Costa Rica Diary

Here is another page from my travel diary in Costa Rica back in 2008

Tuesday, 19 August, 08
 

Since I don´t have a camera, this e-journal is going to be my way of sharing my trip with you.  These are the pictures I have to offer.  So allow me, if you will, to take you on a tour of my hotel, La Pension de la Cuesta, which translates as the Hotel on the Hill.  A quick google search will give you some images of the place.  Of course it isn´t as nice as it looks on the terminal.  My room looks nothing at all like the ones featured on the website, and I don´t know how they came up with that image of the kitchen, but it is nowhere inside the hotel.  The kitchen here is very grungy, and does not have a proper stove, just hotplates and a microwave in the dining room.  There is no hot water in this hotel... the showers are all heated by a special electrical device... so it makes sanitation and hygiene when it comes to properly washing dishes a bit of a challenge. The front section of the hotel is nice, and the best rooms are in this area.  It opens out onto a huge verandah, which is now an indoor veranda, since many years ago the hotel was renovated.  So now, instead of looking out onto a tropical garden, the verandah is just above the dining room and lounge which are very comfy.  As I mentioned my favourite place to sit is in an armchair on the verandah overlooking everything while working on a drawing with coloured pencils.  There is also, as I mentioned, a huge set of windows... the ceiling must be at least 16 feet high... that look out onto various tropical flowers...mostly brilliant orange tubular ones...lush tropical greenery, and a lot of shabby and dilapidated buildings and abandoned structures.  It is quite a mix.  When you turn left at the kitchen...the dining room is right...you take a long corridor, then go up a ramp that is outside then you turn left in a dark area, which is another house that has been connected to the hotel.  This is the quiet area, and it also contains the worst rooms.  Mine is one of them.  It is tiny, much like a Hastings street sro (single room occupancy). The window has a broken hinge so I can´t keep it open and every time I have tried to prop it open with something it´s fallen out.  The walls are painted a dingy off-yellow and the ceiling is bare plywood with a thin layer of white paint  featuring a bare light bulb.  There is also a small worn out table and chair, and a small set of shelves.  Nothing else.  I have become used to this room, however, and it does feel like home to me now, which is nice because it is a much needed refuge for me from the chaos of San Jose, and the chaos of certain hotel guests.  I brought with me my Discman and ten classical cd´s as well as earplugs, so they help tremendously.  I play the most often my Thomas Tallis cd.  Thomas Tallis is widely considered to be the greatest of the English Elizabethan composers of choral works, late 16th century, and one of the pieces on my cd, Spem et Allum, was written for forty parts.  This has to be among the most inspired music I have ever been privileged to hear.  As I mentioned the walls are so thin you can even hear people fart next door.  I am not making this up.  There is also a high window between my room and the next, so that if one has the light on the other sees it.  Fortunately Alvaro, one of the staff, and I have draped a blanket over it so it is no longer a problem  Next door, with a view from my window, is an art gallery that never seems to be open.  At night they have a porch light on all the time which shines very brightly through my thin curtains.  In order to block it out, I have to drape the bedspread over the curtain rod in front of the curtains every night before I go to bed.
 

There is unfortunately, just around the corner from my room, a lounge where smoking is permitted, presumably because this area has open windows and is well ventilated.  Most of the guests here aren´t smokers, thanks be to God, but right now we have this pack of five or six young Austrians, mostly female, and they nearly all smoke.  They are actually like a swarm of locusts, and I consider them so far, the worst and most selfish guests I have yet encountered.  Fortunately, I have been able to set boundaries with them, such as, if I´m using the only functioning computer, also in the lounge, and they happen to be there, then please go somewhere else to light up.  It´s sad to think, that, if they don´t quit soon, that some of them could well end up dying an early death from lung cancer as my mother did.  I have also noticed that only as a collective are they odious.  One on one I´ve found them all to be quite sweet.  Still it´s sad to think that their most famous compatriots have for names Adolph Hitler and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  On the other hand, they also gave us Mozart and Haydn but that was a very long time ago, eh?
 

The staff are splendid.  They are Alvaro and Iris.  They each alternate for twenty-four hour shifts, they work very hard and they are very supportive of their clients...oops, I mean guests.  And I understand, that they are typical of many Ticos, so they for me are also a great window onto this culture.
 

I go to bed at nine or nine thirty every night, after being in my room since 6 30 or 7, following dinner. I check my valuables, just taken out of the security box, which is in a locked room near the front desk that only staff has access to, making it a bit of a pain keeping track of my money and passport etc. I recount my money every night and keep a record, in order to stay within a reasonable budget.  Then I spend the rest of the evening in quiet prayer and meditation, reading and listening to music.  I´m usually up at the crack of dawn, 4 or 4 30, sometimes 5 or 5 30, and if I haven't had enough sleep it's easy to nap before breakfast.  Lately I am helping Alvaro and Iris set things up for breakfast...cold cereal, fresh pineapple, toast, horrible jam, coffee, and juice... the juice is a tasty concoction of mixed tropical fruits that Alvaro and Iris make fresh every morning.  Then I go for a walk in the beautiful small parks in the area.  The parks here are laid out with walking paths like labyrinths, so they can be great for long meditative strolls.  It is marvellous seeing the parakeets every morning.  They are a lovely sight first thing in the morning.  Also the many trees and flowers.  There is a tree here that is a favourite of mine.  It is huge and spreading and produces these enormous scarlet blossoms. 

When I return I have breakfast, then figure out my itinerary for the day.  I think today I am going to visit Zoo Ave, or Bird Zoo, which is about 30 km outside of San Jose.  Later.