Dancing with the Devil
Playing with Fire(water)
Mamas always tell their boys not to play with fire…well I torched my tongue and liver while also simultaneously completing a tico rite of passage — the dreaded and notorious chili guaro.
Day 8, May 19, 2015.
My first morning in the beautiful capital city of San Jose. Our morning began in the hotel cafe laughing about our previous night of dancing. It’s nice to see a continental breakfast and not the basic rice and beans that we had become accustomed to on campus. This morning, we embarked on our tour of San Jose under the guidance of Alessandro.
Alessandro is a fascinating man who has lived the fullest of lives — as an actor, studying in Italy for over a decade, and now touring students like us around his beloved San Jose. Sure, he may have contradicted himself at times, and told us that his current wife (his second) was not actually his soulmate, but he was adorable nonetheless. Especially that little fedora. We walked all around downtown San Jose — various parks, we entered the lobby of the National Theater, and a local art exhibit. Fittingly, some random man was playing the violin while we were in the art exhibit. One thing I question about San Jose is the amount of random men that are just sitting on city streets doing NOTHING except staring and cat calling at our American ladies.
But then again, with girls like we have, I understand why they love them so much. It didn’t help that half of our group was carrying around massive cameras with photo lenses larger than most people’s heads. We stuck out like a sore thumb, but we were proud of it. We embraced our role as tourists, held our backpacks tight, and marched through the capital city of the country we’ve called home for the last week. One terrifying (but also comforting) aspect of San Jose is the police. Costa Rica does not have a military. But their police will make you question it. Huge guns in hand and standing on giant platforms in the middle of busy town squares, a militant police force stands guard awaiting trouble. However, we made our own trouble.
We found a weirdly-dressed due with funny teeth and speaking in a weird high pitched accent on one street corner. He approached Adina and her humongous camera and began talking to her in Spanish on camera. He obviously knew we were American, and I think it was some odd charicature of our culture. Regardless, we took it in stride, and he was pretty impressed at how well some of our students spoke English. TAKE THAT, SPANISH COMEDY SHOW. We ended the segment waving at the camera yelling “Su Manana!!” I think that was the name of the show. I Googled it later and apparently it is a morning talk show for the “Costa Rican housewives to watch and be entertained.” Glad to see the whole world embracing the feminism movement.
Lunch was…interesting. We arrived at a restaurant called Al Mercat. The building looked like something that could be picked up and dropped in Greenwich Village in New York City and no one would notice a thing. The plants on the walls and the decor reminded me a lot of the tiny hole in the wall we ate at for dinner last night. Except this restaurant was a hipster’s paradise.
While we were here, I had the pleasure to listen to some of Alessandro’s stories as Cat interviewed him for her profile piece. Alessandro had eaten at Al Mercat multiple times before. He said “every time is different.” I assumed this just meant he liked lots of different things on the menu. Nope. The chef cooks one dish every day. And he only cooks a certain amount. So he runs out of…say chicken or bananas, you don’t get any chicken or bananas. Just ask Robin. Drinking out of mason jars was a nice little tribute to our Southern roots. But the accompanying guanabana juice was enough to turn me away from my mason jar.
Google guanabana. It’s also known as the Soursop and is one of the ugliest fruits you’ll ever see. Uglier than the peach; I may be from Georgie, but the peach is hairy and looks like a butt. The highlight of this establishment was when “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” by Freddy Fender came on the stereo (making you proud Russ). Remember when I said that if they ran out of food, you just didn’t get any? Robin had to eat our sesame chicken dish sans the chicken. Then, our waiter told us dessert would be a delicious caramelized banana with a special cream sauce. Not that the meal wasn’t delicious, the portions were just fairly small (especially for Robin lol). So we were anticipating what sounded like an incredible finish to our dessert for this lunch. We were served our dessert. A large white bowl is brought out, and we salivate in anticipation.
Two slices of a banana. Two. Guess how many Robin got? Only the one. I took my first bite and said, “Wow, that first bite was incredible. Time to eat my last bite.” Two bites and the dessert was gone. The entire meal couldn’t even qualify as a full appetizer. Poor Catelyn didn’t even get any bananas so they replaced it with leftover goat cheese in the kitchen.
As much as Alessandro hyped this place, lunch left me feeling fairly empty inside. But don’t worry, our group made the most of our afternoon free time. Following lunch, Alessandro had one last stop for us. He brought us to a little cafe, and he had a little room in the back for small performances. Well, Alessandro brought us back to his acting roots and told us the story of how the Earth came to be according to some tribal myth. Let me give you the gist.
A character named Sivu (God) decides to create a universe of rocks and stones. He is very proud of said rocks and stones. Then, Sivu sees a bat fly across the rocks and stones and something falls from him. “WHAT IS THIS SHIT?” shouts Sivu (verbatim apparently). The bat cries shouting “I DON’T KNOW I DIDN’T EAT ANYTHING!!!” Sivu pesters the bat even more. The bat admits to biting the left pinky finger of the “princess tiger.” Sivu demands that the bat return to the “princess tiger” and kidnap her (no explanation was provided for this — the objective here was unclear). So the bat flies into the cave of the “princess tiger” but is confronted by “Mr. Tiger.” The bat is very scared and flies out of the cave, but “Mr. Tiger” beats the bat and smashes his tail on the boulder at the entrance of the cave. Alessandro claims that this is why bats sleep upside down because they all have a giant hole on their ass and if they sleep right side up all their intestines and organs would just fall right out (logical explanation). Sivu still did not have the “princess tiger” however. So Sivu finds a random lady and tells her to create a diversion so Sivu can capture the “princess tiger.” The random lady comes up with the idea of a party. So she knocks on the cave door and tells “Mr. Tiger” there will be a party with food. “Food?!” he exclaims excitedly. “No, no, I shouldn’t go.” The random lady comes back to tell “Mr. Tiger” there will be a party with food and music. “Music?!” he exclaims excitedly. “No, no, I shouldn’t go.” The random lady comes back to tell “Mr. Tiger” there will be a party with food and music and drinking. “Drinking?!” he exclaims excitedly. “No, no, I shouldn’t go.” The random lady then says that the people would love for “Mr. Tiger” to go because all the people love his chocolate. Of course, “Mr. Tiger” could not resist, so he leaves to make all the people chocolate. However, “princess tiger” remains in the cave. Sivu demands the thunder god to destroy the boulder at the entrance of the cave. Sivu swoops in and captures the “princess tiger.” “Mr. Tiger” discovers this and flips his giant pot of chocolate upside down in anger (this is supposedly the explanation for a large hollow rock formation in Costa Rica somewhere). He notices a spot of red lqiuid on the floor of the cave that then turns to green (again, no explanation for the green transformation). “Mr. Tiger” runs out of the cave and notices that all the trees are the same green color. He screams and shouts at every tree, “WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER???”
Alessandro treated every audience member as a tree and shouted this question at each of us. A deer then approaches “Mr. Tiger” and he asks the creature “WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER???” The deer had no idea. However, because of its antlers, “Mr. Tiger” assumes it is a tree because its antlers look like branches. In anger, he rips the antlers off (this explains why some deer don’t have antlers). The tiger apparently wears a shell necklace — like Ursula from The Little Mermaid, and it is why he has such a beautiful, booming voice. “Mr. Tiger” approaches a monkey and demands to know “WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER???” The monkey has a squeaky voice because it has no magic shell, but wants the shell of “Mr. Tiger.” The monkey keeps reaching closer and closer to the shell, but he reaches up to grab him. But at that very moment, he has an epiphany and realizes that perhaps the party was a distraction and they would know where his daughter was. “Mr. Tiger” goes to the party and notices someone has a decoy “princess tiger” on a party guest’s back. He snatches it but is unaware that the decoy is fragile, and it explodes into dust. The dust particles fell into the Earth, and the moral of the story is that if you harm the Earth, “Mr. Tiger” will come after you and kill you because he forever believed that his “princess tiger” daughter was a part of the Earth.
Not sure what that had to do with creationism myth, but that’s Alessandro for you. Continuing on with OUR story…we were granted free time following his epic storytelling. So half of the group decided to go back downtown and explore (and eat).
We ventured into a McDonald’s and I ordered the cheapest meal I’ve ever eaten. I ordered a crispy chicken sandwich off of the Dollar Menu (also known as the 610 Colones Menu) plus fries and a drink. Converting to US dollars, I spent under $3 for my entire meal. Thanks Costa Rica, it makes up for your really crappy, sweet ketchup. After this, we continued to explore various stores downtown in the chilly, pouring rain. Kavi mentioned wanting to stop off at a bread shop somewhere that she had noticed. What a great decision. After a refreshingly American throwback at McDonald’s, Cat and I split a pineapple and cream cheese-filled sweet bread.
Our selection was the farthest on the right on the second row. I nibbled on this on our walk back to the hotel. However, Mihir and Anna, two other students, wanted to go on the search for a massive church we had seen on our way in. Not wanting to miss this, we ventured off into San Jose in search of this church. We stopped at various locations along the way — none of them were the church. I constantly asked where we were and if anyone remembered how to get back. The former was never answered, but the latter was always met with a resounding (but increasingly more frustrated) “YES.”
We found some pretty fascinating grafitti (well, Cat actually had remembered this specific picture so naturally, she had to get her picture taken with it — pose and all). My favorite part of San Jose is that everywhere is surrounded by chain link, barbed wire fences. Even the museums. Jack used his Spanish to ask a tico where the big church was. “Two blocks up and to the left” he said (in Spanish, I’m assuming). We walked about six blocks up and kept walking to the left until we found something that resembled a church. It was kind of large and white, and I was told it was a church but I wasn’t seeing any crosses. Oh well. It was time to roll on back to the hotel. Nothing good happens after 2 am, they say. In San Jose, that applies to about 5 pm. Like I’ve said, it gets dark quick in Costa Rica.
Sure, we made fools of ourselves. But we’re clearly American tourists — so why not live it up while we can? We return to the hotel to shower and prep for a night on the town guided by Patricia — our local tour guide. She takes us to a sports bar downtown where most of us gather by the TV screen in the back to watch the Warriors v. Rockets game.
The meal gave us tremendously large portions (even if we did have to wait an hour and a half just to see them). My chicken burrito was awesome, but our group was so large that we were relegated to a tent in the backyard of the bar with a long table accompanied by chairs and benches of all sorts of sizes, lengths, and heights. Awkward and wet, but fun nonetheless. From here, it was off to a college club that Patricia said was very popular amongst the ticos at the local national university. Wow. What a place. The club was in an unmarked building that looked like a fraternity house both inside and out. We walked in to a dimly-lit lobby with a spiral staircase and a painting of a man physically painted onto the wall (frame and everything). We walked through a living room onto the dance floor. A DJ was playing “Play That Funky Music, White Boy.” I knew I was in the right place. Again, I repeat, the drinking age is 18.
Now, obviously, we are not stupid enough to get schwasty in a foreign country surrounded by thirsty collegiate ticos. However, we were in San Jose, and Patricia encouraged us to safely experience the night life and do Costa Rica right. Now guaro is the national liquor of Costa Rica. One of the supposed “tico rites of passage” is the dreaded Chili Guaro shot.
Never again. I (legally) voluntarily drank a tiny cup of poisonous fire. If a tiny dragon farted in my esophagus, that’s what I was experiencing. If a chimney could burp, I had just inhaled its saliva. I should’ve known this was a bad decision when the bartender pulled out an unmarked bottle of essentially tabasco sauce and poured it in my little glass. Although that decision may not have been my best, our group bonded over being the only people in the entire building who knew all the words to “Best I Ever Had” by Drake and embarassing ourselves to no end on that dance floor. Spenser gave me the VIP award for my dance moves. Definitely yet another day to remember from my epic escapade to Central America.
