Derzblog

Return to NYC - Spica's last apparition

2005-09-01T21:36:00.000-04:00

On September 1 I returned to New York as planned, tired and ready for the next phase of life.

In the Holiday Inn at San Jose Dad and I had set the alarm for 5:30. We checked out, grabbed the free hotel breakfast, and then went outside to the cab stand. The driver wanted an excessive $14 for the airport ride, so I had to threaten to walk away before he would agree to $12, the customary fare. We were too tired to feel any pleasure at having mastered any bargaining techniques.

At the airport Dad and I said a short goodbye. His flight was at 8, while mine was at 12:50. I changed money, and paid the steep $26 (cash only) airport departure fee.

The flight to Fort Lauderdale was uneventful. From my window seat I could watch the Nicaraguan cost scroll past, up to the border with Honduras, then the Caribbean Sea. We crossed Cuba and a line of thunderheads, skirted the Keys, and landed amid a mild late-afternoon Florida thundershower. The flight to New York passed in darkness, but I was able to spot the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter setting in the west, just next to the star Spica. In school days I'd always watched for Spica in the evening as a harbinger of summer: when Spica was no longer visible in the evening sky, it was time for the school year. In this case, my last Spica sighting of the year represented the imminent start of a job search and the end of my travels.

Landing in New York we flew over the U.S. Open. I recognized Blake's yellow shirt from the games Dad and I had watched in Manuel Antonio. We weren't quite close enough to see the ball on the court.

The taxi back to Anand's apartment was $29, including tip and $4.50 toll. Anand was there to greet me, and let me know of the latest deterioroation of the situation in New Orleans.

It was as close to "home" as this blog would get: this is the end!

Final bus

2005-08-31T20:59:00.000-04:00

Dad and I spent our last day in Costa Rica dealing with our return to San Jose. We had breakfast in the cafe and then relaxed in our room up until around 11:30. Then we paid our bill and took a taxi to La Fortuna. The volcano was covered in clouds, so there wasn't much scenery to look at.

In La Fortuna it was a bit of a wait before a bus came along offering a ride all the way to San Jose. Unfortunately the bus was a rickety affair, belching smoke and immensely hot inside, evidently heat from the engine or exhaust coming up through the floor in the rear of the bus. We were able to move forward and away from the heat after an hour on the trip, but unfortunately our new seats were right behind a middle-age Dutch couple that spent much of the trip making out and cuddling - annoying both Dad and me. On another front, Dad was worried that he might not be able to handle a four-hour ride, but he did just fine. The only real difficulty was putting up with the Dutch couple's antics and surviving the stop-and-go habits of the typical Central American bus: At one point we departed a major bus station only to stop for another five minutes to pick up more passengers directly across the street from the station building.

To give a better idea of our progress, it took a full 4.5 hours to travel only 96 km, including a 25 minute stop at an intermediate bus station. To be fair, some of the slowness was due to the winding roads through the scenic Cordillera Central mountain range.

On our arrival in San Jose's Coca-Cola neighborhood we hailed a taxi to the hotel - with a grumpy driver who disliked my asking him to put on the "Maria," the name given by the Lonely Planet for the taxi-meter.

We checked into the Hotel Aurola Holiday Inn, then walked a couple blocks over to the Pizza Hut for dinner. The waitress at the Pizza Hut smiled at me in recognition when we walked in: I had been going there regularly for almost two months, after all.

After dinner we walked to the supermarket to buy some Costa Rican coffee as a souvenir for Marlene and Tony Beltramo, longtime Missoula neighbors of the Hove family who would be picking Dad up at the airport on Thursday night.

I was looking forward to being home. It had been a good trip, but an exhausting one, more tiring than my Asian trip. Yet despite my always saying that every international trip involves at least one costly or embarassing mistake, I hadn't made any major mistakes that I could think of. No lost cash (India), no unneeded rug purchases (Turkey). No mistakenly reserving an expensive hotel in the wrong town (Italy).

Also on the positive side, I had met my goal of taking three weeks of language classes, the highlight of the entire trip - especially meeting Lisa (Priya's buddy), Sally (the wine connoisseur), Evelyn (the energetic dancer), Stephanie (the event planner), and the other Lisa (from DC), plus the fantastic teachers at Intercultura. Finally, I had visited a few of the places seen by my Mom on her visit in Sandinista days, and more importantly had gotten the chance to explore the politics of those years with the teachers at Intercultura during our classes. With Lisa and later with Dad I had even had dinner at a restaurant featuring an old gun-running plane intended by the Reagan team for the Contras.

Lightning, fireflies, and lava

2005-08-30T11:20:00.000-04:00

Our sole task of the day consisted of switching to a new hotel closer to the Arenal volcano and further west. During our visit to Volcan Poas three days ago some women had advised us to stay in a hotel west of the volcano to see lava flows, though in the morning the volcano didn't seem to be active at all.

After eating at the Rancho la Cascada restaurant we packed up and found a taxi with a rather beat-up interior to take us to the Arenal Lodge, 20 km west of Fortuna and just to the west of the volcano. The driver charged us $12, a reasonable rate I thought, and talked to us about his hobby as a railroad watch collector after I mentioned that Dad had worked on the railroad.

We checked into the hotel with no difficulties, getting a "junior suite" for $94 plus tax, a reasonable rate for our beautiful, wood-paneled room overlooking the Arenal volcano. Drinks and meals in the restaurant were carried more hefty charges - our lunch alone was $36. While eating we spotted a couple of huge green macaws, red tanagers, a lot of black vultures, and a big black weasel. (Bird identification was a cinch, thanks to the Costa Rican bird book propped on a music stand in the restaurant.) In the distance Arenal often had a bit of cloud on its summit, but streaks of steam and gas could be seen coming out of its flanks.

"Dawdling would be a generous term for our activities of the day," I said to Dad as we stared at the volcano from our balcony. It was dusk.

"Maybe we should ask at the desk when they last saw lava on the volcano," suggested Dad.

Just minutes later I spotted a streak of yellow spilling out along the ridgeline of the volcano. As it grew darker the streaks of steam seen earlier resolved themselves into tumbling streams of yellow, orange, and red lava, often stretching from the summit down to almost the valley floor. The streams of lava could cover the distance in just a few seconds. Dad suggested they must be huge, car-sized lava boulders tumbling down the hill, but I thought some of the beads of color looked more like a fast-flowing liquid, or like a seam opening up.

Overhead the clouds flashed with lightning, and in the trees and bushes bright fireflies blinked - a bright white light neither Dad nor I had seen in fireflies before. And it wasn't just a light show: some kind of bird or frog made a continuous noise that sounded like a very sonorous version of water dripping (we called the animal "the dripper"), and a second creature would occasionally interject with what I called "the kazoo."

Crossing the country to Arenal

2005-08-29T19:43:00.000-04:00

On Monday our travel tasks included flying back to San Jose, getting cash, then going on to La Fortuna in the north of the country via two buses for a total of around four hours by bus.

It was a glorious morning in Manuel Antonio: lots of blue sky, blue ocean, white surf, and bright green jungle. We packed up and had breakfast at the hotel restaurant, where the staff universally addressed us in English. With each encounter with an English-speaking waiter my frustration with the phenomenon grew. I missed the opportunity to practice Spanish, of course, but more important was the shattering of the always-fragile illusion of being able to fit in, to belong, to benefit from learning a foreign language, and to be a little bit of a different (if not more sophisticated) person by speaking one. Not to mention the fragile illusion of being in an actual foreign country.

We caught the regular bus back to Quepos and there found an overpriced $4 taxi to take us to the airstrip. There was a crowd of around a dozen people waiting, and Dad quickly surmised we would have a larger plane on the return journey. The 19-person airplane was a lot less exciting than the small plane we had arrived in: it had both a pilot and a copilot, and we couldn´t see all of what they were doing because of a small partition between cabins. Still, the view of the shore stretching all the way north to the Nicoya Peninsula was gorgeous.

Back in San Jose I instructed our taxi driver that we didn't want to hear any English during our trip into the center of town. I reasoned that if we were going to pay inflated taxi rates it might as well earn me some practice. The driver asked about our respective homes and was shocked to learn it was five hours flying time between Montana and New York.

For lunch we ate at El Presidente, a restaurant aimed at American tourists judging from the old copies of newspapers with historic U.S. headlines (such as the death of FDR). Naturally the staff spoke English to us. So I ordered fish 'n' chips.

After arriving at the Atlantico Norte bus terminal at 1 we quickly acquired two tickets on the express bus to Ciudad Quesada. It was a comfortable two-hour ride up into the foggy mountains and down the other side. There Dad and I had a chance for a pit-stop before boarding our less-comfortable bus to La Fortuna. Fortunately the bus wasn't full for the entire 90-minute trip, so Dad and I were each able to stretch our legs a little.

In La Fortuna there was a decent room available at the Hotel San Bosco for $40. The view of Arenal volcano was obscured by clouds, though the sunset was beautiful nonetheless - in fact, I was looking at it as I typed my blog entry for the day.

An early wildlife tour in Manuel Antonio

2005-08-28T17:31:00.000-04:00

Dad and I got up at 6 and went up to the top of the hill to await the local bus to Manuel Antonio. The town itself was fairly deserted, but there were two young guides waiting at the national park information booth. We secured the services of the English-speaking guide named William, then paid the obligatory 100 colones/passenger fee to float across the tidepool near the park entrance. For me it was a familiar walk along the pleasant circular trail, shaded by the jungly trees all around. William was glad that I had enjoyed my earlier tour with Jayner, but he wasn't able to spot as many animals as his colleague had - whether due to Jayner's superior skill or the absence of animals. Nevertheless we spotted:

- both two- and three-toed giant sloths, including one in motion;
- Capuchin monkeys;
- Jesus Christ lizards;
- black lizards;
- a heron;
- blue hummingbirds;
- black and red crabs;
- grasshoppers and butterflies in tropical colors;
- and the moon.

Afterwards we went for a well-deserved breakfast at Restaurante Lobster before retiring for a nap and a bit of porch-sitting back at the hotel. A steady rain started up at around 11.

For lunch we decided to return to the Black Cat. The lunch came to around $32, a bit pricey we thought, though we had ordered alcohol and an expensive dessert item. Prices in Manuel Antonio were generally quite high, particularly at the tony area at the top of the hill where El Avion, the Black Cat, and our hotel were all located.

For dinner we returned to the hilltop and tried out El Avion - the restaurant built around the cargo plane intended for supplying arms to the Contras. I had to ask the waiter to speak in Spanish for practice - it seemed to pain him, even when delivering the local specialty, "chicken with r ... er, arroz con pollo." However he didn't charge Dad for a cup of coffee and allowed him to take home the laminated drinks menu with the history of El Avion printed in English on the back.

A short hop over the clouds to Quepos

2005-08-27T17:41:00.000-04:00

After a satisfying and inexpensive breakfast at the Holiday Inn, Dad and I decided to take a taxi to the municipal airport in Pavas, a short ride. The taxi driver was eager to talk, pointing out the house of former Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Oscar Arias, and mentioning that Arias might run again for the presidency in 2006. He was interested if Bill Clinton might run again, so I explained that wasn't possible, though his wife might make a run.

The local airport had only one waiting area and just a couple of flights, all small planes. While we were sitting a woman came up and asked if we were in the market for real estate in Guanacaste province. It seemed that a large proportion of Westerners were interested. Disappointed, the woman returned to her seat and spent the next couple of hours talking on her cell phone.

At 1:15 we were subjected to a cursory bag search and hand-wanding before being personally directed to the waiting aircraft by the pilot, a chubby guy of uncertain ethnicity. When I asked if Dad's suitcase had made it to the luggage compartment he walked me around to the back, opened up the baggage door and pointed it out. There was just one other passenger, though the plane could have seated 10, or 12 including pilot and (hypothetical) copilot.

The pilot started the two engines one by one. I was so accustomed to WWII and low-grade air crash movies that I half expected the engines to backfire dramatically and then belch clouds of blue smoke before starting; but they started up on the first flick of the switch without drama. Next he taxied us out to the end of the runway and, after a single communication with the tower, we took off into the light cloud cover over San Jose, getting a good view of both the slums around town and the nicer homes on the mountains. There were a few bumps but it was hardly turbulent.

After 20 minutes we had arrived at the Pacific shore. The low forested hills of Manuel Antonio formed a scenic headland surrounded by the flat surrounding land made up of endless rows of oil-palm plantations. From the airplane the airfield looked like little more than a helipad surrounded by forest, but as the pilot swung the plane into its approach the field resolved into a single long strip of asphalt in the jungle. Without ceremony he put one wheel on the ground, then the other, and, after a longish pause, the front wheel as well. When we arrived at the end of the runway the pilot opened his door and we followed him to the back of the plane to get our "checked luggage."

Dad said it was his first small plane ride since a bear-spotting trip in Alaska. For me it was the first since two private plane rides with my uncle Gordon, when I was just a kid.

The airport shuttle cost a whopping $5, but took us directly to the Costa Verde hotel on the hill near Manuel Antonio. The hotel reception was built out of an old railway car - a nice touch, but it was cramped inside. As for our room, it was in a cabana overlooking the ocean below and the ridge of high-end resort developments along the Manuel Antonio-Quepos road.

For lunch Dad and I walked up the hill to the Black Cat (Gato Negro) for a rather expensive meal overlooking El Avion, the restaurant built out of the old U.S. airplane once intended for arms shipments for the Contras. We had several hours to relax and watch tennis back in the room before having dinner at the hotel restaurant. We were lucky in that a heavy rain started after our arrival but ended just before we decided to leave. While we were having dessert one of the waiters pointed out some monkeys moving around in the dark trees just off the balcony. We only saw a couple other guests in the restaurant - surprisingly few for a Saturday night in the U.S. vacation season. Yet the restaurant had hired an electric guitar player who worked away at covers in a variety of genres, including an incredibly bad version of Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

Volcan Poas on the tourist bus

2005-08-26T18:29:00.000-04:00

Dad and I got up at 7, showered, snacked, then boarded our 7:50 tourist bus for Volcan Poas. The passengers were mostly English-speakers, and the guide gave us a continuous lecture about Costa Rican geography and people, pausing to translate every phrase into both English and Spanish. It took an hour to finish picking up all the customers at the various hotels between San Jose and Alajuela. Then, just as we were heading off the main road toward Poas, the guide informed us we'd be making a half-hour stop at a coffee plantation. That was bad news for Dad and me, since we had hoped to be at the summit of Volcan Poas before the inevitable arrival of the late morning clouds - and the clouds were already rolling in.

The coffee plantation reminded me of a California wine estate tour, complete with tasting room, balcony providing a view of the rows of dark-green coffee trees, a close-up look at the plants with their unripe beans hanging on every branch, a quick stop at the roasting machine to see how that process works, and an obligatory pass by cash registers and the opportunity to buy anything from T-shirts and Costa Rican souvenirs to ... actual coffee. At least half the customers opted to buy something.

Nevertheless, it was a pretty stop, with lots of blooming heliconia flowers and a good view across the plantation hills.

Next we had another half-hour of road to cover to reach the summit of Poas, which by 11 was mostly enshrouded in fog. Our bus parked a kilometer from the top and we walked the trail the rest of the way to the lip of the crater. There we had our surprise: a clear view across the two-kilometer-wide barren crater, with its steaming sulfur lake and billowing steam plumes coming out of fumaroles here and there on the crater wall. From the viewing deck one couldn't smell the sulfur, but the fumaroles sounded like cars passing along a highway - sort of a continuous rushing noise.

The road back wasn't as long - only about 90 minutes. Dad fell asleep part of the way. Back in San Jose I stopped the driver in the center of town so Dad and I could walk to someplace nearby for lunch: the Gran Hotel de Costa Rica, the elegant grande dame of central San Jose's historical district. At the upscale restaurant under the arcade Dad had a cheeseburger and coffee, while I had arroz con pollo and a milkshake - he was pleased with his meal, but my chicken was dry and not to my taste. Still, we enjoyed the view of pedestrians scurrying in to shelter during the downpour that started while we were having lunch.

In the afternoon I finished making the reservations at the Costa Verde in Manuel Antonio - our studio would cost $102 per night. We planned to leave the following afternoon for our short flight to Quepos on the Pacific.

Things to do in San Jose

2005-08-25T16:08:00.000-04:00

The weather was cool and temperate, cloudy as usual in San Jose during the "winter," as the season is known in Costa Rica.

The next day was one of errands: Going to the grocery store and ATM, setting up the tour to Volcan Poas, emailing NatureAir and the Costa Verde hotel in Manuel Antonio, and going to the airport at 8 pm to pick up Dad. I arrived at the airport via taxi at around 8:15, but the monitors only showed Dad's Delta flight from Atlanta as "confirmed." The monitor showed no change to that flight even an hour after its scheduled arrival, while flights scheduled for later were shown as "arrived." At 9:30 or so, at last, the flight status changed to "arrived" and just minutes later I spotted Dad making his way to the taxi counter to purchase our trip to the hotel.

He reported that the pilot had been forced to circle several times due to fog, and had narrowly avoided having to divert to Liberia, three hours away by bus. Yet it hardly seemed foggy on the ground.

Back home in San Jose de Costa Rica

2005-08-24T23:51:00.000-04:00

At 1 pm I checked out and headed to the Belize City airport via taxi. The driver was talkative and friendly, extremely eager to know why I'd visited Belize and what I thought about it. (I told him I loved the architecture but couldn't take the hot weather.) He was 80 years old and a former mariner. He said he'd been "everywhere," then listed Canada and the U.S. as exotic places he'd been! It's all relative, right? I should have asked him some questions about the way it was during the British years in Belize, but instead I found out all about the cruise ship schedules, the tourist numbers, and the city's plans for expansion in the oceanfront area. He pointed out a large hotel on the coast, a casino he said was owned by some Indian people from the Middle East. We both agreed the casino wasn't our kind of place.

At the airport I had a long wait for my flight at 5 pm. The airport was small, just five gates and a single waiting area. A lone woman handled both the passenger screening device and the bag X-ray machine.

As for the flight to San Salvador, the A320 plane was only half full. The view from my window seat was impressive: a long cruise down the Belize shoreline, a turn inland across the green sunlit mountains of northern Honduras, then down through some thunderheads into the flat lowlands of coastal El Salvador. In the distance I could see a tall volcano poking above the clouds.

The San Salvador airport was more substantial: 17 gates, several bars and duty-free shops, and that clean, disembodied, big-international-airport feeling you get from major airports. The airport was sufficiently far from the city that I didn't get to see any of San Salvador from the plane during the approach. My flight to San Jose was at 7:30 pm, so it was dark by the time we took off. There was some turbulence, but we arrived on time in San Jose, where I had no difficulty entering the country and getting a taxi to the Hotel Santo Tomas, my home away from home in San Jose. They had even saved room 21 for me as I had requested.

More relaxing ...

2005-08-23T11:15:00.000-04:00

It was my last full day in Belize City - but in the morning it just felt too hot to consider a fast trip out to Caye Caulker. As I made my way to the Radisson next door for a BZE$23 breakfast buffet (US$12.50) I noticed a big cruise ship on the horizon, heading for Belize City. After breakfast the street traffic had increased markedly from past days, with a dozen tour buses clogging the streets and filling a terminal that had previously been empty. One of the buses was marked "NEW YORK," probably a code name for the passengers to remember rather than an actual destination.

On the way to and from the grocery store I was accosted twice by the same hustler, another toothless guy who had crossed the street to intercept me. The first time I shook his hand and answered a couple of his questions before moving on my way, leaving him hanging. The second time he intercepted me I just said, "I gotta go," and went on my way. "You're an ass-hole! You're a racist!" he shouted after me. Lots of heads turned to stare, but no doubt they all knew what his game was. He was just the type of aggressive, mean-spirited hustler I'd met every time I'd gone out on the street in Belize City, a nastier flavor from anything I'd experienced previously in my travels.

More relaxing ...

2005-08-22T13:37:00.000-04:00

For my third full day in Belize City ... I continued to do nothing of any importance. It was nice to have one's daily challenges boiled down to just getting food and water, checking the Internet, picking up cash, and then getting back to the hotel and air conditioning as soon as possible.

More relaxing

2005-08-21T13:33:00.000-04:00

I spent the next day relaxing at the Chateau Caribbean. On Sundays most services in Belize City were closed down, so there was little to do other than admire the view, watch TV, and eat. I went back to the Radisson for breakfast, ate fried chicken at the Chateau for lunch, and had a burger at the Radisson bar for dinner. Naturally I spent some time contemplating my now-immediate future of job-searching, apartment-searching, and other practical problems.

Walking around the streets in the early morning I met Harry, a white-bearded toothless beggar whose approach was to recite the state capitals of whatever state his targets said they were from. He also had a strange story about a man he claimed had been the U.S. president before Washington. I got a funny look from a passer-by while I politely listened to his spiel. Then he asked for BZE$1.50 for breakfast and I started to hand him a BZE$1 coin. "I won't reject it," he said, but failed to extend his hand. Apparently he was a choosy beggar. When I put it back in my pocket he changed his mind. Later when I passed him on the street he waved and called out to me. The insistence of beggars and touts in the streets was a definite downside to Belize City, in my opinion.

Relaxing in Belize City day 1

2005-08-20T13:21:00.000-04:00

In the morning I got room service of French toast, then huffed my laundry down to the local place a mile south of the hotel. Even in the morning the air was boiling-hot. I picked up some more groceries, turned down more offers of taxi rides, and took at last glance at the view from the curved windows from the tower room at the Radisson. Then I checked out.

The Lonely Planet had suggested a "splurge" stay at the Colton House across the street for US$55-75 night, describing the place as a chance to experience life on a planter's estate. Perhaps due to the LP recommendation, the hotel across the street had raised its prices to US$95 and it had changed its name as well. A similarly-historic old structure right along the ocean just steps away was offering rooms for US$68, including a/c and satellite TV. I opted for the cheaper option, and checked in for four nights.

My new hotel, the Chateau Caribbean, was a study in unrealized possibilities. Its rates were substantially lower than its neighbors, but they weren't low for a hotel clearly below the luxury category. The owners seemed unaware of what they had, starting with the name: the place was a beautiful wooden British colonial seaside home, not a chateau. The grand staircase was covered in the same cheap, drab gray wall-to-wall carpeting that grocery stores use for footwipes on rainy days back in the States. The floors were uneven and the halls smelled of cigarette smoke. The only color used on the wooden interior was white, and the common areas were filled with worn rattan furniture with thin cushions. Yet the rooms had nearly-unobstructed ocean views. It seemed like a brilliant investment waiting to be made to turn the place into a historic luxury mansion-type accommodation.

In the evening a strong thunderstorm blew in, disrupting a birthday party taking place on the porch facing the ocean. While the amused guests looked on, the winds ripped apart a small three-segment free-standing canvass awning held in place by iron pipes. It looked like the sort of small-scale disaster that could have easily been prevented had someone taken an interest in dismantling the structure.

Eat my shorts, Carmen

2005-08-19T15:07:00.000-04:00

I had set the alarm for 4 a.m. in order to catch the early bus to the border with Belize. About 20 minutes later I was out the hotel door and walking down the road, occasionally followed by barking dogs. I had to walk 2 kilometers to the main intersection at Puente Ixtlu. The full moon was setting in the west over the still waters of Lago de Peten. I reached the crossroads at 4:45. It was deserted, so I just stood there waiting, watching the moon set and the sun come up.

In the end the bus didn't come until almost 5:30, and when it did I almost let it go past thinking it was headed to Guatemala City. The ride was smooth for the first hour, until the bus hit the rough gravel road 25 kilometers west of the border. Morning mists and palm trees were the view out the window.

Before the border a money-changer came aboard the bus and I changed out my last US$6 or so of Guatemalan quetzales for BZE$13. The bills had the reassuring face of Queen Elizabeth II on them - it was nice to be back in Anglo territory.

At the border I paid my US$1 exit fee and got my passport stamped for Belize. Belize was the final new country of my trip, and the thirtieth country I had visited so far. Would Carmen San Diego be even a little jealous?

At the border there were a couple taxi drivers waiting, but the one who spoke to me asked for BZE$5 for the three kilometer ride to the bus stop at Benque. I told him it was too much (the Lonely Planet advised BZE$1 was the price) and started walking. I had made about one kilometer on foot when the same driver pulled up, said he felt sorry for me, and offered to go the rest of the way for BZE$1. I got in.

At the bus station I secured a bus ticket for 8:30. It turned out to be a slow, hot, cramped ride in another schoolbus, with lots of stops along the way. But the bus was on schedule and arrived in Belize City by 11:30. On the bus I enjoyed hearing the different accents of English and Spanish being spoken. Several beggars and vendors who came on the bus spoke only in Spanish.

At Belize City I dodged the line of taxi drivers hoping for business and made my way down the street towards the ocean. A guy with few teeth and dredlocks stopped me short along the way to introduce himself, hoping to get money or something out of me. When I declined to buy him a soda he turned miffed. "Watch your back," he said as I walked away. Indeed just a few meters on down the street I sensed someone following me and stood aside: a young man had been angling to keep himself right behind my sport bag and he was reluctant to pass.

I checked into the Radisson Hotel on the tip of Fort George point, in a room giving a 180 degree view of the ocean. The cost was around US$151, so it was way beyond my budget for the trip overall. I had hoped to find someplace to sort of move into for five days, but the Radisson looked so nice I decided to make it a one-night splurge.

Expenses in Belize City were high compared to everywhere else I had been in Central America. Taxis around town cost US$2.50 according to Lonely Planet, and a load of laundry at the local place downtown cost US$5. At the tourist hotels where I stayed fried chicken dinner cost US$6 and french toast US$5.

To save money on meals I went to the grocery store and loaded up on bread, cookies, and milk. I settled down to a relaxing itinerary of channel surfing and occasional spots of looking out the window at the view of the ocean. In the evening after the sun went down I noticed the sky brightening in the east - the moon coming up yellow-white behind a backlit thundercloud. I sat watching the moon, the ocean, and the ethereal clouds for at least an hour.

Losing the race to the Rebel Base

2005-08-18T15:22:00.000-04:00

I got up at 5 a.m., showered, and headed out to wait along the roadside for my scheduled 5:30 roundtrip ride to Tikal. The only other passenger was Alan, a scruffy English guy who had to be rousted out of bed by the driver.

We covered the 50 kilometers or so in about a half hour, arriving just at opening time at the main gate. There were a half-dozen other tourists there at opening time as well. At the parking lot I waved goodbye to the driver and headed into the park, hoping to beat the other tourists to the Gran Plaza, the central attraction. Looking for a shortcut, I followed the Lonely Planet map to Grupo G, where I hoped to find a path north to the Plaza. Unfortunately the path shown on the map didn't exist, and Grupo G was a dead-end. Curses!

Five minutes later I strolled in to the misty plaza of Tikal and spotted five tourists already camped at the top of Temple II. I climbed the rickety ladder to the top for a look at the view. The tourists were Eastern Europeans talking to one another in English:

"You haven't been to Prague? Well, you're welcome to visit; I'll be a student there for at least another year."

"'At least another year' ... ha, that's funny!"

I moved on.

Ultimately I was able to find a tourist-free lookout to the south of the Gran Plaza for a bit of quiet. The signature view of Tikal, temple IV - the one used for the "Rebel Base" view of the temples used in the end of "Star Wars: A New Hope" - was continually filled with tourists. When I arrived there was a busload of Germans and a half-dozen Italians, all talking amongst themselves. Yet I didn't feel bothered by the group at temple IV. Somehow the scenery was just enough.

From the top of the temple you could watch the low clouds brushing through the Guatemalan hills and the dark forms of the temples in the near distance. I spent over two hours just admiring the view. Only when the sun came fully out of the clouds did I feel it was time to move along.

Back at the main gate I grabbed a lunch of fried chicken with rice at the Comedor Jungla for Q35. The little cafe was attached to a similar place with a cheaper menu posted outside, so the oldish owner kept bobbing out the door to try to convince (or trick) people looking at the neighboring menu to come to his restaurant. He got me, so his pleading method was effective.

On the ride back I talked with Alan, the fellow taxi passenger and resident of the Sun Breeze. He was a joiner (carpenter) doing a three month volunteer stint at a school of some kind near Guatemala City. I could hardly make out his accent. One thing I was sure of: I wouldn't have wanted to spend three months in Guatemala.

For dinner I went to the hotel restaurant for a Q35 grilled chicken plate with rice and tortillas. I turned in early, with the industrial fan blowing, worrying a little about the early-morning departure to Belize City.

Taking a breather in Flores

2005-08-17T11:17:00.000-04:00

In the morning I went for an American-style breakfast at a nearby hotel (bacan, eggs, toast and tea for $4), then walked around the tiny island of Flores. It only took 15 minutes to explore completely, but the air was fresh and pleasant and the little alleys largely deserted except for schoolkids. In the restaurant and Internet cafe I heard plenty of English and some Italian: I was back on the gringo trail.

At breakfast I wasn't the only one reading the Lonely Planet. We tourists were all trying to become overnight experts on heretofore unknown Tikal characters such as Lord Water, Lord Chocolate, and King Moon Double Comb.

One of the fascinating things about traveling solo is trying to guess where the tourists will turn up. I was the only tourist on the long bus ride to Flores, but in town tourists were everywhere. Similarly there was only one fellow tourist on the bus out of Copan going south into El Salvador, yet Copan had plenty of tourists (most were Italians who'd arrived together in tour buses). In fact most buses I had taken in Central America, including the "luxury" service from Tegucigalpa to Copan, had been largely free of tourists.

I anticipated that the next few days would offer plenty of opportunities for one of my favorite pursuits: meta-tourism, the observation of fellow tourists.

I enjoyed the air conditioned room in Flores until noon, then headed back along the causeway to Santa Elena heading for the bus stop. With the sun out and no breeze I was drenched with sweat in no time. Yet I turned down taxi offers, hoping to get by on the number of quetzales I had withdrawn from the ATM in Chiquimula.

At the bus station there were a lot of people on the hussle, trying to feed me false information on the non-availability of a bus to El Remate, where I planned to spend the night. Even the people I picked out as neutral - food sellers or drivers of buses not going anywhere near El Remate - steared me towards obvious taxi drivers with a yen for a rich tourist's business. After idling around for a while watching the action I noticed a bus marked El Remate pull up - a boy onboard said it would depart at 2:30, and there weren't any other buses. But sure enough a colectivo van pulled into the lot five minutes later offering an immediate departure (12:30). I was glad I had been to India and knew enough - at least on this occasion - to recognize and wait out false information.

The colectivo van was a primitive affair - when a rainshower started the driver had to go outside to push my passenger-side window shut - but the crew were friendly and wanted to know all about me. The driver and his buddy pointed out hills and lakes as we went by and dropped me off at a hotel they recommended. Ordinarily that would have been against my policy, but this hotel looked okay and charged only $10 for a room with a private bath, a big industrial fan, and a comfortable bed. I settled in, and also paid for a $5 taxi the next morning to Tikal arranged through the hotel.

I was short on quetzales, however, so I didn't feel like going for dinner at the restaurants nearby, all of which offered fried chicken or pasta. Instead I loaded up on cookies and bread at a nearby shack ($0.75), then walked down the road looking for more goodies. At another primitive hut two men were unloading Coke bottles from a truck guarded by a third man with a police-issue gun-handle shotgun. Shotgun-toting guards on Coke trucks were a feature of Latin America I'd heard about before. At the shack I was unable to get cold water, but I was tempted by a pint of the national brand of whiskey, Old Friend. I brought the bottle back to my room and had a swallow under the heavy breeze supplied by the big metal fan.

In the evening there was a long power outage, but from all around I could hear the announcer covering what I gathered was the U.S.-Guatemala soccer game. It ended with loud, victorious shouting all around, and perhaps some celebratory gunfire as well. I divined (correctly) it had been a Guatemalan goal during overtime.

A discouraging word

2005-08-16T10:14:00.000-04:00

In the morning I headed over to the Chiquimula bus station - actually just a series of regular city streets with buses and minivans parked along the sidewalk. There a friendly man led me to the stall of the Maria Elena bus company, a ramshackle affair squeezed into a wall on the side of the rotten-smelling, fly-infested street market. I learned that the 10 am bus to Flores/Tikal was already full, so I bought a 2:30 pm ticket.

I stocked up on bread and cookies at the local supermarket, then went back to the hotel to wait. While waiting I came down with some diarrhea which lasted until early afternoon. After checking out I had to rush back to the hotel to use the bathroom one last time. For the rest of the afternoon I waited on a park bench in the central park watching the crowds (several high school marching bands and their cheerleaders were parading around).

Back at the bus company stall there was a small crowd gathered waiting, a good sign. At 3 the woman in charge led us to a nearby city street where a bus was waiting, already full of passengers except for the front row usually reserved for the elderly or disabled. Following the example of the others I filed into the back of the bus and stood in the aisle. Then I heard someone shouting: "Gringo! Gringo! Gringo!" Offended, I tried to ignore the word, even though I knew they were just calling me forward to sit in the front seat. They switched to "Mister!" and I went forward, where a woman shouted, "Sit down here!" and directed me to the front seat. I felt humiliated. Perhaps it was best that I didn't say anything, though.

It was a miserable seven-hour trip north to Flores. The aisles were packed so full that the ticket collector had to stand half-hanging out the doorway. The standing passengers next to me sat on my armrest, often banging their legs or baggage against my head. On the positive side the road was smooth and good, albeit winding, and the bus made good time with few stops. Also in the positive category were the clear road signs and kilometer markers - I was happy to be able to mark our progress the entire way.

We arrived at 10 pm sharp. Santa Elena (the landward suburb of Flores proper, which is an island) was dark and damp - it had rained that day. The taxi drivers outside made a faint-hearted effort to get my business, saying Flores was a long ways away and not responding to my request for directions.

The streets were mostly deserted, but I found my way a kilometer north to the short causeway leading out to the island. I could see the reassuring line of tour buses parked at a nice hotel on the other side. At the hotel Canoas I found a room with air-conditioning and hot water for $20 (Q160). In the room I crossed the Flores bus trip off my itinerary - the hardest segment of my trip was over.

Big scenic detour day 2

2005-08-15T10:32:00.000-04:00

On the second day of my scenic detour into El Salvador I planned to take the bus south from Nueva Ocotepeque to El Poy, walk to Citala (described by the Lonely Planet as "near El Poy"), and then take the scenic local bus to Metapan. If time allowed I hoped to move on from there to Chiquimula across the border in Guatemala. This plan worked smoothly.

At around 8 I caught a waiting schoolbus south to the El Salvador border, where I paid my $10 tourist fee, got my passport stamped, and found an honest money changer to change my Honduran lempiras into dollars. He was also able to direct me to the dirt road leading across a modest river to the town of Citala; the town was indeed just a kilometer away.

Citala was a typical Central American village, with the requisite central park, whitewashed church (under repairs), town hall complete with a half-dozen people hanging around outside, and cloud-enshrouded mountains all round. I snapped some pictures of political graffiti near the town square relating to the assasination of Archbishop Romero in 1980.

I asked four or five people about the bus stop and got several different answers about departure times. The bus stop was an unlikely corner in a deserted-seeming neighborhood. Since it was a three-hour wait I bought some crackers and bread to eat for breakfast and lunch - and dinner, as it turned out. Around noon a crowd formed and a beat-up schoolbus arrived, motor straining. The shirtless bus driver informed me the ride would last three and a half hours. He then stretched out on his back on the filthy stone sidewalk to take a half-hour nap while the bus filled with passengers.

The bus wound its way up the steep semi-forested hillside, taking a one-lane gravel road that was in poor shape. There were frequent stops, but for most of the ride I had an empty seat next to me. Near the end the bus did fill up and the man next to me introduced himself in English and pointed out that my legs didn't quite fit in the seats. "I think this bus was made for children," he said. Ya think?

The man, named Luis, expressed his amazement that someone like me would be going around Central America by himself. Luis said he'd learned English during a year spent in California painting houses for a living. He was now teaching English to adults in the mountains of El Salvador. He had me try out my Spanish and pronounced it "good," but he switched back to English at the first opportunity.

The bus pulled into Metapan at 4 and I quickly found another schoolbus heading on to the border with Guatemala. At the border post the El Salvadorean border control woman was obviously confused at seeing the entry stamp and tourist card stamped with the same date. I fumbled my explanation in Spanish, but she got the gist - that I was leaving El Salvador after less than 12 hours in the country.

On the Guatemala side there was a minivan waiting for the trip on to Chiquimula. When I asked directions in Spanish the young man asked me where I was from in English - he was from Belize, though he spoke fluent Spanish and seemed to have business and friends in the border area. I was suspicious of him and his friends when they offered to take my bag and put it on top of theirs - but nothing bad happened. When the ticket-collector came I tried to pay in dollars but didn't understand the man's reply: the young man from Belize translated for me. The cost was $1.50.

The one-hour journey to Chiquimula was probably more scenic than the Lonely Planet-recommended scenic El Salvador trip: lots of smallish forested hills bathed in the sunset. An adolescent boy next to me whiled away the journey puffing incoherently on a recorder, the primite flute-like instruments we mastered in 5th grade in my school.

True to its description in the guide-book, Chiquimula was a sweltering, crowded and noisy town. I found an ATM and then, with the trusty guidebook map, located the Hotel Hernandez by the parque central. A comfortable air-conditioned room was only Q100 ($14).

For dinner I walked to the fast-food chicken joint, modeled on KFC, where I got a whopping order of four pieces of chicken. On the way back I had a chance to admire the white, floodlit town church, packed with a marimba band and revelers celebrating the town festival with candles, street food, and occasional firecrackers.

Big scenic detour day 1

2005-08-14T10:56:00.000-04:00

The next two days of activity were planned around one objective: taking a scenic bus ride in El Salvador recommended by the Lonely Planet Shoestring Guide to Central America. Although the distances involved were short, the two border crossings and complicated route implied more than a half-dozen bus trips would be needed. Furthermore, the Lonely Planet was vague about the actual starting point and duration of the scenic bus route: the book said it started at Citala ("near the border crossing at El Poy," but not marked on any map). The plan represented a two-day detour since the ultimate waypoint, Chiquimula, just across the Guatemala border from Copan, would have been just a few hours away had I gone directly. One thing was certain about my plan: none of my friends or family would have signed on to it had they been along.

In the morning I breakfasted on Chips Ahoy cookies and then boarded the slow bus to La Entrada, the turnoff to points north and south. The first bus journey got off to a bad start: after lingering for 45 minutes in the bus station we then spent another 20 minutes crawling through the alleys of nearby Santa Rita as the bus driver tried to drum up business for the almost-empty bus.

At La Entrada there were several young men, bus company employees apparently, who helped me flag down a passing direct bus to the day's final stop, Nueva Ocotopeque on the border with El Salvador. This proved a much nicer bus, and we made good time through the hilly terrain heading south. Just before reaching Ocotopeque we crested a high mountain ridge shrouded in fog with a spectacular view of the little town down in the valley below.

Nueva Ocotopeque was a small town, barely a handful of blocks long. At 2 pm I checked into a small but nice air-con room at the Hotel Internacional for only 300 Lps. ($14), then went nearby to get three pieces of chicken at the fast food joint Servi Pollo. Back in the hotel room with time to kill I found "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" on TNT, the fifth Bond movie I'd seen on the trip to date thanks to the TNT marathon.

In the evening I tried to go back to Servi Pollo for more chicken, but they had run out. Luckily I still had some bread I'd bought earlier. I was looking forward to being on the road again, since I was anxious about the mysterious "scenic bus route" and whether I'd be able to keep to my ambitious schedule.

At the Ruins of Copan in Honduras

2005-08-13T14:05:00.000-04:00

I got up at 7:30, reluctant to leave my comfortable air-conditioned room. I went for a hearty American breakfast on the other side of the park at the Copan Marinas (a contradiction in terms - there was certainly no marina at Copan). From there I walked the short 1 km path downhill to the park entrance, passing plenty of grazing cattle and a couple of Maya stellae on the way.

It was a perfect day to visit: not too hot or crowded, the sun sometimes poking out from behind low but non-threatening clouds. There were a couple of medium-sized groups of Italians touring the ruins with two local Italian-speaking guides. I was impressed with the quality of the guides' Italian and tagged along for a little while to enjoy the music of that language.

I guessed there were around 100-150 other people at the park at the time of my visit. Since most were in a group of some kind I was able to stay apart from them and enjoy the ruined structures in an almost-solitary state. The carved stellae were impressive, but the overall plan of the site was smaller and more intimate than the Chichen Itza ruins. I tried to imagine what a ball game would have looked like with all the people watching on the various pyramid steps all round. I couldn't help wondering if the expert guides really knew much about what life was like in the ancient cities.

For lunch and dinner I went back to the high-end tourist restaurant at the Hotel Copan Marinas. Long tables were set up for a big group, namely the Italians I'd seen earlier. Indeed, I may have been the only non-Italian client for lunch. Instead of bolognese I ordered Mayan style chicken and, for dinner, fish - both entrees were satisfying. I also downed several glasses of the hotel's excellent and refreshing white wine while enjoying the air-con and the view of the hotel pool.

In the afternoon I had to switch to a more basic hotel, the Yaragua, since my original choice was full. The room was only $20, but I found it damp and musty, with thin walls and a bathroom insufficiently partitioned from the rest of the room. Sounds from a nearby disco kept me up until almost 3 in the morning.

Luxury bus to Copan Ruinas

2005-08-12T14:33:00.000-04:00

My second straight day of bus-riding began with my taking a taxi to the bus station -after fortifying myself with fresh-baked donuts at a panaderia near the hotel. At the Hedman Alas bus terminal I was searched for weapons twice before being stripped of my bag and allowed to enter the modern bus which would take me to San Pedro Sula, four hours away.

San Pedro Sula was a modern, sunny town that had a lot more curb appeal than the capital, at least from what I could tell from the bus. From there it was a further three hour ride to Copan Ruinas. The scenery on the last few hours was quite pretty: low mountains, dramatic thunderclouds, cowboys and their kids herding cattle along the roads and out on the ranges.

As the bus pulled to a stop at Copan Ruinas I noticed a dozen autorickshaws pulling up looking for passengers. They looked newer and more efficient than the ones in India, but the frame was the same. A light drizzle was falling, but I decided to find a hotel on my own, since I was worried any "help" might only lead to a higher hotel bill. Indeed, several men and boys called out to me in Spanish or English hoping to guide me to hotels or horse rides. There were plenty of tourists out and about along the streets.

I checked into the Hotel Copan for $45, securing a plain but good-quality air-conditioned room overlooking a narrow street. For dinner I went a block away to a little restaurant offering, among other things, Spaghetti Bolognese. The meal and red wine were only satisfactory, and a relatively expensive $7. But I went to bed satisfied. The next day I planned to get up early to see one of the best-known Mayan ruins, Copan, the head of a smallish Mayan empire from the 500's to the mid-700's.

Border scams and Tegucigalpa

2005-08-11T14:14:00.000-04:00

August 11 was a day I spent mostly on the bus. I left Leon around 9, made a quick transfer at Chinandega for a bus to the border at Guasale. From there I took a third bus to Choluteca, where I changed onto a bus to the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, or "Tegas" as it was pronounced by the young man trying to drum up passengers for the ride. I arrived in Tegucigalpa at around 5 Honduras time.

At the border I ran into a couple of frustrating scams. When I descended the bus a bicycle rickshaw tout grabbed my bag and told me that it would be a 3 km ride to the other side of the border, "tip optional." I foolishly assumed that meant that the price was optional, and had to argue with him at the other side of the border when the ride was over. In the end he accepted my 9 cordoba "tip" (60 cents) and an extra 45 cents in U.S. coins I threw in at the end of the argument to placify him. The other scam cost involved a money-changer who gave me a bad rate for cordobas - I probably lost about $5 to him, but I didn't think my Spanish was good enough to try arguing about it.

It was probably all just bad luck brought on by my paying the border fees with the dubious $5 bill I'd received earlier in Granada.

I had considered staying in Tegucigalpa two nights to rest. As my bus crested the line of pine-forest-covered hills south of town I got a nice view of the city nestled in between the hills. A closer look, however, revealed that it was a dirty, congested, and polluted city composed of ugly concrete or cinderblock buildings. The streets were narrow and filled with stinking street stalls. Groups of camo-clad soldiers could be seen ambling around, searching pedestrians here and there, pointing their M-16's in any odd direction, usually with the palm of a hand over the barrel when holding the weapon horizontally.

The first thing I did in Tegucigalpa was buy my ticket out of town.

The bus dropped me in the dirty Comaguela barrio near the Hedman Alas terminal. Getting a ticket to Copan proved simple, and relatively expensive. The luxury bus cost $21, ten times the price of any other ticket I'd bought in Honduras or Nicaragua, but worth it I supposed. I was a bit tired of buses that departed only when full and stopped at every hamlet to pick up or drop off more passengers.

For $14 I checked into the Spartan but comfortable Hotel Boston in the center of town, a 10 lempira, 20 minute ride from the bus station. I withdrew some cash and sauntered over to Pizza Hut for a well-deserved dinner. In the evening I whiled away the hours examining my itinerary and listening to a loud hard-rock concert coming from an unseen nearby bar or party.

Cloistered in Leon

2005-08-10T10:53:00.000-04:00

It was a glorious morning to wake up in a convent. I had breakfast of toast and tea in the dining area. Then I headed out on a walking tour of the central part of town, which was much smaller than that of Granada - and much hotter.

I dropped into a small bookstore filled with ratty old Spanish books with titles like: Materialism, Life and Death of Lenin, Lenin, Lenin's Life, On Socialdemocracy, and so on. There were Lenin-related books under History, Literature, Sandinista-history, and Philosophy. None of the books looked under 20 years old, and the Sandinista shelf was almost empty: the few books on that shelf had to do with Africa or the Soviet Union.

Disappointed and hot, I headed toward the cathedral to walk around and possibly go to a cafe, but the streetlife seemed dead at that hour. A short man with a Daniel Ortega mustache kept pace with me and introduced himself, right away offering his services in teaching Spanish or guiding. I figured him for a tout of some kind, so I said I was busy "reading" all day and leaving early the next day. I mentioned several times I liked to be alone, particularly when he started asking about wife, kids, girlfriend, or boyfriend. Pressing further, he wanted my email, so I wrote down a fake one for him and lied about where I was staying. Still, it came as a shock when he tried to hug me goodbye with a kiss on the cheek. I went away double-quick-time. I had become so used to people seeking money that it didn't occur to me I might meet someone wanting something else.

I had often wondered if it might be wise to invent a cover story for my travels - something about having a wife back home, a modest and simple job title, and perhaps even a non-tourist explanation for my travel. After the experience with that man I gave the idea some more consideration. Would I need an explanation for my lack of a wedding ring? Perhaps it would be enough to invent a girlfriend?

In the evening I went for the second time to the stuffy French restaurant at El Convento, this time ordering the salmon with Thai sauce. The bill came to $21, but it was a good meal. There was nobody else in the restaurant during my dinner.

Pre-dawn gun battles in Granada

2005-08-09T10:57:00.000-04:00

Starting around 3:30 in the morning my sleep was interrupted by a series of loud bangs coming from what sounded like several blocks away. I assumed the noises were gunshots, since there was no traffic and the noises seemed to have a pattern and were of two different timbres. It sounded like an exchange of gunfire, with a half-dozen shots coming from one direction followed by a couple responses in a slightly lower pitch. There would be long silences of around 15 minutes, then a few more bursts, sometimes sounding like they came from a different part of town. There were no sirens or sounds of yelling. A couple of times the noises were sufficiently loud that I imagined them coming from the alley facing my ground-level room. I stood up and went away from the wall or into the bathroom, feeling silly. Anyway, I wasn't getting any sleep. The noises continued until around 6.

I had breakfast at Wendy's Waffles again, then checked out of my hotel and walked to the central park. It was a glorious and sunny day. The microbus to Managua had some Korean hanyeul characters on it, and we passed a school bus that had the words "MONTGOMERY COUNTY SCHOOLS" lettered on the side.

The prettiest section of the 90 minute trip was the stretch of volcanic scrubland near Masaya. Here and there volcanic cones jutted up from the fields.

In Managua the bus stopped along a wide boulevard and I hailed a taxi to the Zona Monumental, the downtown area adjacent to the lake that had been destroyed by an earthquake in the early 1970's. While I was taking some pictures of the shattered cathedral a friendly soldier appraoched me and asked where I was from, and how long I would be in Nicaragua. Everyone I met was disappointed to hear I'd only be in the country for a week.

The old National Palace held a museum of art, along with a handful of precolumbian statuary and some pottery. The murals on the walls were most impressive, especially the one still being worked on over the central staircase. Inside the Nicaraguan painting room I noticed a 1950's work that was a direct copy of a French work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. While the painting at the Met is called "Paris Horse Fair" and is identified as a specific horse show on a specific Paris street, the Nicaraguan copy was merely called "Horse Riders."

After a little more wandering around among the anti-government-graffiti-scrawled statues along the main avenue I caught another taxi to the bus stand for Leon. There I found two clowns eagerly gesturing me aboard a schoolbus. I couldn't determine if the clowns were bus employees or fellow passengers, but I climbed aboard and the bus was soon on its way, stopping as usual to pick up merchants hawking unappetising-looking food and drinks. About an hour into the trip the clowns began a performance of sorts, mostly consisting of plays-on-words geared toward a Nicaraguan audience. (I only understood a couple of the jokes.)

Again the views along the route were of volcanic cones, including the perfect cone of Momotombo, the volcano whose flanks host an Ormat Technologies geothermal plant - Ormat was the U.S.-Israeli company I covered briefly at Deutsche Bank after its IPO.

The bus made only a single stop at Leon, on the outskirts of town. I had planned to walk to my hotel, but since I couldn't even see the town I opted for a taxi to the Parque Central. At the Hotel Colonial, my intended destination, the receptionist said there were no rooms available. I asked if she knew of a quality hotel in town, and she gave me directions for the Convent (El Convento). El Convento proved to be a luxurious hotel, the nicest of my trip so far for $68 including breakfast. The cloister contained an elegant fountain and a geometric pattern of hedges. The corridors were lined with religious and other artifacts, and the restaurant was done up in a French drawing-room style. It was all a little pretentious for Nicaragua, but on the other hand I would have a room facing the fresh breezes from the garden rather than mysterious gunshot noises coming from the street.

Rainy day - visiting Granada's museums

2005-08-08T12:42:00.000-04:00

I slept in until 9 in the morning, then headed back to Wendy's Waffle House, the American-owned place a block north of my hotel. There I met fellow single traveler Mark and the husband of the owner of Wendy's, named Sandy. Mark and I had a brief conversation about travel. Dominic, the bowl-seller and tout, waved as he walked past.

I headed across the street to the city museum, set inside the historic blue-and-white colonial-era church I'd photographed the prior day. I was the day's first visitor, so I had most of the rooms to myself. My favorite items were the old photos of the city (most of the structures looked essentially unchanged from a hundred years ago), and of course the hall of precolumbian statues. The statues, lined up under a roof with no walls, appeared like formless blobs when viewed from head-on, but seen in profile their forms were obvious: animals sitting on human heads, monsters, or gods. Some of the statues were perched on what I guessed were Christian-era pedestals with crucifixes carved on them.

In an adjacent room there were some amusing life-sized plaster models of naked humans playing precolumbian games. The human models were laughably unrealistic: black mop hair, uniformly pink skin color, flailing arms. Two men that were supposed to look like they were swinging around a post instead looked like they were stuck in mid-air.

The air was fresh and during my museum visit a light rain fell.

In the afternoon I headed to the Fortaleza la Polvora, a smallish garison building with white stucco walls, gun slits, and guard towers. There was nothing inside, though it looked like some preparations might be underway to install a tiny art exhibit. The handful of tourists were poking around the interior courtyard and climbing up the ladders giving access to the guard towers. From the towers one could make out the lake in the distance, and the domes and spires of the various churches round town poking above the otherwise uniform roofline.

In the evening I went back for more al-pesto, then across the street for some chocolate chip cookies at the Cafe DecArte. At the cafe I heard some 20-something men discussing real estate with an American broker (there was an American real estate office attached to the cafe). It seemed surprising that such young Americans would be in the market, but several people had asked me if I was in Nicaragua to look for land or real estate. In Costa Rica I'd also overheard many Americans discussing their plans to buy houses in the countryside.

Bull Run

2005-08-07T18:30:00.000-04:00

In the morning I slept in until around 9, then went out to use an ATM and buy cookies and crackers for breakfast. Then I shifted to a different and more historical-looking hotel where the staff was willing to speak Spanish to me: the San Martin, just one block from the Parque Central.

At the San Martin I talked to Roger about the hotel's history. The buildings in the neighborhood, he said, were all over 100 years old, and most of the neighborhood's hotels and restaurants had been around for a couple of years. The San Martin and a couple others had opened within the last few months. As for ownership, he said the building had belonged to a general before being sold at public auction after the '79 Revolution. The house had been unoccupied, until 8 years ago when the grandson of the man who'd purchased the house at auction renovated and moved in. I suspected it was a story that would fit for a lot of the historic town center, an area in the midst of rapid development (restoration) judging from the construction around town.

After settling into my new room I went out to sit on a stoop by the street to take some photos. I got a lot of funny looks from locals who didn't expect to see a tourist sitting on a stoop. A young man selling pots came by and struck up a long conversation about his poverty, travel, and the idea of a single Gringo tourist sitting on a stoop in Granada. While this man, named Dominic, was describing his idea of becoming my guide - or "working for me" as he put it - he recognized a British tourist coming our way. Apparently Dominic had previously struck up a similar conversation with this man, named Paul. Paul told us about his experience recovering from Dengue that he'd contracted on the Corn Islands a week or so earlier. I reflected that Dominic must have been a hard salesman to have targeted a sick tourist like Paul.

Once Dominic realized he wasn't going to sell his guiding or pots he took off in a huff. I made my way around town taking pictures - it seemed like every street held another interesting postcard colonial view. For lunch I had a waffle with Aunt Gemima syrup at an outdoor cafe overlooking one of the town's pretty churches.

In the afternoon there was a running of the bulls. Unlike other bull runs I'd witnessed, there weren't any crowd control barriers or any real safety measures other than roadblocks to prevent traffic from entering the city center. Thousands of people crowded into the Parque Central, most huddling behind benches, cars, or souvenir tables. A couple dozen local horsemen, some mere children, drove the handful of bulls around the square while hundreds of children shrieked and ran too-and-fro. To my eye the bulls didn't seem very active: the real excitement came from watching the Madness-of-Crowds aspect as every loud noise or feint of the bulls drove hundreds of people rushing away from the action. When a shout would go up and the crowds started to move it was hard to avoid feeling the urge to flee, even when it was impossible to see the direct cause of the excitement. Church walls, lampposts, scaffolding, traffic barriers, and benches all held their cohorts of smiling, pointing children.

In the evening I ate at the Italian place again, then went to the DecArte Cafe for a milkshake. After my shake I tried to order chocolate chip cookies, but received a sundae instead - that was a lot of dessert.

Back at the hotel I didn't understand something the owner, Sherman, said to me about visiting the Isletas in the bay. I knew he was just trying to give me some practice, so that made it even more humiliating when he had to repeat himself several times word by word to get his question across.

Trek to Granada, Nic. via buses, truck, taxi

2005-08-06T16:07:00.000-04:00

At around 9 I showed up in the Coca-Cola neighborhood to catch a bus to the Nicaraguan border, but learned the next bus wouldn't pass till almost 11. I got a ticket and waited. It was another standard Costa Rican journey, with lots of stops, people crowding in the aisles, and scenery of cloud forests and little towns. We arrived at the border late in the afternoon.

As soon as the bus pulled to a stop at Penas Blancas it was surrounded by currency salesmen waving their bankrolls of cash. I had a hard time locating the various Immigration offices, since the border zone was organized more as a way-station for trucks than for pedestrians. Nobody paid me any head as I wandered around the parking lots and truck-filled streets.

On the Nicaraguan side friendly taxi drivers directed me to a school bus filling with passengers. When I was a kid in Montana the rear school bus doors were for emergencies only, so we always prized the occasional opportunity to use them. So I relived a childhood fantasy by boarding via the rear door. Since I had rushed through the border (treating the ceremonies as a race, as usual) I got a seat. By the time the bus departed it was completely packed, people jammed two-abreast in the aisles. Right away I could tell the difference between Nicaraguan and Costa Rican buses: Nicaraguan buses were louder, more crowded, sweatier, and smellier. People in the rear of the bus were shouting for the driver to get a move on - which he did eventually.

Occasionally the view was visible: rolling green fields, the rough grey waters of Lake Nicaragua, the volcanic cones of the Isla de Omotepe. We hadn't been underway long when the undersides of the clouds grew red from the sunset.

A woman in the aisle introduced herself to me in English: she was a native of the Caribbean (English-speaking) coast and eager to talk. She kept warning me about robbers and mentioning that she hoped to get my seat when I got off. It got dark, and there were few towns along the road. The Nicaraguan woman told me about her mother and daughter living in Costa Rica while she made a living around Nicaragua making and selling her knittings. She mentioned her interest in learning Japanese someday, so I tried teaching her how to say such words as ¨sumimasen,¨ and ¨hai.¨ She wrote down her number in Managua on a slip of paper and gave it to me.

At a spot along the road where there were a few streetlights the Caribbean woman told me I should get off. I shoved my way rudely through the aisle toward the rear door. It felt like the bus was still moving, but I grabbed the red-painted door handle and shoved a few times, and it swung open over the moving pavement below. I jumped off and stumbled along the road a few feet as the bus pulled away - I could hear some chuckles from the crowded bus as the passengers struggled to close the door again.

Where was I?

I had landed in a streetlit spot where two highways merged. There were lots of young men idling in the area, alongside the road and near a couple small dive cafes. I noticed a young man with a backpack and asked if he was on his way to Granada too. It turned out he was from Granada and would be happy to share a taxi with me, if we could find one. We stood in the darkness for 15 minutes waiting. The young man, Efraim Ahmed, gave me his phone number and expressed his surprise that I would be traveling alone in Nicaragua. While we talked a drunk man sitting across the street kept shouting, "He can't understand you, he can't understand Spanish!" During our wait only a couple of vehicles passed, and no taxis.

Then a dark-grey pickup-truck pulled up and three other young men climbed aboard. Efraim talked to the older man driving and the two of us hopped in the back. It was a smooth 15 minute ride along a darkened road into Granada.

"Sabrosas!" one of the young men shouted as we passed two walking figures.

"I didn't even see if they were women!" shouted Efraim over the rush of the wind.

At the edge of town Efraim helped me hail a taxi, and I shortly arrived at the Parque Central in front of the Cathedral. From there it was a short walk down the Avenida Calzada before I found a nice-looking hotel with a room available: the Mar Dulce at $35/night. I paid in cash, disliking the fact that the staff addressed me in English, and received what looked like a counterfeit $5 in change.

It was easy to see that Granada would be my kind of town. Every street in the center was lined with colorful colonial-style buildings. There were lots of sidewalk cafes and in front of other buildings families were sitting out on their stoops watching horses and taxis go by. The interiors of the handful of tourist-class hotels looked sumptuous and respectfully restored.

I felt nauseous from the long trip and lack of food, so I went outside to look for a restaurant. Despite the hour (9 or so) there were plenty of sidewalk cafes open. I went into a nice-looking pasta place and ordered a plate of Al Pesto. The food and wine were excellent, but after sitting for a few minutes I began to feel sick, so as soon as I could finish eating I called for the bill and returned to the hotel.

A few asparin, darkness, and air-conditioning were all it took to revive my spirits.

Graduation from Intercultura

2005-08-05T15:37:00.000-04:00

Friday was my last day of school. I arrived early to write up my one page of homework, a short opinion essay (6 sentences in the case of mine) about what should happen to those responsible for the Dirty War in Argentina. Since the school was locked when I arrived I chatted with Jill, a student I hadn't met before who proved to be from southern Minnesota, not far from Tracy and Marshall where my mother grew up. She was at a fairly advanced level, so we spoke in Spanish.

In class Mark and I each made a short presentation about an issue related to human rights. Mine was a short discussion of areas of the world where the universality of human rights (as defined in the West) isn't accepted, at least by the powers that be. I talked about Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China, and the things I said seemed to more or less pass without objection - it's hard to discuss cultural issues in a foreign language since it's so easy to say something offensive.

Next was the short graduation ceremony. I received an award for extra effort along with around eight other students. I wondered if the effort awards were doled out on a random basis, because I certainly hadn't put in any more effort than in the previous weeks.

Afterwards Mark and I played Scrabble in Spanish, overseen by the instructor. Mark put in way more effort and won by a margin of 190 to 130 or so. I was so happy to be able to make a single word that I couldn't be bothered to aim for triple-word scores or the like.

Class over, I headed to the bus stop and rode into San Jose. I wasn't able to say goodbye to Stephanie and Lisa, unfortunately. It was sad to leave, but I was looking forward to moving on.

In San Jose I checked into the Santo Tomas again and got directions for the TACA offices from the staff. Then I walked down the street to purchase my $296 ticket from Belize City to San Jose for the 24th. I was curious about what the weather would be like in Nicaragua - and Honduras and Guatemala.

The Official History

2005-08-04T16:30:00.000-04:00

Thursday morning's class consisted of watching the Argentinian movie "La Historia Oficial," about a woman's struggle to come to terms with her adopted daughter's origins during the Dirty War in the early 1980's. Mark and I discussed the movie afterwards with the teacher (Alexa), but we both agreed it was almost impossible to understand without reading the subtitles.

For lunch I persuaded Lisa, Bonnie, and Deborah to go to Le Petit Paris, a crepe place run by a older woman from the Toulouse region of France. I had the pasta bolognese, a glass of substandard red wine, and a crepe au sucre for dessert. True to expectations, the French woman spoke Spanish, English, and French with us - she was incredibly polite to all of us.

Afterwards I walked Lisa and Deborah back to the school for their dance lesson - I was still boycotting salsa lessons at the school due to my dislike of Enrique, the instructor. On my way back to the hotel I ran into Justine, who also lived up to expectations, who gossiped a bit and treated me like an old buddy of hers.

Talking Argentina

2005-08-03T15:26:00.000-04:00

Passing through the lobby in the morning on my way to class I nodded at the desk man: "Good morning," he said in English. I'd previously asked him twice to address me in Spanish.

Class on Wednesday consisted of discussing the recent history of Argentina, something I had been looking forward to. My homework was to bone up on Juan and Evita Peron, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Falklands (Malvinas) War, and the dictator Galtieri. In addition I was supposed to have some general knowledge of the economic development and religion of Argentina. Fellow student Mark had a similar list of topics, but he came ill-prepared. Zeyda, the instructor, chastised him for not meeting the minimum standards of the class. He looked haggard, so I gathered he had been up late partying the previous night.

Frankly I was looking forward to the end of classes. During the first two weeks of class I had developed a school-centered social life, but opted to keep to myself during the third week. I also felt that it would be nice in the future to find a school with more advanced students: At Intercultura (i.e. the school in Heredia & Samara) I could count on getting instruction at the right level, but since all the other students were in lower levels they didn't practice much Spanish amongst themselves. (Staying with a local family would have solved the problem, of course.)

I was very tired in the evening and didn't have the energy to finish my essay about human rights. I got up in the middle of the night to finish it off.

And the moon is made out of ...

2005-08-02T15:39:00.000-04:00

In the morning I had to check out of the plush hotel Valladolid and head back to the Hotel America, the place I'd disliked the previous week for its powerful smell of industrial cleaning fluids. As at the Valladolid the previous day, and at the America the prior week, I had to tell the man at the desk twice to speak to me in Spanish rather than in English.

In class we studied the conditional uses of the subjunctive, working on exercises and reading an article about AIDS in Cuba. In one of the exercises I wrote a sentence mentioning the troubles with the space shuttle Discovery. The teacher interjected, "Do you think people really went to the moon?" Fellow student Mark immediately jumped in to express his doubts, mentioning the standard claim about the U.S. flag planted on the moon appearing to flap in one of the lunar broadcasts.

In the U.S. I would have rolled my eyes in frustration.

In the afternoon I found a 1998 movie about the collapse of Barings Bank due to the dealings of rogue trader Leeson in Singapore. I picked up a few finance-related Spanish words reading the subtitles.

Back home in Heredia

2005-08-01T16:22:00.000-04:00

On Monday I arrived via the morning bus in Heredia and found my way to the school. There I met Lisa, Stephanie, and some of the other students I'd met previously at either Samara or Heredia.

I also got a new teacher: Zeyda. And a new classmate: Mark from Boulder, Colo. Zeyda explained the topic for the week: work on perfect and pluperfect subjunctive tenses and a discussion of human rights, particularly in Argentina. She wrote a list of names on the board for us to research - for me it seemed like a slice of heaven, finding out about and explaining political-historical trivia in a foreign language! All with no penalty for making a mistake!

For lunch Stephanie and Lisa organized a group of about eight people to go next door to a local restaurant. It was a charming place, small, painted in the faux Provence style (lightly brushed pastel greens and reds), soft house music playing from a plastic boom box sitting on the counter. The group of students gossiped about things that had happened the previous week or weekend - gossip I had missed out on, since I'd been in Heredia. I met Anthony and Jerry, both from New York and planning on studying Spanish for several weeks. As though on cue, Justine strutted in and started hugging people and blowing kisses: she was the 16-year-old Heredia party girl and Intercultural school groupie I'd met the previous week.

Fellow student Mark took off to go on a pilgrimage from San Jose to nearby Cartago, a 6 hour walk. The Catholic church had only recently made the pilgrimage official, since it honored the discovery of a small stone virgin by an indigena woman. Each year thousands of Costa Ricans made the pilgrimage, including the old and infirm. Mark said he was making the trip to explore the religious practices of Costa Ricans - he wasn't Catholic himself.

San Jose weekend

2005-07-31T12:33:00.000-04:00

I had been looking forward to relaxing by myself in San Jose all week.

In the morning I grabbed breakfast at the Gran Hotel de Costa Rica, taking along my Lonely Planet to start thinking about my schedule heading up to Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala. Then I found a supermarket and a bakery and loaded up on snack food for lunch: I didn't intend to leave the hotel until dinner. In the end I didn't leave the hotel at all.

Heading back to San Jose

2005-07-30T12:17:00.000-04:00

In the morning I grabbed a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs, then returned to the hotel to check out of my room. At the desk the two women staff members began looking through receipts, the older one questioning whether I'd paid my initial week, my second room, and my extra single room charge. I protested that I'd paid all of these as they came up. The fact that I'd changed rooms on the last night seemed to confuse them. I began unpacking my bag, receipts and paper scraps making an inchaote pile on the desk which I vaguely hoped would unnerve the women. Yet I could only find a receipt for the initial week and the extra night, not the single person charge I thought I'd paid the first night. In the end, the woman told me not to worry, saying she'd hold the young man who checked me in responsible. I slunk off feeling guilty.

I left a message for Evelyn at her hotel saying I had taken off for San Jose, then looked around town for her, even going for a brief walk out on the beach in the midday sun with my loaded bag, since the boy at her hotel said she had gone to the beach. We had made a tentative plan to see the bullfight in Nicoya, but I felt it was better for me to just head straight to San Jose.

I sat down at the small thatched bus stand to wait. Locals would sidle up and wait for an obliging driver to stop and invite them to ride in the back of his truck.

Evelyn found me after all - she'd looked at my hotel and heard there that I'd left. I told her my hotel bill story and found out about her immediate plans, then we hugged goodbye. The school bus serving as the Samara-Nicoya shuttle arrived and I got a seat in the front - like most such buses it eventually filled to capacity, with people standing in the aisles.

At Nicoya I made the switch to another bus and headed for San Jose. I tried to count the times I had arrived in San Jose: I counted six, but it seemed like more. The trip from Samara to San Jose took around five and a half hours including the stop in Nicoya.

Back in San Jose I walked to the Santo Tomas and checked in, requesting room 21 on the second floor. When Mauricio saw me he smiled broadly and extended his hand: I had become a regular.

At an ATM on the way to the hotel I was unable to get my Bank of NY card to work. It hadn't worked a week earlier in Nicoya, but I'd written that off as a fluke, but this second failure made me worry. I tried calling the toll-free bank numbers on the reverse side of the card, but heard only an automated message saying calls to those numbers were blocked "from your area code." However, when I tried the card at another ATM the following day I was able to withdraw cash as usual.

Last day in Samara

2005-07-29T11:59:00.000-04:00

Sally stopped by my room first thing in the morning as planned and we returned to the panadera for some breads and sweets. We took our food stash back to the hotel and chatted a while sitting on the patio. Then Sally went to her class, returning briefly at around 12:30 to say goodbye - she was heading to Playa Tamarindo for her last week in Costa Rica.

On the way to school I met Evelyn in the local beach cafe and we walked together chatting about dancing. In class Johanna, Evelyn, Vanessa and I spent the afternoon talking about such things as how our parents met, about our love lives and philosophies, and about other various anecdotes. Johanna, a Japanese-Philippina girl from Seattle whom fellow student Martyne had previously called the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen, told about how she had briefly met her future-boyfriend - a man named Destiny - at a bar in Guatemala several years ago. At the time Destiny hadn't known how to dance, and Johanna had spent that particular evening dancing salsa with others. The next time they met, five years later, Destiny had learned how to dance - and the rest was history.

Vanessa mentioned that she'd been watching me dance salsa the previous evening. "His style is very different [from Tico style salsa], it is very different in New York. I was waiting and waiting to dance with Anders, but he was always busy." That wasn't exactly true, since I'd spent most of the time resting and cooling off.

On my way back from school I spotted Adrian, the Irish student from Heredia, walking down the street wearing a backpack. "It's good to see you," she said. It was almost the exact spot where Sally had noticed me arriving a few nights before. I invited her to dinner with me, Evelyn, Johanna, and Johanna's travel partner Towa. We had plans to return to Acuarianos for some more pasta (al-pesto in my case).

At the restaurant I ordered a bottle of red wine, and the waitress brought out two bottles to choose from, a Chilean and a Montepulciano d'Abbruzzo. Of course I chose the Italian wine - it ended up costing 8000 colones.

The five of us had a wide-ranging discussion about teaching English (Adrian was a volunteer teacher in Samara), American politics, evolution, life plans (Towa was studying international relations) and travel. For the first hour we spoke in Spanish, practice I appreciated. Towa mentioned that I looked like Mr. Smith from "The Matrix," the second person at the Samara school to mention the supposed resemblance.

Classes and salsa

2005-07-28T19:53:00.000-04:00

I got up an hour early for class: the time on my alarm clock had been reset when I knocked out its battery. I whiled away the time watching Italian television.

In class we focused on discussing the week's homework, an investigation of prejudices held by Costa Ricans. We focused on Nicaraguans (disliked by many Costa Ricans - who consider virtually all economic refugees as "Nicas"), Columbians (blamed by Costa Ricans for drug crime), blacks, and Cubans.

The teacher, Vanessa, told some of her stories about the Nicaraguan civil war: she mentioned that many Costa Ricans had first become aware of the problems in Nicaragua when the Carter administration sent a U.S. military detachment to defend Costa Rica against a potential attempt by the Samoza regime to take the war into neighboring countries. She said she'd seen U.S. soldiers on the street in those days. It was a difficult time economically. Food restrictions were introduced and the clocks were set forward by two hours. For a month her mother forbade her to go to school in the dark.

Next we turned to discussing two articles about Cuba and India. The article on India emphasized the issue of selectively aborting female babies, without mentioning religious or cultural causes of the problem. Our teacher brought up the religion issue, pointing out her view that in Islam women have no rights. I pointed out that there were many ways of practicing Islam, that not all Muslims followed the rules of the Saudi or Taliban states. Her apparent stereotype seemed ironic, since we'd just been discussing prejudice earlier in the class.

For lunch Sally, Martyne, Evelyn, Jonathan, and Nagina went to an Italian place a couple blocks away from the school: I had my third penne al-arrabbiata of my stay in Samara, and found it the best of the three. Back at the hotel I tried to take a siesta, but ended up watching TV instead.

At the Internet cafe in the afternoon there was a loud American surfer bragging about his life back in the States: "Yeah, I was out there [skiing] in March, I took this 30 foot cliff and broke a couple ribs. Usually I can take those 30-footers no problem..."

That night the group of students at the hotel (Sally, Jonathan, Carl, Drew, Laura and I) walked down the beach to the bar where the school was holding its informal graduation ceremony. Sally was nervous about delivering her three sentences of thanks in Spanish - she'd even written up cue cards for herself. In the end, the bar was so loud none of the speeches could be heard over the din. Jonathan, another New Yorker, sat next to Sally and queried her as to whether she'd ever cheated on her boyfriend. A rather tasteless approach, but Sally responded to his comments in an offhand, bland fashion: no she hadn't. I later learned Jonathan had gotten badly drunk that night, so I presumed his efforts were unsuccessful.

At the bar Bernard introduced me to the bartender: Andres turned out to be a Swiss bachelor making his way from Tierra del Fuego to the top of North America - on horseback. I tried a couple of French questions on him, but he failed to understand. Similarly, the Costa Rican bartender responded to me in English. This put me in a bad mood for the rest of the evening. I sat down next to Sally and Jonathan to eat my mediocre grilled chicken dinner (which I had to pay for, since I'd neglected to collect a free meal ticket from the school earlier), accompanied as usual by a couple of shots of Red Label whiskey.

After the graduation the salsa music was turned up and a few people started dancing. I shopped around for partners, being turned down by both Genna and Sally. Instead I danced with Elizabeth for a couple of rounds: she was a young, slim, self-identified "drifter" who lived in the Ghostbusters building on Central Park West. She seemed to grow bored of dancing after a song or two. So I went and found Evelyn, my classmate and past dance class partner. She was thrilled about dancing, and had boundless energy and willingness to try the moves we'd half-learned a couple days before. I noticed my Spanish teacher, Vanessa, looking on as we circled around. Johnny, a teacher at the school who also danced with Evelyn, said he wished he had her energy - they were both in their 40's.

Feeling sweaty and a bit blue, I decided to head home early, and made my way back along the darkened beach. Overhead the Milky Way just barely showed through the low puffy clouds.

Samara day 2

2005-07-27T19:38:00.000-04:00

The next morning I was able to head to a small restaurant next door for an American-style breakfast before heading back to the hotel for more rest and relaxation: my Wednesday classes wouldn't start until the afternoon.

At 11 I arrived at the school for a salsa class, and discovered that the only other participant in the class that day was fellow advanced student Evelyn. The salsa teacher, a shapely and provocatively dressed young woman whose husband and son looked on from a relaxed position in a nearby hammock, put us through three basic steps and four complex turn patterns in just over one hour worth of class. It was hard to remember all of the moves let alone get them right, but we did the best we could: the teacher and her husband kept offering the suggestion that we simply speed up our moves.

For lunch I went with Martyne to the local restaurant near the school for another arroz con pollo. Then we headed back for our second class at the Samara school. The afternoon session was largely devoted to a difficult lecture on the uses of the subjunctive. I found the lecture too technical and wished there had been more spoken practice.

After class I met Sally and we walked down the beach, backed by a glorious orange and yellow sunset. After exploring several beachside cafe or bar options we ended up at a restaurant called Acuarianos, run by Italians. My penne al-arrabbiata was good, but Sally's al-pesto was probably the best I'd ever tasted. We had some white wine, then paid the bill and bought another bottle of Argentinian red at the supermarket nearby.

The next stop was Las Olas bar on the beach, where Evelyn had suggested we meet to practice salsa. Laura, an older woman from Philadelphia, joined Sally and me at Las Olas - but there was no Evelyn. We learned the next day she had showed up shortly after we'd given up and left.

On the way back along the beach we stopped to take in the sound of the surf, the fuzzy light of the Milky Way, and the distant flicker of lightning strikes among the thunderheads far our to sea.

In the evening Sally, Laura and I had a crack at the Argentinian red while talking about our jobs. After Laura turned in, Sally and I chatted about food history, home building, and other frivolous things. The last glass of red was a little too much for me, and I couldn't avoid spilling a little on the table - but we killed the bottle as planned and Sally headed back to her room. In the night I sleepwalked and knocked my alarm clock to the floor. I slept poorly after that.

First class in Samara

2005-07-26T20:39:00.000-04:00

In the morning I showed up at the school and joined the most advanced class, meeting teacher Vanessa and fellow students Johanna, Martyne, and Evelyn. The other students in the class were somewhat more advanced than I was, though we were all at about the same level. We spent much of the class listening to Vanessa talk about Costa Rican culture, contrasting it with U.S. culture. I felt at a couple points that we should have been practicing a bit more. I had a few chances to speak, but felt dissatisfied with my mistakes and low level of fluency.

I learned:

* The bridge I'd seen the day earlier had been an example of classic Central American corruption: in exchange for help building the bridge the Taiwanese had been granted free lands in Guanacaste and shark-fishing rights off the Isla de Cocos. As a result, in the last two years endangered hammerhead sharks had been disappearing from the island.

* It is common for Costa Rican women to marry at age 15-18 and have children, then to be abandoned by their husbands. Children usually remain with their parents until marriage, and are expected to help out with furniture purchases and other gifts even if they do choose to move out. Remarriage after divorce is somewhat uncommon, but not unheard of.

For lunch Sally and I went next door to a local place right on the beach. Ocean breezes kept us cool while we chatted about classes: Sally had ceviche and I had arroz con pollo. Next I retreated to the hotel for a siesta. I must have been exhausted because I slept till 5 in the afternoon.

In the evening I watched movies in my room until around 10 before I heard a knock on the door. It was Sally inviting me to hang out across the street at a bar filled with American students and a few locals drinking Imperial beer. I ordered up a whiskey, neat, then chatted with Chris, an ex-New Yorker working at the Smithsonian in D.C. After a couple hours of chatting our group moved to the pool tables to play cutthroat: I lost on the first round and sat out the second. I made it back to the hotel by around 2 am.

Another day on buses - to Playa Samara

2005-07-25T20:17:00.000-04:00

Lisa met me at around 7:15 and we took the bus to nearby Quepos in the hopes of securing a ride back to San Jose. There was a long line of tourists and locals, standing patiently at the rundown concrete bunker serving as ticket counter and package handling center - with one woman on the job that day. We learned that all buses were full until 6 pm: we were buyers. After breakfast we tried to find out about alternative routes to San Jose, such as local buses through Puntarenas. Taxi drivers circled around, picking up on the desperation of the many groups of lost-looking tourists.

At 10 or so a bus to San Jose pulled up and ticketed passengers started lining up to board. When I went out to look it over a friendly man came up and asked me if he could help - he ended up getting us permission to ride the bus as standing passengers. It was hard for me to stand that long on the curvy route back to San Jose - at one point I felt nauseous - but we made it by around 1 pm. I hugged Lisa goodbye, then headed a couple blocks north to catch an Empresa Alfaro bus to Nicoya.

On the 4 hour ride into Nicoya I sat next to an elderly man in a green fedora who was eager to identify local sights along the way such as cement plants, factories, and the new bridge that had shortened the route to Nicoya by a couple of hours. I could barely understand him, but did well enough to get by.

We reached Nicoya at sundown. The park was filled with revelers celebrating the national holiday as well as the annexation of Guanacaste. On a sidestreet our bus came to a sudden halt: we had ripped the side-mirror off a parked vehicle. The older gentleman and I got off and I walked over to a couple of banks to try to withdraw some colones.

The bus station had a deserted look to it: boarded up shops and small groups of local youth milling around with nothing to do. A man standing by the curb offered me a ride to Samara for 8000 colones, saying no bus would depart for a couple of hours. After a minute's hesitation, I got in his unmarked gray vehicle and we headed off down the darkening road, the driver's American 80's mix-tape blaring in the rear speakers. I wondered if all Latin American taxi drivers had such tapes for their American customers, especially since bus drivers only played salsa-merengue tapes. A hazy, humid twilight pink sky hung over the low hills of the peninsula as we flew along the curvy roads. It was dark by the time the driver pulled to a stop at a forlorn intersection by the beach at the small town of Samara.

No sooner had I started down the dark sidestreet than I recognized Sally from Intercultura coming the opposite direction. I met fellow students Drew and Carl, checked into the hotel, and then joined the group for dinner at Pizza A Go Go, an Italian place nearby the school. My Penne Al Arrabbiata was excellent, but the service was slow. Sally insisted we take advantage of a favorable error on the bill as a redress for the slow service.

In the evening Sally and I bought a bottle of Argentinian red wine at a liquor store - the young man at the counter opened it for take-out - then went to my hotel room to finish it while channel-surfing. We eventually ended up watching a coming-of-age movie featuring a very young Christina Ricci. Sally told tales of her horsetraining days, and talked about her tastes in restaurants. After Sally went to bed I found another movie, Heist, starring Gene Hackman as an almost-washed-up bank robber pulling one last job. It turned out to be a David Mamet production, complete with characteristic staccato lines and pessimistic outlook. I turned in just after midnight.

Horses and hiking in M. Antonio

2005-07-24T19:54:00.000-04:00

I met Lisa as planned at 6:30 the next morning and we headed into the national park along the coast for our scheduled nature tour. Our guide was Hernes (sp?), a somewhat heavyset dark-skinned man who directed us across the sandy beach to a ricketly whitewashed boat waiting in a tidepool. We climbed aboard and paid our 100 colones to have an elderly man push us across the 10 meter-wide tidepool to the park entrance on the other side. Then we spent the next two hours walking the shady forest paths inside the park. Hernes would stop every 15 minutes or so to set up his birding telescope - I never once saw what he had noticed till I looked through the scope myself. Here are a couple of the items we saw:

* A spectacular Caiman wallowing in shady, muddy waters.
* Several lizards, most camoflaged to look like trees or leaves.
* Howler monkeys.
* Giant sloths.
* Two varieties of bats.
* A stick-bird. The guide said he'd only seen seven in his 15 years of touring.
* Giant, strong spider webs.
* Scarlet-colored crickets.
* A mimosa whose leaves and branches retracted when touched.
* Giant stands of bamboo.

After our tour Lisa and I ate breakfast at Restaurante Lobster. Famished, I ordered eggs, toast, and a milkshake, and overate.

Next we headed to the tourist office to book a horse-riding tour. There we learned it would be difficult to obtain tickets for the bus back to San Jose the following day: because of the holiday, the buses were booked, and the only office in Quepos would close so early we wouldn't have a chance to buy tickets in advance.

It was around 11:15 before a car arrived to drive us up the half-mile road to Marlboro Ranch. There we met Luis, a friendly, short man in a long-sleaved blue flannel shirt who helped us mount our horses using a large stump. As soon as I mounted my horse began making its way back into its stable, resisting my attempts at control. At some point I bumped my head on a ceiling rafter, attracting Luis' attention: he led the horse back outside and, after throwing a halter rope around Lisa's horse, we set off down the road.

We had a quiet 90-minute ride through the forest, down the beach, across tidepools and creeks, and up a hill overlooking town. Lisa's horse was securely roped to Luis' horse, while I brought up the rear - my horse knew how to follow, but kept falling behind, at barely a (human) walking pace. After a while Luis handed me a stick and showed me how to use it as a flail. After that I had more success getting my horse to keep up. On a couple of occasions my horse broke into a trot at my urging, but since I didn't know how to handle a trot I would quickly bring it back to a walk. One of my stirrups was too loose, hurting my ankle, and I felt gauche handling the horse. But it was fun and made me want to learn more about how to ride. It was the first horseride for both of us.

After lunch Lisa and I headed back to the parque Manuel Antonio to hike to Cathedral Point. The air inside the jungle was humid and hot, and the trail was muddy and steep. At a few points the forest canopy cleared to provide a stunning view over the surf breaking on the rocks far below - but the sun at the clearings was so strong we felt no desire to linger. We kept on hiking. I challenged Lisa: which of us would be the first to see wildlife, now that we were beyond the care of an expert nature guide? It was a challenge I quickly lost: Lisa spotted dwarf crabs, howler monkeys, and several huge lizards.

In the afternoon Lisa and I whiled away the hours at Cafe Marlin at the main town intersection, then moved upstairs to another bar offering happy hour specials. (Nearby several teenage boys laughed it up while double-fisting Imperial beers.) I had four glasses of white wine before braving the drizzle and ultimately catching the bus to the top of the hill to my hotel. On the bus an older American woman was desperately trying to find someone in her group with enough spare change to pay the fare for six people: I gave her about $0.75 in colones. She didn't really thank me.

In the evening I watched the last two-thirds of Bourne Identity (Identidad Desconocida in Spanish). Then I turned in. In the wee hours of the morning howler monkeys began their nocturnal yowling, making sleep difficult, particularly with the mild gueule de bois (hangover) I was nursing from the drinks the night before.

Frustration in Manuel Antonio

2005-07-23T19:30:00.000-04:00

In the morning my alarm went off at 5. The sky was already brightening as I made my way through the streets, passing the cardboard boxes of the indigent here and there. The so-called Coca Cola bus terminal proved to be a number of streetside bus stops spread out over several ramshackle city blocks. The bus for Manuel Antonio left from a dingy parking lot where there was already quite a line forming for the 6 am departure. It was a relief to see Lisa coming from the other direction.

Unfortunately, neither of us had thought it necessary to buy bus tickets in advance. We waited anxiously as the 6:00 bus filled with ticketed passengers, and learned that the ticket booth wouldn't even open until 7. The first bus departed, and another arrived, and the same process began anew - yet a heardy bunch of ticketless passengers continued to queue, with Lisa and I forming the head of the line. Eventually we were invited aboard the 6:15 bus. The other people in the line wore frustrated expressions as they were denied boarding. Manuel Antonio appeared to be a popular holiday destination.

It was a 3.5 hour ride through the curvy roads descending through the forests south and west of San Jose to the beach communities on the Pacific flank of the country. Manuel Antonio was composed of a single busy intersection packed with crowds of surfers, beach bums, and families, all wending their way among tourist-class cafes and sidewalk vendors of beach towells, trinkets, and surfing lessons. Along the one road giving access to the town were a straggling collection of cheap cabinas and expensive hotels. Lisa and I grabbed breakfast at Restaurante Lobster. Then, in the growing morning heat, Lisa and I caught a taxi to the top of the hill into town and started inquiring about hotels. We found the cheap hotels full, and the expensive ones quite expensive - generally more than $65/night. Ultimately I opted to split up with Lisa: My budget was higher than Lisa's, and I was concerned we would find a hotel where there was only one room available, forcing me to retrace my steps to one of the more expensive hotels anyway.

I ended up at the modestly-high end Costa Vista ($100/night), next door to the Banana Hotel and just down from the popular El Avion night club. I was particularly satisfied that the bilingual young man at the reception spoke Spanish with me and treated me with elaborate kindness. Sweat was rolling off my face as I completed the form to check in. Once in my hotel room I stripped off my wet clothes and enjoyed the air conditioning for an hour or so.

At 2 Lisa and I met for lunch back at Restaurante Lobster, discussing our plans for horseback riding and hiking. (She had secured a place in a comfortable hostel for $10. I felt guilty for ditching her.) Just as we were about to head to the Marlboro Ranch for a horse-riding lesson a bank of dark clouds showed up over the mountains north of town. Given the threat of rain we opted to head up to El Avion at the top of the hill overlooking town for a late-afternoon drink.

El Avion was the most famous restaurant-bar in Manuel Antonio, if not Costa Rica. The main bar area was built in around 2000 out of the fuselage of a C-123 transport that had been disasembled and carted in from the San Jose Int'l Airport: the former Wisconsin National Guard plane had originally been sent to Costa Rica in 1985 or 1986 to supply the Contras, but after its sister plane was shot down over Nicaragua the Reagan administration decided to mothball the program. The restaurant had just completed an expansion program, giving it an incredible two-level deck overlooking the Pacific Ocean hundreds of feet below. Lisa and I sat enjoying several drinks watching the sunset: a line of clouds formed a fuzzy pattern of light and dark across the gray waters of the ocean.

Lisa and I chatted about a range of subjects, but especially about our families and parents. We had dinner at El Avion - my arroz con pollo was excellent - before turning in at 7. The only downside of El Avion was the unwillingness of the staff to speak Spanish to us.

Test and Guanacaste Day party

2005-07-22T17:59:00.000-04:00

In the morning we were asked to take a two-hour test. I found it easy except for the 60-line essay, which was challenging and tiring. I may have completed only about 50 lines before calling it done.

Following the test was a graduation ceremony for those who would be leaving. Most of the graduates seemed to be younger students at beginner levels - I wondered if there were any students in higher levels than mine present that week. (There were certainly higher levels offered.) I realized that I would miss seeing the students who were going to be leaving, even though I'd barely begun making friends.

Marcelo, the school director, then led the class in two activities designed to celebrate Guanacaste Day: reading of short poems called Bombas, and giving various high-pitched yells similar to a war-whoop or rebel yell. (I didn't compete in either - I hadn't quite finished my Bomba and I had a cold.) Finally Marcelo led eleven students in a dancing game that closely approximated musical chairs: the dancer who couldn't find a partner when the music stopped had to dance with a broom. Marcelo, his wife, and some young children had all dressed in traditional festive clothing for the occasion.

For some reason I was exhausted. It took all my energy to say goodbye to the friends who were leaving, plan my meeting with Lisa for the following day, and get to the hotel and check out. After buying some OFF! at the pharmacy I found a bus for San Jose and rode into town.

The San Jose bus stopped in a part of town I didn't recognize, and it was probably a 15 minute walk to the hotel Santo Tomas. There Mauricio greeted me in his usual friendly but slightly mistrustful fashion, and I checked into a comfortable room - I had been looking forward to relaxing at the Santo Tomas, with its good TVs, Internet access, and relaxing common areas.

In the evening I went to the Gran Hotel de Costa Rica, the historic and elegant old hotel along the main pedestrian road. The spaghetti bolognese was only average but the red wine good, yet I felt self-conscious being served by the obsequious waitstaff. At the earliest opportunity I retreated to the hotel to watch home-improvement shows on HGTV - it was nice to think about having a home and a stable life of my own.

A rainy visit to a waterfall

2005-07-21T19:34:00.000-04:00

In the morning classes went off successfully. During the first session Britanny presented her speech about the September 11 attacks, featuring such vabulary words as "hostages," "kidnapping," and "collapse." She seemed to focus her remarks on the fact that many around the world disagreed about what constituted terrorism, and didn't fail to mention what in my mind represented a conspiracy theory or urban legend: namely the notion that there were fewer people in the buildings than usual. I sat uncomfortably through the presentation, but couldn't resist briefly pointing out my opinion afterwards that there had been the same number of people in the buildings as any other workday. Fortunately it didn't lead to any discussion. The subject left a melancholy feeling on my conscience for the rest of the day - particularly given that Gary, our tour guide in the evening, brought up September 11 again with me in the car, albeit very respectfully.

After the break we answered general questions designed to draw out uses of the subjunctive tense: I had to state what interested me in a romantic partner. Brian asked that the teacher take one of the questions, and she chose to talk about her upcoming trip to the U.S.: it turned out that Adrianna and her boyfriend were considering moving to South Carolina and planned to go up to explore the idea further during an upcoming vacation. "Why the U.S.?" asked Adrian, with obvious scorn. Adrianna said what interested her was the quality of life in the U.S., but noted the downside of having to drive a car.

In the second round of questions I was asked what had brought me to Costa Rica. I managed to talk for quite some time without making many errors, and communicating the historical and personal interest I had in Nicaragua. Afterwards Adrianna complemented my ability and said she felt I had a very formal style and a good vocabulary. An ego boost that partially soothed the feeling of resentment over having to think about September 11 earlier.

In the afternoon I joined tour guide Gary, the two Lisas, and two younger American men for a tour of a waterfall about 20 km northwest of Heredia. On the way we stopped at Gary's nice house in the hills north of Alajuela, amid sugar and coffee fields. There was a light drizzle falling by the time we reached the chain-link fence marking the entrance to the waterfall site. By the time we had threaded our way down the forest trail and across two characteristically rickety footbridges leading to the falls the rain had turned steady. The two younger men stripped to their shorts and headed into the cold waters, obviously ecstatic about the experience. I held back under the protection of my black New York-style $3 umbrella, to the obvious amusement of the two Lisas. The setting had a contemplative feeling, like a scene from a painting from the U.S. Transcendentalist school in the 1800's.

On the ride back Nick and David, the two American men, insisted we stop at a small roadside shack to grab beers. Then we bombarded Gary with questions about Costa Rican expressions: he told us about expressions such as "pura vida," "buena nota," "que chivas," and "tuani." For his part, Gary was fascinated by our gossip about two students having a romantic liason.

At around 6:30 the lights flickered and went out - only central Heredia had lost power. At 7 I walked down the street and met Lisa, Dennis, and Veskith at the school, which was locking its doors due to the outage. We waited together in the drizzle until Stephanie arrived, then walked around for a while looking for Brian and Nova at Brian's family's house. Lisa, Stephanie and I then took at taxi to Hooligan's south of town - located in a strip mall along the main highway. There we went into Pio Pio for some fried chicken before moving next door to a rather empty bar playing techno music. Brian and Nova arrived, and the second Lisa as well. I had two whiskeys and a shot of Cacique rum, earlier recommended by Gary. But I didn't feel up to going salsa dancing with the two Lisas. Instead I helped them locate a cab, which took 20 minutes, then walked back to the hotel. That proved a 30 minute walk, longer than I expected and somewhat dangerous along the busy road with its narrow shoulder.

My first speech in Spanish

2005-07-20T17:19:00.000-04:00

I went to class a little ahead of time this morning and bought a breakfast of crackers and milk at the Pancito next door to the school. The first part of class consisted of going over exercises. Next, it was my turn to give a speech about an issue related to crime and punishment. I spoke around 25 minutes about my experience on a New York narcotics grand jury. Naturally I was nervous, and made more mistakes than I felt was normal, but I felt it was a success overall. The other speaker of the day was Adrian, who talked very generally about the causes of the Northern Ireland conflict.

In the second session of class we broke up into two groups to debate the morality of violence - a topic that was arguably a bit too general. I couldn't resist the opportunity to adopt extreme positions as a way of making light of the topic. In fact, since beginning language learners are naturally restricted to simplistic statements, it seemed natural to adopt a sarcastic tone rather than attempting to express serious opinions. However the five of us had a good time exchanging some fairly ridiculous remarks about violence, politics, war, and inequality.

After class a group of us opted to go to Vishnu's, which we understood to be a vegetarian Indian restaurant. There weren't any Indian items on the menu - it was merely vegetarian, though my pasta came with ham on it. Afterwards I headed to Bulevar, the main Heredia drinking spot, to grab a drink with Sally, the pretty Texan art teacher (with a boyfriend back in Texas). We had an excellent discussion about art and travel. She told me that her father had gone to school with Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister of Thailand, and that she might be going there the following year. Afterwards we retired to an Internet cafe.

In the evening I had dinner at Pane e Vino again before heading back to the hotel for some French TV. As I was watching a fascinating documentary on corruption in French politics - with a focus on literally palacial offices and homes paid for government employees - I heard what sounded like a gunshot followed by screams. The accoustics of the hotel made it sound like the noises were from the lobby. A second shot a minute later didn't seem to provoke any special noise. Naturally, I decided not to investigate, merely checking that the door was locked and going back to my TV program. The next day our tour guide, Gary, said gunshots in the evening weren't uncommon. There was some possibility it had been a car backfiring.

Class, Day 2 - Anti-Americanism?

2005-07-19T21:42:00.000-04:00

Today's class was dedicated entirely to the week's topic of crime and punishment. I presented my thoughts on the topics of graffiti and assault on police officers. I felt I did well, though not spectacularly. One member of our group, Juliana, had decided to drop down to a lower level, so we were down to five students.

For lunch I was among a group of five students that headed to a fairly typical Costa Rican lunch counter to get the Plato del Dia, which in this case turned out to be a chicken drumstick with rice and salad ($2). Naturally we talked about the host families of the other students. Adrian, from Irland, mentioned that her host father liked to explore her views of the U.S., saying that Costa Ricans hated Americans. This proved a natural segue into Adrian's views: she said she despised the ignorant American tourists she saw in Ireland, especially those seeking some fragment of supposed cultural heritage, President Bush, everything she's seen in the movie Bowling for Columbine, and American movies in general.

"I hate America," said Nova, a college-aged woman from north of Toronto. "But I have to say, Americans know more about the politics and world history than I do. I have no idea what Republicans are."

As usual, I felt some obligation to point out the problems with some of the stereotypes and generalizations about Americans, but I had the sense that any views I might have weren't likely to find purchase. Lisa and Stephanie, the two other Americans at the table, didn't bother arguing either.

In the afternoon I went back to the hotel and studied in the restaurant area, then retired to my room to practice my speech for the following day. The head staff member consistently spoke to me in English despite my consistently requesting (as politely as possible) that he speak to me in Spanish.

In the evening I went back to Bulevar with the two Lisas, Nova, Brian, and Justine (an energetic and outgoing Costa Rican adolescent who spoke fluent English and, I later learned, was known by virtually everyone in Heredia). I spoke some Spanish with Alan, a young Costa Rican friend of Justine's: at one point I used the word "perito" to mean "expert." He corrected me, pointing out that "perrito" meant "puppy" and that "experto" meant "expert." The next day I asked my teacher about the confusion. "Ah, yo conozco Alan y no es una persona culta," she said. ("I know Alan - he's not well-educated.")

After drinks we moved upstairs to play some pool. I noticed that the younger three (Brian, Justine, and Nova) seemed interested in hanging out together - and that Brian seemed interested in Nova. Lisa, Stephanie, and I left them to turn in around 10:30.

Class in Heredia, Day 1

2005-07-18T18:06:00.000-04:00

I headed to class at 7:45 as scheduled, and met some of the other students: Lisa (Priya's friend), the another Lisa, Nova, Stephanie, Adrian, Juliana, and Bernard. After hearing the orientation speech I was called in to talk with Marcelo, the head of the school, who spoke with me in Spanish to test my ability. I was happy to have performed about as I normally do - thus enabling me to enter a reasonably advanced class studying the present-subjunctive.

Next my group was shown upstairs and introduced to the teacher, Adriana. I felt I was about at the same level as the others in my class (Britanny, Adrian, Stephanie, Juliana and Brian). I could notice them making errors, but since I was making mistakes too I supposed they were noticing that as well. Unlike French class in high school, I felt there was no shame in making a mistake, since I hadn´t learned Spanish in any formal setting.

Class consisted of interviewing one's neighbor and summarizing what one learned, discussing a short newspaper article, having one's mistakes corrected by the instructor. A short homework was assigned involving the subjunctive, which we discusserd during class.

One of the school staff, Margherita, showed the new students around Heredia, and we went to a small cafe that served a ¨plato del dia.¨ However, the cafe ran out of chicken, so for me there was no meal - somehow I seem to be forgotten by a lot of wait staff. In the end, some pastry rolls with beef inside were brought out for me to try - I failed to learn what they were called.

The older staff member, Margherita, seemed to enjoy talking with me, in particular about the fact that I was staying in a hotel rather than taking advantage of the homestay. She seemed eager to accommodate my picky eating preferences. I told her that I could speak to here in case I opted to stay in the Heredia school for a full 3 weeks.

In the afternoon we returned to the school for salsa with Enrique. I probably scared him away from giving me pointers by pointing out that I´d already learned certain aspects of salsa (dancing on 2, holding from the top of the hand) in New York - techniques that are known as New York style. However, the other men present were mostly Costa Ricans brought in to serve as leads, so I gathered. This meant that I was one of the worst dancers present - and since Enrique seemed to be more able to show than teach (or perhaps language was the issue) I didn´t feel I got much of a lesson. I danced mainly with Lisa and Stephanie - Lisa noticed that I was dancing on a different beat than she was used to in L.A. She didn´t seem to mind.

In the evening a small group of us got together at the school and headed to Bulevar, the main student watering hole in Heredia. Stephanie, the two Lisas, and I represented the U.S., while Jorge (a member of Stephanie's host family) and Diego (Jorge's much younger friend) represented Costa Rica. I sat at the end of the table and talked a little with Diego and Jorge to practice my Spanish. Diego wanted to know about Michael Moore, saying that both Bowling for Columbine and Farenheit-911 were very popular in Costa Rica, but that he had the impression that F-911 hadn't been popular in the U.S. I tried to explain that many people in America had been disappointed that Moore had made a movie with so many inaccuracies, and that people were also getting the sense that Moore's movies were more about him than anything else.

Diego also wanted to ask my opinion of Paul Coelho, author of The Alchemist and supremely popular in Latin America, judging from the selection of his books available in stores around the country. I told him that Coelho wasn't well known in the U.S. and that only The Alchemist was popular in the States - on my saying those words, the three women spoke up in unison to say they'd read it.

As for Jorge, his dream was to become a call center employee so that he could afford a Hummer.

Preparing for language classes

2005-07-17T12:17:00.000-04:00

The next morning I again headed to the Altamira for breakfast, quietly vowing to myself to move my business elsewhere the next time in San Jose just to explore a little more of the city. Shortly after I arrived a loud group of three American men sat down at the adjacent table and started talking about drug busts - I guessed they were Miami undercover drug cops on vacation.

"You remember that photo of me in the hat on the boat? We must have got 4 kilos that time," one said.

"Yeah, 50 ounces, that's gotta be about 5 kilos, right?"

Later, I heard the fat one of the group, the one who acted like he was in charge, say: "You know, if that guy had done anything, I would have popped him."

"In the back!"

"No, in the head!"

"In the back of the head!"

They laughed.

"Seriously, though, we talked about it," said the fat man. "All you would have to do is say you tripped or you saw him going for a gun. That one time we had a plan to go to the door, and when they opened it, have the second guy trip over the step and then say his gun went off."

There was a short gap in the conversation.

"We were just joking about it, but if it had happened, I think I was the only one who would have had any problem," said the fat man, acting unconcerned.

Every now and then local people selling trinkets would come stand in the open restaurant door and try hawking their wares in English. "Get the f*** out," the fat man said when he had heard their pitch.

I left the hotel around 2 and found the small bus-stand where the local bus to Heredia was parked. It was just a 20 minute ride, and the town of Heredia was so small that we had driven well beyond the center of town before I noticed. It turned out well, though, since on the walk back to the center of town I spotted the language school, whose address I'd been seeking.

I checked into the Hotel America, a hotel built along the lines of a small mid-range American hotel complete with extensive lobby, small atrium, and elevator. But it had seen better days: the elevator was slow, the rooms dark, and the decor fading fast. In one of the back rooms on the main floor a mariache band played for a party of some kind, and the muffled music was audible throughout the hotel. The room smelled strongly of air-freshener. The cost was $35.

In the late afternoon I had a chance to explore the town. The Lonely Planet was right in describing the town, now a suburb of San Jose, as a quaint, almost village-like setting. The cathedral, where Mass was being held, had a squat but pretty appearance, surrounded as it was by a lush green park filled with weekend idlers, including many families. The town also had its share of American food chains - and in fact I succumbed to temptation and ate at Pizza Hut for my first meal in town.

A break in San Jose

2005-07-16T18:27:00.000-04:00

I took the next day off, heading into town for some breakfast at the Altamira, then returning to the hotel to read the newspaper and my book. I received a confirmation from the school in Heredia -good news.

In the early afternoon, during a rainshower, I turned on the TV and watched Harrison Ford battle the Nazis in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Not content with that slice of Americana, I headed over the Pizza Hut for a pepperoni pizza, and indulged in a slice of chocolate cake at a corner shop nearby. It seemed I needed to make up for the lack of food the previous day.

The newspaper contained a minor blow to my ego. An article about energy policies in Bolivia and other developing countries contained several quotations from a former colleague of mine whom I had previously written off as an unintelligent self-promoter. She had been an intern - though she rejected that title - at Deutsche Bank for a few months during my stay there, and was identified in the article as the chief political risk consultant at an energy consultancy in New York. I had been worrying a lot about my future career during my travel, and the article heightened my sense of wanting to get back to work on my career.

After reading a bit of Durrell's Balthazar in the afternoon I turned on the TV again and watched some French TV5. They had an interesting documentary on religious evangelizing in the parts of Aceh affected by the tsunami. Their crew followed a conservative Muslim preacher as well as a group of young Scientologists in yellow t-shirts as they each made the rounds trying to make converts and help out. Predictably, the conservative Muslim had success finding an audience for his message in the local mosque, whereas the Scientologists only managed to "cure" a washed-up turtle before being thrown out of a hospital.

Back to San Jose, and rest

2005-07-15T11:40:00.000-04:00

I slept poorly, worrying about catching the early morning launch back. At 3:30 on my clock I heard the muffled commotion down by the dock, just a couple dozen meters away, indicating the imminent departure of the first launch. The previous day I'd learned that launches left at 5, 6, and 7. I wondered if my information was wrong. At 4 the first launch departed the dock, and I went back to sleep, still wondering.

At 4:45 I looked out and confirmed that another launch was getting ready. I quietly packed up my things without turning on the light, then softly walked down the stairs and opened the door. The nightman came up and I asked if a launch departed at 5. "It's already gone," he said. I asked what time it was, and he said 6. Thus it dawned on me that Nicaraguan time, contrary to what the Lonely Planet said, was an hour ahead of Costa Rican time. Hence the early closure of restaurants the previous night.

The launch left the dock on time, cruising through the morning fog dimly lit by the dawn light. Various villages, interesting trees, and dilapidated shacks scrolled past in reverse order from the previous day. I was able to pay the fare in dollars, curing one of my main worries.

I switched launches in San Carlos. It was a 90 minute ride up the hot and sunny Rio Frio, including 15 minutes of passport inspection at the Costa Rican border. On arrival in Los Chiles I raced through Customs, the port fee table, and the Migracion office in an attempt to beat the other tourists I knew were also heading to San Jose. The Migracion was notably more fetid and crowded than it had been the previous day, and the officer on duty seemed even more grumpy. But when he finally got around to stamping my passport and handing it across he did a double-take, surprised to see his own name on the stamp from the prior day.

There was a bus waiting at the Soda on the corner. The three-hour ride back to Ciudad Quesada was uneventful. I was able to quickly transfer to another direct bus to San Jose. It was a smooth and curvy ride back through the cloud forest and down into the Central Valley, where we caught up with Friday evening traffic. A steady rain fell during the entire trip. On arrival at the station I reflected with amusement that all the other tourists from San Carlos had been left behind at one stop or another - I had won my personal race with them.

I checked back into the Santo Tomas, this time getting a nicer room overlooking the street and a karaoke bar across the way. For dinner I went back to the Altamira for the customary pasta bolognese, red wine, and vanilla shake. There was a colorful American man there apparently living it up in high style, according to his own standards perhaps. He conducted himself garilously in English with the waiter, made some cell phone calls, and was joined by a plump but young woman, a prostitute. He stroked her leg when she sat down, then later I heard him asking her name. He ordered himself a second dessert, and one for her, then walked out to give some little street kids some money and shoo them away. They took his money, then mocked his shooing motion. He was middle-age, tall, fat, pink, fish-faced, with crooked teeth and a loud aggressive speech - the archetypical John down from the States.

Into Nicaragua - Rio San Juan

2005-07-14T20:58:00.000-04:00

In the morning I had an excellent breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, then walked across the street to the dingy Migracion office to get my passport stamped. There was a long line of people waiting to get their identity cards renewed. They looked like they'd been there a while, but they were eager to point me in the right direction. But their information was wrong: there was only one window open, so after pestering a couple officials I ended up getting cuts in front of all the others in line.

Next I paid my port fee at the outdoor booth by the dock and went back to the hotel to wait for the 11:30 launch to San Carlos, Nicaragua. Since I had my book and newspaper the wait was no trouble.

Back at the dock at 11 there was a small crowd loafing around. Two men were fishing with a hook and line, some other men were waiting next to a pile of baggage lined up on the concrete dock, and there were two Frenchmen discussing travel logistics. After asking the local-looking men about the ferry I sat down to wait, again. When the crowd finally moved toward the "lancha" (launch) I started moving gingerly down the concrete steps. Just then one of the men lost his grip on a small black backpack, and it went tumbling into the muddy river just beyond his reach. I started getting out my umbrella - it had a hook that would be useful for fishing things from the water - but in opening my bag I sent a notebook flying into the water. I plucked it out with my hand, then gave my umbrella to a man who was able to retrieve the floating backpack.

After all the ticket money was collected the woman in charge was dissatisfied: I gathered one person had failed to pay, and she didn't know who. We sat for 45 minutes waiting for some resolution, then the motor started and we pulled out into the slow current.

The Rio Frio runs north from Los Chiles into Lake Nicaragua, bordered on both sides by jungle. About 30 minutes into the journey we stopped at the Nicaraguan border where two men in camoflage uniforms checked the passenger list and glanced at the bags piled on the bow. An hour later we reached the spot where the muddy river flowed out into the somewhat clearer waters of the lake; there, around the bend, was the ramshackle village of San Carlos.

The boat pulled up to a wooden shed I learned was the Migracion office. Since the cost of entry was $7 I had to run outside and get a $20 bill changed into cordobas. The money changer was an elderly, unshaven man who openly carried a huge bankroll of three currencies on offer. With my passport stamped I headed into the muddy, shop-lined main street - and quickly concluded the dirty, squalid-looking town was probably the roughest and most dangerous spot I'd ever been. While I sat on a bench waiting (in a safe-seeming area enclosed by a chain-link fence) for the launch to El Castillo, a fight broke out among men drinking beer at a small shack by the water. They had their shirts off and were taunting each other, circling, being egged on by the crowd. A soldier in battle fatigues holding a single-barrel sawed-off shotgun pointed at the ground stood nearby smiling. After a few minutes circling the would-be boxers stood down and put their shirts back on, and the older, scruffier-looking man took hold of his wooden cart and went away in shame.

The launch was another primitive wood and fiberglass affair like the boat from Los Chiles. The scenery along the Rio San Juan was haunting: low-hanging dark grey rainclouds superimposed on a light-blue twilight, pastureland on the banks and lightly-forested volcanic cones in the distance, the occasional very tall tree hinting at what the jungle may have once looked like. We occasionally passed dilapidated shacks, rickety boats and canoes, men and boys fishing with lines and nets. White cranes by the dozen stood at attention along the riverbank, and a few cranes stood atop the floating foliage that dotted the water's surface. Occasionally brown-crested black birds would agitate their yellow wings and fly away from the approaching launch.

There was a thundershower, then another, and then a steady downpour commenced. The shimmering white light produced by the raindrops in the muddy water created an atmospheric effect. The ticket-collector put down the plastic tarps along the open sides of the boat, blocking the view. To help guide the man at the motor he would occasionally look out a crack in the tarp and then point right or left. The rain subsided gradually and then quit just a few kilometers before our arrival at El Castillo de San Juan, 48 kilometers downstream from San Carlos. Our trip took 3 hours.

After snapping a couple of photos of the Castillo I treated our arrival as a kind of race, figuring the Frenchmen I spotted earlier would head for the best hotel, the Albergue del Castillo overlooking town. I arrived barely a minute before them and checked in. Listening to them I learned they were part of a wedding group, so I felt lucky to have a room.

I spent a few minutes enjoying the view from the balcony, watching the river and clouds drift past, and the minor activity in the tiny town of Castillo, with its one main street for pedestrians only and its path up and around the castle itself. I could pick out the French tourists loafing among the wood-and-metal shop stalls. I tried to guess where the British might have landed - on the opposite shore perhaps?

Sitting on the deck looking at the town I recognized the sound of singing coming from a church nearby. The songs sounded like the liberationist Central American hymns I'd heard in Montana back in the 1980's.

For dinner I went down to the deserted restaurant-bar area to see what was happening, waiting till my watch said 7:30 before asking the woman at the desk when dinner would be served. She upbraided me for not asking for dinner earlier, said the cook had left already and I'd have to go to the Soda Carolina down the street for dinner. I used my best Spanish effort to apologize for being a bother and to mention that since I was all alone I had no idea what the program in the town might be. When I failed to locate Carolina's by myself I had to come back and ask the woman to help me find it. Carolina's was empty as well. I sat at a table upstairs and a young pregrant woman soon came up to take my order. "Camarones?" she asked, I presume because she had heard from the hotel woman that's what I wanted. However, she then listed a couple options I didn't understand, so I replied, "as you prefer." I came to regret that when, after a half-hour wait, a huge plate of two lobsters arrived. I didn't know how to eat them, nor did I enjoy the fries I ordered, since they were covered in sauces. The price was a relatively steep 135 cordobas, almost wiping out my holdings in that currency and leaving me nervous about paying my ride back to Costa Rica the next day. I left feeling downcast and careworn.

In the hotel room I discovered the fan didn't work, the bed was too short, and the lights from neighboring rooms shone on the ceiling of my own room, making it impossible for me to sleep before my neighbors. Downstairs a group of Spanish-speaking people was making a large racket, which continued late into the evening. I was glad I'd come, but I resolved to leave on the first ferry at 5 am.

Heading north from San Jose

2005-07-13T11:43:00.000-04:00

"La mania de perpetuar, de registrar, de fotografiar todo! Supongo que eso nace de la sensacion de no gozar plenamente de nada, de sentir que la flor de todas las cosas se escapa con cada soplo de aire que exhalamos." Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar, ch. 2 (Spanish language version). My translation: "The mania of keeping alive, recording, photographing everything! I suppose it is born of the sense of not fully enjoying anything, of sensing that the best of everything escapes with every breathe of air we exhale." It seemed a good description of blogging.

For breakfast I returned to the Altamira and read my new book while enjoying an American breakfast. The Continental breakfast at the hotel had not been worth a centime in my estimation, so I was happy to go elsewhere.

I checked out and headed north to Los Chiles, on my way to visit the Castillo of San Juan in Nicaragua, which a young Horatio Nelson attacked in 1780, his first major combat action. I had long hoped to visit.

At the bus station I happened to notice the bus to Puerto Jiminez pulling out, with the same bus driver. Though it was only the previous day it seemed a long time ago.

The bus ride north went through the rain and fog of the cloud forests in the mountains surrounding San Jose. The road was curvy and slow, and so it took over two hours to get to Ciudad Quesada, also known as San Carlos. Quesada's new bus station was on the edge of town, and to reach it the bus had to negotiate numerous tight streets and turns - it seemed planning for the bus station might have been wanting. However it was easy to locate the bus for Los Chiles on the northern border of Costa Rica. For much of the ride, which made all local stops, I had an empty seat next to me for legroom. Seats on Central American buses weren't built for someone my height.

It was late afternoon by the time the bus arrived in Los Chiles. A woman at the Soda (a type of snack counter) didn't know where the hotel was that I had circled in the Lonely Planet, but she did point me towards the dock. There I discovered that the hotel had changed names; I checked in with a rather grumpy woman who didn't seem very happy to put up with my broken Spanish. The room was air conditioned, but the noise from neighboring rooms carried. For $25 it was a good deal.

For dinner I had a hamburger in the hotel restaurant. I tried to order with nothing on it, plain, but only condiments were omitted. Still, it was a fine meal after going without for the day.

Bus to San Jose

2005-07-12T18:51:00.000-04:00

I was looking forward to being on the road again, but I didn't sleep well knowing I'd have to get up at 4 am to take a shower and catch my taxi. The taxi arrived right on time. I had to feel my way down the stairway and across the cluttered dining area to reach the parking spot. The walk that had taken me an hour took only 8 minutes by taxi.

The bus station window opened to sell tickets just after I arrived - mine cost $8, half the cost of the taxi to the station.

The bus left at 5 on schedule. I was crammed into a window seat with no legroom; I had to keep my legs diagonal the entire way, scheduled for a nine-hour trip. There was someone next to me for almost the entire way, and for long periods I could think of little else than my knees - particularly when a little boy in the next row began jamming the armrest back into my knee.

The scenery was pretty for much of the way: forests, muddy rivers, blue skies with small valley fog or clouds among the forested mountains.

About halfway there the driver got on his cell phone, stopped the bus, and came back after five minutes of talking. Later I determined he'd been looking at the bus tires. At San Isidro he had to stop at a shop and have the bus jacked up to replace a tire. That added an hour to the journey. Fortunately I had the chance to get some crackers and an empanada at a street stall by the town bus station.

Naturally I was again exhausted on reaching the San Jose bus stop. A clump of taxi drivers was waiting by the bus doorway and shouted out, "Sir, taxi!" as I stepped off. They ignored me as soon as I shook my head no and headed off down the street.

I found the Hotel Santo Tomas just where it was supposed to be. It was a splended little urban oasis with pool, fountain, restaurant, and old-fashioned interior. My room was $69 including tax and credit card surcharge. Since it was another American-owned place, naturally the staff spoke English and most of the guests sounded American.

I was feeling slightly more optimistic about the trip than I had been in Golfito. I was also eager to get an email response from the Heredia language school - they hadn't replied (except an auto-reply) to my Friday note.

For dinner I walked into the central pedestrian zone, and the immediate impression I got was of a largely developed European country, albeit a little dirty and rough about the edges. Here and there were small ornate buildings from the 1800's, clean-looking parks, and mid-scale shops. There were plenty of people about, and just a few obvious tourists, though there was plenty of tourist infrastructure such as ATMs, American hotels, and restaurants advertising in English.

My first stop was the major bookstore, which featured a rather sparse selection. Most of its titles were translations of English or other foreign literature. Only a couple racks were devoted to Spanish and Latin American literature, and the history section was tiny. Most of the Spanish-language racks were dominated by names like Isabelle Allende, Octavio Paz, Marquez, and Borgia - their books didn't interest me. So I bought a Spanish-version of the second book in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria collection. I was already a fan of Durrell's comic stories, but I'd never read his serious fiction, which I knew to be rather heavily nostalgic or romanticized.

I stopped by the Altamira for a dinner of spaghetti bolognese and a glass of wine. The bolognese was tasty but the sauce was a little thin. I went to bed early and slept well.

Another day in Puerto Jiminez

2005-07-11T18:41:00.000-04:00

In the morning it was still raining - it had rained all night. I took my umbrella and went across for the communal breakfast of pancakes. It was a fantastic meal. But what I learned next wasn't so great: the 11:30 bus I'd counted on taking to San Jose didn't run during the rainy season, only the 5 am bus. That implied I'd be staying one more night in Puerto Jiminez contrary to plan.

I didn't mind modifying my plan in principle, but I felt it wasn't a good use of my time. I'd already thoroughly explored the hotel library and checked out the beach. It was raining. It went on to rain all day, and I spent the time loafing in the main common area with the cats, playing a game of chess with myself, and reading parts of various books. The bindings of the books in the hotel library were all curled up - apparently the humidity ruins the books pretty quickly. I decided I couldn't live in the tropics for very long.

For lunch I had a tasty meal of chicken wings, and persuaded Ronnie the bartender to mix me a White Russian (ruso blanco). I had persuaded him to condescend to speak Spanish with me, though all of the staff were fluent in English - another aspect adding to my cabin-fever there. For dinner I had chicken fingers and French fries. I paid my bill at the front desk - and was disappointed to note a $15 charge for a taxi to the bus station the next day. Although the 4:30 taxi could be expected to cost a touch more than usual, the going rate was much lower than that I was sure. Although the Pearl was a little outside my budget overall, that was my only real complaint about the service.

The rain quit just before I turned in. I started to imagine the cloying sound of the surf was thunder in the distance.

Relaxing in Puerto Jiminez

2005-07-10T18:21:00.000-04:00

The next morning I went next door to have a hearty breakfast of toast and bacon. On the way down the garden path I met Lauren, one of the owners. She was sitting on a high chair painting a heliconia, one of the dramatic flowers found all around the Iguana Lodge grounds. We chatted a bit - it seemed like a nice life, owning the Iguana Lodge.

Having finished the book Killing Pablo, I had to look around for other things to do. There were a range of tours, but I felt many of them overpriced for my budget ($750 to go fishing, for example - it might have worked for a group of people, of course). With all the rain I wondered if hiking might not be a little too muddy for my taste - and I didn't want to go alone, since the guidebook specifically recommended against that. But basically I just felt lazy. So I sat down on the couch with the cat and read an issue of "Outdoor Traveler" magazine.

Travel magazines are an odd breed. On the one hand, the photos are brilliant and inspiring, and I find the material interesting given my desire to travel ever more. But the text is almost always difficult to read, either it's is too vapid, focuses only on ultra-high-end experiences, or the layouts are just too busy. I prefer travel books: they have a context, a bit of a story, some good history, and they usually keep the pictures crammed in the middle where they don't distract from the text.

At around noon the apparently-customary volleyball game began in the court in the lawn, and it would last till the heavy rain started again at 6.

For lunch I had fish sticks and French fries. By now I'd met five staff members, all eager to please and introduce themselves by first name. I managed to speak Spanish with only the cook and two waiters. The entire staff had been told my name was "William," so at every turn I was correcting them about that. Based on my experience with Shimem at East Campus R/O at MIT in 1992 (he had introduced himself to me as "Mike"), I had adopted the firm policy of always correcting people on my first name.

For dinner the chef shouted up to my room that Gloria (Lauren) and Tobie, the American owners, had invited me to have dinner with them at the Iguana Lodge. I was honored, but it turned out a little differently that I expected. Dinner was a buffet with excellent steaks, salad, and mashed potatoes, and a red wine for me. I sat next to Tobie and Lauren. The strange thing was the conversation - it was a little forced, and nobody introduced themself to me except Tobie and Lauren (whom I'd already met). Essentially it was a case of a group of Americans who didn't really feel much like getting to know one another - yet I found that odd in a hotel where the staff was trained to carefully introduce themselves, and in a country where people boarding buses greet the passengers ("buenas tardes," usually) as a matter of politeness.

However, I did learn that the owners and their children were off to Thailand for a two-week vacation, and that they hadn't built the hotel themselves, though they'd owned it for six years. Lauren confessed she hadn't finished her painting. They all seemed mystified at my plan to visit the historic Castillo de San Juan in Nicaragua - they'd never heard of it.

Across the Golfo Dulce

2005-07-09T12:14:00.000-04:00

I got up around 7:00 and sat in bed contemplating the noise of a bawling baby outside for a couple hours before experimenting with the shower. The water was neither hot nor cold, but the soap had been used. All in all, it was the worst hotel room I´d ever stayed in.

Next I packed up and headed down to the Muellecito (small dock). The air was cool on the short walk along the shore, but by the time I reached the dock I was sweating all over and the sun was high in the sky. Yet the time was only 9:00 and I had over two hours to wait. I searched for a shady spot to sit - but every spot I chose had a bad smell (sewage, turpentine, or rotting fruit). Still, I was able to study a couple hundred vocabulary words. At 10 I went into a nearby Internet cafe, mostly to enjoy the air conditioning.

At 11 I walked back to the dock and hopped aboard the blue wooden boat for Puerto Jiminez. It was already fairly full of people. In the front there was a fat woman selling hats and baubles, and a skinny old man with a receding chin mumbling out his sales talk about bags of fresh fruit juice he was selling. Behind the bench where I was sitting there was a group of American men, surfers, at least a couple of whom had been in the Army. One had camoflage pants and an Army knife stuck in his belt. When a very tanned young German backpacker with a guitar came down the stairs they all recognized her from earlier and asked to borrow her guitar.

"It's not tuned," she said.

"I can tune if for you!" said one.

He proceded to tune the guitar as poorly as I can recall hearing an instrument tuned since my high school orchestra days. A couple of the guys then spent the next hour and a half playing any tune they could remember the chords to. I might have recognized the songs had they been played better, but the overall vibe was pretty groovy nonetheless. Their favorite song, and the one they were best at, was "Hotel California."

The German girl with the deep tan left them and headed out to get sun on the deck.

It was a slow 90 minute ride across the Golfo Dulce to the small dock at Puerto Jiminez. The air was sultry and the sun shone brightly over the gulf, but thunderheads were perched over the landmasses on all sides. It began to lightly drizzle when the boat landed. I put my bag over my shoulder and started walking to the Iguana Lodge, the American-owned hotel I'd read was the best in town.

It turned out to be a hike of over 6 kilometers - a sign near the dock warned me, but I decided to tough it out, despite the muddy conditions of the road and some worry about getting lost. Sweat was dripping into my eyes and I was exhausted by the time I arrived. A nice young English-speaking Tica gave me a tour of both the luxurious Iguana Lodge (comprising several two-story thatched cabanas, including the huge and open main structure with the dining area on the second floor), then showed me the comfortable-looking hotel rooms in the more basic Pearl of the Osa guest house. I opted for the latter - I saw no amenity lacking at the Pearl, and I didn't want the communcal meals offered by the Iguana Lodge. The price was $87 including tax.

My corner room overlooked the front lawn facing the rolling Pacific surf, and a big balsa tree provided shade all day. I immediately felt relaxed and at ease with life. I settled into a good book I found in the hotel library: Killing Pablo, by Mark Bowden, about the search for Pablo Escobar, the drug lord of Medellin. It was frankly the most gripping book I'd read in the last couple years, but the fact that I finished it in one evening probably reflected my lack of intellectual stimulation during the previous days.

For lunch I had a large empanada and a couple liters of cold water, and for dinner the chef stopped by my room to ask me what I'd like so he could buy groceries. I ordered shrimp from the menu. Both meals were quite good, but not spectacular. I had a traditional whiskey with dinner, naturally.

At 5 a dramatic thunderstorm began, but ended around 8, leaving me to slumber to the sounds of the crashing waves on the beach outside.

Many buses back to Costa Rica

2005-07-08T18:32:00.000-04:00

Which is worse, wasting a day (as I felt I´d done in Cerro Punta) or spending an entire day on buses?

For breakfast I had some more pancakes, then checked out and got the first bus down to Volcan, the town on the crossroads 15 minutes from Cerro Punta. There was another bus waiting heading for the border town of Rio Sereno, which the Lonely Planet had recommended as a ¨quiet¨ border crossing compared to Paso Canoas, which the book said featured several-hour waits. It was another 45 minutes on the Rio Sereno bus. The blaring salsa music and cramped seats were getting to me, but the scenery of coffee plantations was quite relaxing.

At Rio Sereno I had to ask several people for directions to the border, which proved to be at the top of a small hill overlooking the town. The two border stations were indeed deserted except for their respective officials. Just as I was just getting my passport stamped two Costa Rican women came along, huffing and puffing a little because of the hill. I was able to ask them for directions and learn that it wouldn´t be several hours until a bus came along. They offered to share a taxi with me for $1. We sat on a bench in front of the supermarket on the Costa Rican side discussing language learning: the younger woman, Shirley, said she had tried to go to English class but quit after the first couple hours because she hated the stiffness of having to sit in class!

When the taxi came the driver asked me what my occupation was. The two women said that was a bureaucratic necessity - the government made the taxi drivers ask to try and cut down on smuggling. I sat in the back of a truck while the two women sat up front - later another taxi pulled alongside and I switched into the rear of a Land Rover, which was if anything less comfortable than the open-air truck. A young girl with her family thought I was funny-looking and tried to serruptitiously take my photo using her digital camera held over her shoulder. I made her show me the photo, then had her take one with my camera as well.

The unpaved road was rough, but we arrived at a little town after around 20 minutes, then switched into a bus. It was another half hour or so to San Vito, the first settlement of any size. Shirley showed me where to find an ATM, then wished me luck and we exchanged phone numbers.

Sadly, I learned it was an hour wait for the next bus on to Neily. Shirley and her friend had told me it was better to go via Paso Canoas, and I was beginning to believe them.

While I was waiting an elderly man came up and started talking to me. I couldn´t understand much of what he was saying, but at one point he started talking about the atomic bomb. I told him I couldn´t understand, but he kept talking to me, drawing looks from the few others around. After about five minutes he gave up - my confidence in my Spanish fluency was damaged. I hoped he was simply crazy.

The San Vito bus was packed, but I got a seat in the rear for the two-hour ride down the hills into Ciudad Neily. The bus station there was messy and packed with people. I was disappointed when I noticed the bus for my final destination of Golfito: It was an old yellow schoolbus.

Wasn´t it too late in the day for that rare pleasure?

Fortunately the bus wasn´t full, and I got to stretch my legs on the final stretch across the plains and up to the Pacific Ocean. However, for some reason it wasn´t the final stretch, since the driver stopped about 15 minutes short of our destination and made everyone get out and change to another bus. Everyone seemed confused, and I never got an explanation.

We pulled into Golfito around 3 Costa Rica time. Golfito, to my dismay, looked like a rather forelorn place without any particular attraction. The buildings were spread out along the main road for miles without any center. The hotel I´d circled in my Lonely Planet turned out to overlook an oil-tanker dock - it was that kind of town. Yet the first ferry for Puerto Jiminez didn´t leave until 11:30 the next day. Rather than splurge on hiring a private boat I decided to tough it out and stay at the previously-mentioned hotel, which had changed its name to Hotel Golfito. I got an interior room for 6000 colones ($12) - it was a primitive affair, but I was looking forward to splurging for the next couple of nights in Puerto Jiminez.

My reasoning was that I could try to average $50 per night, staying at cheap places for two nights and then going for $100 luxury about every third night. However, once I actually sat down on the bed I began having a change of heart. The concrete walls of the interior room seemed to close in around me, and when I looked at the claptrap cinderblock enclosure built around the bathroom my first thought was of the jerry-built cells in Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The mattress was thin, the pillows scratchy, and the box-spring unstable. But the real problem was the loud noises coming from the common room - a baby bawling, a child shouting, a TV blaring, and occasional shouts from the parents. In the hotel pamphlet on the floor I read that the building had been converted from a bakery and theater, and that it was still owned by the same family that had set up shop there in the days of the United Fruit Company. It sounded like a good heritage, but the quality simply was not up to my minimum standards. I spent the evening mapping out ways to avoid ¨roughing it¨ too much during my remaining time in Costa Rica. By 11 the family had turned in, and I did as well.

A day wasted in Cerro Punta, Panama?

2005-07-07T18:21:00.000-04:00

For breakfast the next day naturally I went into the hotel dining room for a chance to try out the pancakes, which the Lonely Planet had featured in their entry for the hotel. Results: a bit on the heavy side, but that´s how pancakes are made in the mountains, right?

In the lobby the news was showing about the attacks in London.

Next I made two short hikes, both along the main road. Essentially Cerro Punta is set in a farming valley among forested hills. There are some large pastures, and the steeper slopes are covered in little vegetable patches, most of which were being worked on by large squads of workers as I passed along. The horses seemed unperturbed by my perambulation, but the cattle were interested in me and one bull felt it necessary to run along a pasture fence bellowing, claiming its territory I gather. I had the whole area explored and photographed by 11, so I headed back to the hotel, just when the skies opened and a rainshower began.

At the supermarket they didn´t have La Prensa until 11:30. I stopped by again at 12, but they still didn´t have it. Instead I bought a cheap celebrity rag, then went back to my room and took a nap.

I whiled away the afternoon on the patio wondering if I shouldn´t have continued on to someplace else. It rained off-and-on throughout the afternoon. It took me only an hour to read the cheap Panamanian newspaper cover to cover. Fortunately a Panamanian couple came along and we had a short conversation in Spanish - I flubbed often enough that they switched to English for a while, but they seemed really happy I was visiting Cerro Punta. Later, the woman came back with a funny look on her face. ¨¿Se enterró de las noticias?¨Yes, I had seen the news on the TV.

For dinner I ordered ¨creole fish,¨which had a kind of salsa sauce I´d never tasted before. Satisfied, I again went to bed at 7:30.

Transcontinental journey

2005-07-06T18:02:00.000-04:00

The next morning I got up fairly early and again made my way across to the Cafe Europeo for a cinnemon de canela. I talked to the woman at the desk about getting an issue of La Prensa - a lack of reading material other than Lonely Planet was getting to me - but it turned out that La Prensa wouldn´t be delivered until the first plane of the day arrived in Bocas. She thought that would be at around 9:30, but it never came so I went without reading material another day.

I checked out and went over to the dock and bought a ticket on the water taxi to Almirante for $3. It took a while before the boat arrived, but I enjoyed listening to the patois of the various captains of other water taxis. I couldn´t understand it except once when I heard the words ¨cocaine¨and ¨5 years.¨

On the ride out to Almirante on the mainland I sat next to Lawrence, a 60-something heavyset man who, as we pulled away from the dock, waved affectionately to a 25-ish dark-skinned woman in a bikini top. ¨One of my girlfriends,¨ he said, ¨I´ve going to visit another one in Almirante.¨ He said he also had one in Changuinola. ¨They like Gringos here!¨ He also told me that the car ferry that happened to be docked in Bocas as we pulled away came from Russia. It had been designed for the Baltic, and since its motor was cooled by seawater it couldn´t go very fast in the warm waters of Bocas del Toro.

The water was almost perfectly smooth as we zipped across the bay under a clear blue sky. Lawrence talked about how he´d run a retail shop in Sedona, Ariz., for 30 years before moving to Bocas two years earlier. He said almost everything in town was less than five years old. That tracked with what Tim and Blanche said the previous night: they knew developers who had been building in the area.

We pulled into Almirante, a town filled with metal-roof shacks built on stilts over the swampy terrain. Taxi touts ran into the dock area, but Lawrence had offered to show me the bus stop, saying it was only a couple hundred yards. It was, but that was the wrong bus stop. I had to go another kilometer on foot after asking directions several times. As I was walking the main drag out of town I felt a sharp pain in my head. Someone must have thrown a rock at me, but I never heard a clatter or saw the rock. Since there was no obvious culprit I just kept on going, rubbing my head a little. I tried to console myself by imagining that it was a taxi driver who´d missed out on my business.

It wasn´t a long wait at the side of the road before the ¨colectivo¨ bus to David showed up. The ride was about three hours. First we got to see some good views of the bay, then the highway rose into the mountains that form the neck of the Americas. I was hoping to see both the Atlantic and Pacific at the same time, but the weather clouded up and a rainshower started just as we crested the Continental Divide. The Pacific was never visible.

We pulled into David and I switched to the bus for Cerro Punta, a small town in the mountains whose main attractions were said to be the cool climate and mountain hikes. It was an easy 90-minute ride up into the lightly-forested hills north of David. There were more rainshowers - actually it was the first rain I´d seen of the rainy season. But it stopped raining before we pulled into Cerro Punta after what seemed like dozens of stops to drop off and pick up passengers at every little hamlet along the way.

The Hotel Cerro Punta was almost a dead-ringer for the type of motel my family used to frequent when visiting U.S. national parks back in the 1980´s. It had varnished wood interiors interspaced with lime-green-painted walls. The owner was a lavishly-polite woman who seemed almost overwhelmed with the notion of checking me in for a whole two night stay (at $22 per night). The room was a little threadbare and the linen rather scratchy, but it wasn´t a dump. To my knowledge, it was the only hotel in town.

For dinner I ate in the hotel restaurant: fried chicken with rice. I learned a couple of stock Spanish phrases from listening to the polite banter of the owner, who was doubling as a waitress that evening. There appeared to be two other couples staying at the hotel, but they weren´t in the dining room when I was there.

I went to bed at 8 wondering what I might do the next day. There didn´t seem to be much in Cerro Punta.

Killing a day in Bocas del Toro

2005-07-05T17:47:00.000-04:00

In the morning I realized just how cheap my hotel was: as I shifted my weight the planks underneath the thin mattress collapsed onto the floor - I jumped off just in time to avoid injury. I carefully put the planks back together, then went into the bathroom to inspect the plumbing. The water was ice-cold and there was really no pressure at all in the shower. I washed under my arms and decided to do the rest at my luxury hotel - because I planned to check in early!

For breakfast I sauntered over to the Cafe Europeo to try out some of the cinnemon rolls. I learned from the waiter that the Spanish name for cinnemon roll is ¨cinnemon de canela,¨ which seems a little redundant (canela means cinnemon), but I heard someone else say it so I guessed they weren´t putting me on. Then I went back to my dumpy hotel room and sat around till the cleaning woman came by. I used the excuse to have a Spanish conversation (sometimes I found myself making extra requests just to see what would happen - this was one of those cases, since I actually didn´t wish to remain any longer). Then I checked out and headed a hundred feet down the street to the Tropical Suites where I checked in to luxury.

How long had it been since I´d taken a bath in a jacuzzi tub? I don´t remember, but it felt quite good. So good I really didn´t feel like leaving my hotel room. So I didn´t. I just watched TV for most of the afternoon: ¨Biloxi Blues,¨ followed by a movie about the early history of the AIDS epidemic starring Alan Alda.

For dinner I returned to the same restaurant I´d visited the previous night. Another pasta Bolognese and a whiskey were brought out. Meanwhile a table full of American and British young people were being entertained by a guy who liked playing Bob Marley covers and knew only a couple other songs it seemed, including one that had the line: ¨You can get another wife, but you can never get another mother in your life.¨ It seemed like a bit of overkill since the restaurant had Bob Marley playing on the sound system - but I was simply happy that the singer didn´t bother me.

At a nearby table there was an elderly man, an old codger who kept pestering the staff in English, and his wife. At some point he looked at me and said, ¨You look like a professional.¨ I admitted I was, and he invited me over to their table. It turned out that Tim and his wife Blanche lived at 74th St. on the Upper East Side and were spending a couple months in Bocas. Not only that, but they were also staying at the Tropical Suites. He´d had cancer and beaten it, but it had left him with occasional mental gaps - evidently the cause of his grumpiness and inability to interact appropriately with the staff. But he was happy to know me. He´d worked as a financial reporter before retiring and wanted to introduce me ¨to UBS.¨I didn´t feel like going into whom exactly he wanted to introduce me to, so I just left it at that. We exchanged contact information though.

I went to bed at 9 after watching Miss Marple and CSI Las Vegas. (They had Spanish subtitles, so it amounted to a minor amount of Spanish practice.) The blinking neon light outside kept me up till around 10:30 when it shut off.

On to Panama

2005-07-04T17:11:00.000-04:00

I got up around 6:30, showered, and read in my Lonely Planet book. I didn't really feel like trying to get breakfast since I knew nobody would be willing to change my "large" notes around town. Instead I checked out and went to the ticket booth and got my ticket for Sixaola at the border with Panama ($2). On my way walking to the bus stop I passed a rasta-looking man with no shirt on who was looking over his shoulder at the tanned Europeon women (French, I later learned) who were also going to the bus stop. ¨White rats! That´s what you are, white rats!¨

Then he saw me and asked for cigarettes. When I said I had none he pointed at my bulging pocket - I was happy to be able to turn him town by showing that the square bulge was caused by my camera.

I listened to the French girls talking to each other about nothing in particular. Then I almost got on a bus going the wrong way since I didn't understand what the driver said to me.

The seat was even tighter on the local bus to Sixaola than on the express to Cahuita the previous day. Furtunately I had an empty seat next to me for part of the way. The scenery was largely of agricultural fields, banana plantations, and little towns. Puerto Viejo looked like a nice little place - that's where Laura had been going the previous day.

At Sixaola two hours later there was a small cluster of taxi touts waiting to jump on the gringo tourists. I stuck close to a Belgian couple and we made our way up to the border control post. The young woman of the couple was nervous - she thought we might need a stamp from the Red Cross to get across the border, but this proved unnecessary. Next we got to cross the picturesque railroad bridge that leads into Panama. A sign in Spanish warned to use the pedestrian catwalk instead of walking on the boards nailed to the railroad ties, but the pedestrian catwalk only went halfway across the river. Naturally, we did as the locals and walked along the tracks.

In the Panama border control post the offical was arguing with a young woman from Spain who believed no passport was needed to cross into Panama. We were allowed to cut in front of her to get our passports chopped. Next a crowd of taxi drivers came up and started offering their business. I was reluctant, but the Belgian couple convinced me to join them for a $3 per head ride directly to the boat dock - we probably got our money's worth for the 45 minute drive through the banana plantations.

Along the way the radio blared news of a Bush speech on the 4th of July. I could just feel the Belgian girl turn toward me and contemplate a snide anti-Bush comment, but she said nothing. Later, her partner asked me why I wasn´t celebrating the national holiday. ¨I´m celebrating by going on vacation,¨I said.

The boat dock was a ramshackle building next to a picturesque little canal. After a 40 minute wait the launch pulled up, deposited its tourist passengers, and we were allowed aboard. The captain of the boat kept a fairly brisk pace on most of the narrow, mangrove canals. Now and then we'd hear a thud of a log passing underneath. The boat slowed whenever we came across a family or group of fishermen in canoes - except for once when the captain didn't notice and we nearly upset a small craft. Some of the fishing techniques looked pretty primitive. For a brief stretch it looked like we were heading into the open ocean, and the waves started getting a little rough, but the captain kept the boat between the shore and some breakers that looked like they were breaking over a shallow sandbar of some kind.

Bocas del Toro is a picturesque town built on the tip of a forested island. There were some nice new hotels, but the town was pretty primitive and most of the buildings were claptrap. I decided to spurge for one night and got a $96 hotel for the second night in Bocas. For the first night I planned to stay in a primitive place called "Las Brisas." Despite the name (meaning ¨The Breezes,¨ I was able to secure a room with air-con for $23, though it looked dingy and uneappealing. On the streets there were a couple of touts trying to get me to follow them to hotels. Although I was able to find some places to speak Spanish in Cahuita, in Bocas it seemed the interlocutors were more interested in guiding me into English.

For dinner I went to a nice restaurant on a dock overlooking the bay. I got what had earlier, in Brazil, become my standard Latin American meal: pasta bolognese with imported whiskey. The service was slow but the food was excellent, as was the view. I spent at least three hours watching the locals boating in and out of neighborhood docks, ferrying family members along the shore and to the other islands just across the bay in front.

I turned in early at around 7:30. The bed was lumpy but the air conditioning worked well - it was a dump, though.

Difficult first day

2005-07-03T16:53:00.000-04:00

I got up at 5:10 am and arrived at LaGuardia at 6. Though the streets had been deserted, the US Airways terminal was mobbed, but an official came by and allowed me to cut in line and check in to make my 7:00 flight.

There was no substantive scenery for the first flight, until we arrived over Ft. Lauderdale, with its extensive suburban neighborhoods intertwined with boat channels and swampy lakes. It was only an hour layover in Ft. Lauderdale, then on to the flight for San Jose. We passed over the Florida Keys and the Gulf, making a southwesterly course to avoid thunderstorms. The man adjacent to me insisted on switching seats so he could use his GPS - I could have told him where we were just as easily. It seems to me that many GPS fanatics are obsessed with their location but have little sense of where they are. When I mentioned we'd just passed the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, the man showed little interest, until I let him try his GPS and confirm it.

We flew in over Lake Nicaragua and Isla Omotepe, then over the rugged green landscape of Guanacaste, sighting the volcano northwest of San Jose. It was spouting a line of soot and ash. From the window San Jose appeared as a large cluster of corrugated metal-topped buildings.

At the airport I passed Immigration with no difficulty and ordered an airport taxi for the Terminal Caribe, for $13, a ripoff I thought, though I guess there's an airport charge. I practiced Spanish a little with the driver, but hardly enough to boast of. At the terminal I got lunch of fried chicken with tortillas ($1), then bought my ticket for the 1:30 Cahuita bus. There I met Laura, an artist from the Carolinas who'd bought her ticket for Costa Rica the day before to attend a wedding. She said she was impulsive, but otherwise we had a sensible conversation during the 3.5 hour journey to Cahuita. The view from the bus was of forested mountain scenery, fog, followed by flat agricultural lands near the ocean. Most of the towns were tumble-down affairs without much sign of global tourism, though there were plenty of cabinas for rent here and there.

At Cahuita I walked around the small town looking for cheap lodging. I ended up at the Hotel Arrecife, for $15. It was a primitive room with a fan and cold shower, but otherwise okay. I had thought it would have a beach of some kind, but I had to retreat from the seashore when fruit started falling around me. I gather some male monkeys like to drop things on people to show off for females. So it wasn't a very luxurious place to spend the night.

In the evening I headed into town to look for food. The town was dark and the people were clustering around little darkened bars and parkbenches. I ended up deciding to just buy bread and water at a supermarket. Alas, the one I chose wouldn't make change for a 5000 colon note (US $10) and I had to pay with a mix of dollar bills and colon coins. The lack of change is one of the difficulties of visiting the developing world.

Exhausted, I turned in at 7 pm, wondering if I'd be bothered by the crashes of fruit or branches falling on the ground every so often.

One more day

2005-07-02T17:49:00.000-04:00

Last day in New York.

In the morning Anand and Priya somehow managed to get up before 7 and be off. I was exhausted, and slept in till 9. Naturally, once I realized they'd gone for good, I set about systematically looting the place.

Actually, I set about watching foreign films in their DVD collection. First I watched "Jim et Jules," a Truffaut film. I don't understand the allure of Truffaut, though the cimematography and atmosphere were good. The plot was a simple love triangle. Perhaps the critics simply like the simplicity of it? Next up was "Abre los ojos," about a rich playboy whose face is disfigured in an accident. Even with the subtitles I had a hard time picking out Spanish words and, since the movie didn't appeal, gave up after an hour.

Economizing, I had corn muffins for breakfast and lunch. Then I popped in "The Guide," a Hindi movie set mainly in Udaipur and Rajasthan. I quickly realized how much more appeal Bollywood musicals have once one has actually visited the places used as backdrops. The film was rich with humor and potential conversation topics.

For dinner my thoughts naturally turned to the "Curry Hill" options. But going to Chennai Garden alone didn't seem that fun, so I opted for pasta at Sotto Cinque. Alas, Sotto Cinque was gone! Dios mio!

Was former neighborhood resident Dave Hully their entire market?

In honor of that ghost of New York past, I went to Noodles on 28 instead, carrying Priya's "Che" bio for reading. Last true New York meal for 2 months!

Last party in NYC

2005-07-01T23:50:00.000-04:00

Although I hadn't yet left New York, on Friday I was essentially already traveling: I was living out of my travel bag, sleeping on Priya and Anand's guest bed, and relaxing. During the day Priya worked on a statistical project for her old boss, while we watched documentary films on DVD, including a moving film about war photographer James Nachtway. Nachtway, a soft-spoken and quiet man with a shock of slick salt & pepper hair and craggy features, covered the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Indonesia, Palestine, Central America, and many other places not shown in the film. His compassion for his photographic subjects is central to his work, since obtaining their consent and even cooperation is essential.

Anand, Priya and I decided to make Cafe Noir our last pit-stop before our respective trips (they were leaving for Washington, DC, on Saturday). There we met Jeff, Jose, Andrew, Alison, Alex, Don, and Natalia. Jose gave me travel advice about El Salvador (basically saying it would be safe for me to go), while Andrew had me type out a wireless message in Italian to some erstwhile Roman admirer of Alison. I practiced a minor amount of Spanish with Natalia.

We grabbed dinner at an open-air Turkish place that featured American ragtime and Pops banjo music. I had a raki and Turkish meatballs. Don and I told stories of our Kerala boat trip and negotiating rug purchases in Madurai with Dave. Our group must have been rather loud, because the oldish banjo player thanked us for leaving.

After that I teased Anand, who was obviously dead-tired, about his purportedly "dragging us" to a salsa place - and we did in fact happen to walk past the studio where he and Priya had taken lessons earlier in the year. I pursuaded the gang to go up to the second floor where we joined in four or five dance numbers. Natalia and I managed to look fairly good doing merengue for two songs, but we flopped on the salsa - it was just too fast for me. Anand and Priya put in a few good moves in their corner, and Don had a chance to practice as well. To wrap up the experience, an older man invited Priya onto the floor for some swing dancing.

Back at the apartment at 11, Don and I watched "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" on DVD while Priya and Anand collapsed in a heap on the couch. When the movie ended Don and I made a cursory effort to move Anand into a more comfortable sleeping position on the couch. Futile. Don opted not to take home his (Dave's) first-aid kit, the source of a running joke between us.

T minus 3 days

2005-06-30T14:51:00.000-04:00

A lot happened over the two months after I began planning this trip in earnest. I studied about 1.25 hours of Spanish daily (on average) in May and June, with a focus on vocabulary. I attended 12 salsa lessons with Maria Torres on the West Side (along with dozens of other beginners like me, including Monica Lewinsky). I placed my furniture and books in storage in Harlem (June 27) and vacated my apartment on the Upper East Side (June 30). My temporary quarters were with Anand and Priya, from June 30 to July 3.

I also thought a lot about my upcoming trip to Central America. My intent was to focus on language-learning and history, but also on relaxing and experiencing a single region rather than rushing from place to place (though I had no regrets about earlier trips and I think any visit, no matter how short, can be highly educational). I saw my Central America trip as a way of connecting with a place and a political history that earlier affected my life: My mom's visit to Nicaragua in the mid-1980s during the Sandinista period, along with my mom's political activism in general, inspired me to take an interest in international politics and public policy. Those interests had led me to study political science and to travel. As important as my mom's visit was to me, my knowledge of the region and the history was scant, so this was my chance to turn what was a childhood recollection of far-away news events into a real personal experience.

Unfortunately, much of what my mom learned and did on her church-organized fact-finding trip had been lost. When she showed us our slides in 2003 she had forgotten a lot of what she did, and my dad and I weren't able to find any notes about her trip itinerary. So something that had been sufficiently real in the 1980s to inspire me had already faded to just a few slides and dim recollections. Here is what I knew:

* My mom's group first went to Mexico City for an orientation session on Latin American politics. Subsequent to her visit the hotel she stayed at was totally destroyed in the Mexico City earthquake.

* The first stop was San Salvador, El Salvador, a small city set amid picturesque forested hills. She noted that the atmosphere was tense, soldiers everywhere, especially around churches. Her group spoke to priests that described being shadowed by American-made Cherokee Chief trucks with tinted windows, the characteristic Death Squad vehicles. They visited the church of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who had been killed in 1980 by El Salvador's military Death Squads for his activism. (Romero had specifically spoken out against U.S. aid to El Salvador. The El Salvador Truth Commission officially found that his assassination was ordered by Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, leader of a Death Squad unit and later leader of the right-wing political party ARENA.) They visited the U.S. embassy, heavily-guarded she recalled.

* She visited Managua, Nicaragua, and was impressed that the streets seemed much quieter and the people more free. My dad recalled his anxiety at the time, with her visiting an area portrayed as a war zone by the press - and how his anxiety melted away after calling her and learning from the hotel receptionist that the church group had gone down the street for ice-cream cones. They visited the U.S. embassy and found it guarded only by unarmed youths - a fact she interpreted as a sign of a more stable and unintimidating atmosphere.

* Their group visited a couple of rural refugee camps, one of which may have been an education center for war orphans. She was particularly enthusiastic for the Sandinista efforts to promote literacy. As I recall, some of her guides said the literacy-centers were described by Contra propaganda as Communist military training camps.

* As a child, I believed that her group had obtained an audience with Daniel Ortega, but this may have been a childhood fantasy.

My dad sent me some of the slides from her trip, which I planned to post.

Complete itinerary, updated

2005-06-10T12:44:00.000-04:00

(Names highlighted in green indicate a city with an overnight stay.)

Jul. 3 - Flight to San Jose, bus to Cahuita, near border with Panama. Hotel Arrecife.
Jul. 4 - Bus to Panama border. Taxi to dock near Changuinola, then water taxi to Bocas del Toro, Panama. Hotel Las Brisas.
Jul. 5 - Bocas del Toro. Hotel Tropical Suites.
Jul. 6 - Water taxi to Almirante, Panama. Bus to David, Panama. Bus to Cerro Punta, Panama. Hotel Cerro Punta.
Jul. 7 - In Cerro Punta.
Jul. 8 - Bus to Costa Rica border at Sabalito. Taxi to San Vito, bus to Ciudad Neily, bus to Golfito. Hotel Golfito Bay.
Jul. 9 - Boat to Puerto Jiminez. Hotel Iguana Lodge (the Pearl).
Jul. 10 - At the Iguana Lodge, Puerto Jiminez.
Jul. 11 - " "
Jul. 12 - Early morning bus to San Jose. Hotel Santo Tomas.
Jul. 13 - Bus to Los Chiles at the border with Nicaragua. Hotel near the docks at Los Chiles.
Jul. 14 - Noon boat to San Carlos, Nicaragua. Boat down Rio San Juan to El Castillo. Hotel Albergue El Castillo.
Jul. 15 - Early boat back to San Carlos, further boat up Rio Frio to Los Chiles, bus to San Jose (via Ciudad Quesada). Hotel Santo Tomas.
Jul. 16 - In San Jose. Hotel Santo Tomas.
Jul. 17 - Heredia. Hotel America.
Jul. 18 - School in Heredia. Hotel America.
Jul. 19 - " "
Jul. 20 - " "
Jul. 21 - " "
Jul. 22 - School in Heredia. Bus to San Jose. Hotel Santo Tomas.
Jul. 23 - Early bus to Manuel Antonio with Lisa. Hotel Vista Verde.
Jul. 24 - In Manuel Antonio. Hotel Vista Verde.
Jul. 25 - (National Holiday.) Bus to San Jose. Bus to Nicoya. Taxi to Playa Samara. Hotel Playa Samara.
Jul. 26 - School in Playa Samara. Hotel Playa Samara.
Jul. 27 - " "
Jul. 28 - " "
Jul. 29 - " "
Jul. 30 - Bus to Nicoya, bus to San Jose. Hotel Santo Tomas.
Jul. 31 - San Jose, at Hotel Santo Tomas.
Aug. 1 - School in Heredia. Hotel Valladolid.
Aug. 2 - School in Heredia. Hotel America.
Aug. 3 - " "
Aug. 4 - " "
Aug. 5 - School in Heredia (graduation). Bus to San Jose. Hotel Santo Tomas.
Aug. 6 - Bus to border with Nicaragua. Bus to intersection on road to Managua. Truck ride into Granada. Hotel Dulce del Mar.
Aug. 7 - In Granada. Hotel San Martin.
Aug. 8 - ""
Aug. 9 - Bus to Managua. Tour of Zona Monumental for 1 hour. Bus to Leon. Hotel El Convento.
Aug. 10 - In Leon. Hotel El Convento.
Aug. 11 - Bus to Honduras border near Chinandega. Bus to Chuloteca. Bus to Tegucigalpa. Hotel Boston.
Aug. 12 - Bus to Copan Ruinas. Hotel Plaza Copan.
Aug. 13 - Copan Ruinas, tour of ruins. Hotel Yaragua.
Aug. 14 - Bus to Nueva Ocotopeque, near border with El Salvador. Hotel Internacional.
Aug. 15 - Bus to El Poy, border with El Salvador. Bus to Metapan. Bus to Guatemala border. Bus to Chiquimula. Hotel Hernandez.
Aug. 16 - 7 hour bus to Flores. Hotel Canoas.
Aug. 17 - 1 hour minibus to El Remate. Hotel Sun Breeze.
Aug. 18 - Tour Tikal in early morning. Stay in El Remate. Hotel Sun Breeze.
Aug. 19 - Bus to Belize City. Radisson Hotel (old Fort George Hotel).
Aug. 20 - Belize City. Hotel Chateau Caribbean.
Aug. 21 - " "
Aug. 22 - " "
Aug. 23 - " "
Aug. 24 - Flight to San Jose, via San Salvador, TACA airlines. Arrives in the evening. Hotel Santo Tomas.
Aug. 25 - Dad arrives. Stay in San Jose. Hotel Santo Tomas.
Aug. 26 - Take half-day tour to Volcan Poas. San Jose. Hotel Santo Tomas.
Aug. 27 - Early afternoon flight on Nature Air plane to Quepos. Stay nearby in Manuel Antonio. Hotel Costa Verde.
Aug. 28 - Manuel Antonio. Hotel Costa Verde.
Aug. 29 - Nature Air midmorning flight from Quepos to San Jose. Bus to Fortuna via Ciudad Quesada. Hotel San Bosco.
Aug. 30 - Move to Arenal Lodge 20 km west of Fortuna.
Aug. 31 - Taxi to Fortuna, bus to Quesada and second bus to return to San Jose. Stay at Hotel Aurola-Holiday Inn.
Sep. 1 - Both Dad and Anders leave Costa Rica. Dad leaves in morning. Anders leaves San Jose at 12:50 for FLL, arrives LGA at 10:19 pm.