Futbol!

My roomates and I have been playing a lot of soccer lately. We have been playing in a small field with a bunch of Costa Ricans who are very skilled. Believe it or not, us gringos have won every time. It's very fun and rough, and the locals will occasionally call you a "puta" or "maricon", which mean bitch and faggot. But it's just for laughs, nothing serious.

Last night we were walking downtown when we stumbled upon a very drunk man. He preceded to fall to the ground and once he saw us looking at him he yelled "Oye, Gringos! Que me dicen?!", which means, "Hey Gringos, what do you say to me?". Needless to say, we walked away.

This morning we had this really weird version of oatmeal. It was basically water and milk with a little bit of oatmeal bits.....it was pretty bad. But being the polite gringos we are, we suffered through it and shoveled it in. Sometimes I hate being a guest....

Today we went to a local zoo. It is more of a science park that focuses on biodiversity and conservation, so to say it was up my alley is an understatement. In the park animals roam freely, except the dangerous ones, of course. We saw tropical birds, iguanas, poison dart frogs and turtles. The organization really focuses on conservation of Costa Rican biodiversity since it is a very important factor to the people here. The local populace all love the natural world, and want nothing more than to reverse our damage. It would be a dream for me to work with them. Pictures are below.

By the way, we were walking down the street today when we stumbled upon a bar where the people inside were watching the Costa Rica vs Bolivia game. We saw them score a goal and the bar went nuts. Just a cool experience. So below are pictures of the street as well as the zoo...

Here is a pic of the mountains in the
background of the city.

Here is a sign....nothing interesting,
just cool cus it's in spanish. It reads
"Back Pain?"

Here is a "Alto" sign.

Here is a line of leaf cutter ants
that we encountered on the side walk.

This is a really cool flower I saw.
There are a billion more species that
you can see anywhere you go.

This is a palm tree. That hole in the middle
was actually made by leaf cutter ants
that live in the tree. The ants protect the
tree from other tree-killing bugs, and when
you knock on the outside of the tree,
thousands of ants come out ready to bight.

Here is a poison dart frog...

Here is another red poison dart frog.

Here is a palm tree. The spikes are
grown naturally and protect the tree from
predators.

Here is an iguana chillin in the grass...



Here is a butterfly. I have thousands
more pictures of butterflies but
I don't feel like uploading them all.

Here I am!

Here is a Caiman.



Here is another iguana eating some
water plants.

I have a lot more photos of really cool animals, but I will upload them in a later post because it is a very time consuming progress. Love y'all, y pura vida!