Eating and salsa-dancing my way through hippie town

21 December 2010

Eating and salsa-dancing my way through hippie town

It was wonderful to sleep in with no alarm to wake me up that morning, and it was the first time in two weeks I had been able to do that. Of course, there was the 5am wake-up call from the rooster down the street, but I was able to fall back asleep. I slipped quietly out of the room while the Norwegians continued to sleep.

It was 8:30 in the morning and already about 80F and humid. I walked to the café directly next door; a place called Zwart café. The café was a monotone of white with colorful art pieces hung around. I ordered a latte and the gallo pinto breakfast, which is the typical Costa Rican breakfast. Gallo pinto is a rice dish mixed with black beans, onions and peppers. Mine came with scrambled eggs, toast and bacon. My latte was delicious, as it should be, considering coffee is grown in Costa Rica. It was good enough that my dad would have approved, and probably ordered a second right after finishing his first.

I took a long stroll back to the hostel by walking down the beach. It was sweltering already with little to no breeze coming from the ocean. I felt the sun baking my pale Anglo-Saxon skin. It dawned on me at that time that I had completely forgotten to bring sunblock on my trip to Costa Rica! The scenery was still gorgeous though. The surfers were already out in droves. It was time for me to head on to my next destination though.

I planned to spend the next few days of my vacation in the hippie beach down of Montezuma which was about 15km from Santa Teresa. Jonnie told me that if I stood on the side of the street outside the hostel, the bus to Montezuma by way of Cobano, would pick me up around 11:30. I was still standing in the heat and sun at 12:00. I was quickly realizing that schedules are only a suggestion in Costa Rica.

Finally I saw the green bus bouncing down the road. It was moving at a speed about as fast as an easy jog. You don’t rush to get places when you life in the tropics. I plopped down the first seat in the bus and patiently waited while the bus crawled down the dirt roads. The bus made frequent stops to pick up locals. The girls would kiss or shake hands with the middle-aged driver. The bus also seemed to function as a mail delivery system. People would flag down the bus, hand the driver a package and some money, and off we’d go. A few miles later, someone else would flag down the bus and receive their package and also hand the man some money. Between the female attention and the extra change he received, I’d say that this driver had a great job!

About thirty minutes and 7 km later, we had finally arrived at the town of Cobano. From here, I would catch a bus to Montezuma which was only another 7 km distance. The town of Cobano is nothing special, it’s really just a town to pass through on route to another destination. Unfortunately, I spent an hour and a half there standing on the curb, waiting for the bus to Montezuma which was 40 minutes late. When all was said and done, it would take me two and a half hours to travel the 14km from Santa Teresa to Montezuma. I guess this is why the travel guide said that once you arrived in these towns, you were loathe to be in any rush to leave.

I called out to my bus driver to stop the bus when I saw the sign for my hostel, Luna Llena, on the side of the road. The hostel was a bunch of bamboo bungalows perched on the side of a steep hill which overlooked the ocean and town below. A Dutch woman told me that my room was ready, except it had no mattress. Apparently the owner was out shopping for a new mattress. The room was small, just enough space for a single bed with a mosquito net and a shelf for belongings. Shower and bathroom were open-air and located at the end of my bungalow.

I ditched my stuff in the room and walked the remainder of the way down the hill to the small town of Montezuma. The town itself was only about 2 blocks in length. It was densely concentrated with restaurants, bars, cafes, tourism offices, taco shops, and hippie hang-outs. Rastafarian men and women were making jewelry out of shells and threads and selling them on the side of the road. Buddhist prayer flags and hammocks hung from the fronts of the buildings.

I spotted the sign for a place called, Organico, with a slogan that said, “Pure food with love.” Outside the café was a chalkboard listing different events, all free, that would go on at the café throughout the week. Earlier today there had been salsa dancing and tribal dance classes. Later on there was as Christmas cookie baking class. Other highlights included Hypnosis positive thinking class, Buddhist meditation, Tibetan meditation (was there really a difference between the two?), chakra balancing yoga, and free drawing class with live model.

It was already late for lunch at 3pm, so I ordered a light meal of a fruit shake called Super Sexy which was made of mango, avocado, banana, spirulina, and wheat grass and ate this with a vegan raspberry banana bread. I enjoyed this while sitting on cushions on bamboo floor mats. When I was done with my meal, woman with an obvious Scottish accent approached me and offered me an Indian head and upper body massage; 40 minutes for $20. When I found a good place in my book to stop reading, I took her up on the offer.

We moved to another part of the café for the massage next to an American woman about my age who was reading a book and sipping a drink. Her name was Christie and she was also traveling alone and happened to be staying at my hostel. I invited her to come come to dinner with me later that night. The Scottish woman sat me up in a chair with cushions and proceeded to give me a wonderfully relaxing massage during which I couldn’t help but fall asleep; luckily she was holding my head up.

When the massage was finished, she brought me a cold glass of water and we talked. I asked her how she had ended up in Costa Rica all the way from Scotland. She had taken a visit to Montezuma and fell in love. At first I thought she meant she fell in love with the town, but turns out it was a Costa Rican man who had smitten her. They stayed in touch, and she started to plan how she could move her life to Costa Rica. She was a travel agent in the UK. When she decided to make the move to the tropics, she started learning how to do massages, manicures and pedicures. After practicing her new skills on friends at home, she finally relocated to Costa Rica for good. She admitted that it was a big adjustment at first, but she now had learned to live life in the slow lane.

I walked a bit more around the town of Montezuma as well as the closest beach and snapped a few pictures. On the way back I realized that it was time for the Christmas cookie baking class at Organico. There was a small gathering of some of the expat locals who had brought recipes. Some of the cookies were already out of the oven and ready for eating. I met Czech woman who lived between Prague, Los Angeles, and Costa Rica with her American husband. She had made some delicious Czech almond butter cookies. There was another woman named Dagma, who was a German from Hamburg, who’d lived in Montezuma for 10 years now. She invited me to her yoga studio the next morning. Then there was a young Australian guy named Noah, who was a chef at what was considered the best restaurant in town. This is, coincidentally, where I had invited Christie to join me later that night.

The Scottish woman had given me a recommendation of where I could go on an evening run. I returned to the hotel and put my running clothes on. They were still a bit damp from the massive amount of sweating I had done the prior day on the beach. That is one drawback of traveling very lightly in a tropical country; one resigns oneself to being a bit smelly. But I figured I’d fit right in at this hippie town where the women don’t shave their armpits, let alone wear deodorant!

It was actually a challenging run along the dirt road. I had to dodge potholes and loose rocks as well as climb up and down steep hills and be wary of all passing cars, trucks, ATVs and motorbikes. The views were beautiful though as the road hugged the side of the coast. I turned around again when the sunlight was dwindling. As I ran back to the hostel, bats flew out of trees, swooping over my head.

After a shower, I headed up to the lobby area of the hostel. It was really more like an open air balcony with cozy chairs, hanging chair baskets, views of the ocean, jazz music and all alight with candles and Christmas lights. It was an extremely relaxing hang-out spot. Christie was already up there on the couch, reading a book. She told me that she had invited an English couple to join us for dinner. While we waited for them, we started a conversation with the guy sitting in the couch near us. He was a German from Berlin named Sebastian, also traveling solo. We now had a dinner group of five people.

We all got to know each other a bit more as we walked down the road to Playa de los Artistas. Sam and Danny were from the Midlands area of England. They had moved to New York City four years ago when Sam, a medical editor, had been offered a job. Danny worked in international aide, fundraising for war torn countries. Sebastian was originally from the north of Germany, from small town famous for making the world’s best marzipan. He plays the flute and the saxophone in an electronica band that toured around Europe and Asia. Christie is a therapist from Ashville, North Carolina. She had recently separated from her husband and was taking time to decide whether or not she still wanted to be married to him. Her two-week trip to Costa Rica was part of her soul-searching. We realized that all five of us were all exactly one year apart with our each of our ages ranging from 29 to 33

Playa de los Artistas was a very romantic restaurant set right on the edge of the beach. There were many candle light tables scattered around the palm trees. The restaurant’s menu changed daily depending on what fresh fish they had or what the chefs decided to make. We ordered a round of beers while we waited for the waitress to present the menu. Finally a tall thin woman in a microskirt and midriff bearing shirt walked over, she looked like some kind of Brazilian model. “You will order food,” she said. It sounded more like an order than a question.

She then went on to present us with the menu of the night which was hand written on two pieces of paper inside of a book cover made of the bark from a tropical tree. We decided to share some appetizers, which included a tuna tartare with passion fruit, tuna carpaccio, and a mahi mahi ceviche. For dinner, we also all ordered fish dishes. Christie and I both had what was basically a fish lasagne. Instead of noodles, there was polenta stained black with squid ink and instead of meat there was mahi mahi. Sam had a whole grilled barracuda. Danny ordered mahi mahi filet covered in nuts and raisins. Sebastian had fried tuna balls. Everything was fresh and delicious and the company was equally as enjoyable.

We decided to continue the evening at the main bar in town called Chicos. We ordered another round of Costa Rica beer and chatted. I spotted my Scottish masseuse out on the dance floor salsa dancing with her Costa Rican boyfriend. Before long, a guy who looked like a Costa Rican approached me. He asked me if knew how to salsa dance. I said not really, but I’d try. I stumbled around like an idiot for a little bit while he tried to explain the footwork to me. Once we actually started to dance, he was so good at leading that it didn’t really matter that I had no idea what I was doing. His English was as good as mine, and it turned out he wasn’t technically Costa Rican. He said his father was from Florida and of Italian-American descent and his mother was Dutch. He said that he is Costa Rican though, because he was born here. His parents own two hotels in Montezuma and he helps to manage one of them. He wanted me to stay out for more salsa dancing, but I declined in favor of sleep. He asked me if I wanted to go running down the beach with him at 6am, but I knew he couldn’t keep up with me. Finally he said that if I wanted to come by his hotel tomorrow night, he might be able to hang out. I know how these vacation guys operate. First you have pina coladas by the beach. They tell you how pretty you are and how the ocean brings out the blue in your eyes. Next thing you know, they get you to quit your conventional job and move down to paradise to weave friendship bracelets and whittle jewelry out of coconut shells. Either that, or you just get drunk, end up with sand and crevices of your body you never knew existed, and taking home the souvenir that keeps on giving, herpes. Oh no, I knew better than to mess around with “Latin” lover wannabes. But I’m just hypothesizing here; I don’t speak from experience!