Okay so I´m sitting in a bus station in Mendoza with nothing to do for six hours until my bus comes, and even though I haven´t eaten anything in 15 hours because the damn chilean airline I was on promised a meal and forgot to pack it onto the plane (?), all the shops in Mendoza are closed for siesta! So this is my way to not think about the delicious cheese sandwich and fresh apple that await me at the corner bakery in an hour.
I am clearly terrible at updating this blog, and I feel like highlights aren´t enough...I have to go into story mode, so this is going to be a stream of conscience style post that hopefully not digress into romanticized food poetry. the last time I updated this was November 18. That´s kinda a long time ago. As you might guess, some things have happened since then. Among them, delicous Argentine asados, beautiful hikes into the mountains of northern Patagonia, poorly suppressed freakouts in internet cafes at the incompetenece of DHL in Argentina, and a mad dash through Mendoza to grab my passport before catching a bus to Santiago just in time for my flight to Costa Rica. okay the shift button on this computer sucks so i´´m ditching the caps. anyways, after screaming at a computer and pulling my hair out with at least 10 people eyeing me, i finally figured out that the new passport i had ordered to be shipped to me had not even left the embassy the day before i had to leave for my fligh, despite dhl´s assurance that it would arrive at least two days prior. this i discovered despite the dhl employees deliberately ignoring my 10 emails inquiring asto the location of the passport. luckily i was able to shift bus tickets around and get my passport shipped to mendoza, where i had to go anyways, just in time to pick it up.
after 3 days of travel, i made it to costa rica and got to see my family for the first time since september. we had a blast of a vacation in two beautiful spots: the osa peninsula on the southern pacific coast and orosi, a cool little town just outside of san jose. we went snorkeling, night hiking through the jungle, and toured an awesome national park. we saw white faced monkeys sneak into the resort kitchen and make away with a loaf of bread, then we heard them howling and fighting over it in the nearby jungle. a few minutes later, a monkey actually jumped into the living area (full of people), lifted up the cookie jar and made away with two cookies! crafty little buggers. we also saw parokees, toucans, squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys, sloths, and all sorts of poisonous frogs. christmas was relaxed and awesome. after a day of river rafting, we sat around and played cards all day. one of my favorite christmases to date. I was sad to see my family go the following morning and pretty apprehensive about my next stay, but I hopped on a bus and headed to puerto viejo to see my cousin Dave, who runs a hostel down there, and whom I hadn´t seen in like 5 years.
so I´ve traveled a reasonable amount through central and south america, among other places, but i´ve never found a town as compelling, relaxed, inviting and fun as puerto viejo. i had such a good time living in a hostel, helping dave build bunk beds and doing random cleaning and what not in exchange for a room. i tried to get a job, but most of them paid about a dollar an hour, so it didn´t seem worth it. eventually I found a job bar backing at an awesome, awesome bar called tasty waves on tuesday nights. god, that was easily the best job i´ve ever had. i got paid to stack beers, shoot pool, dance, drink and generally be debaucherous. amazing. the people there--all of dave´s friends--were some of the coolest people i´ve ever met. as dave put it, the people who stay are the people who get it. true. good thing i´m heading back there for at leat half a year at some point in teh near future.
living in a hostel, especially one as cool and relaxed as dave´s, means meeting people--interesting, adventurous people--from all overthe world. and they cycle through, so there´s a constant supply of new fun characters. i learned a lot about the environment, writing and rocks in school. I learned a lot about argentine culture and the spanish language in argentina, but i think i learned the most about people and life and what´s really important in puerto. just way too many interesting, excited individuals who want to share ideas, meet people, have fun and generally do all the awesome things that go along with traveling.
of course, there were some downsides. for one, i burrrned through money. costa rica is not cheap, and i was frugal as ever. still blew a lot of it. oh well. worse, though, was don klause. he´s this old german dickbag who rents out the hostel to dannie (dave´s girlfriend, who is awesome) and dave. basically the double d´s do all the work, all of it, and don klause makes most of the profit and just gets in the way of all the improvements they try to make. the hostel doesn´t have internet, for example, and everyone knows it needs it, but trying to convince this guy was like talking to a brick wall. if at any point he sensed that you were winning the argument, he´d just wave his hand in your face and say he was done talking about it.
but tha wasn´t the worst of it. the guy would show up periodically (twice in teh five weeks i was there) with a small suitcase that, as far as i could tell, he would never open. after three days of not showering, he really just reeked of bo. after four it was unbearable to be in a normal sized room with him. it probably didn´t help that he spent every night pounding two liters of box wine by himself with his back turned to everyone else sitting around and talking in the hostel. and, as it tends to go, when he got plastered he would share his opinions. some unsuspecting well-intentioned backpacker would usually strike up a conversation with the mysterious antisocial alcoholic in the corner who smelled like when the raccoon got in the copier, and klause would talk at this backpacker until he or she was able to escape. he would tell them about himself, about how incredible a person he is, because he loooved to mention that he is ¨a very important person¨. it was never made clear why he thought this. he´d also share his views on economic gaps and race discrimination, because as don klause knows and is willing to tell you, poor people arepoor because they are dumb, and rich people are rich because they are smart. i won´t go into what he said about race, but suffice it to say that you would easiy drop your jaw at his opinions. and again, you could not argue with this guy. ever. brick wall.
so besides don klause being a terrible, terrible person, i had a fantastic time at the residencia. even got a visit from that badass mofo neil for a week, which was a blasty blast. he´s set on coming back to pv for a longer stay as well. although i was sad to leave costa rica and all teh awesome people in puerto, i´m absurtly pumped for my upcoming adventure with crowley through patagonia, so i can´t really complain. hopefully i´ll be better at updating this and will be able to get into actual stories instead of generalized summaries, but that´s probably not going to happen. anyways, 20 minutes until food! then a 22 hour bus ride to el bolson to meet up with b hottie and start the great patagonian adventure!
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