Coffee Rica

Ooh! Look! It's! Blog! Time! Goody! Costa Rica is awesome! It's just awesome! The coffee is awesome! Just awesome! The people are awesome! Just awesome! Wanna go play catch? You don't need to throw it, I'll throw it, and retrieve it, you can watch! SCREEEEEEECH. Oh man. I just crashed. I just went from Hyperactive Golden Retriever to Mellow Grumpy Kitty. 'Bout damn time. I've been on a Coffee Rica High for the past three days. I've been guzzling the brew almost nonstop for a week. And how did I find myself in such a quandary, you ask....well, gather around children, Auntie M has a story for you....

Saturday, September 8.

After six hours on one plane, and an hour on another, with a measly single bathroom break between flights (airplane lavatories...loathe them...where does the stuff in the toilet go? It's not natural.), with my snarky, ugly-American tendencies tamed only by free booze (international flights rock) and neatly packaged chips/salsa in lieu of pretzels, I arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica, to a beautiful, sunny morning. Our modest tour group, consisting of 15 or so members of a "United China" committee, of which my dear mother is one, were greeted warmly by local Chinese Costa-Ricans. What a warm, gracious group...They had a huge, custom-printed, welcome banner and everything. Yes, there was an adamant, earnest request for a group picture, welcome banner and all. All hail clever, picture-shy me: under pretense of keeping an eye on the luggage, I managed to duck out of the picture. No way am I posing in a banner group picture. NEVER!

Cut to two hours later. After checking in to our hotel, and enjoying a pleasant lunch at a local Chinese restaurant, with standard Chinese banquet fare (!), I find myself grinning weakly for the camera, in a group picture. With a banner. Under another banner. Lud help me. I was jet-lagged. Bloated and drowsy from the greasy Cantonese food. Weak, I tell you. Weak.

So the younguns (me and a trio of other "under 35, tag-along on a subsidized trip" family members) hang with a local "under 35er". We traipsed through an open-air crafts/souvenir market aimed at tourists. I resisted, I am proud to say. Not one chotzka with "Costa Rica" emblazoned on it. Then, we took a straw poll, determined we needed coffee, and got us some super strong brews. I think they were too strong. They made the drive throughout San Jose much more exciting than it warranted. Or maybe not. THEY DRIVE LIKE MANIACS! It's like the wild west, anything goes. You need a pair of brass ones to drive there, dude. One thing I must say though....maniacal driving notwithstanding, people here are mellow. No road rage, no rushing. Car horns are used, not shrilly or forcefully to show frustration at the jackass in front of you, but politely...single taps to alert your fellow citizen drivers. Amazing. Roads are a little rough, though, because, while there are pockets of development in the capital city, there are still many pockets of pre-development, for lack of a better term. Yet we saw no beggars on the streets, or "shady" looking areas. Just lots of nice, gracious, people going about their lives. With gorgeous dogs. My goodness, so many people had dogs! Mellow dogs! Working adults on the street, out walking their dogs; Children in a shopping district, clutching tiny puppies lovingly...in more rural areas, dogs roaming near their owners, good-natured and care-free. My theory is, people with mellow dogs are happy people. So given that...Costa Ricans are the happiest peeps ever.

We capped off the day of shopping and sightseeing with dinner at a local restaurant, where we had a delicious meal consisting of tender roasted meats, plantains, tortillas, tamales, blackened, seasoned rice and a lovely soup with melt-in-your-mouth bits of cow stomach. As our happy-go-lucky local guide was a well-off owner of a chain of pollo fast food joints in Costa Rica, we made sure to save room for a late night snack at one of his restaurants. And was it worth it! Imagine succulent chickens roasting in a huge brick oven fired by coffee tree kindling. Mounds of chicharones (fried pork skin) gleaming and beckoning. Awesome. The chicken was juicy and flavorful (is that a hint of coffee aroma there?) almost, if not as good, as my all-time favorite rotisserie chicken, the epic, Costco Super Chicken. And the chicharones! Heaven. I heart Costa Rica. And that feeling stayed even after we spotted some stunningly beautiful, transvestite lady-men of the night lingering on a couple of street corners on our way back to the hotel. Sidebar: Per our guide, prostitution is legal in Costa Rica, and they are encouraged to register, get business licenses, etc.

Sunday, September 9.

Sightseeing! Abbreviated sightseeing! Our group rented a tour bus, and on the agenda was a visit to a coffee plantation, a volcano, and a rain forest/wildlife refuge. And we did it all in 5 hours. With 2 hours on the road. So it was pretty whirlwind. The volcano and the rain forest were lovely. Even though it rained. Still very lovely. Waterfalls were stunning, the flora were gorgeous, and the wildlife exhibits quite engaging. The poisonous froggies were my favorites. To think those tiny little ribbitters (think the WB Singing Frog) could take you down with a single dose...very cool. And the coffee plantation....oh my. All that greenery holds the secret to rich, flavorful, caffeinated goodness. We were able to get up-close to some coffee trees, and we even got to pick some green beans (which magically turned brown in my bag a little while later...roasted, I think, by my body heat and the humidity of the rain forest). I loaded up on coffee and indulged my desire for a souvenir-y, overpriced tiny shot bottle of coffee liqueur simony because it had a enamel figure of a cooter, er turtle, glued to the side of the bottle.

Later that evening, we attended the grand gala event, which was a lavish dinner banquet celebrating the Chinese Costa Rican Association, where the diplomatic representative from China was the guest of honor. It was quite the experience. Think old school family association spring banquet in SF Chinatown, only with half the room being Spanish-speaking Costa Ricans. With karaoke and endless formal speeches (in two languages -- and yes, even the karaoke in two languages). And endless recitings of association members and honored guests. The spirit of the event was wonderful...and the way the Chinese and the Costa Rican cultures were celebrated was a beautiful thing. I'm just not a huge fan of pomp and circumstance. FOUR HOURS of it. The one highlight (or lowlight) of the evening was the awkward pause during the playing of the two countries national anthems. So everyone rises and faces the flags. The Costa Rican anthem goes off without a hitch. However, it takes the DJ forever (think 5 minutes stretched out veeeery long) to play the Chinese anthem...and the whole room is still standing, looking reverent and solemn, mind you...and then there is the lingering fear that the OTHER, unrecognized as a island-state's state anthem would be mistakenly played. Whew, thank goodness he found the right track...things could have gotten ugly...all in all, the event was quite impressive, with various Costa Rican luminaries attending, and with the local hosts bending over backwards to make sure their guests felt welcome.

Monday, September 10.
After a quick breakfast at our hotel, where the buffet was passable (fruit, yogurt, eggs, toast, the usual. The guava jam packets were cool, though), but the coffee flowed like water -- Oh, the coffee -- we have time only to visit a famous Church in San Jose and refresh ourselves with said church's blessed holy water...(sidebar: Wow. The water gushes out of a couple of pipes, and people are bottling up gallons of it, or drinking and washing various body parts with it...bathing their babies in it...amazing.). We then made a quick stop at a mini-mall and supermarket (where I loaded up on more coffee, as well as rum (two of the essential food groups), and also did a quick cost of living comparison of daily necessities -- guys, the cost of living, for food and daily essentials, at least, is not cheap there.) Then off to the airport, and homeward bound. With a pause in between to spend the last of our colones at the duty free shop for more coffee. Oh the coffee....