Monteverde - Life in the Clouds

Our last day in Monteverde was a little more of the same. We started out with another cloud forest hike, only this time through the other cloud forest. The only way you could really tell the difference, though, was by the muddiness of it all. The Santa Elena Reserve has a lot more mud and is not very well maintained. Probably as a result of this, however, there seem to be far fewer tourists and you can probably enjoy yourselves far more there than at the other reserve, if you can get over the fact that you're going to get muddy.

We hired a guide for this cloud forest hike, which ended up being a complete waste of money. First, the hotel sort of misled us regarding the cost, and it ended up being twice as much as what they had told us, as the price they gave did not include the cost of park admission. However, the tougher part was the family with us in our group had a little 10 year old boy who was acting very much like a little 10 year old boy, making lots of noise and splashing around in the puddles. If we had not already done so many other rain forest hikes and seen so much already, we may have been upset about it. There were also far more people on these trails, which I am sure did not help matters. We did happen to see a snake sitting way up in the forest - the guides had found it at the entry to the park and one of them had trained his telescope on it. Even still, it took some time to really spot it, as it camoflauged itself so well.

After the tour ended, we decided to hike through the forest some more on our own. Almost immediately, we saw more monkeys. I think we also saw some other birds and such, as well, and located a little waterfall that was peacefully rushing along. Overall, I think we did better on our own than with the guide, which was really so different than any of our past experiences. It was this little tour that reminded me that you could have a great guide but you cannot always pick who is on the tour with you, and that can really affect things. However, it was still a lot of fun and we enjoyed ourselves.

In the afternoon, we went on a coffee plantation tour. The other folks that had signed up for the tour did not end up going. So, we had our very own private tour of the plantation, and got to pelt tons of questions at our tour guide about Costa Rica culture and life. He also lifted entire sections from the moview The Bucket List to give us a brief history of coffee, a fact we did not know until we happened to see the movie on our flight home. You gotta love an enterprising tour guide. Overall, this was a really awesome tour, and a nice alternative to all the purely nature/rainforest hikes we had been doing. Plus, we got to meet the actual plantation owner (Don Juan), who is this really old, short man who does not speak a lick of English. He happened to be walking the grounds and saw us there.

And with that, we ended our Costa Rican adventure. Yes, there are gaps (like our trip to the airport where we got stuck for probably 45 minutes because a tour bus in front of us had skidded off the road) and things I probably forgot to mention (like the fact that if you use your credit card to pay the departure tax at the airport, it's considered a cash advance and you get hit with an extra charge by your bank), but I think it covers a lot of it. We hope to go back in maybe a year or two, but that will all depend, I suppose on whether planes are still flying and if they so, how expensive ticket prices are, as will so many of our travel ideas. On the bright side, I was really glad I got to go here while it was still economically feasible and before it became even more touristed than it already is. I wonder how Costa Rica will find a balance between its tourist economy and their ecological endeavors. Hopefully, they are able to achieve it because it would be sad to lose such a beautiful landscape.

Monteverde - From the Air

Early in the morning, we got picked up from our hotel and taken to one of the cloud forests in Monteverde. Monteverde has two "cloud forests," one on either side of the Continental Divide. The clever name for these eco-wonderlands is derived from the fact that they are literally in the clouds. As such, you are generally always walking through a fine mist while you are walking through these areas.

Today was to be our day of breezing through the upper canopy on zip lines like crazy tourists. This notion was completely petrifying to my girlfriend, but I was too tired to be scared. For anyone not familiar with zip lining, there is a series of cables and platforms (about 18 where we were) through an area (in this case a rainforest canopy) and you sort of slide along these cables, from platform to platform at really high speeds. Some systems provide you with a braking lever. Ours, however, left us with only our hands to stop us, as they gave us thick gloves and explained how we had to grip the cable when we needed to stop or slow down. This was by far the hardest part because you never knew if you were going too fast or not fast enough, or when to start braking. As an added bonus, about half-way through, there was a very tall platform where they handed you a rope and they pushed you off, and while it looked and felt like you were plummeting to the ground, the rope you were holding would catch you just before the ground and swing you out into this large clearing. They call it a Tarzan Swing. I called it excitement with gravity.

Zip lining was a nice experience but certainly nothing too exciting for either of us, unless you count the adrenaline rush. However, we were glad we did it so that we could say that we did it. After that little 1 or 2 hour adventure was over, we got to go on a self-guided cloud forest hike, which included (you guessed it) more hanging bridges. By now, though, we had become connoisseurs of these contraptions, comparing and contrasting them. "These seem more stable." "The last ones looked nicer." Etc. We are not sure if we did not see much wildlife on the self-guided hike because all of the nature blended into itself, which seems completely possible, or if it was because only a scant hundred or so feet away crazy tourists were flying and screaming through the air, zip lining their little hearts out. It was probably more likely the latter, or at least a healthy mix of the two.

Next we got a bite to eat, followed immediately by another butterfly garden. However, this one was much larger and had a guide, which was really helpful. The other helpful item was that it stopped raining when we entered the garden and the butterflies became far more active. We learned all of the things we had learned (and forgotten) about butterflies in grade school, as well as a few things we had never known before. For example, some of the design patterns on the backs of butterflies make them look like owls or snakes, or the fact that butterfly wings are covered with scales and they reflect the light and that's what gives them their pretty colors.

After we were finished here, we went up the road a little ways to the Santa Elena Reserve, which is a huge park-like area run by a school, and did some hiking through there for a couple of hours, returning afterwards to where we had gone zip lining to catch the last shuttle out, which we had drop us off in the downtown area so that we could grab dinner, use an ATM, and get some groceries.

According to our handy guidebook, and the map our hotel gave us, Monteverde only has one bank and ATM. Unfortunately for us, the bank closed at 3PM and the ATM had decided it no longer wanted to work. Fortunately, however, we ran into two American teachers on a mission for cash, who had been asking around town and thought they had located a secret ATM. We followed them along in their mission, which ended up proving successful - as we found a little ATM tucked away in a super tiny nondescript room of a strip mall. Cash in had, we went to try and find dinner.

It seems many of the restaurants in the area had changed since the publication of our guidebook, and so, we just found somewhere that looked nice and clean and had dinner. It was nice that the place we picked was across the street from the grocery store and also right next door to the local ice cream parlor, which we also decided to sample.

Tired, well fed, with groceries and cash in-hand, we took a taxi back down the long and bumpy road to our hotel and turned in for the evening.

Arenal to Monteverde

The next day was our trip over to Monteverde. The two towns are not that far apart, unless you count vertical distance. The main problem is the roads between the two places are really rough and difficult to navigate. However, there are some horseback tours that can get you there and another service called jeep-boat-jeep that can easily get you there quickly, and shave at least an hour (of really rough travel) off the overall trek. Its clever name is derived from the fact that a jeep or taxi takes you to a boat that transports you across the Arenal Lake, to another jeep or shuttle, which drops you off at your hotel.

The boat ride was gorgeous and would have been very enjoyable if it wasn't for the two insane annoying teenagers behind us. The woman was from London, I think. I was not quite clear where the guy was from. They were maybe sleeping together but it was hard to say. Based upon the conversation, it sounded like they had been backpacking and staying in some hostels and that she had a boyfriend somewhere. All I know for certain is the two would not shut up for the entire one hour long boat trip and the conversation wasn't even fun to listen to. So, it wasn't like you could just sit back and enjoy a nice eavesdropping session. Instead you just felt trapped with this overwhelming hope that these two would somehow pass out mid-sentence and end your suffering.

Fortunately, the boat ride did have a terminus and we were not on the same shuttle with the non-stop-talking duo. This is where things got even more beautiful. Basically, this entire end of the drive is uphill and you find yourself looking out the window at seemingly never ending countryside with rolling fields and farms and just natural beauty that your brain has trouble processing. Within the span of the drive, the temperature drops about 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) and the roads continue to get increasingly miserable.

Finally, we got to our hotel, which was only about 500 meters down the road from the Cloud Forest Reserve. Along the road to there, is the Hummingbird Museum, which is basically a little shop. My guidebook recommended going to this shop for some free hummingbird observation. So, we headed up the road and were astounded with the hummingbirds zipping around the little outdoor area, whisking in-between the feeders and trees. They went so fast and so close, you often worried that they were going to hit you. However, they were much too smart to do something stupid like that and easily negotiated their way around any innocent bystanders. Afterward, we briefly checked out the Reserve, which was closing and headed home to our hotel to get to our night tour.

This was pretty cool, as we got to walk through the rain forest at night and see lots of nocturnal animals, even tarantulas. It had its moments of being a little scary, like when everyone turned their flashlights off and you realized how dark it really was and that anything could be crawling on you, including that huge spider that was only 3 feet away when you initially turned off your light. It was really a great experience.

Arenal on the Water

For our last full day in Arenal, we booked a canoe trip. We had a tough time deciding between a canoe trip or waterfall rapelling, but in the end we decided the canoe trip would be calmer, easier, and more peaceful. It was a half day trip down a Class II or III river. Given that we had never really been on any river with a real current, this was an entirely new experience. It was a fun trip. It was a little difficult because it was the first time my girlfriend and I had ever acted as a canoe team and I would have trouble understanding why she was doing what she was doing. Plus, sometimes, we would row the wrong way with our correcting strokes or whatever so the other one would be rowing so much harder not understanding why it wasn't working, but we learned a lot both about canoeing and about each other. For example, she learned that I could not always see the obstacles ahead of us that she could, as she was in front, and I learned to just trust more that she knew what she was doing and just offer her as much power as I could, and try to remember which way I was supposed to be rowing. Eventually, we seemed to get a lot better at it and even the guide said we were doing really good at one point.

(I would say that was probably the biggest part about this trip - learning about each other. With all of this hiking and canoeing and everything else, we seemed to learn so much about what and how the other person thought and how to communicate better. I had not expected my girlfriend and I to learn so much about one another on the trip but we did. The canoe trip was probably the pinnacle of all of this because of the way people experience it. It was seemingly the hardest and best part of the trip for me, but not in the way you would expect. I would say my favorite day in Arenal was the 13+ hour hiking day, but the day that probably made the most lasting impact in my relationship with my girlfriend was the day of the canoe trip.)

After we finished our trip, they made us lunch by the river. It was good and we got to talk to the three other people on the canoe tour with us, who were all really cool and around our age, probably a little younger. They were staying in-town and were leaving for Monteverde that day. We were able to recommend a couple different things they could try before they left and it ended up being really helpful to them.

That afternoon, we went to the Arenal Observatory Lodge, which is a hotel but also one of the best places to be able to see the volcano lava flows at night. It is really out of the way. So, if you intend to go into the city at all while staying in Arenal, I would not recommend staying there. However, if you are good with staying on-site the whole time you are there and just book lots of tours that include transportation, it is really a nice place to stay. We walked on some of their private paths, one of which led to a little waterfall, which was really nice, but the paths are not maintained as well. On our way back up we saw, you guessed it, more monkeys. (We saw monkeys pretty much every day that we were there. In fact, even when we go out hiking or kayaking now that we are home, we constantly think we are going to see monkeys in the trees.)

After the little hike, we made our ways back up towards the lodge, after another small hike through some gardens. Somehow, while waiting for the night to come, my girlfriend and I got separated. She had decided she wanted to go sit on another area of the deck and when I went to find her, I couldn't. So, after looking for her for a while I decided maybe she had gone back to where had been hiking before in the gardens. So, I went back but I couldn't find her. I did find a really awesome place for us to watch the volcano and it seemed no one else was there. I went back to try and find her and ran into her. She was so upset. She had no idea where I had been. I guess I had somehow just failed to see her back on the deck because she was sitting in a different area with some random people. Reunited, we went to the place I had found to watch the volcano and the clouds cleared a little so that we could see the top of the volcano and the lava. It was amazing. However, the best view came on the cab ride home when the clouds completely cleared and we could see lava just pouring down the side of the mountain. It was amazing.

Hiking Arenal

This was probably one of our most active days of the entire trip, with activities beginning at around 8AM and not finishing until 11 that night.

Once again, it began with a delicious, but early breakfast, which we finished in-time for our early morning pickup to get us to our 8AM hike through the rain forest. There were an abundance of hanging bridges there, as well. Again, our guide was really cool and our group was fairly small. There was a family of three women (a mother and her two college-aged daughters), two other girls (probably in college) and a third girl from Germany. The hike was kind of long and there were a lot of inclines and declines. Our guide took us the opposite direction that a lot of the other groups were going (its a circular route). This reduced the amount of other groups we had to deal with along the way and made the hike slightly easier. He had recently injured his foot playing soccer and wanted to take it a little easy.

After finishing here, we dropped off the two college girls but kept everyone else and went on our hike down to see the La Fortuna waterfall. It is about 500 steps down, on a pretty steep decline. Once you get there, though, you get to swim in the absolutely ice cold water, just beneath the waterfall. The German girl had absolutely no issues with it and jumped right in. My girlfriend and the mother of the other two girls made their way in pretty easily. Then one of the daughters went in, which left only the other daughter and me. It was during all of this that I learned that this (Colombian) family was from Miami. So, we all bonded, learned what they did for a living, where they worked, etc. The mother was a teacher and the two daughters were in college. One of them worked at a restaurant I know. Eventually, I got in but the last daughter was having a rough time. Finally, I convinced her to come in with the logic, how often are you going to get to do this. Bam, she was in.

Once we got out and managed to get our shoes on - fortunately, we had brought a couple extra towels and we shared them with the others so that they could dry off and get their feet back into their shoes. Then there was the difficult and strenuous hike back up the mountain. During all of this we also learned that the German girl worked for a company in Germany that was going to begin offering tours to Costa Rica for older/retired people. So, she was trying to try out all the activities to determine which ones were appropriate for that age group. We all seemed to feel this was not one of them.

We, eventually, made it to the top and then they dropped us off for lunch and we were told we would have a different tour guide for the second half of our trip. We were all sort of disappointed by this because our guide had so far been great, but whatever. Our lunch ended up being at the same restaurant we had gone to dinner at the night before. Again, it was absolutely fantastic and it included dessert, which was the awesome ice cream with hunks of brownie in it. The entire meal was quite good and the vegetables were just as fresh as the fruit.

Refueled and rested, we did a little souvenir shopping, but the rain had started and it was pouring by the time we got onto our tour bus, heading towards the Volcano hike. Along the way, we picked up a group of about three or four Cubans from Miami. It was hilarious. So, everyone was speaking some form of Spanish. The guide wasn't sure he wanted to do the hike because of the rain and asked us if we really wanted to go, but we were all insistent that we just had to go hiking. So, we got out and began the hike. The first five to ten minutes were miserable and wet but then the sky inexplicably cleared and we were able to continue our hike. It was really cool.

The day we landed, the volcano had begun to be more active and there was a lot more lava coming out than normal. So much so that they had closed off part of the path which takes you right to where the lava rocks are from the last large eruption. However, the Cubans being shrewed negotiators convinced the guide to let us go up unaccompanied and we got to stand on the lava rocks. It was staggering how far the rocks had been blown out of the volcano, and a little disturbing that it could easily happen again and this time hit us. Fortunately, the guide came up and stopped us from going too far and we headed back to the bus.

Next stop, hot springs. We went to the Tabacon hot springs and it was really pretty. The springs there all sort of flow through these man-made gardens, with rocks and such there that you can sit on as the water rushes past you, or there are pools that you can wade through and a waterfall that you can stand behind. The water is around 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) and it was just what we needed after such a strenuous day of hiking - it was about 6PM when we got there. Dinner was at 8 and then we were scheduled to go home. Our guide, however, took us all back to the volcano to try and get some night lava shots, but it was fogged over and we ended back at home, at around 11PM. What a day.

Arenal From Above

For our first full day in Arenal, we had breakfast at the little dining area - a huge buffet included with our room. The fruit was incedibly fresh and delicious every day. If you like pineapple, papya, and bananas, you are going to love Costa Rica. After supplying ourselves with food, we went on a Sky Tram ride up to the top of a platform that offers some absolutely beautiful views of the active side of the Arenal Volcano and the man-made Arenal Lake. The shuttle that took us there seemed to be filled with trendy older-hipsters. Somehow, we just did not seem to fit in with them, as they discussed their new cars and all of the money they were spending here and there. Fortunately, we were separated from them upon our arrival, as they wanted to zipline down the mountain and we had already decided we were going to do that in Monteverde. So, they matched us up with another group of folks that were pretty nice. We had two guides - one was very new to the area, she was from Bahli and I think the other one was helping her out.

After we got to the upper platform and took lots of pictures, they took us on a small rainforest hike and explained lots of nature to us. As our first tour and nature seminar, it was really good. They refreshed our memory of epiphites and bromiliades and were really nice. After all of that was done, we made our way back to the platform for our ride back down. It was a really nice and easy trip, and helped get us oriented.

One thing I noticed that was different from my trip to Italy was it seemed like absolutely no one had done any preparatory work in anticipation of the trip, let alone thought to carry a guide book around with them. I could not seem to get my head around this, as I seemed to use my book even more once I got there. It helped us find our way to a local ecological park that is affiliated with the local schools - teaching lots of nature classes. For only a few dollars, we got to wander around the whole park that was completely devoid of tourists except for us and see a sloth, iguanas, herons, poison dart frogs, a butterfly garden, and all sorts of other stuff. It was really awesome, and so incredibly inexpensive. An entire experience I would have missed without my guidebook.

Afterwards, we made our way into the town, had lunch at the great inexpensive place recommended by my guidebook, found a couple of ATMs and a grocery store. Once again, nearly no tourists were to be found in our restaurant. The grocery store was really helpful for getting water and snack food. As is to be expected, water can be really expensive in the hotels and gift shops. All the money saved could be put towards activities, food, and souvenirs.

That night, we had planned on going to a steak restaurant recommended by my guidebook, but our hotel concierge said that we would like this other place more. So, he had us go there. It really was good. I had this half of chicken cooked in banana leaves with this delicious sauce. Fantastic. And my girlfriend had some steak, which was also really good. Even though this was probably one of the nicest restaurants in the entire town, it was probably about as expensive as going to Chili's here in the US. Completely ridiculous.

It was a very productive day and just what we needed in anticipation of our long day coming up.

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.

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.

On The Fringe

This weekend, I have to drive to Orlando. I remember when I was younger, I loved to drive and would take every opportunity to drive everywhere - as far and as much as possible. When you live at least a half-hour away from everything, it really is not too hard to find far away places to drive to. However, something happened between then and now. I do not know if it is because more people on the road scare me than ever before or the fact that I have to spend almost as much as I spend in week's worth of groceries for a tank gas, but it no longer holds the same allure it once did. I always find myself wishing I could take a train instead and read a book or something on the way. (Generally, Florida's Highway Patrol frowns on book reading while driving.) Unfortunately, Florida does not really have much of a mass transit system to speak of.

I have no choice this weekend, though. My girlfriend's play opens this weekend at the Orlando Fringe Festival and I cannot wait to see it. In a few months, I will need to go to New York (but I'll at least be flying there) to see it in the New York Fringe Festival. I am so proud of her for accomplishing all of this, all while working at her day job, writing a novel, and participating in all the other things that she does. I look forward to being able to go to the play and see at least some of the fruits of all of her labor. I also think it will be fun to be up there and check out some of the other shows that are happening.

Our trip to Costa Rica is fully planned and booked - even our airport parking. I guess we did not book activities in advance, but mostly because one cannot predict Costa Rican weather. So, it's easier to do all of that, we think, once we arrive. I am so excited, and I know my girlfriend is excited to have this to look forward to after all the stress of the Orlando show is over. This way she can de-stress and relax in-time for stressing out again over the New York show.

Another Year Older

Last week, for my birthday, my girlfriend took me to see This American Life. I know what you are all thinking, how could you see a radio show. (Alright, only the few of you that read this blog, who know what that show is, are thinking that.) Well, the show tried something experimental, which is often the case. They asked their listeners to vote online and tell them if they would be interested in attending a live performance of the This American Life radio show (and their Showtime television show) - this live performance would be held in New York but broadcast live to various movie theaters throughout the country. Evidently, demand was high, and we quickly acquired our tickets. It was really quite a lot of fun - once we located the movie theater it was at, and while the show was two hours, it really did not feel very long at all.

We also went to a restaurant/bar bar we had seen on a Food Network show. (This was after, of course, we got some of the best bagels you can get outside of New York and before we went to see Iron Man.) The restaurant is basically a sports bar that serves unexpected fare. For example, you would not expect to find brie wheels, escargot, and fresh encrusted grouper sandwiches at your everyday watering hole. I did not think the food lived up to the hype provided in the show, but none of it was bad. In fact, the garlic fries and flank steak sandwiches were, by all accounts, delightful. My girlfriend was also quite pleased to learn that morning that quality bagels are closer than New York. Granted, acquiring them requires a trip to Miami, but I think she would consider that a small price to pay.

Finally, we booked our tickets to Costa Rica and will be leaving in about a month. I am still coordinating some of the hotel details but almost all of that is finalized and with a little luck, will be completely sorted out by the end of the day. Then I just have to sort out our travelers insurance and medications and we should be good to go. It was expected that the trip would have to be delayed until November but it all came together at the last minute and the Internet helped make it all much easier to accomplish.

It's Been A While

I know, I know. I have not written in over a week on this thing I call my blog, but again, I have been busy.

I went to Chicago two weekends ago and experienced both Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due. The latter is across the street from the former. Apparently, early on, Uno's just got too darn crowded. So the owner opened up a second restaurant across the street. Brilliant! And because not as many people seem to know about Pizzeria Due, it appears to be less crowded and easier to get a table there. We went to Uno's on a whim, saying well, while their pizza is often a little too greasy, we are in Chicago and we should at east try it to say that we tried it before we leave. Oh my God. Forget Giordano's. Forget Gino's East. No, no, no, my friend. Pizzeria Uno and Due is where it is at. Uno's was so good we went to Due the next day for more. And even today, I wake up with a desire to go back and have some more. Certainly, the best deep dish pizza I have ever had. I wish the franchised stores could make it as well as those two places do.

I discovered a new Web-based financial management site. It was written up in a number of places and got some stellar reviews. In fact, the reviews were so good, the company was inundated with new customers wanting to use their product, and their servers couldn't keep up with the demand. It took them several days to install additional servers and get everything running smoothly but they appear to have accomplished it. What is so cool about this site, is you enter your username and password for all of your credit card and bank accounts and it automatically goes there and pulls all your transaction data and keeps it up to date on an ongoing basis, so you do not have to keep entering your transactions as you go. It also categorizes your transactions, and keeps track of your debt to cash ratio and your interest rates and gives you a comparative analysis, based upon national averages, makes suggestions of you could save additional money, and gives you charts as to how much of your budget goes to what - travel, entertainment, gas, groceries, etc. In short, it's exactly what I always wanted. The site is called Mint, and it's completely free. How is it free you may ask because I sure know I did. Well, remember how I said it figures out ways for you to save money, like it pointed out to me that I could open an ING checking account and earn over 4% on my money. 4% in a checking account with no minimum balance! Insane. Well, ING pays them for that ad placement recommendation, as do other companies that offer cool programs and offers that can save or earn you extra money. Is it safe? Well, they sound pretty safe, and their security practices have been approved by e-Trust and Verisign.

As to the trip planning for Costa Rica, because Kate asked. The planning is going great. I have mostly figured out all the logistics of the trip and have selected hotels that we could probably stay at and how much most of all of that will cost. I eliminated one city and possibly added a different one, as it was just logistically easier. Our trip will probably not involve most of the beaches in Costa Rica, which we are mostly ok with, as we live in Florida and can go to the beach whenever we want. We were more interested in the rafting, kayaking, volcanoes and rain forest exploration than the beaches. Maybe if we go back, we will try to take in more beach areas. Overall, though, the trip sounds like it is going to be amazing. Absolutely everyone I know who has been says it is just an amazing place and as more and more retired foreigners and speculators are settling there and trying to make it even more of a tourist destination, I feel fairly sure that if I do not get there soon, I will lose almost any chance I have of seeing it as something other than Disneyland. And that's the story on Costa Rica. If you have any individual questions, let me know. I have looked through about eight travel books on the country and have a couple of favorites so far, but we will see how I feel about them after I get back. I have also done research on other areas of the country and the beaches, but my predominant focus has been elsewhere.

Ok, now off to being busy again.