Con o Sin Verga, Senor?
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2006
1
95
110
Trip End
Apr 01, 2008
San Jose,
Province of San Jose,
Costa Rica
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The bus trip and border crossing were uneventful, and most of the trip was done in darkness so I didn't get to see much of the Costa Rican countryside. (As an aside, I learned that my coccyx hurt and I had a barked shin, so I think I must have taken a tumble the last night in San Juan del Sur, although I don't recall it.) I arrived into San Jose late Thursday night and had some problem finding a place to eat dinner (the steak). I had no problem, however, finding the heart of downtown San Jose, a grouping of a dozen or so hotels, casinos, bars, taxis, cigar hawkers, and hookers - male and female. The epicenter of this bacchanal is the Hotel Del Rey, described in one person's very typical review at tripadvisor (click on the link to read others) as:
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Gassy Aftermath
"Don't bring families or kids here. It is basically an adult Disneyland. Think girls from every Latin American country. On any given night there are from 50 - 150 girls in the bars and lobby. Many are quite good looking and some are down right exceptional. Bring bucks though....times like these are expensive" . .And he basically got it spot on. The lobby, and the two bars are filled with too many prostitutes to count of all shapes, sizes, color and country of origin. And they are friendly. Some are a little too friendly - grabbing, touching, pinching, squeezing and copping as you walk through the place. The only safe place, such as it is, it the casino, where they are not allowed. I just did a walk-through on Thursday night to check it out, but the steak place across the street had its fair share coming and going to the bar/disco there too. And, unsurprisingly, the customers are all gringos.
Interestingly, most of the surrounding streetcorners also had "girls" on them, but I couldn't figure out why they were relegated to the outside as opposed to the girls in the hotels and bars. My best guess was that they didn't want to pay some sort of commission or were banned for whatever sort of violations gets one banned from such a scene. I was wrong. I learned later that it is because none of these "girls" are actually women. Some of them fooled me - at least from afar - but others became obvious once I knew what I was looking at.
After dinner, I ended up down the street at a simple bar for a beer and to read my book. I was having an allergic sneezing fit from someone's perfume, and this blonde from down the bar sent me a shot of "guara," the local rotgut of choice made from sugarcane. I went down to talk to her, and she explained that the liquor was considered good for a cold. We ended up talking awhile and I was forming a pretty good guess that she was a he, but s/he was good. S/he was Italian and worked as a bartender at another local club and did something involving film documentaries - I got the feeling that it was sort of an unpaid internship and she was pumping up her role. S/he was dressed to the nines, but made it clear she was not a prostitute. When s/he went to the bathroom to get high (I could smell the marijuana when she came back), another guy (and his date) there made sure to tell me that she wasn't a she. I told him that had been my guess, but it didn't matter to me, and, after a couple more shots with the four of us, the bar closed and we went our separate ways.
On Friday, I wandered the downtown area without my camera, and had lunch at Taco Bell. I just had to do it. I had to see whether it was the same food as at home, and what the Ticos (the nickname for Costa Ricans) chose to eat there. The answers are sort of, and chili cheese fries. I caught some of the U.S.
Milky Milker
Open at a pub called the New York Pub, which appeared to be primarily frequented by male American retirees and the women who do not love them, including one geezer who had to tell me his favorite joke. That he heard from his pastor in church. And it was so lame I questioned whether he was putting me on. To make it short, it involved a guy going into town to buy a steer for some of his co-farmers to share their cows, and he uses up almost all of their pooled money. As this is the pre-telephone era, he is told he only has enough money left to afford one word on the telegraph. What is the word he wired home? ... Comfortable. You get it? You get it? Yeah, it's been fun, but I have to meet a friend for dinner.Which was actually true. A good friend of a good friend (who we'll call Bob) has lived here for a couple of years. I haven't seen him for a while, but we've killed a few braincells together in the past, so he got a Get Out of Jail free pass from the wife. Following a restaurant fuckup (he sent me to Bakea, recommended by Fodor, but unfortunately out of business for months, and he forgot his cell phone when I tried to call him to tell him so), we did find each other, and we went to the above-mentioned decent Asian fusion place - Tin Jo. That started the Johhny Walker Negras, which led to tequila shots and beers, which led to going to the Del Rey for the "good, plain fun" of chatting up the putas, which led to another bar to try to find a stripper Bob needed for a friend's bachelor party, which led back to the Del Rey, whereupon bob and I separated. Bob wanted "to get his rocks off" and I was winning at the tables. Plus, putas do nothing for me - they are, in this case, a $100 Kleenex. I waited for awhile, but he did not return, which was eerily similar to the last time he was in San Francisco after I introduced him to a friend of mine during Friday Happy Hour.
That said, it would have been cheaper to go with the pretty blonde Colombian. Instead, I went on an unguided tour of several of Costa Rica's finest casinos, slowly dribbling colones (the money here) away while being plied with (likely fake) liquor and propositioned my men and women. There must be places where people here go on the weekend to meet, dance and party, but it was beyond my ken to find them. I wanted to take pictures, but casinos and the "ladies" frown on that, so I got nothing. Even Google images has nothing except this of some of the bartenders. But there is an e-book allegedly allowing you to "see through the eyes of an experienced expatriate a side of Costa Rica that is mostly unknown to the average "ecotourist". A world of fast living, gambling, drugs, prostitution and easy sex.
Steaky Goodness
A world full of women trying to get by the best way they can; often by offering their services as escorts to any guy with a pocketful of green dollars to spend. An exciting and sometimes rather sad world in which those who have, the "sex tourists", come to buy that which they cannot find...or cannot afford in their own countries." As for me, I got in at 8:00 a.m. or so, and slept until past 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, but the U.S. Open called, so I went back out again. Several hours of golf and beers later at yet another Irish pub without a single Gaelic influence other than the name, plus one chifrito (a rice and beans dish with fried pork skins, aka chicarrones), plus the aforementioned tongue at the Italian place, and some wine, I called San Jose quits.
I had originally planned to also stay Sunday night and do a day trip to Volcano Arenal during the day, but the volcano had acted up a few days earlier, tossing chunks of rocks, drooling lava, and spraying noxious gases like a toddler eating peas and mashed potatos, and otherwise making itself uncuddly to strangers, to the point of evacuation. So, hurting from several days of serious drinking, I fled to:
Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica
