Tamarindo

I spent this past weekend with Julia, my friend/roommate from UCLA who is studying abroad in Costa Rica. Despite the fact the weekend included three LONG bus rides (one to San Jose, one to Tamarindo Beach, and one back home to Monteverde) I had a great time. It was great to be able to hang out with kids my age. I met Julia in San Jose on Thursday afternoon. I had dinner at her house. Her host mom is a great cook (her platanos dulces were to die for) as well as a wonderful lady. We spent a long time just talking about her life, and even though she had hardly met me she went on and on about how great it was the Julia and I were friends and were such good people. That night we went out with a few other girls to enjoy the UCR campus night life.

The next day we left early to catch the 8:30 bus to Tamarindo (a beach on the Pacific about 6 hours away). Unfortunately that bus had been canceled and instead we had to take a later bus to Santa Cruz, then transfer. Basically it was an all-day affair. But the 13 of us (there are 12 other UC students on the program) entertained ourselves despite the long schlep. The kids on the program were exceptionally sweet and I felt like I fit into their group immediately.

Our Hostel, La Botella de Leche, at Tamarindo was AMAZING. We were split amongst a few different dorm rooms, but everything was clean and spacious. Each dorm room had its own bathroom and the hostel provided towels and sheets for the beds. The common space was
well laid out with tons of couches, bean bags, hanging hammocks, hanging chairs and hanging swings. There was free internet. They had a fully equipped kitchen that everyone did their part to keep spotless. There were tons of other young folk there as well including many Argentinans and Israelis (my Hebrew got a lot of practice this weekend). Half of the guests had brought their guitars and sometimes we would have sing-a-longs. Best of all, the Hostel only $10 a night! What a deal.

On Saturday, we spent the day at the beach. The water was refreshing and we could watch pelicans dive for fish. The waves weren't too big, but down a ways there were surfers
doing their thing. We also did some beach combing and found tons of incredible shells. I collected a bunch and hope to make some jewelery out of them.


I hardly slept Saturday night because I woke up at 4am to catch a bunch of buses back to Monteverde. The people at the bus station said I would have to take between 3-4 buses and it would take about 10 hours to get home. But somehow I figured out a way to get there with only two buses and managed to get home by 11:30. Unfortunately Mom and Abba weren't expecting me until 2 or 3 and I waited cold, dirty, and tired outside of the house for 4 hours for them to get back from their excursion.

A Pastoral Landscape

Monteverde is like stepping into a Claude Lorrain pastoral landscape. The air is fresh and clean, free of the soot and smog that hovers over San Jose. The one main street is a well-kept quiet dirt road. The sun shines in the blue sky. Our quaint Treetop house is rustic. From the polished wood floors, to the bamboo roof, to the gnarled tree trunk table and stools, everything fits into the picture--an ideal cottage in the woods. The trees grow green around us and the flora and fauna thrive.

But soon this bucolic pulchritude is tarnished by the uncivilized realities of a rural lifestyle. The hills, which the morning sun basks in a golden glow and dances in the dappled shade of the afternoon are monotonous and steep. They double distances. They steal your breath on the way up and jam your toes and wear out your knees on the way down. During the day, the wind keeps the clouds away and cleans the air so you can take deep sweet breaths that no longer burn your lungs or coat your mouth and throat with a fine grey ash. But at night the wind howls. It scoffs at man´s feeble construction of walls and roofs. It exploits the cracks and gaps and enters with a vengeance. It swirls and blows inside and makes certain that as you shiver under your blankets you succumb to the power of nature. It roars through the treetops like a revving engine and shakes the house with its iron grip. The temperature inside fluctuates with the winds capricious temper. The cold marches in along with the darkness.

Pedestrians, cars, motorcycles, and trucks share the road alike. We walk one-foot-infront-of-the-other in the ´safety´ of the white line that lines the edge of the road and tempermentally disappears to rocky gravel, deep gutters or mountain drop offs. We walk, shoulders tensed, as if it will make us smaller. At night we disappear as black ghosts, invisible to and blinded by the bright headlights as they whip around the sharp corners of the road.

There are scorpions hiding in pant legs, spiders on the walls, and beetles on the toilet. The shower has two temperatures cold and scalding burn-your-scalp hot. As it passes from one to the other, you get an ephemeral second of delightfully warm.

After a week I knew I had to get out, and get out fast. But the bus crawls at a snails pace back to the bustle of San Jose that I had so eagerly left.

(Note: I wrote this is based-upon-truth piece of fiction on the 5 hour bus ride to San Jose. I am spending the weekend with Julia and friends at the beach.)

(Note: It is true--Abba got bit on the thigh by a scorpion that had crawled into his pants as they sat folded on the shelf. He is fine)

The Treetop House

On Thursday we concluded the first part of our Costa Rica stay by saying good bye to San Jose and relocating to the Monteverde Cloud forest in the Northwestern mountains of Costa Rica.

We chartered a van to cart our luggage and ourselves for the 3.5 hour drive to the town. The drive is rumored to be horrible, including a long stretch on a nightmarish dirt road. It turns out, however, that it took us 6 HOURS to get here. We left just before 2pm and after an hour on Hwy 1 (yes, the same Hwy 1 that goes through California and in fact the entire west coast, sometimes known as the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California) we hit a TERRIBLE traffic jam. One kilometer ahead a fatal head-on collision had occurred between a huge Mack truck and a smaller pickup. The highway is a small windy two-lane road with no shoulder whatsoever and with the accident turned into a LONG skinny parking lot. People were getting out of their cars to walk around. Our driver told us that the line of cars probably stretched back to almost where we started from! Occasionally you could see the cars in front turn on their engines and inch forward and we would all jump back into the cars, but we only moved forward at most a few feet. Finally after two and a half hours, they had cleared the way and we continued our drive. We passed the accident spot and saw the Mack truck rolled on its side in the bushes and the front of the pick up squished like an accordion with the engine in the front seat. The rest of the drive was uneventful and though it was dark it was easy going. The dirt stretch wasn't not that bad, it was the smoothest/ best kept dirt road I have ever seen.

We arrived to the Treehouse after dark and really had NO CLUE where we were living or what it looked like until the next day.

Monteverde's feel is quite polar opposite from San Jose. Our house still howls with the wind and is a little drafty but it is a quaint wooden flat eye level with the tree tops. Supposedly you can see monkeys and toucanettes in the trees outside our window. All the decor is made from gnarly tree trunks and multicolored woods. We are off the main dirt road and about two km from Santa Elena (the nearby town). Yesterday mom and I explored our environs. We are really close to the Bosque Eterno de los Ninos, where I am interested in volunteering. We also saw a monkey steal a banana from the fruit stand at a little store.

In the afternoon we hiked up this HUGE hill with Abba. It was literally two hours of climbing the steep part of Proctor (by Kan's house) without break. It was quite exhilarating. Mom thinks we climbed the continental divide (the point where the rivers on our side flow to the Atlantic and on the other side flow to the Pacific). Anyways, at a point where it leveled out almost at the very top, we decided to turn back for daylight's sake. Though we hadn't quite made it all the way, we were proud at what we had accomplished, until, we met a balding man with a small pot belly and two dogs also on this deserted trail.
We found out that it took him only 45min to get to the VERY top (farther than we had gone) and he started lower than we had! After a short conversation he excused himself, and began jogging down the 15% grade. And we thought we were in good shape...he clearly had run UP the hill too.

Anyways, I'll add pictures later today, but for now I have a skype date with Lex.

Happy Valentines Day to All!

Cahuita

This weekend we spent two nights at the small town of Cahuita on the southern part of the Caribbean coast. We took a 4 hour bus ride from San Jose and arrived early afternoon to a torrential downpour. I had no umbrella (I swear we only own two in California, which mom and abba brought and used) and could only hope that the clothes in my back pack were not as soaking as I was as we walked over a mile to our Cabina. Luckily my shoes are true to their word waterproof so my feet stayed dry. The Cabina was absolutely precious. It was like a little Anne of Green Gables house with a front porch and white latice trim and a gabled roof. We had a full kitchen and large bathroom. The grounds were beautiful too with lots of Heliconias and tropical plants. And high up in the trees we could spot large iguanas.

Cahuita had faced bad weather for the past week. The torrential downpour that we walked through had been drenching the town non-stop all week and today's weather was considered fabulous because there were only heavy showers with breaks between them. The featured black sand beach Playa Negra that was across the street from our Cabina was more like playa sucia. The sand was completely hidden beneath the blanket of drift wood, of branches, of coconuts, of palm fronds, of leaves and even of entire trees that the stormy weather had washed ashore. The water was a deep purple from all the silt and dirt that was churning in the waves. When we walked along the shore the sweet vinegary smell of rotting bananas floated in the breeze. Most of the litter was organic matter, but there were some gross things including a dead pig. Most of Saturday afternoon we spent eating and walking around the unpaved puddly streets. The football (soccer) field was a perfect lake. Bob Marley was playing from every other restaurant and rastas hung around the corner with their long dreads stuffed into their crotched hats. Everyone was super friendly and walking around, or biking with a surfboard under one arm to catch the afternoon's waves.

Sunday started as a bit of a disappointment. We were ready for a big day at the National Park that is situated at the other end of town. But when we arrived it was CLOSED due to the storm aftermath. The trail was being cleared and perhaps would be open later in the day. We walked a little out of town to go see the butterfly garden and same story...closed because of storm damage! So as was the trend of these past 3 weeks, Costa Rica was, yet again, absconding its gems from us. We decided to walk along the black sand beach for a couple of miles which was actually quite wonderful. A town dog adopted us as we meandered and loyally traipsed around with us contently.
We turned around as it began to rain again, but it was only a short shower. By noon we had already walked 6 miles. We had lunch at a place called "Ingrids." After lunch we checked the national park again and it was open! But only until the first river that usually can be easily forded at low tide, but due to the weather was impassible. This meant that the trail only extended about 1 or 2 kilometers. The park followed the coast line (this coast had white sand instead of black). A ranger showed us a some Howler Monkeys (mono congo) in the trees as well as some sloths. It was amazing how he could pick them out with such ease while as hard as I tried I could NOT see any animals without someone pointing them out. Our animal count for the weekend included: Howler monkeys, sloths, iguanas, lizards, crabs, toucans, oro pendulum (birds), and a plethora of butterflies. By the end of the trip, I had honed my eye and began to spot sloths and monkeys. And as we were walking out of the park on Monday afternoon right before we headed back to San Jose, WE were the ones pointing out the animals to other people walking through the park. It was a good feeling.

We had a delicious Italian dinner at Cocorico. As soon as we sat down at the restaurant the rain started up again. It was unbelievably heavy. We ate without speaking because the rain was so loud you couldn't comfortably uphold a conversation. It just poured from the sky like a garden hose on full blast. The water dripped off the roof in these gorgeous streams illuminated by the pleasant decorative lights of the restaurant. It paused momentarily, as we left dinner, but the dry skies did not last in our mile walk home. However, it was the most enjoyable walk ever. The night was dark black, the raindrops were succulent and heavy. The sound drowned out the crashing of the ocean and I sang a loud into the darkness and no one could hear me. I was borrowing a large umbrella (the kind with the silver pointy tip) from our Cabina and was unperturbed by the puddles. The shower however, was even too grand for this heavy duty umbrella and my legs were soaked by the time we got home. Luckily I was in a dress and so it didn't matter.

Monday broke with blue skies and a hot Caribbean sun. We got to the butterfly garden and Abba and I went crazy taking photos. We had a delicious breakfast--> an enormous bowl of fruit covered in yogurt and granola. We spent the early afternoon in the National Park again and got to experience the blue sky, bright sand, hot tropical version. It was still closed past the river but the stretch we could explore was worth doing twice.

We caught a 4:30pm bus home to San Jose. The ride was extra long because we got stopped by police for an extensive check (we are close to the boarder with Panama). Mom and I did not have proper ID but we were let off with a little finger shaking. Run-ins with the police seem to be a weekly event for us. No less than 5 minutes later the bus got a flat tire so we spent some time at the llanteria getting that fixed. But other than that, we made it home safe and sound. And the weekend turned out to be quite a nice one!

San Jose...who would've known

I have one week left in San Jose. But before I leave, I'd like to share some random observations about the city.

1. I have seen more blind people here than I ever have in my life. Everyday that I am in the center/downtown area, I see at LEAST 3 (but sometimes up to 5) blind people navigating their way around San Jose by themselves. It is utterly amazing that they can get around. First of all, the city is crowded all the time. Secondly, the side walks are uneven and the gutters are at least a foot deep. This means you have to take a leap in order to get from the sidewalk onto solid ground. Third, and most importantly, the traffic is ridiculous. It is life threatening to cross the street even with two eyes and young agile legs to sprint across to avoid getting smashed like a bug. There are very FEW cross walks/lights for pedestrians. It's Frogger, only you don't get extra lives. Lastly, the city is super loud, so being able to sift through all the sounds in order to hear what they need is quite difficult. Yet San Jose seems to be a mecca for the blind. And as far as I have observed they have no trouble navigating.

2. (Speaking of sounds) America's constitution should actually say all men have the right to "life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and quiet." Because in the US people feel entitled to their silence and there are even laws (ex 'disturbing the peace') that prohibit intruding upon other peoples silence. The idea that someone has jurisdiction over sound is laughable in San Jose (as it was in Brazil too). The traffic doesn't surprise me, nor the horns, and even the car alarms that go off daily are only to be expected. But the wind...it is unbelievable. My ears ring with the sound of the wind whipping around our house. It shakes the skylight and makes it sound like thunder. And it never stops!

3. Speaking of weather, San Jose in January is decently cold (considering we ARE in the tropics). The wind, obviously, keeps the temperature down, and makes jackets a must. But the most peculiar weather is this week we have had sunny blue skies and rain all day. Yes, at the SAME time. With the wind you begin to doubt if the wet precipitation that keeps your cheeks wet is coming from the sky at all. You look up and there is not a cloud in sight, in fact, if the wind and rain stopped it would be quiet warm. Yet somehow you are getting misted by water...Needless to say, we have seen some AMAZING rainbows. But their quotidian appearance, has begun to jade their magic. However this one this afternoon was SOOO big I just had to snap a picture from the bus window


4. People sell the most random things on the street. This in itself doesn't surprise me, but what does is that while the wares are eclectic, they are not vary diverse. That is to say, other than food, street vendors seem to sell one of four things: Socks, pencils, DVDs, or lottery tickets.

5. Costa Rican children LOVE pigeons. There are a number of plazas to which hundreds of pigeons flock. Nothing fills a child with more joy that to go running after the pigeons. They stretch their arms in an attempt to capture, and shriek with joy when they fly away.

Here are some photos of some other things we have done in and around San Jose:


The San Jose Opera House. I am very sad we are not going to be around for opera season, I really wanted to see one!


Tree-Huggin' in Costa Rica

Mi Casa

By popular demand, a few visuals of our humble abode:
This is our 4-unit complex. We are the front left


Part of the 5-part security system:


Mom in her bed room taken from my bedroom:


The kitchen:


Abba's study/ living room. The wooden couches are NOT good for curling up on

Rincon de La Vieja

'La Vieja,' as she is known, still resides somewhere on the volcano, though no one could tell you the last time she was seen. The 'rincon' (corner) is as close to a landmark as you can get, but upon the vast volcano, there are many rincones in which to hide. There are thousands of trees entwined in strangling vines, there are rocky creeks, playfull brooks, there are stones and boulders to jump over, there are rolling hills and lush grass, and there is mud to sink into after a hard rain. But the spirit of La Vieja is still felt. She rides on the wind that howls past your ears, mats your hair into bird-nest like tangles, and sends shivers down your spine. She makes the mud pits bubble and burp, and sends the thick gray glop into the air. She releases steam from the rocks, and from the hot stench of sulfur wafting up, you know you just missed her. And when she is feeling particularly creative she paints rainbows in the blue sky (facing west in the morning, and east in the evening) and lures the adventurous to her lair.

Getting to Rincon de La Vieja was the usual long-car-ride/get-lost adventure. The volcano is located in the northwest region of Guanacaste and it took us the majority of Saturday to reach Rinconcito Lodge, where we had booked a two night stay. We followed the rainbow, the whole way there:
(yes, this provoked renditions of Somewhere over the rainbow)

(Though we found the end of the rainbow, right there on the non-existent shoulder of the road there was no pot of gold...though in retrospect, isn't the pot always on the left arch?)

On Sunday we woke up early and had a hearty gallo pinto and egg breakfast along with some fruit and toast. We saddled up for an all day horseback ride around the volcano. Horseback riding, is an amazing sport, and I have not done it since I was 5. Needless to say I was a little nervous to sit precariously on top of a powerful beast for a bumpy and unpredictable ride. We had a guide with us who kept the horses in line, though the horses turned out to be the most calm, gentle and well behaved of animals. You could tell the relationship between the horses and our guide was one of deep respect, hard work and trust. It is amazing how they press their ears back listening for the 'besos' from our guide to keep going. The horses turned left or right with the slightest tug from the reigns, and had run this trail so many times, they worked on auto-pilot at every fork. The ride was really amazing, we had to climb up and down strenuous hills, ford multiple rivers, and cover quite a lengthy distance to and within the park. With our guide's expert eyes we got to see monkeys (moms and babies playing and eating) and a sloth (super rare). The horseback ride took us to the active mud pits and fumaroles of this still active volcano. We also bathed in a natural hot spring and rinsed the sulfur/volcanic dust off in a fresh stream. On our way back in the afternoon, we even got the pleasure of galloping. (Galloping, while much less bumpy, is quite exhilarating. I held my breath, half out of fear, half out of delight, half out of laughter at my perceived lack of control, and was pretty sure if we galloped for too long, I may just pass out).



Other cool animal sightings to add to our list was: a flock of green parrots, a HUGE lizard, a frog (on our porch), butterflies of all colors, and (for mom and abba) a coral snake.

Rincon de La Vieja was very isolated. We were 3 of 8 guests at the lodge (and I think there was only one other place to stay in the whole area). The only evidence of man you could see in the hillsides were a few dirt roads that cut scars in the green. At night, the stars shown like powdered sugar spilled upon black satin. The wind was so strong that I was certain, at night as I tossed and turned, it would blow me right to Kansas.