Moving to Puerto Viejo

At 7:00 the shuttle driver shows up. One look at the expression on his face when he saw all the bags indicated that things were not going to go as smoothly as I had hoped. He spent half an hour on the phone with the somebody in one of the office. I was informed that I had been told that I could bring one large suitcase. “Really and who told me that?” Well, apparently Mr Head office didn’t have the voucher in front of him so he backed down a bit and said that they had 4 other people to bring along with their luggage and that we would not all fit. I wished him well in explaining this to the other 4 people, but this was not my problem. I said, I could have shipped these bags yesterday for 2,500 Colones apiece if I had been told that I couldn’t bring them after asked, but that it was too late now. He called back 5 minutes later and asked if I would agree to an additional $40 fee for transporting all of my bags. I agreed and off we went. My driver, Oscar, didn’t speak a word of english. We never picked anybody else up, presumably they went in another van.

Oscar pointed out the various crops, “papaya, arroz, pina, canos de azugar”. I’d seen papaya. The rice fields didn’t look anything like the paddies I expected from VC films. Pineapples are pretty distinctive. Nobody had pointed out sugar cane to me before. We had a conection point in Siquirres where my bags were placed in a van that was the exact same size as the van I had been transported in. This van already had four passengers and their luggage.

The cast, a very attractive an friendly dutch couple. I think attractive, friendly are redundant with respect to Dutch, both in my encounters with them abroad and in the Netherlands. A very pleasant looking woman with strong asian influences but nothing strong enough that I would care to guess a country, probably half asian and half european, she currently resides in Oregon. The final character was, well one glance, an American hailing from San Francisco.

After breakfast it was time to board the bus, kind of an awkward moment. The asian girl had her stuff in the front seat next to the driver and retook her spot. The dutch returned to the rear seat and the American and I looked a each other awkwardly. All the boys have very wide shoulders. You don’t want to sit next to us in coach.

I got in first, there was no way she was going to be able to fasten her seat belt and sit in the seat next to me with out leaning at 30 degree angle, but the jump seat saved the day.

Turns out she volunteered to assist the Bribri indians in counting birds. Yes this week there were going to 118 thousand species of raptor on the reservation. I said “raptor as in hawks, eagles, buzzards…” She added “and kites.” I objected “There are only about 850 species of birds in Costa Rica.” She replied that these other were just migrating. “Let me ask again did you say 118,000 species of raptors?” She pulled out her iphone and clicked around for a while and said “oh, you’re right.”

How did she get this position? There was a posting in a biological journal. Oh are you studying biology? No, I just want to help. Ahh it all became clear to me now. Who covers your expenses? “While I cover my airfare and I give them $700 to cover food and lodging.” Now, I have been to the Indian reservation. She will be eating about $2/day worth of rice,beans and other local produce, living 4 to a cabin with no air conditioning. I’m sure they would have been just as happy if she sent the money and didn’t come to do any work.

Well apparently they have to leave 2 Indians around at all times. One walks around looking really Indian and the other runs the gift shop. I never saw any other Indians while I was at the place.

No matter what we were talking about the woman from Oregon wanted to make it about her. The Dutch had picture of some monkeys they had taken in Tortuguero, she wanted us to know she had been to Bali and they have monkeys there. She worked Palau into the conversion and everybody waited for her to finish her non sequitur. The volunteer asked about how I drove down here, I told her it was a lot better with a GPS and told here were you could get software for your Garmins with really accurate information. Oregon wanted us to know that when she was in Prague….

Everybody was dropped off, I was last, as I was further south than Puerto Viejo. The van driver looked at my driveway with a “what the f..k” look on
his face. As I didn’t want to shlep my bags up the hill I decided to goad him. “I was here two weeks ago, and I drove up that in a yaris. It’s kind of tricking driving. Man those things have really low ground clearance not like this van. But if you think it is too much for you, I understand.”

Well that did it. He was going to get the van up there. It took about 8 attempts. And no, there was no way in hell I would have attempted this in a Yaris.

I went past the gate, got the key from Saskia and Jerry came with me to help with the bags. Jerry is a skinny little tico, seventeen years of age, he can’t weigh more than 90 pounds. He grabbed two duffel bags at a time and walked up the hill and placed them near the front door. These bags weigh 40 to 50 pounds apiece, the hill is steep and has no steps. I fumbled with the key and by the time I got the door unlocked and the four duffels he had brought everything but the chair, which I managed.

Home! Finally.

Check out Mi Casa

Hell it was 1:00 in the afternoon. The day was just beginning. I’ll try to catch you up tomorrow.

Moving On - Next Stop Puerto Viejo

Saturday 2008-08-29 AM

Tomorrow I am moving with my goods to my new home. Hopefully this will satisfy me for years to come. I have an occupant in my house. I pay the mortgage, the insurance, the property tax and repairs and he pays me nothing. Will somebody please buy my house.

This week’s final gonzo post.

This morning I set off too early to book transportation to Puerto Viejo. I finally found something open around 7:30. Unfortunately the girl worked for a booking company, not Interbus and couldn’t find the hotel I was staying at after I gave her a business card and pointed it out on the map. She said, “that is the bungee jump company”, no dear, but you’re close. Actually this is where my friggin’ hotel is, which is near but just past the bungee jumping place. She told me the shuttle company could not find the place, and that I should show up at the bus company with my bags. I tried to explain to here that “door to door” service does not mean the company office to my hotel.

Rather than, well any of the large number of antisocial acts that were scrolling through my head suggestions for action in bad horror film I simply told her I would be back at 8:30. At the scheduled time I went directory to the Interbus office and the entire transaction took maybe 1 minute. He wrote down “Hotel Ruth”, which is not anywhere near “ApartHotel Arenal” in name, but Ruth is the owner and I figured we were good. I confirmed “they will take all of my bags and pick up at the hotel?” He have me a big nod, a thumbs up and big “Pura Vida”
Packing

Four duffel bags, a suitcase, two back packs and a computer are packed.

Here is my sportsman GPS. Where is the belt clip? Is it packed?

Rocking chair in box? Check. Did I really walk across town with that on my head a couple of days ago?

Belt clip for GPS? Who the hell knows.

Look under the beds. Behind the bathroom drawer. Whatever, it’s either packed or gone.

Catch the bus and move on.

CNBC commentators are arguing. Do I even have a TV hookup at the new house? If I get satellite will it point straight up?

Tools, where are all of my tools? A man needs tools, wrenches, screw drivers, things that cut and grind.

Monteverde

Yesterday we headed out to Monteverde first thing in the morning, which was not exactly as early as intended. On the way we saw a bunch of signs pointing to a German Bakery, so we decided to take a peek inside. The smell of fresh bread was overwhelming, and we knew we had come to the right place; good bread is much harder to find down here than expected. We picked up four loafs of bread, two black bread, a multi-grain, and the fourth being whatever else it was that they had. Mark’s sweet tooth called out and he got a cupcake and a honey bun as well. With the bread in the bag we got back in the car and were now ready to make the rest of the trek.

A couple hours, a bunch of dirty rough roads, and two and a half loaves of bread later we had shown up to a little tourist booth just outside of town, and we booked a canopy zip-line tour, a night tour, and a hotel for the night. We went into the town to find our hotel at the Sunset Inn, and met the owner, who happened to be a German sharing the same last name as us; the natural thing to do seemed to be to share our delicious, fresh baked, German bread with him, which he gladly accepted. Pressed for time we shipped out and drove deeper into the city, but ended up getting a little lost with the lack of signs pointing towards where we needed to go, and showed up a little late, but ended up hopping onto the end with the group; if we joined the later tour we would have been late for our bus pick-up for the night tour. They started off a bit slow, but as we got further in on the tour the zips got longer, higher up, and faster. Unfortunately there was a lot of waiting in line for several of the zips, and time grew close as we were supposed to be picked up from our hotel by bus at 5:30. To our surprise they had a Tarzan swing for us to do 3 zips before the finale, which was quite the rush. We got some videos of that, which I’m sure will be put up here in some way shape or form. The last two zips were amazing, crazy fast, and so long that the end couldn’t even be seen, and we were high above the trees. While waiting in line for the very last one, the zip spanning a mighty 1km, the person in front of us began to shake and break down, wondering if there was another way that he could get back to the start, but he was able to get up the nerve and do it. For this one we had to be paired up, probably needed the weight to make it all the way to the end. We zoomed all the way back to the start, watched a couple more people come in, and got to the car to get back to the Sunset Inn to drop off our bags and get picked up by the bus. <> showed us our room, we dropped off our belongings, and were alerted that the bus was already here to pick us up, so we left and boarded. We picked up several more passengers and went on to the night tour.

The guides there recognized us from earlier at the canopy tours. We were given our flashlights and were guided through the woods. Before the tour even officially began a family of four raccoons emerged from the woods and scampered about. There was two other groups being led about so we went to the other half of the woods to get some privacy, so that all the animals wouldn’t have already been scared away. We saw oodles of insects, and learned some neat facts about them as well. My brother and I were spotting out at least half of the stuff during the tour, but we were going flashlight crazy looking for animals and insects. We learned about some trees, plants, and other animals. I was constantly on the lookout for the Kinkajou, which I learned could best be found during a night tour in the cloud forest (I had wanted to see one since my first visit to Costa Rica 12 years earlier, and since then it had become my favorite animal). There were lots of bats flying around as we looked at mostly insects, but they were interested in this strange fruit that was growing everywhere. We wandered around for a while and we came close to another group, and I thought I heard one of them mention something about a kinkajou, but I figured I had misheard. At this point the guide received a message on his walkie talkie about a “martilla” which is the Spanish name for a Kinkajou, and also the Olingo. Quickly we ran over there and I was finally able to catch a glimpse of one, he was being lazy in the tree but he was climbing around for a bit. I could have stared at him for quite a while but we had to go on with the tour, it was a while before the smile slid off of my face. Some more insects, spiders, plants, and bats later, the tour was over, and we headed into town to grab some food. We had some tipico (typical Costa Rican food) and finished it off across the street with some sushi. The waiter at the sushi bar was a different tour guide from the night walk, it seems that they just can’t get enough work! Content and happy we headed back to our lovely room at the Sunset Inn, and crashed for the night.

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Monteverde

My dad woke up this morning and went for a small walk. He met up with me while I was eating my delicious breakfast and mentioned that he had encountered quite a large bird which he could not identify. After my brother ate we went to the Hanging Bridges at ???????? , the same place as the zip lines tour. It was a major disappointment after seeing everything at the bridges in La Fortuna. The only animals we encountered were butterflies, and not even many at that, perhaps it was the screaming sound of the pulleys and the literally screaming people riding them that scared them all off. The Cloud Forest was very misty, wasn’t raining most of the time but all the moisture in the air caused the trees to drip from above. Whenever we would encounter a big beautiful tree full of life, there was a zipline platform up above that I’m sure was too confusing for any animals to wish to live near. We left seeing nothing new and went back into the town and headed over towards the Cheese Factory, where they made over 150 kinds of cheeses. We ordered milk shakes, a banana split, a hamburger, and a hotdog. The hamburger tasted like a Greek gyro’s meat. The shakes and split were pretty good. We overheard a woman discussing to her friend about how she accidentally encountered her first Quetzal when searching for a Bell Bird, so we decided to ask her where she saw this in hopes of catching a Quetzal ourselves. She told us of a little forest and so we headed in that direction. Time was running short for us however as we didn’t wish to have to drive down the pothole infested dirt roads during the dark, so we only wandered around for a little bit, but still saw more wildlife in the 15 minutes we were there than the several hours at the hanging bridges. We left not seeing the bird we came in search of and decided we could quickly run through the Serpentarium before heading out, at this point it had also started to rain. We saw the snakes, lizards, and turtles, and headed back to La Fortuna. We tried to go to the German Bakery to get more black bread but the store was closed, perhaps another day. A confused bird flew in front of us as we got near to the city, cutting left, then right again, and then straight into our windshield; ironically this was right after a conversation about hunting/killing/capturing animals in Costa Rica. After a 50 millisecond moment of silence we pressed onward and eventually made it back.

We went to go for a night hike at the little park we had permission to wander through at our own leisure, but left Mark at the room as he said his stomach was bothering him and he didn’t have his contacts in. We grabbed our flashlights and headed on down the road. Managed to find the park and went in, headlight equipped, and flashlights in hand, ready to find some real wildlife for the day. About 5 minutes in a giant heron type bird burst out honking loudly right in front of our faces causing us to jump back. We didn’t see much else besides that on the walk and then decided to head back to the room to retire.

- Karl

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White water Rafting - Volcano - Bar Maid

We rafted the Rio Toro yesterday. We travelled about 17 kilometers in 60-70 minutes. That is a pretty good clip, a far cry from tubing down the Brazos. Normally this would be a “3 hour tour” (sing the song) but the water was up and moving fast. We have no pictures to share, I don’t think I will be buying them from the tour company as nothing is really in focus, maybe we were moving too fast for a junior photographer.

About 17:00 yesterday it started to get really clear, so we decided to go see the volcano. We drove down near the national park on the base of the volcano and there were cars and tour buses everywhere just past the river. I thought I was going to rip the bottom out of the Toyota Yaris as it bounced off the river boulders. In isolation it would have been a great observation point, but ignorant tourists were everywhere, kids were playing with flashlights, just shining them in random directions and the camera flash from wannabe photographers was rendering our eyes insensitive to the subtle changes in hue of the smoke at the top of the volcano as it started to glow like a cigarette tip.

Mark napped from 3 pm to 5 pm yesterday, Karl and I walked over every street and visited every store for 2/3 of the town. I picked up an 8 port 10/100 mb/s rj45 switch so that we could all use the internet simultaneously and a new headset for skyping.

We gave up and drop to the Arenal Observatory where for a $4 cover fee each we sat in chairs on a lovely deck way farther up the mountain and observed the volcano with people who had a clue, taking time lapsed photographs from tripods or watching through binoculars. Not a one of them thought that the flash from their cell phone would illuminate the top of the volcano that was 2 kilometers away.

I went to bed at 11:00. When I woke up at 6:00 Karl was not here. When he returned at 7:00 he reported that things were a little slow here last night so he went to the bar and was with the barmaid (a California girl) and that she wants him to be his room-mate. Then he went directly to bed. I guess the 8:30 lava trails walk is off..

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Arenal Hanging Bridges

Things got a little out of control here yesterday so we had to defer the white water rafting until tomorrow. We will be going on Rio Toro.
I guess we will head out to the waterfalls at the park after the kids get up. They were out on the town until 4:30 in the morning.

We headed out to Hanging Bridges, just west of the dam on Lake Arenal. It was a beautiful hike with many kilometers of trail on the ubiquitious concrete blocks that are used on trails and driveways in Costa Rica. These blocks have a 10 cm x 10 cm opening through which grass grows, this helps not turn the whole thing into a virtual sluice. Mammalian wildlife was varied and abundant and avian wildlife was plentiful but the area exhibited a herpetological paucity to our untrained eyes and only one reptile was spotted, a very small eyelash palm pit viper. As for primates we spotted a Howler Monkey, 2 or three troops of white faced monkies numbering in total a few dozen and a couple of spider monkeys, the squirrel monkey eluded us.

We encountered our first tapirs while we were on the first bridge. There is not a great deal of subtlety in their motion, the landscape goes into windless convulsions, though spotting them through dense foliage may be a bit more problematic. Pics



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Car Swap

We drove from La Fortuna back to Liberia and swapped out the Caravan for a Toyota. The roads are very narrow here and there is no shoulder. When an 18 wheeler or a bus comes around a turn 2 feet into your lane, there is nowhere to go. Besides it was a gas hog. At 550 Colones per Liter and 5.5 kilometers per Liter I was burning about $60/day in gas and running a high carbon foot print.

I needed better internet connectivity than could be had from the Internet Cafe. I found a place that allows me unlimited number of connections with some pretty good throughput for $10 / day, with my own coffee maker and a place to store my bags. It also has a kitchenette, living room, bedroom with 2 queen sized beds, good air, nice location right on the edge of town, maid service and laundry service.

The feeder hose to the kitchen sink broke this morning during my morning coffee. Triage! Two notebook computers and 2 cell phones were on the floor connected to chargers. 4 duffel bags, 2 suit cases, a computer case were thrown on the beds. Rudy, the landlady’s boyfriend quickly shut off the water but we were an inch deep in water through the whole apartment. The hose had snapped off just where it joined the 1/2″ FIP fitting. Rudy went off and bought a similar replacement line and it kept leaking. I told him he had the wrong type of supply line but he had a hard time believing me because he bought the same kind that had been on there. As the supply was 1/2″ PVC MIP the zinc FIP with washer was never going to do the job. We walked down to the ferreteria (hardware store not a ferret restaurant) and I walked behind the counter and found a nylon supply line. I told him this would work if he hasn’t already damaged the thread on the PVC by over tightening. He had. So for now there is a bucket there, I told him to go off and get a hacksaw, a shutoff valve a 1/2 PVC to 1/2 MIP adaptor, some solvent and glue and we would have it fixed in half an hour.

It is now 10:30 I’ve been dicking with this for about 3 hours, it is time to go out and book a white water rafting trip for tomorrow

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Arenal

We arrived in La Fortuna yesterday, we are staying at Arenal Lodge on the side of one ofMount Arenal.


The volcano had been dormant since October 1922 prior to a VEI=2 eruption in 1968.[2] The eruption wiped out the town of Arenal and killed 87 people.[3] It lasted for several days, and during that time destroyed crops, property, livestock, and forests. Fifteen square kilometers were buried and the explosion affected over 232 square kilometers. It has been active almost continuously since the eruption.

Pics from last night.

It is 8:50 in the morning with a heavy drizzle so I think I will take a pass on the butterfly tour.

Sleeping in a hammock

Friday 8/14/09

I woke up at about 4:30 and my father was missing, the calls of the howler monkeys were absurdly loud. Apparently there are several stimuli that set them off: rain, people, and dawn. It was turning into dawn, and it was about to rain, so it had set them all off. The sky looked really cloudy, so I figured it wasn’t worth trying to go catch the sunrise, so I went upstairs to the hotel and fell asleep for several more hours. I woke up some time later and Mark was still feeling bad, so my dad and I went into town to try to find a bite to eat. We got coffee and omelets, and we asked for salt and pepper to put on our eggs. She brought us the salt and pepper, but also a big jar full of onions, jalapenos, and a bunch of broth with all sorts of who-knows-what dissolved in the acids. Whatever was in it was delicious, and we put it all over our eggs. Shortly after eating that, my father informed me that there were two people taking their pig for a walk across the beach. The pig was cooperating until it came time to cross the street, at which point it started to scream and back up, not wanting to cross this strange ground. They had to push and shove it, and once it got across it, it was already. My dad asked the waitress were the butcher was, turns out he was right down the alley. “This little piggy goes to market, this little piggy doesn’t go home” Turns out they were taking it to the meat market, perhaps the pig knew what was up, poor thing. After that my dad decided he was hungry for some jamon, or ham if you speak English, so we ordered beans and rice and ham. The beans and rice were good, but the ham was not, this is why I usually just stick to chicken when I’m down here. Unable to finish my meal we got up and left and headed back to Manzanillo to check out of our hotel and begin the long haul to La Fortuna. We took a detour on the way back though, and went to go check out the house my dad had rented. We went up the hill and wandered around the backyard, we saw a bunch of birds, admired all the trees, and we even saw a green and black poison arrow dart frog hopping around on the porch, simply awesome. We got back to the hotel, got Mark, got all our stuff, and left for La Fortuna. 7 hours later we arrived here, where we retired to our beds, but I sit here writing this right now. Actually I forgot to mention, we stopped off at the restaurant we ate at as we were leaving the town with the best tipico, and once again the food was amazing. It was a shame my brother was unable to eat due to his stomach hurting him.

Still hanging on the Caribbean

After watching the beautiful sky the night before I was set on waking up before the sunrise and being on the rock that overlooked the ocean by where we had seen the toucans the other day. The alarm went off at 5:30, but by that time the sun was basically already up. I got up and went outside and the sound of birds surrounded me, there were so many and they were everywhere. But with every couple of minutes that passed they became quieter and quieter. I went back to the hotel and Mark and my father were ready at this point, and we got into the car and drove down the road to the trail that we walked the other day and saw the 4 spider monkeys. We didn’t see much though sadly, but the walk was still nice; I think the most interesting thing spotted was a humming bird, but it was too far away to really tell. We went back to the point across the river and walked to the point, but decided to do some further exploring into the jungle. After reaching as far as the trail would let us, we headed back. We got in the car and decided to drive to the two cities over after Puerto Viejo to get some gas, as there wasn’t a gas station anywhere near us. After setting off, we saw the car ahead of us suddenly stop, and there were three girls on the side of the road looking at something. Upon inspection we saw that there was a three toed sloth crawling across the road, its back end had some fecal matter stuck to it (the only reason a sloth comes down from its tree every 3 days is to take a dump) and eventually it made it across and began to climb a tree. It looked back at us and it had a big goofy smile on its face, but we failed at getting any pictures of this. On our drive back we were a bit hungry, and pulled over at a little city and found the, what seemed to be, only open restaurant. We went in and it took quite a while until we got served and the guy working there seemed to be completely clueless, and he kept proving it to us over and over again. Mark got French toast, Jim got an omelet, and I got rice and beans with chicken. He forgot who ordered what, and then after the edible (edible being the only word I could use to describe it) meal he forgot what we ordered to ring us up, and had much difficulty adding up the three meals. Whatever, another location that won’t be revisited, to say the least.

We got back to Puerto Viejo and visited the unenthusiastic French woman again, and she showed us the one house which was just the downstairs of a two story house, with not much of a backyard, it smelled funny, and the shower was outside. It was a good option considering what we had seen thus far though. But we decided we weren’t done and went to the other realtor right down the road, and the man there remembered my dad from two years ago, a much nicer greeting. He told us he had a nice two bedroom house for rent, so we drove down the road to check it out. My dad was basically instantly sold. The woman there was very nice, and she said that her and her father had built the house themselves some time ago. It was up on a hill, had an awesome backyard, and the house was pretty great itself. We ran down to the ATM, got out some money, and came back to give it to her to seal the deal. When we came back she was on the phone with somebody else who was trying to rent the house, and she said something along the lines of, “Oh I’m sorry, the house is rented already” and hung up. We then went back towards Manzinillo and dropped off some laundry at a woman’s house that had a sign up to do laundry. We dropped Mark off at home as his stomach had been hurting him all day; he was laying down in the back of the car during most of the trip. We went down the street to the restaurant that had the massive plates of food and celebrated the successful house finding with some Imperals, and we ordered some civiche, which was made with bass, octopus, and probably a couple of other things. I had only tried civiche once earlier in the trip and it was pretty bad, but my father wanted to order it again to show me that it was actually pretty good, and that it was! After that we went back to Puerto Viejo to use the internet café once again, and then headed back to Manzanillo to drop Mark off again. We went to the restaurant to try to take on that massive plate of food. Some of the things were a little overcooked, especially the shrimp, but it was still a pretty good feast. Shrimp, lobster, crab, mussels, potatoes, and a bit more, good stuff. After that we talked with a couple of locals, and went home to retire, but decided to go crash in the hammocks across the street.

kjs

Back in Puerto Viejo

We got back to Puerto Viejo and visited the unenthusiastic French woman again, and she showed us the one house which was just the downstairs of a two story house, with not much of a backyard, it smelled funny, and the shower was outside. It was a good option considering what we had seen thus far though. But we decided we weren’t done and went to the other realtor right down the road, and the man there remembered my dad from two years ago, a much nicer greeting. He told us he had a nice two bedroom house for rent, so we drove down the road to check it out. My dad was basically instantly sold. The woman there was very nice, and she said that her and her father had built the house themselves some time ago. It was up on a hill, had an awesome backyard, and the house was pretty great itself. We ran down to the ATM, got out some money, and came back to give it to her to seal the deal. When we came back she was on the phone with somebody else who was trying to rent the house, and she said something along the lines of, “Oh I’m sorry, the house is rented already” and hung up. We then went back towards Manzinillo and dropped off some laundry at a woman’s house that had a sign up to do laundry. We dropped Mark off at home as his stomach had been hurting him all day; he was laying down in the back of the car during most of the trip. We went down the street to the restaurant that had the massive plates of food and celebrated the successful house finding with some Imperals, and we ordered some civiche, which was made with bass, octopus, and probably a couple of other things. I had only tried civiche once earlier in the trip and it was pretty bad, but my father wanted to order it again to show me that it was actually pretty good, and that it was! After that we went back to Puerto Viejo to use the internet café once again, and then headed back to Manzanillo to drop Mark off again. We went to the restaurant to try to take on that massive plate of food. Some of the things were a little overcooked, especially the shrimp, but it was still a pretty good feast. Shrimp, lobster, crab, mussels, potatoes, and a bit more, good stuff. After that we talked with a couple of locals, and went home to retire, but decided to go crash in the hammocks across the street.

Cieling Fan From Hell

What a horrible night’s sleep we had. The fan had haunted all of our dreams. My brother and I both had a series of bad events unfolding in our subconsciouses. The noise from that fan had penetrated our brains and turned a good night’s sleep into a toss and turn fest, separated by horrible sequences of events in our REM. One of the dreams my brother had was of a big scorpion, who would make the exact same sound as the fan as it would run across the ground, he later got punctured in the heart by it right before waking up. One of the dreams I had was of a screeching tornado that was approaching, which also sounded just like the evil fan. Evil evil fan. My dad went out for a walk at about 6, came back at 7 and got me, and we went further down the trail. We first spotted a giant spiderweb in the air that looked just like a vinyl LP, and continued down the trail and we saw one spider monkey initially, two different wood peckers, many butterflies, a long thin brown snake, and a cocoa tree. On the way back we saw a black and green poison arrow dart frog, and 3 more spider monkeys. We were walking down the trail and we saw one spider monkey leap from one tree to the next over the road ahead of us, and we stopped and looked up and watched two more do the same, and then off through the woods they went, just flinging from branch to branch, seemed like a good source of entertainment to me if I were able to do such a feat. We went back to the hotel and got Mark, and then headed off to the beach. Mark began trying to change the topography of the river, as he put it. He began making a big ditch and a dam to try to reroute the flow of water. I joined in after a while, but after a bit of work (we did manage to get the two streams to connect) the rising tide got too high and destroyed the mouth of it, so we gave up and went for a swim. The three of us decided we’d walk along the beach to Punta Uva, so we set off on our way.

We began by going down a little road into some jungle and explored around, it was beautiful in there but eventually we came to where they were clearing trees, probably to build a house. While inside we heard a high pitched whistle, followed by a low pitched whistle from another location. We then saw two little boys running out of the woods away from us, probably thinking we were the “rich white men who owned the area and were cutting down all the forest”. They hopped into their kayaks and paddled away. Then we set off down the beach to Punta Uva. The first stop we made had a bunch of hammocks in the back. We stopped and hung for a little bit, then decided to go into the hotel to get some refreshments. The name of the place was Almonds and Coral, an “eco-friendly” hotel, meaning there were boards that ran through the forest, and crabs and trees could be seen along the pathways, kind of neat. We went to the bar and got three sodas and she asked us for our room number, which we didn’t have, so she wrote us a check and told us to go to the reception desk. We went over there and found out each club soda was a $4, and then asked to see a room. A man came to show us the room, and during the walk he informed us that the rooms cost $325 a night. When we arrived at the room there were two beds with mosquito netting, no air conditioning, the heavy humid tropical air was basically motionless; a hammock in the park would have been much more pleasant.. The kicker of the whole place was that you couldn’t even swim in the beaches behind the place! We thanked the man for his time and left snickering. We saw a family seated inside near the bar and they looked very unhappy, and my brother whispered to me that he would be unhappy too if he was staying there and had to pay such a ridiculous amount for absolutely nothing. We went back to the beach and carried on, eventually the sand started becoming so deep that about every step we’d make would go up to our ankles, so we all took off our shoes and carried them. We walked through more ankle deep sand, a beach littered with twigs that would wash up and down with the waves, and stopped at a big tree on its side that the waves were crashing into. Mark sat down on the log and thought deep thoughts for a minute, and we then pressed on. We passed another hotel which had a bunch of lawn chairs on the beach, and after a bit more walking, we made it to Punta Uva. At this point my father was dehydrated, and had a horrible headache. We went into the water to cool off, and then went up the road to try to find a place to eat and drink. We went to the Punta Uva dive shop and ordered three fish sandwiches, and a giant bottle of water. They were playing a reggae version of OK Computer there, which was cracking me up, and I asked the guy what we were listening to, and he said “Radiohead Dub”. While eating we saw a bunch of leaves falling from the trees, so Mark stood up to investigate, and we saw a bunch of green parrots in the tree doing some trimming. After eating we decided to walk back on the road. Mark pointed out a monkey in the tree and we looked up, and to our surprise there were 20+ howler monkey babies in the trees! Shortly after that we got picked up by a bus and it drove us back into town. My brother and I went swimming again, while our dad went to relax in the hammock across the street from the hotel. We built a sandcastle with a nice barricade that managed to last all night and was even there the next day. The sky was a beautiful red as the sun was setting, even though it was setting way behind us. It cast a magnificent red light onto the top of the water, and I was in awe at the beauty of the shimmering orange-red water, but it started to get dark in a hurry, and our dad came out to get us. We decided we’d go to Puerto Viejo to go to an internet café as we hadn’t used it in several days. After checking up on our email we left and headed to grab a bite to eat. The service there was pretty bad, and the food was decent at best. Mark had rice with seafood and had two mussel shells sticking out of the side, and my father and I split pasta with seafood, and a marlin fillet in brandy sauce. The marlin could have been a boot for all we knew, but the sauce was excellent. It tasted better on the rice than on the fish. We went to Sonya’s again, got another margarita pizza with garlic, olives, and mushrooms, and went back to the hotel to crash.

Death by Sushi

Woke up at about 7:30 and drove out of Puerto Viejo and went down to Manzanillo which was just down the, bumpy and pot hole filled, road. We parked down at the end of the beach as there was a river that ran through stopping us from continuing, so we got out of the car and went on foot. Waded across the river and then entered the forest that lay straight ahead of us. Coconut trees were all around, and coconuts were all over the forest floor, and everywhere you looked, there were tiny holes that little red crabs would scuttle into when you approached. Hundreds of crabs could be seen on our walk, and there were hermit crabs and lizards all over as well. Where we were walking was a jungle, but to the left of us just several meters over was beautiful sandy beaches and ocean. We arrived at a coral knoll that had been thrust up by an earthquake filled with trees, and we looked up and managed to see toucans, which was actually the mission of our morning walk. Such radiant beautiful colors on their bodies and beaks, but soon they flew off. We walked a little further out of the woods and onto a big rock that hung out over the ocean, and we stopped and watched the waves crash up onto the rocks below, and onto the shore. After that we headed back, and crossed the river again and tried to get into the car, but right before that there was some man wandering around wearing what appeared to be a crossing guard jacket and was holding a stick, and was asking us for money for some reason, he spoke no English and we had no idea what he was blathering on about. I was actually just informed by my father that he was there two years ago doing the same thing. Anyways, we got in the car and headed back to El Pizote to try to grab our complimentary breakfast before they stopped serving, but they actually wanted money for it, so we decided to just check out and find food elsewhere. We ended up at Sonya’s again, and Jim had a snapper fillet, Mark had an excellent curried chicken, and I had pasta with seafood.

After eating we went to go look at houses. We made our first stop at a place off the side of the road, and saw a nice, but very open., wooden house with big tree looking posts as support on the sides, but the “special gringo price” he offered was absurd so we went elsewhere. Next we visited this one real estate place that my father had visited two years ago. We talked to the most unenthusiastic, unhelpful French woman for a while and she informed us that there was a house we could check out, but not until the 12th. Several busted nerves later we headed out in search of houses on our own. We got a couple numbers to call from signs in front of buildings that we decided we’d call later. We checked in at a hotel and dropped off our belongings. The manager was very nice, and he was setting out bananas on a stand across the road, and it attracted many beautiful birds. A beautiful yellow one which had a beak with some sort of razor system it would use for eating, which I believe to be a Great Kiskadee, a black bird with a bright red patch on it’s tail called a Passerini’s Tanager, and a Aracari, which looks like a toucan due to the beak, but isn’t actually one. He owned a parrot who would do the cat call whistle on occasion, it was green and crawled into a hole at the top of house the first time we approached it. He informed us that it would just fly around town but return later on it’s own.

After that we headed down to a point between the two cities, called Punta Uva, which means “wave point”, and the name did not lie. We went out into the ocean, but had to walk past some raised coral first, and got out to where we were about waist deep and this is where the waves were breaking. These were the biggest waves I have ever swum in, some of them went over our heads as we were standing there. Mark and I did a fair amount of body surfing, but my dad went to the beach to read as the waves were a bit much. We body surfed for a while longer and he returned to us in the ocean, where we swam for a bit longer until we had been almost exhausted from the waves, and we headed back to the hotel to shower off. The previous day we had passed a place in Puerto Viejo which had a sign out front stating that they had an all you can eat sushi deal for $20, so we decided to go there to eat. Mark got two big plates of noodles, and my dad and I ate delicious, ocean fresh sushi until we were near the point of bursting. I’d say we easily got our moneys worth, fantastic. We left and drove back to Manzanillo and checked out this bar blaring music. We headed upstairs and we saw that the waiters were bringing out massive plates of delicious looking seafood, and we decided we’d have to try the place out one day. We headed back to the hotel, which had no air conditioning, but 3 fans, two of which were mounted to walls, and one that was on the ceiling. I stood on my brother’s shoulders to pull the cut cord on the fan to turn it on, and it started to make a screeching sound as it would turn, but we thought we’d be alright and went to sleep. We didn’t take the hint that the cord was cut for a reason probably.

kjs

Karl's take on Puerto Viejo, Limon, Costa Rics

Monday 8/10/09

Got a bit of catching up to do on our log!

We left La Fortuna in the morning and began our 5 hour trek to Puerto Viejo. Shortly after leaving the city we visited Pollo de Cervecero (474-0101) and got the best tipico (typical Costa Rican food) thus far on the trip. Jim had Cascado con Pollo, which is rice and beans with grilled chicken, and had cheese, shell noodles, fried plantain, and an egg on the side. Mark tried the Chicken Cordon Bleu, which turned out to be pretty good, although it did have some sort of Velveta type cheese in the middle of it, and I (Karl) had Cascado con Pollo en Salsa, which was the same meal as Jim’s, but with shredded chicken in sauce. Muy bueno! Then we drove and drove, and drove some more until we arrived in Limon, where I was informed everybody carried around guns. The only people that I was able to see with guns were the officers, but it didn’t look like a city that I would want to stay in.

We arrived in Puerto Viejo and checked into the El Pizote at about 4:30, and we tried to go explore the trails behind the place, my father and brother had said they were very cool as they had stayed there 2 years before. There were massive bamboo shoots all around, and bats flying about, but it didn’t take too long until we reached the end, apparently they had been closed and we could no longer go to the location that they had previously visited. It turns out that the trails were flooded, and what used to be walkable, turned into a river. Mark’s legs got lacerated on the walk back. I was informed that the city comes to life at night, and so we went out at about 6:30 after it had started to get pretty dark. A lot of the knick knack shops with bracelets and necklaces were still being set up, but there was still a good amount to check out. We saw a place in the center of the city, and a Rasta man in the middle of the street was announcing to us and everyone else that there would be live music upstairs at 7:30, so we decided we’d finish wandering the town, and come back then. I forget the name of the place, but translated it meant “the cute little monkey”. We went into a bunch of souvenir shops, most of which contained the same items, and when it was close to the time, we headed back and went into the restaurant. We sat down, and Mark ordered Basil Pesto Chicken, and my father and I ordered a whole red snapper; Mark made the better decision. The Calypso music started shortly after we arrived; there were three members, a guitar player, a bongo drummer, and a guy playing an instrument that looked like a bow, a curved wooden piece with a single string. The songs had all the same structure, the same 3 chords on the guitar, and the same drum beat, but they would all sing, and the singing was what made each song different. It was a good atmosphere but the food wasn’t terrific and the music was just decent. We left still hungry so we went to this restaurant that my father and brother ate at a lot when they were down there 2 years ago. The woman who owned the place was named Sonya, who was a very nice hospitable individual. She had some of the best music in town being played over the speakers there, started off with some jazz, and later went into some good ambient reggae. We ordered a margarita pizza, Mark got two Mojitos, and my father and I had some tequila. We headed home after that and readily achieved the sleep we needed..

Tuesday 8/11/09

Woke up at about 7:30 and drove out of Puerto Viejo and went down to Manzanillo which was just down the, bumpy and pot hole filled, road. We parked down at the end of the beach as there was a river that ran through stopping us from continuing, so we got out of the car and went on foot. Waded across the river and then entered the forest that lay straight ahead of us. Coconut trees were all around, and coconuts were all over the forest floor, and everywhere you looked, there were tiny holes that little red crabs would scuttle into when you approached. Hundreds of crabs could be seen on our walk, and there were hermit crabs and lizards all over as well. Where we were walking was a jungle, but to the left of us just several meters over was beautiful sandy beaches and ocean. We arrived at a coral knoll that had been thrust up by an earthquake filled with trees, and we looked up and managed to see toucans, which was actually the mission of our morning walk. Such radiant beautiful colors on their bodies and beaks, but soon they flew off. We walked a little further out of the woods and onto a big rock that hung out over the ocean, and we stopped and watched the waves crash up onto the rocks below, and onto the shore. After that we headed back, and crossed the river again and tried to get into the car, but right before that there was some man wandering around wearing what appeared to be a crossing guard jacket and was holding a stick, and was asking us for money for some reason, he spoke no English and we had no idea what he was blathering on about. I was actually just informed by my father that he was there two years ago doing the same thing. Anyways, we got in the car and headed back to El Pizote to try to grab our complimentary breakfast before they stopped serving, but they actually wanted money for it, so we decided to just check out and find food elsewhere. We ended up at Sonya’s again, and Jim had a snapper fillet, Mark had an excellent curried chicken, and I had pasta with seafood.

After eating we went to go look at houses. We made our first stop at a place off the side of the road, and saw a nice, but very open., wooden house with big tree looking posts as support on the sides, but the “special gringo price” he offered was absurd so we went elsewhere. Next we visited this one real estate place that my father had visited two years ago. We talked to the most unenthusiastic, unhelpful French woman for a while and she informed us that there was a house we could check out, but not until the 12th. Several busted nerves later we headed out in search of houses on our own. We got a couple numbers to call from signs in front of buildings that we decided we’d call later. We checked in at a hotel and dropped off our belongings. The manager was very nice, and he was setting out bananas on a stand across the road, and it attracted many beautiful birds. A beautiful yellow one which had a beak with some sort of razor system it would use for eating, which I believe to be a Great Kiskadee, a black bird with a bright red patch on it’s tail called a Passerini’s Tanager, and a Aracari, which looks like a toucan due to the beak, but isn’t actually one. He owned a parrot who would do the cat call whistle on occasion, it was green and crawled into a hole at the top of house the first time we approached it. He informed us that it would just fly around town but return later on it’s own.

After that we headed down to a point between the two cities, called Punta Uva, which means “wave point”, and the name did not lie. We went out into the ocean, but had to walk past some raised coral first, and got out to where we were about waist deep and this is where the waves were breaking. These were the biggest waves I have ever swum in, some of them went over our heads as we were standing there. Mark and I did a fair amount of body surfing, but my dad went to the beach to read as the waves were a bit much. We body surfed for a while longer and he returned to us in the ocean, where we swam for a bit longer until we had been almost exhausted from the waves, and we headed back to the hotel to shower off. The previous day we had passed a place in Puerto Viejo which had a sign out front stating that they had an all you can eat sushi deal for $20, so we decided to go there to eat. Mark got two big plates of noodles, and my dad and I ate delicious, ocean fresh sushi until we were near the point of bursting. I’d say we easily got our moneys worth, fantastic. We left and drove back to Manzanillo and checked out this bar blaring music. We headed upstairs and we saw that the waiters were bringing out massive plates of delicious looking seafood, and we decided we’d have to try the place out one day. We headed back to the hotel, which had no air conditioning, but 3 fans, two of which were mounted to walls, and one that was on the ceiling. I stood on my brother’s shoulders to pull the cut cord on the fan to turn it on, and it started to make a screeching sound as it would turn, but we thought we’d be alright and went to sleep. We didn’t take the hint that the cord was cut for a reason probably.

Wednesday 8/12/09

What a horrible night’s sleep we had. The fan had haunted all of our dreams. My brother and I both had a series of bad events unfolding in our subconsciouses. The noise from that fan had penetrated our brains and turned a good night’s sleep into a toss and turn fest, separated by horrible sequences of events in our REM. One of the dreams my brother had was of a big scorpion, who would make the exact same sound as the fan as it would run across the ground, he later got punctured in the heart by it right before waking up. One of the dreams I had was of a screeching tornado that was approaching, which also sounded just like the evil fan. Evil evil fan. My dad went out for a walk at about 6, came back at 7 and got me, and we went further down the trail. We first spotted a giant spiderweb in the air that looked just like a vinyl LP, and continued down the trail and we saw one spider monkey initially, two different wood peckers, many butterflies, a long thin brown snake, and a cocoa tree. On the way back we saw a black and green poison arrow dart frog, and 3 more spider monkeys. We were walking down the trail and we saw one spider monkey leap from one tree to the next over the road ahead of us, and we stopped and looked up and watched two more do the same, and then off through the woods they went, just flinging from branch to branch, seemed like a good source of entertainment to me if I were able to do such a feat. We went back to the hotel and got Mark, and then headed off to the beach. Mark began trying to change the topography of the river, as he put it. He began making a big ditch and a dam to try to reroute the flow of water. I joined in after a while, but after a bit of work (we did manage to get the two streams to connect) the rising tide got too high and destroyed the mouth of it, so we gave up and went for a swim. The three of us decided we’d walk along the beach to Punta Uva, so we set off on our way.

We began by going down a little road into some jungle and explored around, it was beautiful in there but eventually we came to where they were clearing trees, probably to build a house. While inside we heard a high pitched whistle, followed by a low pitched whistle from another location. We then saw two little boys running out of the woods away from us, probably thinking we were the “rich white men who owned the area and were cutting down all the forest”. They hopped into their kayaks and paddled away. Then we set off down the beach to Punta Uva. The first stop we made had a bunch of hammocks in the back. We stopped and hung for a little bit, then decided to go into the hotel to get some refreshments. The name of the place was Almonds and Coral, an “eco-friendly” hotel, meaning there were boards that ran through the forest, and crabs and trees could be seen along the pathways, kind of neat. We went to the bar and got three sodas and she asked us for our room number, which we didn’t have, so she wrote us a check and told us to go to the reception desk. We went over there and found out each club soda was a $4, and then asked to see a room. A man came to show us the room, and during the walk he informed us that the rooms cost $325 a night. When we arrived at the room there were two beds with mosquito netting, no air conditioning, the heavy humid tropical air was basically motionless; a hammock in the park would have been much more pleasant.. The kicker of the whole place was that you couldn’t even swim in the beaches behind the place! We thanked the man for his time and left snickering. We saw a family seated inside near the bar and they looked very unhappy, and my brother whispered to me that he would be unhappy too if he was staying there and had to pay such a ridiculous amount for absolutely nothing. We went back to the beach and carried on, eventually the sand started becoming so deep that about every step we’d make would go up to our ankles, so we all took off our shoes and carried them. We walked through more ankle deep sand, a beach littered with twigs that would wash up and down with the waves, and stopped at a big tree on its side that the waves were crashing into. Mark sat down on the log and thought deep thoughts for a minute, and we then pressed on. We passed another hotel which had a bunch of lawn chairs on the beach, and after a bit more walking, we made it to Punta Uva. At this point my father was dehydrated, and had a horrible headache. We went into the water to cool off, and then went up the road to try to find a place to eat and drink. We went to the Punta Uva dive shop and ordered three fish sandwiches, and a giant bottle of water. They were playing a reggae version of OK Computer there, which was cracking me up, and I asked the guy what we were listening to, and he said “Radiohead Dub”. While eating we saw a bunch of leaves falling from the trees, so Mark stood up to investigate, and we saw a bunch of green parrots in the tree doing some trimming. After eating we decided to walk back on the road. Mark pointed out a monkey in the tree and we looked up, and to our surprise there were 20+ howler monkey babies in the trees! Shortly after that we got picked up by a bus and it drove us back into town. My brother and I went swimming again, while our dad went to relax in the hammock across the street from the hotel. We built a sandcastle with a nice barricade that managed to last all night and was even there the next day. The sky was a beautiful red as the sun was setting, even though it was setting way behind us. It cast a magnificent red light onto the top of the water, and I was in awe at the beauty of the shimmering orange-red water, but it started to get dark in a hurry, and our dad came out to get us. We decided we’d go to Puerto Viejo to go to an internet café as we hadn’t used it in several days. After checking up on our email we left and headed to grab a bite to eat. The service there was pretty bad, and the food was decent at best. Mark had rice with seafood and had two mussel shells sticking out of the side, and my father and I split pasta with seafood, and a marlin fillet in brandy sauce. The marlin could have been a boot for all we knew, but the sauce was excellent. It tasted better on the rice than on the fish. We went to Sonya’s again, got another margarita pizza with garlic, olives, and mushrooms, and went back to the hotel to crash.

Thursday 8/13/09

After watching the beautiful sky the night before I was set on waking up before the sunrise and being on the rock that overlooked the ocean by where we had seen the toucans the other day. The alarm went off at 5:30, but by that time the sun was basically already up. I got up and went outside and the sound of birds surrounded me, there were so many and they were everywhere. But with every couple of minutes that passed they became quieter and quieter. I went back to the hotel and Mark and my father were ready at this point, and we got into the car and drove down the road to the trail that we walked the other day and saw the 4 spider monkeys. We didn’t see much though sadly, but the walk was still nice; I think the most interesting thing spotted was a humming bird, but it was too far away to really tell. We went back to the point across the river and walked to the point, but decided to do some further exploring into the jungle. After reaching as far as the trail would let us, we headed back. We got in the car and decided to drive to the two cities over after Puerto Viejo to get some gas, as there wasn’t a gas station anywhere near us. After setting off, we saw the car ahead of us suddenly stop, and there were three girls on the side of the road looking at something. Upon inspection we saw that there was a three toed sloth crawling across the road, its back end had some fecal matter stuck to it (the only reason a sloth comes down from its tree every 3 days is to take a dump) and eventually it made it across and began to climb a tree. It looked back at us and it had a big goofy smile on its face, but we failed at getting any pictures of this. On our drive back we were a bit hungry, and pulled over at a little city and found the, what seemed to be, only open restaurant. We went in and it took quite a while until we got served and the guy working there seemed to be completely clueless, and he kept proving it to us over and over again. Mark got French toast, Jim got an omelet, and I got rice and beans with chicken. He forgot who ordered what, and then after the edible (edible being the only word I could use to describe it) meal he forgot what we ordered to ring us up, and had much difficulty adding up the three meals. Whatever, another location that won’t be revisited, to say the least.

We got back to Puerto Viejo and visited the unenthusiastic French woman again, and she showed us the one house which was just the downstairs of a two story house, with not much of a backyard, it smelled funny, and the shower was outside. It was a good option considering what we had seen thus far though. But we decided we weren’t done and went to the other realtor right down the road, and the man there remembered my dad from two years ago, a much nicer greeting. He told us he had a nice two bedroom house for rent, so we drove down the road to check it out. My dad was basically instantly sold. The woman there was very nice, and she said that her and her father had built the house themselves some time ago. It was up on a hill, had an awesome backyard, and the house was pretty great itself. We ran down to the ATM, got out some money, and came back to give it to her to seal the deal. When we came back she was on the phone with somebody else who was trying to rent the house, and she said something along the lines of, “Oh I’m sorry, the house is rented already” and hung up. We then went back towards Manzinillo and dropped off some laundry at a woman’s house that had a sign up to do laundry. We dropped Mark off at home as his stomach had been hurting him all day; he was laying down in the back of the car during most of the trip. We went down the street to the restaurant that had the massive plates of food and celebrated the successful house finding with some Imperals, and we ordered some civiche, which was made with bass, octopus, and probably a couple of other things. I had only tried civiche once earlier in the trip and it was pretty bad, but my father wanted to order it again to show me that it was actually pretty good, and that it was! After that we went back to Puerto Viejo to use the internet café once again, and then headed back to Manzanillo to drop Mark off again. We went to the restaurant to try to take on that massive plate of food. Some of the things were a little overcooked, especially the shrimp, but it was still a pretty good feast. Shrimp, lobster, crab, mussels, potatoes, and a bit more, good stuff. After that we talked with a couple of locals, and went home to retire, but decided to go crash in the hammocks across the street.

Friday 8/14/09

I woke up at about 4:30 and my father was missing, the calls of the howler monkeys were absurdly loud. Apparently there are several stimuli that set them off: rain, people, and dawn. It was turning into dawn, and it was about to rain, so it had set them all off. The sky looked really cloudy, so I figured it wasn’t worth trying to go catch the sunrise, so I went upstairs to the hotel and fell asleep for several more hours. I woke up some time later and Mark was still feeling bad, so my dad and I went into town to try to find a bite to eat. We got coffee and omelets, and we asked for salt and pepper to put on our eggs. She brought us the salt and pepper, but also a big jar full of onions, jalapenos, and a bunch of broth with all sorts of who-knows-what dissolved in the acids. Whatever was in it was delicious, and we put it all over our eggs. Shortly after eating that, my father informed me that there were two people taking their pig for a walk across the beach. The pig was cooperating until it came time to cross the street, at which point it started to scream and back up, not wanting to cross this strange ground. They had to push and shove it, and once it got across it, it was already. My dad asked the waitress were the butcher was, turns out he was right down the alley. “This little piggy goes to market, this little piggy doesn’t go home” Turns out they were taking it to the meat market, perhaps the pig knew what was up, poor thing. After that my dad decided he was hungry for some jamon, or ham if you speak English, so we ordered beans and rice and ham. The beans and rice were good, but the ham was not, this is why I usually just stick to chicken when I’m down here. Unable to finish my meal we got up and left and headed back to Manzanillo to check out of our hotel and begin the long haul to La Fortuna. We took a detour on the way back though, and went to go check out the house my dad had rented. We went up the hill and wandered around the backyard, we saw a bunch of birds, admired all the trees, and we even saw a green and black poison arrow dart frog hopping around on the porch, simply awesome. We got back to the hotel, got Mark, got all our stuff, and left for La Fortuna. 7 hours later we arrived here, where we retired to our beds, but I sit here writing this right now. Actually I forgot to mention, we stopped off at the restaurant we ate at as we were leaving the town with the best tipico, and once again the food was amazing. It was a shame my brother was unable to eat due to his stomach hurting him.

- Karl

La Fortuna to Puerto Viejo

We left La Fortuna in the morning and began our 5 hour trek to Puerto Viejo. Shortly after leaving the city we visited Pollo de Cervecero (474-0101) and got the best tipico (typical Costa Rican food) thus far on the trip. Jim had Cascado con Pollo, which is rice and beans with grilled chicken, and had cheese, shell noodles, fried plantain, and an egg on the side. Mark tried the Chicken Cordon Bleu, which turned out to be pretty good, although it did have some sort of Velveta type cheese in the middle of it, and I (Karl) had Cascado con Pollo en Salsa, which was the same meal as Jim’s, but with shredded chicken in sauce. Muy bueno! Then we drove and drove, and drove some more until we arrived in Limon, where I was informed everybody carried around guns. The only people that I was able to see with guns were the officers, but it didn’t look like a city that I would want to stay in.

We arrived in Puerto Viejo and checked into the El Pizote at about 4:30, and we tried to go explore the trails behind the place, my father and brother had said they were very cool as they had stayed there 2 years before. There were massive bamboo shoots all around, and bats flying about, but it didn’t take too long until we reached the end, apparently they had been closed and we could no longer go to the location that they had previously visited. It turns out that the trails were flooded, and what used to be walkable, turned into a river. Mark’s legs got lacerated on the walk back. I was informed that the city comes to life at night, and so we went out at about 6:30 after it had started to get pretty dark. A lot of the knick knack shops with bracelets and necklaces were still being set up, but there was still a good amount to check out. We saw a place in the center of the city, and a Rasta man in the middle of the street was announcing to us and everyone else that there would be live music upstairs at 7:30, so we decided we’d finish wandering the town, and come back then. I forget the name of the place, but translated it meant “the cute little monkey”. We went into a bunch of souvenir shops, most of which contained the same items, and when it was close to the time, we headed back and went into the restaurant. We sat down, and Mark ordered Basil Pesto Chicken, and my father and I ordered a whole red snapper; Mark made the better decision. The Calypso music started shortly after we arrived; there were three members, a guitar player, a bongo drummer, and a guy playing an instrument that looked like a bow, a curved wooden piece with a single string. The songs had all the same structure, the same 3 chords on the guitar, and the same drum beat, but they would all sing, and the singing was what made each song different. It was a good atmosphere but the food wasn’t terrific and the music was just decent. We left still hungry so we went to this restaurant that my father and brother ate at a lot when they were down there 2 years ago. The woman who owned the place was named Sonya, who was a very nice hospitable individual. She had some of the best music in town being played over the speakers there, started off with some jazz, and later went into some good ambient reggae. We ordered a margarita pizza, Mark got two Mojitos, and my father and I had some tequila. We headed home after that and readily achieved the sleep we needed..

kjs

Monte Verde

Yesterday we headed out to Monteverde first thing in the morning, which was not exactly as early as intended. On the way we saw a bunch of signs pointing to a German Bakery, so we decided to take a peek inside. The smell of fresh bread was overwhelming, and we knew we had come to the right place; good bread is much harder to find down here than expected. We picked up four loafs of bread, two black bread, a multi-grain, and the fourth being whatever else it was that they had. Mark’s sweet tooth called out and he got a cupcake and a honey bun as well. With the bread in the bag we got back in the car and were now ready to make the rest of the trek.

A couple hours, a bunch of dirty rough roads, and two and a half loafs of bread later we had shown up to a little tourist booth just outside of town, and we booked a canopy zip-line tour, a night tour, and a hotel for the night. We went into the town to find our hotel at the Sunset Inn, and met the owner, who happened to be a German sharing the same last name as us; the natural thing to do seemed to be to share our delicious, fresh baked, German bread with him, which he gladly accepted. Pressed for time we shipped out and drove deeper into the city, but ended up getting a little lost with the lack of signs pointing towards where we needed to go, and showed up a little late, but ended up hopping onto the end with the group; if we joined the later tour we would have been late for our bus pick-up for the night tour. They started off a bit slow, but as we got further in on the tour the zips got longer, higher up, and faster. Unfortunately there was a lot of waiting in line for several of the zips, and time grew close as we were supposed to be picked up from our hotel by bus at 5:30. To our surprise they had a Tarzan swing for us to do 3 zips before the finale, which was quite the rush. We got some videos of that, which I’m sure will be put up here in some way shape or form. The last two zips were amazing, crazy fast, and so long that the end couldn’t even be seen, and we were high above the trees. While waiting in line for the very last one, the zip spanning a mighty 1km, the person in front of us began to shake and break down, wondering if there was another way that he could get back to the start, but he was able to get up the nerve and do it. For this one we had to be paired up, probably needed the weight to make it all the way to the end. We zoomed all the way back to the start, watched a couple more people come in, and got to the car to get back to the Sunset Inn to drop off our bags and get picked up by the bus. <> showed us our room, we dropped off our belongings, and were alerted that the bus was already here to pick us up, so we left and boarded. We picked up several more passengers and went on to the night tour.

The guides there recognized us from earlier at the canopy tours. We were given our flashlights and were guided through the woods. Before the tour even officially began a family of four raccoons emerged from the woods and scampered about. There was two other groups being led about so we went to the other half of the woods to get some privacy, so that all the animals wouldn’t have already been scared away. We saw oodles of insects, and learned some neat facts about them as well. My brother and I were spotting out at least half of the stuff during the tour, but we were going flashlight crazy looking for animals and insects. We learned about some trees, plants, and other animals. I was constantly on the lookout for the Kinkajou, which I learned could best be found during a night tour in the cloud forest (I had wanted to see one since my first visit to Costa Rica 12 years earlier, and since then it had become my favorite animal). There were lots of bats flying around as we looked at mostly insects, but they were interested in this strange fruit that was growing everywhere. We wandered around for a while and we came close to another group, and I thought I heard one of them mention something about a kinkajou, but I figured I had misheard. At this point the guide received a message on his walkie talkie about a “martilla” which is the Spanish name for a Kinkajou, and also the Olingo. Quickly we ran over there and I was finally able to catch a glimpse of one, he was being lazy in the tree but he was climbing around for a bit. I could have stared at him for quite a while but we had to go on with the tour, it was a while before the smile slid off of my face. Some more insects, spiders, plants, and bats later, the tour was over, and we headed into town to grab some food. We had some tipico (typical Costa Rican food) and finished it off across the street with some sushi. The waiter at the sushi bar was a different tour guide from the night walk, it seems that they just can’t get enough work! Content and happy we headed back to our lovely room at the Sunset Inn, and crashed for the night.

Monteverde

My dad woke up this morning and went for a small walk. He met up with me while I was eating my delicious breakfast and mentioned that he had encountered quite a large bird which he could not identify. After my brother ate we went to the Hanging Bridges at ???????? , the same place as the zip lines tour. It was a major disappointment after seeing everything at the bridges in La Fortuna. The only animals we encountered were butterflies, and not even many at that, perhaps it was the screaming sound of the pulleys and the literally screaming people riding them that scared them all off. The Cloud Forest was very misty, wasn’t raining most of the time but all the moisture in the air caused the trees to drip from above. Whenever we would encounter a big beautiful tree full of life, there was a zipline platform up above that I’m sure was too confusing for any animals to wish to live near. We left seeing nothing new and went back into the town and headed over towards the Cheese Factory, where they made over 150 kinds of cheese. We ordered milk shakes, a banana split, a hamburger, and a hotdog. The hamburger tasted like a Greek gyro’s meat. The shakes and split were pretty good. We overheard a woman discussing to her friend about how she accidentally encountered her first Quetzal when searching for a Bell Bird, so we decided to ask her where she saw this in hopes of catching a Quetzal ourselves. She told us of a little forest and so we headed in that direction. Time was running short for us however as we didn’t wish to have to drive down the pothole infested dirt roads during the dark, so we only wandered around for a little bit, but still saw more wildlife in the 15 minutes we were there than the several hours at the hanging bridges. We left not seeing the bird we came in search of and decided we could quickly run through the Serpentarium before heading out, at this point it had also started to rain. We saw the snakes, lizards, and turtles, and headed back to La Fortuna. We tried to go to the German Bakery to get more black bread but the store was closed, perhaps another day. A confused bird flew in front of us as we got near to the city, cutting left, then right again, and then straight into our windshield; ironically this was right after a conversation about hunting/killing/capturing animals in Costa Rica. After a 50 millisecond moment of silence we pressed onward and eventually made it back.

We went to go for a night hike at the little park we had permission to wander through at our own leisure, but left Mark at the room as he said his stomach was bothering him and he didn’t have his contacts in. We grabbed our flashlights and headed on down the road. Managed to find the park and went in, headlight equipped, and flashlights in hand, ready to find some real wildlife for the day. About 5 minutes in a giant heron type bird burst out honking loudly right in front of our faces causing us to jump back. We didn’t see much else besides that on the walk and then decided to head back to the room to retire.

- Karl

White water Rafting - Volcano - Bar Maid

We rafted the Rio Toro yesterday. We travelled about 17 kilometers in 60-70 minutes. That is a pretty good clip, a far cry from tubing down the Brazos. Normally this would be a “3 hour tour” (sing the song) but the water was up and moving fast. We have no pictures to share, I don’t think I will be buying them from the tour company as nothing is really in focus, maybe we were moving too fast for a junior photographer.

About 17:00 yesterday it started to get really clear, so we decided to go see the volcano. We drove down near the national park on the base of the volcano and there were cars and tour buses everywhere just past the river. I thought I was going to rip the bottom out of the Toyota Yaris as it bounced off the river boulders. In isolation it would have been a great observation point, but ignorant tourists were everywhere, kids were playing with flashlights, just shining them in random directions and the camera flash from wannabe photographers was rendering our eyes insensitive to the subtle changes in hue of the smoke at the top of the volcano as it started to glow like a cigarette tip.

Mark napped from 3 pm to 5 pm yesterday, Karl and I walked over every street and visited every store for 2/3 of the town. I picked up an 8 port 10/100 mb/s rj45 switch so that we could all use the internet simultaneously and a new headset for skyping.

We gave up and drop to the Arenal Observatory where for a $4 cover fee each we sat in chairs on a lovely deck way farther up the mountain and observed the volcano with people who had a clue, taking time lapsed photographs from tripods or watching through binoculars. Not a one of them thought that the flash from their cell phone would illuminate the top of the volcano that was 2 kilometers away.

I went to bed at 11:00. When I woke up at 6:00 Karl was not here. When he returned at 7:00 he reported that things were a little slow here last night so he went to the bar and was with the barmaid (a California girl) and that she wants him to be his room-mate. Then he went directly to bed. I guess the 8:30 lava trails walk is off..

Arenal Hanging Bridges

Arenal Hanging Bridges

Things got a little out of control here yesterday so we had to defer the white water rafting until tomorrow. We will be going on Rio Toro.
I guess we will head out to the waterfalls at the park after the kids get up. They were out on the town until 4:30 in the morning.

We headed out to Hanging Bridges, just west of the dam on Lake Arenal. It was a beautiful hike with many kilometers of trail on the ubiquitious concrete blocks that are used on trails and driveways in Costa Rica. These blocks have a 10 cm x 10 cm opening through which grass grows, this helps not turn the whole thing into a virtual sluice. Mammalian wildlife was varied and abundant and avian wildlife was plentiful but the area exhibited a herpetological paucity to our untrained eyes and only one reptile was spotted, a very small eyelash palm pit viper. As for primates we spotted a Howler Monkey, 2 or three troops of white faced monkies numbering in total a few dozen and a couple of spider monkeys, the squirrel monkey eluded us.

We encountered our first tapirs while we were on the first bridge. There is not a great deal of subtlety in their motion, the landscape goes into windless convulsions, though spotting them through dense foliage may be a bit more problematic.

Pictures

A Walk in the Park - Wrong Date

I wish I remembered the guides name, or had a picture of his stand. He is on the west end of town on the north side of the main road. Crazy cheap and great at spotting animals.

Car Swap

We drove from La Fortuna back to Liberia and swapped out the Caravan for a Toyota. The roads are very narrow here and there is no shoulder. When an 18 wheeler or a bus comes around a turn 2 feet into your lane, there is nowhere to go. Besides it was a gas hog. At 550 Colones per Liter and 5.5 kilometers per Liter I was burning about $60/day in gas and running a high carbon foot print.

I needed better internet connectivity than could be had from the Internet Cafe. I found a place that allows me unlimited number of connections with some pretty good throughput for $10 / day, with my own coffee maker and a place to store my bags. It also has a kitchenette, living room, bedroom with 2 queen sized beds, good air, nice location right on the edge of town, maid service and laundry service.

The feeder hose to the kitchen sink broke this morning during my morning coffee. Triage! Two notebook computers and 2 cell phones were on the floor connected to chargers. 4 duffel bags, 2 suit cases, a computer case were thrown on the beds. Rudy, the landlady’s boyfriend quickly shut off the water but we were an inch deep in water through the whole apartment. The hose had snapped off just where it joined the 1/2″ FIP fitting. Rudy went off and bought a similar replacement line and it kept leaking. I told him he had the wrong type of supply line but he had a hard time believing me because he bought the same kind that had been on there. As the supply was 1/2″ PVC MIP the zinc FIP with washer was never going to do the job. We walked down to the ferreteria (hardware store not a ferret restaurant) and I walked behind the counter and found a nylon supply line. I told him this would work if he hasn’t already damaged the thread on the PVC by over tightening. He had. So for now there is a bucket there, I told him to go off and get a hacksaw, a shutoff valve a 1/2 PVC to 1/2 MIP adaptor, some solvent and glue and we would have it fixed in half an hour.

It is now 10:30 I’ve been dicking with this for about 3 hours, it is time to go out and book a white water rafting trip for tomorrow

Arenal Lodge

We arrived in La Fortuna yesterday, we are staying at Arenal Lodge on the side of one of Mount Arenal.


The volcano had been dormant since October 1922 prior to a VEI=2 eruption in 1968.[2] The eruption wiped out the town of Arenal and killed 87 people.[3] It lasted for several days, and during that time destroyed crops, property, livestock, and forests. Fifteen square kilometers were buried and the explosion affected over 232 square kilometers. It has been active almost continuously since the eruption.

Pics from last night.

It is 8:50 in the morning with a heavy drizzle so I think I will take a pass on the butterfly tour.

Photos