Semana Santa I: Journey to Panama

A few weeks ago was Semana Santa (Holy Week).  We had the week off, so Paulina and I decided to make a visa run (see note below) to Panama.  

My friend Samantha came down from Kansas to join us on the trip.  I was very excited about this, because Sam and I had travelled together a lot when we studied in Spain back in 2007.  Unfortunately, we had not seen each other since then.  By joining me in Costa Rica and Panama, Samantha and I have now travelled to seven different countries together (Spain, Morocco, Andorra, Switzerland, Germany, Costa Rica and Panama).  That is the most countries I´ve been to with anyone.

Paulina´s friend Raj joined us from New York, and the high school science student teacher, Amanda, came along for the trip too.

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Samantha flew into Juan Santamaría Airport, where my uncle works, on Friday evening, so I took the bus to meet her at the airport, where my aunt and uncle picked us up and brought us to their house.  We spent the evening catching up and reading out back in the ranchito.  The following morning we met up with Paulina and Amanda as they got off the morning bus to the airport.  We went to the Budget rental place to rent our car.  This wound up being one of the most difficult parts of the trip.  They wanted the driver to be the person who paid for the rental.  I had planned on paying for the rental, and having others pay me back, since I have lost my ATM card from the US, and can´t access that money.  They wouldn´t let me pay for the rental, because I didn´t have a copy of my last stamp for entering Costa Rica (you can only drive legally in Costa Rica if you have been there for less than 90 days, and I had been there for about 100).  So Amanda decided to try, but her license had expired and her ID said NON-DRIVER.  This however was not an issue for Budget Car Rental, but we felt bad and told them about it.  Then my uncle, being the very generous person that he is, let us do everything in his name, and we just added Paulina as an additional driver.  This process took us about 2 hours, 30 minutes actually working this out, and 90 minutes waiting in line, which we were only 4th or 5th to begin with, so it was extra annoying.

Finally, we were able to drive to the airport and pick up Raj.  Raj had wanted to be the sole driver, but he was flying in late, so we picked up the car before he arrived.  Also, he did not have a valid drivers license either.

It was late, so my aunt and uncle lent us their GPS, a cell phone and a cooler full of soda for the road.  We drove down to Cahuíta, Costa Rica to spend the night before figuring out how to leave the car in Costa Rica and transport ourselves to Panamá.  On the way down we laughed as Carlotta (the GPS voice) would try to pronounce all of the Costa Rican road names as if they were English words.  Our favourites included Interamericana 1, and Avenida 36a (the ordinal number for 36th in Spanish) and of course, any roads named after people were fun.  As we neared Cahuíta we were driving down the coast and could see the Caribbean through the trees on the driver´s side.  At one point we saw a load of crabs, and Paulina did her best to avoid hitting them, but I´m certain that she ran over a few.  It was impossible not to, but she says she didn´t hit any.  When we arrived at the hostel there were more crabs and we joked that they were the ghosts of the ones we had killed.

We stayed at a beautiful hostel, whose name I don´t remember, but in the morning they helped us get cash out of the only ATM in town, find a parking garage to leave our car in while we went to Panama and arranged a private shuttle to bring us to the Isla de Colón, where we would stay in Panama.

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US Americans can stay for 90 days on tourist visas in Costa Rica.  In order to restart those 90 days, you must leave the country for 72-hours.

Un finde en Cartago y San José / Weekend in Cartago and San José

This past weekend my friends Paulina, Amanda, Andrew and I took off and went to San José for a long weekend.  We had Monday off in celebration of Juan Santamaría Day and Día de la Batalla de Rivas.

We arrived in San José on Saturday morning after taking the 630 bus and walked to our hostel.  Saturday evening Andrew and I went downtown, explored the central market and searched for recuerdos, while the girls went to an Anime convention on the other side of the city.

During the night Andrew and Paulina met a guy named Jason who was also in town for the weekend, because he´s working in Puntarenas.  We invited him along to join us at a football match in Cartago.  We wondered around the city looking for a bus that would take us to Cartago.  After listening to four or five different directions, we finally found the bus station.  We got to Cartago and went to the stadium for the game.

The game was the first of a two-leg series for the national quarterfinals.  Cartago SC went head-to-head against San Carlos, who I had seen get eliminated last season in the semi-finals.  I decided I´d root for Cartago because they were the home team, the underdogs and I didn´t like how San Carlos plays not to loose, rather than to win.  I was surprised to hear the old men near us voice the same complaints about San Carlos.   

40 minutes into the game it was still scoreless.  San Carlos took control of the ball and made one of their handful of attacks in the half.  The Cartaginés goalie slide for the ball and was able to push it away from the attacker and out-of-bounds.  The referee made a horrible call and decided it was a penalty.  (If the goalie hadn´t touched the ball, yes it´d be a penalty, but the ball clearly changed direction, so it had to have been touched).  San Carlos made the most of the opportunity and took a 0-1 lead.  They held their lead until about the 80th minute.   With under 10 minutes to play Cartaginés made yet another attack, as they had been attacking most of the game.  The referee made another boneheaded call, but this time it gave Cartaginés an undeserved penalty kick.  They also scored to tie it at 1-1.  Next weekend the two teams will play in the Ciudad Quesada (Cheesed City) where San Carlos is from.  If they draw again or San Carlos wins, they will win the series and move on to the semi-finals.  Should Cartago win, they will move on to the semi-finals.

After the game, I played tour guide for the others as none of them had been to Cartago.  I showed them the inaccurately named "ruins," the basilica and the Negrita.   For more information on Cartago, you can read my entry http://redfishbobfish.blogspot.com/2011/02/cartago.html  from earlier in the year

That evening, back in San José we all went to check out the new National Stadium.  We were able to walk around the premise, and it appears to be a very fancy stadium.  It was built by the Chinese (PRC) government and opened a few weeks ago.  The hopes are that Costa Rica will now be able to host larger sporting events.  They will start with the 2015 Under-17 Womens´ World Cup of Soccer. Shakira was performing that night, so we were not able to enter and walk around the stadium as you usually can.  We grabbed dinner and called it a night as we all got ready to return to Monteverde Monday morning.

Oh yeah, we also played a lot of monkey in the middle in the reception of the hostel!  It´s always fun to get teachers to act like children.

Amber´s Visit Part I of II

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to have my friend Amber come pay me a visit from New York.  It was so nice to have someone from "back home" come visit.  Amber is one of my friends I still visit with every time I go back to New York, but it has still been about three months.

Her visit started off in a very chaotic and stressful way.  Amber took a private shuttle from San José to Monteverde that was supposed to get in around 6pm (about 10 minutes after sun set).  Instead, I think she said the shuttle got in at about 8pm.  My friends and I were planning a BBQ for that evening, but I told them all to go ahead and that Amber and I would catch up later.  I figured she´d get in, we´d get a cab and drive out to my co-worker´s house, because Amber wouldn´t want to walk an hour in the dark through the woods right when she got here.  So I waited around my house by myself.  Around 8 o´clock I started to get really nervous.  She only knew that I lived "50 meters in front of the Hotel Sapo Dorado on the other side of the street in the house in the shape of an A" (The translated version of my official address) and my phone number.  Unfortunately, that morning, our phone broke, so I figured she was trying to call us, but we´d never know.  So at about 8pm I went to our landlords house to borrow his phone.  We called the Hotel Sapo Dorado (again, right across the street and up, supposedly 50m).  They said that no one by her name had arrived, and that if she did, they´d send her to our house.  So, I went home and started to stress some more.  My landlord and I called the shuttle company, but no one answered.  Finally, I sat down and started to watch Law and Order SVU.  I figured whatever happened to Amber couldn´t be as bad as what happened to the victims on the show.

Around 11pm, my roommates came home and were worried that Amber was not yet here.  So at about 12-midnight my time, 2am Eastern Time, I called her parents house, to see if she in fact got on her plane earlier in the day.  I turned on skype and went to the restaurant across the street that has wireless.  I figured I´d have a great connection at that hour.  Well, I talked to her dad and I said "Hi Stan, it´s Bob Bartlett," and the internet cut out.  I tried calling a few times after that without any luck.  So I went to bed, far later than I ever had before in Costa Rica.

As usual I woke up at about 5am.  I went next door to use the internet, and there was a message from Amber saying that she had arrived and tried to find my house, but eventually gave up and stayed at the Hotel Sapo Dorado.  So I went around 6am and found her as she was about to get breakfast.  She was safe and in one piece, but we were both very relieved and tired.

Sámara

A couple of weekends ago,  I took a trip with some of the other teachers to a beach town called Sámara.  It was an absolutely beautiful beach that I highly recommend to anyone who comes to Costa Rica.  We took private transportation down (so we crammed 11 staff members in a van and drove down to the beach).  We relaxed on the beach, played beersbie, a horseshoe-like game where you throw a frisbee at a stick that has a beer can on it.

The bittersweet part of the trip was that Bob and Linda, who were 2 volunteers at the school returned to the US at the end of their trip.  They are a married couple who celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary with us and stayed for a couple of months.


The highlight of the trip for me was that we rented kayaks and snorkeling equipment and kayaked out to an island near the beach and snorkeled around for a while.  I´ve been told that sometimes you can see different types of rays there, and that my one co-worker saw a turtle the last time she went to this island.  Unfortunately, we did not see either of those, but it was a lot of fun to see lots of different fish and plants under the water that you usually cannot see.  I want snorkeling to be a part of my next few beach trips, and at $10 an hour, the equipment was very cheap to rent.

I also really enjoyed that our hostel had boogie boards for us to use, and that the person working at the hostel was from Madrid, so I got to reminisce about my time in Spain.

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss! and a note on Samara

It has been a couple of weeks since my last entry.  So today I am going to try to summarize two fun events from the beginning of the month. 

March 2nd was Dr. Seuss´s birthday and to honor the amazing author the Creativa decided to celebrate his birthday that Friday.  We started the day with the whole escuela getting together as we would for sing, but this time it was with crazy clothes and crazy hats in memory of the fun drawings from Dr Seuss´s books.  

(picture of me from the celebration to come)

Together with Tera, the kinder teacher, I read Oh, the Places You´ll Go by Dr Seuss to the school.  From there each class went outside and had a read-in of their favourite Dr Seuss books, a parade of the crazy clothes and hats.  Finally we took a tour to see how each class had decorated their door to represent one or more of Dr Seuss´s books.

(picture of Oh the Places We´ll Go to be uploaded shortly)

Samara

That previous weekend my friends and I went to Samara, which is a beach on the Pacific Coast and we went snorkeling, kayaking, boogey-boarding, swimming and played frisbee.  It was a very enjoyable and relaxing weekend.  Unfortunately I wasn´t able to get any pictures because I didn´t want to bring my camera onto the beach.

Pesto!

Pesto pasta is one of my favourite dishes I´ve learned to make here, and one of the first I was trusted to make on my own...

Ingredients:

• 2 bags basil
• 4 small cloves garlic
• 1/4 Cup olive oil
• 1/2 Cup parmesan cheese
• 1/2 Cup walnuts
• 1/8 Cup water

Instructions:

1. Use food processor to chop walnuts
2. Add 1 bag basil, oil, garlic. 
3. Blend
4. Add Cheese
5. Blend
6. Add remaining ingredients
7. Blend
8. Add seasoning to taste

Gallo Pinto

Gallo Pinto is one of the most traditional dishes here in Costa Rica.  There are also other variations that are common around Central America.  It is one of the many dishes here that is made up mostly of rice and beans.  Here in Costa Rica we tend to use black beans and serve it with fried plantains (as seen above).  In Nicaragua they tend to use red beans and have a higher beans to rice ratio.

To make it...

• 4 cloves garlic, crushed with garlic press or something similar
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 1/2 tsp basil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1tsp black pepper
• Salsa Lizano (a local condiment) to taste
• 1 lb tico cheese (the local cheese, swiss might be a good substitute, or mozzarella)
• 2 cups beans, soaked overnight, cooked 45min-1hr
• 2 cups rice cooked

Sauteé garlic, onion and pepper in large skillet until onions are translucent

Add beans and rice, stir in hot skillet

Pour on Salsa Lizano a gusto

Serve with fried plantains for lunch or dinner.

What a crazy week in Monteverde! Part 1

As usual the last week at la Creativa and elsewhere in Monteverde has been interesting.  I had one student who was suspended for cutting another student´s wrist with a rusty nail.  Luckily it was only a superficial cut, but since this was not his first problem in school he was suspended, for the second time this year.  I found out on Monday that his mother had decided to pull him out and to put him in the public school, where she works.  This was sad for me because he is a student who needs help and was making great progress, especially with learning English, and it´s sad to see him leave.

Later in the week we had a pot luck at school on Friday that was in honour of our High School Spanish teacher and her last week before going on maternity leave.  We had a baby shower that was decorated by the 5th and 6th graders!  It was the first baby shower I had ever been to.  We played a game where we had to guess how big María´s belly is by putting toilet paper around us and estimating.  I was pretty close, but someone luckily, was right on, because supposedly whoever guesses correctly will have the next baby.

After the baby shower when we got ready to leave, Gloria (the HS Social Studies and Civics teacher) got in her car and tried going up the hill from the parking lot to the exit of campus where the battery died.  It took 8 of us about 20 minutes to push her car up the hill so that she could then coast half way down the main hill and intentionally off the road until a mechanic could help her out.  (Photo to come).

Later that day we had another pot luck for some teachers to meet with a board member.  At this pot luck everyone except for my roommate Paulina and I brought leftovers from lunch´s pot luck.  Paulina had made banana bread for lunch which was quickly devoured, so I made a second one for dinner.  The dinner was great, Beth, who is a member of the board and a former teacher of my students hosted the meal so that the teachers could have their voice heard by the board.

that´s all for now, more to come later

Escazú

This school year I have had the great opportunity to spend quality time with my Uncle Tom and the newest member of the Bartlett family, my Aunt Terri.  They live in Guachipelin, Escazú, San José, Costa  Rica.  That means they are only about 50 miles (or 5 hours) away.  

Not only are my aunt and uncle extremely hospitable (hosting me and so far 3 of my friends, sometimes even when I´m not accompanying them) they are amazing chefs and know Costa Rica´s sights well as they had an 18 month jump start on me, and the means to travel more.

Also, their amazing house has beautiful views of 3 of the cities in the Central Valley

View of one of the volcanoes from their house

Also their house is beautiful.  They have what they call the "El Rancho" to hang out, read and relax, complete with a sink, electricity and a bar that overlooks the city.  I would like to say that it is a home away from home, but it´s much more modern and comfortable than the homes I´ve had since I left my parent´s house in 2004.

Unfortunately, there was a break in at their house a few weeks ago, and another attempts shortly after.  As a result they have hired a guard to watch the house whenever they are not around.  His name is Marley

Marley

Cartago

Back in December, I visited my aunt and uncle for a few days.  While in the Central Valley we took a trip to Cartago.  Cartago was one of the places in Costa Rica I had been most excited to visit, because it´s name shares roots with Cartagena (see note below).  Cartago, the former capital of Costa Rica is a beautiful city filled with stories and traditions dating back to the pre-Columbus era.

One important story about Cartago is the story of the ruins (seen above).  The ruins are the remains of several building attempts (therefor they are not actually ruins by definition) to build a cathedral on this one plot of land.  Locals will tell you about how an earthquake in 1910 and a few other earthquakes later in the 20th century each destroyed attempts to build on this site.  After a few attempts, they decided to abandon their efforts and leave the area as a park.

The other highlight of Cartago is the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles.  Every year on the 2nd of August thousands of Ticos (and I assume some foreigners) make a pilgrimage to the Basílica.  The Basílica is well known for the legend that surrounds it.  Legend has it that a young girl found a small object that looked like Mary holding baby Jesus.  She brought it home and left it at her house.  The next day she was wandering and found the same object.  Again, she brought it home and locked it in her box.  She went back to the area where she found the object a third time, and a third time it was there.  She then brought it to her pastor and explained what had happened.  Legend has it that this "Black Madonna" was repeatedly found on the spot where the Basílica now stands.

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Cartagena is a city in Spain.  It is the 2nd largest city and formerly the main city of the Autonomous Region of Murcia (where I studied in 2007).  Cartagena is a beautiful seaport city that had such a claim to be the sede of the province over Murcia that the administrative part of the government is actually in Cartagena.