Two Beers and a Pretzel

I went to the Brazilaian embasy yesterday and just missed the touirist visa window by 15 minutes.  My Hostel and the embasy are on opposite sides of town, but it was a very nice day, so I walked back the long way thru downtown San Jose.  Along the way I ran into a large, boisterous Brit who was in his 60´s and an American in his 50´s.  They invited me for a lunchtime brew, and who am I to refuse a beer?  It seemed innocent enough… (blatant forshadowing there)

Just east of downtown, there´s a large park with a lot of casino´s and hotels around it.  Walking around, street vendors offered weed, cocaine, heroin, extacy, etc…  And this actually looks like one of the nicer neighborhoods.  My new ¨friends¨ took me into a casino-bar.  There were scantily clad women everywhere in the bar and the lobby, eyeing you, licking their lips, making suggestive motions.  This was lunchtime, and I felt like a mouse in a snake pit.  We sat down at the bar for a beer and I asked these guys where the hell we were.

The Brit replied ¨Welcome to the biggest whore house in Central America.¨  I´ll never forget that line…  The Hotel-Casino Del Rey and the attached Blue Marlin Sportsbar (I later found you can actually google this place, but probably best if you don´t do it at work).

Then I noticed all the creepy older gringos pathetically trying to dance with these hot young girls and buy them drinks.  Nobody really looked happy.  The old guys were doing the ¨look at me, I´m still young and hip¨ routine that creepy old guys do, and the girls had a dissinterrested demeanoir that said ¨let´s get to it you ugly old man, I want the money¨.   I was tempted to pull out the camera and take pictures or some video (how often are you in the largest whore house anywhere), but I thought it might actually draw too much attention to myself, so I opted against that idea.

As the Brit was explaining how everything works to me (and telling me things I did not want to get mental images of), some 5´ tall 95 lb hottie (stunning, actually) with a lot of piercings and tattos (my cousin Asa would love her) swung my barstool around and jumped onto my lap.  My friends Phil, Jan, and Alan can attest – this actually happens to me all the time, including at an upscale vineyard in Napa 18 months ago.  But I digress… these Tica girls are aggressive.  She hung on me and rubbed some very specific body parts thru my clothes.  She immediately wanted to take me to a $10 no-tell motel across the street for what the Brit and the other guy thought was a miraculously low price ($50) versus the norm (apparantly $100).  I attribute that to my friendly face and blue eyes (which is a rarity here).  The fact that I was 20 years younger than pretty much every other guy in the place probably didn´t hurt much either…

However, beyond any obvious moral objections, I quickly decided that I did not want to become one of these rather pathetic old gringos (it really was kind of sad to watch them)…  So I finished my beer and left.

Besides, Ingrid and Erinn were supposed to be back in San Jose today to catch a flight home, and I wanted to see about having dinner with them.  They got in late after a long day of bus rides, stayed near the airport, and had to fly out early.  You can guess that dinner didn´t work out, but at least it gave me a good excuse to leave that bar.

So anyway, I got the Visa for Brazil this morning and I´ll catch a shuttle to the SJO airport in about 20 minutes.  Then a layover in Panama and I´ll arrive in Buenos Aires at about 7 AM.  I can´t wait.  They say you can get a killer prime rib dinner there for a whopping $8.  For reference, beef in Central America is not exactly unlike Salisbury steak in your elementary school cafateria, so I´ve been dying for some real red meat.

On Tuesday, we slept in a bit, had a late breakfast, and headed down to the beach around 1PM.  For the first time in my life, I drank and ate fresh coconut.  Generally, I hate candy or cake with coconut shavings in it, but fresh from the tree is a whole different story.  Kinda like anchovies in Italy – once you’ve had them there, you discover you actually like them.

Back on topic…we spent the day walking on the beach watching waves crash on the rocks…

…until we found a decent bar, where we enjoyed a few beers and watched the sunset.  I also discovered the panoramic mode on my camera… (click the image for a larger version)

On Wednesday we had to wait to get our laundry, so I missed the bus to San Jose (dang it!) and had to stay another night in paradise with the girls.  We found a cheaper hostel with a pretty good vibe, stashed our stuff, and walked thru the actual park.

Manuel Antonio Park is one of the smallest national parks in Costa Rica, but it’s still worth visiting.  There are well marked paths thru the woods, and a number of animals to see.  The monkeys are the highlight.

You turn a corner in the forest and suddenly hear surf breaking.  As you walk closer to the beach you start to see monkeys in the trees.  These are some devious little bastards.

Since the trees run right up to the maximum high tide line, the trees ring the beach.  People sit in the shade and hang their stuff on the trees…  There are no barriers, so the monkeys will run right in front of you.  Then they zip in and steal stuff.  Bags, hats, drinks, food, clothes and flip-flops are all fair game.  We watched a monkey pick thru someone’s bag and steal a Hi-C juice box, scurry up the tree, and start tearing at the corner until there was a hole it could drink out of.  Then the other monkeys saw him and the screaming and chasing ensued.

We walked around a bit more and found a path that wound it’s way up and down the rocky isthmus between the beaches.  That ended up near the monkey beach, but in a much more tranquil, secluded spot.

Of course, our day of playing in the surf and sand was totally ruined a few hours later by the aching pangs of hunger.  So we made our way out of the park and back to the beach bar for more drinks and another stunning sunset.

My only regret from Manuel Antonio is that I didn’t have time to stop at the “Ollie’s Folly” restraunt, “el Avion”.  We did drive by it many times, so it’s not a big deal – especially since it was not in a convenient location.  It’s an old ’50′s Fairchild airplane that Oliver North bought for the Contra’s on Reagan’s tab.  Somebody gutted it, shipped it here, put a roof over it and turned it into a cafe where you dine under the wiings with ceiling fans where the external fuel tanks used to be.

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Sadly, I said goodbye to the girls today at the bus station this morning.  They were heading south along the coast, and I had to get back to San Jose to square away my visa for Brazil.  It’s not so much “Adiós” as it is “Mañana“.  I’ll probably visit Ingrid in Holland in August (if she’s actually there), and if Erinn’s still living in Cozumel, I may make my way there someday if I finish my SCUBA certification.

Nevermind my hair – a cold shower tends to shorten the primping.  And yes, I cut the goatee to a fumanchu and a flavor saver.  I’ll probably shave it clean tonight….

Cloud forest is a bit of a misnomer.  That label conjures up images of walking thru tropical paradise with a light, misty fog cooling you as you walk.  In order to give you the correct mental picture of the area around Monteverde, I am coining the term “Drizzle Forest”.  Not rain, not clouds, but still very wet.

On Sunday the girls and I walked thru the Drizzle Forest on the hanging bridge tour.  Erinn is an avid scuba diver and skydiver, but somehow hanging bridges scare the crap out of her.  She was a trooper for going thru with it.

We got to one Ficus tree where Ingrid and I actually climbed about 40 ft up the inside of the tree to the bridge platform.  Very fun, but a definite precursor to laundry day.

We saw all kinds of plants and animals along the way, including a grey foxes, something related to a racoon, and a tarantula with about 150 babies…

After the bridges, we headed for the 12 zip lines, rapelling, and Tarzan swing.  Erinn wouldn’t have any part of it, so she stayed back in the lodge and watched cows while Ingrid and I set off for more adventure as the weather got continually colder and wetter.  Granted, colder and wetter is a relative term compared to the previous day when it was in the 70′s.  Colder for us was in the mid 60′s.   Luckily, our hostel guarantees the tours, so Erinn got a refund.

By the time we did the last 800m zip line (400 ft over a valley), it was so windy and raining that people would just zip off into the clouds.  Riding he line yourself, you could not see anything more than about 50 ft away from you. Here’s a video of another cute Dutch girl (there are a lot of them in Costa Rica) that we met going off into the fog…

On the Tarzan swing, you walk up to a platform about 60 ft above the ground along a ridge.  Bungee ropes are hanging from a large tree.  You basically strap in and they push you off.  Then you swing waaaaaaay out 2 or 3 times until they flip a rubber lasso up to stop you (rather abruptly).

Here’s Ingrid on the Tarzan Swing…

And a longer video of me wearing the camera on the swing (with a pathetic attempt at a Tarzan yell)…

We found a restaurant in Santa Elana called the Tree House.  It was build around a big tree.  They had excellent food…  Very good sweet iced tea made more like a margarita than tea, good breakfasts, the best  vegy pizza I’ve ever had, and phenomenal tomato cream soup.  It was a bit expensive, but so was everything in Monteverde.

The next day we booked a private bus (aka – minivan) to take us to the beach at Manuel Antonio.  The ride was gorgeous.  We drove along a ridge that reminded me of descending thru the Sierra Nevada foothills from Yosemite to the central California valley.  Erinn used to live in San Francisco, and had the exact same impression.  On one side of you is the cloud forest, and you can see the Pacific Ocean on the other.  When you finally get to the bottom, it’s like you landed in coastal Georgia.

Here’s me with the Pacific Ocean in the Background…

And the opposite view…

The lowlands – where we saw the Crocodiles!!

Then we drove past Hermosa Beach…

We finally got to our hotel just before sunset.

Yes, it’s pretty nice here at 9 degrees latitude…

Erinn, Ingrid and I booked a nature hike thru the rainforest to see the volcano again (but it was cloudy), then on to a massive Italian buffet at the resort, followed by 2 hours in God’s hot tub.

For all my friends back home in the FREEZING weather…  Here’s how my day started with Ingrid at the pool…  unfortunately, Erinn wasn’t feeling well, but she got better by mid afternoon.

Warning:  Video of a seriously pale, husky (I’m not fat) guy doing a belly flop because the Dutch girl claimed that she didn’t know what one was:

Erin got better just in time for the tour, so we hopped into a minivan and our guide took us into the National Forrest around the volcano to search for (in my best Steve Irwin voice) “the rare and beautiful, and often deadly local fauna.”  Luckilly, the deadly stayed home…

Wild Turkeys, Three Toed Sloths, Howler Monkeys, Toucans, and something related to a Raccoon.  Sorry for the blur on these images, I took the pics thru the guides telescope.

Toucan Sam

Momma and baby monkey.

Video of a male howler monkey climbing in a tree:

Ingrid and Erinn near the steaming hot river.

There wasn’t much to see when we hiked to the volcano viewing area, so we moved on to the dinner buffett.

And then into the river…

FYI:  Heaven is officially in Costa Rica, masquerading as the Tabacon Grand Spa Thermal Resort.  The volcano heats and entire river to about 102, and it flows thru this resort.  In the evening, it was a balmy 70 with light drizzle.  I think all three of us decided that this is definate honeymoon material, if not the wedding itself (just talk your family into the cost… one night at Tabacon, and then skip to the private rooms at the Backpacker’s Resort in La Fortuna for $25 each).  People staying there pay up to $400 a night.  We did it all for $60 each.

This waterfall was incredible.  You could sit or stand under it and it was a perfect heated massage.  At one point, Ingrid and I fell back into the suna-like area between the waterfall and rocks and just laughed because it was so awesome.

Bummer, some dude walked into the waterfall just before I took this picture…

They also diverted some of the hot water to a waterslide…

My Splashdown

Ingrid’s compilation

We got back to the Hostel around 10 PM and totally crashed, which was good because we had an 8:30 AM trip to Monteverde dubbed “Jeep, Boat, Jeep”.

The trip was more like “minivan, ferry, minivan in a trench that seriously stretches the definition of the word road”.  We found a decent hostel and ate the best veggy pizza I’ve ever had, but Erinn started feeling sick again.  Tomorrow we’re booking tours on the zipline, tarzan swing, rapelling, rope bridges, and a horseback tour…  so we shoulld have plenty more good pics and vids.

Finally, good weather in San Jose.  Just in time to leave for La Fortuna and the Arenal Volcano…

This bunny is for my twin neices.  They have one just like it at home.  My sister gave it to me to take pictures so she can make a world geography book for the girls when they get older.  This is by the pool at the Hostel Toruma.

So I left the hostel at 9:30 to get to the bus station.  Met Andy from Germany, Ingrid from Holland, and Erinn from Fort Wayne.  Lonely planet warned that theft is common on this route, so we piled all out luggage in the seat near the middle door and the girls sat on it the whole way.  The bus left at 11:30.  We arrived in Fortuna around 4:30 after stopping about 100 times to pickup and drop-off people.  It sucked – except for about a half hour driving in and out of the clouds in a beautiful area that could have been the Rhine River valley in Germany (except for the tropical ferns and palm trees).

Once in Fortuna, we drudged thru the rain to a small cafe while being followed by a “helpful” local.  I had already booked a room at the Arenal Backpacker’s Paradise (yes, it’s that good), but Andy and the girls had to look for lodging.  Our helpful friend happened to own a hostel and run tours.  Needless to say, that didn’t work out, but the rain stopped and it started clearing up.

So now the girls are staying at my hostel, and Andy found another reputable place.  We all took a tour to see the volcano tonight.  We can actually see it from the hostel, but we went to a spot about 2 kilometers away.

The party bus on the way to the volcano.

Here’s Ingrid.

Everyone watching the volcano…

So now I totally regret shipping my SLR home.  If I could have just waited 2 more days (or had my Canon G9 that is being shipped to my uncle in Brazil)…  the Olympus did OK on 1/2 second exposures, but not as good as the SLR could have.  A guy from Holland had a better camera.  When I get his facebook link, I’ll post his sweeeeeet picture.  Until then, here’s the best picture sequence I got…