Costa Rica!!!, the beach, and a caipirinha clinic

I've never wanted to be wrong so badly as when I watched Costa Rica take down my 'sure-thing' pick for group D, Italy.  In one fell swoop, they advance as the almost-guaranteed #1 seed in their group, eliminated England (my other pick to advance), and set up a do-or-die game between Italy and Uruguay.  Most impressively, Costa Rica wasn't lucky; they simply outplayed Italy.  Costa Rica pressed Italy in possession, won 50-50 balls, and attacked wisely.  Instead of breaking down the wing and putting in a hopeful cross, they attack to the corner and build from that position.  They either work around the top of the box, or let their tricksters beat a man to put in a purposeful cross; this is what led to their goal.  They defend as a unit, and caught the Italians in the offside trap time and time again (though a few of them weren't actually offsides).  When Costa Rica beat Uruguay, I passed it off as 'these things happen', but when Italy looked similarly cold...  It's tough to deny that Costa Rica isn't the real thing.  I wonder if they'll be able to stifle England and sweep the hardest group in the tournament, and I hope so!

I didn't watch the other two games, because we went to the beach and then to downtown Fortaleza for dinner.  The beach was beautiful at sunset, the water was refreshing, and we could still hear the 'gooooooool's from the beachside restaurants to keep up to date with the soccer games.

Downtown Fortaleza was more or less what I expected, an extension of the beach lifestyle but with pants and shoes instead of speedos and sandals.  The square, which was empty at 9pm and full at 11pm, was home to 8 or so bar carts.  Some had a range of drinks, and some specialized in caipirinhas.  Sensing my opportunity to figure out how to make a caipirinha correctly, I ordered one from a friendly middle-aged Brazilian woman.  She put two heaping tablespoons of sugar in a tall plastic cup, and expertly cut the ends off two limes.  She sliced half of one into circles, and cut the other into eight chunks.  The slices went into the plastic cup, and she juiced the chunks with a hand-held press on top of them.  Then she 'muddled' the limes by mashing them with a plastic rod for a couple minutes.  She started pouring cachaca into a cup while speaking Portuguese, and I didn't realize she was asking me how much cachaca I wanted until there was a quite a bit in the cup.  Her creation didn't fit in a plastic cup so she filled a second one halfway, and charged me 5 Reals (~$2.25).  No wonder the caipirinha is regarded as a 'low-class' drink, they're incredibly cheap.  A whole bottle of cachaca is 8 Reals ($3.50), limes are 3 Real/kg (basically free), and sugar is similarly cheap, which means the ice was probably the costliest part of my drink.  That explains why, unlike anywhere else that has ever served me a drink, she asked how much cachaca I wanted!

Today I'm off to see Germany v. Ghana at the Estadio Castelao.  An emphatic German victory is the best outcome for USA, so keep your fingers crossed!