Mint Jelly

Mal Pais, Costa Rica

Happy Monday everybody! I trust this message finds everyone well. So, once again, I have been delinquent in my travel emails. I know that y'all have been on the edge of your seat for the last week, but without further ado let me fill you in on my adventures so far. I arrived in San Jose last Tuesday and left the next morning as soon as possible. Like most Central American capitals, San Jose is crowded, dirty and is without much to do. I had been stuck there on the once before on my last trip to Central America with my friend Kevin for three days looking for a yellow fever shot and did not wish to repeat the experience.

I first made my way to the cloud forest of Monteverde, where I had been before but had neglected to do the canopy ziplines, because it would've blown my daily budget and have regretted it ever since. The canopy ziplines, as the name suggests, are 11 separate ziplines that span the drastic canyons and gullies of Monteverde. You are fitted with a dubious harness and a comical helmet and then attached to a metal handlebar that has a wheel in it. They then fit the wheel over the zipline, give you a little push and you're sent zipping out into space. Some take you through conveniently placed holes in the canopy, others over the forest entirely. If you're interested in looking at fauna or spotting the rare blue spangled quetzal, this is not the experience for you.

From Monteverde I made an extremely hot, bumpy and generally uncomfortable trip to Montezuma, which is a beach town on the pacific coast. Montezuma was chalk-full of spring-breakers (of which I now am one, but am having a hard time admitting. I'm a traveller, damn it!) and generally unremarkable, though I did meet some cool people.

Yesterday I moved up the coast a bit to my present location of Mal Pais. Despite it's name, which means literally "bad country", Mal Pais is my sort of town. Here, it is all about the surfing. Long blonde-haired, bronzed-skinned surfers of every sex and nationality strut up and down the long main drag (if you can call it that, its really a dirt road) which is lined with beautiful flowers, mango trees and thatch roofed surf shops. Howlers monkeys bicker overhead (which sounds like a 800 pound gorilla mating with a haemorrhoidal jaguar) as purple-bodied, red legged crabs scuttle underneath your feet and in fact the street is littered with the remains of crabs who perhaps scuttled when they should have skiddaddled.

Today I decided to take up the local hobby and it turns out the last nine months of working, going to school and doing other decidedly non-surf like activities have not made me any better at surfing. I still suck. I did manage to get a hellacious burn, though. It seems that my skin as accustomed to the sun as I thought it was. I'm on fire. All I want to do right now is crawl naked into a vat of mint jelly. And that's the mental image that I'll leave you with. Me...Naked...Mint jelly. I'll let you're imaginations do the rest. Moe.

The Costa with the Mosta

Seattle, WA

I think I have a problem. Maybe its time for an intervention or perhaps I should join a support group or something. Hi...my name's Mike...and I like to go places.

But this time it's not my fault. I swear. Seriously. All I planned to do this Spring Break was relax in Oly, maybe pop up to Seattle a couple of times, but really just chill, drink a few beers and do other what-nots. But, when a few weeks ago my mom asked me if I wanted to go to Nicaragua to help her look for property, I obviously said yes, because that's the kind of guy I am. I'm a team player... a family man at heart.

She ended up buying tickets to San Jose, Costa Rica rather than Managua, Nicaragua because it was cheaper and since the property that she wanted to look at was in the very south of Nicaragua, it was just as close. So, I didn't even think about this trip at all. I've been busy with school, you know finals and all of that. I've been letting my mom plan and plan to her little heart's content. Until I got a phone call a couple of days ago when she told me that she decided not to go. Huh? It turns out that we were scheduled to go during Semana de Santa (Easter week) and the beaches were going to be packed with partying locals. Then she asked me if I still wanted to go by myself. Partying locals, I thought to myself, hmmm...yep, I think that I can struggle through it.

So, manana morning, I'm off to Costa Rica. I've decided to stay there, since I've seen more of Nicaragua than I have of Costa Rica. I'll be back on the 30th, so you can expect a few emails over the course of the next couple of weeks. I hope the rest of you enjoy your time off or if you have to work, I feel for ya'. Peace, moe