I may not be the most assiduous soccer fan but I always watch the World Cup or at least I have been watching it since 1990. Every year, I root for Italy to win. Today, I was very surprised to see that Costa Rica won the match against the Azzurri. So much so, that I began to look through my notes about Costa Rica and whether I had ever had a conversation about soccer while I was visiting there four years ago. No surprise but I did not. I discussed many topics while in Costa Rica studying Spanish and living with a family but not soccer so it came as a surprise to me today that they beat Italy. Perhaps I need to look more closely at this country.

It was a beautiful place I remember and the Tica people were lovely but it just wasn’t the country for me. Perhaps it was my state of mind at the time or what I was doing there but I have never had the same feeling about Costa Rica that most Americans seem to. Maybe I need to give it another try. As a wine destination, it didn’t offer much if memory serves but apparently I had this bottle of Shiraz. Although I can find no information about it either in my notes or online. Not local grapes obviously, I’m not sure where the wine was bottled.

All that said, here are a couple of long posts I wrote about my trip to Costa Rica.

What I do remember about the country was the amazing fruit and the lush vegetation. I also found the hummingbirds quite impressive. I guess travel really is not only about the destination but about your state of mind. Maybe soccer is the same..