Libby_or_Bust

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!