Costa Rica, Day 4

Day 4: We skipped the normal morning breakfast at the hotel this morning, opting to once again head out to the good-smelling place near the Burger King. I ended up having a traditional breakfast anyway, with rice and beans and the like. But it also came with *fried cheese*. That’s some good stuff, let me tell you. Jess had the American style breakfast, which she liked as well. After that, we went, on our own, to Arenal National Park to do the Hanging Bridges tour.

The Hanging Bridges are pretty neat. The whole tour is part of a nature walk through the rainforest preserve, and the whole place is undeveloped and, other than the trail, completely untouched by human hands. Quite a spectacle. There weren’t any mammals there, but there were plenty of insects, amphibians, and birds around to make up for it. Plus, trecking through the underside of the rainforest gives you the opportunity to look at an entirely different ecosystem up close. Very impressive. There are some really strange critters around there.

We saw a couple of butterflies with shiny blue wings. They are one of the more common butterflies, and definitely some of the prettiest. Another Costa Rica icon. We also saw Army Ants on the march. Now that is an impressive sight. Just this trail of massive, red ants all migrating from old site to new, all moving in the same direction. Scattered throughout were the soldier ants, much larger with angrier-looking pincers. They travel for miles and devour anything that gets in their way other than, evidently, potato chips. We stared at them for a good long time. Lots of cicadas, too, though we never saw any. Their cries were deafeningly loud, though.

The bridges were neat, too, because most of the trail has been cut into the side of some steep hills, and occasionally they built a bridge across these hills that would take you out over the valley. You spend so much time on these trails down low among everything, and then all of a sudden these bridges take you out and over the canopy, and you really get a sense of how big, diverse, and amazing the whole ecosystem is. The hanging bridges were another of my favorites.

After that hike, we drove back to Church’s Chicken, another American import, and had some lunch there. Then we got ourselves geared up and went off to Tabacon hot springs, one of the most impressive resort complexes I’ve ever seen.

As the name implies, the main attraction is the volcano-heated water, but instead of a pool or two, the place is built as a huge, sprawling complex of trails and pools with this bone-soothingly hot water flowing through the entire place. We had nearly as much fun exploring the area as we did lounging and soaking. We found a couple of spots we really liked, where the water was warm but not so hot it forced us out. We lounged and soaked and floated in the water and had a really great time. They also had a couple of pools and a bar that you could order drinks at while still lounging in the pool. We got pina coladas, of course. The highlight had to be the waterfall. Big, luxurious, and HOT. It gave you a nice back massage when you sit under it.

We had bought a package that allowed us to stay in all afternoon and then have dinner, so we soaked for hours. We probably should have dried off earlier, but it was very, very relaxing. Dinner was nice, too. An Indian-style buffet. We started with desserts. Yum.

This movie *may* contain humor.



-N

Happy Halloween

What do Republican Zombies eat?








McCaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnns!!

On living in a Swing State

This election year, it is our first real experience being in a swing state. Our time at WWU was always very politically charged, it can't even compare to the carpet-bombing that has become air-time in PA. Have you heard that Obama has bought out all the air-time that is available? It's true! We get network ads, some long scheduled car and phone ads, and then politics. If it isn't Obama versus McCain, there is a whole host of local elections that are in the same format. For those of us whose already made up our minds, this is like water torture. We've heard about the tax plans, we know the voting records, and we can recite all the topical incendiary misquotes from both parties. We know their rally schedules, we watch their speeches, we've seen the counter ads. For us non-swing voters, Tuesday can't come soon enough.

Matt is worried about long lines at the polling place, which is an old folks home at the bottom of the hill. Why is it that we can't guarantee everyone votes by making it a holiday?

Costa Rica, Day 3

Day 3: We had this morning to ourselves, so we did some relaxing stuff around La Fortuna. First, we went to the post office and mailed off some post cards, (successfully, in spanish!) and then we just walked around part of the city. There’s a large, central park that we strolled through, and a couple of shops selling typical tourist stuff. I got a nifty little pad, though, that I used to write down all the notes I’m using to type this. We stopped at another hammock shop, but decided not to get anything there. It was right next to a store that sold a plethora of wooden sculptures, from the tiny and cute to the massive and artsy. Also on the way back, we booked a boat trip, canoe, down a nearby river, for friday.

Back at the hotel with some time to kill, we hung out in the pool and jacuzzi and sipped pina coladas. Very vacation-y. We felt like real tourists.

Canyoning was up for the afternoon, and it was probably my favorite adventure of the trip. I wasn’t really sure how it was going to work, because according to the tour people, we’d be rappelling down waterfalls, and rappelling isn’t something, I thought, you could just go off and do. It turns out they had plenty of safety for us. When you rappel, you have a harness on and a rope looped through a simple, but very important, contraption at your waist. One hand guides the rope as it comes out of the harness, leading up to where it’s fastened. The other hand is behind you, and it’s in charge of controlling your descent. If you grip that line, you stop, simple as that. Well the first layer of safety was that there was a guy holding onto that trailing line at the bottom of the drop. All he has to do is yank down and he can stop you any time he wants. Further than that, there was another safety line that lead up to a guy who can just pull and stop you any time he wants. So we were safe.

They start you off by just hooking you up and having you sit down over the edge of the first drop. They don’t let you see how high up you are until you’re already too far out to do anything about it, smart. The drops were all amazing. The first one was a good 100 or 150 feet, right beside a huge waterfall. The view was spectacular, and rappelling is a heck of a lot of fun, once you get the system figured out. There were five drops, and four waterfalls, in total. We actually got to go down *through* a couple of waterfalls, getting soaked in the process. It was a ton of fun. Definitely my favorite highlight of the trip. We got to hike up at the end, soaked and happy, and even that little task was fun. Lots of nature, it was raining, (once you’re soaked, rain is nice!) and, as with everything in Costa Rica, all the plants and critters are strange and amazing.

We came back to the guides office at the end of the trip and watched all the pictures they took of us, some of which you can see here. There was a guy there whose only job was to take our pictures. The CD was extra, but it was nice not to have to worry about documenting everything. And yes, they did let us bring our cameras along, and even provided us dry bags so that we could keep them safe. Also, there were cookies!

We got back to our hotel, went to the restaurant for dinner and ordered pizza. Good pizza, finally. Also, we had dessert. Jess insisted.

Also, enjoy this hearty dose of movie.



-N

Costa Rica, Day 2

Day 2: We woke up at 6:30, which sounds early for a vacation until you consider that we fell asleep at 8 or so. Also, when the sun rises, it’s pretty much ‘go time’. We went to the hotel restaurant for the free morning breakfast. It was the same every day, but we liked it: fruits, tropical juices, sausages, pancakes, queso (a particular, soft type that is a costa rica staple), chicken and potato stuff and...rice and beans. Rice and beans is *the* food down here. We had it at a lot of different places. It does make a pretty good staple food.

We sat around for a while, and Jess got nervous that something might have been wrong with our first reservation, Sky Tram/Sky Tour. They were about 15 or so minutes late, but they did show up eventually, and after picking us up, along with a few other tourists, we drove off west to our first Costa Rican adventure.

Sky Tram/Sky Tour is a two-part tour. The first part was a tram ride up the side of a mountain covered in rainforest. We saw a lot of cool stuff from the tram. There were a couple of howler monkeys off in the distance, though we saw more of them later, and lots of interesting plants and trees. We even got to see a sloth REALLY close up, with her baby, too. That was a definite highlight. At the top of the ride, we got to take a quick break and check out the other side of the volcano.

Arenal volcano is one of the most iconic sights in Costa Rica. It was dormant until the 1970’s or so, when it erupted and grew massively tall. It’s still erupting, and there wasn’t a day that went by that Jess and I didn’t see steam pouring off the top of the conical mountain. We’d get to see it glow at night, sometimes, too. Very pretty. From where the tour was, we could see the side with the most activity. You’d occasionally see snakes of steam running down the mountain. That was the lava.

So...zip lining. For those of you that have never heard of this, here’s how it works. You string up some steel cable between points, hook yourself up to a harness, strap yourself to a safety line and a wheel, and slide down the cable. This one was definitely exciting. At times we were 200 meters up in the air, and some of the cables went for nearly half-a-mile. And you would *fly* down those things at some serious speeds, too. Very exciting, very fun, and a blast to do. My favorite was the last one, over a half a mile long, and in the middle, the ground comes back up so you’re zipping through the trees. Very pretty.

We went into town for lunch, intending to eat at the burger king, but were lured next door by the smell of smoky BBQ. It was just a simple restaurant, but they made really good food. I had the ‘typical lunch’. Chicken, riceandbeans, veggies, potatoes, and a really good fried plantain. I think they candy those things there.

For the afternoon, we planned to go by La Fortuna waterfall, stopping at a hammock shop on the way. The hammock shop wasn’t there anymore, but the waterfall sure was. It took us about 10 minutes on an unpaved, bumpy road, but evidently that’s par for the course around a lot of places in Costa Rica.

One short, but steep hike down, and we were at the waterfall. They advised us that the water was safe for swimming, but not to swim *under* the waterfall. Check out the video, you’ll see why. It’s a serious waterfall. You’d really have to work at it, though, to swim underneath it. There’s so much water flowing down that it constantly pushes you to shore. Very pretty, though, and the water, while nippy, was good for a swim. Jess swam around behind the waterfall, her first attempt at terrifying me while in a foreign country. She seems to enjoy doing that.

We also took a little dip in the river beneath the falls. There were a bunch of little, tiny fishes that Jess thought would try and nip at her newly-painted toenails. The hike out was short, but tough. Very vertical, though the path had been well carved.

Also, on a side note, my new river shoes are really good. Keens, if you’re curious.

We decided to go to one of the places recommended by the book for dinner. Luigi’s pizza. Evidently they’re supposed to do good pizza, but let me tell you, that pizza was TERRIBLE. And if you know me, you know I’m not picky about my food, but something about that pizza was just intolerable. I couldn’t finish it. Yuck. Pizza, even. How do you screw that up?

Mooooovie.



-N

Costa Rica, Day 1

Day 1:
This starts off in Florida on a Monday after the wedding. We woke up plenty early, with all our stuff already packed, and got ready to go. We got to the airport without incident and checked in smooth as butter. As is traditional for these overseas trips, so far at least, we only had one backpack each. Most of that was taken up by clothes and a couple of things to keep us entertained on the flight. We felt very sharp when checking in and seeing people with huge bunches of massive suitcases. I can’t imagine what was in those things. Maybe they were moving to college. Worked especially well considering that Spirit airlines charges you to check in even one bag. It’s one of the reasons their tickets are so cheap.

The flight was quite short, Florida is closer to Central America than I thought, and before I knew it, we were on the ground! A foreign country, how exciting! Getting through customs and immigration was a breeze, we just showed our stuff and they let us right in. The boons of traveling to tourism-friendly locales. We changed a bunch of money from Dollars to Colones, the local currency, right at the airport, but I hadn’t figured out the conversion rate in my head, yet. When we walked out, we ran a gauntlet of taxi drivers, and mostly ignored them. We did ask one where Poas rent-a-car was, and he called for a guy. Someone with Jessie’s name on a board came over and escorted us over to where the shuttle would pick us up. He was very friendly, but I don’t think he actually worked for the rent-a-car place, and he was pretty explicit that he was just working for tips. Like I said, I hadn’t worked out the conversion rate in my head, so I tipped him 100 colones. I wasn’t going to do the dumb thing and accidentally tip him 50$ for carrying a backpack 25 feet. As it turns out, though, I tipped him roughly 20 cents. Oops.

Poas rent-a-car was pretty nice. They spoke english, which was true of most of the tourist-y places we went to. They got us hooked up with our manual, 4-wheel-drive jeep and a GPS specifically for finding our way around the country. The GPS was great, because most of the major, country-crossing thoroughfares look a lot like nearly-abandoned mountain passes. The GPS never steered us wrong.

About 25 minutes after we left, though, the car started acting up. It started off being hard to shift into gears. Jess would tell me, and I’d have to use both hands to get it into position. After a while, though, we couldn’t even do that, and whenever we downshifted below 3rd gear, the car would sputter and die. And then we couldn’t get it started again.

So there we were, in the middle of San Ramon, unable to speak any Spanish, with a dead car, and still about an hour away from our hotel. I was about to go out and brave the wilds of Costa Rica to see if I could get a telephone and call Poas and tell them to bring us a car that worked, but Jess recommended we wait for a while. After about 10 minutes, we were able to start up the car again, but it still wanted to die every time we dropped below 2nd gear. So we did pretty much the entirety of the drive in 3rd gear or above. Which was exciting on those tiny mountain passes. At least we could coast on the downhill stretches.

The drive was gorgeous, though. Costa Rica is as green as any place I’ve ever seen, and it’s filled with so many amazing sights and strange plants that even the drive was a nice opportunity to see plenty of rainforest countryside. Well eventually, on our drive, we discovered that the clutch wasn’t as loose as Jessie’s truck, and we had been leaving it ever-so-slightly depressed while we drove. Evidently, the clutch didn’t like that, and as soon as we stopped riding it, the car gave us no problems for the rest of the trip.

The GPS drove us right to our hotel. We checked in, mostly, but the front desk informed us that the power was out to the entire hotel, so they couldn’t run our credit cards yet. Well it was still daylight, so we walked off to our room. Pretty much the entire hotel was a series of bungalows, all of them with a beautiful view of Arenal Volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Also very conical and Iconic. Our private room had an awesome view, and we just spread the windows wide and drank in the view for a while. After that, we had some dinner at the hotel. We really ended up liking that restaurant. Jessie especially liked the dessert, ‘Baccio...something’. We never got the name down, but it was a puff filled with nutella and nuts and cooked in a fire stove, and served with ice cream and chocolate. We intended to share that and the Tiramisu, but Jess ended up eating most of the Baccio.

As with most nights, we ended up going to sleep early. The sun set at around 7, and it set fast. After that it was so dark that sleeping was really the only thing to do. So we did.

I'll be making little videos to accompany the text entries. Enjoy!



-N

Intermission: Update

Right,

So I'm about to get down to the business of blogging about the honeymoon, much like I did for the Japan trip, but I wanted to do a quick update about us before diving back into the past again.

We've been home and married for about two weeks, and we've flipped over from being contract-to-hire employees to actual employees. Our salary...did something, I can't quite remember which direction it went, but our benefits for being properly employed are spectacular. Bonuses and 401k stuff and everything. They even pay for our health club membership. How nice!

Nagano continues to grow. He was a BIG kitten when we came back from Costa Rica, and he continues to grow in tiny little steps. Being older has calmed him down, too. I'd post pictures, but it's a big process to get stuff on here and then posted, so I'll do that later.

Tigger had a rough day yesterday. We took him into the vet a few months ago and the recommended bringing him in for a teeth cleaning. It's a pretty serious thing where they put him under and get at his teeth. In Tigger's case, they actually pulled 6 of his teeth because they were too rotten. We were worried for him, but he seems to be doing just fine. We have some antibiotics and mouth-morphine to give him for a few weeks and days, respectively, and he ate hard food right when he came back, so that's good. He seems to be in pretty high spirits, but that might just be the drugs talking. He was very affectionate, as soon as we picked him up from the vet, we had to reach in and clean out his carrier some, and he was nuzzling Jessie all over when she put her hand in. The vets say that pets seem to really like having bad teeth out, because it hurts less. It certainly seems to have put Tigger in a good mood.

Also, we're going house hunting! We went to a couple of 'open houses of opportunity' last week, and weren't terribly impressed with what we saw. We've seen some better houses, though, and talked with our real estate guy who will be showing us eight of them tomorrow. So that'll be fun. We'll bring the camera, any experienced house-shoppers want to warn us of what to look for?

Video games! Tis the season where all the big stuff comes out in preparation for the holiday shopping season. I'm currently playing Little Big Planet, ahead of schedule, he he, and Rock Band 2 with Jessie. We make a pretty great band together. It's called 'Doomsday Not Included'. We took that one from the 'random band name generator' in the game, which is awesome.

Right, let's talk Costa Rica...

-N