The dirt on living in Costa Rica and backpacking Europe. If you want pretty descriptions of beaches, green tree frogs, and 'pura vida' reflections this is the wrong place.
Additional irreverent travel advice includes hitchhiking disasters, getting drunk with locals, four-hour border crossings and other fun topics.
That must be why I couldn't go the Plasencia Cigar finca in Esteli, Nicaragua for Holy Week in April. It was the longest holiday I would have from the hell that my teaching job at Berlitz Costa Rica had become since January, and I planned well ahead. So I thought.
(I realize simply because I smoke cigars, many Americans have already put me in the same category as Nazis, child rapists and baby seal murders. You can go return to your healthy lifestyle of eating bacon & maple syrup milkshakes and getting important updates on Kim Kardasian & Kanye West's baby.)
Three weeks before the holiday I contacted a Couchsurfer who fortunately was an executive manager for Plansencia. He offered me a place to stay and arranged a personal tour to show me around the expansive tobacco farms - cigars included. Once I got that arranged I went to Transnica in San Jose to find a bus to Esteli, Nicaragua.
"We have no buses to Esteli for Semana Santa. All cancel. Only to Granada."
It's a culturally-significant object
Shit. I'm going to Granada then. At least I can renew my visa, get drunk off cheap Flor de Cana rum and buy some real Nicaraguan cigars. I heard Granada had exceptionally beautiful Spanish colonial-era architecture, so it would be worth visiting for a weekend of picture-taking. Sometime I care about those cultural things.
The week I was to leave for Granada a Swiss Couchsurfer showed up at our San Jose apartment with no specific plans. Thanks to my American charm, I convinced her to travel to Nicaragua with me before she continued on to the rest of Central America. Fortunately, she is as equally sarcastic and cynical as I am, otherwise we would've ended up killing each after the 3 days we spent in close quarters going to Nicaragua. She did have a Swiss Army knife.
That's not a joke.
Crossing the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border is a pain in the ass...especially during Holy Week. Basically every single Nicaraguan that works legally (and illegally) in Costa Rica goes back home to see their families and join in depressing religious processionals. The temperature also magically goes up about 100 degrees when you enter Nicaragua. This one time I was glad I took Transnica and not the local "chicken buses." Between borders you have to switch bus routes, which means waiting hours in a infinite line to cross the actual border. With Transnica you stay on the same bus.
I did return alone by local buses. Ugh. That requires a separate post.
Swiss Miss and I had a reservation at Hostel Oasis Granada. She was a serious backpacker, and had many things she wanted to see and visit in the area. I had put in 3 months of teaching 50+ hours a week, so I didn't want to do shit other than drink, smoke, sleep and get laid. We agreed to see some of the depressing Semana Santa religious processional and go out in the evening together, but didn't see each other for most of the trip. It was for the better. The hostel was in a beautiful historical building with a central garden, a pool, lots of hammocks and free coffee. I walked around town and took some pictures in the mornings, but spent most of the afternoons sleeping in the hammocks, swimming and playing guitar. It's too damn hot in Granada to do much else.
We did see one of Granada's Semana Santa processionals (there are many.) It was depressing. And extremely religious.
Holy Week Processional
Catholicism is all about suffering, and this ceremony certainly emphasizes the suffering. You are in the middle of the humidity and blazing midday sun. There's a sweaty crowd following around a giant statue of a cross-bearing Jesus as a ragtag brass band plays a sad cacophony of noise. Possibly it's the unbearable heat, or maybe the musicians are hungover from the previous night's party, but no one can find the rhythm, and no one is in tune. As a musician myself, I felt an urge to smash the uninspiring musicians over their heads with their own instruments. The cacophony is occasionally disturbed by a long Bible sermon delivered with all the excitement of a Board of Directors meeting fueled by Quaalude & Sizzurp martinis.
I'm sure many Christians are wishing me a swift trip to hell now. Ironically, this scene of religious fervor is one of my many imagined dreams of what hell is. Listen:
Neither Swiss Miss or I are suddenly inspired to praise Jesus. We heard about the nighttime processional and have no desire to see it. We leave the sad Catholic processional before the sheer depression of it causes us to commit suicide.
A year of decadent, dangerous Costa Rica hostel management is over. I ungraciously return to a quiet life of English Teaching to support my traveling/drinking addiction. I had already spent two strange years teaching in Thailand and Slovakia before, so it had the feeling of accidentally bumping into an old ex. The familiarity feels good at first, but after a few moments you remember why you broke up in the first place.
Teaching English abroad is an exercise in humility. You realize how little you know about the very language you've been speaking since you were a child. You pathetically try to correct students' grammar errors and questions without screaming out: "Dammit, because I speak English, that's why!!!!" You have to keep a straight face when students pronounce "beaches"as "bitches." Your local coworkers quietly resent you because they had to put in years of education to get the same job you got simply by being a... dah dah dahdah: NATIVE SPEAKER!!!! (cueapplause, shouts of, USA! USA! 'Murica! 'Murica!)
If you don't take students' errors too seriously; however, it can be a very funny job. And I do mean funny...not fun. The ESL teachers know what I'm talking about.
My interview with Berlitz, which coincidentally happened the same day I got robbed, went well and I started training the day after I left Castle Tam Hostel. Ever the cynic, by the time I'm one day into training I already see problems with teaching in Costa Rica, as compared to Thailand and Slovakia. My salary is lower than it was in both of these countries. Given that Costa Rica has the highest cost-of-living for Central America, this means I'm sitting above the poverty line, but still sitting at home for two weeks doing nothing until payday to make rent. Remember that alcohol factors importantly into my budget.
My awkward work schedule means 4 hours of teaching at 6 in the morning, followed by a 6 hour empty gap, then 4 hours of teaching until 9 at night...Saturday mornings included. Even though Berlitz is an international language school, none of the administrative staff speaks English, and it's only by virtue of speaking Spanish that I'm able to wade through the paperwork involved with getting hired. Fortunately, I am part of the government healthcare system, but that is not exceptional since Costa Rica has a social healthcare system anyway.
At the end of two weeks, Berlitz assigned me a 40-hour work week at their San Pedro Equus center then promptly forgot about me. I was disconcerted to find out that my manager was from England -since everyone thinks British English is better than American English- but when I saw his blue scorpion tattoo, missing teeth and bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey prominently displayed on the shelf, I felt strangely comforted. When I walked into the teacher's office, I was surprised to hear only the sounds of Spanish. Isn't this an English language center?
The first 3 months sucked horribly. After that the wounds healed, leaving just a dull, numb feeling that only hurt when it rained. It rains a lot in Costa Rica.
I won't write much about the year I worked at Berlitz. I'll leave that to the studious ESL teachers who take their jobs seriously. Teaching paid the bills (barely), and I made some really good friends from working there who frequently shared the same hangovers with me.
And now I know the most beautiful bitches in Costa Rica are in Guanacaste.
Some People Came Here Because They Thought There Would Be Practical Advice For Teaching In Costa Rica. HaHaHa. If You Want To Work On The Beach, Don't Expect To Get Paid. Here's Some Links For Schools (With Salaries) In Beautiful San Jose:
January was half over and so was my holiday. There were still fresh memories of Missouri red wine, snow-covered hills and holiday parties in my mind, but it was time to leave that and return to work in the sweltering 'winter' heat of Costa Rica. I wondered how the owner, Jon, had taken our fight over the robbery and if there would be any repercussions. He hadn't answered any of my emails. While I was in the United States, I continued to check my Castle Tam Hostel work account to keep track of guests that were arriving and leaving.
One day before returning, I opened the work email up. I typed in the shared password. The email didn't open. I tried again. Again it didn't open. I've been typing it in daily for the past year, so I didn't see any reason why I would forget it. Still I checked my notebook where it was written. I typed it in letter for letter, and still no success. Dammit, Jon. That sonofabitch had changed the password. Rather than telling me to my face how he wanted me gone, he was simply going to squeeze me out of the hostel business...
I returned to Castle Tam in the late sunny morning. January is high tourist season in Costa Rica, and I fully expected to find guests hanging outdoors on the porch or in the lobby. To my surprise, the place was completely empty. I walked through the garage bar and found it empty as well. I called both Jon and Manual. There was no answer. I shouted their names. Silence. Not even a guest was around to see me. The bright, tropical sun shined in through the glass door of the porch, but the eerie silence inside made the place feel lifeless.
I was inside, so at least I knew Jon hadn't changed the locks yet. I checked my room for any things I may have forgotten, then unlocked the secure office door behind the reception. My other suitcase was already packed in there, and I had a few important documents in the safe. The safe code I also had committed to memory. Would he have changed it?
I spun the lock to the right and left and the small steel door opened quietly. I grabbed my documents then stared inside the safe. All our profits in large bills were taken from the reception cash register at the end of the day and guarded here in envelopes marked with the bills' denominations: twenties, fifties and hundreds for American dollars; ten thousands and twenty thousands for Costa Rica colones. Once or twice a week, Jon would take the envelopes to deposit in his Costa Rica bank account. He had not taken the money out yet this week.
For a moment, I stared inside the envelopes. There was a security camera directly on me, but no one was around in the hostel. Although it fit Jon's military style, I highly doubted he was hiding in a room watching me on video at that moment. Normally he would be in the garage. Besides I knew where the videos cables were connected and could disconnect them if I wanted to.
I was sitting there with at least five-hundred dollars in my hands. I thought back to the past few months when Jon had stopped talking to me, his indifference to me being robbed and the following morning when he had raised a fist as if to hit me. As if being robbed was my fault.
Before the hostel, we had hooked up with sexy European girls, happily terrorized other hostel guests and staff in Nicaragua and partied at Rocking J's Hostel epic birthday party. During the hostel's beginning we had crafted a mad revenge plot on a scam artist who robbed us that eventually landed him in jail; changed the property from a creepy dump for transient, gringo whore-mongers into a proper, lively youth backpacker hostel; held live concerts for guests and planned for an eventual European sister hostel. Through it all we had developed a private, sick politically-incorrect sense of humor (the worst of the political left and right) that no one else understood.
This video was from the good times. What had gone wrong in the last 6 months?
The easy answer would be marijuana. Jon came from a conservative family, and had been in the military until just before he left for Costa Rica so - to the best of my knowledge - at 26 years of age he had never smoked weed before we started traveling together. Certainly he behaved as if he had never smoked; to this day he still can't roll a joint. In the past year he had gone from gingerly inhaling small blunts we shared to hitting 3 or 4 bong loads everyday by himself. I have no objection to marijuana (indeed, I support legalization), but this was far too much even for me. He already had a guarded, structured military personality and this only grew into full-blown paranoia when he was high.
...But I'm lying to myself. As with most men who think too highly of themselves, our greatest downfall is women. It was a guest.
While Jon made sure guests were paying for their stay, I made sure they were enjoying their stay. He has a great mind for numbers, which is why he kept track of the finances; but his people skills are lacking, which is why I always handled marketing and publicity. This entailed taking guests out to tour the city, seeing cultural activities, eating at
restaurants and drinking at bars (a lot) in hopes they would recommend us later by word or in writing. Naturally, many of these guests
were single women.
She arrived from the Netherlands for a semester abroad in Costa Rica. Her plan was to stay at the hostel for a week or two until she found an apartment to share with other students. Jon was determined to get every penny (Colon?) out of her possible. She had barely unpacked her bags when he started spitting out his long-term stay options: student pricing, long-term monthly rates, privates with hot water blah blah blah... I saw it from a more human perspective. At some point while he was rapping, I got his attention and whispered, very business-as-usual, "If you really want her to stay longer, just fuck her right."
And that is what I did...the asshole that I am. While Jon stayed in drinking and smoking, I took her out and we hooked up that same night. She said she had just gotten out of a long-term relationship and had no desire to start anything serious. Like a fool, I believed her. We had our fun, and as predicted within two weeks she forgot about moving to a student apartment. By then I had moved on to another girl.
...no fury like a women scorned. She couldn't accept it. She went after Jon, and he was willing. Initially, I was happy for him. When we started the hostel, we shared fantasies of young, horny university girls on vacation in Costa Rica showing up at our door and looking to behave badly...preferably with us. I was perfectly OK with "hostel groupies." I did not expect him to fall for one girl so bad; and I did not expect her to change him so much.
She had her revenge. They locked themselves in the garage bar for hours some days. Whatever she said and did to him in there was worse than any drug. Within a few weeks Jon's conversation with me dried up to pure business talk: no politics, no sports, no sick, politically-incorrect jokes. All of my faults (I have many) became magnified through her: any error I made in calculating profits or construction, any inappropriate comment, or any woman I brought back became another problem. Just to make a point she cooked meals for Jon, the employee Manual and other hostel guests, but never for me. Her hatred for me turned into his hatred. I ignored it to the best of my ability and kept working, but this invisible wall continued growing between us. I was getting irritated, tense and less motivated to work. One of the cardinal hostel rules we agreed on was, "No free rooms for sex," and the day when she whispered to me with a smirk that she hadn't been paying for the past month, I knew I had to leave. The business was finished...
I sat in front of the open safe and thought of these past bitter months. The money envelopes were in my hands. I could just rob this damn hostel, disappear, and never be heard from again. Even if I were caught, criminal justice is slow in Latin America, I have connections and my clean record would work in my favor. But I couldn't. Revenge doesn't motivate my life. I left the money in the safe.
With my bags in hand, I walked out the front gate, dropped my keys in the mailbox and left to figure what I would do with the rest of my life in Costa Rica. I haven't returned to Castle Tam since.
I was back in St. Louis for the holidays. The robbery in Costa Rica and the fight in Castle Tam Hostel had happened two days ago but they were a thousand miles away. For a short time I could forget them. I'm going to the place where I always go to forget worries when I go home: Missouri Wine Country.
Ever since I turned 21 my family and I, plus family friends, always try to make it here once a year to share wine, craft beer and fine cigars. Even before I was old enough to drink or smoke (legally) I became familiar with this area from its various state parks that I hiked as a youth.
Before I continue, I will make it clear that Missouri Wine Country is actually two regions: the historically Germanic area located on the Missouri River Valley to the west of St. Louis, and the more French Route du Vin located south of St. Louis near Sainte Genevieve. Both regions are full of wide rolling hills and valleys, rocky cliffs that dive into babbling creeks and lush hardwood forests that look their finest in autumn when the leaves burst into fireworks of color. The beautiful scenery not only has merited these regions designations as Missouri state parks, but the rolling hills are also ideal terrain for cultivating wine grapes. Many German immigrants of the western Rhineland and French immigrants from the neighboring border regions settled here because it reminded them of home.
The Missouri River Valley west of St. Louis has two specific wine regions: the Weinstrasse, located on Old Highway 94 north of the Missouri River, and the longer Hermann Wine Trail which winds south of the river along Old Highway 100. There're both easy trips for anyone unfamiliar with the area since the wineries are practically in a row on the roads and well marked. The Hermann Wine Trail has seven principal wineries and they majority of them are located in Hermann within walking distance of each other. The Weinstrasse has only four wineries and is more spread out, but it is on more scenic, hilly terrain.
These are wonderful places which I will talk about more at another time. This year I went to the bootheel of Missouri for the Route de Vin, a good hour drive south of St. Louis on Highway 55 to Exit 150 (Ste. Genevieve.) Here you can spend the morning burning calories hiking on the white pine-covered trails of Hawn State Park; and spend the afternoon gaining those calories back with bottles of wine at the wineries.
Hawn State Park is located approximately in the middle of the wine
trail. The park encompasses several old growth forests of "Whispering
Pines," so called for the hushing sound they make whenever a strong wind
blows through them. There are several trails that wander through these
pine forests; two short 4 miles trails, one of 6 miles and a long
rolling 10 mile trail. In the interest of time we chose the 6 mile
trail so that we could have more time for drinking, but still work up a sweat. Somewhere around the 3rd mile we started climbing a hill and at the top found ourselves in the middle of the largest of the white pine forests. In the silence of
winter the whispering pines practically scream.
After the pine forest, we continued over the hill to a series of rocky cliffs overlooking a wide valley. Somewhere below us was Pickle Creek, a babbling stream that meanders through the park. The 6 mile trail goes in a loop that crosses the creek twice. A mile after looking over the big valley we came to some more sharp cliffs that dove directly into the creek before the trail finished. The look down gave me just enough vertigo to be happy we were almost finished and ready to begin drinking a strong red Norton in the firelight warmth of a winery.
Our hike lasted into the afternoon, so we only visited two of the wineries that day. Why would you want to rush wine anyway? From Hawn State Park it's about 15 minutes on Highway WW to the nearest vineyard, the large Chaumette Winery. Once at the bar inside, our server gave us their wine list and asked us to select 5 tastings. I've never been to California's famous Napa Valley, but I imagine it would shock me to have to pay for every tasting. Most Missouri wineries have totally free tastings from 3 up to 7 glasses depending on the size of the place.
For this reason we skipped the nearby Crown Valley Winery in favor of going to the smaller Charleville Winery. Crown Valley is a massive, impressive place modeled after the California wineries, with nationally award-winning wines to match; but it charges for tastings and it's frequently too busy.
Our group of drinkers has gravitated to quiet, little Charleville because it has better scenery, a more family-owned feel and (most importantly) good craft beer. Although other Missouri wineries have recently started homebrewing in an attempt to follow the burgeoning craft beer movement, Charleville started before it got big and their experience shows. Driving to the end of Highway WW and winding up the rocky road in 3rd gear to this isolated spot is well worth the extra effort.
This was the last stop for the day. There was no rush. We tasted a few wines and followed them with a beer sampler. Here you can find an IPA, their big Tornado Alley red ale, a Belgian ale, several stouts and some creative seasonal brews, including the Box Of Chocolate, a special Belgian Ale brewed with chocolate. We bought pints of the beer that best suited us then went to the porch to pass the afternoon by the fire-pit smoking cigars and shooting the shit. For me, no trip to Missouri is complete without stopping here.
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