Costa Rica Photos

As promised, here are my photos from Costa Rica, with captions, and a couple of short movies of hummingbirds. Some of the shots did not come out very clearly, but many of them I think you will enjoy. There's close to 200 of them.

Our First Cabin

Early the next morning, we awoke and experimented with our shower - trying to make it hot but not scalding. The place we stayed at in San Jose also had a shared kitchen area, with free coffee and lots of different teas. It was really a cool little place and relatively empty. There seemed to be about three college-aged girls staying in another room just down the way from us, but I think that was everyone in our particular building. So, it was nice and quiet. I imagine a bunch of college kids could have a blast there ... except, it is in downtown San Jose.

We checked out and left our luggage with the hotel front-desk folks while we went to grab breakfast at a little place down the road. This was the first time I was to have black beans and rice for breakfast. What a trip. The traditional food there, though, is far more bland than many other Latin areas. Quite different than what I expected, but good and cheap.

Our shuttle out to Arenal got to our hotel almost as soon as we returned from breakfast and whisked us off to our first private cabin. The trip out was really easy after you got out of the small and busy roads of the San Jose area. Pretty soon, most of civilization fell away and you were driving through much more rural areas. It was really cool. The cabins at our resort were sort of like little duplexes. So, there might be someone on the other side of your duplex but you would never know it unless you saw them. There were trees and shrubs everywhere making you feel more secluded. The showers were also really cool because they were sort of open in the ceiling, providing you with daylight in there, and there were plants set into a little alcove just beyond the shower. We also had these really cool rocking chairs on our front porch. So, you could just sit and relax and watch the humming birds.

We spent a lot of that day just enjoying our cabin and trying to make the AC work. We were, unfortunately, unsuccessful with this latter task and they switched us to a new and bigger cabin. We were somehow not as happy with the second cabin as the first, but they were both really fantastic. The view from both rooms was of the pretty landscaping that dominated the area that was our resort and then the omnipresent volcano beyond. Really, really pretty.

This was probably our least active day of the entire trip. We walked a little while out to the road (our resort was set off from the main highway in Arenal), and determined that walking into the town or anywhere else really was not something worth undertaking. The streets there were not really laid out for pedestrians until you got into the actual town, and given the driving down there, you were really risking an awful lot by attempting to walk.

Deleted Scenes

I realized that I forgot a couple segments from my last post. Probably the most significant one was that the server in our office went down just before I left on vacation. I am not, technically, our IT person. However, I do have a long history of fixing stuff that is IT related and we have a service contract with Dell for IT support. Hence, armed with a couple of cell phones and a sense of adventure, I worked with Dell to determine that at least one of the server's hard drives was bad and got it replaced and then determined that the remaining hard drive was corrupted and I needed to destroy and rebuild the entire array.

In theory, this should have gone more-or-less smoothly, as we had a complete backup tape that had gone off the night before. We backup every night and the backup was good and the tapes were brand new. So, I had a lot of positives in my favor. Plus, we have high level technical support at Dell. As such, you only work with the folks in the U.S. that speak English and really know a lot of stuff. I had a huge negative, however, Windows 2003 Small Business Server, which ended up being a thorn in my side and kept me in the office from 8AM Wednesday until 6:30AM, the next morning (Thursday). (This was the Thursday before I flew out to Costa Rica, and I still had not packed.) Who needs sleep, right? Apparently, I did. Because I distinctly remember going home and leaving a message for the person I knew would come in first that morning - not very long after I left, actually - to call out IT guy, with a detailed description of what I had attempted. I also had Dell notate the case file.

The heart of the problem was that Windows was not restoring correctly and nothing we tried seemed to be working. I kept having to start from scratch each time, and that usually took about another 40 minutes or so, to get to the point where I could try to restore again and then that part took about an hour. All of this led to some interesting comments and Tweets in the middle of the night that night. So, for any of those people that received comments from me at around 3 or 4AM that night/morning, thanks for writing - you gave me something to read.

While this was going on, I was still on decongestants and antibiotics for whatever odd sinus thing that had infected my body right before my trip. I am guessing lack of sleep was not the best course of treatment for all of this, but.... I did refuse to go to work for the remainder of Thursday and left the rest of it up to our IT guy. I felt a little vindicated that it took him a long time to fix it, as well. He spent all of Thursday in our office and when I cam in Friday morning, it still was not completely working. In fact, he ended up having to take it back to his office and work on it there. While I was in Costa Rica, however, I received an email to let me know that the server finally came back up.

I am still not fully convinced that the server is operating at 100%, but it is definitely functioning. I have us calendared to buy a new server in the first half of next year. Heck, for the amount that we ended up having to pay the IT guy, we probably could have just bought a new server.

Given my ability to become completely consumed with IT, it has been suggested that I consider taking a class or two in it. So, I am considering it. That and Spanish. I am horrible at foreign languages, but I feel like in South Florida, I have a better chance of being able to practice it and use it on a more frequent basis, and I think it would help me in my future travels.

Takeoffs and Landings

As some of you know, I was in Costa Rica last week. However, in order to get to Costa Rica, I had to fly. I suppose I didn't have to fly. I could have taken and boat, but that would have gotten me there far too slowly and I would have missed all my other reservations. In an attempt to minimize any angst over possible hurricanes that might occur between the time I booked the flight and the time I actually took the flight, I acquired travel insurance from AIG. The insurance was also taken out to cover possible lost luggage (that never happens, right) and the potential need to be evacuated in the event my girlfriend or I developed some rare disease or had an injury and needed to be airlifted out. We were happy to learn how ridiculously cheap this insurance was. For all of that, covering lost luggage, all hotel and airline reservations that might be lost and getting airlifted out in the event of an emergency, and a whole bunch of other stuff I had never even considered, it was under $100 for both of us. Totally worth it. However, no insurance policy that I took out could have possibly protected me against the flight I had to Costa Rica.

It all started simply enough. The flight was in the afternoon and I was rushing to get to the airport after getting hung up at an estate plan signing because the couple failed to tell us that they had multiple aliases. Not only that, but as we revised the documents further, more and more names came out of them. For example, after revising them a second time, we were about to sign and the wife said, "Does it matter that I have a different name on my driver's license?" Nah, who cares about silly things like names. My girlfriend was worried that they would close our flight because we would not be getting there two hours in advance. Having never experienced anything like that, this thought had never occurred to me. Now, I was suddenly stressed and concerned that I would not even be able to get on my plane.

We dropped off the car and, eventually, got on our shuttle to the airport. Upon getting to the ticketing area, we learned something really cool. At the airport, we were able to self-check-in for our international flight with checked luggage. Brilliant. It was the coolest thing ever. We just scanned our credit cards and passports and the the luggage tags printed out at the counter and they would call us over, stick the luggage stuff on them and off we went. One hurdle cleared. Next we went through security and grabbed a quick sandwich before heading to the gate, where our flight had almost finished boarding - no waiting around for us.

My girlfriend was excited that we were to have a female pilot. I was excited to just be on the plane. As we took off, and the beautiful ocean spread out around us, and my girlfriend started snapping pictures of the Keys and Cuba, as we quickly wizzed past them.. Before we knew it, after some heavy turbulence, we were over San Jose. There was a slight problem, however, the airport was closed. What?!

See, that heavy turbulence we passed through on the way there was owing to heavy thunderstorms. Well, evidently, some were still lingering over the San Jose airport and the entire airport had closed. Worse still, the pilot could not raise the tower on the radio to determine how bad the conditions were on the ground. So, with 20 minutes of fuel left (the pilot provided frequent updates of such things), we began to circle the airport. About a half-hour later, the pilot explained that we would be attempting to land now, as the weather had slightly improved. If this did not work, we would have to divert to the other airport in Liberia.

As we broke through the clouds, on our final approach, just as we were able to see the earth below us, the pilot veered off and hauled ass to Liberia, explaining along the way that the landing was not going to work and we barely had any fuel left so we would have to fly through some storms, expect some turbulence, sorry for the inconvenience.

About 18 minutes later, we landed in Liberia. Go us. Several of the passengers were more than willing to simply get off here and arrange for transportation out from this airport, but they wouldn't let us deplane. They tried to blame it on the fact that the airport is not equipped with immigration. Unfortunately, for them, a few of the passengers knew better and voiced their displeasure with being lied to. Yes, I was one of those passengers, but it's not my fault. My book on Costa Rica clearly indicates that their airport in Liberia accepts international flights and that there is a massive effort underway to try to expand it to accommodate more direct flights. Not to mention the fact that I actually looked at booking a direct flight into Liberia when I bought the tickets to begin with, but the cost was too high.

They refueled our plane and about 30 to 45 minutes later, we were back on our way to San Jose. This time, we landed. Wooo! Not only that, we finally got to get off the plane. For reference, our flight was due in by 4PM (local time, that's 6 EDT). It is now around 6 their time. We are hungry. We hurry towards immigration and stand in-line. And stand in-line. The line seems to be moving, but we cannot tell where the people are going. It becomes clear that the line is only moving because they are changing the number of rows in the labyrinth that is the rope line. After about a half-hour, we learn that immigration is closed for everyone that is not a Costa Rican citizen because the electrical storm brought down their computer systems. They estimate that they will be restored in about 2 to 3 hours. Joy.

At about 9:30 (local time), immigration begins to show signs of activity again and we are all rushed through. We grab our luggage, which is fortunately, still sitting there in baggage claim and rush to find our ride to the hotel. After trying to make the phones work for a while, my girlfriend finds a man that has a sign with my name on it. He locates a shuttle for us and we are whisked off to our hotel, in the rain. We arrive at the hotel at 10PM (local time). We are starving and without any local currency. Plus, it's pouring rain, very dark, and San Jose is sort of a sketchy place to hang out in after-hours. Fortunately, we are just down the road from a 24 hour Shell gasoline station, with an ATM. Score one for the petroleum company. We go and get local currency, after taking some time to figure out that 10,000 colones basically equals $20, not a $200, and we dine on scrumptious peanuts and pretzels. Hence, ended our first day (and adventure) in Costa Rica.

Oh, one of you asked if I will be posting pictures of the trip. The answer is I already have, and you obviously do not keep up with my Flickr page, which is not surprising, as I do not think many people do. There are some photos of the trip over there. I have more that I am working on uploading to Picasa and once they are on Picasa, I will provide another link. For now, Flickr is what's available.

People Are Rude

This weekend, I finally dragged myself to go see the second Narnia installment. I am still not sure what to make of the movie, as a whole. I think the ending to the movie left me a little confused or disillusioned, I am not sure which. However, I do know that I am sort of getting tired of going to public events because people are just rude, and often the rudeness comes from directions I never would have expected. For example, I thought for sure the little children sitting down the row from us were not going to be able to sit quietly for a movie with a running time of over two hours. I was proven wrong, possibly owing to the vigilance their father. Although, the 20 or 30 something year old couple that sat at the other end of our row were incredibly annoying - talking and giggling throughout.

I, personally, do not care if you talk or laugh or do whatever you want to do during a movie, as long as I do not have to hear it. However, they were too loud to ignore and they had no sense of volume - they did not get quieter during the softer parts of the film or only try to speak when the louder parts came across the screen. I felt like demanding that they pay me back for my tickets. Apparently, they needed their parents to take them to the film.

I found that most of the theater audiences at the Orlando Fringe Festival were generally quiet and attentive, but there were still some tense moments at the production put on by the youth theater group. We got lucky enough to sit directly in front of some proud parents with every sort of recording device imaginable. I kept hearing one of their digital cameras make its "I just took a picture" sound, and my experience would not have been complete without the mother suddenly freaking out saying, "Oh no, I am out," of film or tape, I presumed.

I am all for people having a good time, but not when it comes at the expense of everyone else around them. If you really needed to talk to one another that badly, you should have rented a DVD.