"America retains the world's pre-eminent military force, spending almost as much on defense as all other countries together. But precisely because of this military prowess, enemies will seek 'asymmetric' means to counter it. That means America must 'display master of irregular warfare' rather than wish it away."
My interests have shifted significantly in the last year or two. As such, I am switching the direction of the blog. I intend to make this site a collaborative effort, so I have taken down the things about "me" so that it can act as a platform for all the posters.
Christy and I are kicking back on our last few days (today being the last) in Costa Rica.
La Fortuna
Hola personas todas,
We are done with school, surfing, and yoga and have a few days to explore a bit more of the country. Montezuma, the place where the school was located, was a neat traveler type town, but we were ready to move on. It was so remote that is drove the price up for all goods and services. It was a cash only economy, which some speculate allows people to not pay taxes, which in turn, leave the roads muddy, the water undrinkable, and the infrastructure generally sparse. People there are mad at the government for not providing them help, so they blow off the government and don’t pay taxes. Hmmm.
Anyway, we were ready to get out of the Nicoya Peninsula and see some more of the country. We went to La Fortuna that is about 80 miles north of the capital, San Jose. We are glad we made the trip, and are happy that much more of Costa Rica is developed, successful, and functioning more properly than the hinterlands like Montezuma.
Yesterday Christy and I spent 7.5 hours going 100 miles. I’m pretty sure if yesterday was a stage in the Tour de France (which ended today and Carlos Sastre won - I watched the stage live this morning at the café where we ate breakfast), they could have ridden it faster than we drove it. If the ferry ride was replaced with a flat bridge, but the riders had to ride on the roads, including pot-holed dirt roads for about 20 miles, they still would have been faster.
The roads in this country remind me of the Pacific Coast Highway. If you’ve been on it, you know that it is constantly turning, going up and down, spanning canyons, etc. That is how traveling in Costa Rica is. Constantly undulating roads, great scenery. Nothing is straight. Nothing is flat. The traffic was crazy and big 18-wheelers try to scale roads in excess of 15% grade, and they slow to a crawl, backing up everyone else. Travelers to Costa Rica are warned – getting anywhere that is about 100 miles away or more is a full day event. Oh yeah, and we were in a proper taxi (8 passenger van that sometimes holds 13 people – like yesterday) that could pass other cars and trucks occasionally. If we were on a bus, we might still be on our way here.
La Fortuna is the town right outside the Arenal Volcano. It is an active volcano that is almost always in a cloud. It’s a colorful town. There are lots of tourist outfits, but the town is not only for tourists and travelers like Montezuma was. There are proper Tico businesses and places to eat. Christy and I like the town a lot.
Tonight we are staying a nice place. We will watch TV for the first time in more than 3 weeks (aside from the bit of the Tour I saw this morning). Tomorrow we are going on a hiking tour where a guide will help us find some creatures of the jungle and then a dip in the hot springs. YES! Tuesday we will hang out a bit in the morning and then head to San Jose (remember getting anywhere takes a whole day). We leave at 6:30AM on Wednesday.
Thanks for reading,
James
This is just a quick hello while I wait for my check at the cafe/internet place.
All you surfers out there... Mal Pais is where it's at. First, the town is chill. We are staying at
Tales from Costa
Rica 2.5
Christy and I are spending this weekend in Mal Pais (translates to Bad Place). It’s not. It is a surf town on the other side of the Nicoya Peninsula from Montezuma. We are only here for about 30 hours so I’m probably not going to surf here – especially since I have an entire week of surfing coming up.
The intention of this update is to describe in some detail our Spanish lab on Friday. We caught a bus out of Montezuma to an even smaller town (is that possible?) called Cabuya about 6km away. Our intended destination was an animal shelter on the outskirts of Cabuya.
This is not your normal animal shelter. It is a wild animal shelter. It is one part zoo and one part in-patient hospital. Among the animals was the one armed white-faced monkey named Tarzan. There was a squirrel that fell out of its nest and was abandoned by its family. There was a Toucan with one wing (think Nemo but a bird). There was an animal that I cannot remember (raccoon family) that had been electrocuted, and an anteater whose problem I do not remember.
There were three things disturbing about the animal shelter.
First, was that you could hold and pet the wild animals. Members of our class actually
got into the cage with the white-faced monkey – all 20lbs of him. He crawled
around on top of my classmates swung from one woman’s hair and otherwise just
hung around with people (sorry, bad pun). The squirrel crawled up and down my
classmates. The anteater even put the moves on one friend of mine and stuck its
tongue in her mouth! Maybe none of this sounds disturbing, but let me remind
you that these animals were wild. They were not born in captivity. They had only been there
part of their lives. They were in tiny cages and only let out to crawl around
on humans.
The second weird thing about the shelter was the cleanliness of the facility. Like everything else in Costa Rica, it was predominantly outside. In fact, the part we saw was exclusively so. It was also POURING rain on us. I guess this shouldn’t surprise me at this point – as it can rain anytime and anywhere in this country. But as the tour continued, the rain basically flooded the place. Christy and I (and our classmates) were walking around in flip-flips in top-of-our-feet-deep in God knows what wastewater. I did not think all was well.
Both of these factors compounded the strange vibe, and ultimately the weirdest aspect of this hour-long tour: the owners. The woman was from Texas and still in her nightshirt at 1pm when we arrived. Her husband (though I’m not sure they were actually married) was a Costa Rican upon whose family land the shelter sat. The woman yelled at us demanding donations as soon as we walked in the door (By door I mean small gate that we could barely find from the path because the foliage was growing over it. It is not clear to me whether or not she wants the community to know what goes on there).
When we left, both Christy and I had a very bad feeling about the situation, as did our teachers and many classmates. However, my concerns have been allayed somewhat. At the bakery in Cabuya where we ate and picked up the bus back to Montezuma, we met with volunteers (and all the help is volunteer based) from the shelter. I struck up a conversation with one of them. She was an ESL teacher from NYC. She was 20-something and appeared to have a good head on her shoulders. I asked her how she found the place that is located basically at the end of the tip of the most remote part of Costa Rica. She found it through WWOOF. I actually don’t know if this is the correct acronym, but I believe it stands for the World-Wide Organization of Organic Farms. Travelers can volunteer at WWOOF locations and stay without monetary cost. I asked her if the place was legit, and she vouched for the woman and the on-goings of the shelter. That put my mind at ease about everything except what was in the water that I drudged through at flood stage.
Christy and I are leaving our hotel in Mal Pais now. The hotel is called The Place. I recommend it to people coming to this part of the world. All the cabinas have themes and their own name. We stayed in the cabina named Nido del Amor (Nest of Love). It has A/C and a hot water shower. Yumm.
Thanks for reading,
James
I am going to take dictation from Christy for this post.
Hey all,
Tales from Costa
Rica – Week One
Thanks for taking the time to click the link and read about what’s up with us in our time in Costa Rica. Let me start by creating a bit of context for our trip. I want to learn Spanish. I figured this summer would be a great chance to make strides in that arena. I wanted an emersion course. I wanted Christy to come with. I thought a beach would a good selling point for her. In my searches, I found La Escuela Del Sol – a school that offers Spanish classes, surf lessons, yoga study, and fire spinning. I have chosen to do Spanish and surf. Christy chose Spanish and Yoga.
Now that’s what we’re up to here. But where is “here?” We are in Montezuma, Costa Rica. The town is on the southern tip of the Nocoya Peninsula in the northwestern part of the county. Montezuma is a very interesting place. It is extremely remote, but has a very international vibe. On any given night, the street (yes, singular) is filled with more people from outside CR than from inside the country. Right now, for example, we are at Organico. It is a restaurant owned by a Turkish woman that has several European employees. Its seating area includes a patio (everyone eats outside in Montezuma) and an air-conditioned room with pillows on the floor and very chill and meditation-inspired music. Now, as peaceful as that sounds, bear in mind that this is the nicest place in town by a wide margin. I was here two days ago (laying down because I was not feeling well) and I had ants crawling all over me… So, to sum up, Montezuma – very remote, very small, and very hot.
The weather is consistent if nothing else. It is hot. It is 85-90 and muggy every day all day – into the evening and through the night. There is no break. The only difference is sometimes it rains. “Rain” is not really an adequate description of what happens. Deluge comes close. Two nights ago, it rained harder than I have ever seen it rain anywhere – for 4 hours. The PVC pipe our hotel uses as a downspout to redirect some water looked more like a fire hose. Indeed, some of our classmates used the diameter of the water coming out of the downspout to gage whether or not it was “letting up” so they could go to dinner. When the diameter of water changed from 4 inches (the diameter of the PVC pipe) to 2 inches, they made a break for it.
Our accommodations are clean and kept tidy by the staff at the hotel. The veranda has hammocks everywhere for a serene and social atmosphere. The area also overlooks a very pretty beach area with waves crashing on a bunch of rocks. We have a private bathroom, but there is a slight ventilation gap at the ceiling of every bathroom that connects to all the other bathrooms. So, one can hear (though muffled) other people going about their business in their bathrooms. We have paid for AC in our room (an “upgrade” aka up-charge). AC allows for sleep, which would be very difficult for me otherwise. Our hotel does have one major shortcoming – no heated water of any kind or degree. Cold showers are very refreshing when it is so hot, but a little warm water would go a long way. Alas, it is not to be so. We bounce in and out of the cold water quickly washing the essential areas. We cannot curse our water though because sometimes we don’t have water at all! Last night I wanted to shower before we went to dinner… no water - which seems strange to me given the surplus of water all around us.
Spanish lessons are going well though. It is a true emersion course – all of our text and almost all of our instruction is in Spanish – gotta bring the A Game to class. It is paying big dividends, even if I speak too much English outside of class. The classes are small (2 people for Christy and 3 for me) so we have many opportunities to practice and get our questions answered. The other aspect of the class is the pace – we did present tense verbs in 2 days. Now we are working on past tense. In between, it’s body parts, food, colors, and flora/fauna. Wednesday and Thursday were particularly difficult. I was not feeling well – stomach ache, headache, and general fatigue. Trying to learn when it was hot, I was hot, and nauseous, was very taxing.
Christy’s yoga is going very well. She really likes her yoga instructor – which is telling given her high standard for instruction. As for my surfing, it is really hard. We have a 45-minute walk to and from our hotel to the beach where we surf. Our boards stay at the beach, but the walk is over beach and jungle paths – up and down two hills. And surfing itself – as anyone who has surfed can attest – is an energy intensive activity. Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton look like they do for a reason. However, I stood up (on my huge 8.5 foot board) the first day. I have been riding espuma (foam) all week. Yesterday, I caught my first real wave by paddling past the break, turning around, and paddling back in to “catch” the wave – stand up and ride. After that success, my subsequent two efforts were much less victorious. On try number three, I did not make it past the break point and got repeatedly pounded by waves in deep water and was knocked off my board. It was pretty scary, but tiring more than anything else. Once I got back to my board I was completely spent. That pretty much ended my Friday surfing. Yesterday afternoon, I had a hard time lifting my arms.
As for reliability of communication, the Internet here is slow and a little expensive. However, I anticipate checking my email more frequently, especially if I don’t get sick. (Wednesday and Thursday I was horizontal when not in class or surfing.) As such, you will be more likely to write emails to you rather than spamming you with a blog link. For family, we have a calling card, so I will make some calls this afternoon. My cell works only intermittently in town, and it’s $2.00 a minute.
Christy and I are generally enjoying our trip, though it is tough at times being without many amenities to which we’ve grown accustom. I will say that it was weird to open my computer for the first time today and look at the icons on the screen. My eyes noticed looking at a “screen” was a different sort of light than I had been looking at for a week. I thought that was a neat feeling. Also, I have basically been unplugged and out of touch with the world for a week. I will definitely not be able to take any shortcuts when reading The Economist when I get back. Being unplugged doesn’t occur for me as refreshing or recharging. It is basically a choice. And, given where technology is and the world being flat – it seems unnecessary. I guess in time, Montezuma will come more completely connected.
Thanks for reading this lengthy entry. I appreciate you taking the time to read. I hope it was valuable for you.
Best,
James
