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.
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