So my Costa Rica visa needed renewing again and I also wanted to buy some electronics for my house. Imported goods in Costa Rica are taxed at a ridiculously high rate. The effect of the high taxes is that people shop outside of the country and then bring the goods into the country to avoid paying the taxes. The government gets nothing out of the deal. The high taxes don't work the way they were intended to work. I decided to fly to Miami to kill both birds with one stone. There were also roundtrip flights to Miami for well under two hundred dollars. I booked a flight.
I flew from San Jose Costa Rica's nice new terminal into Miami international airport's crazy mess. The airport in Miami is one of the worst airports I have ever been in. The signs were terrible in the airport. Due to remodeling that was very messy, most of the signs were giving wrong information about where to go and things. There was nobody anywhere that spoke any English. I had to speak Spanish to get information. I felt like Miami was the foreign country and San Jose Costa Rica was the more American feeling airport with way more English speakers available. Despite the poor airport I did find my way to my hotel shuttle and made it to my room. The hotel was having a bed bug problem. Yikes! Not what I wanted to hear. There were exterminators working only a few doors away from mine. I talked to them and they told me that they had inspected the room I was in and they were sure there were no pests in it. I wasn't sure I should believe them but I was too lazy to go find a different hotel so I took the chance.
I went down to the hotel bar after a nice hot shower. There were a few people there. I ordered my drink and a hostess came up to me a few minutes later to introduce the guests to each other. I was not used to this type of thing in a hotel bar but I enjoyed meeting the other guests. We talked for a while and had a pretty good time in the end. I was tired though and I went back to my room early and watched tv for an early night.
The next morning I did all my shopping. I wanted to walk and use public transit. The hotel workers did not seem to know anything at all about using public transit and they told me that walking in Miami is very dangerous. I asked why and they told me I will get robbed or hit by a car. I kind of laughed at their attitude and walked out of the hotel with a map in hand. I started to walk to a mall about a mile away from the hotel. The first street I came to I found out what being a pedestrian in Miami was like. The road was a six lane road with a crosswalk painted in the intersection I was crossing. Not one car would stop for a pedestrian. I waited and waited but there was no way to cross the busy street. I asked another young kid walking along how to get across the street and he told me I had to walk up two long blocks to a light and I would be able to get across there. I took his advice and made it across. All the street crossings were like that. There had to be a light to get across the street and even with the light a pedestrian had to be super vigilant and quick footed or the cars would hit you. I was very careful and made it safely. The hotel was half right already. Was I going to get mugged next?
I bought all my items I needed at the mall and when I was done I thought about walking back to the hotel. I had a bunch of bags from electronics stores and I would have looked like an easy target for thieves so I broke down and took a taxi back to the hotel. I put my stuff in my room and went down for lunch in the hotel bar restaurant. I met a Chinese guy there and we talked a while. He asked me if I knew anything about real estate in Miami. I told him all I knew is that the market had fallen flat recently in Miami. Prices had been falling for some time now and there were some good deals available if he was buying. He told me he was buying. I told him how to find a real estate agent before I left. He called one and arranged to go meet them the next morning. He seemed happy for my help. I had nothing else to do in Miami so I decided to make a tour around town. I booked a tour through the hotel desk for all day the next day.
When I went down to the hotel restaurant to eat breakfast, the Chinese guy was there trying to figure out how to get to his real estate agent's office. I helped him get a taxi and then sat down to wait for my bus. It came right on time. I jumped on board the empty bus and we took off to pick up more passengers at other hotels. The bus started to fill up. When we got to the Four Seasons hotel an English woman stepped up the stairs of the bus and scanned the passengers already onboard. When her eyes met mine she immediately walked over and sat down next to me. She said hello in a thick Wales accent. I recognized the accent and she was surprised that I knew where she was from. She told me her experience with Americans so far had been that they knew nothing about geography. I laughed and we started to talk. Her hand started to rub my thigh within two minutes. I had to think about it for a minute to make sure that she was rubbing my thigh on purpose and not just by accident. Sure enough she was hitting on me. I laughed to myself and went right on talking to her.
We stopped at one more hotel before we were starting the tour. As soon as the bus stopped she ran up to the driver and talked to him for a second then ran off the bus. She came back a few minutes later with two drinks in her hands. She handed me a margarita. Eight fifteen in the morning and we were drinking tokillya already. I took it and shook my head. We went right back to our conversation. She was a very fun loving and witty woman. I had more fun with her than I have had with almost anybody in years. We talked about world traveling. She invited me to come along with her and travel the world again. She offered to pay for everything and go first class. She was leaving on a cruise the next day and told me I could start right there. Everytime the opportunity came along she bought some more drinks. I was getting drunk quickly and so was she. She started asking me to come back to her hotel with me so we could have some fun after the tour was over. I told her we would see when we were done with the tour.
We drove around Miami in the bus and stopped at all the typical tourist spots. Then we boarded a boat to go see how the rich live on the islands in the bay. We got a picture taken of the two of us before we boarded the boat. She bought several copies to send pics home to her family she told me. I just laughed. We laughed together all day long. But by the time the tour was over I was really really drunk. She wanted me to get off with her at the Four Seasons and go to an Irish pub somewhere. I ended up backing out of the sure thing. I don't do that very often but I was so drunk I wasn't sure I could even stay awake to say nothing of going out drinking some more and then getting raped by her. She clearly had that in her mind. She made it very clear. I was not misreading her intentions. She was very graphic in her description of what she wanted to do to me. I hugged her and told her goodbye. I was so drunk she could have just grabbed me by the hand and taken me with her, I would not have been able to fight her off.
When I got back to my hotel I said something to the Cuban driver and he laughed his ass off. He told me I should have gone with the Wales woman because she was really rich. I laughed with him and told him I was no puto. I crawled back to my room and took a bath then conked out for the night. I had a hangover in the morning.
The Chinese guy was there for breakfast again. I asked him how his real estate hunt went and he told me he had bought 12 condos. I was impressed. I asked him how big they were and how much they cost and he started to babble about how many units each building had. He bought twelve entire highrise buildings full of condos not twelve individual units. He spent millions of dollars in one day. I was kind of taken aback by the scope of his purchases. I asked him if he needed a taxi to get to his real estate agent's office and he told me they were picking him up shortly. Sure enough a few minutes later a big limo pulled up and they came over to help him to the limo. I had to laugh at that too. The day before the real estate agent could not be bothered to pick him up but spend a few million dollars and all of a sudden he was getting rock star treatment. Money makes the world go round.
I spent the day at the pool recovering from my tour partying. There were several messages for me but I told the hotel to throw them away without looking at them. I made it back to Costa Rica the next day.
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