Nicoya with Benjamin

With a line about “Tico Time” as his excuse, my boy Benjamin rolled up in the green Nissan Sentra 2 hours late for picking me up in front of Hospital Mexico in SJ. It’s all good though, at least he showed. I climbed in shotgun, said hello to his “host mom” who he was driving cause she doesn’t, and her friend…and we were on our way to Nicoya. The ride was fairly uneventful, Ben and I caught up on stories, we spoke some politics with the host mom…stopped for lunch and some snacks…crossed over the Puente de la Amistad de Taiwán, a bridge that crosses Nicoya Gulf and connects the mainland to the Guanacaste penninsula…and got to Nicoya around 6:30, just after sunset. We rolled into Ben’s place he was staying for 6 weeks to do his summer research (he has a little in-law apartment in the back of his host mom’s house). After getting the extra mattress from the house and washing the road dirt off our faces, we walked into town for some supplies. We stocked up on sandwich supplies and snacks for our day hiking and spelunking (man I love that word) on Saturday, and scored a bottle of Flor de Cana – a 7 year old Nicaraguan dark rum to mix a few cocktails…(there is a good chance my duty free allotment will allow for a bottle or two to make it’s way back stateside for and end of summer BBQ ;o) SO we headed back to the pad, and worked on the rum while having a slow, lazy start to the evening after spending the afternoon in the car. By the time ½ the bottle was in our bellies it was almost 10 and we were headed out for Chinese food. The local Chinese food joint was awesome…clean, fresh and delicious. So we grubbed and watched some of the soccer games – the US Invitational Gold Cup. After dinner we migrated to the local bar and found a dude playing acoustic guitar and singing songs…but after a couple rounds and some chatting with the local Tico’s last call came early – 11:30…so we accepted an invitation to head down the street a few blocks to the local nightclub. The place was bumping, some pretty good mix of reggae and raggaeton (a bastardized version of hiphop and reggae…think shaggy only worse)…so we continued meeting new characters, as well as a few of the friends Benjamin had already made (he’s been there 3 weeks already)…and before we knew it, it was 3 am and we were being ushered out the door. A pirata taxi ride and we were back at Ben’s place; where he somehow convinced me to have an un-necessary Surpe’ (or last drink of the night…think a saying like “one for the road”)…hit the mattress at 3:30 and was out like a light.