At Christmas time they put a pine tree up by the bar in the Estrella, decorated with ornaments and tinsel. Blinking white lights hung from palm trees and front doors all over town. Someone hung a stocking from the lifeguard tower. The local schoolchildren even put on a Christmas pageant on a stage built by the pool, complete with a Santa Claus, who was sweating his north pole off in that heavy suit.

     They even brought out a local musical act as a special treat, though I think it was more of a treat for him than the audience. He introduced himself as “Tico Hendrix” and sported a jerry-curl and buck teeth. Tico pawed at an electric keyboard and howled out Christmas songs and bad jokes into the microphone.

“It’s so great that they give special needs people a chance to perform in public,” I told my friend, who corrected me that Tico Hendrix was fully functioning, and not even on the spectrum, but just really bad. During the merciful breaks between bad songs, he told bad jokes:

“Thank you ladies and germs, your applause is underwhelming. Excuse me, folks, but my English is not so good. And neither is my Spanish...” 

Crickets. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Tamarindo so quiet. Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

Every year 6.6 million U.S. citizens call another country home. They do so for a variety of reasons -- work assignments, warmer climates and better medical care, and a cheaper cost of living. But whatever the reason for buying a one-way ticket to being an expatriate, they have some important choices to make once they get there.

I've been lucky enough to live in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and travel all over the world, 37 countries on six continents and counting, and I've met U.S. expatriates almost everywhere. If you're considering a similar move, here are some things to consider:

1. Language.
Communication is something we take for granted, but when you are in a foreign country you might not be able to walk right up to someone and express yourself... or ask for life's essentials, like the bathroom, and beer. You'll want to study and practice the language as much as possible before you go. Also, taking intensive language lessons once you arrive is a great way to meet people and ease the linguistic transition.

2. Where to go? 
There are many factors that go into your choice of a new home country: climate, political stability, crime, proximity to the U.S. for a quick flight home, cost, language and customs, etc. Many people chose to expatriate to places like Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, or the Philippines for these reasons.

3. Taxes, insurance, and other nuts and bolts.
Even when you're living in another country, the IRS expects you to pay U.S. taxes as long as you're a citizen and make income. You'll probably also want to stay current with your U.S. health insurance, and many people conveniently forget to tell them that you don't live in the U.S. any more so it doesn't cause complications. You can bank online and pay bills online these days with e-statements, but you can also get your stateside mail sent to a relative or to a post office box.

4. Medical.
It's important to be aware of the medical services available in your communities, and how they are rated for quality and consistency, as well as access to prescription medications. Many seniors who are expats want to live in countries with medical care that is much less expensive than in the U.S. Luckily, that is most of the world.

5. Buying real estate and a car. 
Your first instinct may be to plant "roots" by buying a home, a car, etc. but I've found it's best to give it some time. Don't make any major purchases for at least a year until you thoroughly learn the local culture, customs and business climate. There can be some complex and Draconian rules when it comes to property and vehicle ownership, as well as bizarre registration and paperwork demands. Basically, people get ripped off or make bad decisions all the time, so give it some time until you're a seasoned expat and enlist the advice of a trusted local. You'll also want to weigh out the import taxes and costs of having things like a car or furniture shipped down to you, or buying them locally.

6. Safety.
The reality is that you have to be careful no matter where you are in the world, but with some common sense you can stay safe. Don't walk around with jewelry, don't show off valuables, don't go into bad areas, befriend locals to show you around and watch after you, don't walk around late at night or get too drunk, and get a dog! Every country (including the U.S.) suffers from street crime problems, but avoid countries where there's political upheaval or religious fundamentalist groups.

7. Working, making money, and doing business.
Many expats find out that life isn't quite as cheap as they anticipated and the savings goes fast, so you'll have some decisions to make about earning money. But do you try and open a local business? Try to keep working in the U.S., doing your job remotely from your new home country? Or jump into tourism? Do your research and go for a low risk consistent paycheck, not a venture that requires a huge up-front investment of time and money. I can't tell you how many people I've seen open bikini or surf shops or restaurants, and six months later they're broke, stressed and going out of business. Keep it simple.

8. Technology.
Technology will be an invaluable tool as you try to stay connected to friends and family, do business, and get things done from your new country. With some adjustment and planning technology will be your best friend. Get a local cell phone. Almost every bar and restaurant has Wi-Fi, so iPads, laptops, iPhones (with your U.S. network turned off!), and e-readers can all be used as mini computers to keep you rocking and rolling. Applications like Skype, Netflix, WhatsApp, internet calling apps, language translators, currency converters, and GPS make your life easier. And a Go Pro camera is just fun!

9. Blending into the local community.
Assimilating to the local culture is a long-term challenge, but also a constant source of beauty, humor and fascination. Be naturally curious and open to being outside of your comfort zone. Say hello and show respect to everyone, learn the local sayings, the customs, celebrate the holidays, make local friends, and even get in good with the police and officials. Attending religious services and volunteering to do charity work are great ways to foster good will and positive karma.

10. Residency and Visas.
Some expats want to become citizens of their new nation, some are content staying there on extended tourist visas. If that's the case you might have some shuffling to do over the border to renew your visa every 90 days, and be your ability to open a business or own property restricted. Sometimes there are huge benefits to becoming a citizen, sometimes no real difference, so do your homework and talk to other expats, because it could be a lengthy and expensive process to establish residency.

***
I hope that helped!  Email me any time!  Now, can you handle the UNFILTERED experience of my time as an expat in Costa Rica? The TRUTH that you will NEVER find in an article?  Check out the CONTROVERSIAL book that has the Tico TImes, AM Costa Rica, and Costa Rican expats talking...and laughing!    

Get the ebook: Limited time only $4.99 on Amazon for Kindle.

South of Normal; My Year in Paradise.
A gonzo blast of laughter and adventure covering subjects like:  

• Spending "quality" time in a Third World prison.
  
• Getting ripped off by locals.
  
• How a country is different during the rainy season.
  
• Navigating the local dating scene.
  
• Medical care, working virtually, and technology abroad.
  
• Staying safe.
  
• Dodging sharks, scorpions, drug traffickers and corrupt police.
  
• Everything you WISHED you knew before you moved abroad!

 Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

A few years ago, when I started down this path, I wanted to be a WRITER. It all seemed glamorous – living in the tropics and banging out a best selling novel in between rum drinking contests, bull fights, and answering fan mail from exotic female admirers.  

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Not even a little bit.  

It’s been three years after I hit the reset button on my life, walking away from my comfortable existence as a businessman in California. I sold or donated all of my possessions and moving down to Costa Rica to live by the beach, bringing nothing but a laptop and a surfboard, to chase my dream of being a writer. 

Now, two books and thousands of written pages later, the secret to success has been magically revealed to me:

Hard work.

I know, not as exciting as I hoped for, but there it is. Scratching out a living penning words isn’t as much about being a WRITER, as it is about WRITING. Author Mary Heaton said it best:

“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

In fact, most great writers have dedicated everything they had to the craft – and then more. They chose a life of self-imposed poverty, isolated hard work, and even ostracism from “polite” society to pursue their passion (though I believe polite society is overrated). It’s about putting in their 10,000 hours, as Macklemore raps, and then some, because they love their art so much they can’t NOT write.  

The collateral damage includes comfort, safety, material gain, friendships, relationships, and even sanity.

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” Ernest Hemingway.

Even though it was my lifelong dream to be a WRITER, all of that hard work didn’t sound so fun to me. Couldn’t I just skip ahead to the good parts? Still, I devised a three-year plan to lead me to the promise land of literary greatness and financial gain. Here it is: 

My Three-Year plan:

1. 1. Do it.
2. 2. Do it well.
3. 3. Do it over and over, and monetize it.

Granted, that may be the exact business plan of every hooker in Reno, but I’d like to think that my plan was (slightly) more socially ambitious, and by the end of my third year I would have “made it,” breaking into the industry and earning a comfortable living as a writer. Let me explain.

The first year I wanted to write and publish a book. It would be ideal to write the BEST book I could, but just writing one and going through the indie publishing process was overwhelming enough, without worrying about pesky little details, like KNOWING WHAT THE HELL I WAS DOING. I got started in my new beachside home, Tamarindo, Costa Rica, in the heart of the rainy season when the dirt roads were a muddy mess. By the middle of the dry season, in the arid heat and the dust, the book was done. 

“Write without pay until somebody offers pay; if nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.” Mark Twain.

Writing that first book was an exhausting, scrambling process, about as far from my comfort zone as I’ve ever been. At times I didn’t think I was going to make it, or make it out of there in once piece. It was committing my soul to the page only to be trampled, documenting my ridiculous humanity for all the world to laugh at. I rushed at the wrong times, lost steam when I needed it most, and generally made every mistake I could. But, from some small miracle, the book still came out entertaining enough to pick up. 

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” George Orwell.

The second year of my three-year plan was ‘doing it well.’ I actually had two choices here. Upon releasing their first book, most authors focus on selling books. They become expert marketers, and that is where they focus all of their attention. I totally understand that inclination, but standing at that crossroads, I chose a different path. I would focus on learning my craft. Sales be damned, I was going to invest all of my work and focus into becoming the best writer I could be. 

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
Allen Ginsberg.

I eschewed any chance of profit with the first book and instead moved up the coast from Costa Rica, to the charming fishing town of San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua to write. I sequestered myself in a cheap apartment in a local barrio, dirt alleys in the jungle living in the midst of stray dogs and roosters and the local people who made $2 a day. I was scared at first, in a third world country where some people were desperate just to eat, and many a night I slept beside a machete or carried a knife in my backpack. 

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” Henry David Thoreau.

But I always made it to the dawn, and thanked God for it, sitting down at my desk to document that gratitude with vigor. The locals in my barrio sang as they hung laundry, the smoke from the cooking fires in their front yards rising to my windows on the ocean breeze. It was perfect.

“Talent in cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” Stephen King.

I did two things for those six months: I read, and I wrote. I read everything I could find ABOUT writing; character development, theme, conflict, dialogue, emotion, etc. There was no place to buy books, so I Googled these topics and read every article I could find, and then when I’d exhausted those someone brought me down a Kindle, so I could download books about writing. Pretty soon I’d read all of those, so I started reading biographies of writers.

Do you know what the common theme was? Hard work. Writers write a lot, and when they aren’t writing they read a lot, and that’s how they get better.

“If you can’t create, you can work.” Henry Miller.

So I wrote, too. Every morning I woke up at dawn (Ok, I woke up at 2 a.m. when the roosters and stray dogs started in, but I went back to sleep) and brewed some locally-grown coffee, splashed it with Baileys, and sat down at my desk, just about the time a clunky pickup truck rolled through the barrio, selling freshly-picked mangos and bananas.

“I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired to write at 9 o’clock every morning.” Peter De Vries.

I put on my headphones and cranked some dancehall reggae or Michael Franti or Citizen Cope, and I wrote. It didn’t matter WHAT I wrote, I just unleashed whatever was in my subconscious without letting my mind get in the way. My fingers flew around with a life of their own, blurring with the speed of a DJ spinning records. 

“Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say.” Edgar A. Poe.

One day I rescued a skinny, whipped four-week old puppy off the street. At first he was too small to walk far, so I carried him everywhere. He was black and white so I named him Panda, and I fed him milk and put him on a towel on my desk as I wrote. I said hi to the locals as I walked through my barrio into town, and the little kids abandoned their soccer ball and ran out to play with Panda. 

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”  Saul Bellow.

And then on August 1, the walls of my house in the barrio shook side to side and dishes fell as a huge earthquake rocked the town. Church bells tolled for everyone to evacuate because of an imminent tsunami, but to me it was a signal to start the first chapter. So I wrote. Three months later, when the school kids were lighting fireworks in the streets for Dia de Indepencia, my manuscript for South of Normal, was done, 1,000 pages of sunshine and snake pits.

But there was no time to pat myself on the back, because that’s when the REAL work began – rewriting and editing. So I put my head down and got busy, once again.

“The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.” John Irving.

Soon, everyone in town knew me, and Panda was so big and strong he was pulling ME when we strolled the cobbled streets. The abuelitas, grandmothers, in their rocking chairs on the front porch waved to me and wished me God’s blessing, and all of the little kids begged to take Panda to the beach. 

“Como esta su libro?” they would ask - how is your book? - for word got out that I was a writer. 

My last week before leaving Nicaragua our little town was infested with rich vacationers from Managua. The parties and fireworks went off all night, every night, but I had work to do. So I took Panda to the ferry and cruised over to Ometepe, cajoining islands in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, one of the only places on earth with fresh water sharks. Each island had an active volcano rising steeply from its center, and the beaches were jet black volcanic sand like crushed moonstone. Panda ran and played and I kept working.  

It was there in Ometepe that I understood the wisdom that all of those great writers were whispering to me; to write well you need to go through a process of failure, of discomfort, of displacement from the normal human condition. You need thrust yourself into a volcano, sacrificing your ego, so you can become connected to everyone and everything. Only through this ultimate surrender will you truly be able to write something important, and serve the world.  

“So you want to be a writer? Unless is comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it.  Unless the sun inside you is burning you’re gut, don’t do it.” Charles Bukowski.  

My last night in town I threw a big party for the wonderful people in my barrio as a thank you, a pig roast at the very top of the hill by the town’s water tank. All of the mothers cooked and the children gave me gifts. The power went out so the DJ couldn’t play and it was dark, but we took out flashlights and someone turned on their car stereo. And then it started pouring rain but we didn’t care – we danced and hugged each other and celebrated life. 

“Suertes,” they said - good luck, and I finally realized - those people, the same one's I feared at first, had been keeping ME safe the whole time, watching out for me. I handed the children Panda’s leash and he wagged. He was a San Juan del Sur dog, and would be happiest running on the beach with them.

In some ways I think that was the best part of my life, because down there I left behind the romance of being a WRITER, and instead, fell in love with WRITING itself.  

I’m happy with the choice I made, to focus mastering my craft instead of becoming a pesky promoter interested only in sales. And I am happy with my book, South of Normal, because, although flawed and deeply imperfect, it is honest, and I gave it everything I had.

“Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.”
Ray Bradbury.

Now, on the eve of its release, I shift into part three of that supremely important three-year plan: to do it over and over, and monetize it.

This is it, my chance to cash in, to re-enter polite society. I know how to do it - I’ve paid attention to all of the books and articles and blogs and podcasts about promoting yourself, getting attention, landing an agent, and making money. It would be easy for me to invest my precious time here on earth into selling books.

But I just can’t bring myself to do it. It’s not in me. In that respect, I guess I’ve failed at my three-year plan, because I could care less about being a WRITER. I just want to write. 

So, if it’s okay with you, I think I’ll change my three-year plan. I think I’ll just relive my second year over and over, stuffing a backpack, heading to the airport, and disappearing once again into that big, wild unknown. I’m thinking that Thailand, Vietnam, or Cambodia sound good, where I’ll look for that tiny little hut on a secluded beach amidst the smiling locals. And in that perfect soulful silence of barking dogs, clacking roosters and the throng of humanity, I will write. And every morning I will stare out at the sea and say “Thank you, thank you. For this beautiful failure, thank you,” and then I’ll sit my ass down and get to work.

-Norm :-)

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” William Faulkner.
 Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

1. Prostitution is legal but possession of pornography is illegal.  They even have unions, membership cards, health benefits, and police protection.

2. In most areas people cannot flush toilet paper because the pipes are old and only 1” wide, so toilet paper goes in the trash basket.  

3. Pedestrians have very few rights in Costa Rica.  They joke that Ticos love to use their horns but hate to use their brakes!  It’s so bad that the Tico word for “speedbumps” is “Son muertos,” or, “The dead people.” 

4. When raising your glass or beer to say “cheers” to Ticos you are supposed to look them directly in the eye, or else you’re cursed with seven years of a bad sex life. (apparently I haven’t been making very good eye contact, then). 

5. Costa Ricans have no addresses and very few street signs.  When mailing something or giving directions, they just point out proximity to nearby landmarks.  So when I lived in San Pedro, a suburb of the main city, San Jose, my address was “50 meters south and 100 west of the church of San Pedro.”

6. Earthquakes are common in Costa Rica.  They may get 2-40 per month depending on the movement of techtonic plates.  Almost all of them are small, though they got a 7.6 last time I was living there.

7. Costa Ricans are not good at soccer compared to their Central and South American neighbors!

8. Ticos put coffee in their babies bottles along with milk, and also give it to young children.   

9. The most popular national beer is Imperial.  They drink it over ice with lime and salt, called a “michelada.”

10. "Guaro" is the national liquor, sort of like a fire-water sugarcane tequila. There is no denying it's strong,  but I find it kind of nasty.   

11. Fast food restaurants like McDonalds, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried chicken do home deliveries.

12. The meter in a taxicab is know as the “Maria,” which is a loose reference to the Virgin Mary and her honesty and virtue.

13. Cheap brand cigarettes are only about $1.65 per pack. 

14. You aren’t allowed to wear sunglasses or hats inside of the banks (due to so many robberies)

15. The slang is much different than proper Spanish.  Slang is called “pachuco.”  

16. One slang word is to call someone “Mopri.”  This is supposed to mean “primo,” or cousin, backwards.  In the 90’s Costa Rican teen culture went through a phase where they were saying words backwards.  Maybe around the time of Kriss Kross here in the US?

17. A lot of popular bands play the main stadium in San Jose, most recently the Red Hot Chili Peppers and then Lady Gaga.  

18. Scientist actually named a species of Costa Rican fern after Lady Gaga after she played there.  I’m not making that up!

19. They have bullfights in CR but instead of the bull being harmed, it runs free around the ring and tries to harm the brave teens and men who jump in there for sport.  Almost every little town has a festival with bullfights during the holidays.  

20. CR is one of the biggest cocaine transit nations in the world, as 90% of the cocaine that ends up in the US comes from Columbia to Costa Rica, and then up through Central America into Mexico and across the border.  

21. There are roughly the same criminal penalties for marijuana as there are for cocaine and all drugs

22. Robert August brought the surf scene to Costa Rica with his 1968 documentary, Endless Summer, and then Endless Summer II.

23. If you get pulled over in Costa Rica the police can probably be paid off for around $40.  

24. You are not allowed to wear shorts in a government or public office in Costa Rica - they see it as disrespectful and may turn you away. 

25. They say there are Three Great Costa Rica Lies.  It took me a year of living in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, to find them all out.  They are a bit secretive but I do reveal them in my new book, South of Normal.  

-Norm  :-)

If you liked these, check out 30 Fun and Wild Facts about Costa Rica. ​

     Can I be honest with you? I was really worried about dating in Costa Rica for another reason. When I finally did get the chance to meet a lovely nice young lady and we courted and went on seventeen dates and I met her family and got her father’s permission and we got matching tattoos and Googled each other and were finally ready for a special, intimate night together, there was one possibility that could scare Little Norm right back into my drawers: Jungle Bush. You’ve heard of 70s Bush, right? Well Jungle Bush was (in my mind) the tropical equivalent of 70s Bush. I won’t go into too much detail, but for my readers who weren’t born until Puff Daddy started rapping, here’s a snapshot: In the continental United States in the 1970s there was a whole generation of young people who were…how can I say this with the utmost sensitivity…they were all DIRTY. It was hip to wear filthy bellbottoms and man-blouses and everyone went barefoot and slept with each other because, of course, STDs weren’t invented until the second term of the Reagan administration. They listened to horrible music with finger cymbals and three-hour sitar solos and did a lot of drugs. Somehow that was all supposed to stick it to THE MAN and bring the troops home from Vietnam. In my opinion, they should have made THE MAN listen to the music and they would have signed a peace treaty the next day. Anyway, a horrible byproduct of their lax hygienic life choices was that they didn’t have time to focus on personal grooming south of their equators, if you know what I mean. So everyone walked around with 70s Bush, and when they took off their undergarments they all looked eerily similar to Kareem Abdul Jabbar when he fought Bruce Lee in “Enter the Dragon.” Somehow they found this attractive and kept copulating with reckless abandon—it must have been the drugs.

Yes, it was thirty-something years later, but I was in Costa Rica, a Third World country of rainforest where their main economic exports were bananas and sugarcane. Where were battery-powered personal shavers on that list, I wondered? It was called a Brazilian Wax and not a Costa Rican Wax for a reason. They couldn’t even pave their own roads, for Christ’s sake. Pornography wasn’t legal and I had to smuggle in vibrators for the local women! I was terrified that when I finally get intimate with a nice Tica, she’d suffer from a case of Jungle Bush and I’d have to excuse myself from the festivities by faking a groin pull and climb out of the bathroom window naked and run away and possibly move out of town.

Yup, times we're tough on the dating front in Costa Rica. Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

That day has arrived, the highly anticipated moment that only comes twice a year and completely rocks your world.  No, I’m not talking about the two times a year you have sex, I’m talking about Daylight Savings Time.  

I’m not a big fan.  The morning of the time change we run around the house furiously, trying to set every clock back as if a giant comet will slam into the earth and wipe out humankind if we don’t get it all done by 8 a.m.  Just when we think we’ve adjusted every clock, watch, radio, and appliance timer in the house, we’re reminded that there’s the matter of the dashboard clock in the car to attend to.  That in itself takes 45 minutes, trying to cram the end of a paperclip into a microscopic opening while simultaneously pushing the correct buttons with the other hand, crossing us up and eliciting curses that aren’t appropriate for a Sunday morning.

I highly recommend leaving the clocks alone and just waiting six months until they move back one hour again, but that doesn’t seem to be a popular opinion.  

Instead, everyone complains about the hour of sleep they’re going to lose, so much so that they lose 2.3 hours just talking about it.  I have to admit, when someone cheerily tells me “Don’t forget to spring forward eight Sundays from now!” I want to slap them.  And if I hear another bad joke about how we lost an hour, I’m going to kick someone in their balls.  We did not lose an hour.  You can’t just “lose” an hour (other than by watching Burn Notice.)   And we don’t ever “get” an extra couple hours of daylight.  They’re all out there anyway, no matter if we set our clocks backward or forward or stand on our heads and speak in tongues. 

I understand it used to be a “sunlight thing,” but why didn’t people just wake up one hour earlier?  Wouldn’t that have been easier than all of this nonsense?  Imagine if aliens came down and examined our society from an objective, clinical viewpoint.  There would only be one conclusion they could come up with about the bizarre concept of Daylight Savings Time, before they got in their spaceship and went back to the planet Zerthion Phobius 9.2 and sent another flaming comet down to blow us up: whoever invented Daylight Savings Time was really, really high. 

You have to smoke something pretty strong to come up with: “Dude let’s just pretend that it’s an hour earlier, and we’ll tell everyone to change their clocks at exactly the same time, all over the world.  Yeah, that will work.  Now light that incense and roll up another one.”

A little internet digging reveals that a nice fella named George Vernon Hudson from New Zealand invented Daylight Savings time in 1895.  I’m telling you, Georgie was smoking the good shit.  He's #1 on our list.  DST was used on and off in Europe during times of war, but didn’t even become universal in the United States until the 1970’s, to help cut electricity usage during the energy crisis.  The 1970’s?  People talk about DST like it was some biblical mandate.   

This all led me to thinking, as it often does, who else throughout history probably smoked marijuana.   

Some of them seem obvious…

2. Whoever came up with the spelling for “Wednesday” was definitely hitting the pipe.  (I recommend we officially change it to “Humpday.”)

3. The astrologists who all of a sudden decided Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore were baked.  How are you a planet one day and then you’re just a 5,000 mile round ball of rocks the next day?  That’s like saying one day, “Sorry New Jersey, you’re not a state anymore.”  Well, bad example – that would actually make sense.  But you know what I mean.

4. Who else?  Albert Einstein?  What do you think?  Have you seen his hair?  He shagged Marilyn Monroe.  That dude could party.  

5. Mother Theresa probably hit the bong every once and a while – she was WAY too nice. 

6. Ben Franklin was as high as a kite.

7. Michael Jackson was an alien.

8. Whoever built the pyramids had to be smoking reefer.  In fact, the Egyptian Pharaohs did use marijuana for its health and transcendental benefits.  

9. Christopher Columbus carried cannabis sativa seeds on board his ships, and thus takes credit for introducing marijuana to the Americas.  No wonder why he sailed hecka slow and kept getting lost.

10. Queen Victoria’s private physician prescribed marijuana when she had bad menstrual cramps. 

11. Joan of Arc led the French army to victory over the British in the 15th century when she was only 19 years old, but then was accused of using “witch drugs” (including cannabis) and burned at the stake.  She probably fucked up the rotation.  Puff, puff, pass, Joan.     

12. They’ve found residue of cannabis on clay pipes unearthed from William Shakespeare’s garden in England, though he would claim “Doth thinketh it belongs to yee landscaper.”  

13. Jesus was a hippie, walking around the dessert with Birkenstocks and stinking of patchouli oil, never having any money or bringing enough food, but somehow still making do.  I saw him selling hash brownies at a Dave Matthews show in Colorado once – true story.

14. Buddha?  He sat around naked except for a loincloth with half-closed eyes as people brought him incense and snacks as offerings.  Yeah, that’s an easy one.

15. Michelangelo had to be stoned when he painted the ceiling of the Sixteen Chapels.  That’s a lot of manual labor. 

16. Thomas Jefferson grew marijuana.

17. So did George Washington.

18. Michael Phelps, who won more Olympic medals than anyone else in history, had the munchies so bad that Subway signed him as a spokesperson.  

19. Clinton tried it but couldn’t figure out the inhale thing correctly, 

20. Where Barrack Obama got it right.  

21. Not only did George Bush smoke weed, but Mr. “War on Drugs, God talks directly to me,” was a sloppy drunk and a big cokehead when he went to Yale. 

22. Al Gore invented marijuana.

23. The ancient Greeks gave marijuana to teenage boys to try and calm their sexual urges enough to sleep through the night 

Who else are some documented marijuana smokers throughout history?

24. Winston Churchill,
25. Walt Disney,
26. The Chinese emperors,
27. John F. Kennedy,
28-30. Mega-wealthy entrepreneurs Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and Sir Richard Branson.

That’s pretty good company.  Me, personally?  I can care less about smoking or not smoking these days, but I’m glad to see the U.S. is starting to get its head out of its ass and loosening up on a plant that’s been on earth as long as we human beings have.  

But either way, please, I’m begging you, someone get stoned enough to come up with a better idea than the Daylight Savings Time thing.  

Wait…what’s that?  What did you say?  Someone just reminded me cheerily to “remember to spring forward today, buddy, because we lost an hour.”  Please excuse me for a second – I have to go kick someone in the balls.  

*****
To read more semi-funny writing by Norm I would recommend picking up his new book, South of Normal.  Click on the book cover to see more.

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Uncle Hugo?


My brief and inglorious stay in Venezuela.


Venezuela, July 1999


A cabbie warned us that our beach was the worst on the island.

He was right.

It was littered with beer cans, food wrappers, and French people in banana hammocks. A sewage pipe intersected the south end of the beach, draining enough mystery sludge into the water that it stung your eyes when you swam. It was crowded with poor Venezuelan locals who guzzled back-to-back Polar beers from coolers, plastic bags with ice, and local vendors. You could barely find a spot of sand not covered with a cheap blanket and a drunken family inhabiting it. When they turned their heads left to see what was worth stealing on their neighbor’s blanket, the neighbor on their right reached over and stole their beer. Naked toddlers ran around unattended, peeing all over the place as their parents made out shamelessly. On any given blanket you had a 17.5% chance of seeing a Venezuelan titty pop out, or worse. When they got up and brushed off the sand and stumbled to the bus stop, their only goal was to go home with some beer and approximately the same number of kids they came with.

Scrawny teenagers raced scrawnier horses up and down the beach at furious speeds. They rode bareback, hugging the horses with their bare feet and clinging to the mane with one hand, the other hand used to whip the poor beast mercilessly. Everyone cheered as they raced.

One kid got thrown from his horse when it stumbled in the sand and took a bad digger. I know Shane and I could have gone to the nicer beach and sat around with the pale tourists flopping around like sea otters, but what the hell was the fun in that? We wanted local. It was no postcard, but it wasn’t terrible for the ass-end of paradise.

We took out the Frisbee and found some real estate to throw it back and forth. Everywhere we went the Frisbee came with us — it was the perfect way to amuse ourselves at any beach or public park, or even in the parking lot while waiting for the bus, and chasing after it and leaping into the air to catch it gave us a great workout. Throwing the Frisbee around also provided a perfect opportunity to meet people. Most places we went, people had never even seen a Frisbee before, and kids always loved it and grouped around us, wanting a turn. If we saw a group of hot girls we wanted to spit game at, we’d just throw the Frisbee in their direction. Either it landed near them, in which case we’d run up and collect it and chat a bit, or it would hit one of them squarely in the face and cause a nosebleed, in which case we’d get to spend more time with them manufacturing sincere apologies that it had been a complete accident, and offering to take them out to dinner to make amends. That was a win-win the way I saw it. Our Frisbee was yellow with a big smiley face on it, and we must have thrown that thing an hour or two every day. We always held it up in pictures to show where we were and yes, that we were still smiling, like a hostage holding up that day’s newspaper.

And that is how we met our strange new amigo, a chatty guy around our age who walked by and asked if he could throw the Frisbee with us. After flopping it around unsuccessfully for five minutes he suggested that we have a drink with him and his friends instead and led us to a grove of trees. Several obviously unemployed fellows stood about, and a pregnant lady in a bikini sprawled out nearby on a tree stump. He introduced us to his brother, a sketchy bastard who was skinny and balding yet covered with thick body hair, like he was a little too far left on the evolutionary chart that showed man’s progress to get his knuckles off the ground and walk upright. To make matters worse, he was sweating like a whore in church. I tried to push Shane toward him and stand closer to the pregnant chick.

They were drinking from a bottle of anise, a strong local firewater liquor, and filled little plastic cups and urged us to drink round after round, while yelling enthusiastically in Spanish about things I didn’t understand and didn’t care to. They refilled our cups and insisted we drink more with them since we were their new best friends. The stuff burned my esophagus on the way down and hit me between the eyes instantly. The hairy brother couldn’t wait for the formalities of pouring it into cups, so he started drinking straight out of the bottle. He was a real kook, screaming because he was half deaf in one ear from the time a stick of dynamite misfired near him in a mining accident. I tried to stay on the side of his bad ear so he wouldn’t want to converse with me, but he still badgered me with anecdotes about his days working on civil engineering projects while he was in the military. I made it very clear to the brothers that I didn’t speak Spanish, but they ignored this fact and continued to catch me up on everything that had occurred in their lives over the last 25 years. The more I protested that I had no idea what they were saying, shamelessly pointing to Shane to divert their attention, the closer they got and the louder they yelled.

Someone didn’t smell right. The hairy brother drank more and became animated, trying to headlock me. He waved his arms around like a gorilla, his eyes bloodshot and unable to focus, and tried to hug me with his dripping man-sweater. I stiff-armed him but did it subtly, trying not to be rude so he wouldn’t turn on us and cut our heads off with a machete.

The only thing that seemed to calm these bad-breath bandits was Queen. Yes, Queen the band. A transistor radio sat on the beach next to them, antennae erect to pick up the only station on the island, and when a Queen song came on they went crazy. They loved rock and roll music, they said, and Queen was, of course, the best band ever. Really? I never got that memo. They wanted us to sing along and they wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was either that or do more shots, so right there on the beach Shane and I belted out our best rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “We Will Rock You,” and “We Are the Champions.” We had to make up most of the lyrics, repeat choruses, and switch songs mid verse, but it seemed to soothe these savage beasts a little. The brother tried to clap along and stamp his feet to the beat, but the shrapnel in his head most have stricken him tone deaf as well. But as long as I kept singing, he relinquished his headlock on me. I didn’t want it to end, so Shane and I went into repeat mode, mixing up the songs and singing chorus after chorus. They tried to keep up and sing along, to what I have no idea, and I didn’t want to risk injury or a breach in my hygiene policy by stopping them.

“We swill, we swill, watch you!” they howled. Clap, clap.

“Key swill, key gill, wash you!” Drink, drink. Clap, clap. Everyone within earshot stared at them, embarrassed that these men had been appointed the drunken ambassadors of their country.

“Key argyle clampions my friend!” Dynamite Head soloed. I made eye contact with Shane to communicate our breakaway. We told them that we’d had a great time but it was getting late and we had to go. They protested. Sorry fellas, we have somewhere to be, we pleaded. They wanted to come with us. They wanted more drink, more Queen, more girls. More? Where the hell were the girls that we were supposedly enjoying now? We were finally excused after taking three more shots and promising to meet them in the same spot in an hour. An orgy of handshaking, hugs, missed high-fives, and vows that we were hermanos (brothers) ensued. We walked down the beach quickly, without looking back, and ran the second we couldn’t hear Queen anymore. Shane thought that they were trying to take a crack at us, but I thought they were just blitzed out of their minds and overly friendly. When I got back to the hotel, I took a shower with extra soap and collapsed on the bed, passing put instantly from anise and sun.

When I woke up I was in a fog, confused about where I was and how I got there. That vertigo was becoming common, because on our trip so far we’d been in a different cheap hotel, or on a flight, bus, or train every third day. I got my bearings by looking at the hotel stationery. We were at the Blue Iguana in Isla Margarita in Venezuela.

That’s right — how the hell could I forget? As I eased into wakefulness I thought about our journey so far. It had been a wild ride — only a few weeks ago I had been so innocent and carefree until everything went wrong. It had started with the rat-hole King’s Inn, quite possibly the worst hotel on earth, infested with rats, hookers, and shadowy guests who paid by the hour. After two hellish weeks there we had finally plotted our escape, booking flights to Brazil.  We arrived at the airport extra early, eager and bright-eyed to depart the country, only to get turned back because our travel visas weren’t valid.  Back to the King’s Inn. The next day we found the Brazilian embassy and fought our way to the front of the line to apply for our visas.  The paperwork would take a few days, but our escape seemed imminent save one item: we needed medical certifications that we’d been immunized for yellow fever.

I had already had every immunization known to man before I left the United States; my shoulders were like pincushions over a three-week period at the Yale medical clinic. But Shane still needed his, so the next day we grabbed a taxi and headed out to try and find a medical clinic where he could get his shot quickly. Our driver took us all over the city, but every clinic or doctor’s office was either closed or they couldn’t fit him in for an appointment until the next week. Finally, the driver said he knew of a free medical clinic that would do it, but it was in a rough barrio and gonna be a crapshoot whether we got out safely or not. He took us deep into a shit-hole hood where young thugs hung out in the middle of the street blocking cars — he said the police wouldn’t even go there. He pulled onto the curb in front of the medical clinic and told Shane that they had to run in together and get out quickly so they wouldn’t be robbed or mugged or worse. He told me to stay in the back of the taxi with the doors locked and not to let anyone in, no matter what. He pulled something from under his seat and placed it on the back seat next to me with a newspaper over it, and then they sprinted into the building. I locked the doors from the inside and pulled back the newspaper; it was a huge butcher’s knife he’d left me to fight off any carjackers. Damn, this was getting heavy.

They came running out twenty minutes later, just as the locals were starting to circle and discuss how to dispose of my body once they stole the car. We got back to the embassy, but even with his medical card it would take almost a week to process the visa paperwork. There was no way in hell I was staying at the King’s Inn that long, so we hopped the first flight we could to Isla Margarita, a resort island off of Venezuela’s northern coast where rich people from the mainland and poor island folks partied.

The island was a welcome break from dirty, polluted Caracas and the King’s Inn. Our first night there we went downtown to check out a crowded strip of bars. Shane noticed several girls walking together up ahead of us. He was mesmerized by a tall, super-fly chica in their pack so we followed them for a while, trying not to be obvious by hiding behind trees and pretending to read newspapers when they turned around.

We were tailing them when they stopped abruptly for one of them to answer her cell phone. Shane and I couldn’t hit the brakes in time, so we bumped into the back of them at full speed. Since it was obvious that we were going to follow them around all night like lost puppy dogs without introducing ourselves, one of the girls took pity on us and said hello. Shane talked to his tall girl and I chatted with her younger sister, who spoke surprisingly good English. It turned out that three of the girls were the president’s nieces and their family was at Isla Margarita for their summer vacation. Back in 1999 not many people had heard of the Venezuelan president, but pretty soon people started paying attention to the name Hugo Chavez in international news as he grew increasingly antagonistic toward the United States, positioning himself as the new Fidel Castro. I suspect that the girls were really in Isla Margarita for security reasons, because President Chavez was on shaky political ground in his own country when he illegally extended his term limits and quelled a political revolt by physically locking his congress out of the capitol. The girls were staying at the best hotel on the island and always had security officers hanging around. They were digging us, so we made a date to take them out to ice cream later, and then it was time for the Ciao Line.

What’s the Ciao Line, you ask? In Latin American countries when you greet someone or say goodbye, no matter whether you’ve just met them or been exchanging bodily fluids with them for years, you kiss them on the cheek. Sounds painless, right? But the president’s nieces and their friends traveled in packs, like over-populated coyotes. I should have applied Chapstick when I saw them coming. When they got up to leave, I stood still with my lips puckered, doing that fake little half-hug where you stick your butt out so your private parts have no chance of accidentally touching, and said ciao to each of them. One by one, they moved down the line and did the cheek kiss and said ciao, like a gringo conveyor belt.

We kicked it with Chavez’s nieces for a few more days.  For some reason I can’t fathom, whether she just had awful taste in me or I was being set me up for a political kidnapping, the niece I was hanging out with took a real shine to me. There was no denying that she was beautiful, and I would have loved to properly date her, buddying up with “Uncle Hugo” and the presidential family and consummating my love for her with frequent relations, but that just wasn’t going to happen because of the toothpaste all over my man-junk. I should probably explain.

Shane was our official trip doctor. Granted, there were only two of us, so the options were limited, but I couldn’t even pass ninth grade biology, so the choice was obvious. Of course, he had no formal medical training but he was a pharmaceutical salesman, so that was good enough for me. Plus, he had a grab bag of pills in his toilet bag, so I could steal a random handful and wash them down with a beer whenever needed.

In Isla Margarita I developed a rash all over my man-junk region. Now, to be very clear, it turned out to be nothing — just a bad heat rash — but I’d never had something like that before, so I was freaking out. I pride myself on being as clean as the board of health, and I knew I definitely contracted it during my time at the King’s Inn. I bought a huge bottle of rubbing alcohol to wash myself down completely whenever I even touched a local, but it quickly broke in my backpack and doused all of my possessions, making me smell like a senior center on cleaning day.

I’d been trying to self-medicate for a few days, but the rash just wasn’t going away. I remembered when I was a teenager and I got a pimple, people would tell me to put toothpaste on it at night before I went to bed and it would dry up by morning. I thought the same theory might apply here, so I slathered toothpaste all over my man-junk every morning and night. I had gone through three tubes of Aquafresh but it wasn’t working so far — although I did enjoy the minty tingle. Finally, I started to panic and couldn’t take it anymore. I booked an appointment with the trip doctor (Shane) to look at it and give me his professional opinion and hopefully some drugs to clear it up; nothing is sacred when you’re traveling around the world with someone for a year.

We were crashing the breakfast buffet at the Marriot for the fourth morning in a row, our ritual of taking advantage of the hotel’s amenities without actually staying there. No matter what country we were in there was always an ultra-modern and sparkling Marriot somewhere in town. They didn’t seem to notice when we walked in like we were VIP guests and helped ourselves to some free coffee and breakfast, read the newspaper sprawled out in comfy chairs in their lobby, lounged by their pool, and even took our time using their majestic marbled bathrooms. After a few hours we’d leave the Marriot and retreat to our shit-hole hotel down the street, feeling refreshed. So Shane and I snuck into the Marriot bathroom for my doctor’s appointment. It was embarrassing, but I reminded myself that he was a medical professional (sort of), so I dropped my trousers and he examined me right there in the Marriot bathroom stall. He looked for a second and then said, “Hmmm ... I’m not sure. It may be something.”

Yeah thanks, I could have told you that. We waited until the coast was clear to come out of the bathroom stall so no one would get the wrong idea. But needless to say, I was excluded from having any relations with the president of Venezuela’s niece because of my toothpaste. Ohhhh, if only Uncle Hugo knew.

After a long weekend on the island, we felt the calling to go back to Caracas to check on our visas. After more boxing out in line, we were told that it would be one more day. No problem. To pass the time, we hired an old taxi driver to drive us all around the city and show us the attractions — including a glimpse of the bad neighborhoods to see how the common person lived. He was hesitant, and we had to urge him again and again to drive us into these barrios. “This doesn’t look so bad,” we said to ourselves, as I snapped a couple photos of the scenery. When we turned up this one street the driver whipped the car around instantly and sped off in the other direction, tires screeching. When we questioned him why he abruptly drove off he only said, “Ladrones,” which means “thieves.” We thought he was crazy and just being paranoid, but found out otherwise pretty quickly.

We were waiting at a red light only a few blocks down, when all of a sudden a motorcycle rolled up with two skinny tattooed guys on it. They pulled up right next to my door and started yelling, and reached through the open back window, trying to grab at me. They were trying to rob us of our cameras, wallets, and watches, whatever a tourist might have on him. I was in shock, but in a split second it was obvious they were about to get violent, and there we were trapped in the back of this taxi. All of a sudden the old man slammed the gas and took off, speeding through a red light and dodging traffic. The thieves chased us for about ten blocks, trying to catch up and pull alongside the swerving taxi, but our cagey driver eluded them, and just as quickly they peeled off when we passed a police car. We were safe.

It took a minute for my heart to stop jumping. Our driver explained that they were gang members who controlled the barrio’s drug trade with violence, robbery, and intimidation. He said that they had knives and guns and they weren’t afraid to use them. So when they saw a taxi cab in their neighborhood (which never happens) and a white guy pulling out a nice camera (which also never happens), they decided to jack us.

We must have looked as conspicuous as if a helicopter landed in the middle of your street and Donald Trump got out. The driver turned his face around and showed us a big scar that led from his cheek to the side of his mouth. He told us that he’d been carjacked before in his taxi and the robbers pulled a pistol and shot him at close range. The bullet ripped through the side of his mouth and exited his cheek.

Our luck was changing, and indeed the next morning our shiny new visas were ready for us at the Brazilian embassy. We boarded a plane the following morning with our fingers crossed, hoping we were leaving behind the Dynamite-Head brother ad-libbing Queen songs, Hugo Chavez and his nieces, toothpaste on my man-junk, high-speed chases with ladrones, cab drivers with bullet scars, the Ciao Line, the Dantean hell of the King’s Inn, and butcher knives in back seats forever. But we did remember to pack the Frisbee, just in case we wanted to hit someone else in the head, which was really just our way of saying hello.

TamaRumors

One morning I watched a dog eat a dead iguana in the road. We all did—it was our morning entertainment. The crew at Sarita’s Bakery sat outside and watched the mangy dog circle the carcass, ripping it apart. After it was done it rolled in its kill and laid down to sleep in the sun. When a car drove up, the driver had to swerve around because the dog was too lazy to move.

“Look at that dog. He’s not even moving,” Surfer Scotty said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s going to be a hot one today,” Salty Dog Rodney said.

“Sure is,” I said. It always was hot so I don’t know why we bothered saying it every day, but we did. 

I liked the streets when it was early, sitting outside Sarita’s when she first opened, watching the other shopkeepers hosing down the sidewalks in front of their stores, a deliveryman with bread steaming from the basket of his bicycle. Sleepy Nicaraguan and Dominican workers walked up the road toward the nice houses in white uniforms, their feet still hurting from the day before but smiling and thanking God just the same. 

Sarita’s Café was the center of the Tamarindo gossip exchange. Gossip, or “el chisme” in Spanish, was the central activity in town, the only currency shared by all. It was so prevalent that locals referred to our town as TamaRumor. We had plenty to talk about—there’s nothing more dynamic than a small town in the tropics. In fact, the smaller the town, the more complex the relationships, the more the vines grow intertwined. 

Information in Tama spread strictly by word of mouth. There was no local TV coverage, no local radio, no town hall I could see, no town meetings, and no community bulletin board. There was one monthly rag that covered local events and posted a surf report, called…the TamaRumor. The only daily newspapers were in San Jose, so far away, both in distance and culture, that it was like reading about another country. 

It was easier to get our world news from Sarita’s, and I liked it there. Sarita gave me a local discount so coffee was half price, only 400 Colones. To further entice me into her establishment she kept a bottle of Baileys behind the counter just for me. Where else in the world do proprietors in a café gladly contribute to your 7:00 a.m. alcohol consumption? 

For a lot of us, Sarita’s was our town center, our water cooler since we didn’t have real jobs. There were five seats out front so the regulars joined me in our stakeout of the dirt road. 

“Oh no, here comes Big Teeth,” Rodney said.

“Ahhh shit, I can’t stand this guy,” Sarita said. “He’s so rude.”

“What’s his real name again? Mike? Carl?” I asked.

“Who the fuck knows? Big Teeth,” Sarita said. Big Teeth pulled up on his motorcycle in a cloud of dust, his German Shepherd running closely behind. He dismounted, took off his helmet, and started up the steps to the café. The dog followed, barking. 

“Jesus, he’s got some nasty choppers,” Surfer Scotty said. “Those things could really do some damage if they got a hold of you.”

“Yeah, and the dog does, too,” I said. 

Big Teeth ordered coffee and came outside. The rest of us just sat there and didn’t say much. He hiked his khakis up to his chest, made some racist comments, and offended a passing girl before getting on his bike and driving away with the dog. 

“He’s always complaining about my muffins and my prices,” Sarita said, smoking a cigarette.

“I like your muffins,” Scotty said.

“We like your muffins, too” Rodney said.

“What about my prices?”

“I like your muffins a whole lot more than your prices,” I said. She pretended to pour coffee on my head. 

Sarita was from Rhode Island, a fiery redhead with the sass to match. Her real name was Sarah, but there were so many Sarah’s in town that I think she opened a café just to differentiate.It was nice to have a fellow east coast ball-buster in town. Every morning I looked forward to being lambasted with insults the moment I walked through her door. 

Where I’m from everyone talks shit, whether it’s puff-chested Italian bravado, mellifluous banter from the hood, or biting Jewish sarcasm. If your friends weren’t talking shit to you then you knew there was a problem. Growing up in New Haven was like being at the Olympic Training Center of shit talking, and I was a prodigy fast-tracked for the gold.

That’s why being a writer is my dream job—I get to talk shit for a living in a semi-socially-acceptable forum where I won’t get beat up or thrown in jail. I can make people laugh and hopefully get paid for it one day. What are the alternatives for me? A used car salesman? A politician? My God, those are some horribly scummy vocations. No, I think I’ll stick to writing. 

Sarita had a first-class yapper on her, too; not quite on my level, but then again, who is? East coast shit talking isn’t meant to be hurtful at all—quite the opposite; we understood that the frequency and viciousness of the verbal attacks actually corresponded with how much we cared for each other. So a typical east coast shit talking session at Sarita’s might have sounded like this (with translation for the rest of you schleps):

I’d walk in.

“Ohhhhh nooooo! There goes my morning,” Sarita would say. (Good morning, kind sir. I hope you are well.)

“Excuse me, I must be in the wrong place. I was looking for a café and this is obviously a shit hole.” (I wish you a splendid day too, fair lass.)

“No, please, come in—you’ll fit right in then. Wow, you look like crap!” (So nice to see you. Did you sleep well?)

She’d pour the Baileys and fresh café into my cup and hand it to me, noticing the t-shirt I was wearing. 

“What’s with you and yellow shirts all the time? You wear one like every day. Do you think you look good in yellow or something?” (I like your shirt. You look good in yellow.)

“Wow, that’s a LOT of lipping you’ve got going on. You’re at about an 11 and we can use you at a 4.” (Why thank you, I appreciate that.) 

“Oh, whatever, Norm. Why do you even come here? No one likes you.” (Thank you for coming. We really like you.)

“Hey, if you prefer, I can leave and never come back.” (I like you too and appreciate your great café.)

“Don’t threaten ME with a good time!” (Don’t threaten me with a good time.)

That was Sarita’s favorite saying: “Don’t threaten MEwith a good time.” 

And so it went, on and on every day, a witty repartee amongst eastside friend-emies suitable for framing. 

Sarita had an apartment near me in Pueblo del Mar. I helped her carry supplies to and from the café because she’d injured her foot. The first time I saw her apartment I was absolutely certain she was running a meth lab. White powder snow-flaked the countertops and it was approximately 187 degrees, even though the ceiling fans were working overtime. Everywhere I looked there were bins, tubes, and beakers containing spices, icing, and white powders of mysterious origin. I estimated the street value of her apartment to be $600,000 U.S. dollars, but she claimed it was just where she did all of her baking. Yeah, right.

She lived there with Jason, her gringo boyfriend. He was a personal chef who didn’t have much work so he sat around the apartment smoking weed and watching Patriots games on his laptop all day. If I had to pinpoint his personal philosophy on life, I’d say that Jason was a follower of “I-Don’t-Give-A-Fuckism.” I respected him for that. We’d sit in front of the café in the afternoons, when he was watching the place for Sarita, and talk about old school punk bands, end-of-the-world conspiracy theories, and whether you’d rather get hit in the face with a lead pipe or a baseball bat—important stuff like that. I liked Jason. He looked a little rough around the edges, and suffered from crippling social anxiety that kept him from hanging out in public a lot, so we had more in common than he might have guessed. 

Jason and Sarita were always on-again, off-again. Sarita would need someone to talk to at the café, or knock on my door to say hi. It’s useless giving relationship advice to anyone, but I did root for them so I just said “yup” and “I hear you” and shook my head in agreement every 14 seconds, secretly wishing she’d brought over some of her famous meth cinnamon rolls. I liked them both but I wanted nothing more than to stay out of their relationship woes, though the human stain always seems to follow me.

Running a business in Tamarindo was a daunting task. Sarita had bills to pay and already had to work twenty hours a day trying to hold it all together. I don’t know how she did it, but it didn’t look like fun. She hired my neighbor’s daughter to help, but that just created another salary to pay. Sarita was always exhausted and stressed, but to her credit she kept up her usual chipper, crappy attitude with us. 

When tourists came into the café, us locals tried to put on a good show and watch what we were saying. The café wasn’t like your neighborhood Starbucks back in the States. Every morning, tourists poked their well-shampooed and conditioned heads inside and asked for a vente caramel Macchiato or inquired if she served Frappachinos. No matter what they ordered we all just pointed to the big metal coffee pot sitting on the counter. We had coffee or more coffee—drink it and don’t complain. 

I think I speak for everyone who thinks a “barista” is just a dude who makes coffee when I say that the whole Starbucks thing has gotten a little out of control. It’s to the point that the corporate coffee culture is gentrifying the last place I’d ever expect—the hood. 

Before I left Sacramento, I was sitting in a Starbucks one afternoon on Stockton Blvd. For those of you who aren’t familiar with that particular street, it rivals any avenue ‘cross the country named “Martin Luther King Jr.” or “John F. Kennedy” as ghetto-fabulous. So I was just sitting there, chilling, and this thug walks in with a gangsta limp—gold teeth, hoodie, jeans sagging. I figured he was there to rob the place, which was perfectly fine with me, but instead he walked right past the line of customers up to the register, leaned his tattooed forearms on the counter and said: 

“Yeah, like, ya know what I mean, yo yo—hook me up with some of dat…grande triple shot half-whip vanilla soy decaf mocha. Please.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I wanted to shake him by his Sean Jean shirt and scream, “Really G?! Come onnnnnn, boo boo, you gonna go out like THAT?! That’s not a coffee you just ordered—that’s a Prince song!” 

Well, I can promise you that you wouldn’t find any of that same opulence, pretension, or insect-free cleanliness at Sarita’s! But alas, she did need to cater to the tourists because us deadbeat locals weren’t enough to make a living off. So we helped her out any way we could, even inviting them to sit down with us. You know me by now, I HEART Tourists. I was more than happy to answer any questions they might have…about sharks. 

The surf posers came right off the plane with legs so white they were unsuitable for public viewing, wearing Bob Marley t-shirts they’d just bought at Target, holding short boards they could never ride. They’d come into Sarita’s for a quick shot of java on their way to the beach. Once they saw Surfer Scotty, Salty Dog Rodney, and me sitting outside, they’d figure it was a good time to ask some locals a few of questions. Which beach was best for surfing? When was high tide? What was a good place to buy a new rash guard? But most of all, they wanted to know about sharks before they jumped into the ocean. 

“So, fellas, are there any sharks in the water down here? I mean, is it safe?”

“Oh yeah, perfectly safe. Nothing ever happens,” I’d say.

“For sure, you’re fine in the water. No worries,” Surfer Scotty said.

“Yup, 100%,” I said.

“110%!” Scotty chimed in.

“Whewww! Okay, cool. I was a little worried because I’ve never been in the Pacific before and before I left it was Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.”

“Well…except for that guy last summer,” I said. “Right, Scotty, remember him?”

“Oh yeah, of course. Except for the guy.”

“Guy? Guy?! What guy? What happened? What happened last summer with the guy?”

“No one knows for sure,” I said. “He was a local, a good surfer, too, out at Playa Grande with a couple of his friends. He got bitten by a shark and died. Does that about cover it, Scotty?”

“Yeah, but some say it was a crocodile. Not sure. But something definitely bit him on the leg and he died.”

“You’re not kidding?” the tourist said, looking over his shoulder to make sure his better half wasn’t listening. “We Googled it but nothing like that came up. Please don’t tell my wife—she wanted to go to Amish country, instead.”

“Ohhh, you have to be careful with those Amish, too,” I said. “They’re sneaky bastards once they get ahold of you.” 

“But, to be fair, he bled to death because they took forever getting him to the hospital,” Scotty said. “He was only 200 meters away from the medical clinic but instead of putting him on a boat across the estuary they called a taxi. It took 45 minutes to show up and then they drove around for a while.”

“Jesus, that’s awful. Please—I don’t want to hear anymore.”

“Oh yeah, so listen to this,” I said. “I heard he bled out in the back of the taxi in a gas station parking lot across the street from the clinic.”

“Big shark, too, from what his friends said. Ripped half his leg off. And once they get a taste for human blood, it’s just a matter of time,” Scotty laughed.

“Ughhhh, oh my God!”

“Hey—watch out, you’re spilling coffee on my flip flop,” I said. “But really, don’t worry about it, buddy. It’s perfectly safe and I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Perfectly fine! Never better!” Scotty said. “But just remember if you DO get bitten by a shark, or a crocodile, just don’t call a taxi! Hahahaha.” 

“Hahahaha, good point, Scotty!”

Bob Marley suddenly lost his appetite and left half of his banana bread on his chair for the ants to swarm. He looked a little green when he left, carrying that surfboard like a tombstone, heading in the opposite direction from the beach. Odds were that they’d spend the rest of their vacation in the hotel pool. 

The moment the tourists were out of earshot we started up our shit talking session right where we’d left off. Game on. From our chairs in front of Sarita’s we had a perfect vantage point to watch people in town pass by. It was a great way of ascertaining everyone’s personal business each morning, the perfect forum to judge without amnesty. It was immature, irresponsible, and borderline cruel, but hey, what can I say—you’d do it, too. 

Big Chuck, the jolly personal chef, walked by. I liked Chuck—he was always really cool to talk to as he smoked bud, wading in the pool at our apartment.

“Didn’t he and Angela break up? She’s been a hot mess at the bars every night.” 

“I don’t know. I think they keep making up and breaking up.”

“That’s too bad, I like Big Chuck.”

“It’s too bad for her. I heard she borrowed money from Longboard Sarah and never paid her back.” 

My big-boobed alcoholic neighbor walked by, squinting against the sun. She wore the same dress as the night before and carried her high heels. She crossed the street before she passed us in a feeble attempt to evade notice. 

“Hiiiiii there! How are you? Did you have a rough night?” we called out. She walked faster. 

“You should have seen her at the barbecue the other night. She was sloshed! I think she hooked up with Grant.” 

“Your friend Gringo Grant? I thought she was a lesbian?”

“Your mom’s a lesbian.”

“Yeah, well, your dad is a lesbian.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” We all took a timeout, and sipped our coffee.

“Didn’t Grant’s apartment get broken into? He lives in Langosta with that tall guy who plays online poker, right?”

“Yeah, while they were away doing their border shuffle someone broke in and cleaned ‘em out: TV, laptop, nice camera—they got it all.”

“Damn, that sucks. Who was it? A Critter?”

“Well, I’m not supposed to say anything, so you didn’t hear it from me, but Grant thinks it was Tony Touch.”

“Who’s that? The crack head guy dating the waitress from Le Beach Club?”

“Yeah he works at Blue Turtle tours. I’m pretty sure he’s clean these days, or at least off that shit.” 

“I heard he owned a gun.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I heard he beat her up.”

I didn’t say anything.

Lena drove by in her black Mercedes. I ducked down, but she didn’t see me anyways because she was on her cellphone. I’d been dodging her for months and had no desire to deal with her ever again. 

“Look at that one. Someone told me that she married a rich old gringo years back and took him for all of he was worth. That’s how she got her money.”

“Yeah, sounds about right. Chris said she ripped him off in a real estate deal and stole five acres of his land.”

“I guess they’re going bankrupt on those condos he was building.”

“Oh, speaking of bankrupt…guess what I heard yesterday...”

It went on and on, all morning, talking about who was on a bender and who ripped someone off and, who was acting like a prick, and where everyone was trying to put their pricks. 

“Man, I saw Nayla, the yoga teacher/Spanish teacher/personal chef yelling at someone outside the market yesterday. She was really losing her shit.”

“Yeah, I think she was yelling at Mack White. I heard he was sloppy drunk the other night and grabbed her ass, and she slapped him.”

“He was at Casa Crack last week—I saw him walking out of that Dominican girl’s apartment.”

“Really? And what were you doing at Casa Crack?”

“Never mind.”

Someone was going crazy. Someone else was pregnant. This one had a venereal disease, that one was broke and selling their surfboard to buy a ticket back to the States. Nothing was out of bounds and we didn’t have to worry about being politically correct. That was Sarita’s Café, the best source of information Tamarindo, excuse me—TamaRUMOR—had to offer.

“There are rumors about you, too, you know,” Sarita said to me one day.

“What? Are you serious? Like what?” I said.

“I heard that you used to be in the army, but now you’re ultra-religious and don’t even curse.”

“What the fuck? Who the hell said that?”

“You know, people talk. That’s just the word around town,” Sarita said.

“Jesus Christ, that’s crazy talk! How do these rumors even get started? People should be more responsible with what they say.”

Sarita, Rodney, and Scotty shook their heads in agreement and we looked out at the road. The stray dog rose from the dirt, yawned, and started dragging what was left of the iguana down the road. 

“Sure is hot today,” Rodney said. Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room