El Macho Gringo: Mal País surf photography and a giant spider

Welcome to another Costa Rican catharsis! Or, if “catharsis” isn’t quite the right word, at least another blog update on my travels and experiences in this incredible country. Since my last blog entry, (which was far too long ago, I admit), I’ve traveled to Mal País beach to watch a surf competition, gone dancing at the best electronic music club in Central America, scored a header in a fútbol match, encountered the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in the wild (stay tuned for photos at the end), and given a 10-minute presentation on extraterrestrial life, in Spanish, to a class in which I am the only non-native speaker.

A couple of months back, when my friends Josh, Andy, and I decided we needed a break from classes and the bustling, daily grind of taking the bus to San Pedro, studying at the university all day, and then riding the bus home again, we did what any Gringo abroad would do: hopped on another bus for 8 hours and headed to the Pacific. Our final destination was Mal País beach, and we stayed at a hostel called Tranquilo Backpackers, probably my favorite, so far, in Costa Rica. Tranquilo has a central kitchen area where youth guests can store and prepare their own food at any time, and make pancakes from batter provided by the management every morning. Everything was kept very tidy, unlike some hostels I’ve stayed at, with a row of hammocks lined up along the rooms for relaxing and looking up at the verdant canopy, filled with native birds and even monkeys. Tranquilo was an incredible place to stay, but beware: falling asleep overnight in a hammock only seems like a slice of tropical paradise until you wake up with a ring of vicious mosquito bites for a belt. Good times in the jungle!

On our first full day, we started things off with the usual sorts of things one does after arriving at a Costa Rican beach, such as lying around on the sand and taking photos, swimming in the surf, and lying around some more on the beach. We were all pretty content with doing nothing and working on replenishing our tans that had all but faded to a nice milky tone in the month since classes had started. At least, we were until we heard about the surf competition.

As we walked through the tide down the beach we heard a loud voice booming in Spanish, between island reggae songs, and noticed a huge concentration of bleach-blonde, well-bronzed surfer dudes (or “maes” as they say in CR) and girls hanging out. Further out in the surf, we could see lots of teenagers in competition shirts absolutely shredding on the waves, and realized immediately that this had to be some sort of competition. Once we located a spot to post up in front of the competition booth, Andy and I were quick to start snapping some photos. I’ve never been happier to have such a good zoom lens on my camera, because I was able to get some really good shots of the competitors from the beach. My favorite pictures are of an older Tico guy with long hair, who was carving around the waves off to the side of the competition, as if saying, “I don’t need prize money on the table to be totally gnarly, man.” Later that night we watched the sunset from the sand as surfers continued to dot the waves far out beyond the tide, until there was almost no light left, and then followed everyone in to a beachside club party.

A quick side note: the sunsets on the beaches here in Costa Rica are the most beautiful that I’ve ever seen in my entire life. It’s amazing how the light reflects off the water and the sand and paints the sky a gradual gradient from blue, to yellow, to orange-red and eventually shades of purple after the orb has sunk beyond the horizon. I was able to get some great end-of-the-day shots at Mal País that I’ve posted at the end of this entry.

While I haven’t done a whole lot of traveling since that getaway trip, mostly due to my course load at the University of Costa Rica, I have had a lot of cool experiences here in the city. As I mentioned earlier, I went with a group of friends to an electronic dance club called Vertigo in downtown San José to see a Belgian house music DJ called Jimmy Van M. Vertigo is advertised as “the best electronic club in Central America,” and with good reason. There are several tiers to it and a main dance floor filled with lighting effects, and the sound system packs enough bass to be heard up and down the street outside. We had such an incredible time dancing that we didn’t end up getting back to our neighborhoods near San Pedro in a taxi until the first rays of morning sunlight were flaring on the horizon. Now that’s the sign of a good night.

Since this is a “study” abroad, not “party” abroad trip, after all, I’ll emphasize that even though my studies aren’t as fun to talk about in a blog as the “extra-curriculars” I’ve experienced here, they have been the real success of my Tico life. It has been amazing to observe my own improvement with the Spanish language, as I’ve gone from thinking I was a hotshot on arrival in January, to realizing I could hardly understand anyone’s conversational Spanish, to my current situation of being able to understand almost everything and speak pretty effortlessly. I had a definite “step-back-and-think” moment last week after I completed my portion of a class presentation in Astronomy and realized that I had been speaking constant Spanish for almost 10 minutes without having to make a translation from English first in my head. I’m still a long way from being able to call myself “fluent” in Spanish, but after living here for almost five months I think I can confidently say that I am “functionally fluent,” or at least “bilingual.” I had the same feeling this weekend when playing soccer with some Costa Rican friends, because I was able to yell back and forth with them in Spanish during the game without thinking too much. Oh, and I definitely earned some respect after scoring a goal on a header.

I’ll cut this blog post short before it reaches term-paper length, but I’ll be making another trip to a beach town called Montezuma this weekend before final exams start really breathing down my neck, so I’ll be putting together at least one more photo blog post before I head back to the good ol’ U.S.A., in July. I also returned to the hot springs and coffee plantation in Cartago last weekend, with the Grupo Kansas, which I already described in my first blog entry on Macho Gringo, so I’ll just let the photos at the end here do the talking. What set this trip apart, however, was a large tarantula-esque spider that we found crawling on a boulder by the hot springs. I haven’t been able to figure out exactly what kind of spider it was, but it sure looks cool in the close-up photo I shot, especially after the two little nieces of one of our group coordinators were done splashing it. (In retrospect, probably not the best idea.) But without further ado, enjoy the photos! Click to enlarge.