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.

Zaire

After crossing the wide Congo River we headed down a one lane dirt road through thick jungle. The road was more of a trail consisting of two ruts with grass growing between them and regular holes filled with water and mud, lots of mud. About a half hour after it got dark, and I mean inky black darkness illuminated only by the headlights of the Landrover, we arrived at a compound that reminded me of a family farm back home in Wisconsin. If not for all the dense jungles, it would also have hinted at a fort from the old west.

Our missionary called this his church. There was a nice large American style two story house with shutters on all the windows. It was surrounded by a very large garden filled with banana, mango and papaya trees, neat rows of vegetables and large amounts of flowers. In the dark it was impossible to see the tended corn and peanut fields behind and surrounding the area. Then there were a few smaller out buildings and one large barn type structure and another smaller barn. There was a very stout fence made of hardwood saplings about 10 feet tall placed side by side and tied together into more of a wall than a fence. We were greeted by his beautiful very young looking wife and his four hot looking daughters that all looked to be teenagers and an obviously local black man that approached the Landrover with a very concerned expression and started talking very quickly to our driver. We parked and entered one of the smaller buildings to clean up because we were covered in mud. The bucket shower sure felt good after such a long grueling day.

While we were getting cleaned up, I politely asked about his all blonds family but all I could think about was the hot wife and oldest daughter. I found out that the oldest daughter was nineteen and the youngest was thirteen. I put on my cleanest clothes but they weren't exactly fresh from the French laundry clean. They were more like the least sweat soaked clothes I had with me. The local man helping us out offered to take all our clothes and bring them back cleaned tomorrow. I jumped on that offer. My friend and I were both still dirtballs to be blunt about it. We also were having a real hard time not continuing our little game of swearing incessantly and the missionary was repeatedly asking us to clean up our language.

When we entered the immaculately clean, well kept house, there was a huge table being set up with dishes and all the girls were busy helping out. We were offered a drink right away. One of the first things I learned traveling in Africa was that all the missionaries seemed to have large, very well stocked top shelf liquor cabinets. They tended to use them often also, but more importantly to me, they also shared them generously. I chose brandy and a beer. I got Hennessy cognac and a Belgian dark ale that was a real treat for me. I kept catching myself checking out his wife and daughters and I think he did too.

I was pretty horny by now. The only white women I had seen in the last six months were three Irish nurses when I was in the hospital in Nigeria and a couple of peace corps workers here and there. One of the peace corps girls I met tired me out for a week and she was the last partner I had been with. That was six months ago now. Did I mention yet about all the hot blonds in the house? I am not racist by the way, but I refused to indulge in the local African women because there was just too much STD evidence visible everywhere I looked so far in Africa. The victims were easy to identify by the open sores all over their bodies and their general unhealthy appearance. I had no condoms so I passed on all the locals.

The entire family spoke perfect English as well as French, German, Flemish, Spanish and Dutch. They probably spoke all the local dialects also. I was impressed by that since I could barely speak English without swearing like a sailor. It seemed to me that every town I had been to in Africa spoke their own language. No wonder the colonialists were able to take over so easily. The locals could not communicate with each other to organize any resistance. Teaching a uniform language actually seemed to make it easier for these countries to gain their independence later on. We talked about that a little while waiting for dinner.

Finally the dinner was served. I can not even come close to describing this meal. Remember I lived on mangos, bananas, pineapples, peanuts, oatmeal some bread here and there and lots of beer. I saw several types of roast meats and poultry, baked and mashed potatoes, gravy, a variety of vegetables, melons, grapes, apples, oranges, cheeses, milk and juice, condiments, fresh breads, several desserts and did I mention the hot looking girls sitting on the opposite side of the table when they weren't serving something?

We kept getting in trouble for swearing. I was really trying but I kept slipping up but not as much as my friend was. Over dinner we talked about our African experiences. The story of my arrest in Nigeria was a popular topic. I kept quizzing them about Zaire and what was safe and what was not, where to go and what to see. When the meal was over, we were quickly escorted out of the house and put up on cots in one of the barn buildings They had already been readied for us by the time dinner was over. I think our poor choice of words was the reason for our quick escorted exit. But it may have also been that his daughters were too interested in us and he didn't like the looks going back and forth across the table.

I was so full. I felt like I had just ate three or four Thanksgiving meals in a row. What a day so far. Bloody mayhem for breakfast, bloody bus accident for lunch and then this latest overdose on food. I was going to sleep well for sure after all the food and excitement. I was also planning some nice dreams involving blonds.

As we were sitting around on the cots rehashing the day, the oldest girl came out to the barn where we were. She asked my friend to go outside to smoke his cigarette and to take his time with it. I got excited immediately. She wanted to talk to me in private. My friend looked at me with a roll of his eyes that screamed out, "YOU WOULDN'T DARE!" and I gave him a look that said, "DON'T COME BACK TILL I COME TO GET YOU!" He went outside and left the two of us alone. She walked over and attacked me as soon as my friends back was close to the door. MMMMMMMMM did I like that. It wasn't what I would call a marathon session but it was one passionate moment that would last me for months reliving it every single night. It took all of somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes start to finish. She knew just what she wanted and made sure she got everything she wanted. Afterward, she calmly redressed and casually asked what my plans were the next day before walking out with a mischievous satisfied smile on her face. I was just in shock. Satisfied but shocked none the less. My rule of not touching the locals had just been obliterated by a single horny 19 year old blond bombshell from Belgium.

My buddy came back into the room when he saw her leave and said, "I can sure smell what you just did. You bad boy. I don't believe you. You are going to get us both killed."

I was ready to sleep. I just smiled and said, "This has been one really really long day. How can I get myself killed? I am totally dead already. I think I am in heaven. Now shut up. I want to savor this. Good night" He was just as tired as I was, I am sure. Within minutes we were both asleep.

The next morning we had breakfast brought out to us. I think that was because the missionary did not want us around his family any more. I think he might have known what his daughter did the night before but I am not sure. Maybe he could smell it on her like my friend did on me. He acted very different than he did on the ride to his compound than he did now. He briskly told us to rest up today and that in the morning he would take us down to Goma the closest town in the area. So we hung out and checked out the compound until the next day. The girls were not to be seen other than a quick glimpse here and there through the windows. Our meals were brought out to us in the barn. We both chuckled over our banishment but we still enjoyed the food. I never did get to say goodbye to her before I left the next morning.