Playa Conchal and the works

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Since, I didn´t post anything since thursday I´ll fill you in from there with lots of goodies.

Thursday night Kate, Jeff, Marcos, Marcos´s host brother, and I went to some shady pool hall where there was a man with only 1 arm giving Kate the rape stare. Costa Rican men, especially those with missing body parts or teeth are unbelievably rude and obnoxious to american women. They take cat alling and lude farneti comments to new heights. however, if you so much as talk to a tica you get that same rape stare yet it has a whole new affect.

Friday morning, I had my first exam at 10 am. It had been originally scheduled for 3 pm but we talked the teachers, mainly jorge, the sweetest teacher on earth,(possibly greater than the great john reid as far as comical sense) into letting us take it in the morning and cancel classes so we could catch a 3pm bus on friday to Guanacaste, which hapens to be a 6 hour ride to Brasilito. The exam was mad easy and I wrote a 500 word essay on the American Wood duck.

Thursday Afternoon I made an excellent purchse of one loaf of bread, one 4 dollar jar of peanut butter, and 1 jar of jelly. Friday, post exam, grandma vilma and i, in the kitchen, whipped up a god awful amount of pb and J sandwiches for the bus ride. About 2 hours into the trip when i brought those out i became more popular than the backstreet boys late 90´s.

6 hours later we´re in guanacaste at the Brasilito Hotel, run by an Irishman who had entire the process of moving to Costa Rica and starting up and opening a hotel documented and aired on BBC. Pretty Cool. Well, not 10 minutes off the bus, we had offers to go to the "White beach" for a "Barbaque" on Saturday. These people were professional scammers and I saw it the whole way. Actually I didn´t beacuse 15 minutes later they had chairs pulled up at a our table and 3 beers on my tab.. HMMM not good. A fat cuban woman was the ring leader, who keep talking like she had a mouth full of potatos and her 2 drunk coharts who were completely useless. They kept asking me if my friends liked to have fun, and if I wanted some cocaine. And she claimed she was a tour guide that could get me all sorts of free stuff. At this point I got the hint and I wasn´t buying it. So I started getting ugly, vicious comments about castro and commies were made, and she got the point and hightailed it outta there.

Saturday orning woke up and did the usual soda, a shack of a cafe, and downed some rice and beans con huevos with some dirt cheap coffee on the side. We all then walked about 20 yards to playa brasilito which was a little on the yucky side and walked the mile south to playa conchal which is a beach covered in tiny broken shells that are suprisingly smooth and soft to walk on.

After some ample amount of tredding water we rented snorkelin gear, and did some snorkeling. Unbelievable. There were so many types of exotic fish I have never seen before. It was beautiful, just literally thousand and hundreds of species. I saw mackrel chasin bait and leaping out of the water, an octupus, sea horse, starfish and neon colored suckers of every variety. It was spectacular.

For Lunch I ate at some shack, actually it was less than a shack and i payed like a dollar for a half of chicken, a coke, coleslaw, and some form of potato. It was great. Kate ate a half a pargo (fish), then i ate the other half. Alex had some chicken as well, then I had the rest. I´m human garbage disposal. I´ve never eaten as much food in my whole life as i have here in Costa Rica. Not only is the place a time warp its got some crazy tape worm powers as well.

Did some more beach action.

For dinner I dined on 4 bananas, 20 cents total, a loaf of bread 50 cents and a carton of juice cents. Gotta love the super brasilito mercado.

For my birthday, yeah the big 20, (ps. I received a total of 2 happy birthdays from people, thanks jon and wesley), we had a sweet bonfire, with pringles, a snickers, hotdogs and a few costa rican beers. It was a blast, but the best part came 10 minutes before midnight, when I went for a walk down the beach and almost killed myself when i walked into a massive leatherback? turtle on the beach. She was out of the water and was on her way to lay eggs. After rounding up the crew we watched slowly, very slowly dig a whole and then lay her eggs. It was by far my favorite thing of the whole trip. Just to see something some natural and specatular, and on my birthday to top it off.

Sunday morning, we returned to conchal for some more beachin, just relaxing soakin up the glory of Costa Rica, Caught the 2 o clock bus, in which i had to play musical chairs, for which i had to move seats about 10 times because when we bought tickets for the return trip they only had 7 seats available and we had 9 people. But eventually I found myself sitting next to a 23 year old russian who was doing an internship in san jose at a resort, who is fluent in 4 languages, english, spanish, russian and german. It was pretty interesting to hear her prespective on how Costa Rica compared to Russia and what not.

So all in all, learned a little more spanish, soaked up some culture and survived 13 hours on a bus over the course of 48 hours. Got a ton of great pictures, can´t wait to show everyone. Alright, I got a paper to write and homework to be dooing.

Love you mom, dad, lindsay, grams and grams. take care everyone.

-Luke

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Comments

[Nadine]

happy birthday. sorry its late. i was in a hut on an alp and they didnt have electricity let alone a computer. take care.

[bizzerk]

yaknow
sounds very nice LL. that turtle experience sounded awesome. me and my legendary friend VICTOR just visited Jon for 3 nights, and now we are in charlotte visiting our friend Alfred from HS. i'll ttys. peace!

[Jeremy]

blog response #10
my bad on the whole not saying happy birthday sac. i knew it was your birthday because your mhairi's face book reminded her. i was basically waiting for your latest blog to say it, so yeah, happy birthday. 20 is the age of limbo - you're not a teenager, and you're not an adult. you've already had plenty of experience drinking, but for some reason can still get in trouble for it. you can be drafted to fight a useless war, but you can't pound a brew. hmmm. thats pretty cool how you're dealing with shady costa ricans in spanish, thats pretty hardcore stuff. also, you are in fact a human garbage disposal; every blog youve written has painstakingly detailed every meal you've ever had there, and it's most enjoyable. who would have know a loaf of bread would be so great. you sure are riding a lot of buses man. thats rough. what kind of buses are they anyway? like legitamate buses? or more like retired US school buses that have been painted over? that turtle sounded pretty interesting as well. i mean, i know that after i throw back a few pringles and a couple brews, i enjoy watching random wildlife create more random wildlife. always a crowd pleaser. okay sac gotta run, good luck with the rest of the trip. pretty interested in seeing all the pictures and stories you've accumulated. take er easy

[farneti]

happy freakin birthday
id send you a gift but im too cheap.

[AnnElise]

Happy birthdaaaaay :)

[juj]

sent u a text message cause i was away all weekend...knew u wouldn't get it n e way til u got back..ttyl..have a good rest of a costa rican time!

[scott]

happy hannakuh luke

[Katrina]

Woah, thats a pretty freakin sweet way to spend your birthday. You have a special bond with those baby turtles now. Totally bring one home. Happy Birthday!