5 days left
Only 5 days left until I come home. I can´t believe it´s been over 5 months here in Central America. This trip has been amazing. Though I am a person prone to absolutes, I honestly have never felt so independent and in charge of my own life. I came down here thinking I would find out what to do with my life, and ended up realizing that I was doing what I was doing with my life. Does that make sense?
I climbed the highest mountain in Costa Rica. It´s called Mount Chirripó, and it´s really freaking big, over 10,000 feet. And I climbed it, lost my voice and a toenail, and proved that I could.
I went to Panama, and now I´m in Nicaragua. By myself. Not scared. People ask if I`m travelling alone and I say yes. When you´re travelling solo, you´re more open to other people, so you´re never really alone unless you want to be, and even then it can be tough. In the last 5 months I´ve met countless people from all over the world, lots of them awesome, some of them real assholes. Some I´ll keep in contact with for a long time and others I won´t; they all have been important in my trip being what it is.
The food I´ve eaten and the places I´ve stayed! Any way you cook a plantain is good, from maduro to patacones, and there´ll always be a place in my heart for gallo pinto. Copos are shaved ice with powdered milk, sweetened condensed milk and flavoring. Nothing short of a gift from heaven on a hot day (which is every day). Sometimes your colón will get you a beautiful room with a balcony and clean communal kitchen, and other times all it gets you is a dirty room and someone else´s pubic hair on the sheets.
I´m also really tan. Bioluminescent plankton kicks ass. A Nica asked me yesterday what part of Spain I was from because of my accent. Last night I walked around the park in León sipping coke out of a plastic bag with to guys from Canada who had biked (as in motorcycle) down here from Whistler. Four days before that I was hanging out with a Tico sculptor whose work will be on display in Alajuela´s newly remodelled Juan Santamaría park. Two weeks before that I was on a zip line tour in Monteverde, spotting a pair of very resplendent Quetzals and then flying over the canopy in the pouring rain. A month-and-a-half before that I was in the San Blas Islands in Panama, eating fry bread and learning how to sew Molas with a group of indigenous women who kept trying to call me Carolina.
Now I´ve only got 5 days left. No sense in spending it in an internet cafe!
Tags: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Travel
April 16th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
You can give your children these two things: One is roots , and the other is wings.
May you fly as high as you wish , because you always will have us to come back home to rest. Your roots will be here, but your wings will carry you to the ends of the earth if you so wish.
Love mom & Dad