The last few days have been interesting. Two days ago, Amy and I took a 6 am bus from Monteverde to Puntarenas, where we followed a couple of people who were in search of the ferry that goes from Puntarenas to Paquera. For those of you who have not read the Lonely Planet's segment on Puntarenas, it is described as a port city of "polluted waters, seedy environs, and slow decay." Add to this delightful description the stifling combination of heat and humidity and the long walk carrying both my large backpacking backpack and my daypack from the bus drop off to the ferry (a local man insisted that it was 500 meters, a little over a quarter of a mile, away; his 500 meters turned into 500 liters of sweat that was pouring from my body, as I was wearing long pants and a sweater to keep warm through the chilly Monteverde morning and the walk was actually closer to a mile long), and you have my definition of Hell, sans the satanic pig, George W. Bush and a legion of his followers, and the Petula Clark song "Downtown" on repeat that would be necessary to make me truly miserable for all of eternity. By the time we were done following a local man ("only 500 meters!") and a fellow traveler from Colombia who had charmed this sweet but misinformed man into guiding us, I was drenched in my own sweat and ready to kill something. Amy alternated between laughing at me (she had a t-shirt!) and empathizing ("I know, it really is very hot"), while I schlepped down the smelly, fishy streets with my backpack on my back and my daypack on my front and repeated over and over, "I hate this place." I almost cried with joy when we finally got to the ferry and got a cool juice with the Colombian girl, Karin. I'm not sure that I made a very good first impression since the first thing I did was tear wildly through my backpack looking for a t-shirt and shorts and run my sweaty self over to the bathroom without introducing myself, but Amy must have done okay because Karin hung out with us on the ferry ride to Paquera, and then again on the taxi ride from Paquera to Montezuma. She even asked if she could share a hostel room with us (we said yes, only to realize that she didn't know that Amy and I were dating, so Amy gave me a look and I chased her down and told her before she paid for the room--fortunately, she was fine with it). Then came Amy's turn to make an impression. The first thing Amy, Karin, and I did after booking our room at Hotel Luna Llena was go to a lovely cafe called Organico to get dinner. Amy accidentally ate two bites of salad with honey on it and promptly began to go into anaphylaxis. The gentle, dreadlocked hippie man behind the counter kindly did not charge us for the Salad of Death, but did take his time writing out our receipt, while Amy wheezed in the corner. Fortunately, a couple of Benadryl, a Prednisone, and rest back at the hostel were enough to restore Amy's breathing capacity--we can save her epipen for other Salads of Death. Karin decided that she was going to go explore Montezuma on her own, LOL.

So, besides this initial exciting day, Montezuma has been AMAZING so far. It is a smaaaall town composed primarily of expatriate hippies who either wear bathing suits or flowing articles of earth-toned clothing with no bras. It is a sleepy beach town where local artists sell their unique and macrame jewelry, over half of the inhabitants have dreadlocks, and marijuana is culturally, though not legally, embraced (for this, it has earned the nickname "Montefuma"). Upon originally arriving, Amy and I were excited (hippies! Feels like home), and then disappointed (surprisingly, the hippies weren't super friendly and kind of stared at us a lot. Perhaps we looked too normal? But I have blue hair. Maybe we should have taken our bras off...?), and now we are blown away again. Yesterday, Karin, Amy, and I went on a walk down the beaches of the Peninsula de Nicoya, the strip of land that Montezuma is on. We would walk down one beach, have a short jaunt in the woods when this beach disappeared, and then reemerge on a different beach. It was hot and we were warned by a local not to swim in the ocean if we had any wounds because a red tide had just come in. Apparently, red tides occur when a certain kind of toxic algae blooms in the ocean, giving the waves a reddish color. Because I had fallen down and scraped up my leg earlier that day, I was particularly paranoid that if I went into the ocean, my legs would fall off. But it was soooo hot and soooo humid and we had all this water lapping up onto the shore to taunt us. Fortunately, we found a natural fresh water pool next to one of the beaches to swim in. It was so cool and beautiful, and we spent a good amount of time there,swimming and watching the local hippies play with their unkempt packs of dogs. It wasn't until we read Lonely Planet later that we learned there are several dangers in Costa Rican fresh water as well, including leptospirosis and fresh water snapping turtles, who can take off a person's hand with one clean bite. Ooops.

After wandering away from the pool and back into the woods, Karin, Amy, and I were intercepted on the trail by a large, bright orange, yellow, and purple crab that was dragging a leaf across the path. We looked up onto the hillside and saw that there were hundreds of these crabs poking out of hundreds of holes on the dirt hillside. We spent a good deal of time trying to capture these crabs on camera, but it was difficult because as soon as we got close to them, they would rapidly retreat into their holes like neon tarantulas--if they hadn't been so scared of us, I probably would have found the lot of them downright creepy. There are so many exciting and beautiful things in this country!

The best part of the day, however, was actually during the night. Karin, Amy, and I had stumbled upon a beach resort/restaurant on our way home and stopped there to get some drinks and tapas. This resort (the Ylang Ylang) was right on the ocean and has a roof but no walls, so we had a clear view of the water from our table. It was from here that we watched the sky change from a sunny, clear blue to a stormy blue as the clouds rolled in for an afternoon thunderstorm. Suddenly, we were in the middle of a monsoon as the sky dumped enough water fill a second Lake Tahoe. The coolest part, however, was that because the restaurant had a roof but no walls, we felt like we were in the middle of the storm without having to get wet at all. The sky cleared long enough to give us a beautiful pink sunset, and then darkened into night, while lightning struck on the horizon; it was incredibly beautiful. After we were done at the restaurant, we walked home along the beach. At one point, we stopped to look at the waves and were stunned to see that they were glowing. Amy and I turned to look at each other with raised eyebrows--was the ocean actually glowing, or had we consumed a couple too many pina coladas? We sat on a log and watched the dark water as it rose and curled into waves, then turned a bright, luminescent turquoise before crashing down to rejoin the dark. We looked at each other again--perhaps we had a Montefuma contact high? Or perhaps we had been exposed to an unknown hallucinogen in the jungle? Either way, we both were both hallucinating the same thing, and it was BEAUTIFUL. Upon going back to our hostel, we read that red tides sometimes cause bioluminescence in the ocean, primarily the parts where the water is moving about a lot (i.e. waves). I had seen this before once in Puerto Rico, but it had been due to phosphorescent plankton in still water that only glowed when you moved the water yourself. This ocean was glowing all on its own, and it was amazing. It was like a light show that came to life every time a wave curled over itself; everything would be dark, and then horizontal streaks of light would shoot from one end of our vision to the other, like a train speeding through a tunnel. Very, very cool. Amy and I would like to go back tonight just to make sure we weren't hallucinating.

Also, the noises that woke us up this morning? Howler monkeys, in the trees outside of our hostel room. We could SEE THEM from inside our room! And there were babies!!! Costa Rica is an amazing place. :)

written by  kfox on July 8, 2012 from Montezuma, Costa Rica
from the travel blog: Costa Rica!
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Amy and I have been sitting in the Denver airport for about 6 hours now, with another 4 to go before we hop back on a plane to San Francisco. Where did the month go? I am simultaneously excited to go home and see my loved ones and pets and sleep in my own bed and horrified at the idea of returning to reality, especially a reality in which my most academically difficult year of grad school looms on the horizon (whose hair-brained idea was it to go back to school again? Oh yeah, that was me...). In less than a week, my hair will need to be a color that is found in nature again, and I will have to start wearing slacks instead of the same pair of quick-dry hiking shorts for 5 days in a row. Often, I am tempted to run away to southeast Asian or Iceland or Ghana or someplace of the sort in order to learn more about the world and hopefully help the underprivileged communities in it. And evade my student loans, which are accumulating interest with every second that passes. But alas, running away is not my style. Denial is more my thing, and it has gotten me through many difficult periods of my life. For instance, I am in the midst of a 10 hour layover in the Denver International Airport after waking up at 2:30 am this morning and not sleeping much since then. If I had allowed myself to fathom how long 10 hours can be when one is sleep deprived and $16 airport sandwiches are the only available form of sustenance, getting myself out of my hostel bed in San Jose this morning would have been much more difficult. Similarly, if I let myself acknowledge just how much work I am going to have soon and how much debt I am accumulating to do this work, I would drop out of grad school instantly. My semi-professional opinion as someone who will one day be a professional is that a mild amount of denial is adaptive and we humans would accomplish far less without it because we'd be too freaking scared to do much of anything.

Also, yes, folks, that's right: your therapist may indeed dye his/her hair blue and advocate denial when on vacation. Crazy, huh?

Anywaaaay...I feel that my sleep deprivation is leading me off on tangents. Back to Costa Rica! I left off in Montezuma, right after the ocean started glowing and Amy and I thought, "Hmmm, this must be what an acid flashback feels like." But good news! We went back the next night and the ocean glowed again! We also noticed that when we walked in the sand that was still wet from the waves, the ground around our feet lit up every time we took a step! It was amazing...kind of like walking on stars. Amy and I spent a decent amount of time pretending that we were walking on stars, but Amy wasn't feeling well, so eventually we retreated to our hostel for another night.

That brings up another fun topic...what to do when your girlfriend falls ill in a tropical country with scary-ass diseases. The morning after our first bioluminescent adventure, Amy awoke with a slight fever, a headache, and a generally achey blah feeling. My first thought: MALARIA (apparently I have inherited some anxious overreacting tendencies from my parents). Amy assured me that she probably did not have malaria and it could just be the flu...such minor illnesses do exist outside of the United States. I was not convinced, and proceeded to look under the "Health" section of my Lonely Planet, just in case. In this section was a list of potentially fatal diseases one can contract in Costa Rica, including Dengue Fever, Leishmaniasis, Typhoid Fever, HIV, and our old friends, the Hepatitises. Amy gently reminded me that it was possible to contract most of these diseases in the United States as well. Still, I went into a tizzy. Maybe there had been Leptospirosis in the fresh water pool we swam in?! Or maybe Amy accidentally stepped into the ocean and some of the red tide toxins had entered her bloodstream through a microscopic cut and now HER legs were going to fall off?! And potentially glow in the dark?! I found out where the nearest medical clinic was, in addition to the nearest hospital, and talked to our hostel about how we would get Amy there if necessary. Amy and I laid on our bed under the mosquito net and watched the howler monkeys outside of our window and the hundreds of ants who had decided that our room would suffice as a breeding ground due to all the rain outside. I had just started thinking about how I could evacuate Amy to the U.S. if necessary when she announced that she was beginning to feel better, lol. I think a bit of denial in the moments directly before that announcement may have lowered my blood pressure. But hey, you do what you can, right?

Okay, it is finally nearing time for Amy and I to hop on our last plane. I am going to go buy one more $16 sandwich. I will try to go back and recount more of our Costa Rica adevntures (there were lots), but there is a distinct possibility that I may not have much time when I get home. If not, maybe I'll publish a book of stories in a few years when I'm done hiding from the government/my student loans in southeast Asia or Iceland or Ghana. Until then, adios!

written by  kfox on July 26, 2012 from Denver, United States
from the travel blog: Costa Rica!
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