Our first natural encounter in Costa Rica was not monkeys, as I had hoped, but shit-tons of ants. And unfortunately, this is not an ant problem that you can eradicate. In fact, you may as well strap a pair of antennae to your head and start practicing lifting 50 times your body weight, because this is definitely a case of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

We have learned to live with the ants, but it wasn’t so easy in the beginning. The first night in the house as we sat on the most uncomfortable futon in existence, Adam was slightly dismayed to find that he happened to be lounging on a large pile of ants who had made an impromptu nest in the folds of the cushion. To make matters worse, as we peered into the pile of scurrying ants, we saw that they were frantically moving little white parcels that looked like tiny grains of rice—ant larvae. Continue reading “Wild Costa Rica” →

Our trip to Costa Rica began with a very long day of flights and layovers that ended in the capital city, San Jose.  During the day it was shopping streets, markets, cemetery, parks, cathedral, museum, etc.  Later it was local bars, even a few which are famed for the proliferation of prostitution.  At first I thought that this was an interesting phenomenon to observe, but when we read about how Costa Rica has been put on the watchlist for an alarming rise in human sex trafficking, it ceased to be intriguing.

On an evening walk on our last night in San Jose, Adam said to me in a conspiratorial whisper, “Can I tell you a secret?  I don’t really care for this city.”

I’m loath to make blanket statements about a place that I have only spent three days in when I know that hundreds of different unrelated things color my judgment, but, if I’m only reporting how I feel, San Jose hadn’t knocked my socks off either.  It was, to me, a city like any other with nothing that really stood out.  In fact, I was beginning to think that I would have nothing of interest to say about San Jose, but then, we hadn’t yet met Patricia. Continue reading “Good News, Bad News” →