Tiffany finally decided to share some of the spotlight on Tiffmac.blogspot. I'll leave the activities and pictures to Tiffany, she's great at it. For my "guest commentary", I have a few stories from the past week of travels.
"Leaving Puerto Viejo With A Bang"
Alas, we are leaving Puerto Viejo and the Carribean coast. We had a great time here as you can see from Tiffany's posts. Actually, as I'm writing this we are making plans to go back. Turns out we have a job for three weeks working at Kaya's Place while the owners (JT and Sarah) head back to the US for some business and much needed vacation time. More on the job stuff later.
So, it was last Thursday morning when we parted ways with our new friends from Vancouver, Jaime and Carolyn and all the great people at Kayas Place. We arrived to the bus stop around noon for the nearly five hour trip back to San Jose. In Puerto Viejo there are two bus stop shelters. They are about 20 meters apart and consist of a wooden plank underneath mismatched shapes of corrugated metal with precariously anchored corner posts holding up the structure. We were standing under the larger of the two shelters awaiting our bus for San Jose. Taking the public bus a long distance is always a nervous time as we've run into a few minor challenges on public buses already. A five hour ride on these buses is also a test of endurance in many ways. Dealing with the heat, dust, crowds, bad roads, and lack of comfort takes its toll. Anyway, just before our bus arrived a local bus pulled up to the shelter next to us. Apparently the driver was enjoying the ocean view rather than watching his driving and the outside bus mirror clipped the shelter. This minor force was too much and the shelter slowly began to sway. Luckily, the few people underneath had already moved toward the street in anticipation of boarding and thus were clear when the entire shelter crashed to the ground. We laughed and resigned ourselves to the fact that things like that happen down here and no one seems to pause for a second to worry about it. The remainder of our bus experience back to San Jose was uneventful, which is a much welcome occurence.
"K&S Brewery A Bust"
Back in San Jose and driven by my love for beer I was determined to visit the only brewery in Costa Rica. First problem was finding the place. Addresses here are much different than in the USA. Typically the address will be something like: “200 meters south of the old stump”, or “across from the plaza near Big Pop´s Ice Cream Shack.” Inquiring about the location of a restaurant or bar is further complicated by the language barrier. None of the taxi drivers knew the location of the bar and several did not seem to understand what we were asking. Finally, the internet saved the day and we found an address that stated “in Plaza Crystal”. This was sufficient to get
us there.
We arrived at nearly 8pm on a Thursday night, but the place was empty. After paying the overpriced cover charge for the eventual live music we ordered a taster. I was quite dissapointed when all five beers being offered were lagers. I do not understand why they choose to brew lagers in a country with a perfect climate for ales (lagers must be brewed cold, while ales like the semi-tropical temperatures of San Jose). We tasted all the beers and once again I was disappointed. The flavor reminded of Karl Strauss beer in San Diego with all beers having very similar taste and finish. The best of the bunch was a traditional German pilsner which I envision is very similar to the German Budweiser. At around 9pm the crowd started to pour in and the band was warming up. At that point we tried to get the attention of our server for nearly 45 minutes. We ordered one last beer and the check, listened to a couple songs, and got out of there. The band along with the beer was unimpressive.
“El General”
Many small towns across the world have at least one strange town figure and Montezuma is no exception. In fact, this particular town jester immediately caught my attention. I first witnessed this crazy man walking down the main street, halting to attention, clicking his shoeless feet together, saluting an imaginary authority figure and yelling a string of rehearsed words into the air. It was then he became “El General” to us. The next incident took place around 7am one morning. The General was strolling along the main street of town, which is approximately three blocks square, shouting “No estoy loco”. Translated with my less than polished Spanish skills, “I´m not crazy.” At this point the General was just warming up. For the remainder of the day he walked around town shooting everyone with his imaginary guns. Sometime the weapon was a simple handgun, other times a machine gun. The last time I saw the General he was hopping around and making strange expressions during some sort of a dance. We will remember many great things about Montezuma, like the beaches, the waterfalls, the snorkeling, and the jungle, but we will also remember “El General”.
Well, that´s all from me for now. I´ll let Tiffany update all of you with the details and pictures of our adventures in Montezuma, Quepos, and Manuel Antonio. Cheers.
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