Chronicles of the sandmen

Costa Rican and Panamanian costs have driven Calvin, JL and I into the kitchen, where surplus bags of dry (or Lizano-flavored refried) beans and white rice and whatever fresh flourishes we compile at the market meld into Lizano-heavy gallo pinto, accompanied by requisite bricks of crumbly, salty queso blanco, surfboard-cut lengths of platanos maduros, and tortillas. If you look closely, you might glimpse half a yellow-green beauty of an aguacate tucked between the plate-obscuring piles, puddles of yellowish liquid-fat pooled in the valleys between foods indicating our newfound fondness for frying and liberal interpretation of "splashes" of cooking oil. "Um, dude, how many cups are in a splash?"

For breakfast variation and vitamin-recovery; sometimes you'll catch me halving cantaloupes to hollow with a spoon, or hefting a bag of tree-ripened mangos whose peels have captured the swirl of tropical sunsets.

La Fortuna's Discoteca Volcán Look, two years later, again treated me to some dance floor tongue-twisting, this round courtesy a thirty-one-year-old Tica with a decade-erasing smile. Besides the transmission risk of herpes and mono, all harmless fun. Seeking surf and sweat, we made our way to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, where balmy beachfronts and grimy drug-runners hosted us for three nights, though our superlative hostel, Los Sueños, afforded us all the comforts of home. Palm trees and sea breezes (carrying that potent, ever-wafting Caribbean scent), tumblers sweating concoctions of local firewater and cola. All at ease.

We crossed into Panama at the quiet Caribbean border post, boating to Spring Break 2009! in Bocas del Toro. Bocas is another tourist haven, at the moment brimming with Spring Breaking universitarios from across the US. So we partied, shook off hangovers to watch the first day of NCAA Tournament action, and made our way back to the mainland, where reasonable pricing still hovers far above that of the Central American heartland (Guatemala to Nicaragua) I miss more with every hemorrhaged dollar. But Boquete's ever-cool mountain climate, the verdant coffee- and produce-rich slopes, I prefer to sand and sweating in the shade.

Who's got the juice?

La Fortuna, Costa Rica, what with the nearby lava-spouting Volcàn Arenal and natural hot springs galore, is a tourist orgy. Just like most of Costa Rica, I reckon. Costa Rica´s landscape is as stunningly diverse and verdant as I remember from my 2007, latent-travel-bug-awakening visit, but with my new education from having crossed Central America, Costa Rica feels like an unwalled zoo. Chintzy souvenir shops spot towns' main strips. Scurrying backpackers with rabid tour-hawkers at their heels outnumber locals. Every sign is in English. The bastardizing of Costa Rica, and I'm contributing.

I'm not so conflicted. And if I am, I drink. Jackson, Calvin and I went through a bottle of Ron Abuelo and a 12-pack last night before we met Jugo -- who may actually have been named Hugo, but at that point subtleties in pronunciation were lost. We wandered to a bar, drank some more, all the while babbling and slurring in Spanish, then went back to Juice's apartment for ice-crystally Imperial pint-cans to ensure morning hangovers.

This afternoon we were treated to a stew of platanos, yuca and chicken's feet; claws and all simmered for hours and served over rice. According to Wikipedia, "The majority of the edible meat on the feet consist of skin and tendons, without much muscle." Yep, that's about right. Basically you insert a grayish, wrinkly claw-tipped digit into your mouth and suck and gnaw at anything soft, the edible portions that dislodge from bone with the consistency of that rubbery toplayer that forms over old puddings and jellos.

Calvin on slovenly travelers somehow missing Central America's toilet-side waste-soiled-paper repositories: "Um, that's like airballing a slamdunk."

So, after six months in Wildlife-blessed Central America, of course at my first stop in Costa Rica -- some cheap roadside lunch counter off the highway -- my attention is directed toward a monkey swinging through the trees. This trip's first damn monkey.

Crossing the border from Nicaragua into Costa Rica was something of a hassle for having violated my 90-day tourist visa, having to run between various offices to make photocopies of my passport, another to pay the fine, and then finally back to the actual immigration office. But I made it across to Costa Rica, where police stopped our bus four times to check passengers passports, thus stretching the purported four and one half hour trip from the border to San Jose an extra two hours.

San Jose is decidedly first world. American fast food chains and clean streets, an absence of visible poverty. Stoplights. Stoplights that are obeyed.

The mercado central is filled with lighted, clean-, wooden-tabled comedores missing only the framed placard: "Sanitation Score: 101". This is not the developing world. Where's the grime and bustle, the questionable eateries? The market carnicerias aren't adorned with hanging pigs heads or hacked up cows' hindquarters, flies feverishly abuzz in the heat and stink; but glassfaced, refrigerated display cases, cuts neatly placed in labeled trays.

But Costa Rica is one of the world's most popular destinations for sex tourism. Hookers stalk the corners near our hostel, approaching the cars that creep by, shoppers absorbed in their side view mirrors, deciding whether to speed off or pause on the curb.

After five months, I'm reunited with Jackson, and we're joined by Calvin, who just flew in from Charlotte, NC. Given our propensity for breaking into random harmonized song without the slightest provocation, we're considering presenting ourselves as a renowned American R&B trio in order to land club gigs and impress Ticas. To maintain masculinity in the smooth face of our R&B, we fart and cuss a lot.