Hay Perros en el Medio de la Calle! Ay yay yay!

Day 4 30-6-12 Saturday Quote of the Day: Man, I don´t even know what I was on last night. -Jaco Kevin It has been a day. As I sat down to write this, I actually had to ask Jason, Where did the day begin? I remember waking up in Manuel Antonio. The bed definitely was not all that I had expected it to be. When you sat on it, it felt like it had some element of memory foam, but after sleeping a solid 9 hours on it, I´m pretty sure it was just bedrock. No matter. We got up fairly early to catch the bus into Quepos. There are always such interesting folk at the bus stops. Today, we attempted to talk to a lady that either worked or lived at the hostel in which we stayed. We were never really able to patch her connection to the hostel together. Anyway, she talked to us for a while and was very concerned about the dogs in the middle of the road. (She was my inspiration for the title) She went on and on about how a dog was running around in the middle of the road, and it almost got hit by a bus. She was quite disgruntled about the whole thing, but this saying has become a catch phrase for Jason and I because there are always dogs in the middle of the road and the drivers don´t care. They don´t slow down. It´s a miracle you don´t see more dog road kill down here. Anyway, from Quepos, we bussed into Jaco to meet Jason´s friend of a friend Jaco Kevin. We like to call him Jaco Kevin because a.) it sounds nice and b.) it helps us distinguish him from all the other Kevins we know in Costa Rica. The bus ride from Quepos to Jaco was about 90 minutes, but because I have a mild form of narcolepsy I slept for most of the bus ride. I´m not kidding. I cannot keep my eyes open in a moving vehicle (unless I´m driving, of course). It was a bad sleep too, ecause it was one of those sleeps where your mouth keeps falling open which inevitably wakes you up. There´s no sleeping through that. So, when I woke up we were in Jaco. After a minor snafu with our bus driver in trying to figure out where to get off this God forsaken bus, we ended up in downtown Jaco. Jason had sent one Facebook message to Jaco Kevin and talked to him once by telephone. The directions from Jaco Kevin were to go to Big Ron´s Pizza Shack. Turns our, this actually was pretty easy to find. We had a slice of pizza but there was no Jaco Kevin. Naturally, we asked his coworkers where he was. They not only gave us his work schedule for the day, but gave us directions to his house. All I know is, I´m really glad about two things. 1. I´m glad strangers don´t show up at my work looking for me. 2. I´m glad that even if that did happen my coworkers would not give them my home address to come find me. Yikes. Jason and I decided to rek the mile and a half in the sweltering heat to meet the illusive, well sought after, Jaco Kevin. The walk was killer. I was sweating my face off and all I could think was that I was so thankful for going to so many Barre 3 classes and working on my rhomboid muscles. It was really paying off now. My back was screaming, regardless, when we finally arrived at Jaco Kevin´s place of residence. Jason knocks and some guy, (not Jaco Kevin) answers the door. Jason asks if Kevin is around, to which the guy replies no, he´s not. Jason then goes on to explain to this guy who we are and why we are looking for Jaco Kevin and then the guy says, Hold on, I´ll get him for you. Uhhhh...what? After a few moments, awkwardly waiting on these people´s porch, we finally glimpse Jaco Kevin coming down the stairs of his loft in all of his Jaco Kevin glory. Standing at about five foot two, in low rise brown, plaid board shorts, long blond hair ties back in a messy ponytail, no shirt, sleep in his eyes, stumbling down the stairs. I can see he clearly operates on the ¨no shirt, no shoes, we still get service¨ Sexy and I know it principle. ¨what´s up man?¨he says, which segues into handshakes and introductions. I´m pretty sure Jaco Kevin is still drunk or high, at this point, but he refers us to a hostel down the street and offers to walk us there. We arrive at Hotel Kangaroo, which is a very cute name, but the cleanliness is subpar at best. And, hot. Very hot, with a single fan which cannot be left on unless we are in the room. It will be a great night for my sleep sack if that is any indication for you. Jaco Kevin knows people that work here, though, so I think we felt like we should stay here, and they hooked us up with our next transportation out of here tomorrow so es todo bien (all good). At least, I didn´t have to walk much further with that 50 lb backpack. Once we got settled in, we said adios to Jaco Kevin which entailed a hug and a kiss on the cheek for me. Jason assures me this is customary but it hasn´t happened before or since. Jason explained to me further, no, it´s customary for Costa Ricans to do that between friends. Are Jaco Kevin and I friends? To recap, he´s a friend of a friend of my cousin. The relation seems very loose. At this point, I don´t much care, I just feel bad he felt he needed to touch my wet, salty face. Dis-gusting! Lo siento, Jaco Kevin! I needed the ocean like I needed my next breath. So, we changed and grabbed Jaco Kevin´s surfboard that he was letting Jason borrow to practice on. The board was way too short for Jason, but he got a little taste of the surf skills. I thought he was doing well getting the basics down but I believe he concluded that there was no chance of him standing up on a surfboard. Meanwhile; I romped in the ocean, until I was cooled down enough to go lay on the beach. Yes, of coures, I forgot my book again! I decided to just lay and relax. Every so often, like this afternoon, or sometimes just walking down the street, it will all of a sudden hit me, ¨I´m walking/laying/eating in Costa Rica!!¨ This was one of those moments. Mid way through my relaxation, I heard the loudest noise coming from overhead. Just this wild screeching sound, so I finally got curious enough to glance up and there was the most magical sight! 30 (yes I counted) red macaws in flight! I wasn´t sure anything today would top the magic of Jaco Kevin but the Macaws certainly did. Increible. Super noisy, but incredible, nonetheless. After the surf and turf, we decided to clean up and head back to downtown Jaco for dinner. We thought we´d borrow the bikes at the hostel because, well, let´s face it, we´d just look so cute tooling around Costa Rica on bikes. More like we were just deathly tired of walking everywhere. These old rust buckets were anything but cute, but they got the job done of getting us back to downtown Jaco. Although, this was a slightly harrowing experience. Remember the drivers in CR, and the narrow roads, yes, well now we were sharing a road with them with no sort of safety gear whatsoever. We got to town with full intentions of eating dinner at a soda, but once we got there we couldn´t find one! All day when we are driving we pass by them, but now, when we are looking for one, we could not find one. We ended up at Jaco Taco, which had pretty good food and one dollar well drinks. At dinner, the thought occured to us that by the time we rode home, it would be dark...on narrow streets...with Costa Rican drivers...with no reflective gear...or lights...or safety gear...AND the thunder and lightning show was beginning so it was only a matter of time before the rain started to fall. We considered all of these things and still decided to stop at Big Ron´s to say our final goodbyes to Jaco Kevin, as we remembered he was scheduled to work at 5. Being that it was now almost 7, we were sure we´d catch him. Of course, when we got there, the guy that answered the door at Jaco Kevin´s house (Joe) informed us he´d be there at 7. So we sat around talked to Joe and waited until well after 7 but no Jaco Kevin! No one except us seemed to care much, which was pretty funny. Joe said he tried calling him but got no answer. But, when we rode past his house on the way back to Hotel Kangaroo the light in the downstairs was on and the front door was open. Now, I´m not saying Jaco Kevin was home, or wasn´t home, simply that the light was on and the door was open. Draw your own conclusion. So, in the beach towns there are always a Casino. On our way home tonight we decided to stop into one, play a few dollars and see how we did. First of all the casino was dead. I played a couple of slots, and lost. Jason played some video poker. He actually won a hand, but then a message flashed on the screen saying, something about the power just went out and so the machine was unable to process how much he won. HAHA! We lost our twenty dollars and decided Costa Rican casinos are just as big a rip off as Casinos in the states. We were having such a good time riding around on our bikes, the wind actually cooling us off for once, that we decided to ride down to the beach to watch the lightning storm. We had a good time just enjoying the magnificent show of sheet and bolt lightning. We returned to Kangaroo, to find our proprietor, Francesca acquired a dog in our absence. Well, for one thing we think she was the proprietor although we cannot be sure because every time we left and came back there was someone new at the house, and we could not figure out everyone´s connection. Anyway, suddenly there was a dog roaming the hostel. The dogs here run around wild, until today I hadn´t seen a dog on a leash, so I´m not sure if the other dogs are strays or belong to someone. Either way, Francesca had most certainly picked up a stray. She had named this dog Charlie and he continually got scolded for sleeping in the chair. She was so excited in telling us about Charlie, ¨We found him, an he´s mad at me for giving him a bath today, you know, to be sure he doesn´t have fleas and such.¨ (To really get the full effect of Francesca read that quotation with your best French accent) The minute she left the room, Jason says to me, ¨That dog absolutely has fleas.¨ Jason continues to accrue mosquito bites at a rapid pace. I´m excited to get on to Montezuma, as I know I have some candlelight yoga waiting for me there.... Paz, Judy