And Then There Was One.

Approximately 12 years ago, my family and I took Esapnol classes in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Twelve years later, I returned to find that....the streets were paved.

This is a moderately quiet mountain town renowned for it's cloud forests. A cloud forest is like a rain forest but its wet nature is sustained by rain and cloud moisture. I extensively hiked each of the cloud forests and was impressed by the green. There was green everywhere. Green leaves on green branches from green trees covered in green moss snacked on by green bugs. Unfortunately I didn't get to see a Quetzal, the beautiful and rare national bird of Costa Rica.

I took residence at the first hostel I came to when I was dropped at the adjacent and more accessible Santa Elena. I could research and obtain the hostel's name but I wouldn't be doing justice to the fact that the entire time I was there I didn't know its name.

The staple of my stay in Monteverde/Santa Elena was "The Common Cup." The CC was in its 24th day of existence when I meandered in for a free coffee roasting class. What I didn't know, is that The CC also gives free cups of coffee and is evidently a gringo magnet. I suppose that's what signs in English will do.

The CC is run by a fast talkin' Georgian named Ken who has lived in Costa Rica for five years, is married to a Tica, has Tican step-kids, owns a coffee farm, and now The CC. His motivation for The CC was to provide a hub for travelers and locals to freely enjoy a cup of Joe that had been freshly picked, roasted, and brewed in town. The CC makes its money from selling bags of coffee for $8/pound, 40% of which goes to fund youth programs in town. Somewhere in the monetary equation of The CC the farmer sees a 400% increase in what he usually would get for a pound of coffee beans. I'm unsure of the mathematics, but Ken said-so.

I used The CC as my own hub-o-friendship. I met a Minnesotan teaching at an international school in the Dominican, an aspiring filmmaker from Philly, a post-grad traveler from LA, and some medical missionaries from Portland. Basically I was the creepy regular at the coffee shop there to pick up friends. It only moderately worked.

My greatest friend success was while pa-rousing the streets, a favorite pastime of mine. I overheard English and slowed my gait to allow the Gringos to catch up. Andres and Nick were from LA and traveling with friends. We had no real destination so I suggested we visit my brother and my hangout from Monteverde circa '97: a small park at the bottom of a dirt road with hiking trails and a waterfall. We completed a hike which turned out to be far more difficult than any of us had anticipated. But we survived and I scored a dinner date with the five Los Angelians. During our hike I discovered that Andres' girlfriend was Jewish so when I arrived for dinner I brought a box of wine and the most Jewish bread they had: bagels. I later realized that it was also Passover and bread's a no-no, but it was the thought that counts.

All-in-all, Monteverde was a success. I didn't have much of a social life but I got lots of hiking in, tons of pictures (I took advantage of the auto-timer on my camera for self-portraits), caught the Final Four, and slept miserably as I had the creepiest room in the unnamed hostel, not to mention the Costa Rican snoring champion next door.

A note: don't sign up for a tour unless you know for CERTAIN there are other people going. For a friendless traveler to take an adventure tour alone with just two Costa Rican guides is uncomfortable, moderately embarrassing, and dull.

Off to Arenal, Costa Rica's most popular active volcano.

I took the Jeep-Boat-Jeep shuttle service (lack of a better term) to drive, float, then drive to the lava. As fate would have it, three young school teachers from New Jersey were making the same multivehicular transfer. Slowly, conversation between the four of us grew and I was invited to have lunch with them. Then we found a hostel together (or rather it found us as we were pitched the appeals of Cabinas Jerry four times over). Then we found a tour together (again, courtesy of a multiple sales pitches). Then we shared 32oz beers together. Then we took the tour together.

I'll take a break from the together lines and describe what our $35-a-head tour got us: transport to a resort's free volcano observation deck, a guided hike through the resort's gardens, a swim under a waterfall (cool), a hike across and immediately back across a hanging bridge, 1.5 hours watching the volcano at night (yes we saw lava but overstayed our desire to be there as our guide, Julio, watched an important soccer match - and yes, I did just call it soccer Julio, suck it), a borrowed flashlight trek to the natural hot springs (which seemed to be runoff from the adjacent resort but we'll give Julio the benefit of the doubt), and a whole lot of drawn out stops for animals including a dead snake and bad canibus jokes. Needless to say, the Julio Tour Company, sucks.

But, as every cloud has a silver lining, I found mine in bonding with Steve, Megan, and Kelly of the Garden State. Traveling on their spring break, they found it in them to take in this ginger bearded loner from Arizona. We added one more, Steph of Santa Barbara, to the Wolf Pack and called ourselves the Buellers or members of a traveling circus. The Bueller thing doesn't make much sense and probably doesn't merit mentioning but there is a white bearded man in San Ramon, Costa Rica who may or may not believe that we were all traveling separately and coincidentally found one another each with the same last name.

Upset with the scam we'd just had pulled on us we decided to get out of dodge. We headed to San Ramon, possibly the least tourist friendly city in Costa Rica, but with a diverse bus system that would allow each party to conveniently travel on. But before we parted ways, there was beer to be drank.

After finding and price pointing each of San Ramon's three hotels, we settled on the nicest, La Posada, which offered us a cash only, tax-free room for $85 for three guests. That's right, three guests. We slyly pulled a quick one and slept five to that room. Booyah.

With a place to stay it was time to belly up to San Ramon. It was remarkably difficult to find a restaurant/bar but when we did and we made it last. The five of us sat and drank and ate for a good two-hours before we left to do the same thing at the park, this time with more 32's. When those were gone we needed ice cream and ran into another La Posada guest, Bill from Alaska. An extremely interesting and warm man, he bought us all cones and offered Steph and me a ride to San Jose in the morning. After free ice cream, it was on to 30 beers. Followed, much later, by a beer run for one more sixer.

All-in-all my solo travels were not so solo. I met fun, like-minded folks who were simply enjoying an adventure of their own. Whether it was seven days or seven months, everyone had stepped out of their box and into a little discomfort, something new. While traveling and meeting these discoverers, I couldn't help but think of Chris McCandless, the mysterious post-grad and subject of "Into The Wild." McCandless died alone, only to discover that life is best lived when shared.

We said our goodbyes and after spending an afternoon with Steph in San Jose I found myself all alone again. As I stood waiting for my next bus, I noticed something written on my ankle: "HOLA!" the penned message read. I'd never been so happy to realize I'd drank too much the night before.

Thanks Tara. Thanks Buellers. Thanks random others and those to come.

Arrival

First of all, international travel - or travel in general - is not made for 6'5" people, namely me. I should note that American Airlines was very efficient and kind and, most importantly, on time. Kudos AA. Beyond that, the seats were incredibly small and I was seated next to sprawled sleepers.

On my overnight from LA to Miami a sweet old man who appeared to be on his first flight had to go to the bathroom, from the window seat, just as I, from the aisle seat, was falling asleep. From that point on, I knew I would not sleep for the rest of the flight. The inflight movie was The Invention of Lying. Not good. It had become impossible to sleep and I didn't want to turn my light on to read because I did not want to disturb the able sleepers. My mistake.

Between the two flights (LA-Miami and Miami-San Jose) I managed to hit my head 4 times on the aisle located televisions. I also managed to sit behind seat recliners whom I hate. But when all was said and done, I arrived in San Jose.

And there she was. Tara Ruttenberg my host, guide, and - most importantly - my friend.

Reason #238 I'm thankful for Tara: she dominated the overwhelming and intimidating San Jose airport exit.

From the airport we bussed to a cab, cabbed to a bus, and bussed 4.5 hours to Puerto Viejo. I passed out twice on the bus after not sleeping all of the previous night while flying in. Once in Puerto Viejo we found a place to stay and I quickly - or as quickly as the humid weather would allow - got out of my damp, heavy jeans. I immediately put the jeans into a compartment of my pack where I knew they would not be accessed again. We found dinner then went straight to bed.

The rooster blarred at 3:44 am and didn't stop until I don't know when but he sure as hell started at 3:44 am.

Day one in Puerto Viejo was for biking. We rented beach cruisers from a guy who smelled like pot and called me "Adan Mantequilla" because Butler was spelled a lot like butter. Tara's bike was bright pink, mine was white and too small.

We were riding out to Manzanillo which we later discovered was 13km away. Initially, Tara announced that it was 20km away. Retrospectively, 20km would've been awful, but I digress.

Our first stop was Punta Uva. It's difficult to describe Punta Uva because there are no words to describe such a place. Instead I have invented a new adjective: postcard. Punta Uva was incredibly postcard. It's unbelievably tranquil and as the Palm Trees stretch over the water, it's easy to lose yourself in the lapping of the waves and the softness of the sand. For this, I fell asleep.

When I awoke, Tara was gone for a walk so I decided to let my primal instincts take over: I was going to get us a coconut. With my eyes to the sky I searched for the most ripe one. I finally settled on the perfect one. I shimmied up the 50ft tall palm tree to retrieve my chosen fruit. Noticing that I had a good angle into the ocean, I jetisoned myself off the tree and swan dove into the bay. I was later told by a Scandinavian onlooker that the climb, pick, and subsequent dive was a thing of beauty.

That is completely untrue.

Realty: I used a dry, leafless palm frawn to bat down a green, very unripe coconut. But I was able to retrieve it, crack it open, and we enjoyed the refreshing and tasty milk.

We biked on to Manzanillo which was a less postcard view but unbelievably gorgeous nonetheless. I napped here as well.

We returned home, showered, then ate. Again we were exhausted and found ourselves in bed and asleep by 10:15pm.

Day 2 on the Carribean Coast was for hiking. We were off to Cahuita in a bus and it became quickly evident that it was a fantastic idea not to ride bikes out to the national park. Pot holes, dirt roads, and erratically controlled drivers made it an intimidating and threatening bike ride, but an easy bus unless you're the driver. Not my problem.

Walking into Cahuita was quite a site. It was like entering a Disney ride. We crossed a small bridge and as we crossed, the landscape changed. We moved from a town into a park and the vegetation became incredibly dense in a hurry. The park was much of the same.

To our right was green on top of green on top of green. To our left was the Carribean Sea. It's relatively mind blowing. While hiking Cahuita we saw three types of monos (howler, white face, and spider), some raccoons, and an iguana holding on for dear life as he fell from a branch. Also saw a spider the size of my fist eating a bug. That was gnarly.

When we returned to Puerto Viejo to prepare for dinner, we first picked up an ice cream afternoon snack. It was an early sunset, about 5:45pm, and as we ate our ice cream we watched what I suppose was a sunset. The ocean was there but the sun was not. You see, Puerto Viejo is on the eastern coast of Costa Rica and, as we all know, the sun sets in the WEST. So, we watched a sherbert sky with no sun. It was quite beautiful but something I'd never seen before. I've decided all sunsets of an eastern ocean will be called "sets".

We also discovered that it was St. Patrick's Day. As they say, every town has an Irish Pub and Puerto Viejo is no exception. We decided to give it a whirl. After dinner we found ourselves a quality box of $2200 colones ($5) wine and settled in on the beach in front of the bar. Tara and I enjoyed the boxed wine as the local cover band, Atomic Pants, played in the background.

When the boxed wine was gone we headed into the bar. Only problem is we were both over boozing so we "settled" on ice cream. Chocolate and then passionfruit. This was ten fold better than rum shots or whatever you take down in the Carribean.

We boogied down to a mash of "La Bamba" and "Twist 'n Shout" and declared ourselves the world's foremost wedding/bar mitzvah dancers. The dancing was interupted for us as Atomic Pants moved into a Radiohead cover. While we couldn't dance, the local prostitute got low to "High and Dry".

The hike and box-o-wine began to take its toll and we decided that it was time to turn in. After a brief discussion, it was determined that it was 2:00am. We were pooped and leaving the next day for San Jose. Convinced it was 2:00am and we had to get to bed.

We walked back through town, St. Paddy's Day'd out. We got back to the room and I checked my watch. It wasn't 2:00am. My clock read 11:26pm.

Oh to be young.