the reality of traveling

Always my intent with emailing, writing, blogging, drawing, etc. whilst on the road is to some how convey or express the abundance of unexpected beauty that exists in this world. I often find myself feeling torn between just being in the moment and also wanting to some how preserve those moments especially to share. It is tough in any given day so many bizarre interactions and moments occur there is absolutley no way to convey them all. I consider Paul Theroux and his unbelievable accounts of riding the trains through Asia. His ability to remember in detail conversations and tiny anecdotes. The prospect of trying to emulate that is overwhelming.
What has happened today and yesterday, the smells, the tastes, the feelings of it all. How can I explain how San Jose smells in the rain? How Soma´s Gallo Pinto tastes?

Today we ate breakfast with a friend of Eva´s at Q Cafe, a place that is clearly catering to foreigners with its color palatte, menu and lighting scheme. We spent four hours talking about all the important things two gringas and a british 16 year old would talk about: various government structures, why English milk might be the best in the world, crazy tico stereotypes, you know all the standard stuff.
After the epic breakfast Eva and I took off for the Tica bus terminal to get my ticket changed to tomorrow, and to include a stop in Granada. San Jose will be down to one Charlie´s angel starting thursday.
The whole bus ticket situation is pretty much indicitive of how things work here. Eva had bought the ticket for me so that I could get into the country. Knowing that we would have to change the dates we had made sure that this was possible by checking the website and even further had been confirmed by one of the employees when we called earlier this week. What they failed to mention, until we showed up last night, is that there is only one man imbued with the magical powers to change bus tickets. And last night that man was at home, probably eating a warm dinner as the rain fell over a dark San Jose. So this morning we returned to meet the man and change the ticket. But was the man there? Of course not, somehow we managed to show up on his lunch break, so it was another twenty minutes before he was back at the desk ready to make things happen. I will give the tica bus people credit for something, the magic ticket changing man speaks flawless english, I mean near perfect with no accent. Which when you are me, hacking scentences together or just staying silent entirely so that Eva can figure shit out, having an English speaker makes your day. To get the ticket we needed a copy of my passport, which luckily could be procured across the street from Victor a Swede who runs a chop shop with a photocopier. He gave Eva and I his card with a calendar conveniently printed on the back. When we returned my magic bus man said something about how Victor holds everybody up because he loves to talk and then got to the important business of asking me if I was single, for ticket purposes of course.
See all that and it was barely two o´clock, which only explains why this whole blog/travel/me being my crazy self in a foreign country takes a lot of words blog entries, postcards and pages in my journal to expalin. If only someone would pay me to write about it all. sigh.