Un Hotel Limpio, Por Favor

Rather than try to sum up the last few days--which have brought moments of pure joy (my first toucan sighting) and utter dismay (my first bout of traveler's belly)--perhaps I should just try to capture the last 3 hours, which felt like 3 weeks. Surely they're somewhat representative.

Right now, I'm sitting in a rather cush (for Costa Rican standards) hotel room in Guapiles, Costa Rica. I am paying 55 U.S. dollars to stay in this hotel room and I tell you, I am going to drain every last ounce of value out of it--the private shower, the telephone in the room, the coffeemaker, the minifridge, the pool, the ridiculous mini golf course (!)...and oh yes I will have a second helping of that big buffet breakfast tomorrow morning.

Why in the world am I spending my precious "plata" on a hotel that belongs on the side of a U.S. interstate? Well, believe it or not, this is the second hotel I've checked into today. The first one cost 6 bucks.

It's the rain's fault. It started raining, in this doggone predictable rainforest, about 24 hours ago and it's been dumping ever since. When the rain began, I was staying at Miraflores Lodge, this rustic jungle paradise hotel where I enjoyed a delightfully firm king size bed and apparently used up all of my good karma, hopefully not for this entire trip. While I was enjoying a nice afternoon swing in the hammock, listening to howler monkeys bickering in my temporary backyard, my neighbors and new gringo friends, Dominique and Phil, were getting antsy for a little sunshine, since they've only got ten days in Costa Rica and love to snorkel. It was about time for me to move on anyway, so I jumped at the chance to hitch a ride with them towards an area I'd been wanting to check out--the northeast of Costa Rica, near Tortuguero National Park and also Earth University, a non-profit school focused on tropical sustainable agriculture.

Before heading on to Montezuma, on the Nicoya Peninsula, they dropped me in the town of my choice, Guayapil, a "lovely, prosperous town," according to Lonely Planet, which was supposedly a good base for checking out the areas mentioned above. Unfortunately, the only real lodging LP listed was "Hotel Wilson," where I had Dominique and Phil drop me off, in the rain, with my baggage.

Six dollars later, I was sitting on a tiny, saggy bed that reminded me of an old U-shaped horse just daring you to ride it around that godforsaken nature trail one more time. The room was awful--small, loud, dirty, sketchy, and, mysteriously, smelling of sewage. Frankly, the whole town kinda stank. I'm not sure where all of this prospering was supposed to be taking place, but this was not it. Did I mention it was pouring rain?

So there I was, lonely, wet, annoyed, and suddenly unsure of why I came to Costa Rica in the first place. Who cares about monkeys, anyway? Squirrels are just as cool.

After I had gotten my fix of self-pity (which included calling my mom), I did what any thinking person would do when semi-stranded at a sketchy, dirty motel in a random town in a foreign country during a huge rainstorm: I went underwear shopping.

Okay. Not really. But I did decide I needed to find someone who could tell me how to get away from all the nastiness, and the first clean-cut, friendly, female, individual I came across happened to be the owner of a store that sold mostly undergarments. It was a couple, actually, and they were angels. They wrote down a couple of names of places and even called to see what the rates were. They said they had relatives in Virginia. I told them so do I. We became friends.

So then all I had to do was grab my stuff from my hotel, drop the key off at the front desk (they didn't even notice...too busy being sketchy), and catch a cab to a hotel outside of town. The first hotel the taxi took me to was situated above a Burger King, if you can imagine. So I had him take me here instead, to Hotel Suerre, where I am now within walking distance of 9 holes of miniature golf.

Now, I skipped a whole bit about trying to use a local ATM and not being able to withdraw money, because los cajeros automaticos no le gustan el Mastercard, and a few other odd, disturbing tidbits, but you get the drift. Un mal dia, basically.

And it's too bad, because if I'd had internet access yesterday, I would have raved to you all about this amazing place I was staying, where I woke up to howler monkeys and all sorts of birds and a plate of fresh local pineapple and papaya and coffee, run by this great Argentinian fellow Leo and his luminous 7-months-pregnant wife Soledad. I would have gone on and on about the mystical experience I had with toucans, and then about this fabulous tour guide we had named Abel who introduced us (my 2 new American mates and me) to all sorts of crazy flora, and took us to the home of two Nicaraguan indigenous brothers who escaped that country during the Contra violence and have lived in a dirt-floored hut in the jungle ever since, eating wild bananas and sometimes fish.

I took the photo above in the town of Puerto Viejo. It's not really representative of where I am now, but I like it so much I had to share it. There's a whole settlement of Jamaican immigrants on the Carribean coast and it makes for some beautiful people, who look even more beautiful against a backdrop of azure waters and leaning palm trees.

Anyway, now's the part where I'm supposed to tell you now what I'm doing for the next few days, but I promised myself (and my mom) that I wouldn't think about it until tomorrow. I've definitely grown weary (already) of the logistical struggles of traveling alone--I'm looking forward to being planted in one place once I get to Ecuador. I'm also thinking that post-Ecuador, I'll try to find a one-month teaching gig or something, so I can explore a new place without racking up so much mileage.

Alright-- I must head out now. It just so happens that as I was typing that last paragraph, a Chilean fellow walked by, and--feeling chatty--asked how the wireless connection was working, and we got to talking...turns out he's here visiting banana farms, works for some big company that develops "biological products"...sounds interesting.