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.