Food, Ferries, and Fun With Car Horns

By Tom
Santa Teresa, Costa Rica

Our journey began in San Jose with a man named Jose (ironic, I know) who took us around the city. While we were in San Jose, we sampled some of the Tico cuisine. One of the things we've been looking forward to on this trip was all of the amazing food we were going to experience first hand. The curries and spices of India, the noodles and flavorful sauces of Southeast Asia. Costa Rica is not one of those places. The food here is mostly centered around rice and beans and fried chicken. Usually, the fried chicken places have a cartoon chicken on the sign giving a big thumbs up, implying that the chicken dishes are so tasty there that even the chicken himself endorses it. Of the few chickens that I've met in my life, it didn't seem like any of them would be particularly proud of how tasty they would be if you killed them, pulled their breast muscle off, battered it, fried it, and served it with rice and beans. That´s not to say we haven´t been eating well; we´ve just had to expand beyond the staple Costa Rican dishes (although to be fair, the fresh fruit here is unbeatable).

We´re now in the remote surf town of Santa Teresa. To get here to the Nicoya Peninsula, we caught a 90-minute ferry across the Gulf of Nicoya. There are several famous ferry rides across the most picturesque golfs in the world, places in Greece, Thailand, and New Zealand, and I'd contend that the Gulf of Nicoya is among the most beautiful out there. The port that the ferry pulls into at the end of the ride is simply a dock on darkly forested hillsides. It feels primal and remote.

Back in San Jose, we were staying at a hostel downtown with a heavily trafficked street right outside our window. San Jose drivers apply honking to their driving technique the way other drivers apply steering and braking. They honk when arriving at every intersection, honk at pedestrians, honk when a car merges into their lane, honk when the light turns green (even if the first driver is already moving). And if they feel slighted, the horn blares loud and long as though an overweight man has had a heart attack and has collapsed onto the steering wheel. It's as if every driver in San Jose wakes up every morning and thinks to himself "Today there will be NO other cars, people, or anything that will slightly delay me for even a single moment!" and every day they find themselves sorely disappointed. As Jose put it, Ticos are the friendliest people in the world until they get behind the wheel of a car. Friendly or not, the din doesn't do anything to help you sleep once the morning rush hour starts every morning at 5:30am. So it's nice to finally be here in Santa Teresa where the only sounds that wake us are the gentle patter of rain on the roof or the monkeys in the branches outside our window. After spending several weeks back home visiting family, moving, planning the wedding and the trip, it's nice to be in a place where the heat and the afternoon rains that come daily like clockwork dictate a slow pace of life.