Waiter, can we have a pair of patience pants, please?

Two things have really solidified on the trip -- without internet access, Wayne is a cranky bunny, and Darien will always swipe food from Aaron’s plate.I think the funniest line of the morning goes to Aaron.  It was a calm breakfast morning, Wayne and I arrived at 6 am to be overwhelmed by the groups going out on tours, and then hung around to have a very nice breakfast.  He headed back for vitamins and packing, and I stayed there, sipping coffee and listening to the ocean.  And scratching the bites on my leg...

I have been nearly bite free almost the entire time here until we got to Bahia Drake.  After each afternoon nap, I have discovered several bites despite not hearing any mosquitos at all.  Wayne also turned up with bumps on his legs.  Well, it wasn’t a mosquito.  Last night I found the culprit skittering behind the bed.  A little black spider that was a wee bit too fast for me to catch.

And I love the ocean, baby.  Followed closely by rain, of which we had plenty last night.

Anyway, Darien and Aaron arrived (guess who’s been calling them Daron and Arien??) for breakfast, shortly followed by Wayne.  It was funny to watch Darien’s fork continue to circle Aaron’s meal, only to finally be told that she needed a pair of patience pants.

Apple, tree!

We finished our meal, packed up and left by 8 am to head back out.  This was after having worn Wayne’s Christmas Jersey (van Persie’s Netherland jersey, to be precise), and having had somewhere between four and six people call out van Persie!  Good player!  With only seeing the color of the jersey and the number!

We were planning on dropping off Darien & Aaron in Palmar Norte, and then heading to Ojochal for lunch.  The drive was remarkably faster and unpunctuated on our return, and we dropped off Darien & Aaron with plenty of time for them to have lunch, catch a bus out and then eventually make it to San Vito by 4pm.  Good driving, must say.

Lunch at Citrus was as good as last year.  And there was some lovely artwork for sale, but way too bulky to bring back to Hawaii.

The rest of the drive to Quepal and then Manuel Antonio was uneventful, and we wound up slightly down the street from the hotel in which we stayed last year.  When we got to the Pacific Souss, it was miserably hot, there was no wi-fi in the room, and our 3G service was reduced to the pits.  The humidity and head were enough to make you weep, and even the view couldn’t really bring you to a state of bliss.  I think we missed our hotel from last year.  Oh well.  Adding insult to injury, we arrived in Manuel Antonio too late to go to the national park, and I hadn’t thought to book us closer to the park in order to be able to walk through.  Sigh.

A beer and a nap can make things better, though, and we woke up refreshed and headed up to dinner.  A quick perusal of some guides showed us that the park opens at 7 am daily, and that we would have plenty of time to walk through tomorrow.  So, dinner was served, and the email arrived...LSAT score.  While I’m not in the top 1o%, I am high enough up to be competitive at many schools, UH in particular, so I am happy, and starting to think that law school may indeed be in my future.  We shall see.

To bed we go at 10 pm, and we will look forward to tomorrow in Manuel Antonio National Park.

Happy New Year!

The primary attraction of Bahia Drake is the 108,000 acre Corcovado National Park.  We went today, guided by Manuel, who has been guiding here for the past 18 years, and living here for the past 30.  We left a little after 6:30 n the morning (we had an early breakfast), and rode for about a half an hour to the San Pedrillo Ranger Station. Manuel was a completely awesome tour guide, saw many things based on how he listened to the jungle canopy.  If I had to hike the Costa Rican jungles for some reason, I would want him on my side, guiding me.

We did a 3 hour hike in the morning, winding up at a stream after hiking under the canopy in an exceptionally diverse area.  We saw ring tailed kingfisher, puracao, golden orb spider (their webs are used to make kevlar), an anole lizard, capuchin, spider monkeys, and macaws (a pair of whom were romantically inclined) during the hike.  We then returned for lunch and then hiked out to a waterfall, followed by a dip in the swimming pool.  You have to hike about 10 hours to get to the next ranger station, and it takes several days to cross the peninsula.

There are approximately 500 species of trees in the park such as: the giant mahogany reaching over 80 feet high, strangler fig trees, and the unusual garlie tree. There are also over 360 types of birds, and the park protects the largest population of scarlet macaws in the country.

After our hiking, we came back to the resort, and hit the salt water swimming pool.  The bar opened with appetizers at about 4:30 (and with beer at 3:30), so we showered, relaxed, snacked, and I wrote in the blog.  I also had an unusually difficult (connectivity wise) skype call home, which made me realize that the wifi probably leaves a lot to be desired...thank goodness for 3G! 

Enjoy what your New Year brings you starting today!

Vuelta a Costa Rica

Happy New Year’s Eve!

So when we went up to the Poas Volcano, I mentioned that there must have been some sort of bicycle race, and it turns out it was leg 7 in a 12 stage bicycle race that took part over all of Costa Rica.

The Vuelta a Costa Rica (Tour of Costa Rica) took place from Monday 17 December 2012 til Saturday 29 December 2012.  The race is held annually in Costa Rica, carries a UCI rating of 2.2, and is part of the UCI America Tour.  In case you were wondering, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) classifies its races according to a code made  up of two or three parts which indicate both the type or style of race (the first part), and its importance or difficulty (the second and third parts). The first part can be an integer or an abbreviation, and the second part, when present, is usually integers. Both parts are separated by a period or decimal point (.).  'HC' (beyond categorization) is the highest ranking category, followed by '1' and then '2'. So, the Vuelta a Costa Rica, when its ranking is broken down, is a stage race over multiple days (the first “2” in the rating) of a scale similar to the Tour de Normandie (the second “2” in the rating).  It is raced by UCI professional continental teams of the country, UCI continental teams, national teams, regional teams, and club teams.  The race broke down into the following stages:

1 - Dec 17, San Jose - Limon, 155.9 km

2 - Dec 18, Limon - Pococi de Guapiles, 178.75 km

3 - Dec 19, Ticaban - Pococi ITT, 28.8 km

4 - Dec 20, Pococi - Paraiso de Cartago, 138.85 km

5 - Dec 21, San Jose - Canas, 138.85 km

6 - Dec 22, Canas - Grecia, 140.15 km

7 - Dec 23, Volcan Poas ICTT, 18 km

8 - Dec 25, Circuito Presidente CRIT, 188.4 km

9 - Dec 25, Jaco - Prees Zeledon, 143.09 km

10 - Dec 27, Circuito Osa CRIT, 121.4 km

11 - Dec 28, San Ramon Sur - Pejibaye de Pez, 90.21 km

12 - Dec 29, Peres Zeledon - San Jose, 134.8 km

This year’s winner was Oscar Eduardo Sanchez Guarin of Cuba, and the total distance cycled was 1431.21 km, about 890 miles.  Not quite Tour de France, but this darn country is hilly!

Enough of the side notes, time for breakfast soon!

It's New Year's Eve, so we must be traveling

This morning we bid a sad farewell to our friends at Casa Botania, and took off on what we (Wayne and I) expected to be a 2 1/2 hour drive.  I wondered what was up when Aaron and Darien choked back a laugh simultaneously. The first 1 1/2 hours went swimmingly until we turned down the road towards Drake Bay.  We had a photo stop on the Gulf side of the Osa Peninsula, and then I got to continue driving forward.

Bahía Drake is a small bay on the north side of the Osa Peninsula on the coast of southwestern Costa Rica.  Believed to be a port used by Sir Francis Drake in the 16th century and the location of one of the British pirate's fabled hidden treasures. The main town of Bahía Drake is Agujitas and has a population of about 1,000 residents. The bay is not on the beaten track and can only be reached by highway during the dry season. Boat service up the Sierpe River and air travel connect Bahía Drake to the rest of the world during the rainy season. There are miles and miles of beautiful coastline with rocky crags and sandy coves that extend from Agujitas, where the village of Bahía Drake is located southward toward the boundary of Corcovado National Park about 12 miles to the south. Along this stretch of beach are located some of the most remote and spectacular ecolodges in Costa Rica.

The bay is named for Sir Francis Drake himself, who visited this area in March 1579, during his circumnavigation in the Golden Hind. History has it that he stopped on the nearby Isla del Caño, but locals speculate that he probably landed here as well. There is a monument at Punta Agujitas (on the grounds of the Drake Bay Wilderness Resort) that states as much.  :)

Well, the condition of the road began to seriously worsen about halfway in.  We wound up going up and down rocky hills quite a bit, dodging oncoming traffic the entire way.  I had the opportunity to ford 2 puddles, 1 stream, and the river you saw above after traversing a couple of very rickety bridges, with Darien punctuating the travel all the way.  I was particularly chagrined by the river crossing, as while we were waiting for Wayne to scout out a pathway, 2 local kids on a moto forded the stream (and I think they were laughing at the gringos).  With each bridge and stream crossing, Darien became more and more convinced we were on the wrong road (after all, the woman at the resort only asked if we had 4 wheel drive, and didn’t mention the condition of the road other than it had been improved significantly).  Alas, we were indeed on the correct road.

We finally made it to the town on the bay, and negotiated a parking spot for two nights (no price negotiated yet, and no pay until we get back and still have a car).  From there, we caught a boat to the resort.

We checked in, had a late lunch, discovered that this is not the land of hairdryers (that will wait for Manuel Antonio), and then took off upstream in kayaks in search of crocodiles.  Alas, no such luck.  We got to a point where there were some small rapids that surged a bit, and turned around, heading under the bridge.  Darien was up for kayak wars, in which she and Aaron indulged.

After we got back, we rested before our New Year’s Eve supper - snapper for Darien & Aaron, and BBQ pork for Wayne and me.  I had been fretting for days about not having sashimi for good luck while we were in Bahia Drake (where can we get it, oh no!), and we found a savior at the table next to ours.  He had caught several ahi, sailfish and other fish, and had kept the 80 pound ahi for serving that night for dinner.  Woo hoo, let’s here it for the man who saved New Year’s Eve!

Very tasty and enjoyable all around.  We finished up the evening with poppers (we didn’t use them at Christmas since Aaron’s parents were with us and we only had four) and Concha y Toro brut sparkling wine (and fireworks), ending out a very pleasant day, and lending an auspicious start to a good new year.

I wish everyone a wonderful New Year filled with happiness, love and friendship!!!!

Adios, Fila Guinea

Sadly, today marks the end of our time in Fila Guinea as we move to Casa Botania for this evening, and then down to Bahia Drake for New Year’s Eve and Day.  We did a short walk, less than three miles, through the upper part of her village, turning around at the upper school.  We got to see the temporary structure built for graduation, and for bingo.  It is still there, despite school being out until February.

It was quiet, almost deserted, and the few people we saw we either preparing for church, or moving around with Sunday ease.  We walked by the now defunct Soda and Internet Cafe, both of which went out of business in the past few months. 

Once done with our nearly three miles, we packed up, Darien did an exercise tape, and we loaded up the car.  We fed the grand-kitty one last round of soft cat food (which she glommed up quickly), left some crunchy food, and headed back to the recycling building to drop off our most current load.  We then did a repeat trip to the Mexican restaurant across from the San Vito bus stop, where we waited for Aaron to return from San Jose.  Sigh.  No more grand-kitty for a while.  =[

From here we went back to the Wilson Botanical Gardens in the outskirts of San Vito.  If you read the blog last year, you know the botanical garden is part of  the Las Cruces Field Station, and it has beautifully diverse tropical and subtropical plants, and offers views of unusual plant families and rare and endangered plants from Costa Rica and other parts of the La Amistad International Park. Today, rather than go the typically marked trail of flowers, we headed instead to the bird watching tower, and then down to the stream (where you should only go if you have permission due to being overnight guests).  The tower seems to max out at over 34 feet, in fact, closer to 45.  We didn’t see many birds, but there was quite a view of the valley and mountains.

From here, it was back to Casa Botania, a bed and breakfast where we had a beautiful meal last year.  Tonight we stay in the two bungalows down from the main building, and enjoyed a three course meal prepared by its owners.  The view from our bungalows is spectacular.

If you read the blog last year, you may remember that Casa Botania is a Bed & Breakfast located about half between the Wilson Botanical Garden/Las Cruces Biological Station and the town of San Vito de Coto Brus.  The B&B is run by Kathleen and Pepe, a young Tico-Belgian couple who have an adorable son named Elias and a furry dog named Loba, and is situated on a mountainside in the Linda Vista neighborhood and enjoys a splendid and spacious view of the valley, as well as the primary forest reserve of Las Cruces.

The B&B stresses renewable resources (we have solar powered lights outside the cabins, and the interiors are very natural), and really has a family feel to it.

Sunset was particularly spectacular.

For dinner, we were treated to a fabulous three course meal - soup or fish appetizer, lamb or chicken tikka masala for the main course, and dessert was a banana flambé or chocolate mousse.  Quite to die for.  Kathleen’s parents are here in San Vito right now as well, her father makes an excellent “digestive” reminiscent of lemoncello for post-meal consumption, and her mother makes jams for the breakfast meal.  I believe that I will be looking forward to that meal, and think I should probably try to burn off another thousand calories or so in the morning.Following the end of our meal, we retreated to the cabins, where the boys will be watching the Redskins play the Cowboys, and I will be writing in the blog, and Darien will be reading on her Kindle.

Tomorrow it is off to the beach and the land of working hair dryers - although I will miss San Vito.  To think that if Darien had not been posted here, we would never have made it to Costa Rica.  For shame!

Sleep tight all, and here’s hoping that the Redskins win!