The Dirt Field

After my last entry yesterday afternoon, I decided to hike down one of the nearby roads in search of entertainment. I saw signs advertising an ecological park with a $10 admission fee, but as I neared the park entrance, I also saw a part of the barbed wire fence surrounding the park that looked, um, passable. I hopped the fence and began trekking through the tall grass and underbrush towards a river I saw in the distance.

When I got to the river, I was hot and it looked highly inviting, so I stripped off my boots and socks, rolled up my pants, and waded in. I then spent a marvelous hour exploring the rocks and the small rapids in the river. When the sun started to set, I began working my way back across the river to where I had discarded my boots. However, three feet from my shoes, I stepped on a mossy rock and dropped into the water like a heavy stone. It was exceptionally unpleasant, and I bruised my shin in the process. Then the crocodiles smelled blood and attacked me. Just kidding. They were actually caimans.

Once I dried off and got my shoes back on, I hiked out of the park and began walking home. Along the way, two men leading a large group of horses passed me. I said hello, they said hello, and then they offered me a ride back into town on one of their horses. It was awesome and I felt like a true cowboy…or a gringa tourist with a cumbersome blue backpack.

Later that evening, I ran into my friends from the Caño Negro tour earlier. They mentioned that they were meeting some friends in the local Parque Central and invited me to join them. We then spent the bulk of the evening drinking cervezas in the park that we purchased from the mercado across the street, until the police asked us to leave because it was past the hour when drinking in the park was permitted. We left, but not before I got a picture with the police officers.

(Note: Read the entry entitled ¨Crazy Donald¨ below. The people we met in the park included the guy who had gone on the illegal volcano tour earlier that day. Donald, in a desperate desire to see his new friend again and a desire to be as mentally unhinged as possible, followed us to the park and spent the entire night repeating the same three things over and over until I was ready to strangle him.)

We took our impromptu party back to the porch of our hotel, at which point I (with the help of three cervezas) decided to jog a mile or so down the road in the dark to go see the horses in a local pasture. I hopped a few barbed wire fences (hopped is a generous term; it was more like throwing a large sack of cabbages over the fences) and found a skittish herd of horses with whom I made friends.

Upon the realization that I was in the middle of nowhere in a dark field with a herd of horses, I headed back to the hotel, rejoined my now completely sauced friends, and headed to the all-night Soda la Parada (think Ihop of Costa Rica) for a midnight snack. After a veritable feast of pizza, tilapia, chips, and frijoles, we called it a night. And that, my good readers, is the end of my tale for now.