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Published: November 19th 2007
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Last night I and several others had a nice dinner at the resort French restaurant.
I guess I should say now that "all-inclusive" is more of a temptation that I am capable of resisting. I have consumed and consumed ever since I've been here. The food is great and it is available 24 hours a day. The only limitation I've discovered is that room service will only bring four beers to your room at a time. Do they not realize how much time they could save themselves if they lifted this restriction - if even for this bunch of Texans I'm here with?
This morning I got up early and after breakfast in the room, took a jeep tour with a couple friends.
Let me back up a sec. - the staple of nearly every traditional meal here is black beans and rice. I've never been the biggest of bean-eaters, but I like the way they prepare them here. So, I keep ordering the "traditional costa rican breakfast" which is the requisite beans and rice, eggs (over-medium is the way I like them), oh, and a bucket of sour cream. How are these people not huge?
I
also drink a lot of the coffee.
Back to the jeep tour: Three of us paid to go on a tour in which you drive your own jeep; following a guide jeep. As soon as I can i will post some pictures.
The trip was fairly rough, but loads of fun.
First, they took us through roads that amounted to neighborhoods. Any of you who have taken tours of colonias along the Texas border would find this part of the tour familiar. The difference, though, is that plush vacation homes were built and fenced in among the dilapidated homes of the natives to the area.
One very noticeable characteristic of all the people we drove past was an abundance of friendliness. It was as though we were in the town parade; everyone we passed waved at us and the children lit-up as we passed. It was not like going over the border in Nuevo Laredo or Juarez, though - they were not actively engaging us or trying to sell something. They were just really friendly.
We stopped in a couple of the small towns through which we passed. Both of the little towns were based
Beef
I think I ate at least one of these while in Costa Rica... on the same lay-out: The towns were centered upon a soccer field. Around the soccer field were a church, a dancehall, a bar and several small "sodas" or convenience stores.
In West Texas we take our high school football seriously, but I've never seen the stadium-as-town-center set-up.
After the neighborhoods and little towns we drove through some undeveloped areas - it may have been a national park, but I'm not sure.
Much of the road required the four-wheel drive we had on our jeep - especially the truck that we found stuck in a river that we had to pull out of the mud.
We saw a lot of beautiful scenery, but just as I was about to scream the title to this blog entry the lead jeep came to a quick stop - and then we heard them: Howler monkeys.
It doesn't take long to figure out how I assume they got their name: they make a lot of noise. But it's more like grunting. They didn't like the sound of our vehicles and when we turned them off they stopped grunting and throwing shit at us and relaxed again. Ultimately they started playing
again and were very fun to watch; especially the babies. I hope I got some good pictures, but it's hard to tell with the bright sky that was their background.
Still, I really wanted to see some monkeys and I did.
We then took a little hike along the beach - most of our group did anyway. I'll show you later some strange tracks that were left along the beach sand; kinda funny looking...
At the end our guide took us to a little bar where we had a beer and some onion rings. We all loved our guide.
She was very sweet and needlessly embarrassed when she couldn't answer some of our trivial questions about her country. She explained her lack of education and the history of her family. She explained how most of her money now goes to her little sister's education so that she won't find herself in the same position in life.
She hopes one day to open a cleaning-company; maybe in Canada where she was able to spend some time a few years ago.
But right now, she is making a lot of people happy by showing them her
country-by-jeep; and by showing them the monkeys...
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Monica P.
non-member comment
Grr.
I hate the word bean-eater.