The Happy Hippie Hut

Olympia, WA

What’s up all? Well, yes it’s true. I’ve been home for almost a week now, but I feel that you all deserve closure on my Costa Rica vacation. Hmmm. Does that cross the pretentious line? Nah. So in the last email, I illustrated my time in Puerto Viejo and how I met Laura and Jolen, a nice couple from San Diego. Well they convinced me to head south with them to the Happy hippie commune (my name, not theirs) in Punto Mono or point monkey in English (that one’s real), down near the Panama border. The commune is four miles from the nearest town, so we had to take a boat to get there (or make a long muddy hike through bug and snake infested jungle which I would have been all for if not for my laziness), but it was scenic and we enjoyed the ride over the rolling waves.

The commune itself is beautiful. It’s fairly self-sustaining with subsistence farming, solar power and is tended to with peace, love, harmony and other bullshit. I kid. Actually, the people there were very nice and very welcoming. Only a couple of them had that disconcerting, vacant, everything’s just so fucking beautiful I just can’t handle it and might have to machete crazy, look in their eye.

The fact is I’m totally used to the vegan, soy-based, non-animal tested, organic, communal lifestyle. At Evergreen I’m surrounded by it, after all, and I can definitely appreciate certain aspects of it. Nonetheless, it was certainly entertaining to watch Laura’s reaction when she was informed by a long curly haired Israeli dude, that basil is an herb, not a spice, as we all held hands in a large circle around our recently prepared and blessed dinner and one-by-one told the group our name, where we were from and our favorite spice.
That night, after numerous games of shithead (the card game I mentioned last email) there was a truly kick-ass drum circle (one thing hippies can do better than almost anybody). Everybody had an instrument and/or was dancing. There were guitars, flutes, obviously drums and other knick-knacks to beat, shake or rattle. I had a maraca. Not a pair of maracas. Just one. Which, honestly, fits right in there with my musical abilities.

We stayed for two days, basking the quiet glory of a peaceful place. Finally, however, we had to make the long trek back to San Jose. My new friends headed on to Monteverde, where I started my trip and I came home.
So here I am. A week into the new quarter, sitting in my school’s library writing this email, about to walk through the cold drizzle to my house. I can feel the heartfelt pity your sympathetic souls are sending me right now. Thank you. I appreciate it. Be good. Moe.

A Day in the Life: Puerto Viejo

Olympia, WA

I open my eyes and pull myself to my feet. I'm bleary eyed but not to worse from the wear of last night. I wade through the sea of hammocks trying to get to the front desk to see what time it is. I neglected to bring anything that gives time and had accidentally woken up before 9:00 am the last two days. Hmmmm. The clock says 10 till 10, well ... all right. That's more like it.

Walking down the main drag of Puerto Viejo I'm frustrated with how crowded it is. It's Semana Santa and it appears that most of the country has shut down and come to the beach. I run into a couple from San Diego that I met on the bus a couple of days before. We sit and eat breakfast: Pineapple, banana and mango drowned in yogurt and granola. We sip on watermelon juice and gripe about the fact that the stupid reception clock was wrong and it's actually still only 8:30 in the morning. Oh well, nothing to be done about it now. We hurry back to our hostel to get ready to go to the beach as a procrastinating sloth peers down at us and seems to say "Whoa, now...slow down and take it easy."

We take the sloth’s advice, ease our way down the jungle trail to the beach and prepare for a day of sloth… the sin, not the animal. We laze on the beach, once in awhile getting up to use the boogie board I rented or to play Frisbee with Chancho the German Sheppard who seems to be waiting for us (or perhaps the Frisbee) at the beach everyday.

After a hard day at the beach we retire back to our hostel for a little nappy-poo. This truly is one of the nicest hostels I’ve ever been in. Tile work and mosaics decorate practically every square inch of walk way and walls and when there’s no tile work, there some other work of art. The place is jam-packed for Semana Santa with the afore-mentioned hammocks and tents that cover every available blade of grass. Beautiful girls wearing little more than a skimpy sarong and a bikini, lazily drape themselves over any available piece of furniture.

It’s not easy, but I do manage to get a few winks in amongst the reggae music and the general revelry. There’s a Norwegian a couple of hammocks down who I haven’t seen out of his hammock all week and I get the general impression that if I were to return to Puerto Viejo in a couple years, he’d still be there with his little iPod and speakers and joint hanging out of his mouth. Well… I don’t want to end up like that guy, so yet again I pull myself up to my feet.

I find my new friends and we play a few rounds of an entertaining card game with the unfortunate name of “shithead”. As we play we sip a fruity beverage that the owner of the hostel has whipped up. Its sweet taste belies its strength, but we take no heed.

Later we leave the hostel and walk into town. This place reeks of reggae. It looks like it, feels like it and definitely smells like it. Heavy-lidded Rastafari saunter up and down the streets, a joint dangling precariously from their lips as their heads bob up and down to the Marley beats.

We grab something to eat, perhaps a casado (the national dish that consists of meat, rice and beans and a some veggies) or maybe a pizza and down some Imperial beers. Afterward, we head down to Bambu, the reggae disco, but it’s too crowded. The place is overflowing with the melange of high dread-locked locals and drunken sunburnt tourists.

So we head back to the hostel. There’s a huge bonfire on the beach, around which people are belting out truly horrendous versions of bad songs. Perfect. We sit down and join in the off-key crooning of such classics as Hotel California and La Bamba. Finally, however, my eyelids tell me that they’ve had enough for one day and I pick my way through the slumbering masses to my hammock and fall asleep content and ready to do it again the next day.

A quick note, before I get any more hate mail. This is a retroactive email. I’m actually home now in cold and rainy Oly. So please, no more death threats. Peace (and I mean that), Moe.

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

Pig's Head Stew

Barracoa, Cuba

All right, so they looked like potatoes. I ate the bananas. I ate the yuca. I didn't eat what was obviously meaty and I ate the potatoes. It was only after I had passed off the rest to one of my new friends that I realized that I had watched them make the stew and the stew didn't contain any potatoes. I walked up to another one of my friends who was still greedily consuming the stew, pointed to what I thought were potatoes and asked "What's that?". He smiled with pigs head stew dripping down his chin, "Brain. Es good, no?" I nodded gingerly, "Uh, si. Pass me the rum."

We were in Barracoa on the far East coast of Cuba, a couple of hours northeast of Guantanomo. I had met a bunch of kids, when I was out walking, who were celebrating one of their 21st birthdays. I was took a picture of them and they invited me up to their apartment to hang out with them. They were a boisterous group, saturated in their home made rum, but really cool kids, who weren't trying to hustle me for anything. They invited me to a party the next day that they were having for the birthday boy. They were having it at a place out by the river outside of town. They promised mucho rum and comida creole. Hmmm. Creole food, I thought. To me creole food is jambalaya, crayfish pie and gumbo. So I thought sure, this will be a cultural experience. Sometimes experiences can almost too cultural.

I, along with an American and a Swiss guy that my brother met along the way, met the kids at their apartment. Before we left, they told me to look into a pot. It contained onions, bananas, yuca and other assorted vegetables all sorted neatly around a fresh pig's head. They, of course, laughed at our naive shock and we laughed with them, mainly because I don't think that it really sunk in that at some point we were going to be expected to eat this.

So off we went. We caught a horse-drawn cart. One of the kids drove, while we passed around the rum and the driver sang and played guitar. When we finally got to the river we crossed the most rickety-assed, Indiana Jones bridge that I've ever seen (and I've seen a few) and came to a clearing that had a make-shift firepit. An older couple (friends or family of the birthday kid, I guess. I never really found out who they were) showed up and started to prepare the stew. The woman washed and peeled the vegetables, while the man chopped the pigs head to bits with a machete (seriously, I have pictures). He offered me the machete, but I passed. Anyway, we were having a good time, drinking more rum, dancing with a couple of the girls that had showed up and trying to sing along to Cuban songs that we didn't know the words to. Eventually, however, the stew was finished and the woman started passing out bowls. Of course, as guests, we were the first to be served. Suddenly, though I didn't eat breakfast, I wasn't very hungry, but really we didn't have much choice. It would have been rude to decline. It really wasn't that bad. As long as I ate around the meat, and just ate the bananas, the yuca and the potatoes.

I'll be home tomorrow night. If you haven't received a personal email from me since I've been here, don't worry, the emails been expensive and slow, so I've been neglecting you all equally. Oh yeah, I lost my cell phone, so if you would like to talk to me please call or email me your number. Ciao, Moe

Fren, you wan buy a seegar?

Trinidad, Cuba

What's up, kids? So, yes, I have been totally slacking, once again, on my group emails. However, to my defense, email isn't quite as readily available here in Cuba, as it was in Ecuador. Also all the email places are state run and 6 dollars an hour. Luckily, though it's expensive, at least it's excrutiatingly slow. Oh, how wistful I am for the days of gringolandia in Quito with it's pleathera of internet opportunities. Still, the blissful ignorance of the outside world has been nice, these past couple of weeks.

So let's see, last I left you, I was still in Havana waiting for my brother, Wil to arrive. He did, and after a day of misadventures, we found each other. We spent a few more days in Havana, walking the streets, taking day trips out to the beach (my skin finally looks almost healthy again), and listening to music. Our stay was highlighted by going to the Hotel Nacional and watching the Buena Vista Social Club. We had seen numerous bands trying to replicate their music, but nothing was like seeing the real thing. By the time Sunday rolled around, I was pretty sick of old Havana. Yes it's beautiful, but it chaulk full of hustlers, prostitutes, and German sex tourists, and that can get pretty old after awhile.

Also, one other thing about Cuba. Everyone who lives here, either works for, has a family member working for, or is somehow affiliated with the cigar industry. As a result, everyone has the exclusive hook-up with a cigar factory. During the hundred yards from the place I'm staying to the internet place, I was asked six hundred times if I wanted to buy a cigar. Eventually you hardly even notice it.

So finally we headed Cienfuegos, a nice little town, a bit more relaxed, with easy access to the beach. Here, we pretty much just lolled around the plazas, sipping rum and talking drunken European sailers and pretty cuban girls. From Cienfuegos, we headed east to Trinidad. Trinidad is a beautiful historical town, with old buildings with colonial architecture and red tiled roofs, and absolutely treacherous cobble stone streets.

We spent a few days taking hot bike rides to the beach, wandering around through market-places and sipping rum, while talking to pretty Cuban girls (this seems to be a national pastime). I would have to say, though, the highlight was a nightclub we went to one night called La Cueva. The club was in the countryside above the town and when you go in you descend about fifty feet or so, walk through a tunnel, and then come out into this huge cavern that they have converted into a discotech. It had to be the most ascthetically interesting nightclub I have ever been to. The thing is though, they charge ten dollars and then it's all you can drink. This keeps all of the cuban people out, which makes it a functionally boring club. Oh well.

I almost got y'all caught up. It'll have to wait for another time. Be good. Moe

Cuba Libre

Havana, Cuba

What's up everybody? So, it's been about five months since I've
written you all last. During that time I've mostly been working on the boat,
the details of which I'll not bore you with, since you all either are working on
the boat, have worked on the boat at some point, or have heard me talk about it
so much that it feels like you've worked on the boat. Anyway, I finished with
that for now, having earned enough money (I hope) to make it through the last
two quarters of my schooling. I have now a free three weeks before I need to be
home for Christmas (My mother's made it very clear that since I'll be in the
hemisphere this year, that I should at least be home for that) and three weeks,
I decided, is plenty of time for an ill advised adventure to Cuba. So without
any real preparation or thought about my trip, besides buying plane tickets, a
real pain in the ass since you I had to fly through the Bahamas, I find myself
in the middle of Havana writing you all this email.

As hostels don't really seem to be an option in Cuba, at least not so far, and
since the Cuba book that I bought is probably languishing amongst Bob Marley
cd's and Doritos bags in the dregs of my friend's car in Olympia, I guess I
really wouldn't know. So, I'm staying with a family. It's difficult to move
50ft in Havana viejo, the old touristy part of Havana, without some guy asking
you if you need any number of the plethora of services he can provide, ie. rooms,
drugs, women, tours, etc. After finding that all the hotels were at least 50
bucks a night, I let one of the hustlers take me to a family who rents a room
for 25 bucks a night. I'm sure that I can find one for less, but I like the old
lady who runs it, it feels fairly secure, and it's only a couple of blocks off
the main drag of old Havana. The guy, in return for finding me this place,
asked only that I buy him a thing of powdered milk for his son. Sure, why not,
I thought. At least it's for a good cause, and it can't be that expensive, so
when his Uncle, who had been tagging along asked for one as well, I said no
problem. I strode up to the counter in the store and confidently asked for two cans of their finest powdered milk. The cashier said, that'll be $11.50. Uh, make that
one.

Old Havana is beautiful. Narrow streets run between buildings with old colonial
arches, tall dark wood store fronts, and second floor balconies with iron work
reminiscent of the French quarter in New Orleans. Since this part of town is
UNESCO protected, they've done an admirable job restoring the buildings here,
but as soon as you leave this part of town, they fade quickly into crumbled
glory, and the wide streets become a playground of cars from my father's
childhood. How the people here have managed to keep these cars running for all
these years is beyond me, but the streets of Havana look like an old gangster
movie, with a few nondescript eastern European cars thrown in for good measure.
Night in Old Havana is exactly how I pictured it. Cuban salsa, flamenco, and
meringue wafts through the wooden lattice work out of every restaurant and bar.
Mojitos and Cuba Libres flowing, while people enjoy the food and atmosphere (all
right, I'm starting to sound like a restaurant guide). Anyway, last night
happened upon a flamenco show. A five piece band played and sang while a man
and a women first alternately danced and then together to the rythems of the
music. They flung their heels about with reckless abandon while their hands delicately floated through the air, smiling all the while. I've never been so impressed with a man in heels.

Anyway, I think that this is enough for now. My brother, Wil, will be joining
me later today, assuming everything goes as planned, and we will be wandering about
Cuba for three weeks. So, you will, as usual, be able to look forward to a few
more of my emails. I hope that this message finds everyone well. Ciao, Moe.