ROADTRIP to Atenas

So, last Monday, when five of us polished off a bottle of Tequila, we came up with a brilliant idea: a roadtrip to Atenas.  (Mondays are becoming notorious for excellent ideas: see Boogie Days.)  So, yesterday morning, I fifth wheeled it with Jeni, Scott, Pepper, and Ozzie, and we packed up and headed to Atenas.  Now, first, for those of you that don't know, Atenas is a town of about 25,000 located in the mountains between here and San Jose.  And generally, I know nothing about Atenas.  Except that Ozzie lived there for perhaps most of his life.  

So, we took off in the Silver Bullet at 8:00 AM, not really knowing where we were going, and definitely not knowing why.  We put on some awesome music, and did a lot of seat dancing, laughing, yelling, singing, and storytelling (GET OUT OF THE CAR JENI, Capitan Coyote y Pimienta Picante, to name two).  We stopped to get a round of Cuba Libre's in cans in Orotina.  I don't know quite how to explain this, but there was love spilling out of this little car.  It's like there was a ray of sunshine falling down on our chariot as Scott navigated us through the twists and turns of the two lane highway snaking through the mountains.  Even before we got to Atenas, it had been an absolutely wonderful day.  I could feel life throughout my body, and laughed frequently even when there was nothing to laugh about.  

We stopped by Ozzie's mom's restaurant, and then by her hotel for a second on the way to two waterfalls tucked in just past the town of Tecares (AKA Tecate).  The falls were spectacular (pictures forthcoming), and we all got a little high, seemingly from partial asphyxiation from all the water in the air.  We swam in the refreshingly cold water, and left as the thunderstorms began to roll in over the mountains.  After another exquisite ride in the Bullet, we landed back at Ozzie's mom's home, where we napped on couches after wrestling with his German Shephards.  Ozzie's mom came home full of life and cheer around five or six, and we dined on delicious chicken, rice, beans, sausages, tortillas, and salad.  Scott suffered through vicious attacks from both Ozzie's guard-cat, who thinks he's a dog, and a scorpion hiding in the upholstery of an outdoor chair.  We were all lucky enough, including Ozzie's mom, to see Scott preform the world's quickest strip dance, dropping his drawers in under a second after being stung on the ass by the monster insect.  Good fun for all of us, with the possible exception of Scott.  

After I almost backed off a 500 foot cliff, we made our way home late night, using our emergency flashers the entire trip to make up for a lack of taillights.  We arrived back around 11:00, when we parted ways under an almost full moon, and I retired to my castle and crashed into my bed into a dreamless sleep after suffering through the second half of "Che".  Awesome day.  Awesome day.