day two

I started off my morning with a good shower. Skipped breakfast and grabbed my backpack filled with all my camera equipment, and headed out with my uncle and grandma to what they considered “el mejor bar-bee-kyu” in Costa Rica. The drive must’ve lasted about a total of two hours on the way up the mountain (I cant remember the name of the town we ended up in: food comas usually destroy brain cells as well), and despite their dissatisfaction with the overly-cloudy weather, I found myself somewhat musing over the ways in which the clouds work around here. The weather in Costa Rica is fickle. One hour tumultuous rainstorms could be working their way over your head, and the next hour could bring an inexplicable downpour of sunlight. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the drive through the pueblitos, each one equipped with their own (rather large) soccer field, and I kid you not when I say that every single town had one; with grass greener than whatever “other side” you may have conjured in your head, the fields were each placed in the middle of the pueblos… clean goal posts and lights put up in their veneration. Had it not been for the indefinite moisture which affected these areas of the mountains, I would have probably taken more photos outside the car -- a constant reminder to me that Costa Rica is indeed a rainforest. With Black Sabbath and notable tracks from Grease playing in the car’s stereo, my uncle went on an on about Janis Joplin, telling me that it was really the Syphillis that parented her inimitable, scratchy voice.

We ended up finishing off what could’ve easily been a feast for 5. A liter of cola, unripe banana salad (not by mistake, unripe bananas around here are a common dish), a small serving of chicken soup (again, with unripe banana… and probably the best chicken soup I’ve had in a while too), some stone-ground tortillas, and of course, bbq. And not the lame-ass bbq-sauce drenched meat I’m used to eating. Im talking real, roasted for hours and hours on end, tender fucking delicious chicken, pork and beef. Woooonderful that im not a vegetarian. On the way back, we pulled into a drive-thru at Pops, the infamous (and best) ice cream dive possibly of the entire western hemisphere.

Im now laying on the bottom half of an otherwise empty bunk bed… uploading photos of today’s drive (ill include a photo of my bubblegum scoop). A fierce wind is howling outside, drizzle is spattering the window by my feet. Im tired, full, and as of ten minutes ago, not constipated anymore. Ill take a nap for a few hours and then see what the afternoon brings my way. Might involve a rented movie and some soup. In the meantime, its funny to think that today is the first day of 2009... All toll roads over here are free in celebration of the new year.