But I can’t not talk about ziplining through a forest and hiking to a waterfall and how I apparently do not cut vegetables fast enough. So I will deal with reality for just a little while, just so I can share my stories with you.

(view from my plane going to Costa Rica)

The final leg of my amazing trip was eight days in Costa Rica with one of my best friends, Matt (the trip was originally nine days, but I accidentally missed my flight). If I was telling this story in person, I would pause and make him tell the part about how we know each other, because it makes me laugh. He’d say that we went to high school together and have known each other for 10 years, but we didn’t become friends until college (when we worked on the yearbook together. Did you even know that colleges still had yearbooks?). My story would say that we met and became friends my freshman year of college, but once in high school he said something sassy to me. Something he conveniently doesn’t remember. He’s lived abroad for four years and has been traveling around South and Central America for the past six months. Before I’d even been laid off, I’d been telling people that should layoffs at work happen again, I wanted to meet up with Matt. And somehow it magically worked out that he’d be in a location that I could fly to with my Jet Blue pass. I love when the Universe is nice to me.

When Matt picked me up at the airport, all I knew was that we’d be staying the night in San Jose, but our plans for the rest of the trip were up in the air. No reservations. No bus tickets. No itinerary. Six months ago I would’ve been freaking out about this, but after showing up to a hostel that didn’t exist and missing a flight, I knew I’d be fine, not to mention Matt speaks Spanish, which makes a huge difference (lest I remind you of my Santo Domingo experience).

After lunch, we grabbed coffee and ran into a friend he’d met traveling. She told us about a free film festival. The movie was supposed to have subtitles, which it did, but they turned out to be in Spanish. So I had no clue what was going on. The quality wasn’t too great either, which resulted in Matt and his friend (a native Spanish speaker) not understanding what was going on either. All I remember is lots of boob shots, some midgets and a small child wandering around with a shotgun. Other than that, who knows.

What I wasn’t expecting was San Jose’s overwhelming number of incredibly persistent beggar children. The city felt a little familiar to me, like a more modernized, tourist-friendly version of Santo Domingo. Even though the Dominican Republic isn’t as well off as Costa Rica, I never had people pestering me for money, and I was even traveling alone. One night in an ice cream shop, Matt turned down a boy asking for money. The boy then started talking to me (because that’s a brilliant back-up plan). I kept shaking my head and saying no, Matt sternly told him in Spanish to get the hell outta there, and the ice cream employees (who were oddly dressed like nurses) called for security because he wouldn’t leave us alone. This kind of encounter probably happened to us at least six other times. And we barely spent any time in San Jose. Because the next day we left in search of waterfalls.