Transitioning to a new place

Hotel Brasilito is right on the beach on the corner of the main drag to the beach. There is an open air restaurant, a patio with chairs, tables and a couple of hammocks. it is a great place to sit, see the horsecack riders come and go, the ATV riders comes and to, and at about 6 pm watch the sunset.

Across the street there is a bar that must be two different parts. They play loud music in both but different songs. A times, the birds were so loud. I think they are gackles. Between the noise and the fact I didn’t set the a/c quite right (and the bed is hard as a park bench) it was a difficult night’s sleep. And this morning dogs barking, roosters crowing.

It took me a while to get in the groove today. Always a bit of a transition getting to a new place. Once I got a little food in my stomach and some business done (laundry and a boat tour booking for tomorrow) I got in the beach groove, spending more than half my day in my swim suit.

After breakfast I walked through town. It’s all of about eight or ten blocks, most streets dirt. I found a little grocery store where I have bought water three times. Then I went walking on the beach. There is the beach the hotel is on and then another beach just over a small hill. They are different, which seems amazing. My beach is harder packed, probably because there is traffic (car, horse, ATV, motorcycle) on it, with lots of sand in the surf. The next beach is not as hard packed, lots of little shells, and way more people. And the water is clearer. The Westin Resort is there and it seemed like there were a number of people from there swimming, walking, and reclining in the shade. It is hot. I don’t know the temp today but yesterday my weather app said it was 91.

For lunch I had fish at the place next door. The guy there told me his name was Kevin, which I knew couldn’t be true. By the end of the meal he was calling me “mi amour”. And I was calling him Jose’, his real name. It seems awkward that in the first few questions they want to know if I am alone and married. The same thing happened in Ecuador. I never get asked what I do. That is certainly our culture.

Before sunset I set off for the ATM. I don’t have a good sense of 600 meters, I guess, because it was way further than I thought. I asked a younger man (mid 20’s) for directions and he walked me all the way there and all the way back. It was very much the Costa Rican way. We had about as much conversation as two people can who don’t speak each other’s language. His name is Henri (roll those r’s like there are three of them), works in air conditioning (he had a shirt embroidered with the company name as so many people do), and he has a relative who has lived in Atlanta for two years. I practically had to twist his arm to pay for his juice drink in the market.

Comments are closed.