These aren't the droids you are looking for

the good news is that i have made it into costa rica and to my hostel safe and sound. the bad news... well i got a few nicks and bruises along the way. it all started off swimmingly on monday night when my parents dropped me off at the airport. we went up to the luggage check where i got to use my jedi mind powers. the way it works when you go to costa rica is that you need to provide proof upon exiting the country that you have a planned exit from the destination. of course i had no such thing nor did i want to have anything similar so i did some research on a local bus line that treks into panama and put it all to memory. when asked about my exit ticket, i simply regurgitated the information with brilliant conviction and thus swayed her to believe i truly was going to panama on november 14th at seven thirty in the morning.

after that battle was won, there was still one more looming over me. i told the woman that i wanted to carry my guitar on the plane and i didnt want to check it with the other luggage. without having to put up a fight, she says its no problem and instantly put a big smile on my face. i then checked my backpack, said an emotional goodbye to my parents and headed up the escalator to go through customs.

this process was simple, but my deodorant set of a red flag so they searched my belongings. fortunatley i didnt have any contraband in my guitar case which is usually what the hold up is. once i was through customs i had a few hours to kill so i made some victorious last phone calls telling everybody how great things were going. with still about 45 minutes to go before boarding, a man called out to me, "hey guitar guy!" and he motioned me over to his restaurant table. he told me he was going to pay me to give him a guitar lesson to which i replied, its your lucky day, im an instructor. i pulled out the guitar and handed it to him as i fished for my tuner in my bag. once i found it, he insisted on tuning it. letting him was my first mistake. i had detuned the guitar so it wouldnt be affected by the pressure differences during the flight and this guy had a tough time figuring out which strings were supposed to be tuned to which frequencies. after guiding him through the first three strings, he got a little anxious and cranked up the G string... yes its always the G string... wayyyyy too tight and it snapped. boom. just like that, im now down a very precious string of which i was really hoping to last me quite some time.

he apologizes and then for the next little while i try to help him learn a fleetwood mac song he had written down on paper. a ways into the lesson i noticed that the plane had begun boarding and my chances for storing the guitar were dwindling. i told the guy i needed to pack up, he gave me five bucks for my troubles and i ran onto the plane. three people before i made it into vessel, i heard the flight attendant start shouting "theres no more room! everything has to be checked from here on out!"

my heart sunk a little bit and i pleaded with alberto the man taking my guitar to find some room on the plane. he gave me his word he personally would take care of it and everything would be just fine... but he had to check it. i slowly meandered heartbroken and torn into the plane without my little travel buddy. i also had a very bad feeling about the situation.

i arrived in florida this morning, waited out the layover and then hopped on the plane to costa rica. a few hours later i was off the plane and eager to see how well alberto lived up to his word. i got my luggage quickly and then found my guitar on a seporate conveyor belt. i pulled everything aside and gave it a quick inspection. all looked well.

from there i walked outside where a girl in a backpack flagged me down and convinced me to split a ride from a driver... specifically not a taxi... to the san jose bus station. it was a good deal so i gave in and went over to meet pablo our driver. pablo was an energetic character who was blasting the CR vs brazil soccer game. apparently the CR team is doing very. so well in fact, government offices shut down to watch the game. the same thing will happen again tomorrow and there will be a big party if the team wins the cup. anyways, pablo drops off the girl at the san jose station and told me he would take me to my hostel at no extra charge. a few minutes later, i said my goodbye, thanked him and walked into the hostel galileo. i was greeted warmly by the hostel owner who actually gave me a 'welcome to CR' shot and told me to wait a few minutes while she prepared the room.

at that point i took out my guitar to repair the broken string and decided to give it a full bodied inspection once again. thats when i saw it. there is a big crack in the wood on the bottom of the body where the strap is connected. alberto betrayed me. i knew something like this was inevitable, but i wanted to prolong the incident at least beyond the first day! so tomorrow along with collecting information and hunting down jobs, i will be filing some very angry complaints with spirit air. what a bummer.

on the bright side, it looks like i should have some good leads on jobs because of the people who live at the hostel. all in all, costa rica seems beautiful but my part of san jose is a pretty congested and smoggy city. i did however enjoy my first cup of costa rican coffee from this very nice woman in a very tiny hole in the wall cafe. it was fantastic... and she understood my spanish.

all this on the first day, i can only imagine what is to come next.


scott