Some anecdotes
Backpackers sometimes do things that might seem a little crazy. Back home, it would seem pretty ridiculous to get three forty-five minute buses just to reach a little village because a guidebook said it was pretty. When abroad that it totally normal behaviour. Orosí, south of San José, sits in a little valley and it kind of pretty, though I’d rate it’s prettiness as worthy of only two buses, not three.
From Orosí I headed to the near-by but not so hot town of Paraíso - which means I got to ask for “a taxi to paradise”. That’s the title of a future hit for Bon Jovi or my name isn’t Dr Watson.
Here’s a picture of the main square in Paraíso- perhaps they reached a bit too far when they named the town:
http://picasaweb.google.com/roysfox/CostaRica#5473491302146271634
I clocked up a traveller’s favourite in Cartago, near Paraíso. I remember this one from South America: you ask a question in Spanish, they start to answer (proving they’ve understood the question), then pause, and ask “… do you speak Spanish?”. Yep. You know when I spoke Spanish just then? That was your clue.
Cartago also had great traffic lights. (Check out the YouTube video I posted below.) The green man strolls across the road, then as the lights are about to change he breaks into a run and then a full blown sprint.
Back in Guadalupe, some teenage kids next door were rehearsing their band (two guitarists and a drummer - they need to find a bassist but they are always hard to fine because they are so damn weird). They only knew one song, and they couldn’t play it that well, but it was interesting to hear what the Costa Rican kids are playing these days. See if you can guess what they were playing. It’s a song by a heavy metal band from the Black Country. It was originally released in 1970 as the title track of the band’s second studio album. Q magazine placed it at number 11 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. Rolling Stone ranked it number 250 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and called the song, “a two-minute blast of protopunk”. In 2009, it was named the 4th greatest hard rock song of all time by VH1. The singer’s name rhymes with Fozzy Fozzbourne.
Finished with my woman ‘cause she couldn’t help me with my mind
People think I’m insane because I am frowning all the time
