the welcoming committee

hi everyone,
i realize it's been a loooong time since i've written a post on this. sorry about that. hopefully i am back in the swing of things now, and updates will be more frequent.
this weekend, pat and i went to montezuma, a very small beach town on the nicoya peninsula. the town is nicknamed montefuma. "fuma" means "smoke" in spanish, and the town is known as "berkeley on the beach"... mostly meaning there are a lot of hippies and a lot of weed. didn't come across any weed, but definitely a lot of hippies. dreadlocks and peaceflags were aplenty, and it actually did feel like a very small version of telegraph avenue on the beach, minus the smell of vomit and tons of students in cal gear. on saturday, we hiked up a stream to go to the montezuma waterfall. it was absolutely gorgeous, with rocks to jump off and a nice swimming hole, monkeys in the trees, and, well, there was a waterfall. what more could you ask for? we spent most of the day there, then hiked back down to watch the costa rica v. mexico soccer game. costa rica did not fare so well, and thus bar failed to erupt into the fiesta i had hoped it would. pat and i took a walk along the beach, hoping to find a restaurant that took credit cards (somehow we had no cash for the whole weekend, and only 2 restaurants in town took cards... awesome). we ended up a restaurant that looked promising but failed miserably, as our waitress informed me our burger came with cheddar cheese when in fact it came with american. i was not amused.
today, we walked along the beach again and found a resort hotel with a restaurant, which (obviously) accepted credit cards. we sat, drank milkshakes, ate a great meal, and wished we could afford to stay at a resort hotel. i think their grass was actually greener. their bathrooms certainly were cleaner, that's for sure. we spend the rest of the day hanging out on the beach until our bus left at 2:45. part of the journey is on a ferry, so we got to see a great sunset over the ocean as we tore through a bag of pretzels (dinner of champions).
we got into san jose 5 hours later, and just when i was feeling all warm and glowy about being home, our welcoming committee showed their nasty little faces. in our kitchen, there was: a spider, a cockroach, and a lizard, all spotted within a minute of each other. why god, why? i am now terrified of setting foot in our kitchen, and we don't have any pretzels left to live off of. mom, if i look famished when you arrive on saturday, this is why.