Jaco beach and the North Americans
Gusmao is a brasilian friend living in Costa Rica. He just bought car year 72. We (Gusmao, my brother Ronaldo and I) used his car to go to the beach. In the montains when we were going to the beach the water in the car started to boil because the fan was not working properly. We stop for ? hours to wait for it to cool down. Finally we got in Jaco. This is an interesting place to be. The majority of tourists up here are North American(N.A.). They are desperate trying to learn or improve their Spanish and large percentage of the locals speaks fluent English. So the locals want to talk in English to impress them and sell more. The N.A in other hand would like to have a perfect accent perhaps to get better deal. I found myself in the middle of this situation and I just hided my ability to understand English and tried very hard to put a strong accent in my Portuguese to look like the locals. We were all in a pub together having some drinks (light beer of course) and playing an North American game. I was also trying to be local. The N.A. were straggling to speak Spanish and so did I but because Portuguese and Spanish have some many thing in common I was doing quite well in comparison. They did not pick up that I was not one of the locals. I felt like been a French (you know what I mean don?t you?). It was so funny to see them trying so hard when we could perfectly speak English. Finally in the end of the evening an local had to help someone to explain something for me and she told him in English that the problem of communication in part was because I was not from Costa Rica. She said to him that I was Brazilian bending my Portuguese to make it a little bit similar to Spanish. Once more I did not react to her comments, I felt really good not be speaking in English. Anyway they assumed that I was not able to understand them. Their problem? Stuart and Doo were very naughty today. First Do chose a shirt to Rapha written in English because it was easy to read them Stuart chose one shirt written in Spanish to Felipe just because Costa Rica speaks Spanish. So, Doo changed his made and wanted to buy same shirt with Spanish message as well. I did say to Doo that he could change rapha?s shirt if he wants to. But then Stuart got upset and started to cry and in the end I had to get involved to sort out this fight. I told Stuart that it would be ok if Doo choose something in Spanish but it would not be allowed to have picture of animals like the shirt that Stuart have chosen to Felipe. They both were happy with this suggestion and Doo bought rapha a shirt with Spanish message as well. They had I photo together in the shop where they bought these shirts. Stuart also took other picture in the beach but Doo was not present. Doo run way to the forest and just came back later. On our return to San Jose our car once more warmed up the radiator and the water started to boil. It was 8 pm and we had to walk until we found water to fill out the radiator. This is a quite higher mountain and five other cars stopped for same raison. We arrived home 10:00pm and I am very tied. Doo and Stuart were also very tied and sleeping. I just put them into their bad. Thanks God for that!!!