Saludos desde Costa Rica ...

I'm in Costa Rica right now, for my 72 hour Visa run.
In a small place called Playa de Coco.
Lots of expats here... lots!
I have to say I can see why...
The beach, the surfing, the bars, ...
I was a bit shocked though by the high prices here.
Being used to having a great dinner at Casa Bohemia WITH a drink for under C$100 ($5), having a pizza with one drink here for 12000 Colones ($24) was a bit of a bummer.
Tonight, I had dinner at the local Chinese.
Good food and a little bit more affordable!
But there was just too much of it.
First, I thought I'd give it to the nice lady at the hotel because she did my laundry and made my reservation for the bus back to Nicaragua.
But then, I recalled seeing an older man with a bandage on his foot at the beach.
He was sleeping on a concrete bench.
Everybody around him was enjoying the view of the fishing boats and the surfers trying to do their stuff.
But the old man with the bandage couldn't care less what was going on around him.
There probably wasn't anything he hadn't seen before anyway.
The poor guy must have been living in the streets for decades.
So, when I finished my Chinese dinner, there was still half of it left.
Also some bread and half a bottle of Coke Light.
I walked passed to hotel, to the beach where he usually hangs around.
It was pouring with rain, and the streets were flooded.
When I didn't see him in his usual place, I thought... where would I hide from the cold rain when I was an old man living in the streets of Playa de Coco?
Anyway... I found him rather easily.
He was looking for shelter on the covered terrace of a local souvenir shop.
It was nice of the girl attending the shop to let him sit there.
I said Hi and asked him if he was hungry.
Which of course he was.
I told him how bad the weather was. He said: No, it's good weather!
We need the rain once in a while!
I handed him the bag with food and the half a bottle of Cola Light.
Not that he needed to drink anything light!
He was very skinny, as one might expect.
I asked him for his name... He told me it was Apolinario.
What a nice name, and what a nice guy.
In the three days that I have been here, I never noticed anybody talk to him.
I wonder why that is...
Probably the tourists have other things on their minds than talking to a streetbum!
Well... Apolinario is eating his Chinese food now and drinking Diet Coke.
I thought... I have to go to a Cyber cafe and put this on the blog.
As soon as I'm done here, I will go and ask Apolinario if he liked the food...
Maybe he's got a story to tell, who knows...