Today was a day FILLED with walking, if I do say so myself. We did achieve our goals, in the end, but I’ll get to that.
As we exited the house and checked our bags to make sure that we had everything we needed, and suddenly noticed a “leaf” on the wall. No, it’s a bug! It wasn’t moving, but it seemed to like the lighter shade of yellow on the wall in opposition to the darker shade further to the right.
We were going for a walk. Just because we had kind of oriented ourselves at a certain distance from the one and only intersection we knew of, we decided to be adventurous, and wander off on the street going left. I figured that we were probably going to go for a little while until we figured we better turn back because it might rain.
Coffee and chocolate are commonly grown products here, and one might think that there would be coffee and chocolate products EVERYWHERE. So far, what I’ve found is that when you find chocolate, it’s in the form of a powdered chocolate drink mix, and when you discover coffee, it’s usually in the same supply as that in the United States.
Along the walk to the main intersection, there were two people, an older man and a boy probably my age, on horses. The old man had a horde of dogs following behind him, all yipping uncontrollably.
Dogs, are the most common animal here so far, and most of them are pets, unlike some of the other places I’ve been. In China, there were no animals, other than their pet birds. In Turkey, cats ran loose, and worked for food by begging at outside restaurant tables. In Morocco, there were cats. Lots of cats out and about. I must say, also, that frequently, one might find Chihuahuas attempting to be big, vicious dogs. They may chase you, in which case, fake a kick. They’ll back off, but you may have to do this a few times.
As we walked down the edge of the street, trying not to run into trees, or step in mud, or get ran over by the cars driving at speeds too high for the area, a man running in the road passed us. Now, I have no clue where this dog came from, but he must have thought that the man was a car or something because he launched himself from his hiding place behind a tree, and ran after the man as fast as his little legs could carry him. The yipping was high pitched and frenzied as the man attempted to get the dog to go away by stopping abruptly, running faster, and kicking at it. The dog went away eventually, but probably only because he saw us and decided we would be easier prey. This was a little dog, but he was mighty malicious.
There were huge coffee plants where we stopped, and a blue building like a small warehouse that probably said something like, “Coffee irrigation control”. This was where we decided to turn back, but not when the day ended. We had walked a little ways, and we heard a bus pull up behind us. Turns out, it went to Alajuela.
Once we successfully got into Alajuela, after a rather lengthy bus ride of about ten minutes, we stopped at the Mega Super. Mission one accomplished. I’m beginning to think that milk, soymilk, rice milk, ANY milk, is very expensive. For one, non-refrigerated box of any kind of milk, one must pay five dollars or more. We checked at both her and at the Pali.
As I was standing and eating my chocolate peanut Clif bar waiting for my dad to get out of the restroom, I contemplated the Mega Super. It did look like it was an older building, like most grocery stores that aren’t Walmarts that I’ve been in. I had just begun thinking that it was actually kind of nice when something that hasn’t happened to me anywhere but in my bathroom. A spider was dangling in front of my face. I looked at it, and it looked at me, until I realized that this little spider would need a lot of space to successfully get back up to the ceiling, which was a long ways up. So I backed up, and watched him as he began his long ascent.
Next, we hopped a bus going downtown, and looked at where we were going. I saw the music store that I had spied a day or two ago not far away from the Mega Super. It was upstairs in a white building in a rather desolate area down the street from a market, and near to a ferreteria (Hardware store).
The bus dropped us off, and I was thinking, why is everyone getting off here? And then I remembered. When everyone gets off the bus, you’re either at the station, or you have just gotten to the tourist attraction that everyone wants to go to. Duh. Out we got, orienting ourselves as well as we could.
The feeling of getting off of a bus in a foreign is similar to confusion. It’s like you’ve just entered into a new world, and your only form of transport is leaving you for dead. I could describe it, as a mix somewhere between confusion, betrayal, and terror.
After getting off of the bus and walking to the bus station, we walked the block around the station. We discovered many things. First of all, we discovered many shoe shops. Similar to Mexico, shoes are a popular thing here in Costa Rica, but, unlike Mexico, there are few women wearing high heels here. I’ve seen many, but compared to Mexico, where EVERY woman wears high heels, very few women wear them here.
I’m not sure exactly what the Pali reminded me of, but I know it reminded me of something. It is a line of stores, as far as I can tell. At least it LOOKED like the sign had a logo on it. It was stocked with a number of different foods, including chayote, an avacado squash like thing that shouldn’t be used for guacamole.
When we first walked into the Pali, the first thing I noticed was the rice. Big piles of bagged rice. People must love their rice here, because there sure is a lot of it where ever you go. Currently, beans and rice is a pretty common homemade dinner dish here for us every night after our excursions.
Getting home was relatively easy, we just got on one of the buses that said “Poas”, the ones that would lead us home, and rode on it until we got to out street, and then began the long uphill trek back up to our house. When we got back, the leaf bug was still waiting for us, right where he had been when we left.
The leaf bug, our true friend.
travelingshipps 