Central America is a huge center for language schools and Samara seems to be one of the epicenters. Every non Tico I meet seems to be learning Spanish here. It’s a nice idea. You go to school for four hours a day and then use what you’ve learned on the beaches, bars and dusty streets of the village.
TUESDAY, JULY 16 – SAMARA, COSTA RICA I’m sitting on the apartment’s tiny balcony looking out over a Pacific Ocean that’s as flat as a pane of blue glass. The only white water I see consists of a few small breaks near the shore where I thought I’d try surfing for the first time as […]
MONDAY, JULY 15 – SAMARA, COSTA RICA Here’s one way to get away from ex-pats even in a place without many: Dive into a jungle. Costa Rica is lousy with rain forests. Jaguars still roam the dense growth throughout the country which, from the air, looks like the Amazon with beaches. The jungle in Samara, […]
SUNDAY, JULY 14 – SAMARA, COSTA RICA Apartment living is a great way to see Third World countries. Or, maybe this apartment is a great way to see Costa Rica. I’m sitting in a spacious, tiled living room with wrap-around windows that perfectly frame the Pacific Ocean. Yes, it seems like it’s the whole Pacific […]
FRIDAY, MARCH 1 – CANCUN, MEXICO Am I home yet? It’ll be nice to get back to Colorado and be warm again. It’s rainy, gray and miserable in Cancun – in more ways than one. This place is mankind’s cesspool. It’s debauchery in its filthiest form. If planet Earth had a morality scale, you could […]
THURSDAY, FEB. 28 – HAVANA My taxi in Cienfuegos stopped to pick up a ride before we headed up to Havana, and I didn’t know if it was a home or a vandalized construction site. It was a small one-story house which didn’t appear to have a front door or any glass on the windows. […]
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 27 – CIENFUEGOS, CUBA Never judge a person by first impressions – unless, of course, it’s a hot Cuban babe whose first question is “Where are you staying?” – and don’t do it with cities, either. When we dropped off Marco here on the way to Trinidad, I thought Cienfuegos was a dusty […]
TUESDAY, FEB. 26 – TRINIDAD, CUBA I just sat down in a sweaty Viazul bus on my way to Cienfuegas. The Cubans call the bayside city “The Pearl of the South.” It could be the Hades of the South and I might go. I couldn’t handle one more visit to Trinidad’s Casa de la Musica […]
MONDAY, FEB. 25 – TRINIDAD, CUBA Here’s one aspect of Cuba that beats the hell out of all the other communist countries: It sure has better beaches than Eastern Europe. Ukraines go to the Black Sea – on July 15. That’s about the only time it’s warm enough. I made my first venture to a […]
SUNDAY, FEB. 24 – TRINIDAD, CUBA I’m up at 5 a.m. with a savage headache. I don’t know whether it was from the seven-year-old Havana Club rum I swilled last night or the small metropolis of roosters that are outside my bedroom door. I’ve heard a steady chorus of “cock-a-doodle-do” for nearly two hours. There […]
FEB. 23 — HAVANA I’m sitting on a stoop outside Havana’s microscopic bus terminal wondering if I can get a ticket to Trinidad. For the bus terminal of a major Latin American capital, this place looks more like a coffee shop. The office is the size of a 7-Eleven with a parking lot smaller than […]
FRIDAY, FEB. 22 – HAVANA I saw what a baseball looks like when you knock the cover off it. Here in Cuba, it’s not how hard they hit the ball. It’s what they wind up playing with. That’s all they have. The pre-teen ball player stood next to me in the parking lot of staid […]
