First thing the abuela who owns this hostel told me in the morning is that I need to get married to someone rich soon, because ¨youth is free and easy, everyone loves you, and you can do whatever you want, but when you get older and uglier, nobody wants you and everything is hard. Best to find someone soon.¨ I am trying to remember the context for this pithy commentary, but Im not sure there is an acceptable context, at least not first thing in the morning! I laughed and told her she was scaring me, and she said ¨good.¨

So, the folks I met the second full day I was here...

When I got up, it was raining so I decided to eat breakfast, but found that all the little cheap cafes were closed because it was Sunday. So I went to a slightly more expensive resturant on the main drag, and ordered some coffee and a ¨pinto¨ which is rice and beans with something else to the side, often a meat in sauce or eggs and ham. I finished and had another coffee... it was still raining... watched the people passing by under their umbrellas, or racing through the puddles, played some of my vacation logic puzzles that I find so relaxing, and finally this woman shows up and sits down at the table next to me.

She looks at me several times, and I think that perhaps she wants to strike up a conversation but doesn´t know how, so I started and asked her something. We have a very mellow conversation about this and that, about the park and her travels so far, and then the conversation settles down. But before long, she is conversing in German with the gentleman at the table one over from her. When that conversation ends, the man asks me a question over her table, we talk for a few seconds, and then the woman in the middle table says, ¨Hmmmm, I think you should both come to this table.¨ And so we do.

We actually have a really nice conversation about where everyone has been, where we´re going, who we are traveling with (we are all traveling alone), what has been the best, then what our careers are, and so forth. The Swiss guy, Adrian, is a type of social worker that focuses on educating families on how to create a healthy place for their children. The German gal, Astrid, is a therapist who focuses on movement, or how peoples movement, positions, and physical interactions reflect a type of psychology. They are both smart, unusual, well-traveled and highly interesting. Over the course of the day, it turns out that they are both genuinely nice people as well. In fact, they are two of the nicest people Ive met in a very long time, and we were well matched in age (Astrid is only a few years older than me, and Adrian is in his fifties) and character.

So, a good conversation turned into an agreement to go together to the Botanical Gardens, which ironically is what I had arranged to do by myself, but so had they. And we were the only people in the park! Again, nice conversation, a good pace, monkeys and toucans, flowers and trees, avejas cortepelos (which I could have done without as they burrowed into my hair and clung there for dear life). After a few hours in the park, we split up for a half hour or so, to meet up again and go to a recommended beach in Adrian´s car. The beach was a long sandy, rolling beach, and I had bought some pastries for us to share, and Adrian sat on the log and looked off into the distance, while I wandered down towards the waves and Astrid beachcombed for seed pods and interesting pieces of wood.

After this, dinner together at the seafood place... and that is when the soccer tournament was, so we enjoyed that afterwards, then went to a bar and had a few drinks. We were joined by a Tica girl who is a guide and tourist worker who had met Adrian before... she was totally and utterly tossed, kept repeating herself, and slowly as it came out, was hitting on Astrid to a large degree! Also, it turned out that our waitress, who was acting a little strange and utterly hostile to this girl (Eileen), was a former girlfriend... and either they had only broken up three months ago, or three years ago, or they had dated for three years and broke up three years ago, or they broke up because of incompatibility or because of a desire to play the scene, or whatnot, I don´t know because Eileen told us approximately 2.3 different versions of everything, including her age (either 17 or 27).

Anyhow, Eileen was shit-faced, the waitress was pissed, Astrid was nervous, Adrian was entertained, and I was extremely amused when Eileen set about telling Astrid and Adrian why women-women love is far better than anything they´d ever possibly experienced. I tried to keep the disagreement off my face. Heh. She was pretty funny... would have been great had she not repeated herself endlessly, including a few English tics like saying ¨really really¨ and ¨No No, No, really really, I no lie to you, for sure, its the TRUTH!!!!¨ Regardless of whether we were disagreeing with her or not. She also had the amusing habit of ordering a beer from the angry waitress, taking a mouthful, and then ordering another one. She bought beers for everyone at the table, although nobody was finished with their drinks and Astrid had stopped. All and all, she was an interesting endpoint to the evening, and so it ended and Astrid and I gave each other a big hug, Adrian and I exchanged one of those cheek-kiss things that I still find slightly traumatizing, and we each went our ways... to different ends of the earth.

Strange these small encounters with kindreds. They are so easy, so easy they make you wonder why the rest of human interaction is so damn hard.

I have been having many thoughts on this trip. I will try to note them down in my notebook while I am in the park, but I must tell you, the park has no blog and so I shall be swapping to paper for these thoughts. I think they are good thoughts. Observations about myself, about life. For instance, all those bad recursive, endlessly repetitively thoughts that I struggle with every day in my life back home, well, they are not here. They havent followed me, and this is such a relief to my mind. It is so nice to be full every night with new information, new input. To not have to fret about certain things.

I still feel dreadfully out of shape, fat, and dull as a teaspoon. I still feel unaccomplished. But I also feel relaxed, like I can see my way over the edge of the teapot.

So I will write about that. In my notebook. In the meantime, I will mention that the sun was out all day today, and after spending a day by myself yesterday - renting a bike and going down to the beach for a bit - then biking back in the pouring raining to arrive dripping and happy just in time for a beer on the porch. After that, I went back to Kennys to try and arrange to get the photos to him, and he told me he had a surf tour schedule for today and I was welcome to join and take pictures. Which I did, and after taking some photos... I went swimming with the surfers and bobbed and floating in the warm Golfo Dulce on the Pandulce Beach. And my body thrummed all the drive home in satifaction... when I get back from the park, I am going swimming every day, I tell you!

In the meantime, Merry Christmas, folks. And happy return of the sun.
I ran into Eileen the next day, and to my surprise, she actually remembered me and had the good grace to blush.