Moving On

That's it. It's time. Time to move on from the city life. I've been in San Jose for 2 days now, staying at a hostel where I spotted my first (and hopefully last) cockroach yesterday, and I'm ready for some of that good old-fashioned vacation life-- you know the stuff, with the white sand beaches and the azure blue waters, the cheap, delicious Tico fare, and of course, the cabana I shall have all to myself, with a hammock strung between mango trees?

Okay, maybe that's a bit much to ask. In fact, I don't think I'll be swinging between mango trees until I head east to Cahuita, a little town on the Carribean coast, where I'll stay for one night before heading out to Punta Mona. Today, if all goes according to plan, I'll head to the famous Monteverde reserve--one of the last remaining pristine cloud forests in Central America. Except I'm going to be sneaky--rather than going to the actual Monteverde reserve, where there will surely be lots of tourists (at least according to the awful dream I had last night), I'm going to go to the nearby Santa Elena reserve, which is apparently JUST AS cool but not nearly as well-known. I'm crossing my fingers for monkeys.

Enough about big plans, though-- I want to make note of my weird and wonderful day yesterday. High points included a visit to a medicinal herb farm in the mountains north of San Jose, where I hung out with my friend's friend, Michael, who was SO fun, and was a great break from all of my urban struggles to communicate in Spanish. The farm was spectacular, with lots of unrecognizable, beautiful, Dr. Seussian, plants that Michael pointed out but couldn't really explain (not the farmer type). Another high point was when I ran into the two pups featured in this pic--except this is the PG version of what I saw. I also got a shot of them humping furiously, but I was laughing so hard that it's off-center and out of focus. Sorry; would have loved to share it.

Medium-high points included the satisfying challenge of navigating San Jose's convoluted bus system-- which I did in Spanish, thank you very much. I think I had to ask random people for directions at least a dozen times. (Don't worry, mom, they were all either policemen or fruit vendors and looked very clean-cut!). Besides, that's how one makes friends, right?

The low point of the day was this awful motorcycle accident I witnessed as I was walking to the bus station in the morning. The drivers are crazy here--so far, my technique for crossing the street has been to wait for a mother pushing a baby stroller to deem that it's safe, and then follow. So far, so good. The accident was surreal-- this guy was barreling, loudly, down a hill at nearly 50mph, heading straight for a bunch of cars stopped at a light. I'm sure my mouth was hanging open as I watched, wondering what the heck he was going to do. As it happened, he just skidded, lost control, fell off his bike, helmet flying (they wear helmets here, but the custom is not to buckle the chin strap--soooo smart, eh?). This guy easily could have died. Instead, he stood up, looking a bit bewildered and wondering where his bike had gone, and picked up his helmet. A cop happened to have been standing by and walked over to either help him or give him a ticket for reckless driving (hope it was both).

Well, I better head out. I heard a rumor from my Rough Guide that there's a restaurant that serves banana-macademia nut pancakes down the street. Need I say more?