Daily grind in Manuel Antonio

I was living in my condo alone and enjoying myself watching the world go by from my balcony. The condo war was going on around me but I was not involved myself. I signed up for some Spanish Language classes at COSI to help me pass the time and to help me learn the local dialect of Spanish. So far my Spanish language was terrible. I first learned my early Spanish from Speedy Gonzales in the cartoons. That was pathetic only knowing that amount of Spanish. My first Spanish speaking county was Spain where my girlfriend from Ibiza taught me their dialect. In Spain they drop the s and they lisp their c. They use very little slang and short direct phrases. I got by there. Then I went to Mexico where they use slang and swear for 90 percent of their words. You need to know two different languages there, the vulgar street language and the language around someone's mother. I had to relearn my pronunciations for Mexico because they were totally different than in Spain. Then I went to Costa Rica and they use less slang than Mexico but it is all different slang. They also use a different grammar than in Mexico. Their overall vocabulary is totally different. I learned their form of Spanish at COSI. Then I went to Argentina and there they have rewritten the grammar and speak completely different from all the other places. Each country was like their own language. It was kind of irritating to me that they were so different from each other yet still claimed to be the same language. They were so different that one day I was in a restaurant in San Jose Costa Rica and two men entered the restaurant. They had just arrived from Barcelona Spain and they tried to order their lunch. The waiter could not understand any of their Spanish and they could not understand him. I ended up translating and ordering for them which just cracked me up to no end because I could not speak either form of Spanish but I could understand them both and I could communicate with them both. Such is life.

I took classes at COSI in Manuel Antonio for a few hours in the morning a few days a week. I met lots of friends going to the school. We hung out on the beach doing our homework and practicing our Spanish.

We also went out on the town at night together. We would go to the bars in Quepos like Wacky Wanda's or Sargento's or some of the other ones. Late at night after midnight when it opened we would go to the disco in town. The disco was a drug infested lowlife infested loud disco right out of the seventies that played Latin hip hop music for the most part but threw in the mandatory Bob Marley and current top pop music as well. Cocaine and pot were readily available and widely used. Crack was around too but that was the drug of choice for the lower rung. Lots of crime happened in and around the disco. I never had any problems but lots of my friends got into trouble of one kind or another there, usually because they were shitfaced drunk and stoned. We had fun there but in general it was too loud for my taste. I preferred to have private parties at my condo where we could go skinny dipping and actually talk to each other because the music was not blaring so loudly. I must be getting old because I just don't like the blasting music anymore.

On Friday and Saturday nights there was a beach party at Mar y Sombra. Those were some fun nights. Several hundred people were there and it was a real cross section of types of people. There were as many as a couple of hundred working girls. There were always some working boys. All the young local party crowd showed up after they were done working. Then there were all the tourists of various ages and types. The crowd was about seventy five percent straight and the rest gay. It was a giant melting pot. I always had a good time there. For several years it was my most popular night out. Then the government showed up one day and just bulldozed the place and that was the end of it. I heard lots of stories about why it happened most commonly that the owners were balking about paying higher bribes to the officials but also that a rich American paid them to do it because his daughter was raped there by some of the lowlife crowd when she was drunk and stoned one night. I don't know why it was bulldozed but it was and I missed it after it was gone. I found lots of dates there.

The Costa Ricans basically never say no. If you ask the right questions they will all go out with you. Over a period of several years, I was only turned down one time when I asked the locals out for dates. They could have a husband, three kids and four other boyfriends but they would fit me in their schedules. I loved it. I got very bold at asking them out.

I basically did the flavor of the day dating but I also had a long term girlfriend there. She was a typical Tica as the local women are called. She was married and had three kids. She was not living with her husband but they saw each other regularly. She had several other boyfriends. Basically the locals were poor and had no money for all the expensive tourist activities but they enjoyed their sex and they were very active. A typical Tico (male Costa Rican) expression is that they have a wife, a couple of girlfriends and a boyfriend. The entire country seems to be very sexually active. It is a real life Peyton Place. The locals talk about it as much as they do it too. All the conversations seem to revolve around rumors about who is doing what with whom. They cracked me up sometimes.

So I was single and I joined into the Tico way of life. Puravida. I was pretty loose. I was going out with the students from my school, the teachers, people I met at the beach, tourists, locals and basically just doing what ever felt right at the time, my flavor of the day. I had very few problems with this lifestyle. Once in a while I would have somebody knocking on the door while I was knocking the headboards but it wasn't a big problem. Life was going well for me as a single man in Costa Rica.

My girlfriend from California came down to visit a few times. I always told all the locals to stay away when she was there but the Tica way is not to do that. Karen got a kick out of them knocking on my door all the time. She was happy to see me enjoying myself so much after seeing me in such agonizing pain for so many years back in California. My health was fairly good to me in Costa Rica. The hot humid weather kept my higher levels of pain at bay. I could get morphine at any pharmacy when I did have pain issues so I basically just didn't worry about my pain levels unless I lost my mobility which happened a few times.

My kids came down to visit me a couple of times too. I really enjoyed having them come down. They were all in their twenties now and they were the perfect age to have fun in Manuel Antonio and Quepos. We went fishing and they all caught their first sail fish and we caught mahi mahi and dorado as well as tuna. Then we cooked up a feast back at my condo. Sarah made some Cajun food like gumbo and jambalaya with all the fish. She is a great cook. We hung out on the beach and partied at the bars together. I wish they could have spent more time there but they are all busy with their lives and jobs back in California.

Condo wars

When I first arrived in Manuel Antonio I lived in a nice friendly condo with views to die for and friendly neighbors. About a year later a war broke out. There were about fifty percent straight owners and fifty percent gay owners living in the condos. There was no animosity between the two groups and times were good for everybody.

Then one day a group of the gay owners were sitting around in the bar and they decided that the condos would be more fun if they were 100 percent gay instead of only fifty percent gay. They came up with a mean spirited plan to drive out the straight owners and have new gay owners buy all the condos. They schemed and plotted and started their war. The first thing they tried was just telling everybody that the place was all gay. They thought that it would embarrass the straight owners into selling out if the condos had a reputation for being gay. Well the straight owners turned out to be too gay friendly and did not mind the new reputation and they were not at all inclined to sell out of their condos that they loved so much merely because they had some gay neighbors. Then the gays decided to up the stakes a bit more. The gays were in charge of management of the condos which were built on a steep hill. Most of the straight owners lived in the upper units and most of the gays lived in the lower units. To get to their condos the straights entered a few doors at the top of the hill and walked straight and level sidewalks to get to their condos. The management locked those doors forcing the owners to enter at the gates on the bottom of the hill and walk up steep flights of stairs to get to their units. Some of the units were about a hundred steep steps up from the bottom and it was a tough climb in the hot humid weather. The gay friendly management insisted the new rule was for security. It took a while but the straights now started to talk to each other about what was going on. They suddenly realized that the gays were messing with them to try to get them to sell out. The straights decided to fight back. There were some more dirty tricks the gay group of owners tried also, some of them were little things like broken down phone lines to the straight units and electrical problems and plumbing problems all artificially created hassles to drive out the straights.

When the straights decided to fight back it got even worse. The gay owners tried to deny that they were doing anything while escalating the harassment level even more with new parking restrictions to make the straights have to park further away from their units. They also started to pick on one of the straight owners who was doing some remodeling. They actually went in and physically destroyed the condo one night when the owner was not there. They cut it up with saws and wrecked the walls and fixtures. When the straight owner came back and found the destruction the fighting escalated to hiring thugs to physically threaten the gay owners that were doing the harassment. That stopped the war. The gay owner who was the ringleader of the war was physically threatened by the thugs and he sold out in a matter of days. Several of the other ringleaders also moved out including the management that was involved in the events. The police threatened to arrest several of them and that is what finally ended the attempted gay takeover. A few of the gay owners were not involved in the altercations and they remained living there but all the actively involved gays that planned and carried out the war against the straights were driven out quickly and the war was over.

There was and probably still is tension left over from this stupid juvenile war that was fought. The condo management is always suspect now and the straight owners are very careful to make sure they don't get taken advantage of again. The whole town knows about all the problems and real estate agents do not like to get involved in any sales involving these condos now because of all the historical problems in this association. The good days there were short lived.

Now development all around these condos has driven away most of the animals and birds that originally made the place so charming. The big new buildings are blocking the beautiful views that once existed. The new developments have overwhelmed the water, electrical and sewer capacities of the area also. There is always a water shortage now. The electrical goes out almost every single day and the whole place is starting to smell like ass as South Park says from all of the over loaded septic systems over flowing into the streams and ground water. There are lots of problems and the current downturn in the international economy has not helped either. Most of the new development that ruined the ambiance of the place is now sitting empty because there are not enough tourists to fill them. My dream of retiring there and living the idyllic life I found when I first arrived were shattered now by all the ugly changes taking place. Manuel Antonio went from a tropical green jungle to just another concrete jungle like any other big ugly tourist trap.

I sadly left the area after several years of living there because I just could not watch the place getting destroyed so quickly.

Living in my condo, Monkey wars

I fell in love with my living arrangements in Manuel Antonio Costa Rica. I sat out on my balcony, in my hammock, watching all the birds, sloths and monkeys all day and night long. There were tons of birds from hummingbirds to toucans and parrots. The sloths were there in the same trees almost every single day. They moved slow but they sure moved around a lot and got in some crazy positions. There were white faced monkeys, howler monkeys and the little tiny endangered titi or spider monkeys to watch everyday.

The monkeys had organized wars. I watched for hours and sometimes days as these wars unfolded. The white faced usually started the wars but sometimes the howlers started them too. First they would decide to cooperate with each other and a large troop of them would gather. They would go around the area where they were going to fight and mark the area with their scent and they would also make a big deal out of breaking branches. They always made very loud screeching noises when they broke the branches off. They would get all excited doing this. Then they would break up into several smaller groups and hide quietly in the trees while one group went out and drove spider monkeys into the trap they had set up. The group would harass the spider monkeys and then chase them toward where the other monkeys were hiding in the trees. When the spider monkeys finally were driven into the area where the trap was then all the white faced monkeys would attack from different directions and try to make the troop of spider monkeys split up into smaller groups. They seemed to be particularly interested in separating out a single mother spider monkey with a young baby. Then they would all chase that singled out mother. The spider monkeys were smaller and faster than the big white faced ones but because the white faced attacked from all directions they would sometimes be able to corner a spider money or just her baby. If they could they would grab the victim and kill it then make a big deal of screaming and jumping around loudly in the trees before they would tear the smaller monkey up and eat it. The spider monkeys would jump out of the trees to escape. I saw them jump down from really high in the trees and land with a tumble uninjured and just run over to a different tree and continue to escape. Sometimes the jump down to the ground injured them and that would be the end as the white faced would close in on the injured monkey and kill it. The howlers did this too to both the white faced and the titi monkeys. The white faced did it to the titis and also to other troops of white faced monkeys that they were at constant war with. It was fascinating to watch all of this activity from my hammock. The monkeys would also attack sloths with babies to try to eat the babies but the sloths were stinky dirty parasite covered animals that the monkeys usually stayed away from unless there was a very young baby sloth involved.

The monkeys also ate birds and their eggs. If they found a bird's nest with either eggs or baby birds in it that was the end of them as the monkeys ate both the eggs and the babies. I watched a troop of spider monkeys find a hummingbird's nest and when the mother hummer came back to find her nest empty she came down in my face screaming at me from about two inches in front of my eyes. I was terrified that she was going to peck my eyes out. She could have easily done that because hummingbirds are so much faster than I am. But she just screamed at me for a few minutes and then flew back to her nest and started to repair it for another brood.

I saw a huge boa constrictor moving through the trees one night. It was moving very fast for a snake around fifteen feet long. They look so slow but this one was fast. I don't know where it was going but it was in a hurry. One boa lived under the pool of our condos. It had been there for years and was growing quickly according to the other people living at the condos. We sometimes found snakes dead or dying in the swimming pool in the mornings. I liked early morning swims and I had to learn to check the pool for snakes before I jumped in. The pool chemicals usually killed the snakes pretty quickly. Most of the snakes we found in the pool were fer d'lances and sometimes smaller bushmasters. The larger bushmasters were able to get out of the pool but the smaller ones got trapped in the toxic to them water.

Lots of birds migrated to Costa Rica from North America. There were flycatchers, tanagers, warblers, hawks, vultures, hummingbirds, gulls, frigates, toucans, trogons and hundreds more different birds to watch. Costa Rica has almost nine hundred different birds to see in the country. Wiki has a good list with pictures if you want to see which birds there were. My favorites were the mot mots. They had their long tail feathers with little round balls on the end that they flicked around. There were not a lot of them but when I saw them I always loved them. I don't know what all the vultures lived on but there were hundreds of them flying around all day circling in the air currents or sometimes just sitting in the trees out in front of my hammock.

When I first got to Costa Rica I saw scarlet macaws but they disappeared from the area where I lived shortly after I arrived. They were the first birds to disappear. By the time I left Costa Rica several years later almost all the birds had been displaced by development. First it was the scarlet macaws to go then the toucans went, then the rest of the parrots. The song birds started to thin out next and the hummingbirds became less common also. I was watching the change and it really upset me to see so many species of birds being lost so quickly for a few hotels for tourists. Costa Rica went from a green tropical jungle to a concrete jungle so fast I was amazed at the transformation. The worst part is that the reason all the tourists wanted to come here was for all the birds and animals and the development to cater to the tourists was ruining what the tourists came for. It was ironic but sad. Not just the birds were disappearing, so were the monkeys and snakes and all the other animals like the sloths and tapirs and other small mammals and reptiles. Trees were being cut down so fast that the monkeys could no longer get to and from their feeding grounds so they were dying off also. The noise from all the construction was also driving away the birds and animals. Now all the hotels and condos are built up but the tourists are starting to go elsewhere where there are still animals and birds.

The same thing was happening in the oceans around Quepos and Manuel Antonio. Costa Rica allows long line fishing and that method of fishing kills everything in the water not just the target fish. Turtles and bill fish are killed in the long lines along with the target mahi mahis. Sharks have almost been totally killed off in the waters around Costa Rica by long liners finning them. The fishermen cut of the shark's fins and throw the rest of the carcass back in the water still alive to die. I saw the fishing decline so fast as more and more long liners started to fish that it was disgusting me and making me not want to eat any more fish. The government of Costa Rica tells the world that they care and are very green but the truth is that they are not at all green or doing anything to save the wildlife and fish in the area. They tell the world that there is no long lining going on when it is common place there. It is all just government propaganda to lure tourists into the country. In a few more years there won't be any tourists because there will be nothing left to see.

The animals weren't the only ones waging war. My condo association broke out in an all out war also. My ideal living situation turned into a war zone and I hated it.

Costa Rica

South Park did an episode on Costa Rica. It was a very accurate depiction of a lot of the things that are common in the country. It starts out in San Jose and talks about all the prostitutes on the streets. It talks about the "Smells like ass" from the open sewers. They show the kids getting eaten alive by bugs in the rain forest. All of these are true to some degree. Prostitution is legal and common in Costa Rica. The prostitutes are not lining the streets like in South Park but instead they work in the bars and clubs or out of massage type store fronts. There are open sewers in Costa Rica that are just disgustingly smelly and unhealthy. Come on Costa Rica, open sewers went out in the eighteenth century. So the "smells like ass" South Park line is too true, especially on a hot muggy day. The bugs and snakes in the rain forest are also true however most tourists do not get bitten by venomous snakes and eaten alive by giant mosquitoes. The mosquitoes do carry dengue fever which is fairly common in Costa Rica so it is best to avoid the bites as much as possible by wearing repellent and covering up and by avoiding the worst hours for mosquitoes. I got dengue twice over the years I was in Costa Rica. The second time my blood work tested positive for it the doctor wanted to rush me to the hospital because there is a deadly version of dengue that causes its victims to bleed and they told me that I had that type. I stayed home and treated my sickness by myself with my friends helping me out instead of going to the hospital and I did recover without bleeding to death.

I did not have much of a problem with mosquitoes other than the dengue but I did get eaten up by no see ems more than once. The first time was while trying to fish in a stream once and then another time was when I was near a river mouth on the beach. No see ems are just that, impossible to see little flying insects that have a vicious bite that itches for three weeks and gets a blister with an oozing wound. I hated those bites. I got lots of bites on the fishing trip and I was miserable with them for the entire three weeks they took to go away. Some people get infections from scratching the no see em bites. I was lucky that I did not get any bot fly bites either. Bot flies bite you and lay an egg in the bite that grows into a huge fat worm under your skin. I saw several people that had them in Costa Rica. The worms need to be carefully pulled out with tweezers to get rid of them. Nasty.

There are quite a few venomous snakes in Costa Rica. The fer d'lance is the most venomous but the bush master is more aggressive and larger. I saw both types of snakes several times. I also saw a corral snake which is venomous also. There are some large boa constrictors in the jungles too. I saw some that were around fifteen feet long and as big around as my thigh. There was one boa that ate a monkey in a tree over a road that was so fat after eating that it stayed in the tree for about three weeks to digest the monkey before it disappeared. This snake was in Manuel Antonio near the jungles but still in the town when it ate the monkey. There were tons of tourists looking at the snake and taking pics. It reminded me of the French story of the little prince.

I continued to travel around with my college friends. We went to all the main tourist places in the country. The volcanic craters at Poas were beautiful. They are the widest craters in the world according to Costa Rica. There are nineteen active volcanoes in Costa Rica. On my flight into the country one time I was flying on Continental Airlines and the pilot circled an erupting volcano with the plane. He did several passes in different directions so that the passengers on each side of the plane could get a good view. We could see right down into the throat of the beast as it spit rocks and bright red lava up at us. Some of the passengers got scared about the rocks flying around because they thought that we might get shot down by the volcano. When they complained at the airport our pilot got in big trouble for his show but I loved it.

We went to watch the same volcano, called Arenal, with the college kids. We spent the evening sitting in a river of warm water drinking and partying while we waited for the cloud cover to blow away so that we could get a good view of the lava spewing out of and flowing down the sides of the volcano. Around midnight the clouds blew away for us and we got a good show but we were all pretty hammered by that time. It was a fun night I must admit.

We spent a couple of days at Monte Verde a cloud forest area in the north central area of Costa Rica. During the day we toured the forest and at night we partied at the disco they had there. It was not a very large disco but we had a lot of fun at it. There was a reptile zoo there where we learned to identify the venomous snakes we could encounter in Costa Rica. That came in handy when I did eventually run into snakes in the wild. My first snake encounter was in the swimming pool at one of the hotels. I went out to go swimming and there was a snake in the pool. It was a fer d'lance and when I told the other students to come and look one of the hotel employees came out and hacked the snake to death. The Costa Ricans hate snakes and kill them on sight. About thirty people a year get bit by venomous snakes there and almost all of them are farm workers not tourists. The odds of getting bit by a snake are slim.

We traveled north and west to see the Costa Rican cowboys, palm oil plantations, coffee plantations, macadamia nut farms, pineapple plantations and more. The weather up in the northwest part of the country was hot and windy. I was not too impressed by that area even though it is one of the big tourist places. When we were trying to sit on the pacific beaches the sand was blasting our faces so hard we had to leave the beach and just hang out in the bars and clubs. The college kids were able to adjust though.

We stopped at Jaco for a night and we all went to the Beatle Bar. This bar had about three hundred prostitutes working in it. We walked in and all six of the males were mobbed by the girls. I thought it was hilarious but the girls were good looking and stuff. I just didn't need any hookers since I brought seventeen girlfriends in with me. We partied there all night. The girls with us were quizzing the hookers all night about who they were and what they did or how much they charged and all that. Most of the hookers only work a few days a month. Most of them are married and have kids. This is just supplemental income to support their family with. Some of the hookers were crack cocaine addicts but in general they were just normal girls trying to earn a living. Most of their clients they told us are American and European men here in Costa Rica to go fishing. So they fish for red snapper during the day and then fish for pink snapper at night.

After Jaco we went to Quepos/Manuel Antonio. When we arrived there I fell in love with the place right away. Quepos was a dirty little city with smelly open sewers but Manuel Antonio right nearby was beautiful with a three mile long palm tree lined beach and lots of birds and animals all over. This was the last stop on our tour around Costa Rica with the students and this is where I jumped ship from them. It was a blast for three weeks to be living a spring break experience with all these young whippersnappers but when I finally broke away and got my freedom back I enjoyed that too. Hanging around with hardcore party animals can be a little hard on the health and pocketbook. After we partied hardy at the local disco called Mar Y Sombre in Manuel Antonio the bus took off and I stayed behind on my own.

I quickly found a place to live. I rented a condo at a place called Villas El Parque with a view of the jungles and beach, a hammock to lounge around in, a pool and a bar/restaurant. I settled in to stay for awhile.

San Jose, Costa Rica

I flew to San Jose, Costa Rica by myself. I did not read guide books about the place or anything so I really did not know what to expect. I found a good clean cheap hotel by talking to some travelers at the airport that were leaving the country. I chose this one because it was near the university and I always liked the parts of towns around universities because they were always vibrant and full of people. I was tired but I went out on the town for a beer after taking a short rest and a shower in my hotel room.

The bar I just happened to walk into as I walked around this area of town had about two dozen American students in it. They were drinking and partying hard. There was also a pool table and I sat down to watch the pool games. One of the mouthier louder boys was winning all the pool games and being very obnoxious to all of his opponents when they lost. I was just quietly watching it all. Finally no more of his friends would play with him any more and he started to loudly look for another challenger. He eventually got in my face and challenged the old man to a game. I could not resist after the punk called me an old man.

I racked the balls and watched him break and get two balls in on his turn. Then I carefully potted about five balls and intentionally left him up against the rail so he did not have an easy shot. He missed and I potted a couple more balls on my next shot before again sticking him into a bad shape for his shot. He missed again and started to rail about how lucky I was. I quickly agreed that I was being lucky. Then I proceeded to finish the game on my next shot. I made my eight ball shot look like it was going to miss and then it just barely dropped into the pocket. All of his friends cheered me for beating him and he immediately challenged me to another game. I accepted again. The same thing happened. He challenged me again because I was so lucky. I accepted. His friends were cheering me on and buying me shots and beers as I was kicking the loud mouthed punk's ass over and over again just because I kept being lucky. After about twenty matches where he did not win a single game and I always got lucky he gave up by telling me that he was from Texas and he was a Texas holdem expert. He told me they were going to go back to his place and play a Texas holdem tournament and that I had to come with them and play so that he could win his money back. I tried to decline but all his friends started to talk me into going with them. So I joined them at their house for a game of poker even though I hardly knew her.

The game took a couple of hours but in the end I won with kings over twos beating a flush that the last remaining girl had against me. My obnoxious pool player friend was furious that I won by luck so he started another tournament to win back the money from me. Well I continued to be lucky all night long. While we were playing the kids invited me to come with them on a three week tour of the country in a bus. I told them no but they kept pushing me to come with them. Everything was already paid for and it won't cost me a cent they told me. I think they just wanted me to come along so that the obnoxious kid from Texas was not the top banana. One of the boys told me that I had to come along with them because there were only five males and seventeen girls that were all horny as hell and the boys needed my help. I had to laugh at that line. But I finally agreed to go along with them.

The next morning despite their horrendous hangovers we all piled into a bus with a guide and a driver and we left San Jose heading East for Limon. I sat in a seat by myself but a short while later one of the girls came over and sat down next to me and we shared her bottle of rum together. Then she told me she was tired and needed a nap. She leaned up against me and then slid down to rest her head on my lap. I thought this is fine, she can sleep on my lap. Sleep however, is not what she had in mind. My zipper came down slowly with her teeth gently pulling on it and her hand up my shorts helped her get me started and for the next couple of hours she just slurped away and napped here and there. I was liking this group of kids already.

We finally arrived at our destination late in the afternoon. When we got off the bus there was a market that sold pot cakes, pot ice cream and pot prerolled in fat joints. The kids tried to buy the stalls out. We went to our hotel nearby and unloaded our bags. Then we wandered around town smoking pot and drinking rum and beer. We checked out the beach and found the main bar/club in town and we settled down for some serious eating and drinking. The kids were all getting high too but I was staying away from all the drugs. They bought some cocaine in the bar and started to do lines of that also. The coke just woke them up from the pot stupor they were in so that they could drink even more booze. I was cracking up at the attitude of these kids.

Our hotel arrangement was four rooms with a couple of beds in each room and when you wanted to sleep you just crawled into any one of the beds and took your nap in a group of whomever was in the bed with you. It was a very casual arrangement. The end result with seventeen horny girls and six guys including me was that there was plenty of sex available to all of us guys at any time we felt like it. It was an interesting time for me. I was kind of surprised the way I was just accepted into the pack despite the fact that I most likely was older than their parents.

We hung around the Limon district for a few days. Limon historically was the black area of Costa Rica. All dark skinned people had to live in this area of the country and they needed a permit to travel in the rest of the country. That setup no longer exists but the area is predominantly black and had a reputation for being the drug capital of Costa Rica. There is a strong Rasta presence and Caribbean influence in the area. The locals even speak a dialect originating in Jamaica. There is also some surfing at the beach there.

We traveled north from there and took a river boat ride from Puerto Viejo to see monkeys and crocodiles. There were birds like toucans and parrots. We saw a few snakes and lots of iguanas in the trees along the river. We also went to Tortuguero to see the sea turtle laying eggs. Every place we went the hotel arrangements were the same and we were basically in a three week long drunken stoned party as we wandered around the country. I was having a great time and getting to see Costa Rica at the same time. These kids had taken classes about Costa Rica and they had all the guide books and we had our guide along with us too. A couple of the girls were making sure that the guide was having a good time too.

Mexico burnout

Mexico can be a very interesting place to visit with all the history and geographical things it offers. Some of the best beaches in the world are in Mexico. The people are varied and friendly. All well and good. There are dangers but there are dangers everywhere you just need to minimize them and maybe have some luck on your side to avoid the worst dangers. I was always pretty lucky in that not much bad ever happened to me either in Mexico or anywhere else for that matter. I have a lot of street smarts and experience that helps me survive in new places.

Some of the problems in Mexico are the water shortages and water delivery problems. Taking a shower in Mexico was always an exciting adventure because you never know when the water will stop coming out of the faucets. There is nothing worse than to run out of water after soaping up in the shower and then be covered in soap scum all day when it is 96 degrees and sunny outside. Foaming sweat is ok for horses maybe but I did not like it. Lack of water wasn't the only problem when you took a shower. There were also the suicide showers themselves. The suicide showers with the obviously poor wiring were always scary. A suicide shower is a shower head that has an electric water heater inside the shower head itself to heat the water for your shower. Standing in water with exposed live wires going to the shower head can be hazardous to your survival. To touch the exposed wires can kill you. Washing your hair requires that you pay close attention to where your elbows and arms are flying around. One mistake letting your arm go too high and ZAP you are electrocuted.

People do get killed from the bad wiring sometimes and not only in the showers. In Mexico and most other third world countries there is very little building code enforcement. In Mexico particularly it is common for people to steal their electrical supply from the overhead wires. To do this they just take a wire and go up and twist it around the overhead high current wires. Lots of people make mistakes and fry themselves doing this but it doesn't seem to stop anybody from doing it. I have seen high voltage high current wires exposed at thirty inches off the ground on main side walks in Mexico and other third world countries. Anybody that touches these exposed wires would be instantly fried. Yet there they are at the perfect eye level for little kids. I don't know if the kids there learn to not touch the wires by seeing their friends fry or if it is just by chance that they don't touch them very often. It is an extremely dangerous situation and it is common all over Mexico. Wires just loosely twisted together with sparks flying every once in a while is also an everyday sight anywhere in Mexico.

Another very annoying thing in Mexico is the fireworks. For every wedding, anniversary, birthday, graduation, holiday and whatever other excuse to have a fiesta there was, there were always fireworks for the celebrations. The parties typically went late into the night and the fireworks were mostly just loud firecrackers that sounded like bombs going off. So all night long, every night, there were loud explosions going on to keep you from getting a good nights sleep. I started to wear ear plugs to allow me to sleep for a couple of hours. Lots of party goers get injured playing with these stick-of-dynamite sized firecrackers they played with. They usually got really drunk before they started to play with them and they were just homemade firecrackers to start with so the mistakes and resulting injuries were common place. I hated all the explosion noises more than I hated the amplified mariachi bands that played the same music over and over again at all the same events.

I am about six feet tall and in Mexico that is just too tall. In every market and along all the streets there are headbangers that start at about five feet off the ground. I had to duck so often that I inevitably missed one sometimes and I got bopped in the head for it. It was impossible to keep your head up to look out for them. The ground was so uneven and had so many open holes to fall into if you didn't look down that you were forced to look down with only a few glances at over head obstacles. Tourists with casts on their legs and arms from tripping are a common sight in Mexico. I never injured myself in Mexico but I did finally break an arm in Costa Rica for the same reason. I would hate to be confined to a wheel chair in Mexico because you would not be able to get around at all from all the obstacles and uneven surfaces.

The dangers in Mexico are not what drove me out of the country. All the pickpockets, thugs, drug lords, mariachis, dangerous wiring, loud parties and noises, thieves and crooked cops or other officials are not what made me want to get out of the country. It wasn't because of diarrhea from the dirty water and contaminated foods. It wasn't the suicidal drivers. The reason I left is because it is impossible to get even a couple of minutes of peace in Mexico. No matter where you are or what you are doing there is always somebody in your face trying to sell you something or tell you something or just to talk to you about something. They do not take no for an answer. Please leave me alone does not work. Trying to ignore them just encourages even more aggressive behavior. Hey Mister, wanna buy some jewelry for your girlfriend? Or what ever they were selling from gum to flip flops, they did not take no as no or go away as go away. Even if they did take you seriously and walked away, they would be back five minutes later saying the exact same thing to you...they were relentless. Anything you do just encourages them to increase their attacks. I started to go a little crazy from it after a while.

On the beach is one of the worst places for this harassment. All the jewelery and clothing and hammocks and food and drinks being hawked for sale are just one big relentless attack on your private space. There is no threat of ever falling asleep on a beach in Mexico--the hustlers make sure of that. I have to give them credit for their persistence and for their get-up-and-go trying to earn a living. There are a lot of Americans that could learn a thing or two about self sufficiency from these street hustlers. Instead of asking for handouts these people are trying to find a need and fill it. Sometimes I do want that margarita when they come up to me to offer me one but I have to say no 998 times for every "ok I would like one please" I say.

In the end it was this relentless attack by street hustlers, hawkers and cons that would not get out of my space and give me even a few minutes of peace and quiet that made me decide to leave the country after a couple of years of traveling around in it. Everyplace I went was the same thing too. There was just no escape. So I decided to jump on a plane and head South. I had no plans on where or when I would go I just knew I had to get away from these guys before I exploded at one of them one day.

By chance of availability and cost of the flights the first stop was going to be San Jose, Costa Rica.

Cuba

While I was in Cancun I met lots of people that went over to Cuba for all inclusive vacations that cost very little. I heard mixed reviews of the little island country. All my life I have heard about Castro and Cuban communism. Castro is always made out to be an evil mean dictator. The people I talked to varied widely on their opinions of Cuba and Castro. The stories told two different pictures of this country and this man. Castro sounds like he can be both good and evil at the same time. The romantic Cuba of Papa Hemingway's time apparently is long gone.

I have to start with the story of a friend of mine. He went up to Canada on a business trip to Toronto and he met a Cuban business woman there. They had a good time together and the woman invited him to come to Cuba. So this guy told his wife that he was going fishing in Mexico with his friends and then he flew from Cancun to Havana Cuba to meet up with his new girlfriend. The woman met him at the airport and they went straight to a hotel and started to do the wild thing. They were going at it for only a few minutes when four soldiers broke their door down and came into the room and beat the living crap out of both of them with their rifle butts. My friend had multiple broken bones in his face, arms, hands and ribs. He was hauled off to a jail cell and thrown in a dark cell without any medical care. After he was interrogated for a couple of days the Cubans decided that he was not the anti Castro financier that they thought he was and they told him he was free to go if he paid them $30,000 for a fine. My friend called his wife and told her he was in prison in Cuba and she mortgaged the house to come up with the cash and a family friend carried the cash down to Havana Cuba where he was met at the airport by the soldiers. They exchanged the prisoner for the cash and made both of them fly out on the next plane. My friend had to go straight to the hospital when he returned to the States because he had to get the broken bones rebroken and cast so that they would heal correctly. He then needed physical therapy for many months to rehabilitate his beat up body. He still has ongoing health problems from the beating incident. His wife forgave him for his indiscretion. Within a year however, it just ate away at their relationship and she divorced him in the end. He along with his friend that carried the cash to Cuba were both charged by the American government for taking cash to Cuba and they were fined something like a hundred grand. He is still paying off the debts for his two minutes of pleasure.

Other people that have gone to Cuba talk about a country that is extremely poor but that is full of happy healthy people. The old cars from the fifties that were there when Castro took over are still running and the towns are in disrepair but otherwise these people seem to like the country. I guess if you are lucky and have no problems then the country can be a nice vacation spot. There are a lot of brutal things that happen there if you disagree with the politics or lifestyle choices of Castro whether you are a tourist or a citizen. There is a huge prison where they put gays and people with HIV to isolate them. There are people that have just gone missing because they were opposed to Castro. Religion is allowed but very restricted and very few people are believers now. There is free health care so the people are relatively healthy and education is free so the level of schooling is very high but the education is very biased.

Cuba is hit by hurricanes every hurricane season because it is in the direct path of hurricanes coming across the Atlantic. The hurricanes take out most of the trees and flowers and weaker buildings so the place is a barren concrete jungle of grey buildings with very little landscaping that survives all the wind. Rum and cigars are still the elixirs of the masses there. Both are cheap and very good quality. Lots of tourists go there from Mexico and from Europe for the sex trade in Cuba. Apparently almost anybody in the country will have sex with a tourist. Twenty dollars for five hours is the most common rate I hear people talking about. I saw big full page ads in Mexican newspapers for these sex trips and the ads were aimed at both men and women. I met literally hundreds of people that went on these sex tours and most of them raved about how much fun they had.

There is also a good music scene in Cuba that is internationally known for the style and quality of music they play. Tourists told me about clubs like El Gato Cierto and The Tropicana or Hotel National where there is music and or cabaret shows just like from the fifties. There is also an area of the country that is on a peninsula with good beaches that is only for tourists. The only Cubans allowed into the area are workers for the clubs and hotels in this district. Castro has made the American dollar illegal and also made a law against Cubans talking or interacting with Americans except for business relationships like giving them a taxi ride or renting them a hotel.

All of these reports about Cuba sound kind of mixed up and weird to me. Maybe someday the country will open up to Americans and it will reintegrate itself back into the world of 2010 instead of 1956. I can only hope it does because I would love to go explore the country someday without the fear of having soldiers beat me up and throw me in jail.