www.CostaRicaTicas.com

YO King C:
A lot of what you say is true but you young guys 59 years and below, expecially 40 to 55, can feel rejuvenated and rightly so.....you still have an adequate supply of bullets left in that pee shooter. Actually up until about 3 years ago I had a good bit more spring in my step when in CR but my life long habit of non stop party time has finally taken it's toll. Yes, our egos are inflated with a 20 year old chica sitting in our laps and stroking what's left of the family jewls but that is strictly a dinero induced and blind reality sensation. BUT, it's damn sure better than bad attitude gringas.

I firmly believe that when most of us step off that plane in a foreigh land we take on a new identity. Yes, portions of our regular self are still intact and surprisingly not all but a number of us metamorphase into a younger, more daring dude with soldier of chica fortune aspirations. All of us have a least a partial identity change. There is a little actor in just about everyone and Gawd, have I played my share of rolls. Amazing how we even rationalize the dinero we blow and how we rave about things we would readily discount back in the states. We have found our "Lost Horizon"....our Shangri-la.

Is it not humorous how we convince ourselves into thinking just about all of these women want us. And, that sometiimes shy person we were is still back in the states and this form I've taken on must be a result of the "Body Snatchers" and damn.....now I'm a hunk & wolf stud. This actor business is fun. Too bad it is a one act performance short trip.

Then we board the return flight and our worn out body sinks into the crevices of the seat. Ever notice how it seems to be more quiet on the return flight? As the plane lifts off we feel that part of us at home slowly breating back into our bodies. As we go through our wallet we notice how the Franklins and Grants also changed identities and became Hamiltons and Lincolns along with a couple of stow-away one thousand colone bills. Thoughts of manana begin to creep into our minds and the toils and troubles of our gringo life again cloud our mind and emotions. We age almost a score of years older and those minor aches we hid for several days again return. As the sound of the landing gear subsides we reflect on that person we were while in CR and we begin a new desire to become that person again. Going to miss that dude for awhile.

_________________
Damn if I'm going to repeat this shit again. I need a drink.
I've been drinking vodka every day for 45 years and I have certainly never found it to be habit forming.

Yo Circus:

Dude....... You still got a little spring in your step.

There is always that return trip to CR....

See ya later

KC

Sir, once again you have blown me away with your eloquence in describing a phenomenon that I experienced, but had been to this point unable to fully verbalize. We may never meet, but I hope that we do; it's obvious that I could learn a lot from you.




More than youth (I turned 48 yesterday), Costa Rica allows me to play the role of someone else. Yes, the essence of my personality remains intact, and God knows that the blindness doesn't go away. Still, I metamorphose from mundane blind Paul into "El Ciego," a combination of Zorro, Daredevil, Hugh Hefner and Mister Magoo. Everything becomes interesting and very little hurts. I can suffer the slings and arrows of mediocre beer, nasty air pollution and high-octane hustlers while I wander through my own utopia.

The fact that this utopia is mostly illusory matters little. Yes, I'm still blind Paul, still 50 pounds overweight, still in lousy physical shape, still clumsy at most things...but no one knows my stateside self, so my chosen role isn't tough to sell to a local audience.

Everyone in my God-forsaken little Midwestern town already knows my weaknesses and tends to prey upon them. The gringa women I know here believe that they've already got me figured out. Part of my success in playing/selling my role as El Ciego is that in C.R., I'm as strange to them as they are to me.

I'm rambling a bit, and I apologize, but I want to make the point (to King costa as well as others reading this thread) that it's not just about feeling younger. Costa Rica becomes a perfect stage for the actor that circus points out is in all of us.

Sometimes I get the feeling expressed by Steely dan: "Any world that I'm welcome to...Is better than the one I come from." This is true in C.R., where my dollars go farther than here, where younger women (for whatever reason) act like they find me more attractive, where I can become, and be El Ciego.

_________________
Pura Vulva! Wandering through the dark, I am El Ciego.

Great thread, brought out the best of the best. La favorita knocked 15 years off me first night, 10 the second. Haven't quite gained it all back yet. And I've got a bit more youthful mojo to work with during withdrawal week back home. Just gotta remember to quit moping around on this here computer with youse guys, and do forward-moving stuff like get to the gym and get my dinero-earning back on track.

The King has spoken, indeed, but I think Gringotim's list oughta be the post of the month or maybe we just set up decoy sites with those types of warnings, to keep the numbers of competing Gringos down?

(Sorry Admins, I know that chasing people away ain't in your business model, but I'd say from meeting you and others that you have succeeded in drawing quality to this site and to CR, and the friends I've met really make it work better. It's a master level of chica-chasing I never got to in HS, college, or with buds afterward. We do hunt in packs, don't we?)

YO El Ciego:

Young man, you do yourself proud in your commentary. You're also not afraid to identify that "other person" you portray......a lot of guys can't. It's those who never venture out, take a risk, change identities or explore other cultures that are truly blind. Your vision will be OK with your other senses in gear.

El Ciego:

I really like the honesty in your post. The way you portray yourself in your "gringo life".

Just like me, when I hit San Jose, I'm King Costa, my real self minus 25 years.

Reminds of a great saying "Youth is wasted on the young". Hell, in CR I have the maturity and experience of a 51 y.o. with a 25 y.o. mindset.

It just doesn't get much better. As I posted previously, I am very lucky to have a wonderful GF down there. She has become a fine companion.
She is everything I could ask for in a fine lady. I still sometimes pinch myself to see if it really isn't a dream.

King Costa

This kind of experience for us viejos/oldies (I'm in my early 50s), reminds me of the concept of the "Triune brain", which postulates that our brain and thus our thoughts are categorized in three ways, the reptilian brain, fight or flight stuff; the mammalian (or limbic), instiincts, emotions; and the cortex, higher thought functions which seperates us from the rest of the mammalian population.

The depths of the male ego is definitely situated in reptilian and mamalian, and even though we know we're paying for it in CR, the male ego simply feels the rewards of having the attention, "love" and the bodies of young, beautiful women.

You walk into the DR, ZB, NF and your cortex shuts off - you just ride on the feeling of being King, Alpha male, being stroked. Nothing like a lovely young woman to make you lose 20 years in a second. And it's pinging a very deep and old portion of our brains.

Our cortices can tell us that is not really real later on, blah,blah, blah...in the meantime the enjoyment of this very special experience is like nothing else.

Great observation, Philo -- we're wired this way -- no amount of rationalization or social engineering is going to change us (just keep most of the Gringo competition away from CR, thank yew!)

Cremaconpalo cited a Washington Post article on another thread saying that the median age of US Hispanics (43 million of them) is 27, for US whites it's 40. Looking up Costa Rica, it's now 26 for females.

http://www.travelblog.org/World/cs-ppl.html

For me, the demographics are saying "Hang around US whites if you want to spend the rest of your life with old, sick, spoiled, complaining -- OK, I'll stop now -- declining people. Aim for Costa Rica in 10 years or so, and meanwhile, get to know the US Latinas." It's a plan!

>>>14. in many cases, the casinos have 'strange' rules...you really have to be on guard<<<

Can you elaborate on this as if I make it to SJ I plan to be playing a lot of roulette? Are you implying I am going to have problems getting back to the hotel with winnings?