El Pueblo de Jaco

Jaco is a cute little surf town on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. Most of the people here are college-aged and come just for the surfing season. The streets are jam-packed with cars and people on bicycles and you are constantly smelling delicious rice and beans. Dogs roam the streets in packs of four or five and people seem not to even notice them. The muscular, bare-chested, Spanish-speaking teens who hold surfboards with the tops of their buttcracks showing are just as plentiful as the women selling pottery, which is quite a few, might I add. Today, I went to quaint little clothing boutiques, and most of them were very my style. Which I would decribe as... New Yorker hippie goes to Paris and dines with Caeser of the Romans? I bought these really cool shoes at a store called Guacamole. My first day in Jaco, my family and I ate dinner at a Soda, which is a restaurant that doesn't have its liquor liscense. I had beans and rice and beef and some carrot salad- it was delicious. I even ordered the whole thing in Spanish! No matter how full I was, I couldn't stop eating. Yeah, that's not too healty is it? Well, I feel I have already bored you with my non-stop typing. So, here are the pictures.

There were stores like this around every corner. Most of them had the same things-clothing, bowls, and little tourist trinkets.

Since Jaco is a surf town, it is only natural that surfboards were everywhere.

I am still trying to figure out what it says on the sign of this car. "Mientra el ice come rico, el pueblo se muere de hambre. Digamosle no al abuso." Do you know what it means?

This is my favorite store ever, even better than Heritage 1981. It is called Guacamole.

Yum. This was actually my mom's dish. I would have posted what my food looked like, but by the time we got the camera out, I was already digging in.

This was an "escuela primera." An elementary school. With my amazing spanish skills, I explained how my mom wanted to go to a local school for her pictures.

That's Jaco!

Viva la Vida

As I said in a previous post, I am on vacation in Costa Rica with my family. Today, we went to Manuel Antonio National Park to see all the tropical animals that live here. I was walking with our 12-person tour group and found myself seperated from my family. I looked to my left and noticed I was walking next to this 50-something year lady. She had very tan, blotchy skin from years of sun damage and wore those official "travelers clothes". You know, with the cargo pants and neutral colored outfits. She turned and smiled at me and before I knew it, she was telling me about her experiences in Tunisia, Patagonia, Australia, and more. I was only half-listening however, I more more focused on how I wanted to be like her one day. To really experience life and not let fears and worries hold you back. To learn about other cultures. I don't even know what this woman's name was, and she probably doesn't know mine, but man was she cool. Little does she know that I will remeber her forever.

Arriving in Costa Rica

Hello readers. I am with my family on vacation right now in Costa Rica. Gosh, it's lovely here. The people are so friendly and the landscape is marvelous. When my family and I arrived in San Jose, our driver met us and we prepared for a two hour ride throught the windy mountain roads to our resort. So, the first thing I noticed was that the roads do not compare to the roads we have back in the U.S. They are narrow and bumpy, but this didn't bother me a bit. Matter of fact, I liked it because it made me feel a tad bit like my idol, Anthony Bourdain. The first little town we rode through was so cute. The buildings and houses were low and colorful and they all had gates out front. Many people were walking from place to place and a couple of them weren't wearing shoes. Collarless dogs roamed the streets and cows and horses grazed in the little land they had. As it turned out, every little town from here on was exactly the same as the last. But I never got bored. It seemed like we drove around, up, and down every mountain in Costa Rica. The steepness of the moutains and the guardless roads combined with the spuratic driving of our stick-shifted car made for a very nervous me. After what seemed like 24 hours, we arrived at our resort which turned out to be way worth the tough and rough journey here.