Hola (again), bitches!
A couple weeks ago, I was lucky to spend about 8 beautiful days in Costa Rica with my friend Keri. Our goal there was to do as little as possible -and we achieved that goal.
We split our time between two gorgeous beach towns, Samara and Montezuma (pictured below) on the Pacific coast.
Samara was really sleepy, its season winding down and the town empty most of the time except for a handful of locals. We spent our days there in a wonderfully familiar routine of first having breakfast served to us by the pool outside our luxurious little villa (equipped with both a blender and hammock to Keri's delight), then walking a few steps to the beautiful crescent-shaped beach and enjoying fruity rum drinks and food at a beach-side cafe before finishing our afternoon frolicking for hours in "Drunk Ocean".
Note that as the trip moved on, Keri and I devolved into one (mildly retarded) entity who communicated by a blend of implicitly understood facial expressions and catch phrases. I laughed so hard sometimes that my stomach literally hurt.
We finished our trip in the town of Montezuma. This was a much livelier town than Samara but that wasn't all together better. The food was quite good and there was some "nightlife" (there was one bar that everyone -and I mean everyone- went to each night and listened to reggaeton) but it all seemed at a cost of a town paying the hidden tax of developing their economy around tourism. The older Costa Ricans seemed genuinely polite and gracious, appreciative of the patronage provided by foreign visitors but the young people (late teens into 20's) did little for the tourists but expected tips for that meager service, that itself speaking of a sense of bitterness in having to serve tourists (who spoke little to no Spanish) to make any real money in their native country. It was also not uncommon to see the kids who led your boat trip earlier in the day coked out of their minds at night at the bar later that night. Drug dealing sadly seemed a common side business for many of these young people. I also learned that there was a tremendous spike in sexual assaults and violent robberies of tourists in the beach towns closest to Montezuma, targeted at Europeans and Americans who had bought land there. Coke + Poor Economy + Rich Tourists = Crime Wave.
So the country overall leaves a strange impression upon me, filled with rich bio-diversity and stunning natural beauty but seemingly undergoing an awkward painful transition in its culture, economy and infrastructure. Nothing hammered home this strange juxtaposition more than when after Keri and I had hiked to these secluded water falls near the town and, in the span of a hour, I was offered the sale of coke -twice. There were a total of maybe a dozen of us there. Yeah. bad.
That all said, I had an amazing time and highly encourage anyone to visit. My heart just aches a bit for land that seems to be losing its innocence. Some pics my trip are here.
