Costa Rica, the Miniseries, vol. 5 - Series Finale

Despite our relief that the wedding would not have to be postponed, our fears were again renewed when the power went out four hours before the wedding. Thankfully, this time the power outage was a scheduled one to repair damage to the country’s infrastructure, and power was restored two hours before the wedding was to begin. Hair was curled and crisis was averted.

The wedding itself went off without a hitch and was truly the most beautiful wedding I’ve seen or heard of. The wedding was on the beach behind the house and because the wedding coincided with high-tide, waves were splashing ten feet into the air as a backdrop to the ceremony. I had been asked to do a Scripture reading for the ceremony and say a few words. It was really a privilege to be one of the only family members to speak in the ceremony. Aaron and Bianca: Thank you for that honor and I wish you many, many years of joy and love together.

The night of the wedding, much partying allowed me to see my first Pacific coast sunrise. Despite the so-called DJ only playing for approximately 45 minutes, our group’s iPod addiction was able to save the day and keep the party going all night. On my final day with my family, I played translator/bargainer for a large group of the wedding guests as they did their souvenir shopping around town.

Saying goodbye to my family was tough, but that’s the life of an ex-pat, I guess. After paying entirely too much for a bed to sleep in during my last night in San Jose, I caught a bus to the airport (Peace Corps volunteers can’t afford cabs very often, and leaving my family was the reminder that I was once again dirt poor). No hang-ups to report in the San Jose airport, although my final day in Costa Rica was not fully uninteresting. As I sat waiting for my plane to board, I saw a familiar face cross my frame of vision. Brendan Brown, a friend of mine from college, just happened to be on a weekend vacation in Costa Rica and happened to be in the airport at the same time as me. As I chased him down and yelled out his name, I could see his face stare at me blankly for about five seconds while his mind reeled in disbelief. Not only was it a huge coincidence to run into an old friend in a foreign country, I never would have run into him if he hadn’t missed his flight earlier that morning. ‘Tis truly a small world after all.

Brendan and I in the San José airport.

Costa Rica, the Miniseries, vol. 4

On the night of the rehearsal dinner, the complications began to arise...

Just as the wedding party is finishing up speeches after a tasty dessert at a gourmet restaurant, a sudden cut in music and light changes the mood in the party. In a group of 30 where probably only five or ten people have previously left the States, rumors begin to take wing. Quotes from the evening: “Did you hear that power is out in the whole country”; “Yeah, it’s out in all of Panama and Nicaragua, too”; “Within a couple days we’ll be cutting through the jungle with machetes searching for food”; and my favorite, “We really should stick together, being that we’re next to the two biggest drug producing countries in the world: Panama and Cuba.” In my own delight, I added my own quotes to the evening’s tension: “Did you guys hear that Fidel Castro is invading Costa Rica for its rich phosphorous resources?” and “Did you guys hear that the Dixie Chicks just died in a plane crash on the way to Costa Rica because the runway lights were out?”

In the end, one of the rumors did end of being true, and sadly it wasn’t the one about the Dixie Chicks or the one about Fidel Castro. As hard as it was for me to believe that such a thing could happen, even in a developing nation, the power really DID go out in all of Costa Rica for about 8 hours that night. Imagine my chagrin when I found out that I had made fun of the wedding party in vain. When the lights came back on at about 4 AM, we were still enjoying the pool party with portable music and quickly-warming beer. Cheers erupted across Costa Rica, and the fears of Dixie Chicks fans across Central America were quickly assuaged.

The view of the pool from the 3rd-story balcony.

A sunset in our "back yard."

Another sunset shot.

Candid shot of Aaron and Bianca a couple days before the wedding.

Costa Rica, the Miniseries, vol. 3

After 9 months without seeing a single member of my family, the reunion in Liberia was sweet. In all sincerity, living so far from my family for this long has made me value my family more than I ever thought I would. After a brief reunion with family, we went to the rental car agency to have our first encounter with our Volkswagen-esque minibus, which we quickly dubbed “The Rattler” for its vociferous performance on Costa Rican gravel roads.

Arriving at the house that had been rented by my brother and a number of the wedding guests was a surreal experience. Various samples of the weeks quotes regarding the house: “This feels like a Real World house”; “This is probably where Brad Pitt stays when he comes to Costa Rica”; and my favorite, by Sam Bell, who performed the wedding ceremony, “I don’t think I’m cool enough to be staying in a house like this”. The house was really amazing, and while I only have one photo of it to post for now, you’ll just have to trust my word on it. Or you could take a guess based on the fact that it’s on sale for over $4,000,000 in Costa Rica.

The week of the wedding started incident-free for about the first three days, other than the minor incident of an argument over whether or not it was dangerous for drunk people to jump from the second floor into a 4-foot-deep pool. Seems like an obvious answer, but you’d be surprised how convincing drunken physics lessons and buoyancy experiments can be. A few days into our time there, a group of us went to a zip-line tour through the jungle. The gist of the concept of a zip-line tour is that on platforms high above the ground you hook a harness into a steel cable and are pushed from tree to tree at frightening speeds. Knowing how dangerous pulley systems are from my climbing days all I could picture the whole time was someone getting a finger snagged in the pulley. Thankfully, no fingers were severed in the tour and adrenaline was pumped through the veins of all.

I know I haven't gotten there yet in the written miniseries, but here are a couple pictures from the wedding. I know present Mr. and Mrs. Aaron and Bianca Moore.

The groomsmen in front of the aforementioned house.

The wedding pictures turned out really, really beautiful.

The wedding party, there were about 30 of us total.

The car for the week, "The Rattler."

My dad and I at a black sand beach we visited.

A giant iguana we saw on the way back from the black sand beach. My dad tried to grab it and it tail-whipped him.

The much celebrated house we stayed in...really amazing.

Groomsmen Sean and TJ with my dad at the black sand beach

Costa Rica, the Miniseries, vol. 2

After about four days in Costa Rica by myself, I decided that I couldn’t handle another night of going to bed a 8 o’clock and waking up before sunrise without an alarm, so I got up the gumption to talk to some people I had crossed paths with on the beach and later in a bar. They happened to be a group of about eight Argentineans and two Spaniards, all about the same age as me. We hung out for a good while at a reggae bar, dancing and drinking among a mostly local crowd. With our numbers quickly diminishing due to a slumber induced by a long day in the sun, the four of us left dancing in the club headed down to the beach for a night-time dip. The half-awake guard and his long-distance flashlight attempted to put a damper on our fun, but the same samurai stealth skills noticeably lacking the previous week when I almost cut my thumb off with a pocket knife (see previous post) were able to keep us under the radar of this buzz-kill beach-sentry. This motley crew of European, North and South American blood headed back to the bar to dry off with some more reggae beats. Despite the fact that by this point we were the only white people in the bar, we continued to prove that while white men may not be able to jump, some of us can certainly dance. All in all, a great night with a much lower risk index than walking along the highway at night.

From Cahuita I caught a couple buses from Cahuita through San José out to Puntarenas, a seedy coastal town along the Pacific coast where a couple Peace Corps volunteers who I had previously contacted are living. Puntarenas was a good time with two really chill volunteers, Kelley and Marianne, and was a good opportunity to get to see the Peace Corps side of Costa Rica beyond the relative glitz and glamour of the tourist traps. Then, on the bus up to Liberia to meet up with my family, I crossed paths with two Pennsylvanians living in Costa Rica who had just left a shady situation where they had been hired to teach English to businesspeople yet were curiously being lodged in a discotheque-meets-whorehouse.

This wild parrot apparently figured out that if you hang out at touristy places and talk that people will givey you lots of food. This was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Whenever poeple would laugh at it, the parrot would imitate their laugh, which would make them laugh more, making him imitate them even more.

So that big piece of leaf in the picture is being held up and drageed along by a little tiny ant that you can't even see.

The camera wouldn't focus on the spider, but the spot where i've added emphasis in the top right is a huge spider I almost walked into in the Cahuita National Park area.

Like the parrot, as you walk deeper into the National Park area, there are monkeys just chilling all over the place and while they don't like to get too close to people, they defintely don't keep too much distance.

A camouflaged crab, waiting for unsuspecting prey.

A hermit crab taking a stroll down a branch.

A totally abandoned stretch of beach about a mile into the national park. These beaches could have perfectly been the set of Castaway. Really beautiful and really secluded.

So, as you can tell, the wildlife was abundant in Cahuita, and all these pictures were literally from about an hour or two in the national park total. This was definitely my favorite part of Costa Rica, and somewhere I'd love to go back to. Check it out if you're in Costa Rica someday.

Costa Rica, the Miniseries, vol. 1

So, due to the fact that I wrote nearly 2000 words as a summary of my trip to Costa Rica, I decided to do this in a fashion more convenient for all of you who want to read it: in the form of an ABC dramatic miniseries. I'll include a few photos in each entry although they may not have anything to do with the particular entry. Also, I didn't feel like proofreading 2000 words of nonsense, so pardon any errors you may encounter.

Now, on to the business of updating you all on my life and times. I left off on about the second day of my trip to Costa Rica for my brother Aaron’s wedding. For those who may have been left worrying, I have healed up well from all of my injuries leading up to and in the first days of my trip to Costa Rica. After escaping near kidnapping along the highway at night and spending a couple days at the empty beaches of Playa Bonita, I headed down to Cahuita National Park, also on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. The town of Cahuita (which lies at the entrance of the national park) has a pretty hippy ambience to it and despite being rather touristy is made up of almost all gravel and dirt roads. The culture of the area has had a strong influence from Jamaican culture due to a long history of immigration from the Jamaican islands. The best part of this culture influx is the prevalence of some good, old spicy Caribbean/Creole cuisine. It’s been nearly a year since I’ve had anything truly spicy outside of what I cook in my own kitchen, so it was truly a treat to eat some spicy jerk chicken from a nice old lady named Edith. My tears of fiery pain were also tears of joy, my dear Edith. Your kitchen is a temple in my book.

My first morning on the Caribbean, I woke up early enough to see the sunset without an alarm...Couldn't really see the sun, but the beach was still very pretty.

Another view of the first beach I was at, Playa Bonita, just north of Limon.One of two dogs chained up at the $10 hostel I stayed at. This one was nice and reminded me of a black Killu, whereas the other one nearly bit my hand off.

A purple crab, who had come out of his hole to hunt small prey...or slow feet. I escaped harm, thankfully.

The view at the entrance to Cahuita National Park, two blocks from my hostel. To me it felt like it could have been a set for the movie Castaway.

Until next time, take care and stay tuned.

Somewhere beyond a 4th grade reading level

“Somos culpables de nacimiento, cada acción nuestra afloja la soga que dejará caer la guillotina que tumbará nuestras cabezas sobre la paja de la historia.”

– La Nada Cotidiana

“We are guilty from birth, each action loosening the rope that will drop the guillotine upon our heads, knocking them into the basket of history.”

– The Everyday Nothingness

That’s a quote from a novel I just read by the exiled Cuban author, Zoé Valdés. For some reason the language of the line just stuck out to me as very poetic. I also just thought that it was neat how she used such macabre imagery to describe something as ordinary as the passage of time between birth and death. Before I sound too pretentious, just let me say that despite reading a lot of books in Peace Corps, I’m still just as obtuse about the deep meaning and symbolism within poetry and literature as I have always been.