Sciontific Methodology

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I got up early in the morning so that I would have time to check out the Catarata Fortuna on my way to the Pacific coast. It was a pretty waterfall but I thought that the $10 entry fee was a little steep. It seems like everything in Costa Rica costs $10. That's pretty much how it is in any place that polluted with rich tourists. The drive to the coast was a spectacular one on a twisty-turny road that seemed to go on forever. I can't say that I saw much because I had to concentrate on driving but I really enjoyed the ride. I got lost in a city at the base of the mountain and missed a turn at a major intersection where there was no sign but I still managed to find my way to Jaco early enough to locate the campground and set up my tent.

It was here that I invented a new discipline that shall be called "scionce" in honor of the little red car that has brought me so far. "Scionce" is similar to "science" except that hypotheses are based on wishful thinking rather than objective reasoning. When it was observed on more than one occasion that attractive young women would approach my car when I pulled over and stopped to check the map, a hypothesis was duly formed that the Scion had become the sort of babe magnet that everyman has dreamed about. This might be due to the fact that it's an unusual car in this part of the world, the exotic license plate from a far-flung place called Pennsylvania, or a unique combination of road dust collected from 6 Central American countries because anything is possible in Scionce. I repeated said experiment a few more times but I only achieved a 50% success rate which suggested that more study needed to be done. This I could not do because it was getting dark but I resolved to continue this important sciontific research on another day. As it happens, I would not have to wait long. As I was walking back from the Mega Super (a grocery store) the following morning, a woman called out "Amigo!" plus some other spanish that I didn't get so I stopped and asked her to repeat herself. She asked if I could speak Spanish to which I replied that I could speak ten words. She laughed and asked me what time it was so I told her in my very best Spanish that it was "son las nueve en punto" because it just happened to be exactly 9 AM. I showed her my watch to confirm and she commended me on being able to speak Spanish so well. She was friendly to the point that another Sciontific hypothesis was duly formed: Some of the babe magnetism must have rubbed off on me due to my close proximity to the Scion. This apparent attraction might also be due to white skin, blue eyes, perceived wealth, a bid to get a green card, or the fact that I can tell time in Spanish because anything is possible in Scionce. She asked me where I was going to which I replied that I was going to the beach which was the truth because I was going to take some pictures before I shoved off. It was at this point that she said "Vamos! Tu y yo" and gestured with a tilt of her head. My feeble mind thinking in Spanglish and wallowing in the quagmire of Scionce struggled desperately to make sense of what was happening but alas it could not so I just stood there dumbfounded. I just barely stopped myself from asking "¿donde?" as I came to the realization that "where" didn't matter and that the Sciontific hypotheses put forth thus far could not be advanced further without a generous grant from the National Scionce Foundation. In other words, "Tu y yo" wasn't going to happen unless yo the ho got paid for her part in this charade. This is how the world works in a tourist town chock full of tourist money in a country where prostitution is legal. I thus failed as a sciontist by rejecting the principle of wishful thinking when the situation reached a point where advancing said theory would have hit me in the pocketbook. So much for Scionce.

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