Seamail No. 7

Today was a good day. And I can't even say it's mainly because we're out of Mexico, though that is definitely a large part of it. Our last days there were filled with angst and that nervous feeling in the bottom of your stomach when you know there's very little you can do but wait for things to get better. Things have gotten better now, and the feeling's gone, but you, our loved ones have been almost totally in the dark for at least the last three weeks about our lives. Yes, we were robbed, but before that happened we were having a really wonderful time exploring Mexico. Those are days that will be hard to think about without anger. More on those days will follow this email, hopefully untainted. Anyway, at this point the big news is that I was able to procure an emergency passport after a two day trip to Merida, and the US consulate there. During that time our home base was back in Puerto Morelos, this time at tiny, windowless Hotel Inglaterra (Hotel England). Very claustrophobic. We replaced some of our missing stuff and tried to get everything straightened out to leave the country.

Which, as of this writing, happened two days ago. The lingering thought we shared with some nice German tourists on our propeller-driven (!), tiny airplane into Guatemala: where does the money go? In Mexico, they charge a $40 dollar per person exit tax for air departures. Imagine, if you will, the hundreds of thousands of tourists flying out of Cancun every year. At $40 dollars per person, you'd think some decent roads would be in order, perhaps some law enforcement. And that's just Cancun, now imagine tourist departures from all of Mexico. It doesn’t add up.

So the last week in Mexico left us a little jaded about that country. It’s probably an unfair criticism...we were just unlucky. Still, you can’t help the way you feel.

Now we're in Costa Rica, and it's a good day; the first in a while. We landed in a rain shower, and the air was thin and cool. When we got to the hostel, we actually had to put on long-sleeved shirts and wear socks to bed: a welcome change! When we woke up the next morning and walked out of the hostel, we saw the mountains surrounding San Jose. It was a breathtaking sight with the tops of the mountains shrouded in early morning clouds and the sunny areas glinting bright green. We actually wore pants today all day, and real shoes, not sandals. The first time for both since we left America. Our hostel is pretty nice, with a pool, free internet 24/7, cable tv lounge with 94 channels (last night we caught an episode of seinfeld!!), a huge kitchen, and lots of really great travel resources around costa Rica. So far one of the most amazing things about costa rica is money.

The first interesting thing about money is the exchange rate. The tico (meaning costa rican) currency is called the colon (named after Christopher Columbus), and is valued at about 365 per US dollar. This makes prices seem huge whenever you glance at price tags. Not that we have trouble remembering that we're in another country with different money, but when you look at a pair of pants and see the price says 10,550, it's a little strange (by the way, that's about 29 dollars). It's a good thing we have our exchange rate calculator (thanks john and gene!), because it's not even close to an even, easily figured exchange.

the second interesting thing about money is how cheap things are. Maybe it just seems this way because the price in colones is so much larger, but things seem even less expensive here than in Mexico. Today we got some passport photos taken for future use on visas and such, and four photos cost 1.50 US. We also bought some more replacement clothing, but we had to search a bit more to find the cheap stuff. The first store we happened into, however, was a thrift shop selling second hand american clothing. It was great.

Our biggest low price surprise came when we looked into some of the traveling we want to do around the country. It doesn't look like we'll ever have to pay more than $20 dollars a night for lodging (except maybe at Christmastime), and some of the all-inclusive guided tours are really inexpensive. For example, we want to visit a place called Tortuguero national park, but it's not really possible to get there without flying or taking a boat. But here in the hostel, they'll book a 2 night 3 day tour of tortuguero including meals, transportation, entrance fees and lodging for about 90 dollars per person. For anyone wishing to do some traveling, Costa Rica really seems to be a great place to do it, everything seems really accessible, even to budget travelers like us. Once you arrived here, you could easily spend an entire week for less than 400 dollars for two people - that is including food. The only expensive thing is the airfare.

Another interesting thing about money here is that apparently Costa Rica has become the so-called Switzerland of the Americas. This is because of the anonymity of accounts, as well as security, and for some reason, an exemption from certain international laws. I don’t really know the politics very well, but I would imagine that Costa Rica, much like Switzerland, is basically a neutral country, which makes it a safe haven for lots of dirty money, just like Switzerland. The article I was reading said that lots of American organized crime circuits have been using Costa Rican accounts, and that this banking laxity combined with security is also responsible for a boom in internet gambling sites. Apparently, they are everywhere here, and take bets from all over the world, but especially from America.

Keeping also with the interesting facts about Costa Rica is their policy on alcohol sales. Apparently, by decree of federal law, no alcohol is sold (in stores, restaurants, etc.) on Christmas, from Thursday through Sunday surrounding Easter, or (here’s the weird part) on election days. Apparently, they want your decision making ability to be unimpaired.

We spent yesterday just walking around San Jose downtown. There is a pedestrian district with lots of shops and museums and theatres and such. It's a very interesting city, which is apparently built to withstand fairly hefty earthquakes, leading to some very interesting architecture. Interesting more on the strange side I should say, especially the newer buildings. The older buildings are very ornate, and, it seems, beautifully restored. The standouts are the national theatre and the old post office. Both very nice. Outside the national theatre is a plaza with a huge amount of pigeons. One of the many entrepreneurial activities in this plaza seems to be taking pictures of people surrounded by pigeons and then selling the people their photo. Every once in a while, the photographers will scare the pigeons deliberately to get a picture of them flying up around the people, and every pigeon in the park, on the cue of the scared ones will take off into the air. The whole flock circles about 3 times before settling back down. Kind of scary when you're in the middle of it and 100+ birds come hurtling at your head (or so it seems).

I think that one of the best ways to compare Mexico (the Yucatan) to Costa Rica is to say that everything in Costa Rica is less extreme than in Mexico. The weather is less extreme. The mode of dress is less extreme. The language barrier is less extreme...I'm finding Costa Rican Spanish easier to understand than Mexican spanish....maybe it's the lack of Mayan influence here (since the only spanish Jerad has learned is Mexican spanish, he is having some problems here). So far everyone has been much friendlier here too...our first taxi driver (a talkative chap named Winston) was volunteering info all over the place - cities and beaches that would help my project, etc.

Some people may have been missing our weekly food updates lately, and they will be happy to hear that we are having a wonderful time with food here in Costa Rica as well. As always, we had to find an Indian restaurant - as our luck had it there is one about 3 blocks from our hostel! Tin Jo had some of the best Indian food we've ever had - we highly recommend it. Tonight we made some gallo pinto (literally translated means spotted rooster, but is just rice and beans) and have been sampling the fresh baked bread from some of the many bakeries scattered throughout town. One thing that must be said, though, is that Costa Rican grocery stores (Perimercado and Mas X Menos) have nothing on Mexico's Chedraui and Super San Francisco de Assis.

Earlier today we hit two of the nearby museums - the national museum of Costa Rica and the museum of contemporary art and design (the leading museum of its type in Central America). Both very interesting and worthwhile. The national museum is in an old army fortress/headquarters that was used until 1948 when Costa Rica officially disbanded their armed forces. The most interesting part of the museum was in the cells that were once used for disciplining soldiers and holding political prisoners- the walls were covered in messages and drawings from desperate people.

Because of its neutrality and the fact that there are no armed forces here, Costa Rica seems to be a haven for pacifists. One of the three hostels in town (not the one we're in) was formerly known as the peace center, and continues to be run by Quakers (a pacifist Christian sect). We stopped by, and it's in a neat old house, but is not as good as ours. Another place we saw today in San Jose is a place called the United Nations university for peace studies. Didn't know anything like that existed, and certainly not here, but it's comforting to be around people and, apparently, a government opposed to violence (unlike in Mexico where it was common to see soldiers walking around with machine guns and security guards with shotguns at banks). Being in hostels with so many foreigners from different nationalities, we've gotten a much wider view on how America is viewed in the world. Often, when people find out we're Americans, they're pretty skeptical about us (sometimes they actually groan), but we immediately assure them we don't like george bush either, and we all have a good laugh.

Tonight, as we were walking towards a very large mall (which is coincidentally the site of several huge internet gambling companies, and is pictured in the article I was reading in the most recent Newsweek ) in search of jackets and other replacements for stolen items, we were greeted with a real glimpse of central american politics. Here’s the story: we started to hear the song 'eye of the tiger'(of rocky IV fame) blaring from a car about 2 blocks away. As it got louder, we were able to identify the car, which was a vw bus decked out in red and blue (the tico colors) with huge bullhorns mounted to the roof blaring what must have been meant as some sort of political anthem. The windows were all plastered with campaign posters for a candidate in the mayoral races, his smiling face greeting us as we walked on the sidewalk accompanied by some very loud 'survivor' Imagine our surprise, while singing along, that the van was only the beginning of the entourage of the candidate himself. And then, there he was! He must have noticed us digging on his music, because he shouted 'Hey!'in his best American accent and raised his fist. Then he was gone, and all we could do was laugh.

While San Jose has been very hospitable and fun, I'm ready to get out of the city and into more of this beautiful country. Seeing the mountains in the distance from outside the hostel is just not good enough. All of my notes as to where I was planning for us to go were stolen with our backpacks, so as of two days ago we had very few plans as to where we were headed here. As of right now, however, it looks like we have tons of options. Soon, hopefully by about Wednesday or so, we'll be heading to the Atlantic coast - we are definitely going to Tortuguero National Park and to a tiny town named Parismina. The nesting season is just about over on the Atlantic side, so we’ve got to hurry. On the Pacific side, however, the season is just beginning. I’m really looking forward to our travels to the Pacific because there are some of the most important nesting beaches in the world there. At some of these beaches there are mass nesting events called 'arribadas'when thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of turtles nest in one night. Quite an experience, they say. We'll definitely be visiting Ostional and Nosara, along with many other beaches. As far as non-project related traveling, we're hoping to do a lot of that too - hike at the Arenal volcano, do a bit of white water rafting, and (of course) plenty of rainforest visits all over the country.

Many of you probably haven't heard this, but liza's camera is on the fritz, so we haven't been able to take any pictures with it lately to post. Hopefully we'll get something with that straightened out soon. Since my camera is stolen, we will actually have NO pictures of this part of our trip, until we get some kind of replacement, or liza’s camera gets fixed. That's very unfortunate. Hopefully good news on that front soon. Also, both of our address books were stolen, so if you want a postcard while we're gone, we'll need some new addresses. (Note: sending us your address doesn't guarantee a postcard (mail is expensive!) But it increases your chances. Also, we'd just like to know where you live. For our edification)

This email is haphazard because it was written over the course of 4 days, and by both of us alternatively. No effort has been made to keep it from one point of view, but I'm sure you can usually figure out who's talking. If not, no big deal right?

We hope this finds you very very well, and if you want to see pictures of us in mexico, go to our website at http:\\\\lizamueller.tripod.com, and our trip journal at airtreks.com. No new pics, but we can all be nostalgic.

love and mountains from costa rica

liza and jerad

how about some music pick of the week time? (A stab at normalcy) I wish I could recommend liza's mix cd she made this summer, but you couldn't really go out and buy that... so I'll just tell you the bands that are on it, and you can listen for them, they're fun. Gorillaz, morcheeba, the white stripes, alanis morisette, the whitlams, and some spanish guy singing 'que pasa contigo mi hermana?'(What's happening with you, my sister?) over and over (liza's interjection: it's from the Gorillaz cd). Enjoy.