Montezuma´s Revenge

I have a bad habit of writing everything in emails before I write them on my blog. So, I´ll try to include everything, without repeating myself too much!

Dave and I got really sick when we got back from Montezuma. I don´t think I already mentioned that, as I haven´t been on the computer much since then. I don´t know if it was some bad food, bad water, or just very strong tropical germ, but I have never had a fever so intense. It was one of those mind-bending delusion causing fevers. I was so out of my mind that I couldn´t understand, logically, why I was sick. I thought the Costa Rican government, or the US government, was making me sick so that I would be weak and vulnerable and they could rebuild me how they wanted to, as a slave to their system. I think I have been reading too many of Dave´s political science books and having too many discussions with Canadians about American politics. That being said, it was a very strange feeling. I am glad I am feeling better.

I am tutoring a little 7 year old girl here. Her name is Soleil and she´s intelligent and fun, but has the average attention span of, well, a 7-year-old. I am supposed to be teaching her how to read English, but sometimes she just likes to tell me how good she is at reading, rather than show me. I´m not buying it, chiquita! Her parents are Tica and American and she speaks both Spanish and English. She goes to the private bilingual school here, but apparently half her classmates can´t even read in either language, and she´s the youngest in her class. I guess she´s probably better off than the locals, though, who apparently only go to school for three hours a day. George Bush wouldn´t approve- I bet there are children getting left behind.

They are also paving the road here, a first for this town! Their version of paving, however, is not like ours. As another Oregonian said to me, "This isn´t I-5 they´re paving." They also seem to do a lot of work, very repetitively, and hold up a lot of traffic. See, there is only one road that goes through town so when the road is shut down, nothing moves. The funny thing is, no one seems to mind that much, not even the busses, from what I can gather. You don´t really need to go anywhere here. Everything in town, you can walk to, and no one commutes to go to work, so it´s not as though people aren´t getting things done. It´s fun to watch, too. They have been working on the stretch outside The Bakery for the past few days and every day a bit more gets done. They´ve done a lot of filling, flattening, filling, flattening, laying gravel, laying a tarry oil, molasses substance, flattening, filling, and then somewhere in there a semi-flat road gets built. I would take pictures of the process, but no one will ever see them anyway!

Dave and I are now living in a little one bedroom house that has become the tin foil and us the baked potato. In the morning, by about 8 AM, then sun starts beating down on our tin roof and baking us into little French Fries. I usually retreat to the porch (now adorned with a hammock!!) and read my book until Dave emerges from the oven.

Well, the Internet Cafe is closing for lunch so I´ll have to write more another day! I hope everyone is well and enjoying the onset of winter! That could be snide, but winters where some of you are are so pretty and snowy! Although I will be the most tan I have ever been in December!

The Travel Bug took me to Montezuma

After coming straight to Mal Pais without traveling anywhere else first, the travel bug finally caught up to me. On Wednesday, I got off work early and headed to Montezuma with Dave and Brady. Montezuma is a really small, hippie, artsy town (there is an organic coffee shop! and a book store!!!! Guess which one I went for first!?) Montezuma is on the tip of the Nicoya Peninsula and actually only about 15 miles by beach from here. However, the roads here are so bad that it takes much longer than seems rational to get there. We first took a bus east to Cóbano, a slightly larger town than ours. Well, actually, I shouldn´t say larger. Everything you need to find, you can get in Cóbano, so that is why I assume it is larger. However, I don´t think the town is actually that much larger, just more centrally located and more accessible, so that´s why every thing you need is there. Davey and I have this joke that you can get anything in Cóbano because everytime you ask someone where to find It, It´s in Cóbano. "I´m having trouble finding cheap clothing, do you know where I can get some?" "Cóbano," "Okay, how about the vet, for this homeless dog I seem to have adopted?" "Cóbano," "Hmm... okay. I really want to buy a jetpack, so when I go back to the states, I don´t have to take the bus all the way to San Jóse. Cóbano, right, that´s what I figured." I´m off on a tangent.

So we took the bus through Cóbano and then south to Montezuma. The reason people really go to Montezuma is because of the Montezuma watefalls. If you hike up about 30-45 minutes of steep trail, you´ll get to the top of a gorgeous watefall in the middle of the jungle. The first waterfall is a jump (I did it!) of about 15 feet. The second (no way), of about maybe... 40 feet, and the third, I don´t think anyone jumps from there, is about 70 feet, I would guess. So we hiked around on Thursday, then ended up at a little organic coffee shop, where we met a girl from Portland, and stumbled upon Montezuma´s film festival.

The town is very different than Mal Pais. When I told my boss that´s where I was going, he called me a "god damn hippie," with a smile on his face. The town is a little more condensed, and actually has more than one street! It´s also a little quieter, but there are still enough people wandering around that it doesn´t feel deserted. We stayed in a little hostel on the beach, and after making two trips to the book store, I spent all of Friday afternoon laying in a hammock on the beach, reading my new books. It was so nice, and of course now I´m back at work! Now I have a really strong yearning to do more traveling throughout the country, though. I´m saving up to go to the other side, the Caribbean side, for a week or so. I´ve heard it´s really pretty and actually has a lot of culture to it because of the Jamaican roots that have mixed in with the Spanish Costa Rican routes. Last night someone described to me perfectly how they would define the history and the culture on the west coast of Costa Rica, "Christopher Columbus´ships came, dropped people off in Costa Rica, some of them travelled here, and they´ve been surviving every since."

That´s all for now. Look for me trying to swim to Cuba from the Caribbean side!