costa rica

I was very excited, as you may imagine, to leave San Jose for the coast. Quite personally, I find San Jose to be a rather uninteresting city. Aside from some beautiful parks well suited for reading, San Jose itself is not a very aesthetically pleasing city. It is congruent with most other Latin American cities in that it is bustling with people, has horrendous traffic, and street vendors are selling everything from fruits, to lottery tickets, to underwear. Here you can find every fast food joint you can possibly imagine: McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, Subway, Quizno's, Dominos... each with a Tico twist. It borders slightly on disturbing.

Alas, after a bumpy 3 1/2 hour bus ride, I finally arrived in Manuel Antonio. One could notice that the landscape and climate were totally different. The scenery turned very lush and green, colored by pink hibiscus. The air turned hot and humid. The road down to the beach is elevated, allowing you to see the Pacific Ocean and the uninhabitated islands that jut off the coast. All and all I was extremely excited, seeing that I hadn't seen a beach since August.. never mind a Costa Rican beach. It was really neat to see street signs that signal to slow for children, dogs, and monkeys.

I was fortunate enough in that I was able to spend a whole week here in Manuel Antonio. I stayed at an amazing hostel called the Vista Serena. I HIGHLY recommend this hostel. They have spotless dorm rooms, private rooms, hammocks, movie nights, a full kitchen, free coffee and toast every morning, mangrove tours, and is overall a great place for meeting people. Not to mention that the staff Monica, Conrad, and Sonja are all just lovely and are always willing to help if you need anything.

During my time here, I had my first official week of Spanish classes... ever. My Spanish is okay, I most certainly can get by, but it's nothing to write home about. I was a little nervous before I began, seeing how my teacher Runia did not speak a lick of English and I was in the class all by myself. All and all though, I had a great week. I learned a tremendous amount and even had a cooking class, a salsa class, and a surfing class on top of the 3 hours of private Spanish lessons everyday. The setting of the school is beautiful. It is all outdoors with open classrooms and if you're lucky enough, you can see monkeys, sloths, and iguanas.

My week in Manuel Antonio was nothing short of beautiful... except another word to describe my week could have been sweaty. The beach was gorgeous. The jungle comes right down to meet the sand and there are beautiful vistas of the offshore islands. The sunsets here are disgustingly beautiful. I'll be challenged to see if I can find a prettier one. The Manuel Antonio National Park is also nice, but a little expensive - $8. There are trails that lead to private beaches and you can see capuchin monkeys frolicking in the trees. If you're really paying attention, you can see sloths, raccoons, anteaters and parrots.

I met only the most amazing people and had quite an interesting experience watching the Patriots play a horrible Superbowl inside of a US C-123 Cargo Plane turned into a bar.

And now I'm off for Montezuma.

Ah, my fifth day here in Costa Rica. As many of you may know, I was supposed to be in Guatemala for the next three months, which just so happened to fall apart less than a week before I was due to leave. Rather than try to find another volunteer organization with only a few days to spare, I opted to stick with the same organization and just change my destination. I was hesitant to come to Costa Rica originally, knowing that tourism is so huge here and that it may be difficult to totally immerse myself in the culture. However, I found out pretty quickly that if you put forth the effort and really want to immerse yourself.. you most certainly can. I´ve been eating mostly at local sodas (which are typical tico restaurants) and ordering casados (set meal) for lunch and dinner. The casado usually has rice, beans, plantains, salad, and either beef, pork, chicken, or vegetables.. which is great for me since I´m a a vegetarian. I arrived Wednesday in San Jose and spent my first three nights at the Hostel Pangea. The hostel has an open-aired restaurant/bar, a roof deck with views, free internet, a decent sized swimming pool, colorful murals, and a dance floor. All of the recommendations for it are definitely on par. I had deja vu when it came to staying in a dorm with 5 other people again. As strange or as uncomfortable as it may sound, it truly is the way to go if you´re traveling solo. One minute you introduce yourself to someone staying in the bed next to yours, and the next minute you´re out to dinner with them and then out for the night. My second night here, I did just so with a girl from Spain and two girls from Ireland. We ended up at´discoteque´called Castro´s and spent the whole evening and a good part of the morning dancing salsa, merenegue, mambo etc. I had the best time. Previously I was considering taking salsa lessons, but it´s really not necessary. Not necessary in the fact that if you just keep going out and dancing, you´re sure to pick it up... not in the sense that I´m good... because I´m most certainly not. It really only takes a night or two to pacify any nervousness one may have about living in a foreign country for three months... atleast that´s how I feel at the moment. Yesterday I took a bus to Manuel Antonio which is located on the central pacific coast. En route, I met the nicest Ticos. Before I left the hostel, I met two Ticos who were heading to a near-by beach and offered to share a cab with me to the bustling Coca-Cola bus station in San Jose. Notorious for being one of the more dangerous places in San Jose in regards to theft and pick- pocketing, they showed me where to buy a ticket and then where a safe place was to sit and wait until my bus was ready to depart. I was very thankful given that it was my first time there and it was incredibly crowded and confusing nontheless. I was very relieved to get on the bus and be able to relax. I got a window seat so I´d be able to check out the views on the way, and of course I got the one window where the curtain wouldn´t stay closed due to the wind of the moving bus. The man sitting next to me must of picked up on the fact that I really wanted to see, and before I knew it he has whipped his shirt off and tied the curtain with his shirt. I was very taken aback by this kind gesture, definitely not something that happens frequently in the United States. Anyways, I am here in Manuel Antonio for the next week taking intensive spanish lessons. I start tomorrow morning and am very excited. It is absolutely BEAUTIFUL here in Manuel Antonio. I will tell you more about it later, because right now I need to go find some place to watch the Superbowl.

Chao!