Two Beers and a Pretzel

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.