Errands in San Jose & Future Adventures

A DAY IN THE CITY: San Jose traffic--with all its honking horns and black exhaust--is certainly a change from the rainforest. It can get exhausting to hear cars, look at concrete, and dodge through crowds constantly. I would rather have ten hog-nosed pit vipers in my study plot than be caught standing in the middle of a San Jose traffic jam. So the city can be an overwhelming experience, but at the same time, I`ve learned to appreciate its gritty rhythum. And the people (despite everything you will hear about josefinos) are generally a nice crowd. The merchants that I talk to have always been patient with my Spanish. So that is fun.

I spent the day running errands: food for my bus trip tomorrow, knitting needles and yarn and books for all my bus trips in the next week or so, a hat to replace the one that is somewhere on the Osa Peninsula (see, Mama, I am preparing for the tropical sun in Nicuragua!), and shorts to replace my favorite chili pepper frisbee short that are in La Selva.

Tomorrow morning, I am taking a bus to Nicuragua to stay at Finca Magdelena for a few days. The hostel is on a working organic farm at the base of a volcano on an island in the middle of Lake Nicuragua. My friends who went there for spring break have said that it is really beautiful. It will be a great time to relax, read, and hike, but the real motive for going to Nicuragua is to re-new my tourist visa for another 90 days. The rule is that foriegners can only stay in Costa Rica for 90 days at a stretch and in between they have to leave the country for 72 hours.

After Nicuragua, I am planning on coming back to San Jose to stay with one of my Tico friends. Along with the other Ticos and one other US student who is staying in Costa Rica a week late, we will hike Volcano Barva in a large national park a few hours from San Jose. Ben had hiked this volcano when he had comed to Costa Rica earlier (and I was in the hospital without an appendix); he warned us to prepare for very very wet weather.

Then I am going to take a bus to Orosi with Fabi and stay at the guesthouse of a small national park ranger station. It is in the mountains near Cerro de la Muerte, almost on top of the Talamanca Mountain range that runs alone the spine of the country. That means that the moist, montane forest vegetation will be beautiful with lots of mossy and that there will be far fewer bugs to nibble on my ankles. Finally, I will end up in Las Cruces for my field assistantship with Chris Graham. So it promises to be a wonderful summer!