En resumen...our thoughts on CR

- Survival Spanish = stringing together all the words you know in Spanish w/gestures, vocal intonation, and self-effacing laughter.
- You must have a camel toe or go home and put your jeans in the dryer right now. O, come mas frijoles negros y arroz.
- Funerals in CR involve carrying a casket down the middle of the dust basin/road- and don't forget your best flip flops and camel toe. Camels don't take the day off just b/c somebody died.
- The best way to transport a dead calf is by wheelbarrow.
- "Chacos" = an ancient word for dirty feet
- **For best results, water your gravel daily. If this gravel happens to be in the middle of the road, so be it. This rule applies to stray dogs as well. **
- The real Bavaria, Germany never made a beer as good as Costa Rica made Bavaria, cerveceria Costa Rica
- When in CR, watch for falling bottles of Coca-Cola. They burst open to become beautiful Coke fountains, bathing you all in their sticky goodness.
- still doesn't get Lucia's feet clean, though
- Traditional CR'can Breakfast: beans, rice, egg
- Traditional CR'can Lunch: beans, rice, plaintain
- Traditional CR'can Dinner: beans, rice, bistec
- Sara y Lucia's Breakfast: jamon, queso, pan con vegetales, mantequilla, mostaza
- Sara y Lucia's Lunch: soy chips
- Sara y Lucia's Dinner: see breakfast menu
- San Jose: not the shithole everyone, namely the Bible, says it is
- The worst road in CR: valiant attempt at shaking all the excess black beans and rice weight out of you
- Tamarindo: sweatiest place in the Western hemisphere
- Beware commenting on Lucia's driving. It leads to immediate brushes with death
- Diahatsu Terios: Like a rock. w/very small seats and shitty shocks, but a full sized spare tire.
- Apparently, construction workers in Alaska make enough money to go on vacation for 6 months each year. In contrast, construction workers in CR work 7 days/week starting at 6 am sharp.
- Don't befriend the first girl you meet at the hostel
- TACA/LACSA airlines: not as shady as it sounds. But your snackie will be jalapeno flavored plaintain chips at 4 am.
- Forget the euphemisms for mineral water, it just has gas here
- Surprisingly expensive items at the grocery store: queso cottage, deli-style mustard, turkey en varias rebanadas
- Cheapest grocery item: bananas at 4 cents
- Tap water: 100% safe to drink!
- Mayonesa: so popular it has its own book
- Scarce: paper towels/napkins or pretty much anything to wipe your hands on.
- All eligible bachelors are 19 or younger and think slut is a dirty word
- German backpackers, not as charming as you have been led to believe. For that matter, the American ones aren't either.
- Rando' dogs.
- En resumen: Helluva good time. Pura Vida.

We're out,
Las Ticas

P.S. Por favor, comment copiously to show you appreciated our efforts to keep you entertained :)

Enjoy that Bavaria Light, it could be your last

Lucia:

Our last night in Latin America Lite. We sit here at Kap's place, with our 55/night room, but it is delightful. Sure, it is by far the most expensive night we have spent, but we have a TV! And the common areas all to ourselves.

We (gasp!) went to the grocery store to get the makings for dinner. But, this time I actually got stuff to cook, so I had chorizo argentina and chorizo tico, with mixed veggie stir fry, and yes, black beans.

I also got some fruit for dessert. The mango cutting was a debacle, and the little bananas, were well, small.

This reminded Sara of a funny thing that was said at the Tamarindo bar, Monkey Bar: "yes, that Chink must be the Jew you are referring to"

Here is yet another fond memory from that night: ButtCrack guy number two. Yeah, it is true, there were more than one of them that night. Like we said, it was hot and I suppose you do whatever you can to cool off.

So, as we sit here and drink our last Costa Rican cervezas we toast a great vacation.

Pura Vida!

Lucia y Sara

Todo en espanol!

Sara- "Hola."
Random mujer on the other end- "Quiero hablar con Alberto, por favor."
S- "Quien?"
RMOTOE- "Alberto"
S-"No es [sic] aqui"
RMOTOE- "Gracias"

SCOOORE!

P.S. In the middle of the night, I woke for a pee break and suddenly realized the grammatical error in my phone conversation. Not es, but *esta*, of course. Shame drove me out of bed and into the common area in my PJs to acknowledge my error immediately.

You had to wait, but it was worth it

we know that you all have enjoyed reading the blog. And that we have done a great job of painting pictures with words, but haven't posted any actual pictures!

Here we catch you up:

The Arenal Volcano, view as we drove from San Jose' to our first hotel in La Fortuna. It looked just as cool from our hotel. Notice that you can see the top. the LP tells us that this is rare as it usually covered in clouds/smoke.

Next is what we did while in La Fortuna. Before you get your hopes up, there are no pictures of Eskimo and Boring Barbara. Sara couldn't stand to be near them long enough to get a shot.

Here is Sara "canyoning":

Here is Lucia on a horse(Lucia did not choose this photo, as it is muy unflattering):

After all that time on the horse, here is the view from the top (before we climb down the 700 steep and winding steps):
What about Mrs Robinson's little boy toy? Oh yes, we got a shot with him. (you know that he was in love with Sara because he had his friend take one on his camera too. how sweet) Besides being the home of the lecherous white boys, Tamarindo is home to some vicious bugs. Sara uses 40% DEET as a mosquito repellant/aphrodisiac. Notice that she sprays it everywhere. Everywhere. Little known fact about the Pacific coast of Costa Rica - it actually slants downhill to the North. odd, isn't it?
In case you were worried about what kind of hellish conditions our 35 bucks/night got out in Tamarindo, here is the view from our little patio and then the little patio itself. And then, lastly, a bit of the absurd that comes with traveling, here is a shot of the local San Jose' grocery store and their maxipads being sold out of a cooler:

More pictures to be posted from Lucia's 35 mm whenever they get developed and put on CD.

Those are NOT the rules of Asshole, but buddy, you are one.

Lucia:
I am sorry if I got your hopes up. Certainly a beach town teeming with drunken white boys would seem to be the setting for success. or possibly one of those afterschool specials. Either way, it was a dud.
We began the night with grocery store dinner and a few beers. by a few I mean that Sara had one and I drank 6. Then Sara didn't want to go out too early, she wanted to wait for our six neighbors before heading out. I see her point, it is possible that every town we had been in thus far did have a nightlife but that when we went seeking it at the ripe hour of 8pm it had not yet begun. But, I was a six pack (oh, and they were those really tall cans...) to the wind, what to do with that potential. ah, I laid in the bed with the light off and the ceiling fan on high. It was hot I tell you, very very hot. Then, Sara finally roused me and we went over to join The Neighbors for a game of asshole.
I played a round or seventy million of asshole in my college years. Funny, I forgot though how much it makes me hate the people I am playing with. They only had room at the table for one more chair, so Sara and I played together. Meaning that Sara held the cards and suffered the brunt of their rudeness as I sat behind her and tried to advise. Unfortunately my college friends played a different variation on asshole with the only real similarity being that it still makes people act like pricks.
So, we played a couple hands, never moving out of the asshole position (oh yes, that is right, they made us start in the asshole spot) and then finally got up to go to the bar.
The highlight was really making fun of everyone else. My buzz permanently departed even though I had two more beers at the bar. I feel like Todd would have advised doing a shot to get back on track, but Sara wasn't drinking at all and it just felt depressing.
I will tell you that a five foot tall native looking (is that degrading to say that?) guy asked me to dance. And I did think long and hard about going to hit on the guy that we dubbed Contemplating Suicide, but he disappeared right when I was getting up the nerve.
On the whole, it was WAY too hot in Tamarindo for me. Even if I had found someone I would have freaked out at the thought of touching them in this crazy heat.
If the Friday night described above is not pathetic enough for you, then you don't even want to know what we did (well, what I did. I don't know where Sara went) on Saturday. I will give you a hint, it involved two beers, dinner, and then laying in bed with the lights off and the ceiling fan on super high. Oh, and listening to podcasts from my iPod. wowza. I really know how to live it up, don't I?
Lucia