Montezuma's Revenge

Friday we set out early for Montezuma, a beach town on the Nicoya Peninsula in northwestern Costa Rica. Our plan: take a bus to Puntarenas on the Pacific coast, take a ferry across the gulf to Nicoya, then take another bus to Montezuma. We arrived to Puntarenas just fine but went looking for the ferry at the wrong dock. A quick lunch and taxi ride later, we arrived to the ferry just as it was departing. A couple of the officials hurried us through the ticket booth and shouted at us "Run!" and "Don't Run!" as we sprinted up the dock. The ferry took off right after we got on, and we enjoyed a one-hour cruise across the gulf.

Upon landing, we boarded a full bus (literally full, as in there were about as many people standing as sitting and there was no space to negotiate down the main aisle) and rode about 60 km (36 miles) over the next two hours. The journey was marked by sweat, potholes, discomfort, frequent stops, and tears of desperation. Luckily, I made friends with a shiatsu massage therapist from Boston to pass the time.

We arrived at Montezuma to find everything I hate in a beach town: lots of American tourists, lots of hippies, lots of Rastas. In fact, Costa Ricans refer to the town as "Montefuma", a play on words referring to the amount of pot that is smoked there. We rented a cheap room in a pension from an American ex-pat and walked outside to the beach.

Unfortunately, it wasn't really worth the six hours spent in transit there. There were two beaches. The main beach was crowded and dirty, with a line of twigs, fish bones and bottlecaps marking the wave line in the sand. The other outside our pension was a small inlet with lots of fishers and seabirds. In fact, the highlight of the weekend may have been watching the pelicans dive for fish in the water.

I spent the night out with friends, got sick in the middle of the night due to the heat and was ready to head home in the morning. Kind of a fail of a trip, but it was nice at least to get out of the city. One more image from this weekend, coming from some Frenchmen's RV parked outside our pension:

Very Dada. I'll head to a different beach soon and hopefully come back with better stories.

Pura vida,

Eric

Everything Is Slightly Ridiculous: Parte Tres

I just heard some loud bangs outside my window. I looked out to find a neighbor, within two blocks of my house, setting off a gigantic, 4th of July-style fireworks display, orchestrated to the music of all the neighborhood car alarms. What I don't hear are police sirens. I guess this is something else we're all willing to sweep under the rug? I'll enjoy the show meanwhile.

Updates from the beach coming tomorrow.

Pura vida,
Eric

Voto 2010

Election Day is finally here! And in San José, it is quite the experience. Some top differences between Costa Ricans and Americans during elections:

1) People here are happy! They are excited to vote, and even if they don't like the top candidates they still vote to pay their respects to democracy.

2) Ticos make voting a priority. Lots of businesses are closed, alcohol sales are constitutionally banned today (except in bars), and people wait in long lines to cast their ballot. I rode with my host dad to Cartago today, a 45 minute journey, so he could drive his carless daughter to her otherwise inaccessible polling station on the other side of town.

3) Flags and honking. Riding around the city today in a car was like swimming through a sea of colors while listening to a cacophonous orchestra of carhorns. Flags whose colors represented certain candidates hung from the windows of probably half the cars we drove by. When these cars came across others sporting the same colors, honking became a complete necessity. My host dad honked constantly as we passed Laura Chinchilla's green and white banners.

4) Ticos respect supporters of all candidates. I didn't see any hostility between different candidates' supporters. Many cars hung two, three, or even four candidates' flags from their cars. This excludes one Otton Solís supporter hanging his red and yellow flag from the window of my public bus. Passing by a small gathering of Laura supporters, he shouted out the window "¡Marionetas!" [puppets]. I feel he was not typical though because (a) he was talking to himself for most of the twenty-minute bus ride and (b) he looked like the Latino version of actor Steve Buscemi.

It appears currently that with approximately twice the vote of her nearest contender, Partido Liberación Nacional candidate Laura Chinchilla will soon become the first female president of Costa Rica. While my host dad is quite happy, I'm sure my host mom is torn. She decided at the last minute to vote for Laura just to support her party. She didn't want to vote for Laura earlier for the sole reason that she didn't like her "face like a dog."

I'll let you decide on that one.

Pura vida,

Eric

Day Tripper

The travel section of my weekend was composed of two trips: one to Cartago and the other to Volcán Poás.


Cartago was the colonial capital of Costa Rica from the 1500s to the mid-1800s, when the capital was moved to San José. Today, Cartago holds two main attractions: las Ruinas de la Parroquia, and la Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles.


Las Ruinas were the result of a 1910 earthquake which destroyed the church located on the Plaza Mayor of the city. Rather than rebuild the church, the locals decided to leave some of the walls standing and convert the interior into a garden.





The other more major attraction in Cartago is the National Basilica, dedicated to La Negrita, Costa Rica's patron saint. The story goes that a little indigenous girl found a statuette of the Virgin Mary on a stone in the forest. She took the statuette home and the next morning discovered it was gone. She found the statuette in the same place in the forest later that day. She took it home again, and the same thing happened the next day. She told the local priest, who took the statuette to his office for study and also found it gone the next day, back sitting on the same stone in the forest. These events were later proclaimed a miracle by the Church and a church (later to become the Basilica) was constructed over the rock, where a statuette of the Virgin Mary still sits today (Though I saw the statuette in the basement of the basilica, I did not want to take a picture for you while some locals were praying in front of it).

Today, the Basilica serves as a pilgrimage site. People walk, sometimes for weeks, from places as far away as Nicaragua and Panama to pay homage to La Negrita. Below is a view of the inside of the Basilica. The kneeling men in the main aisle are crawling towards the front on their knees.

After a day of religious relics, ex voto offerings and pilgrimages straight out of Honors 101, I took a completely different trip to Volcán Poás, a couple hours drive from the city. There is a park there with a lookout over the quasi-active crater. The area just around the rim reeks of sulfur (or perhaps as I originally thought, scrambled eggs).

A couple hours of hiking later, we descended down from the volcano and I managed to snap this shot of the Valle Central from the bus. The cities of San José, Alajuela, Heredia and all of their suburbs lie here, accounting for about 1/3 of the nation's population.

Election Day tomorrow!!! I'll be checking out the city's festivities up until the start of the Super Bowl.

Pura vida,

Eric

Election Season

Yesterday, I was literally less than one foot away from a Presidential candidate. While a friend and I looked on, stunned like a pair of smitten schoolgirls at a Jonas Brothers concert, Otto Guevara (the libertarian candidate currently polling in 2nd place) worked the crowds on the Avenida Central in San José. As he approached us, I stood still, debating whether to extend my hand to him or not, and quickly running through a list of awkward Spanish greetings in my head. Most likely realizing that we were not potential voters, Otto veered off to our left, instead greeting two girls standing next to us.

My friend later described Otto as placing one hand on each of the girls' cheeks, almost blessing them as if he were the Messiah, come back to Earth to judge the quick and the dead and to privatize Costa Rica's national industries.

Election Day is Sunday. More importantly, Election Night is Sunday night. I've been told the entire nation gets drunk in the street. Wish me luck.

Pura vida,
Eric

Manuel Antonio

Another week at the beach: tough life, I know. Nothing exciting enough to mention (except, you know, that it was January and I was on the beach), so I'll limit myself to two-word picture captions.

Much sand.

Wants bananas.

Pretty picture.

Actually evil.

Pura vida,

Eric

Cat Got Your Tongue?

No, I do. At least, if you're a cow. Today I stopped at the Mercado Central for lunch and ate part of a cow-tongue sandwich. ¡Qué riquísimo! I highly recommend it to all who can stomach the thought along with the dish. Just don't look at it before you eat it and you'll be fine.