers meet, some kind of (magical) chemical reaction takes place and the water turns bright blue. Like neon blue. Think the color of the sky, perhaps mixed with a bit of vanilla ice cream. Like if the sky was a flavor of ice cream, the color of that ice cream would be the color of this river. It was nuts.
There was also a spot of water that we stopped at. Our guide told us all to think really hard about the most beautiful thing we could think of. We did and after about 30 seconds the water started bubbling violently. The guide (who I kid you not, seemed to know EVERYTHING about the jungle) shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't know why this happened. There might be some kind of scientific explanation but even if there is, I would rather not know it.
Our guide was the cat's meow. He is a biologist and tour guide. He informed us that he has discovered 3 new species in his 26 years as a biologist. I now have an abundance of knowledge of what plants I could eat if I were to potentially get lost in the jungle. It was like having a more awesome and less douchy Bear Grylls as our guide.
This weekend the Group of Idiots has another preplanned excursion, but Robin and I have opted out of this one. I'm not quite sure what the weekend ahead holds. Friday night there is a concert of a Costa Rican folk band called Malpais that we will be attending and Saturday, Sunday and Monday (a holiday from school) who knows...but todo bien, I'm down for a surprise adventure. I am thinking about everyone at home a lot, I love and miss you all, until next time, pura vida :)
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
the world is a mystery when you don't understand the language...
My dear friend Robin said the above to me the other day and I feel that there are few things more true. At this point, one month into my stay in Costa Rica, I am in a constant state of uncertainty. (I think I'm ordering this, but who the hell knows?)
In the past 2 weeks the silliest lapses in understanding Spanish have come in the form of a) Robin and I becoming very excited about free juice samples at a restaurant in Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean, only to discover said drinks on our bill. And b) when a mystery woman showed up at Robin's house for breakfast and we had no idea why this woman was there. This event is what prompted the statement. We are still not quite sure who this woman is and why she joined us for breakfast.
So two weekends ago I went to Puerto Viejo, which is in the province Limon, on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. It was beautiful but I was rather perturbed with how gringo-ized it was. Sure, there were Ticos that lived there, but in fact, the vast majority of waiters/waitresses and bartenders I encountered were Gringos.
We stayed at a hostel called Rockin' J's which rented hammocks instead of beds. Which was fun for about one night. To be honest, I do not know why so many people recommend this hostel so highly. It was really dirty, like really REALLY dirty. As in, I felt it would be more cleanly for me to skip showering rather than go into the showers. Also the hammocks literally felt as though they had never been washed. Robin and I opted to switch hostels on the third night, much to the dismay and confusion of our companeros. For whatever reason, everyone we were with LOVED Rockin J's. And don't get me wrong, it was a fun place to party, but not such a great place to sleep and/or shower at.
The owner of Rockin J's was an old-ish man, about 55 or so, who I am pretty sure visited Costa Rica when he was like 18 and never left. Which is cool. But he was 55 and still raged like an 18 year old, which especially weirds me out post "the incident" with Robin's crazy host mother. His right hand man, was about 30 or so and reminded me to a T of the bad guy in the movie, The Girl Next Door. He had one of those mohawks that was really just a landing strip of slightly longer hair down the center of his head. And from what I could tell, he wore exclusively t-shirts with the sleeves cut off. He was the kind of guy who seemed relatively cool at first but the more you talked to him the more you realized he was kind of a douche. On our second night in the hostel he invited us to, and this is word for word, "a rave/pool party in the jungle, it's kind of far away so you'll have to take a taxi but there will be TONS of coke and ex there." We declined his offer and felt no remorse about this. Our good feelings towards declining the jungle rave were confirmed when a bunch of people came back at 5 am, on ecstacy and woke us up to talk about the rave (and give us lots of hugs).
Puerto Viejo was beautiful AND I saw a sloth, so that life goal is achieved. But I was really upset by the fact that it seemed like in this place with a beautiful beach and so much incredible nature, the best thing Puerto Viejo claimed to offer was free drinks from 10-12 at various bars. It seemed like most of the people I went with were more concerned with getting fucked up than seeing and experiencing a new place, I doubt a lot of them even remembered much about the weekend.
This past weekend I went to Tamarindo, which is a beach on the Pacific side of Costa Rica and it was a lot of the same. The other 50 members of our study abroad group have arrived and it is definitely clear that the main prerogative of the majority is to get drunk as often as possible. In fact, we watched a movie in class on Friday and when I sat down the girl sitting next to me informed me that she had just vomited due to the night before. Lovely. AND classy.
It just seems like a lot of people in our group are looking for the United States in a place where it doesn't exist. But it generates money, so, there are a lot of bars that offer free drinks to a majority Gringo clientele. In Tamarindo we went to a restaurant whose menu almost exactly mimicked that of Red Robin. Not that I don't love Red Robin, but that is not what I'm here to see. This restaurant was extra disappointing because it also mimicked Red Robin in that the prices were oddly high for such mediocre food, and the staff was unnecessarily surly.
But no matter, it was a good weekend. Robin and I opted out of the offered extra excursions to save money and just layed on the beach. I attempted to surf with my friend's surf board, but that did not go so well. I got out into the water and then a big wave crashed on my head. I got scared and promptly returned to shore. I got rather sunburned and for the first time utilized an aloe vera plant, which worked about the same as the aloe vera in the bottle but it felt much cooler and more exotic.
I am increasingly frustrated with my Spanish skills. I am incapable of not speaking and it is so hard when I want to say something but I do not possess the vocabulary to do so. Oh well, I guess there will just come a certain point when I stop saying things like "Oh wow, that shirt is drunk" and "I'm going to ignite my friend" (I said the latter by accident when I was trying to say I was going to meet my friend. Oops.)
Until next time...pura vida.
In the past 2 weeks the silliest lapses in understanding Spanish have come in the form of a) Robin and I becoming very excited about free juice samples at a restaurant in Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean, only to discover said drinks on our bill. And b) when a mystery woman showed up at Robin's house for breakfast and we had no idea why this woman was there. This event is what prompted the statement. We are still not quite sure who this woman is and why she joined us for breakfast.
So two weekends ago I went to Puerto Viejo, which is in the province Limon, on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. It was beautiful but I was rather perturbed with how gringo-ized it was. Sure, there were Ticos that lived there, but in fact, the vast majority of waiters/waitresses and bartenders I encountered were Gringos.
We stayed at a hostel called Rockin' J's which rented hammocks instead of beds. Which was fun for about one night. To be honest, I do not know why so many people recommend this hostel so highly. It was really dirty, like really REALLY dirty. As in, I felt it would be more cleanly for me to skip showering rather than go into the showers. Also the hammocks literally felt as though they had never been washed. Robin and I opted to switch hostels on the third night, much to the dismay and confusion of our companeros. For whatever reason, everyone we were with LOVED Rockin J's. And don't get me wrong, it was a fun place to party, but not such a great place to sleep and/or shower at.
The owner of Rockin J's was an old-ish man, about 55 or so, who I am pretty sure visited Costa Rica when he was like 18 and never left. Which is cool. But he was 55 and still raged like an 18 year old, which especially weirds me out post "the incident" with Robin's crazy host mother. His right hand man, was about 30 or so and reminded me to a T of the bad guy in the movie, The Girl Next Door. He had one of those mohawks that was really just a landing strip of slightly longer hair down the center of his head. And from what I could tell, he wore exclusively t-shirts with the sleeves cut off. He was the kind of guy who seemed relatively cool at first but the more you talked to him the more you realized he was kind of a douche. On our second night in the hostel he invited us to, and this is word for word, "a rave/pool party in the jungle, it's kind of far away so you'll have to take a taxi but there will be TONS of coke and ex there." We declined his offer and felt no remorse about this. Our good feelings towards declining the jungle rave were confirmed when a bunch of people came back at 5 am, on ecstacy and woke us up to talk about the rave (and give us lots of hugs).
Puerto Viejo was beautiful AND I saw a sloth, so that life goal is achieved. But I was really upset by the fact that it seemed like in this place with a beautiful beach and so much incredible nature, the best thing Puerto Viejo claimed to offer was free drinks from 10-12 at various bars. It seemed like most of the people I went with were more concerned with getting fucked up than seeing and experiencing a new place, I doubt a lot of them even remembered much about the weekend.
This past weekend I went to Tamarindo, which is a beach on the Pacific side of Costa Rica and it was a lot of the same. The other 50 members of our study abroad group have arrived and it is definitely clear that the main prerogative of the majority is to get drunk as often as possible. In fact, we watched a movie in class on Friday and when I sat down the girl sitting next to me informed me that she had just vomited due to the night before. Lovely. AND classy.
It just seems like a lot of people in our group are looking for the United States in a place where it doesn't exist. But it generates money, so, there are a lot of bars that offer free drinks to a majority Gringo clientele. In Tamarindo we went to a restaurant whose menu almost exactly mimicked that of Red Robin. Not that I don't love Red Robin, but that is not what I'm here to see. This restaurant was extra disappointing because it also mimicked Red Robin in that the prices were oddly high for such mediocre food, and the staff was unnecessarily surly.
But no matter, it was a good weekend. Robin and I opted out of the offered extra excursions to save money and just layed on the beach. I attempted to surf with my friend's surf board, but that did not go so well. I got out into the water and then a big wave crashed on my head. I got scared and promptly returned to shore. I got rather sunburned and for the first time utilized an aloe vera plant, which worked about the same as the aloe vera in the bottle but it felt much cooler and more exotic.
I am increasingly frustrated with my Spanish skills. I am incapable of not speaking and it is so hard when I want to say something but I do not possess the vocabulary to do so. Oh well, I guess there will just come a certain point when I stop saying things like "Oh wow, that shirt is drunk" and "I'm going to ignite my friend" (I said the latter by accident when I was trying to say I was going to meet my friend. Oops.)
Until next time...pura vida.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)