New Year’s Memoir – 2024 Edition
December
Prague had marvelously cold temperatures and the Christmas markets looked ‘how they should’ at night in the snow 😍.
And behold Vilnius, also with snow (and freakishly warmer than Prague :D).
We checked out a punk concert at this venue, xi20, I’d heard about for years. Was nice to finally see what it’s like.
Back in Prague, there was one super amazing event before the holidays: Temple Of, a collective of immigrant DJs amplifying the sounds from their regions (SWANA), held a party at Ankali. Friends at Spatial Food offered tea and snacks; good parties have tea, yes. Moreover, there was a huge carpeted dance hall with Arab-themed music and quite fun no-shoes dancing :D.
I’d been planning to go to a good darkpsy and hi-tech party at Alternburg, but I decided that leaving for Costa Rica at leisure seems preferable and gave the tickets away.
My aunt has lived in Monteverde for a long time, also living in Vashon. This is my first trip there.
At the start, Ilmėja, her mom, and I spent a day in Alajuela, a small, cute city near the capital.
We were fans of the Casado, a balanced meal of rice, beans, salad, and protein. The cuisine is very different from Mexican, generally not so spicy, yet rich and made from similar ingredients.
We had fun contrasting the capacity of three different cameras in capturing this stormy cocktail.
After the beach by Jaco, we spent a couple of nights by Uvita. I tried a Rompope shaved ice, which is a bit like eggnog. The beach here was splendidly warm with a pleasant, mild surf. Ilmėja really enjoyed playing in the shallow part and took her time becoming acquainted with the water 🙂.
Uvita is known for having a sandbar that goes out to some rocks and looks like a whale’s tail. One can only walk there during low tide. We barely made it and the water was already coming in as we returned. The area where waves crash from both sides is super fun. Staying until sunset to play in the water, we almost lost space to walk on the beach as high tide approaches the trees. Whoops 😋
The biodiversity is spectacular. Costa Rica has so many kinds of ants, including leaf-cutter ants. I even saw some little ants on the leaves being carried.
We later some some Agouti. I think they also have Paca and Capybara. They apparently urinate during reproduction, leading the female to perform an excited “frenzy dance”. Turns out humans aren’t the only animals to enjoy a good ol’ golden shower.
We went to the Nauyaca Waterfalls, a paradisiac place. The water was too strong for the kids to swim much, yet I made it under the falls :D. 🧘♂️.
On my birthday, we went to the Manuel Antonio park where we had a guide to point of exotic creatures such as sloths, crabs, and poisonous snakes. The beach there was perhaps the best for little kids as it was really, really gentle. Ironically, the prohibition on food in the park aside from a caged foodcourt made it more boring than hanging out by the hotel. At the hotel, monkeys peer into your door if you don’t close it and they cruise the trees by the beach to dumpster dive for treasure. In the past, the beach at Manuel Antonio was apparently a much more exciting place!
The family pow-wow of 17 members was enjoyable. I enjoyed seeing how Ilmėja enjoyed interacting with many of the family members in different ways, times, and places. A bit like how I cruise the Ozora dance floor :D.
The drive up to Monteverde is beautiful. We saw a small tarantula along the way when stopping to enjoy the view.
First things first, we’ve got to check out the local nightlife, featuring Chakaruna. The music and art were quite good. Unfortunately, we arrived around 10 p.m., and almost everyone had gone home by then 🥲🤣.
We decided to to El Tigre Waterfalls, which wound up being very muddy. And Ilmėja wound up doing it in flip-flops, making for some quite good hiking practice for her. I think she’d never been in such an environment before and she leveled up during that hike alone 😎. Reflecting back, I had quite a high number of simple adventures in comparison 🙂🤠.
The drawbridges and falls were scenically beautiful. Ilmėja got her first horseback riding with me, too, enjoying practicing guiding the horse via the reigns.
Costa Rica is full of air roots, which take in water and nutrients from the air, allowing plants to be closer to the sun. One noteworthy example of such a tree is the Strangler Fig, whose roots grow down around the host tree, root in the ground, and eventually starve it to death. This creates a cool hallow tree that can be perfectly suited for climbing!
We also went ziplining with “the original canopy tour“. It’s quite fun. There were a bunch of wasps by one of the platforms and one could go rather fast. Watching Ilmėja go from super scared, barely doing it with the guide, to enjoying it (still with the guide) and claiming not to be have been scared was heartwarming :D.
Some millipedes smell very fragrant if you entice them to curl up and shake them about a bit.
We stayed the night at the San Gerardo Biological Station where one can go on a night tour of the rainforest. The homecooked meals were pretty good, too 🤤. Volcano Arenal could also be seen.
We saw some frogs, spiders, bats, fireflies, and other bugs. The lil’ frogs are quite difficult to spot.
Monteverde has a hummingbird cafe, Cafe Colibri, where one can easily see numerous hummingbirds of a few varieties.
Our final stop was the Lev Etto Goertzel Mann memorial at the Cloud Forest School. My cousin Lev died suddenly at 14, possibly due to meningitis. He was a really interesting, funky lad. Would have been great to see him grow up. You can read his official obituary or Ben’s on his blog. Maybe he’d be happy to have some toilets and a picnic area dedicated to him.
We stopped by a roadside beach on the way back to Alajuela.
The final stop of the year was Vilnius, where I spent the New Year’s crossing. This party at an old jail was a refreshingly normal event, so I was pleased. And if it’s said that the way one spends New Year’s Eve is how the rest of the year will go, what does it portend for Mr. Putin to be behind bars? 🤔🤓
