Just look around

I was riding the bus home from San José yesterday morning and, despite being very tired since I got up at 4:30am to catch the bus, I found myself looking out the window and thinking about just how beautiful the scenery is. I do that a lot actually. Almost every time I take the bus I spend the majority of the time gazing out the window in wonder. The sky is so beautiful, the colors change, the clouds are always different, sometimes you see the mountains, sometimes the mountains are covered in mist, it's so green, there are always flowers and plants I've never noticed of seen before.

It's important to note here that I take the same bus A LOT. There's one main road trough my town and you can go east or west, those are your only choices. Riding the bus that much in only two directions you'd think that you'd get tired of the scenery. I guess some people would, but I don't. How could you get tired of seeing a new little waterfall between a bunch of vines, discovering a beautiful little creek you've never seen, seeing huge red parrots swooping through the sky? I don't know that I'll ever get bored of it.

In the same way my bus only goes east or west, I only have 3 or 4 roads to run and bike on, and I certainly don't get tired of those. Pineapple fields, cute baby cows, goats who look like the might at any moment decide to chase me, frogs, butterflies, palm trees, pine trees, babbling streams, seeing all the way to Nicaragua on a clear day, a faint distant view of a volcano, jogging 10 minutes from my house to a bridge that sits 100 feet above a lush ravine and class IV rapids... and my absolute favorite little kids and grandmas and grandpas on the porch who smile and say "Adios".

I heard two very interesting comments from gringo travelers this week about Costa Rica. The first was, "All Costa Rica has are beaches and volcanoes and rain forests. That's it." 'Hmm.' I thought when hearing this, 'Sounds pretty boring to me.' The next thing I heard was, "Yeah, I've been traveling around the country for about 3 weeks and it's getting kind of boring." Just like the first comment, I thought, 'Yea, really boring. I don't find anything interesting about miles of white sand beaches or volcanoes that spew red lava all night long' I don't really know what these people were getting at. Maybe they were missing their friends and family and were tired of traveling. I don't know, but what I do know is that it's really a shame that a person can't enjoy the beauty of what's out there, especially in a place like this, and I can't help but wonder what it is that they think when they're sitting there looking out the window of their little apartment in Detroit, or wherever it is they're from.