Sleep Spent

Leaving Quepos. First to San Jose (CR) then to Panama City then to LA. Tomorrow morning I fly to San Jose (CA).

Anybody want to pick me up and give me a ride to work? Give my cell phone a call and leave a message. Thanks!

We got up on Tuesday in Juntas and had a soak in the hot tub. (The shower wasn’t heated, but the hot spring was very nice!) After that we went looking for a place to get some cash. Turns out the Banco Nacional doesn’t like my card, but a different bank accepted it just fine. We got out about $90.

We were walking back to the hostel when Gregg noticed a variety shop and stopped to have a look. He wanted to get some T-shirts and some snacky-snacks. The shop had tons of clothes, for very inexpensive prices. Gregg ended up buying 10 pairs of girls’ panties for $.40 each. These he plans to use at Burning Man this year as part of a “reverse panty raid.” At first we thought for sure the woman would be sketched out by our interest in girls’ panties, but she seemed to get over that rather quickly when it became clear that Gregg was serious. She assumed that he was buying them for his daughter. It was curious that he didn’t seem to care what size they were, though, and he told me later that she commented on this point. In response, he said, “she’ll grow.”

All pantied up, we went to the next store and bought some snacks for the road. We got a bunch of stuff and the nice man behind the counter added in some caramel mixed with coconut for free. That proved to be the best of the lot, IMHO.

We went back to the hotel, settled our tab and got on the road for the peninsula. I was driving again. We crossed the Taiwanese “Bridge of Friendship” and we were on the Nicoya Peninsula. It was much dryer than the landscape we had left, and we immediately saw several iguanas run across the road. I managed not to hit them, and continued on my way. We drove for several hours on some paved roads and some non-roads. We stopped at a little town to get lunch. Gregg had some eggs cooked with vegetables and several tortillas. I had a hotpocket-like thing and what Gregg had. (I was hungry.) Gregg talked with the people who ran the soda a bit. Their little 4-year-old was particularly talkative. We took off once we had finished and spent another couple hours driving. We got gas and stamps in Cóbano and then took the dirt road down to Montezuma.

We loved Montezuma! It was paradise, though a bit touristy. All the banks and auto shops and everything was up the hill, which left the hotels, restaurants, shops and the beach. We found a place for $20/night (the most expensive so far) and dropped our stuff off. The room was right on the beach. Right away, we took off for a waterfall that Lonely Planet said was a little ways out of town. I was in board shorts and sandals, which was probably a stupid move since we had to basically walk up a creek to get to the falls. But we both made it with no injuries and with plenty of sunlight to spare. This pool was the perfect temperature, unlike the other one which was quite cold. This was refreshing and we both took a short swim in the pool and under the falls.

On the way back from the falls the sun was setting, so we I got some awesome pictures. There were waves and rocks and a boat several hundred meters off shore, bobbing in the waves.

We got back to the hotel and discovered that there was something which appeared to be leaking from our car. We were frightened for a bit, until we realized that it was really dripping down from the inside of the wheel wells on all four tires. We looked back and noticed that several locals were spreading something on the road. Gregg asked and confirmed that it was molasses. We asked our hotellier what that was about, and he said it was a local product (meaning it was cheap and available) and they used it to keep the dust down on the roads.

After this, Gregg and I went to have dinner at a place called Colors. The food was the best we’d eaten so far: I had a chicken curry with raisins and almonds and Gregg had a vegetable melange in a congac sauce. This was a particularly satisfying meal for Gregg, after days of huevos and papas fritas. We went back to the hotel and then I went to go blog. When I got back, Gregg and I went just outside our door for some fruit drinks and I noticed a guy playing guitar. I hadn’t played in days, so I was really excited about the possibility to play a bit. Fortunately, when I got back from food I got in line and was able to play a bit. The girl whose guitar it was showed up and I taught her the main riff from “Blackbird.” The hotel owner came by just after 10 and asked us to quiet down for the night, so I stopped playing. Two very cute Italian/Swiss guys showed up so we talked with them for a bit. Then we were asked to stop talking again, and they needed to get up early to go fishing, so we parted company and went to bed.

We arrived in Costa Rica on Saturday night. Once we got through customs, we went to the desk to pick up our rental car. This I put in my name, something which I might not have been able to do in the US seeing as I don’t turn 25 until Sunday the 26th. But after going through all the rigamarole, we had our car. Turns out, it’s a stickshift.

We had arrived pretty late, but we still wanted to get some way toward La Fortuna before Sunday. So we drove up to San Ramón. (Gregg drove, since I had never driven stick before.) This was tough, because it was dark and there were very few lights on the road. We almost drove off the road once, and ended up stopping in this triangular area separating an exit from the continuing road. It came up out of nowhere! But we got to San Ramón all right. We found a hotel which was supposed to be $4/night but which ended up costing us nearly double that. We also had to lock our car up, which we ended up getting for $3.

This town was hopping. We weren’t quite sure why, but there were tons of college-aged kids around drinking at the bars on this one street, and just generally milling around. There was a nice vibe. We ate in this restaurant were Gregg got some pasta with a savory sauce. They were playing U2 and Led Zeppelin videos while we were there, but when we walked past later they had switched back to something more befitting a little out-of-the-way Costa Rican restaurant. Perhaps the music was for our benefit.

We went back to the Hotel Gran and pretty much went right to bed, though it was after 12 by this time.

The next day we woke up at 12:30, which was mostly my fault: I had mis-set my little travel alarm clock. We got on our way after figuring out how to use the shower with the scary-looking electric wiring hanging out in the tiled area. (Turns out it was heated at the shower head, and it took some fiddling.) We went and got our car, which was fine. Gregg asked me if I wanted to drive. I was a little apprehensive, since, as I said before, apart from driving around a parking lot with my sister once a few years ago, I have never driven stick. I said OK, I’d give it a try, and we set off. Yes, there were some start-stop-start moments, but I did all right. :-)

We headed up to La Fortuna, stopping for lunch in the little town of Zarcero. There was a neat garden area in the center of the town (in front of the church) where there were tons of sculptures made out of some sort of juniper-like plant. Helicopters and dancing people and whatnot. It was neat. We had lunch and continued on, stopping once to buy some cheese from a roadside vendor.

When we got to Ciudad Quesada, we took a right and went in search of the Tucanito, a public park/hot springs area. We got there after closing time, but they let us in and didn’t even charge us. At first we couldn’t find the hot springs, but then we realized they must be down by the river, a nearly 1km walk. We started down the trail but changed our mind when we realized we’d likely be down by some standing water (meaning mosquitos), and it was getting late. We thanked the proprietors and left, being at first misdirected. But we eventually found our way. Gregg did the night driving.

We arrived in La Fortuna late, after the sun had set, and set about finding a place to stay. Gringo Pete’s was full up, which was too bad. They were the cheapest in town. Instead we opted for Cabinas Jerry. The guy offered it to us for $6 each, but through some graft on his part and some bad math on ours, he charged us $7 each. :-( After we got situated, we went off to see the town and had a nice meal. La Fortuna was way more touristy than San Ramón was, so there were nicer restaurants all over the place, as well as outfitters. We went back to the cabina and hit the hay.

(*UPDATE:* I forgot one of the most important things that happened to us all trip! We took the car out to Arenal, the active volcano in the Arenal National Park right next to Fortuna and watched as magma trickled out of it. This was at about 11 pm; apparently there was a great big eruption roundabout 3:10, but we were long asleep by that time. There were a couple big explosions while we were watching it, but perhaps we were on the wrong side of the mountain: we only heard these, and didn’t see much in the way of lava being tossed into the sky. Still, a fantastic experience.)

The next morning we got up at the much more reasonable time of 10:00. We left our loding and took the car up to a waterfall that Lonely Planet (our bible) recommended. We picked up two Argintinian women who were clearly walking the 7km up to the falls. I don’t recall their names (they were tough...), but they were very nice and were thankful for the ride. We saw the falls (very impressive) and posed for some silly pictures, which I will post later. We skipped swimming in the pond below the falls, as it appeared to be VERY cold. The Argintines were underwhelmed with the waterfall, since apparently they have tons of much more spectacular ones in their country. The falls were shorter than Yosemite Falls, but still pretty impressive. And it’s the end of the dry season here, so it would probably be much better come August.

We brought the girls back to town with us and dropped them off. Then it was off to Juntas. We first rounded a man-made lake. There were some bad roads, some stunning views and several coatis which begged us for food when we stopped to take a picture of them. We stopped for a juice drink at a convenient soda and talked about Juntas. It was originally a mining town set up by Minor Keith, the head of the United Fruit Company. We drove a good long way to get there, showing up in Juntas after dark. We wandered around looking for food and internet, finding a little of both. We also found an arena football competition between at least four local grade school teams. That was cheap, and good fun. Gregg bought and drank some Coca-Cola in a bag. We were the only gringos in town and certainly the only ones at the game. We got stared at quite a bit, especially by the kids under 5 who didn’t know better.

We got a pretty good deal on the place we stayed that night. There was a hot tub and a pool, both of which had the perfect temperature. We soaked that evening (hot, cold, hot) and went back to the room. We had a very fine discussion about finances and the wonders of owning property and then decided what we would do the next day (Tuesday).

I’m once again out of time, so I’m going to stop now. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some time to write again tomorrow so I can be caught up!

I left San Francisco bright and early on Friday the 17th. I boarded an Amtrak bus to SLO (to pick up D. Gregg) and then on to Santa Barbara. Well, we didn’t make it to Santa Barbara in time because of ¨this¨:http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2006/03/18/news/local/news01.txt. So we took 154 around Goltea and into Santa Barbara, but so did hundreds of other cars. We were stuck in traffic for nearly three hours, and we missed our train in Santa Barbara. There was another one at 7, which we hopped on.

This put a wrench in our LA plans (train station pick up and dinner with some of Gregg’s friends), so we called them up, cancelled, and then called another of his friends and had her pick us up at a different train station. That went to plan, we went down the 405 and ended up at LAX right when we needed to and boarded our 7 hour flight to Panama.

In Panama we got off the plane and had a 9 hour layover. We avoided all the taxi drivers at the airport who wanted to charge us $25 for the ride into the center of Panama City and walked out to the bus stop. There we caught a bus for the 45 minute (supposedly...) ride. Panama has the most amazing buses I’ve ever had the privelege of riding in. They’re all converted school buses and they’re painted all sorts of garish colors on the outside and have the most piercing horns. The best part, though, is the speakers mounted inside that blare whatever music the driver wants to play, usually some utterly danceable Reggaeton. There was one song in particular we heard which was hilarious, where a guy repeated ¨Gringo, gringo, gringo¨ a lot. Good times. Gregg and I made it to the center of Panama City, bought some stuff ($2 board shorts for me and 6/$1 socks for Gregg), and then headed off to see the Canal via another bus. The Canal was big, and there was a great exhibit in the visitor’s center about its construction. Then we hopped back on a bus (which took some waiting) and transferred to our fourth bus in the city center, near Plaza 5 De Mayo. The last bus to the airport broke down several times, and we had to wait for the driver to put in gas once. And there was a traffic jam. But fortunately, we made it to the airport in time and made our 1:15 flight to San Jose Costa Rica.

And now I’m out of time, and I have to sign off. Will write more later.

My mom helped me out yesterday in a big way. First she went to Santa Clara and picked up a dresser for me. Then she braved the traffic and crowds at Ikea in EPA and bought a bed frame. And then she drove all the way to San Francisco and helped me move them into my new room.

She’s like that.

Once we had everything out of her car, I suggested we go find parking and get something dessertish. So we parked on Castro and went to a coffee shop/bar at Market and Noe. We talked about the time she lived in SF and the time immediately following that when she and my dad lived in San Bruno and commuted here for work. She was a nurse at what is now Davies Medical Center at Duboce and Castro. I didn’t realize this until she told me.

Anyway, we had a nice long chat and then walked back to her car. As we did so, we passed this bum on the sidewalk who was laying out in his sleeping bag and who loudly said:

“You trying to seduce me with that necklace? You hussie!”

My mother was wearing a thin chain. The chain passes through the outline of a heart. It’s all gold and very pretty. I thought that comment was hilarious, but it understandably made mom a bit uncomfortable. “I like my necklace!” she said to me defensively, as I put my arm around her.

It seems she isn’t the only one.