Sabado a la playa Jaco and other adventures

I am starting to get settled at work – I can find the bathroom now.

On Friday morning, the eastern sky was clear – a first for us. A plume of smoke emanated from the peak of a distant volcano and streamed across the sky. Excited to learn more about this sighting, during lunch I asked two co-workers what volcano I had seen. Now keep in mind four things: first, directions in Costa Rica are relational – geographical points of interest are near someplace else or on the way to somewhere; second, there are plenty of volcanoes in Costa Rica; third, I can find about five places after living here all of five days; and fourth, my pronunciation of places in Costa Rica is perfect – until it comes out of my mouth.
So the conversation went something like this:
J: “I saw an active volcano this morning in the east. Do you know which one it was?”
G: “You mean over there?” pointing at the mountains visible to the south.
J: “No –in the east, where the sun comes up”.
G: “Hmmm. You mean over there?” pointing north.
J: “No – east”.
G: “There is no active volcano that direction”.
J: “OK, I discovered a new eruption then”.
Enter co-worker A, who lives near us.
J: “A, I saw a volcano in the east this morning. Did you see it too?”
A: “Oh sure”
G: Spanish spoken quickly to A.
A: More Spanish spoken even more quickly to G and V.
G: “Oh, east. That’s where I live. Near Iruzu, but it isn’t active.
J: “So which one did I see?”
V: “Turrialba. It’s near Iruzu.”
J: “Doo-ree-ell-ba” I repeated with perfect pronunciation.
V: “Turrialba” he said, looking at me as if I had started singing a song from the Sound of Music.
J: “Doo-ree-ell-ba” I repeated.
V: “Tu–rri--alba” he says for the third time, looking at me like I was a tourist trying to find a bano at a gasolinera.
My dysfunctional pronunciation brought to mind that I had had this “naming” conversation before, after living in Minnesota for 10 years. I had told a native MN coworker that we were going to “Lake Kabetogamma”, naturally assuming that the end of the word was pronounced like the Greek letter. She took great delight in teaching me to say “Cab-a-TOE-gum-a”. So relative to speaking Minnesotan, my Spanish is coming along nicely.

On Saturday I bounded out of bed at 5:30 a.m. The sun was up and I had slept in for as long as I could. Nancy was unconvinced, but by 7:30 we are on the road to the beach. We punched “playa Herradura” into the GPS since it looked like a good spot on the map and arrived in an hour and a half or so. The pictures make playa Herradura look like paradise, but the garbage and low-life left us with the impression that it was more of a fishing beach than a resort destination.

We headed a few Km south to Jaco, where we parked on the beach, watched the surfers and went for a walk. Eventually the heat, humidity and sun told us it was time to find some agua y un bano. We found the water … but no bathroom.

(Note added in proof – we read in the newspaper that a heavy storm had pelted the Herradura and Jaco areas on Thursday, so perhaps the mess at Herradura was atypical.)

Nancy drove in Costa Rica for the first time today, as we ventured out and around the neighborhood – without turning on the GPS.