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.