Two Beers and a Pretzel

I didn’t sleep at all Tuesday night for some reason.  I flew out of San Jose into the Sunset.  We got to altitude, ate a quick, bland meal, and descended into Panama City.

The layover was supposed to be 1 hour.  It was 1 hour in the airport, 1 hour on the plane, 2 more hours in the airport again, then we finally left for Argentina.  I couldn’t sleep on the plane (I never can).

Buenos Aires has been a mixed bag so far…  I was soooo tired after being awake for about 36 hours.  I got to the Hostel Florida (on Florida Ave in the central pedestrian district) at about noon and crashed in the lobby until I could get a room at 2pm.  Then crashed in the room until noon this morning.  I feel much better.  The rest will do me good, since I booked a pub crawl with the hostel tonight, bike tour of the city tomorrow, and semifinal soccer match on Saturday.

The area I’m in kind of reminds me of a cross between anywhere in Rome and the Marienplatz in Munich.  Very cool, lots of street musicians, Tango studios, upscale shops, and nice places to eat.  There’s an intersection of two pedestrian streets that is busy and just fun to people watch.  I am no longer the tallest, or the only blue eyed person.

I had a few hours to spend this afternoon, so I walked all around the pedestrian area.  In the most ironic thing to ever happen to me… I was snapping a photo of a “What would Chuck Norris do?” t-shirt when a guy bumped into my left side, showed me a knife, and pointed to an alley - literally to the immediate right of this picture.

I handed him my wallet with my left hand (the knife was in his right hand).  As soon as he had to fumble with he knife to get the wallet, I hit him with a right jab with my camera (Olympus 1030SW - impact resistant) and hotel key in hand.  He went down.  I picked my wallet back up and walked away.  I think he got $AR60 worth of Pesos (about $12 USD), but I wasn’t going to go back for it - it’s always better to get the hell out of there as fast as possible, just in case the guys really is tough.

NOTE: Kids, don’t try that at home.  I have actually taken 6 months of quasi-legal fighting classes from a guy who trained policemen in Cincinnati, and turned out to be a coke-head (but a brilliant fighter)  - in his basement fighting multiple people at once, as well as disarming people.  These classes were good enough to get me to quit Taekwando at a gym that preferred real sparring to memorized dances just before making brown belt (that’s a whole ‘nother story).  Granted, had this mugger been with a buddy, or had a gun, I obviously would have sacrificed the $200 in my wallet, but this guy looked like a lone punk trying to scare me, and in general, Managua was much more intimidating anyway…

I now had some adrenaline to burn off, so I walked around a bit more - in the middle of the street this time.

After a while I got back to the hostel to see a street band performing outside.

I’m finally calming down.  Hopefully tonight will be fun without incident.

I went to the Brazilaian embasy yesterday and just missed the touirist visa window by 15 minutes.  My Hostel and the embasy are on opposite sides of town, but it was a very nice day, so I walked back the long way thru downtown San Jose.  Along the way I ran into a large, boisterous Brit who was in his 60´s and an American in his 50´s.  They invited me for a lunchtime brew, and who am I to refuse a beer?  It seemed innocent enough… (blatant forshadowing there)

Just east of downtown, there´s a large park with a lot of casino´s and hotels around it.  Walking around, street vendors offered weed, cocaine, heroin, extacy, etc…  And this actually looks like one of the nicer neighborhoods.  My new ¨friends¨ took me into a casino-bar.  There were scantily clad women everywhere in the bar and the lobby, eyeing you, licking their lips, making suggestive motions.  This was lunchtime, and I felt like a mouse in a snake pit.  We sat down at the bar for a beer and I asked these guys where the hell we were.

The Brit replied ¨Welcome to the biggest whore house in Central America.¨  I´ll never forget that line…  The Hotel-Casino Del Rey and the attached Blue Marlin Sportsbar (I later found you can actually google this place, but probably best if you don´t do it at work).

Then I noticed all the creepy older gringos pathetically trying to dance with these hot young girls and buy them drinks.  Nobody really looked happy.  The old guys were doing the ¨look at me, I´m still young and hip¨ routine that creepy old guys do, and the girls had a dissinterrested demeanoir that said ¨let´s get to it you ugly old man, I want the money¨.   I was tempted to pull out the camera and take pictures or some video (how often are you in the largest whore house anywhere), but I thought it might actually draw too much attention to myself, so I opted against that idea.

As the Brit was explaining how everything works to me (and telling me things I did not want to get mental images of), some 5´ tall 95 lb hottie (stunning, actually) with a lot of piercings and tattos (my cousin Asa would love her) swung my barstool around and jumped onto my lap.  My friends Phil, Jan, and Alan can attest - this actually happens to me all the time, including at an upscale vineyard in Napa 18 months ago.  But I digress… these Tica girls are aggressive.  She hung on me and rubbed some very specific body parts thru my clothes.  She immediately wanted to take me to a $10 no-tell motel across the street for what the Brit and the other guy thought was a miraculously low price ($50) versus the norm (apparantly $100).  I attribute that to my friendly face and blue eyes (which is a rarity here).  The fact that I was 20 years younger than pretty much every other guy in the place probably didn´t hurt much either…

However, beyond any obvious moral objections, I quickly decided that I did not want to become one of these rather pathetic old gringos (it really was kind of sad to watch them)…  So I finished my beer and left.

Besides, Ingrid and Erinn were supposed to be back in San Jose today to catch a flight home, and I wanted to see about having dinner with them.  They got in late after a long day of bus rides, stayed near the airport, and had to fly out early.  You can guess that dinner didn´t work out, but at least it gave me a good excuse to leave that bar.

So anyway, I got the Visa for Brazil this morning and I´ll catch a shuttle to the SJO airport in about 20 minutes.  Then a layover in Panama and I´ll arrive in Buenos Aires at about 7 AM.  I can´t wait.  They say you can get a killer prime rib dinner there for a whopping $8.  For reference, beef in Central America is not exactly unlike Salisbury steak in your elementary school cafateria, so I´ve been dying for some real red meat.

It was a nice day, so I bummed around downtown again today.  It was a little messy after last nights party.  Ok, actually the town is pretty dirty to begin with and there were a lot of cleaning crews out, so it may have actually been more clean than normal.  I bought a Cuban cigar - holy crap it was potent, but good.  I stopped after one Havana sourced stogie, having learned my lesson 7 years ago in Germany about smoking too many Cuban cigars.  Ask Shelly, Joe, Sweeney or Merkle about it.  I swear it was all the schnapps shots (I think Enzian was actually the German work for kerosene) that made me sicker than should be legally allowed, but I’m guessing the 2 cigars might have contributed to my pain.

So, back to the change of plans…

I was going to take a 16 hour bus to Panama and see the canal, then catch a flight to Sao Paulo and a puddle jumper to Porto Alegre.  Aside from my total disdain for an extended overnight bus ride (the seats are not remotely made for guys with wide shoulders), the flights were going to be about $900-1000, and I would still need a ticket out of Brazil before I can get an entry Visa.

Instead of that, I found a sub $400 round trip from Buenos Aires (EZE) to Porto Alegre (POA) that gives me about a  month to play in Brazil.  There’s a sub $800 one-way flight from San Jose (SJO) to EZE every day this coming week at all hours. That gives me flexibility in case of any snafu’s getting the Visa and also takes care of my exit ticket requirement.

The practical upshot of this plan is a week in Buenos Aires.  I have no idea what I’ll do, but I have the Lonely Planet guide to figure that out…  Tango lessons or something.  Everything I’ve heard is that it’s a great place.

The bummer is that I’ll totally bypass Panama and only see the canal from the air.  I may remedy this by extending my South American expedition to Argentina, Brazil, Argentina again, Chile, Peru, Columbia, then sail to Panama, see the canal, and then fly to New Zealand in late February.

This is a big deal in San Jose.  The whole town crowds into the downtown area.  It’s like a Who concert in Cincinnati - literally, for a while it was dangerous… I had to block a crowd from smashing some young kids.  I know my body mass index is a little high, but it’s occasionally useful.

People climbed on anything to see the parade.

The grounds decorated for the occasion

For the most part, they had bands and dancers, but also a number of impressive parade floats.

And a double-lifesize nativity scene.

Bonus Pictures…

Please remember to be careful to watch for crossing children, foxes, sloths, and monkey’s.  Exactly how long does it take a sloth to cross a road anyway?

…and a comforting disclaimer from a room…

I got Back into San Jose the other day.  Stayed at Pangea Hostel.  Great vibe, but the rooms are expensive for thin sheets and a small shared bathroom.  Still, I met a young US couple moving from Korea to Indiana after meeting in Americorps and then working for either Hyundai or Kia..  They were pretty fond of drinking.  Then we hung out with a few Kiwi guys and a relly cute Aussie girl at the pool.  Sorry guys, the camera was packed away.

Yesterday I had planned on getting some docs notarized at the US embassy and overnighted back home, then go to a travel agent for a ticket into and out of Brazil…  Finally, the Brazilian embassy to get my visa. .  According to the US embassy website, it doesn’t take long.  4 hours later, I failed to find the recommended travel agent and the Brazil embassy was closed for the weekend.  Waste of a day, although walking around downtown San Jose prior to the Festival of Lights was pretty nice.  Strange hearing Christmas Carols among palm trees.

I thought about taking care of my Visa in Panama City, but the bus to get there is 16 hours overnight.  Yuk!!  I think I’ll stay in San Jose and get my Visa on Monday… then possibly catch a cheap flight to Panama, see the canal, and then try to get to Cartegena for a day or two before flying to Porto Alegre for the holidays.

Sitting here is boring me silly, but I am catching up on writing more details in my journal and watching a few movies.  In an hour or two I’ll head out to downtown for the big San Jose Festival of Lights - which all the locals recommend.