When we finally settled into Jaco (before the whole witches stuff happened), Lauren and I went out to do the worst errand to ever face women: swimsuit shopping. My swimsuit no longer fit and hers had developed a strange, constant itch. After having been in a dozen different oceans and lakes, it was time to retire our old swimsuits and get new ones.

But that is a task easier said than done in Costa Rica. Apparently, women who go swimsuit shopping in Costa Rica have no need for any support (up top) and no need for any room (down below). What was supposed to be a 1-2 hour errand ended up taking all afternoon during which we probably tried on more than thirty different swimsuits, all in cramped dressing rooms with highly unflattering lights. In the end, by combing pieces from two different shops, I was able to make something work. Lauren gave it her best but in the end, we gave up.

Having shopped away the whole afternoon, after showers, Lauren, Kassie and I went out to dinner and later, to an infamous Ladies Night.

As we entered, I was perturbed to see a bouncer checking an American girls’ I.D. We never carry I.D.s out late at night for fear of them being stolen, and it was a long walk back to our hotel to get them. Then, to our horror, we heard the young, blond girl say:

“1989 is mas de diez y ocho!” (That’s 1989 is more than 18… as in, years old.)

We all gasped, wide-eyed, and I covered my gaping mouth as I registered the fact that children born in 1989 are now 18. The girl nodded as us, rolling her eyes, thinking we were sympathizing with her annoyance that the bouncer was struggling to figure out her age from a state driver’s license.

He finally let her in and then without really giving us a second glace, let us pass too. Apparently, whether we were more than “diez y ocho” was not in question.

In NYC, Ladies Night generally means women don’t have to pay to get in… or maybe we get a dollar or two off of exorbitantly-priced cocktails. Here in Costa Rica, Ladies Night meant ladies drink free.

Granted, it wasn’t top shelf liquor, but when the three of us waltzed into the Monkey Bar, we discovered we could drink as many Tequila sunrises as we wanted. Until Midnight.

So we got our glasses and some change and racked up a game of pool. I honestly don’t remember who won the games, but Lauren says she won the first and we think Kassie won the second (the tequila, perhaps, explaining my memory loss and my pool losses) We also had fun posing for more photos — this one oddly reminding us of the Sopranos.

At midnight, when the free drinks were over, we managed to find our way out of the back pool table area to the main dance floor. And we were horrified, yet again.

Young girls were grinding with their boyfriends, who were obviously not interested in anything but sex. As par for the course in developing countries, it seems, some middle-aged white men were drunkenly trying to dance with the uninterested prostitutes that they had “bought” for the night.

We only lasted about 10 minutes before we called it a night.

The next day, we relaxed at the beach. In the afternoon, Kassie tried surfing for the first time while Lauren helped. As soon as they got started, though, it started pouring down rain, so I ran for shelter and missed the whole thing. I can’t attest to what happened, only that Lauren returned with a bruised jaw…

We thought that night would be Kassie’s last night, since she needed to catch a bus to San Jose to catch a bus to Panama, so we went out for a nice dinner. Afterwards, we scoured the town for a place to get a drink. Lauren and Kassie spotted a bar blaring loud music down a dark alley and decided to go check it out, over my strong objections.

The bar was filled with locals. Only locals (Ticos). I felt like we were sticking out, but most of the locals were too drunk to care. As Lauren and Kassie ordered beers (I wanted a coke but they didn’t have any), an incredibly drunk Tico stumbled into me, practically knocking me over, as he blindly tried to find his way out of the bar.

We sat drinking our water and beers and quickly realized a DJ was lining up some Karaoke. One after another, Ticos took the stage, drunkenly singing songs in Spanish. I kept waiting for someone to come up and turn out to be an Latin American Idol undiscovered star, but alas, everyone was really, really awful.

Lauren and Kassie were amused to no end. We tried to get Kassie to go up and sing, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the dark alley outside that we would have to walk down again. And I was still suffering from stomach illnesses I had acquired in Ecuador. And I was a litle PMS-y.

So I got cranky and we left. (It happens.) Lauren and Kassie walked me home before heading out on their own. The next day, all Kassie could talk about was how Lauren could have let her eat some fattening yucca cheese ball things.

The next morning, after much deliberation, Kassie decided to fly to Panama instead, giving her an extra day with us in Jaco (and saving many, many hours on a bus). When Kassie went to buy her plane ticket, a local tour guide told her there was a beer festival in town, just down the road. We decided to try to find it, and in the meantime, we scoured more shops for a swimsuit or rashguard for Lauren (yet again, we were unsuccessful).

During the process, we stumbled into a cigar shop where a local guy was making cigars right there in the window.

Intrigued, Lauren and I decided to buy one, and after asking many embarrassing questions (like, which end of the cigar do you light?), we forked out $5 to try a local cigar.

We also found a hair salon. Lauren has been in dyer need of a haircut for a couple of months, but in South America where hair is as straight as it can possibly be, finding a stylist who knew how to cut hair turned out to be impossible.

But here, the obviously gay men - who spoke English - quickly agreed to cut Lauren’s hair while it was dry without combing it — exactly what she needed. They told us they were open until 10pm, so we told them we’d come back later.

We kept wandering down the street to find the beer festival, but there was no sign of anything. At the end of town, where the bus station was, we stopped for Kassie to buy her bus ticket back to San Jose the next day. After getting her crack-of-dawn bus ticket to catch her plane, she asked the woman at the register if there was a beer festival. No, the woman replied, laughing at us. We left, worried that she thought Kassie was asking if there was a beer party on the 5am bus.

We made our way back into town occasionally yelling at each other, “Hay una fiesta de cervesas cerca de aqui?” (Is there a party of beers near here?)

After amusing ourselves with the phrase, we stopped in one last swimsuit shop and actually found a clerk who could answer our question. No, not a beer festival, he told us, but there was a county fair and the beer there was cheap. But it didn’t get really started until after 6pm.

So we went back to the beach, where Kassie tried surfing again, and so did Lauren, and I was able to get a few shots of her standing (though the best shots were of her crashing — sorry, Kassie!)

That night, we all got cleaned up to go to the fair. Kassie had to do a few things on the internet, so Lauren and I went to get her hair cut. As we wandered down the street, we couldn’t find the salon — and then, to our devastation, we realized it was closed. Closed! It was only 6pm…

We made our way back towards our hotel trying to find Kassie and stumbled on another salon. Lo and behold, it was another gay man cutting hair — and he had curly hair too. I told Lauren to go for it, so we quickly found Kassie and told her about the new salon. She came with us and I was shocked to watch this man quickly and skillfully cut Lauren’s hair back to a cute length.

We left, satisfied, and grabbed a taxi to the fair. As we drove up to the fair, though, we realized that it was very, very small and mostly abandoned. The taxi driver pointed to a venue next door and said that there was a rodeo there.

We took a quick tour of the muddy fair grounds and decided to give the rodeo a try before we called it quits.

It was 7:30, and according to the very cute older man selling the tickets, the rodeo would start at 8pm. So we got tickets and a few beers and headed up to the stands. We were the only ones there, except for one other family. We amused ourselves taking pictures and drinking our beers. But 8pm came and went. As did 8:20 and 8:30. Kassie eventually went and got us more beers and chips this time and we concluded that the event must start at 9pm, since a few more people had walked in.

And we waited, and waited. America Country music blared from the speakers. But nothing else happened.

Finally, an announcement came on that we couldn’t understand and everyone started leaving. We guessed that the event had been cancelled, but Lauren stopped one of the locals to ask why.

She explained (in Spanish), “the man with the red pants did not come.”

Yes, the man with the red pants. We wondered if this was a clown or a bull tamer, and headed outside to get a refund. There, we asked one of the organizers, and again, she said the exact same sentence (in Spanish):

“The man with the red pants did not come.”

So we got our money back and headed to the fair grounds, trying not to slip in the mud. All of the usual games were there - including balloons that you throw darts at - and the usual fried dough-treats were around, but everything looked a little more sickly than the county fairs I grew up with. We were scared of the food and the games didn’t seem to have much excitement.

Lauren and Kassie spotted one of the swinging pirate ship rides and decided to go on it. I offered to hold the camera, not one to volunteer for anything involving motion (sickness). So I photographed and prayed while they boarded and rode the pirate ride.

We went back to town afterwards, and because we hadn’t eaten anything, we ended up at a restaurant next door to our hotel that had yet another Ladies Night (with free alcohol).

Lauren and I decided to bring out our cigar and we posed for photos and we slowly smoked it. (the photos have gotten an oddly high number of hits on our pics section, so we ended up hiding some… it’s creepy.) The next day, we couldn’t get the taste or smell of cigar off of us.

We ended up calling it a night sort-of early, since Kassie had to catch a taxi early the next morning.

In the morning, we woke up to tell Kassie goodbye as she left around 4:25 to catch her taxi. Lauren and I dozed back to sleep until a loud banging on our door woke us up at 4:40am. It was the French owner, dressed only in a towel.

“The taxi is here. Where is your friend?” he demanded.

“She left already,” Lauren told him. The argued back and forth as Lauren explained that Kassie went outside to wait for the cab more than 10 minutes ago.

After the chaos was over, with the taxi driver yelling at Lauren, we laid back down in bed.

We guessed that the taxi was late and that Kassie had flagged another cab down, but we had no way of confirming our suspicions. It was too late to go to the bus station to check, and we would be leaving Jaco before Kassie would likely get to an internet place to let us know that she was okay.

We fitfully slept the rest of the night. Lauren got up early to go to an internet place to email Kassie. There wasn’t anything more we could do, so we packed our bags and walked down the street to wait for the first bus we would have to take to meet up with Lauren’s uncle, who happened to be in Costa Rica at the same time.

P.S. We ended up hearing from Kassie that afternoon. The taxi was late and she did flag another one, which had a woman taxi driver who was apparently much nicer than the one that yelled at us. She even waited for Kassie’s bus to come before she took off. So all is safe and sound, once again.