I've been thinking of re-designing my apartment.  I'm thinking of going with an Easter Island motif:
The police in Costa Rica are a tough bunch.  Also... young:
Yummy... Sprite.  Can you guess what's odd about this can of Sprite?:
Give up?  It's that it provides 7% of your daily "Energia".  Which is not a protein, carbohydrate, oil (Grasas), or sodium.  Um... so what the hell is "energia" exactly?
I had no idea bananas grew on tree:
To my urban ass, this was the most fascinating part of the banana tree experience - the little "tip" (actually quite big, in fact):
Speaking of odd things urban mo-fos like me never see... did you all know there is a bug out there that has the body of a leaf?!?

True story: We are on the bus to the next city.  It's driving through the mountains, curvy on some scary ass roads.  Very scary ass roads, very curvy.  

As we are going on the road, the bus stops, and all the men get out and start walking down the mountain road.  I was a little confused.  The bus then goes an make a 5-point turn (that's really the best you can do when you are on the edge of a mountain), and is now facing the direction we just came from.  I guess we're going back towards where we came from, right?

Wrong.

We continue to go down the mountain.  BACKWARDS.  IN REVERSE.
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Just in case that video doesn't come up clearly... that's a big ass bus going down a steep, tight, curvy mountain road, in reverse.

Needless to say, I decided to join the rest of the healthy (and smart) people walking down the mountain road to wait for the bus at the bottom:
A mile and a half later, we reached the pit stop.  The bus eventually showed up, still in reverse.  Meanwhile my shoes and jeans were a little muddy from going down the mountain path, but my heart and nerves were probably much better for it:
Even in Central America... well, maybe even more so in Central America... you got love for the left-wing liberal.  These guys make Chomsky look conservative:
Costa Rica is down with international rules when it comes to basketball:
Yep, that's the trapezoid paint box.  Here's the other side of the court.  It's a pretty Free Darko photo, no?  Still not as good as the basketball court in the Sahara desert that I saw while in Morocco, but close:
Maybe Jake from Bread City can do something with this pic.  The best I can come up with is this homage to Billy Ocean: "Caribbean Screen: No more jumpers on the run..."

Here's what the beach behind the court looks like - and yes, that's the Caribbean Ocean:
That black sand is much prettier in real life than in that picture above.

Sometimes nothing makes you feel better when you are away than a touch of home.  Maybe in the form of a sign:
The hell if I know what slow food means.  My people be tripping. 

Another sign of home... a bar with a TV showing the Yankees-Indian playoff game (game 3, the game the Yankees would win):
And I watch the game, while a loud salsa/merengue/reggae band played.  Here's some audio footage of what that sounded like.  And with that I'm out:
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