05.29.07

An Introduction to Guaro - Burning Water in Montezuma

Posted in HUMILIATIONS, Travels at 9:33 pm

It’s always risky fun to drink the locally-made alcoholic products. You don’t go to Germany to order a Miller Lite, and you shouldn’t come to Texas without a disappointingly bland Shiner Bock. And when traveling to Costa Rica, your desired weapon of self-destruction is Guaro.

Gauro is short for Aguardiente, which literally means “burning water”. It is made of fermented sugar cane that is grown, bottled, and distributed in Costa Rica. The dominant brand is Calcique. The drink is popular amongst poor farmers, mainly due to its low cost and slightly better taste than Pine-Sol. The initial smell reminded me of Vodka, but I could have only dreamed for such a smooth, palatable drink.

Cacique Guaro is only 70 proof, but after a few drinks of the substance, you will begin wondering if Costa Ricans understand that “70 proof” means 35% alcohol, not 70%. The day after a Guaro night can only be described as something short of Hell on earth, with mind-splitting headaches that will vaporize your migraine medications. Once you set out to have a Guaro night, you must realize that your next day is completely and miserably screwed, and there is nothing you can do about it but laugh and hope you took more pictures than I did.

Guaro’s dry and sharp flavor dominates any commonly-used mixer that comes in its path, such as cola or orange juice. However, there is hope. Some drinks, such as Fresca or Squirt, will mask the misery of drinking heavy amounts of this toxin. Another good one that Billy and I used was a strong, red energy drink named Maxx.

My first Guaro experience was spectacular. Billy and I were in Montezuma, which is oftentimes titled “Montefuma” by locals and travelers due to its high usage of marijuana. We traveled by ferry, which was quite a nice experience. But there was no time for pot-smoking for me and Billy, we were on a mission to get severely black-out drunk, and do it fast.

After buying the bottle of liquor, which cost roughly US $5 (a somewhat bad sign when buying liquor, no?), along with cups and mixers, we headed down the main street towards the beach. On the way, a worthless bum with long, dirty hair and very few teeth, screams at us, at which Billy replies with one of my favorite quotes from the trip:

Worthless bum: TALK TO ME GUYS!
Me: *Laughs in this guys face and keeps walking*
Billy: FUCKING CALIFORNIANS! They come here on vacation and never fucking leave!

How did we know this turd was from California? I don’t know. You just do. I have been intensely studying these people for the past 5 months, and still can’t put my finger on it. But when I do figure it out, you will be the first to hear about it. Anyway, I digress…

After continuing our rudely-interrupted walk, we made way to the beach, fired up some drinks, and did some bodysurfing with some girls. Two hours later, the bottle was gone, and I was sugar cane drunk. Life was good.

Click on the few pictures in the album and you’ll see how this bottle stripped Billy’s very soul. The night continued with a ton of beer and the local soccer championships, after which we danced and Billy and I don’t remember making it home. We do, however, remember the bus ride the next day. You could describe it as “torturous”.

Not wanting to keep this experience a secret to the rest of my friends and family in the states, I brought home some Cacique, and it will be involved in another party - my trip back to Austin. Coming soon after we finish up the Costa Rica series!

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05.25.07

Costa Rica Boat Tours - The Circle of Life

Posted in Travels at 12:33 am

It only took three billion years of evolution on planet earth, but the ultimate circle of life has finally been achieved… and destroyed all in one day.

On May 9th, 2007, Billy and I rode in the back of a truck with some tour guides to get to the Palo Verde Boat Tours near Bolson and Santa Cruz, Guanacaste.

While waiting for other tourists to come, Billy dropped a shrimping net, and managed to catch a shrimp. It was a small critter, but would server our purpose in an effort to become self-proclaimed Gods, if only for a day. Using this shrimp, we hatched a plan that would spark controversy for years to come, and would ultimately ban us from the state of Kansas. We would use the shrimp to catch a fish (pictured to the right).

The wheels of divine purity already in motion, we then embarked on the tour. We saw several Cebus monkeys, inluding one crazy one that actually came onto the boat looking for food! There were also many birds, a bunch of iguanas, Howler monkeys, and of course, crocodiles… many crocodiles.

In order to fulfill our destiny of food-chain disruption, we headed downstream to the area where many crocs hang out, and spotted a nice-sized crocodile near land. We tossed the fish there, and after a minute of watching it flop around, the crocodile jumped to the task and slowly began eating it. The croc played with the poor fish for a while, and then positioned the fish properly and chomped down for the final crunchy bite. The women on the boat shrieked in resounding terror, imagining what this beast would do to their nimble arms. But the men knew better. We knew that it was time. Time to complete the circle of life.

Billy and I rolled up our sleeves. The plan was set: We would jump into the water, sneak up on the crocodile, and destroy the inferior creature with our bare hands. After which, we would eat it, and use the scrap meat to catch more shrimp. This feat would not only put us on top of the food chain, it would establish us as the eternal governors. It almost seemed too easy.

There was just one problem: Billy got cold feet. As we argued about the impending crocodile attack in order to usurp Mother Nature’s position and become self-proclaimed messiahs, Billy’s true colors came out. Billy had been there before, and he didn’t want to go back. As it turns out, Billy is Satan. The horns in the picture here are clear proof of this, as is his angry face and red clothing.

No longer wanting to tangle with God and Satan all in the same day, I decided to let the croc be, giving him domination over the global food chain, at least for the day. And after meeting Satan himself, I decided that rather than take over the world, we’d do the next best thing: eat tons of delicious food at Chico Cocodrillo and then get violently black-out drunk in Montezuma – story coming soon in two blog articles.

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05.18.07

Costa Rica Bar Review: Bar Tazmania in Santa Cruz and Caraño in Bolson, Guanacaste

Posted in Travels at 12:33 am

May 8th, 2007 was a spectacular day for a number of reasons. First, it was a day in where Billy and I got out of San Jose, Costa Rica, which you can imagine isn’t on my top 10 list of places to raise a family. But more importantly, it was a long travel day which introduced me to some of the coolest dive bars that you will never have a chance to visit.

Photos from this day can be found here on bertopics.com.

Before the trip began, we ate breakfast at some small coffee shop restaurant on the outskirts of San Jose. After a bus ride to Santa Cruz, Rowler and I had a few hours to kill. Once the obligatory postcards were dropped off at the post office (and most likely never to be seen again), it was time to hit the bar. Specifically, Bar Tazmania – a nice local watering hole where you can get free meat soup with every beer until 11pm. You can get to Bar Tazmania by walking down the street past the two old women who sit on the step and talk about how much of a doll Billy is, not knowing that he understands Spanish.

For a whopping 700 Colones, Bar Tazmania offers a bottle of Pilsen and a bowl of their famed delicious meat soup. The menu in the picture to the left has the choices of meat soup you can get from the little old lady working in the back – we chose the tried-and-true Carne Mexicana. There is also some interestingly tangy hot sauce on the table, which has onions built in as well. After this drink and snack, I elected to pick up the tab, which equated to $2.70. I think I’ve been charged that much in LA for looking at a damned beer.

We then traveled to Billy’s town of Bolson, which is in the province of Guanacaste. You can imagine the look of fright on this poor little girl’s face when two big, sweaty white guys sat next to her on the bus, which was at least 150 degrees due to the closed windows because of the rain.

Further installments of mikeroberto.com will feature Bolson, but one of the highlights of the night was our trip to Caraño. Upon our arrival, the local bus drivers were hanging out there. Billy and I discussed the educational systems of the United States, but it didn’t take many beers before we began doing some educating ourselves: We taught the Costa Ricans about words that you do not want to tell American women. Some such words that begin with the letters B, C, and P. Use your imagination.

There is no way I could reliably tell you how to get to this bar. My best guess is to walk down the dirt path on Billy’s street where the cows like to escape, and pray that the cows that have escaped are not angry bulls looking to gore two drunken gringos in their asses.

These two bars on May 8, 2007 are two of my favorite bars ever. They are cheap, friendly, and complete dives where people are warm and food is spicy. If you can’t get along at these bars, you don’t belong at a bar in the first place.

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05.14.07

How to Poop in the Caribbean Sea (or Atlantic Ocean)

Posted in Travels at 9:51 pm

Last week, Billy and I visited Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, a seedy beach town which was fortunate enough to be the training grounds for a newfound talent that I am going to teach to you here.

As an American, you are going to make certain mistakes in your traveling life. One such mistake is to overindulge in delicious street-vendor cuisine, which has been festering in a giant bacterial breeding ground: a huge bowl in the hot, humid, Costa Rican sunlight.

Not wanting to disappoint your friends, you will choose to go to the beach rather than to miserably sweat inside a sauna of a bathroom. While at the ocean, you are inevitably going to be pressed with one of life’s most burdensome issues: The need to poop while at the beach.

On one hand, you can always make the long walk back to the hotel room, do your business, and put your cold, salty swim shorts back on and walk back to the beach. On the other hand, you can do what real men do: poop in the ocean, or in this case, the Caribbean Sea.

In order to avoid absolutely humiliating yourself like this gentleman here, you are going to need some skilled technique. The following steps outline how to take care of business without ruining your fun in the sun:

1. Get in the water, preferably shoulder-deep.
2. Swim a hundred feet away from where you have been playing. It is important to make sure that nobody is around you¹.
3. Make sure that some waves are coming, but not too intense of waves that you’ll get capsized and blown onto your own turds while maneuvering this situation
4. Face away from the beach so as the waves pull your deposits away from you
5. Untie your shorts. Now comes the critical part.
6. Pull your pants down so that as much of your ass is showing, but crouch over so that your weenis is still covered as much as possible. If you are crazy, you can just take off the shorts and hold them, but I have fears of fish trying to eat my package.
7. Tread water with your hands. Keep your pants in position by spreading your legs as much as possible (it won’t be much, as the backside of your shorts will be around your thighs)
8. Let it rip. As soon as you feel a turd coming up, paddle/tread as far forward as you can. Move a bit sideways if it makes you feel better.
9. Repeat until done.
10. Saddle back up, swim back to the side and THEN back inland, and brag to all of your guy and girl friends about your massive accomplishments.

Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of this incident, and I only took a few pictures in Puerto Viejo, but you can see them here. The main Costa Rica album will be updated throughout this blog here. Note that Angry Crab (pictured right) is mad that you are pooping in the ocean!

Please feel free to add any comments, critiques, or personal techniques. Perhaps we will start a web site devoted to pooping in large bodies of water.

Either way, Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica was a good time with Billy and Trainwreck, and there will be more about Costa Rica in postings to come. Stay tuned!

¹ It is a near guarantee that the nearest person of the opposite sex will start to advance onto you, as happened in my case. While girls have generally left me alone for the first 25 years of my life, the one time when I don’t want them to be coming near me, they start swimming over, no doubt.

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05.08.07

Dear San Jose Thieves

Posted in Travels at 7:42 am

Hello, it is Mike Roberto and Billy Lowery - the two gringos you unsuccessfully attempted to steal from yesterday in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica.

It is with great pleasure that I revel in your humiliation, knowing that your day was ruined and that you had to get off the street (if only for a few hours), hurting your pitiful business. You must have felt like complete shit when we caught you opening my bag and trying to steal my camera. The surprised look on your face when Billy pushed your fat ass and launched into a tirade of insults in Spanish was priceless. Your failed attempts not only disgraced yourselves, they disgraced your country.

You are worthless pieces of shit and I can honestly say that I wish nothing but a slow and painful death to you. Be happy that we were smart and didn’t throw your pathetic asses through the store window.

You were outsmarted, outclassed, and out-witted by Billy. His amazing reaction was the last thing you expected, and it showed. He is 1000 times the man you will ever be. I am glad to have friends like Billy who can be trusted, unlike your disgraceful souls.

Please stay out of the U.S., and more importantly, stay the hell out of my bag. You cannot ruin the wonderful trip that I am on.

Rot in hell, and thank you Billy.
Berto

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