Kepfram & Ellie's Travel Journal

Memories of Nicaragua:
It's been about a month since we did our border run to Granada, here's what happened...

I like to sleep. Most of the time I don't get enough sleep, not because I'm a light sleeper or have insomnia, I just refuse to go to bed @ anything approaching a reasonable hour. This quirk occasionally pays off when I stay up all night to do something in the early morning like helping us get to the bus station downtown by 4am.

I remember the bus ride to Granada like this: I got on the bus, I woke up @ the Nicaragua border, went through customs, then watched about 3/4 of Cheaper By the Dozen on the bus before getting off in Granada. Ellie tells me it was a long ride to the border.

On our walk from the bus stop to our hostel we saw a street bull, an unclaimed bull just trotting down the street, apparently this is normal. We also saw a horse grazing along the riverbank in town, some loose chickens, & 3 goats chilling on the sidewalk @ one point. There were lots of horse carts, handsome cabs, & stray dogs on the streets too.

In addition to street animals Granada has a lot of street children, kids who've ended up homeless & make a living panhandling or peddling candy & other things. I thought it was really sad, but like I wrote before: Nicaragua is really poor, which is kinda what creates the problem, some people can't afford to have children so they put them on the street.

We visited a shelter for street kids outside of Granada that Ellie's friend Taleigh had worked with when she was doing social work in Nicaragua a few years back, but none of the kids were there that afternoon. Everybody was off playing fútbol that day. We did look around the grounds though, we checked out the buildings, the hillside view of Lake Nicaragua & the little islands just off the shore. It was really pretty.

Just like in real life, I talk too much. I'm going to let Ellie finish writing about Nicaragua (she was there too you know)....:One of the hostels in Granada has nightly movies (a room with a TV & DVD player, and 1 or 2 movies every night). We saw Maria Llena de Gracia (for the 2nd time) & since we were the only guests I tried to have us watch it without the subtitles, but Kepfram caved after the 1st 15 minutes, so we had watch it with them turned on. No matter, it was still a great movie.

This same hostel proportedly rents bicycles, however this was unfortunately not to be. Perhaps it was because we went during the off (read "rainy") season (although it didn't rain as much in Nicaragua as it had been in San José), but although they did seem to have 2 bikes, only 1 seemed half decent, and neither had locks - so since the risk of them getting stolen was high (if we decided to stop anywhere during our day out), that they discouraged us from taking them.

I was really disappointed. We'd planned to explore the countryside outside of Granada (our plan was to go to Laguna de Apoyo) & I'd been REALLY missing biking. I'm not too interested in trying it here in Costa Rica - the roads around here are crowded with cars which don't attend to traffic laws (as we've mentioned), and you'd have to get quite far out of town to find a place deserted enough to enjoy. In Nicaragua there were TONS of bikes (and horses) on the roads, and very few cars.

So we stayed in town all weekend, which wasn't all bad. We loved the city - the oldest city in the Americas - founded in 1524. There is some incredible architecture (something definitely lacking in San José), and the people we met were much friendlier and more open than we've generally experienced in Costa Rica.

We walked around a lot, people watched, took a ton of pictures, spoke a lot of Spanish with the folks at our hostel, met an old friend of my friend Taleigh's & took a tour of the street kid's shelter that Kepfram mentioned above, looked at Lago Nicaragua (although we didn't go for the boat tour this time). It was quite a pleasant 3 days all told.

We stayed at a small hostel & language school named La Siesta run by some friends of friends. The place was really cute with several open courtyards with huge lovely plants (frequently visited by hummingbirds who might also flit around inside the room you were sitting in before exiting from whence they came).

Our hosts were a young married couple who'd just opened the place a few months before. Marcela is Nicaraguan by birth, but spent the last 10-15 years in Costa Rica with her family (who still live here), Boris is French, but met Marcella while teaching French in Costa Rica.

In Granada (which they say they prefer to San José), they host travelers and give 1 on 1 language classes (in either French or Spanish) to their guests & others. Truly great people & a great place to say (remember that for your next trip)....

We're mentioned how much we love shopping in the markets here in Costa Rica. Not true in Granada! Perhaps it was the lack of refrigeration in central market - but endless cramped aisles with tons of warm meat sitting & stinking on wooden chopping blocks.... It turned my stomach, and I hadn't really felt my first world sensibilities get in the way of appreciating and enjoying my experiences here until then.

Needless to say we were less apt to enjoy eating meat in restaurants after seeing how much of the meat was stored (luckily Kepfram had already eaten his steak dinner when we saw the market - and raved about it too - and since neither of us got sick, so it's all good, right?).

I should say we enjoyed good food while in Granada: a Waffle breakfast, an evening snack over drinks (Sangria for me & "flor de Jamaica" - or rather sorrel!! - for Kepfram) at one of the more expensive restaurants overlooking the towns large central square (remember expensive is in comparison to other restaurants in town, this place was nice & dirt cheap), & an elaborate Italian meal with our fellow guests & hostel hosts on our final night in town.

¡La proxima vez te juro que escribiré en español!

Our Last Day in San Pedro:
Today is our final day in the old apartment. We've moved everything to our new place & we're not coming back.
Well, we'll be back to visit our friends here & maybe use the internet a couple times, like we've been doing most of this month (we've been sleeping in the other apartment for @ least 2 weeks now coming here almost daily to use the internet before running off to work or elsewhere).
At moments of transition I like to reflect about what has gone before, what I will miss, what has been, & what I'd like to see in days to come...
I'm going to miss the crepe place that was over by the supermarket. I think they closed so I can't even go back sometime, damn.
I'd recount other things about San Pedro but as I think about it I like our new place more so I don't expect to miss much about this neighborhood.

Hasta La Vista!

Also, if Ellie & I don't write for another 2 weeks or something it's because we haven't gotten our internet service connected in our new apartment yet.

Kepfram

Time Spent in San José:
We really need to update this blog.
So much to tell, so much to tell... we've got stories about Nicaragua, our new apartment & the normal stuff about how we're so interesting & how even when things are bad here we're still in Costa Rica! Oh well, you've got something to look forward to for later.
Our new apartment is in downtown San José so there's more to see & do nearby, here's a bit of what we've been doing the last 2 weeks:

• Our move means that my 10 minute jog to capoiera class will now take about 30 minutes, but I'll be out of class for @ least the next week. I sprained my ankle jogging last Tuesday giving me another excuse not to go back to capoiera for a while. Maybe I can work on my handstands while my ankle is healing?


• We now live about 5 blocks from Tin Jo. We went there for dinner the other night & I can't wait to go back. I'm thinking we could eat there more often if we just go for dessert sometime, that way we wouldn't go out too much.


• Since el Centro Nacional de la Cultura is across the street from our new apartment, Ellie's checked out a Harry Potter Festival & an Indigenous People's Festival, together we went to an X-Files Festival, which consisted of some tables of sci-fi/X-files merchandize & a projector setup in another room playing episodes of the show. We watched about 1 & 1/2 episodes in Spanish which was just about as easy to follow as it is in English.


• International release dates being what they are we saw the 40 Year Old Virgin on Wednesday (I so love 1/2 price Wednesdays!) & we may go see it again, everyone was laughing so loud that we're sure we missed some of the jokes. I was really surprised:
  1. I really liked the movie & found it really funny.
  2. Comedy is SO culturally dependent I was amazed that the audience found it funny in spite of it.


• Slowly but surely I'm getting to know San José better, although sometimes I wish I didn't. I found a public pool, a couple restaurants I'd love to check out (there are 2 places that have Mariachis that I'm really anxious to see), discovered an arcade, some movie theaters, a few cheap electronics stores & saw 2 places I'd rather not see again. Both were unpleasant red light districts: imagine HBO's Hookers on the Point for one & then imagine it again with everyone having big hands & adam's apples. Prostitution is legal in Costa Rica so I assumed that would mean that the problems we associate with it in the US wouldn't apply, but it may be that the problems of drug addiction & poverty don't give people a lot of work options in any country.

Ciao por ahorra,

Kepfram

Another Weekend Update:

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the blog in the last 2 weeks, here's the abridged version of what's been going on:

• We're moving!
  I know we've raved about our apartment & how nice our neighbors & neighborhood are, but we've got a major problem living here: there's too much English. Before leaving the states I was often asked if I thought my Spanish was sufficient for a year away in Latin America & I'd always answer back about how Ellie & I were taking a month long intensive Spanish course & then living in Costa Rica for 9 months, which would give us enough of a background to get by. Ah, "the best laid plans..." This is what actually happened: We both teach English for a living & tell all of our students that they can't speak Spanish in our classes. All our neighbors in the building speak English, all the movies we watch & things we read on the web are in English. There's very little in our routine that demands a lot of Spanish. When I take cabs or people engage me on the street I can get my point across, but I know I'm messing up 1/2 the time by the looks I get (which is funny, because until I speak most people assume I'm from Costa Rica's carribean coast). I do get about 2 out of the 3 hours of Spanish class offered @ my job every Friday, a little bit of conversation, some new vocabulary that I promptly forget, & sometimes a game before my co-workers & I switch back to English.
  One of my big goals for this year was to learn Spanish. That's not going to happen if I'm not practicing it. We spoke more Spanish during the 4 days we were in Nicaragua than in the 2 months since leaving school. When we got back we realized that we needed to make Spanish our priority, so we'll be moving by the end of the month.


• Ellie's back in school. She's found a language school that isn't ridiculously expensive (it's assumed that rich gringos are the only one's who need to learn Spanish here so prices are generally inflated) with a teacher she really likes within walking distance of where we've been living & her job, she's taking 10 hours of Spanish every week & loving it. I'd like to take classes as well, but want to get back on schedule with capoeira before I commit to any classes (I haven't been going since we started looking for an apartment).

Our Costa Rican Kitchen:

Actually we don't really cook Costa Rican food in our kitchen (it's pretty bland overall, so not really inspiring), but being that we are here we do have different tools & ingredients to work with, which has changed both what & how we cook. Here're some things we've learned:

• Did you know you can make "muffins" on the stove? (discovered when we had some over-ripe bananas & no oven...).


• I think we already mentioned that corn flour makes damn good pancakes, we've moved on to crepes, & they're not bad with corn flour either.


• It's REALLY easy to make jam.


• A tobasco bottle with a whole poked in the top makes quite a serviceable salt shaker.


• Fruit flies can live for a few DAYS in a refrigerator.


• Ellie's finally learned how to cook plantains (mmmmmMmm).


• Kepfram's finally learned how to cook with dried beans & how to make pancakes (& crepes!).


• It is possible to get dishes clean with only cold water.


• Tamarind juice ferments into some tasty hard "cider".


• Fresh squeezed OJ ferments into some unforgivably bitter liquid (...we did manage to reduce it down into an interesting sauce, but we don't intend to need to do it again).


• Kepfram's food is delicious (as many of you know), BUT (¡mygod!) does he use a lot of butter....


• Kepfram's remembered how to make fresh coconut milk (mmmmMMmm - coconut rice), but as much as he's trying to kill us with butter, we had to draw the line somewhere... (we've only had it once).


• Achiotte is really a flavorless "spice" (no matter what the website says), but mixed with oil it's used for color - we've been having oranged potatoes & other veggies lately.

Sorry we have not taken any photos of the outdoor markets yet. They will come eventually - but we have a lot on our plate right now (details to follow in another post).

P.S. On a personal note: Kepfram would like to send a "mad" shout to the Roasted Chicken guy @ the Feria Agricultura de Guadalupe, "That was some damn good chicken. See you next week, one love."