(L: J&C in canopy yesterday; R: me on horse)Wednesday, June 21st, 2006. I woke up at 6:30am and ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant alone again. Then I spent a 1/2 hour on the computer checking my email and writing back to David, who is currently staying in my house with Jonna, which I was totally wierded out by, but they both seem to be saying it's working out okay. Yah, I'm not home, and neither of them actually live there, but both are just kind of "staying " with me, just without me. Between the two of them, however, they are taking care of Charmey, who is behaving himself. David actually called somebody at ARC-PA to talk to someone about some of his grievances with Touro and he thought the guy sounded like he was totally exasperated with hearing either about Touro or from complaining Touro students. My thoughts were he should be less about getting exasperated and more about getting their freaking accreditation pulled. Duh. Apparently, he can't do anything with complaints from students alone, but encouraged David to file a formal complaint with his classmates and to prepare for the site visit in December with a list of student issues or grievances. This, of course, will never happen. They all complain, but nobody wants to do anything formal. David also claims he has been calling anyone he can actually think of about getting rotations and thinks he made headway with surgery and an ER site, but with David I'll believe it was perhaps a phone call, and boy, he's really damn tired, so I never can actually believe it until it happens. And it never seems to actually happen. The common denominator is always the same: Daivd. One can only get so pissed about somebody else's apathy before you feel like smacking them and telling them "If you're not going to do anything about this, then stop your goddamn whining, you baby." Yah, I'm there.
(L: J&C in canopy yesterday; R: me on horse)
In the morning after breakfast, we drove to the ranch where we went on an extremely boring horseback ride with the group. I never got to even trot for more than 10 seconds and it was boring. John spotted a bellbird up in a tree and I saw it, but didn't catch a really good look. Charlene and I remarking later among our frequent wondering why any of the people on this trip travel at all- how this "adventure" travel company is a misnomer: it's created by americans for the american lifestyle with american watered down "local" food and culture which is to say completely geared for the american traveler who doesn't want to really experience another place, they prefer to say they were in costa rica and it was "wonderful." Heavens, let's not shock the americans. Even in Thailand (I'm getting out of my journal here) where the age demographic was half of what it was on the CR trip, and these were much more adventurous people- they were absolutely aghast that I ate street food. So we say this, but I'd still not want to stay in a hut and get bed bugs, but I do like real local food. I think what you feel taken away from you is the sense of control of your own "adventures." What makes me feel like a bid bag world-traveling guru is being able to say "Oh, yes, and this tiny little place in the middle of xxxyyyzzz had this fresh fish that was something I have no idea but they made this blah blah blah and aren't I amazing for navigating all that by my OWN?!! No, really, I'm that adventurous!" It's the control to find your own adventure. Charlene wondered why these people don't just ride a horse at home? Why waste time in a foreign country doing something you could do in the US? Don't they want to do something uniquely Costa Rican? My comment was that these types probably never do anything like riding a horse at home, and to them this is "adventurous" because they're doing it on vacation.
The rest of the day was just bad. I should have stayed in Monteverde and gone out on my own back to the national park and explored myself, or gone to the butterfly garden, or the reptile house. There are a million choices. I woke up dreading this day and Charlene talked me into going on this activity. It was the"School visit" and then the "home visit." You get to break up into small groups and go home with a "real" costa rican family and share a home cooked meal with them. Oh god, kill me now. Small talk with strangers is bad enough, but small talk that's not even possible with people whose language I don't speak and whose culture I've been carefully sheltered from on this trip? Oh, no. Oh bad. I feel the abdominal cramps and sting of vomit in the back of my throat from anxiety clenching me in an iron fist right now just thinking about having to do this again...
Before the home visit was the lowest, worst part of the trip. We got to visit a "local" school that the Grand Circle Travel Foundation likes to give money to- although in exchange for this fundage, the students and teachers get to disrupt their days once a week or even more to give these 2 hour extravaganzas put on solely for the american tourists. Aparently these tourists like to see the cute children dance and sing in their local costumes and then get pulled onto the dance floor to join in with all the children smiling their dazzlingly best sad 3rd world smiles while twirling around the americans. It was like my worst nightmares had all come to fruition in this one, horrible afternoon. After the dancing and three exciting costume changes, a 1st grader named Angie picked me out of the group and pulled me by the hand- her English was excellent- and gave me a view of her classroom then played several games of tic tac toe on the chalkboard with me after writing "My name is Angie" and I responded "Me amo Shelby." Then back to the main room where we were forced to don skirts, do 2 local dances with the children before all doing the hokey pokey together. I hated every second like a root canal.
The
dancing and school visit was that painful. This whole things just dragged on
waaay too long- like 2 hours in what could have taken 30 minutes, tops. Skip
the 3 costume changes, there were probably eight dance numbers and my GOD no
hokey pokey. A couple of dances, no grabbing the americans and bringing them
to the dance floor for added pain, and let's get this over with so the children
can get back to the business of learning instead of the business of showbusiness
for tourists.
After the dancing, Marcos split us up and I was to go home with a local 8 year old and her 6 year old sister in tow from the school for the home visit. Fortunately I was in a group with John and Charlene, unfortunately the group also included Bill and Carolyn. At least I'd be with J&C. I still felt like i could have vomited on cue just thinking about this whole experience and how dreadful it was going to be. Bill and Carolyn were far more like what the family was used to from the tourists, I assume: they sat there primly, hadn't learned a syllable of spanish, and didn't seem to try to do anything to include the host in any conversation. I was mortified by them and felt the onus was on me to try and make at least an attempt to learn about our hostess. Charlene was more than happy to practice her Spanish as well as use her electronic translator which was quite the tool.
We went into a tiny house that was very clean and well kept. Mixie was the mother's name and she was probably my age or younger- and already had 3 kids. She lived in the tiny house with her husband (through many laborious attempts at communication in which Charlene and I were the only participants) I learned that this was Mixie's second husband, her 1st marriage ending in divorce, and her eldest son, Kevin, was the child from her 1st marriage. Her husband worked for 1 year in the Monteverde cheese factory as a driver and before that was in construction, for which I believe he lived in Toronto, Canada for some time where I think she went to visit him once. She was very pretty, and although the house was, at best, 500 square feet, she kept it very clean and neat. There are no screens in CR, and locals pretty much leave their doors and windows open all the time, so they just learn to live with the flies. And there were lots of flies. She set a very nice table for us- and had our lunch ready to go when we arrived. My impression was that most americans show up, don't even bother to say "gracias" and don't exchange even a word with the host, let alone try and find out their names or a bit about them. Mixie, at the beginning, had this placid I've-done-this-tourist-speechless-lunch thing many times before, she had it down to a science. She was at no pains to make any kind of conversation and seemed to be not in the least concerned or uncomfortable about that. The lunch was cold salad with cabbage, tomato, cucumber, cilantro and some kind of tangy clear dressing, steamed chopped carrots with green beans and lemonade. Buffet-style, we all took a plate from the counter and loaded up with rice, frijoles negros, and baked chicken with palm hearts and cheese. I must say, hands-down, this was the very best meal I had in all of Costa Rica, bar none. Bill and Carolyn had learned not even a syllable of spanish, so they often lapsed into english only conversation which left Mixie completely out and pissed me off royally. By the end, Charlene and I had managed quite a bit of conversation and I eased up considerably.
After that really delicious meal, Mixi brought out a photo album over coffee and a baked palm heart dessert (lovely!) and I went through her album, asking as many questions as I could. Bill and Carolyn had brought a few photos of their home in Spokane and J&C&I played with the daughter, Maria-Jose translating words on Charlene's electronic pocket translator, and before even I felt too uncomfortable, Marcos came to retrieve us and off we went. Like most of these things are when they're over,it was way less horrific than I had anticipated. I was grateful to be with Charlene who is really sensitive to the needs of other people and tries to make everybody comfortable- kind of like me, so I think Mixie probably got a lot more out of that lunch than she had in others.
We were supposed to have the afternoon "free" after 1pm, but we didn't get back until almost 3pm, but J&C&I had really wanted to still get to the butterfly garden. Charlene absolutely loves butterflies and used to grow them as a hobby. (I love having friends with as nerdy past times as my own!!) so we had Sammy drop us off in front of the road to the garden which we walked down. It was hot and a very steep road, arriving only an hour before closure. Paying my $9 (which at the time i found outrageous) we quickly went through the 3 habitats with our guide, Zach from UCSD and his degree in etymology. With the rain threatening, we 1st went to the cloud forest habitat with blue morphos, yellow-spotted long wings, silver wings and so many others fluttering around everywhere. It was so cool. Small, but really cool. Next came the mid-elevation which was all open and we got waylaid looking at a pack of white-faced capuchin monkeys coming through before stopping at the leafcutter ant exhibit. I love those leafcutters. They are about the only animal species besides humans which cultivate their own food source, not eating what is in their environment. They bring in the leaves and basically make a compost heap into which they defecate which acts as the soil for the fungus they grow and eat as food. This fungus can grow no where else and cannot be made any other way. Only the leafcutters. I loved them.
Next we came to the lowlands which was totally stolen by the huge numbers of blue morphos fluttering all over the place in all stages of life, like sparkling turquoise pieces of paper who gently rustle in the air. Life to death as a butterfly is mercifully short: only 2-3 weeks as a butterfly. The owl butterfly was here as well (I have a picture of it earlier) which is absolutely huge and beautiful. Zach was incredibly knowledgeable, very enthusiastic and talked 100mph due to one or the other reason, or perhaps both. The last habitat was low-light to showcase the transparent butterflies which are extremely cool. They are transparent because their wings lack the scales in the middle which give butterflies their colors and patterns. Last of all, we got a Zach guided exclusive tour of the insect room. We started with 2 tarantulas, the red jointed female which crawled all over Zach's hands was extremely cool. They live 25-30 years and are actually really placid, sweet spiders. Then we moved along to beetles, the single largest group of bugs on the planet, rhino beetles, dung beetles, more. I didn't take any pictures, but John sure did. It was so great Zach could have stayed all night just telling us about the bugs and indeed, we took up another hour of his time mesmerized by the bugs. Am I the only one who reads Kundera?!?! The juxtaposition of love and eroticism and philosophy with bugs and details and brilliant encyclopedias full of passion about things gross and fascinating. Passion, even about bugs is such a turn on.
We left, well after closing and went to look at several menus in the town before settling on a place with Costa Rican food as well as pasta for dinner (? I know). I had a margherita pizza, which was actually quite good and 2 glasses of pretty bad Chilean merlot (Castillo del Diablo) which seems to be the national brand of wine everywhere. We had a very accommodating, friendly waiter was so anxious to please us. Charlene asked a million questions before settling on a white russian to get a taste of the costa rican britt coffee's brand of coffee liqueur she wanted to try. We had a nice meal and they dropped me off at the corner where I took my 256mg camera memory stick into the local internet cafe and had them put the pictures onto a cd. I erased my much needed memory stick for the rest of the trip, and checked my email to find that David did not yet respond to my long email from that morning. Walking back to the room alone after 8pm, I got into bed after a shower and practically passed out with tired by 9pm.
Thursday, June 22nd. I ate breakfast in the morning with J&C after packing my bag and leaving it outside my door for the local porter to get it to the geri-wagon. The drive today was taking us to the pacific coast resort town of Puntarenas. A long and bumpy ride, we stopped 90 minutes into the drive as usual for a potty break (with all the BPH and stress incontinence on this trip I suppose it's necessary to keep the wagon clean) and Marcos was typically rambling the whole time so I slapped on the headphones again and drowned him out as best I could. You have to actually push the earphones down against your ears to actually be successful, but then it's hard to read as your hands are occupied. An hour later we stopped again having got down the mountains actually onto the coast at a local highway home business where the driver, Sammy, knew someone. The woman of the house was making tortillas (not at all a CR food, actually) so Marcos gave her the cheese "we" made at the dairy farm and we took turns pounding out tortilla dough which she cooked for us and we all ate with avocado and the cheese. Except me, that is- I stayed outside in the sweltering heat watching birds- saw a flick of orange-chinned parakeets (noisy buggers!!!) I eventually tried a small piece of tortilla and cheese and avocado before we got onto the wagon again. I also spotted a cinnamon hummingbird and John spotted a green kingfisher across the road. (all of these were taken on the pacific coast after lunch)
After this second geriatric potty break back on the road to listen to more Marcos drone on about anything and everything with scarcely a pause for breath until we got to our lunch spot on the caribbean coast. The town is Punterenas- where Mixi went on family vacations and is fairly touristy. The coast is being developed as tons of condos are going up all over the place all with water vistas and imported money. Puntarenas is also known for its seedy side- it is a more up and coming town, with a pretty seedy side still going on but getting cleaned up as the money comes in. There has been a huge problem with child prostitution and prostitution in general. There are signs all over the airport warning against having sex with children.
That said, lunch was at one of a series of open-aired shacks on the beach and I had some decent mahi-mahi. The beach really was beautiful and even better- no naked natives, no horse crap, and no naked natives selling blankets to contend with. Although I'm sure if you're there long enough, you'll be approached by any myriad of peddlers selling jewelry or some other nonsense. Just the usual number of unfixed feral dogs wandering all over. It was so hot as we got off the bus that by the time lunch was over and we could walk on the beach a little bit I was head to toe drenched in sweat and so ready for the air-conditioned geri-wagon.
After lunch we drove the rest of the distance to the Hotel Parador which is
down this horribly bumpy and unkempt road where there is construction like mad
going on in the middle of the lush jungle. We paused for another 3-toed sloth
hanging in a tree on the drive then arrived to a tray of fresh fruit juice drinks
with speared pineapple and cherry on an umbrella and cold, moist towels. Nice.
As you may expect, hotel Parador is done in high spanish style and very well
suits my tastes for heavy, dark, ornate detail and religious iconography. The
grounds are amazingly lush. WHAT an incredible hotel! There is carved,
heavy wood everywhere and then the grounds are like a jungle garden and the
interior like a spanish castle. Ooh! Call me in heaven! They also had this infinity
pool that was incredible with this statue of an alligator in the middle. Wow.
Had I not had my no-bathing suit clause in effect, I would have been in it on
this impossibly hot and humid afternoon, but alas. No bathing suit clause.
Holy chow this hotel is great. I wandered around the gardens and it has a little secret pathway down to the beach, it is amazing. I just want to live here. And wear velvet dresses. But maybe that is better off in someplace cold where I can light fires and candles... so perhaps if we moved this to the carpathians, you know- without the heat... what a place!
As I walked to my room, the tree outside of my door was host to a 3-toed sloth mother/baby duo just sleeping in the tree and a pack of capuchin monkeys that came whipping through so fast nobody is ever able to get a picture of them. I stood there watching the sloths, and basically they barely moved the entire time we were at The Parador, every time I went in or out of the door I'd check on them. At night I checked my email and wrote a long one to David after a walk around the grounds. I spotted a black iguana just sitting in the flower beds, and a yellow-headed caracara falcon on a post, he seemed to be part of the hotel- he was always around.
While I was on the computer the hotel's power went out, but for some reason my computer did okay- generator? I wasn't complaining. It was time for dinner which was out at a local restaurant with the group, so we met up in the lobby which was lit with candles and flashlights and loaded up onto the geriwagon for the drive back up that horribly bumpy road to an "authentic" restaurant. it was creepy driving down that road in the pitch darkness, but we arrived at the restaurant which was all lit by candle, and that provided lovely ambiance. What ruined that pretty quickly was the place was absolutely swarmed with american tourists and a bazillion children. I got to sit between John and Bertha who, customarily, complained about everything. About 5 minutes sitting at the table with the local mosquitos having located my legs, the lights came back on. I was seated across from Joy and did my best to make a dinner's worth of polite conversation. She's okay. Just old and from Tennessee. I got a big kick listening to her say to Lynne in her Tennessee drawl "This is a nice local place, not american- it's really got the local flavor." And I just wanted to die laughing but that seems to really be how this group feels. I ate american nachos (no kidding! Nachos!) in a restaurant with a menu entirely in english, with mexican american food, prices in US dollars, and it's absolutely overrun with american tourists. But since it's in Costa Rica with no walls, this somehow translated into an "authentic" experience. I had to keep myself from cracking up.
Left: wild orchid at the Parador; Right: the yellow-headed caracara who seemed to have his own perch at the Parador. Above is the iguana hanging out in the garden ( next to a glasswing butterfly and another elegant bit of lush landscaping at Parador)
After dinner we drove back to the hotel but stopped at the local liquor store so Tom and Tommy could get some Coke for the rum they bought earlier (these men strike me as fairly serious partiers). Tommy (the father) is a consummate frat boy-type at age 70 despite being a retired, educated professional chemist and son Tom is a really sweet guy- I just wish somebody would let him know about his horrible halitosis. I bought a bottle of cheap merlot with Marcos before we all piled back into the wagon, liquored up for the night. Young Carolyn gave me her swiss army knife to uncork my wine and away I went. Back at the room, I couldn't see the sloths in the dark so I tucked into my room and sat at the little sitting area, sipping bad merlot flipping through channels and stunned to see they had pornography on regular television! Bastards! The Parador has in room air conditioning which you can turn down to arctic temperatures so I turned that bad boy way low and froze the room solid, sipped my bad merlot which worked its wily charm and was fast asleep in no time.