We left late at night from Seattle on December 28th after a drop off from Jen's parents, and flew through Houston over night to arrive in San Jose in the afternoon. The place that we were staying wasn't a place I would normally choose (imagine a website advertising it as the "#1 party hostel!!!!!!") but was cheap, convenient and safe. We took a walk around San Jose, exploring parks, markets and street. We found a great place to eat and thoroughly gorged. The evening was filled with us trying to shake two nice but odd guys at the hostel and falling asleep to the bass beats of the "#1 party hostel!!!!!!".And this is where we parted. Jen and Amanda headed west to the coast to meet up with 2 other friends for New Years, and I joined up with Andrea to hang with her family for a few days. I joined Andrea, her sister, brother-in-law, daughter, brother and mother and their house, playing pool on an oddly slanted pool table with inconveniently placed doors, windows and walls in the way of the game as we waited for the minibus to arrive. The minibus was full of Andrea's big (20+ people), crazy (Andrea's words, not mine) family for a 3 hour drive north. We drove through green hills that reminded me so much of the north island of New Zealand. Lots of dairy farm, steep green pastures, and fresh air.
We spent the next two nights at a lovely former rancho hotel-turned-"priestery" near a river; closest "major" town would be Jabillos. I spent the time reading, playing in the pool (the games usually involved throwing soccer balls as hard as possible near each others' heads; the trick is to hit the water just in front of their face so your victim get both a harsh spray, and a ball wack
in the face), walking around the areas beyond the rancho, getting "lowered" into the pool in a lounge chair (since I wasn't going to let go of the chair; I had my money belt and wallet still on me), playing lots of party games, going to mass on New Years Eve (sorry, there's no proof of me actually being in the church) and really trying to speak Spanish but horribly failing. It's amazing how useless tourist Spanish is when trying to have normal conversations. After we had headed back to San Jose, I thanked Andrea's mom for "the bulls" instead of "everything".I ended up back at the "#1 party hostel!!!!!!" for one night before I headed south. I wasn't sure how I was going to get to my next destination, but finally decided at about 10:30pm to reserve a 5:30am flight the next day.
My flight south took me over the mountains west to the ocean. The 12 passenger plane got tossed in the air like a piece of paper. I'm not generally a freaky flier, but I'll admit I had a few fleeting "I think I'm going die" moments. The only thing keeping me calm was the lack of fear on my fellow passengers' faces. Maybe they were just paralyzed in fright. After arriving in Golfito, I took a 3 hour taxi ride even further south to the end of the road on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. Literally the end of the road. I actually had to walk uphill 15 minutes past the end of the road to get to my most wonderful retreat. Beyond us was an indigenous reserve, then Panama.
The place I was staying was near a small village called Punta Banco, south of the more popular Pavones. The area is basically a surfer's area backed by jungle. The hostel was called The Yoga Farm and it was just what I needed. The place included 3 meals a day, mostly vegetarian (though 2 chickens got whacked my first night) and mostly organic, straight from their property.
Solar power meant we went to bed shortly after dinner around 7pm, but that was OK as we also got up early for yoga class at 6:30am. I wouldn't say thought that I practiced yoga - most days it was more of me laying there and just reveling in the peace of it all. The yoga space was a huge open air wooden deck overlooking the ocean with scents of ylang ylang wafting by. Hammocks meant lots of reading. Other neat features included the compost toilets and rainwater showers. Glorious. Some days were spent walking and hiking, swimming in the ocean, taking my first surf lesson. Others were just spent laying in a hammock, reading and playing guitar. It was incredible. The people that stayed there were perhaps a bit more spiritual, new agey than I am, but the crowd lent itself to a relaxing, thoughtful, friendly 5 nights. Loved it!The surf lesson with local guru Wilbur was a highlight. He had amazing knowledge of the water
- he could tell me to paddle 2 metres to the left, right, in, out in order to move to where the waves were breaking or not. Since my spindly arms don't lend themselves to much paddling, I didn't spend too much time on the water, but I really enjoyed myself. I got tossed by waves, rode them into shore (not standing, I would need a few more days to get to that point) and whooped with excitement. Plus Wilbur didn't speak any English so I impressed myself with my Spanish comprehension. Wilbur was impressed with my balance - I'm pretty sure he called me a pro star (perhaps this was lost in translation, but I got lots of thumbs up).It was really sad to leave such a relaxing setting. If I didn't have such a pull to see different countries, I would go back in a heartbeat on another vacation.
I left on my last morning at 4:30am to catch a 5am bus back to Golfito. In Golfito I had my usual haircut made a tradition on the last day of my previous 4 trips. My flight back to San Jose was less adventurous than the one down, and it led me directly back to the international airport for my flight home. Somehow I scored first class seats on the way back (which on Continental doesn't mean all that much really). After Amy and Nancy picked me up in Seattle and got me home at 3:30 through snowy roads, I had been travelling for over 24 hours, and I had 3 hours of sleep before I got up to go to work for a 9am meeting. I really pushed my vacation as long as I could, and it was totally worth it.
