The Passion of the Hobo
"And Alan, who some called the Hobo, cameth triumphantly into the city, riding on his ass (in a bus). The people shooketh their booties and cried out 'Halelujah, blessed is he who cums in the face of the Lord!' And verily, his ass was sore."
- Pabst 2:11
And so it was. I was planning to just go back to San Jose and hang out with my cousins and see what kind of trouble could be found there. But I was really getting long with Kari, so I decided to travel around with her a bit instead.
First we headed to the carribean coast in Puerto Viejo de Talamaca. It was nice enough, but kind of touristy and expensive. Not too much to say about that place, except it had the tiniest ants I had ever seen, and every morning they would be swarmed all over the used condom, inside and out. High protein diet, I guess.
Soon we headed into Panama to the Bocas del Toro archipelago. This was a really cool spot, kind of low key and friendly. I went snorkeling here, only my second time, and along with tropical fish and coral, I saw a transparent squid which shot through the water, I'm pretty sure they actually use some kind of jet propulsion that I'd like to know more about. I also saw, almost swam right into actually, some kind of jellyfish that was really amazing. It was like a glob of silicon with pure, white, light pumping through its veins. It had all these little globules of silicon that kept going off and coming back on, I couldn't see if they were attached or some other creatures, strangest thing I'd ever seen. We also went bike riding across the island stopping at this batcave filled with thousands of bats. We'd shine our flashlight on them, and they'd get all pissed and start flying around right at our heads!
Panama is having presidential elections in May, so there was lots of campaigning going on. One of the candidates actually had a little ralley in Bocas del Toro while we were there. Jose Miguel Aleman, a vacuous cartoon of a smiling politican with half shut eyes not unlike John Kerry's. He gave me a hat, and after his speech, there was a little parade through the small town. I managed to put myself in front of him and shake his hand. He said something to me, but I didn't catch all the words. The only words I caught for sure were "gracias" and "hermanos." I think he said something like, "Thank you for being one of the brothers," which doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not sure if he thought I was Panamanian. Maybe he recognized I was foreign and was trying to say something like we were brothers in other countries or some shit like that. Now really, I hope that the best candidate wins, but since they're all probably corrupt bastards like anywhere else, I hope he wins so I can say I shook hands with the president of Panama. Incidentally, the current president of Panama is a woman, Mireya Moscoso. Apparently she's as corrupt as hell too. Doesn't really matter though, because presidents can only serve one term.
After Bocas, we headed across the country to the mountains. Nothing too interesting happened there, we went hiking a lot, and I don't think the old American couple that shared our dorm was too fond of us or the noises that came from our bunk in the night.
Here, though we'd grown quite close, we decided to split. I kind of felt like being on my own after about three weeks of being together nonstop. More over, curiosity was really starting to get a hold of me. I realized I was less than a day's travel to the annual worldwide Rainbow Gathering in southern Costa Rica. So it was a fond farewell, and I hope to visit her someday in Oslo. Her parents also have a house out in the country that's supposed to be really nice, and Norway is the one Scandanavian country I didn't go to (cuz I was stupid), so maybe I'll make it back that way someday.
The Rainbow Gathering is a place where a bunch of hippies get together and try and form some kind of cashless community of sharing and trade and goodwill towards man. That's the idea anyway. Now I knew that hippies have the tendency to bug the shit out of me, but like I said, my curiosity was mounting and I thought I should at least check it out. You know, don't knock it til you try it. Well I tried it, and KNOCK FUCKING KNOCK I hated it. The rest of this entry is basically just my rant on why. If you're not interested in that, or are hippie-friendly, you might just want to stop reading here.
After almost not making it across the border (because they said the crossing I was at was only for Costa Ricans) I arrived in the small town of San Vito, the town closest to the Gathering. There were lots of hippie types milling about, getting groceries, and all that. The first one I ended up talking too was this chick named Amy with tattoos all over her arms and face and with a great big German shepherd. She was actually of a hippie subgenre, the crusty squatter traveler type. Her and her friends were pretty tolerable. We sat around town drinking beer (Kari didn't drink, so I hadn't even gotten drunk since I got here) and waiting for something to happen. Nothing did, so we decided to hitchhike to the Gathering. The funny thing about Amy and her friends was they had this real chip on their shoulder about hardcore credability. It was like, "Nice backpack." "Thanks, I found it in the trash." "Oh really, I stole mine." Everything they owned had to be justified in some way. But like I said, interesting, literate, people, and way better than the hippies I was soon to meet.
So Amy and I get a ride almost the whole way there right off the bat, with her dog and all. But when we arrived at the last little town before the Gathering, she realized she left her passport in town and had to head back. So I was on my own. I started talking to a couple hippies at the little place that served food, I wouldn't even call it a restaurant, just a little house that served decent food. The girl was pregnant and they were talking about how they wanted to have a "dolphin birth." I was like, "Oh Christ, now it begins." Apparently, dolphins shoot out good vibes or something like that, so they were trying to find a dolphin midwife, which apparently there is in Costa Rica. But they were the only ones headed towards the Gathering, so I figured I'd hang with them. I mean, they were decent people overall.
As soon as we start walking, uphill, and me with my pack, it starts raining really hard. The road turns to mud and I'm slipping everywhere but still sweating cuz I have my backpack. Finally we get a ride from the owner of the land, and I exhaustedly make it to the camp. They graciously offer me some space to sleep under their tarp, but I kind of got the impression that they were only doing that because it was what they were "supposed" to do, not because they really cared too much about me. I got that impression from a lot of them, they were friendly to me because we were in a place of "love" and "friendship." It was remarkably Christian behavior. In general, most people didn't really seem that interested in me. They could probably tell I wasn't part of their little club, and therefore only offered the most basic of courtesies because they felt obligated.
So feeling a little awkward and disoriented, I headed to the food tent where they actually had some nice food, rice with mango chutney. Everything there was free, there's no money involved, which was a nice idea, although perhaps only practical in month long gatherings like this. After that, I was pretty tired, so I tried futilely to sleep. I couldn't get comfortable, finally I managed to sleep until sunrise. I was already thinking it might be time to go. But wait, I thought, give it a chance.
So I decided to walk around, it was like 6am, so only a few people were up, doing yoga or meditating or whatever. One guy was walking around in a robe, mumbling to himself. I smiled at him as we crossed paths. Then he gives me this patronizing "bless you my son" nod like he's Jesus H. Longdick. I was thinking, "Oh no you didn't." What a pretentious bastard. But that's what I found to be true of many of the people there. So many of them were trying to do the ol' holy serenity routine, it was really tiresome. All this pretense and all these silly affectations like saying "Blessings" instead of good bye. What the hell is that shit?
Speaking of shit, I had to take one, so I went into the woods and did so like a common pope. After I did, I noticed this little sign that said, "This is a sacred temple, please no shit." Whatever the hell that means. Oh well, I kicked a pile of leaves onto my shit then kicked the whole thing down the hillside. So much for the sacred.
Wandering around some more I encountered in English and in Spanish at various points, the strange legend, "Love is work." This, to me, bore a startling resemblance to the nazi slogan placed at the gates of their concentration camps "Arbeit macht frei," that is "Work is freedom." Who were these kooks?
Later on, I was sitting around with some other people when someone asked what day it was. I said "Monday" before someone else replied it was "Purple cosmic horseshoe" or some other Lucky Charm bullshit from Mayan astrology, which was all the rage out there. Astrology is definitely one of the most serious strains of intelletucal vice. All the other people nodded contemplatively at her answer, as if giving it great weight. Oh, and there was actually rain dances! And it wasn't just for fun or exercise or to you know, practice ancient culture or something, many of the people, and yes, I asked them, many of the people ACTUALLY believed that their pathetic gyrations could have an effect on the weather pattern. These are full grown adults in 2004, mind you! Besides, making it rain in tropical Costa Rica is like making Pink Floyd suck. Haven't you people ever heard of the scientific method? Science is a false religion, they tell me, not understanding that there's no such thing as science per se. Science is just a way of studying reality. It's not beliefs that someone made up, but facts that have been discovered and tested and proven over and over again. So aside from being physically miserable, not having a tent or anything, I was mentally miserable as well, although I was getting some pretty good chuckles.
I mean, I'm sure the hippies were relevant back in the day, in the 60's and all, but today they just seem like a bunch of middle class white kids acting poor and searching, frantically, for spiritual meaning in a world that is completely meaningless. They seem to think they're going to save the world, but let me tell you, there ain't no pot o' gold at the end of their Rainbow.
So by eight or nine am, I knew it was time to head on, I'd had quite enough of this. I was sitting, waiting for a ride out and eating free fruit. And again, I think the ideas are good, the intentions are sweet, and most of the people were nice enough, so don't let me sound too harsh. Anyhow, I was sitting and a friend of mine from back home, Eric Carlson walked by. I knew he was here, but I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to see him. We talked a bit, and I told him I was leaving. He offered me a space in his tent, but it wasn't just that, this Rainbow Gathering was just way not my scene and so I had to get out. And get out I did. And enter into San Jose, in triumph, I later did.
Amen,
Alley G
- Pabst 2:11
And so it was. I was planning to just go back to San Jose and hang out with my cousins and see what kind of trouble could be found there. But I was really getting long with Kari, so I decided to travel around with her a bit instead.
First we headed to the carribean coast in Puerto Viejo de Talamaca. It was nice enough, but kind of touristy and expensive. Not too much to say about that place, except it had the tiniest ants I had ever seen, and every morning they would be swarmed all over the used condom, inside and out. High protein diet, I guess.
Soon we headed into Panama to the Bocas del Toro archipelago. This was a really cool spot, kind of low key and friendly. I went snorkeling here, only my second time, and along with tropical fish and coral, I saw a transparent squid which shot through the water, I'm pretty sure they actually use some kind of jet propulsion that I'd like to know more about. I also saw, almost swam right into actually, some kind of jellyfish that was really amazing. It was like a glob of silicon with pure, white, light pumping through its veins. It had all these little globules of silicon that kept going off and coming back on, I couldn't see if they were attached or some other creatures, strangest thing I'd ever seen. We also went bike riding across the island stopping at this batcave filled with thousands of bats. We'd shine our flashlight on them, and they'd get all pissed and start flying around right at our heads!
Panama is having presidential elections in May, so there was lots of campaigning going on. One of the candidates actually had a little ralley in Bocas del Toro while we were there. Jose Miguel Aleman, a vacuous cartoon of a smiling politican with half shut eyes not unlike John Kerry's. He gave me a hat, and after his speech, there was a little parade through the small town. I managed to put myself in front of him and shake his hand. He said something to me, but I didn't catch all the words. The only words I caught for sure were "gracias" and "hermanos." I think he said something like, "Thank you for being one of the brothers," which doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not sure if he thought I was Panamanian. Maybe he recognized I was foreign and was trying to say something like we were brothers in other countries or some shit like that. Now really, I hope that the best candidate wins, but since they're all probably corrupt bastards like anywhere else, I hope he wins so I can say I shook hands with the president of Panama. Incidentally, the current president of Panama is a woman, Mireya Moscoso. Apparently she's as corrupt as hell too. Doesn't really matter though, because presidents can only serve one term.
After Bocas, we headed across the country to the mountains. Nothing too interesting happened there, we went hiking a lot, and I don't think the old American couple that shared our dorm was too fond of us or the noises that came from our bunk in the night.
Here, though we'd grown quite close, we decided to split. I kind of felt like being on my own after about three weeks of being together nonstop. More over, curiosity was really starting to get a hold of me. I realized I was less than a day's travel to the annual worldwide Rainbow Gathering in southern Costa Rica. So it was a fond farewell, and I hope to visit her someday in Oslo. Her parents also have a house out in the country that's supposed to be really nice, and Norway is the one Scandanavian country I didn't go to (cuz I was stupid), so maybe I'll make it back that way someday.
The Rainbow Gathering is a place where a bunch of hippies get together and try and form some kind of cashless community of sharing and trade and goodwill towards man. That's the idea anyway. Now I knew that hippies have the tendency to bug the shit out of me, but like I said, my curiosity was mounting and I thought I should at least check it out. You know, don't knock it til you try it. Well I tried it, and KNOCK FUCKING KNOCK I hated it. The rest of this entry is basically just my rant on why. If you're not interested in that, or are hippie-friendly, you might just want to stop reading here.
After almost not making it across the border (because they said the crossing I was at was only for Costa Ricans) I arrived in the small town of San Vito, the town closest to the Gathering. There were lots of hippie types milling about, getting groceries, and all that. The first one I ended up talking too was this chick named Amy with tattoos all over her arms and face and with a great big German shepherd. She was actually of a hippie subgenre, the crusty squatter traveler type. Her and her friends were pretty tolerable. We sat around town drinking beer (Kari didn't drink, so I hadn't even gotten drunk since I got here) and waiting for something to happen. Nothing did, so we decided to hitchhike to the Gathering. The funny thing about Amy and her friends was they had this real chip on their shoulder about hardcore credability. It was like, "Nice backpack." "Thanks, I found it in the trash." "Oh really, I stole mine." Everything they owned had to be justified in some way. But like I said, interesting, literate, people, and way better than the hippies I was soon to meet.
So Amy and I get a ride almost the whole way there right off the bat, with her dog and all. But when we arrived at the last little town before the Gathering, she realized she left her passport in town and had to head back. So I was on my own. I started talking to a couple hippies at the little place that served food, I wouldn't even call it a restaurant, just a little house that served decent food. The girl was pregnant and they were talking about how they wanted to have a "dolphin birth." I was like, "Oh Christ, now it begins." Apparently, dolphins shoot out good vibes or something like that, so they were trying to find a dolphin midwife, which apparently there is in Costa Rica. But they were the only ones headed towards the Gathering, so I figured I'd hang with them. I mean, they were decent people overall.
As soon as we start walking, uphill, and me with my pack, it starts raining really hard. The road turns to mud and I'm slipping everywhere but still sweating cuz I have my backpack. Finally we get a ride from the owner of the land, and I exhaustedly make it to the camp. They graciously offer me some space to sleep under their tarp, but I kind of got the impression that they were only doing that because it was what they were "supposed" to do, not because they really cared too much about me. I got that impression from a lot of them, they were friendly to me because we were in a place of "love" and "friendship." It was remarkably Christian behavior. In general, most people didn't really seem that interested in me. They could probably tell I wasn't part of their little club, and therefore only offered the most basic of courtesies because they felt obligated.
So feeling a little awkward and disoriented, I headed to the food tent where they actually had some nice food, rice with mango chutney. Everything there was free, there's no money involved, which was a nice idea, although perhaps only practical in month long gatherings like this. After that, I was pretty tired, so I tried futilely to sleep. I couldn't get comfortable, finally I managed to sleep until sunrise. I was already thinking it might be time to go. But wait, I thought, give it a chance.
So I decided to walk around, it was like 6am, so only a few people were up, doing yoga or meditating or whatever. One guy was walking around in a robe, mumbling to himself. I smiled at him as we crossed paths. Then he gives me this patronizing "bless you my son" nod like he's Jesus H. Longdick. I was thinking, "Oh no you didn't." What a pretentious bastard. But that's what I found to be true of many of the people there. So many of them were trying to do the ol' holy serenity routine, it was really tiresome. All this pretense and all these silly affectations like saying "Blessings" instead of good bye. What the hell is that shit?
Speaking of shit, I had to take one, so I went into the woods and did so like a common pope. After I did, I noticed this little sign that said, "This is a sacred temple, please no shit." Whatever the hell that means. Oh well, I kicked a pile of leaves onto my shit then kicked the whole thing down the hillside. So much for the sacred.
Wandering around some more I encountered in English and in Spanish at various points, the strange legend, "Love is work." This, to me, bore a startling resemblance to the nazi slogan placed at the gates of their concentration camps "Arbeit macht frei," that is "Work is freedom." Who were these kooks?
Later on, I was sitting around with some other people when someone asked what day it was. I said "Monday" before someone else replied it was "Purple cosmic horseshoe" or some other Lucky Charm bullshit from Mayan astrology, which was all the rage out there. Astrology is definitely one of the most serious strains of intelletucal vice. All the other people nodded contemplatively at her answer, as if giving it great weight. Oh, and there was actually rain dances! And it wasn't just for fun or exercise or to you know, practice ancient culture or something, many of the people, and yes, I asked them, many of the people ACTUALLY believed that their pathetic gyrations could have an effect on the weather pattern. These are full grown adults in 2004, mind you! Besides, making it rain in tropical Costa Rica is like making Pink Floyd suck. Haven't you people ever heard of the scientific method? Science is a false religion, they tell me, not understanding that there's no such thing as science per se. Science is just a way of studying reality. It's not beliefs that someone made up, but facts that have been discovered and tested and proven over and over again. So aside from being physically miserable, not having a tent or anything, I was mentally miserable as well, although I was getting some pretty good chuckles.
I mean, I'm sure the hippies were relevant back in the day, in the 60's and all, but today they just seem like a bunch of middle class white kids acting poor and searching, frantically, for spiritual meaning in a world that is completely meaningless. They seem to think they're going to save the world, but let me tell you, there ain't no pot o' gold at the end of their Rainbow.
So by eight or nine am, I knew it was time to head on, I'd had quite enough of this. I was sitting, waiting for a ride out and eating free fruit. And again, I think the ideas are good, the intentions are sweet, and most of the people were nice enough, so don't let me sound too harsh. Anyhow, I was sitting and a friend of mine from back home, Eric Carlson walked by. I knew he was here, but I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to see him. We talked a bit, and I told him I was leaving. He offered me a space in his tent, but it wasn't just that, this Rainbow Gathering was just way not my scene and so I had to get out. And get out I did. And enter into San Jose, in triumph, I later did.
Amen,
Alley G