Costa Rica for 3 days

We stepped off the plane, sleepless and tired into warm, welcoming Costa Rica. Rafer was in a particularly "good" mood due to the lack of sleep and excessive (to his mind) heat. The airport, including security and customs was almost completely wall-less, which allowed a nice breeze to cool us off.

The cab from the airpot to Liberia was $15 (which is muy carro in Spanish), and effectively non-negociable (unless we wanted to pay more). Our accomodations at Hotel Guanacaste were simple and clean. Some workers were erecting another roof to the courtyard and Rafer ended up standing precariously on a ladder trying to help them. This prompted Erik to jump up another equally precariously perched ladder, and finally myself who was still finishing breakfast/lunch of the centroamerican lifeblood gallo pinto (beans & rice). The workers bought us beers afterwards thankful that we had helped out as there was no way they would have erected it on their own. Personally, I was glad we had all bought medical insurance.

Thanks to the two cute girls (Alisa and Sheryl) at Flight Center for that one, who also let us in 2 minutes after they closed and stayed an hour helping Rafer and I buy tickets to Israel and convincing us how irresponsible we were for not buying at least medical insurance (although we're still on the fence for cancelation insurance).

For the most part, Liberia was pretty dull. I roped Erik into an impossible quest to find liquid nitrogen (liquido nitrogena) to kill a wart on my finger. We stopped by six or seven farmacias, two medicos, and el hospital. Although we were unsuccessful in our quest, we did acquire some cool refreshing watermelon and hot painful sunburns.

At night, we made friends with a local drunk bus driver named Hector who taught us a card game called Ron or Rum, and Costa Rican Vente-Uno (like 21, but face cards are given the values 11, 12, 13, 14). He spoke no English, but enjoyed drinking so we got along just fine.

On our last night (Feb 3) in Liberia, we met an Englishman who was going to travel the world on a round-the-world ticket for a year. He was an ex-insurance salesman who explained, "no one is born an insurance salesman, you just end up that way". We went to bed early, escaping Hector and another drinking fiesta and card games that would have kept us in Liberia for even longer.

Dan.