Costa Rica numero uno

Hi. This is my first post, and I am wondering how to write this whole thing without feeling woefully narcissistic. I think it is impossible, so maybe I will just go with the flow, and think at least it is not as bad as when I used to make everyone in my family sit and watch me recite lines from Grease. Is it?

Anyway. I am writing this blog to document my travels, not because they are in any way particularly interesting, or indeed that I have an especially wonderful turn of phrase. However, I do seem to be addicted to updating my facebook page, and even for the sake of diluting that and its effects on my reputation (not to say decreasing FRIEND FIGURES)I feel an alternative outlet for my ¨experiences¨ to be documented can only be a good thing. Plus, just say I decide I want to be some kind of John Snow figure in the future, it would be good to say LOOK! look at the sheer lyrical brilliance expressed in my youth(ish) via the medium of cutting edge technology.  

Anyway, I am currently travelling latin america with some chums, and whilst it is hardly Jack Kerouac and Gertrude Stein (or whatever), I imagine at some point in the next decade when I am at home alone with my 29 cats gently gnawing the sagging flesh of my elbows, it will be nice to read this, look back and remember all the times I stayed inside a hostel frantically bent over my iphone recording things that probably happened to other people.  

We are in Costa Rica just now, a country I will remember largely for its insect population and the havoc they have wreaked on my wimpy Scottish skin.  It is a really gorgeous place (REALLY???WHO WOULD EVER HAVE KNOWN)but it feels a bit less authentic than the rest of the places we have been.  Not enough poor people walking around by half.  You still can´t flush toilet paper down the loo though which is a sign of exoticism.

Before Costa Rica, we were in Panama, Colombia and Ecuador. Most of the trip was me and Angela, a pal I met at the prison camp sorry restaurant, we both worked in in Scotland. In a last ditch attempt to avoid Being A Real Grown Up, we both did a TEFL course, saved our tips and worked every shift we could get to scamper over here as soon as we could. Despite our best laid plans to be fluent in Spanish by now, working in some ethical school, saving the world etc etc etc, four months later, we somehow find ourselves in Central America living it up on a beach with two other pals from home.  Still, impending financial doom, and dare I say it BOREDOM of the life of leisure have dictated that when dear Kim leaves to return to sunny Bristol, the holiday period will be officially over, and we will start working towards being functioning members of society. Manana manana. On that note, I feel I have exhausted my powers of thought for the day.  I am going to go and eat a three day old croissant that the other suckers have overlooked, and then we are going to a serpent farm imaginatively called Serpentine.  Me and Kim went to a Butterfly Farm last week, and it was like some kind of avant garde surrealist piece on purgatory.  We got dropped off by a water taxi, which we told to come back in two hours (the look of sheer disbelief on the face of the 5 year old driving the boat should have been a warning to us).  The ¨farm¨ turned out to be a strange mildewed tent, manned by three sinister men, who charged us five dollars each for the pleasure of standing in the rain looking at some crippled butterflies who flew listlessly (and lopsidedly) around aforementioned mildewed tent. The other 1 hour and 52 minutes was spent standing by a stagnant swamp waiting for the boat and talking about all my past relationships. Heavy duty Freudian shit going down there as the insects made us scratch uncomfortably and the stench of rotting vegetation wafted around our sunburned snozzles.  
Ah well. Onward and up! Hasta La Vista.

p.s I am not sure what avant garde actually means.