I found my Costa Rican Benjamin Braddock.

This morning, after a wake-up statement from Boring Barbara- who, in addition to Eskimo, was one of our 5 dormmates, I headed out to rappel down waterfalls. I do recommend this activity to anyone who visits Costa Rica, but more to enjoy the perfectly organized tourism industry than for an adrenaline rush. My perspective may be skewed though, since I am comparing this to the tourist attractions in Bolivia and because I have been lucky enough to go skydiving, which is hard to beat in the pretty-sure-I'm-going-to-lose-my-red-beans-and-rice department. After canyoning, I returned to the hostel and shortly thereafter Lucia and I embarked on a horseback ride to the La Fortuna waterfall with our baby-faced, soft-spoken-- read, inaudible-- bilingual tour guide. Let's call him the Costa Rican Benjamin Braddock to my Mrs. Robinson.

Horses are maybe not so much my thing, so, always one to get my money's worth, I decide I'll turn our tour guide into my personal Spanish tutor for the next 3 hours. This involved me repeatedly getting exasperated at the fact that I seemed not to comprehend any of his Spanish when the real problem- well, in addition to the fact that I often couldn't comprehend any of his Spanish- was that he was too soft-spoken, I mean inaudible. But over the course of the next 3 hours, bumpy horseback riding and climbing a plethora of stone steps, somehow I managed to impress innocent young Benjamin who, I understand, tiene 19 anos. He was pretty enamored-- just ask Lucia. My favorite moment occured during our discussion of dirty English words. Don't stone me, I didn't contribute to the corruption of a Costa Rican youth, he just had a good time displaying his knowledge and I was an encouraging audience. OK but maybe this line of conversation began because I used one too many swear words during the horseback portion. Benjamin's fine display began with such mild expletives as "damn", "moron", and "madman", but upon seeing that I wasn't impressed, Ben looks directly at me and delivers, "Slut". Upon which I burst into encouraging laughter and Lucia looked mortified. And then Ben delivers a double whammy by following up with "Whore". I rounded out my laughter with a bemused chuckle but realized this wasn't going anywhere good, so I changed the subject to the topic I know best- hip hop.