foray into semi-permanence: a fifth floor retro-entry.

A setting, perhaps.

In the evenings in San José, the sky turns a different color of orange than I've ever seen. This is certainly not the place in Costa Rica to watch the sun set, but the orange cream soda popsicle that drips down in between the buildings at dusk lends calm to a concrete wasteland of car horns and catcalls. Jugglers perform for cars stopped at intersections, drunks hold out plastic cups and ask for money, and metal bars cover all residential doors and windows. The one-way narrow streets aren't quaint; they are uneasy. This city has dirt underneath its fingernails. Ask any Costa Rican anywhere else in San José, and they'll tell you that San José is dangerous, noisy, and ugly. Thats because the rest of the country lives on the beach, walks to work on dirt roads, and buys mangos from the corner store. I can't blame them - there is something frustrating about being in a big city when the easy life of the beach is so close by. But I'm calm here. I'm getting used to it.

Op. San Jose, phase one, Hostal Pangea.

It felt good, somehow, to be back in a hostal, with its requisite idiosyncratic traveler population. The Costa Rican hostal crowd, I judgementally report, does not stack up to the that of Peru or Ecuador. This country is safer (supposedly) and more expensive; it is less the destination of the malnourished backpacker than the sun-seeking citydweller. Hostal bar conversations are about surfing, wasting time, or getting wasted. I dare say that the crowd is less adventurous - and more American. I'll admit I don't like having Americans around. Two Americans (from DC, I later learned) had a loud and childish conversation that kept me awake in my bottom bunk my first night at Pangea; somehow I would have been less annoyed if they spoke a different language. I did meet a few good ones at Pangea, however.

Typical hostal encounter: Putting in contact lenses and brushing my teeth, exchanged mildly awkward nicities and get-to-know you questions with Kara from Salt Lake, who looked good wearing a nose piercing and a baby-blue bath towel. What is an appropriate amount of conversation in such attire? She had curly hair and wore earth tones (I later found out), and left me Mitch Album's "The Five People You Meet in Heaven", which she thought was a spectacular book, but she was unsure what I meant when I asked her if it was "poignant". She wrote "Kara read this '06" inside the back cover. I didn't like the book (the five people say the kinds of things you'd expect those five people to say) , but I felt like I should read it, since I told Kara I would, and she looked good in a towel.

I had dinner one night with Kyle, a somewhat confused 18 year old from Connecticut, whose parents had recently gotten divorced. His dad married a wealthy younger woman and bought a big house in a fancy part of town. He worked at Office Max and was offered a managerial position when he handed in his two week notice to move to Costa Rica and work as a white water photographer, kayaking alongside rafts of tourists and snapping pictures of them. His passion is kayaking, and through the river he met a Costa Rican who set him up with the job and a way to get out of small town Connecticut. Two weeks after arriving in the country, chafage, contaminated river water, and a misdiagnosed infection sent him to the hospital in San José, where he stayed for 10 days recovering from a very severe infection. When I got there, he was surely the only outpatient staying at Hostal Pangea. I hope he is well.

I also shared some beers with a Canadian chap with beat up sandles and a scraggly beard and two american girls he had met while working on one of the many hippie farms in the country. The girls, both in their late twenties, were also midwesterners - empirical evidence tells me that that region produces a lot of adventurers. More than other parts, at least. Their farm experience was interesting - lots of peace-seeking expats come together to plant trees, eat raw veggies, and forget about the daily news for a while. From my time in rural Ecuador, I could relate to their tribulations, trying to avoid the onset of mold and malaria in dirty plantation bunkhouses. These were some good ones.

Expecting to be more or less gainfully employed soon after arriving in San Jose, I moved to the Hostal Toruma, which would provide a better house-hunting headquarters and be closer to my imagined internship. Toruma turned out to be both a blessing and a nightmare. I stayed there for a week and a half, and got into a pretty comfortable routine with a family of Colombian Refugees who had been there for about 5 months when I arrived (more on this later). I had manly colombian coffees with James and watched nightly TV with his wife Janeth and her daugher Jennifer. I cooked and drank boxed wine while we watched the Simpsons, then we enjoyed a colombian soap opera called "Los Reyes" (the kings), and then we laughed and cried with the girls from Sex in the City. Other travelers came and went, but we were the mainstays, and we got along well. Jennifer celebrated her 15th birthday while I was there, which is a pretty big deal in latinamerica. It was kind of a sad event, and frustrating, as the family had been through a lot, fleeing from Colombia, being shot at in Costa Rica, and having trouble getting visas to go to the US. At James's request, I serenaded Jennifer with "happy birthday" (in english) that morning, through the blue bars of the family's bedroom window. She cried, and James assured me that her tears were happy ones, not due to missed notes. A few other friends from the hostal joined in the birthday meal, including Miguel, a 30-year old doctor from Barcelona who I got to be good buddies with, and Josh, a Brooklyn born twenty-something who brought along some fresh rhymes and some johnny walker black. More to come about my colombian family.

I also had an infuriating experience with a hostile hostal employee, who took crappy latinamerican customer service to a whole new level. Which brings us to

The Case of the Missing Compaint. A story of toast, friendship, and denial.

In two weeks at Toruma, I did not once consume my "included" breakfast, supposedly consisting of toast and jam - this because the maid did not want to give the breakfast to me, or even put out the toaster and bread so I could undertake the "toasting" myself. She also gave me lip or refused to speak to me in the morning, failing to responde to my friendly "good morning"s on several occasions - and all for absolutely no reason. Perhaps once I asked her when breakfast was. One day, as she was reclining on the sofa watching spanish TV, I had the gall to ask her for some bread - the bread I paid for - not even toasted, just the bread, since I didn't want to "trouble" her, or - heaven forbid - ask her to do her job. She grudgingly gave it to me and returned to the couch, one leg on one of the arms. I cautiously turned on the radio - volume low on only one speaker so as to not wake the TV-watching beastmaid. I sat right next to that speaker and began consuming my scrambled eggs and untoasted whitebread. The maid troubled herself to get off the couch to turn off the radio, meanwhile raising her voice over the volume of the television to tell me to have some respect, as she was watching TV. I was dumbfounded. Speechless. I made a valiant effort to conceive of any way in which I might possibly have been in the wrong in that situation. Ultimately, I could not conceive of anything. So I confronted her at the reception as I was going to work, explaining very matter-of-factly that it wasn't her JOB to watch television - rather, she ought to be making me breakfast - but that all I really wanted was for her to give ME a little respect. She laughed and walked away.
Not to be outdone, and coming from good complaint-letter writing stock, I composed an articulate letter (in spanish) to the management regarding said maid. As the manager was only present during the day when I was at work, I checked for insurgents and slyly slipped the letter under her locked door under cover of night. The next morning, I grew suspicious that my covert delivery tactics had not gone unnoticed when I saw that the maintenance man was diligently working on the lock to the manager's door - under close supervision of the maid. A curious coincidence, don't you think! After avoiding the maid and eating my breakfast, I found that the maintenance man had given up with his toolbox and resorted to other means - namely, he brought in a 12 foot ladder and tried to enter the room via the small window cracked open above the door. I appreciated the farsical situation for a minute before heading to work. When I returned at lunch to try and speak in person to the manager, I found that she had gone home sick. Sadly, she might never know about the events that had transpired that morning.

It began when the receptionist (the maid's croney), who somehow knew of my previous night's activity, informed the maid of my correspondence. The two of them proceeded to mislead the maintenance man into his lock-busting efforts. When he was unable to access the room, they sent him to the manager's house with some wild story to get her keys before she came to work. They opened the door, stole my letter, read it OUT LOUD in the reception area, calling me a liar, tore up the letter, and threw it away.

Little did these dastardly hotel employees know, but I had an informant. James, the patriarch of my colombian family, had observed the entire scene. He had me meet him a couple of blocks away from the hostal so that noone would see him telling me the story of the letter-theft. I told him that the mornings farce had left me suspicious, and that I was quite astonished at the lengths these two employees would take to conceal their transgressions. As the manager never arrived, I was forced to write another letter, attaching the first one (saved on hard-disk) and discussing the pair's newest misdeed - mail theft, a petty crime all over the world. I didn't ask for much, not remuneration, not even toast - just a little common respect, the kind strangers give each other when they pass on the street.

The letter - writing was cathartic, but ultimately, I am sad to report, it was perhaps all for naught. I never got around to handing in the second letter, and the hostal changed hands and closed for remondeling weeks later. I can only hope that that maid is not charged with providing anyone breakfast at any other hostal. And so...

Aah! but I was talking about something...

As these things often do, soon after arriving at Toruma, I found myself pretty set-up (although free-breakfastless), with an internship at the United Nations, a gym membership, two new shirts with buttons, a pair of new shoes, and a place to live.

-The gym, on the top floor of Mall San Pedro (If this shopping center were an apostle, it would be my favorite one.), boasts a select few TV screens showing nothing but syndicated american television and soccer games. Theres also a not-so-high-tech (but certainly loud) sound system that usually plays crappy techno-type music, like the kind that was blasting at Results Gym when I accidentally went on a date with a hot gay Ecuadorian man in DC. This gym is full of latinos with gelled hair, and quite a few of them could kick my ass. Some couldn't. I don't really chat, though, and try to listen to headphones and mind my own business while reading the spanish subtitles for McGyver.

-The shoes are sweet, and so was the lovely saleswoman, Sujey, who I now have a pseudo-relationship with, which consists of exchanging nicities every time we bump into each other in the mall, which is frequently.

-The two dollar shirts deserve less then the line I'm giving them.

-I fell into an interesting living situation, at Apartamentos Melba #6, a couple of blocks from the University of Costa Rica and its neighboring bar district. My dreadlocked Mexican roommate, Daniel, wears flip-flops to his daytime internship at the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, and he has a high-pitched laugh which comes out around girls. He uses hand gestures to the point of absurdity and describes every person as "buena honda", which pretty much means "cool" - but in his case means nothing at all due to severe over-use of the phrase (he even described our resident gecko as "buena honda"). More often then not, he opens cereal boxes from the wrong end. We always have tortillas in the fridge, and soccer on the TV, except when the pistons are on (LatinAmerican ESPN. Disfruta!) or Daniel is engrossed in some national geographic program about otters or natural disasters. I live on the top floor (thats the third one!), which allows for a nice breeze to blow through, and a view over the tall trees of the university district toward the mountains north of the city - a spectacular sillouhette at sunset. We've got a fridge-freezer that ices over on a weekly basis, an on-site water heater, and an interesting manual-type washing machine. We have a phone which is physically connected to the wall - I think those are called landlines. The phone is my favorite part of the apartment, with an incredible 1970s beige/brown color scheme and a radial dial push-button layout (that is, the buttons are arranged in a circle on the head of the phone, instead of in the grid that we use today.) The door is a bit tricky, but it was no problem for the husky guy that works on motorcycles in his first floor apartment when I asked him to help me with my key, stuck in the lock. He busted the door in. Latin American Locksmithing.

-At the UN, I work in the office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, and I have a cubicle that butts up against the window, from which I watch afternoon rain drip into the fifth floor of the neighboring parking garage. I work in the protection unit, essentially monitoring the way officials of the Costa Rican government's immigration office process colombian refugees' applications for asylum. I found it curious and coincidental that I actually do have post-graduate experience in that very area, since I worked on asylum affairs at the State Department last time I occupied a cubicle for free. It is interesting work, and my time spent at the immigration department here in San Jose has been meaningful and educational. Those are the basics.

I also have internet access, and can write blogs after-hours. Which means more chronological hoo-haw is coming, furious if not fast. Stay tuned for weekends at the beach, a whirlwind trip back stateside, chest hair, and dudes and debaucherous devilry. Also, tender moments curled up in cozy nooks with Jane Austen and bran muffins.

Pura Vida and the Saint Joe Slims

(Another post-mortem blog rehash. From Tamarindo to San José, April Fools day through mid-month. )

Costa Rica has its character, and its characters. Another stop on the road. Roads populated by new groups of traveling aquantainces and local idiosyncracies. More rain to soak my shoes and fill up river beds and potholes; more sun to parch those roads and turn my skin and the sky different colors. A new country doesn't really mean a new attitude. In this life, it indicates most basically the passage of time and a movement on a map. Costa Rica is, however, a new experience.

I arrived in the Juan Santamaria airport in San José at the beginning of April, Ecuador in the rearview and not enough cash in my pocket to make it worth changing into Costa Rican currency, the Colón. Juan Santamaria, I later learned, is the national hero, a drummer boy who posthumously rose to prominence as a symbol of courage and the plight of the lower class. Turns out that in the mid 19th century, an American southern jackass named William Walker decided to take over and enslave whole Central American countries in the name of the Confederacy. After naming himself "president" of Nicaragua, he set his sights on Costa Rica. Little did he know, Juan Santamaria was tapping out a different rhythm. He was working on a song called "I'm going to burn down the fort where the invading americans are holed up, die in the process, and then get an airport named after me." Santamaria's skills as a beatbox or a percussionist have not been verfied, (in actuality, a lot about him is probably legend/myth/nationalistic political hooey) and no one has made mention of the song he was working on until this blog. However, as I came from the south, and in peace, the statue of the little drummer boy that stands outside of the airport greeted me on friendly (albiet stone-faced) terms, and the country has turned out ok without explicit American governance.

I took a free shuttle to an airport hotel, where I would await my parents hours later. Camping out in the lobby, I quickly befriended two middle aged Floridian couples who had stationed themselves next to the Color TV for the nights Final Four matchups, Florida v. George Mason and UCLA v. LSU. While one of the women did express her preoccupation with getting me "sloshed", I did happily accept their generous offers of about three beers, a mixed drink with Guaro (the Costa Rican aguardiente - cheap liquor), and about a third of a bottle of Concha y Toro champagne in one of those classy plastic coated styrofoam hotel bathroom cups. I was moving towards sloshed, as I hadn't eaten for hours, so I bucked up and went to the RoastiPolli restaurant across the parking lot for a quesadilla. I used my credit card, the first time I'd been able to do that in a restaurant in months, and I tried not to cringe at the price, in american dollars, at american prices. Months later, I'm only now forgetting about the paradise of cheap eats that is the South American Andean region.

I was mostly sober in order to receive the folks some time late in the evening, and happy to return to RoastiPollo to share some chicken nachos on dad's dollar. I would be happy and grateful and satisfied to eat and drink for free for the next week with my parents. All along this trip, people have asked me how my "vacation" was going. That was no vacation. There were no palm trees or piña coladas. Only potatos and overnight bus rides and pepto bismol. Tamarindo, on the northwest pacific coast of Costa Rica with my parents - that was a vacation. That was relaxing. That, as the Costa Ricans so often assert, was "pura vida".

Tamarindo is a paradise. A long beach, palm trees and pretty girls, white sand and a sure-thing spectacular sunset. Populated mostly with stoned surfers, the waves are certainly a thing of beauty. Like the last time I was on a beach in Mancora, Peru, I tried not to trouble myself too much - and succeeded. Reading the national newspaper and a daily run on the beach was all I needed to call it a productive day. Simply ingesting the amount of food I had at the hotel breakfast was enough of a chore - fresh tropical fruits and juices, just-baked bread, rice and beans and fried plantains, pastries and amazing coffee. After breakfast, digestion dominated the day's activity. My parents and I made big decisions like where to put down our towels or which gourmet restaurant to dine in. This was a great vacation.

We did venture out of Tamarindo for a day, felt like we should explore a bit - they have an adventurous streak just like me (perhaps I should say it the other way around), so we rented a car to head down the coast to see some beaches and maybe some sea turtles. At the outset, my mom felt that my dad's inability to even start the car was a bad omen. Sadly, we did not heed. After getting a crash course in the car's security key system, which may prevent even the car's rightful owner to start the engine, we managed to get on the bumpy road heading south. Almost spot-on covers of rarely-played american rock hits as a soundtrack, we rolled on down the coast, mom navigating the geography and dad trying to avoid the potholes. The scenery was incomparable; the region of Guancaste during the dry season is a desert of dusty roads and empty riverbeds. Boney cows with long floppy ears and barbed wire fences surrounding locals' meager gardens. We did find one wet spot, a low-lying part of the road which was covered in water, depth unclear. A conveniently passing land rover showed us that the passage was safe, so we did not have to ford the river, we did not lose three barrels of flour, and grandpa did not get yellow fever. Soon after, we decided to stop at a naitonal park and see if we couldn't check out some sea turtles laying their eggs. Parking the car near a ranger station, we found no sea turtles, but were surprised to come upon a severe puncture in one of our rear tires. High noon in guanacaste is a great time to change a tire, should you ever have the chance. Nothing like pumping a jack in 110 degree weather. I was prudent and reapplied sunscreen; my old man should have taken a hint - though it honestly wasn't as bad as it could have been. We managed to put on the spare and pump it up with the electric pump fortunately supplied by the ranger station, and decided that this was exactly what we left the relaxing paradise of Tamarindo for. We were satisfied with the day's events and could return to the Tamarindo for some well-deserved beers. That will teach us not to try and do something while on vacation!

Most nights, we ate, walked home along the beach with a waxing moon and a million stars and some crashing waves, and went to bed early. I often grabbed another drink with the hotel employees as they finished up or sneaked internet in the hotel lobby. One night I let the folks find their own way home and made friends with a couple of friendly spring breaking american college girls. While uneventful, I spent a few interesting hours with

Cat - too skinny to drink 3 caipereiños, she lied right down on the restaurant's bench seats and complained about an overbearing worried traveling companion (soo glad I have not had any of those) and her boyfriend's surfing obsession

Other girl - Hindi-speaking californian with actually interesting things to say and an antique Coach clutch, which I will admit was pretty classy looking. I'll also admit that until we discussed it my only association with the word clutch was the manual transmission kind.

30-something couple - invited to carrouse with us by the gregarious girls, the woman was a DC immigration lawyer, the man an entrepreneurial college dropout who had done quite well for himself. He was in divorce proceedings, but seemed downright relaxed and happy to be with his current girlfriend, as they both had property in the Tamarindo area. They did seem to be happy.

I felt glad during that interaction and during my entire stay in Tamarindo that I was not on spring break. That I was a traveler, that I was seeing real things and Living a Real Life out of the country.

My dad an I attempted to surf, my mom succeeded in tanning, and we all managed some reading. I finished Jimmy Carter's new book, and my folks read books I'd recommended to them - my dad The Life of Pi, and my mom the Master and the Margarita. Is it a sign of becoming an adult when your parents take your advice on literature? Is it a sign of being a kid when you go on vacation with your parents? I'm satisfied with an affirmative to both questions.

It was another sad goodbye when mom and dad headed to the airport after a week, leaving me alone again, naturally. We did it quickly. Love you, see you soon. Thanks for the beers. I'll getcha back someday...



No place to stay, and Easter week filling up every cheap hostal bed in Tamarindo, I wasn't worried. Things always work out. And they did. I managed to haggle one bunk for one night in a classy hostal close to town, and moved on nomad-like for the rest of the week. My first night was at Hostal Tamarindo, and though it had the most modern, clean, and spacious hostal kitchen I have ever used, I still had difficulty navigating the bustle of french and australian bikinis cooking chicken and pastwa while I prepared the cheapest meal possible: rice and beans and veggies. In the meantime, I befriended a couple of brits, a sexy californian of guatemalan descent, and a group of Illinois students "studying" abroad in Costa Rica. The atmosphere was festive, with tanned surfer dudes cracking open beers and constantly sounding more and more like Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (Holy Spumoni!) Several rounds of drinking games later, I missed college only a little bit and was able to actually enjoy getting down to some Reggaeton at the Mambo Bar, Tamarindo's forum for locals to sell drugs and pick up drunken college students. It wasn't entirely a den of iniquity, but it sure isn't my idea of paradise. I headed home, cuddled with my backpack on the top bunk, and tried not to squeek the springs enough to wake up the unshaven aussie sleeping soundly below.

Next day, I moved on to a room in the Botella de Leche (bottle of milk) hostal, where I would stay for most of the next week, in various rooms or camping out in the yard. Everything in the hostal is cow-themed, the buildings painted white and black like a cow and the salt and pepper shakers sporting a bovine visage. Maria, the middle aged and matriarchal, brilliantly colored Argentinian owner, made me feel right at home from the moment I arrived, her hearty and gutteral smoker's laughs filling up the converted farmouse like the fresh air that flowed through always-open windows and french doors. Her staff of tattood argentinian twenty-somethings kept things loose, and the atmosphere was familiar and cheerful. The kitchen was also spacious, and I was happy. I shared food, drinks, and stories with a handful of international travelers at the Botella. Notable americans included Dana, a nurse from california on a month's surfing vacation; Hannah, an 18 year old world traveling floridian who graduated high school, volunteered in Kenya, and then found herself working at a Tamarindo sandwich shop and surfing every day - she left after a couple of days to go home and look at colleges; Carrie, a tan and friendly former Penn soccer player who was set up with a pretty sweet gig while trying to decide what to do with her life, working as a paralegal in paradise and surfing in her free time. A DC resident, we may cross paths again. I continually bumped into an amiable short chap from Quebec while cooking dinner, and found myself sharing a loveseat with a Swede for evening channel surfing. I felt guilty taking in a few minutes of American Idol.

No place to go and no room in the Botella, I pitched a tent in the yard and payed to use the kitchen, play guitar under the shade in the hammocks, and shower following sunset runs. I got pretty used to idleness, but it was difficult getting used to the prices - I'd say that Tamarindo was about 5 times as expensive as what I was used to in Peru, Ecuadorian prices somewhere between the two. The beach filled right up after my parents left, as it was Easter week and the entire country was on vacation. Ticos (thats what Costa Ricans call themselves) turned out in droves to populate the waves, enraging the local surfing population. With dry sand in short supply at high tide, the beach in front of town got crowded. A couple of hundred yards out of town, however, there was always ample room to relax on the beach. I continued with my lax routine and consumed a large portion of the monster jar of JIF crunchy my mom had brought from the US, as she had received my telepathic communications of crunchy cravings while in the PB aisle the day before leaving home.

Midnight on wednesday of easter week the country imposes a ban on alcohol sales, ostensibly to observe the religious holiday. In practice, this means a run on liquor wednesday evening, which inevitably leads to people buying too much booze and getting drunker than they would have were beer available for purchase on demand. It also means another reason to celebrate the resurrection on sunday, when the seals come off the beer fridges in the supermarkets. I myself bought a couple of big cans of Imperial, my favorite cheap Costa Rican brew with a fantastic eagle logo in black on a yellow and red can. I polished them off over the next couple of days, waiting for busses to begin running to San Jose, the country's capital, on saturday.

I packed up the tent and rucksack saturday morning and rushed to the bus, sadly leaving behind my peanut butter, which had been stolen or moved late the previous night, the likely culprit a hostal employee with the munchees. (I wasn't too upset, as this fellow, a Tico named Ali, had shared some booze with me the night before and given me a ride home from another unfortunate encounter with the Mambo bar...) I rode most of the 6 hour trip south to San Jose next to an early adolescent named Jose, and we discussed fishing and soccer to no end. A fine young man, who said I could date his apparently attractive older sister if I wanted, and gave me half a package of buttery cookies as he left the bus. I rolled into San Jose at dusk, paid only slightly more than I should have for a taxi cab to luxurious Hostal Pangea (pool and bar and free internet!), and began to investigate my new city.

A walk around Barrio Amón that evening led me to a sportsbar called "Sonnys" next to Hotel Hemingway, where I talked about Paolo Coelho with the security guard for twenty minutes before deciding to dine on the daily special "casado", a $2.50 plate of rice, beans, meat (I made the wrong choice with the lambchop), and veggies. If not for the food, I could have been in any bar in america. I sat on a barstool next to a white-bearded trucker-capped guy named Clyde who drank five beers while i had dinner, and the woman that served me my food had the bangs and demeanor of any podunk barbacker named Deloris or Charlene. She called me "mi amor", which i think would have been "honey" if she were american white trash. A nice filling dinner, and I walked home down steep paved hills, seeing clearly under the yellow streetlights that this would be an ideal place for me if I were in the mood for a transvestite prostitute. Lets just say there are some shady neighborhoods in Barrio Amón where I ought not to have been by myself after dark, it turns out. I later met some people who had been physically attacked on those same streets.

In all though, San José seemed a nice enough city. A few nice plazas and colonial buildings, but no major defining characterstics apart from extraordinary urban sprawl. I'd come in search of employment, hoping for a response as I'd blanketed the city's NGOs with my resume. I had a good feeling I would soon be calling San José my semi-permanent residence. (This the segue to a blog which might actually bring this train up to date.)