Warthog Pinacate

Continuing our rogue’s gallery of characters we met and photographed along the way.

This couple is Carla and Richard from the Bay Area. We met them in Samara, where they were overseeing the construction of a condo they bought just blocks from the beach. Carla has a business in event planning and music.

At Los Inocentes, a farm in the north of Costa Rica, we met several people. Here’s Bill Mason, in a photo he sent us. He’s an investment banker, originally from Connecticut, who really enjoys Costa Rica. He’s bought a lot near the beach near Montezuma. He regaled us with a description of the exclusive Papagayo resort where his firm was holding an offsite session.

Here’s Phil Baker, waving. Phil is a real estate magnate in California and Costa Rica and he was introducing us to some of the projects he’s planning. He gave us a tour of his property near Heredia, where he has about 5 acres for his home and small coffee plantation.

And one of Bentley’s favorite acquaintences, is Pato. He’s a charming dog, belonging to the owners of Hotel Las Tortugas, Louis and Carrie. Pato and Bentley became pup pals. Not only did they have a riot romping on the beach, but other times, when Pato was in the neighbotrhood, he would trot up the stairs of our faro, bark once, and invite Bentley out to play. (Owing to the webbing between his toes, Pato earned his name from the Spanish word for duck)

Departure on July 16, odometer reading was 213554.
Return on November 2, 223962 miles on the Landcruiser (and our butts!)

Part way through the trip, we decided that we should capture pictures of the various folks we met. So here is a rogue’s gallery of our acquaintences.

Here’s Mariele, yoga instructor from Argentina. We’ve enjoyed her classes in Tamarindo on each of our three trips. Her classes have a special aura, partly because they are in the open air, under a tin roof. On several occasions, we are treated to lightning and thunder. She lights citronella candles and incense, and teaches a bilingual class, which welcomes cats and dogs as well as humans.

Our other yoga pal is Annie, co-owner of the Rip Jack Hotel in Playa Grande. She and husband Dave and chef Bret run a great restaurant and hotel. Annie and Dave spent about a year driving through Central America before buying the hotel. (Sorry, Dave, we didn’t snap your picture!) We also enjoyed yoga with their three cats with an ocean view and breeze. Bret, from Mississippi, is a terrific chef, and we ate a number of meals at RipJack.

Next is Ginette Laurin, who operates Casa Laurin, an excellent B&B in the Escazu suburb of San Jose. She has welcomed us several times and is not only a great hostess, but enormously helpful in advice on finding things and getting things done is Costa Rica. On our last visit, the couch in our room was made up especially for Bentley.

More members of the cast of characters to come!!!

Lookout, Carolyn’s back in town! With the Santa Ana winds, it’s dry and hot here in San Diego, but it’s great to be home. I’ve missed all of you friends and family. The blog won’t end - I still have 967 photos that we could put up here and another month’s worth of writing. And Fred will be recording his drive home, too.

I put Carolyn on the airplane at the small but elegant airport in San Jose and 25 minutes later I had the Landcrusier teetering on two wheels. Bentley was standing with two paws on the right front window and two on the floor. The front left and right rear wheels were on the ground while the front right was about four feet down in a deep hole and the left rear floating in the air.

Carolyn and I had found an interesting real estate development in Athenas the day before. Athenas is famous around here for having been voted “the best climate in the world” by National Geographic a couple of years ago. My guess is that the ‘best climate’ award was made with votes from plants and people being weighted equally as it was preparing to rain as i fell into the hole.

Athenas is a pleasant little town largely populated by ex-pats from around the world. The development is billed as a Bali style community and consists of a dozen lots and several very pretty Bali style homes. I think its a pretty good deal, you can get a 2900 sqft house and pool on two acres for around $271K. The spec home is beautiful with about 900 sqft of its 2900 sqft consisting of indoor/outdoor terrace. The swimming pool is mostly outside but a portion of it wanders indoors where there’s a small bridge (inside the house) across the pool. You have to walk across the bridge to get to the master bedroom; the arrangement allows you to swim into the house.

All I did was attempt to park on the side of the road near the entrance gate of the development. Plants grow really fast in Costa Rica, we spoke with a fellow yesterday who planted a banana tree last year and this year it’s 15 ft tall and producting; likewise a bunch of plants had grown over a hole (3ft x 3ft x 6ft deep) at the side of the road. As I slowly pulled off the road the right side of the car suddenly dropped into the hole.

I slowly got out of the drivers side door and had a look. No damage at all but i could easily shift the cars balance with one hand. Quickly a few workers approached to admire. I asked them to stand on the left read bumper which nicely lowered the car to a nearly level position. I then locked the hubs, put it into 4×4 and slowly backed to onto land. No damage at all, in fact the car body never touched earth! It’s pretty easy to get into such a predicament around here.

The drive back to Faro (our little house at the beach) from airport was a rainy one. The roads continue to get worse day by day. The proceedure here is to fix the roads in the dry season then let them fend for themselves during the wet season. We’re now getting close to the end of the wet season and the roads show it. Interestingly as I drove along the PanAmerican highway I came to a place where the road narrowed to one lane. It was two lanes a few days ago but today there were several trees and misc other plants occupying one lane; the largest of the trees was about 30 ft tall. The land the trees were growing on was a piece of dirt 20 ft by 20ft and 6ft deep. This block of land had slide down a nearby cliff and landed intact in the north bound lane of the highway. There ws only this nice little patch of jungle and no sign of there ever having been a road at this location. It sure wouldn’t take long for nature to reclaim this whole place if left alone!

Carolyn is returning to San Diego to take care of some business there (and not in small part to avoid the central american border crossings). She took our laptops back with her but i think I’ll post the occasional update on the solo travels of Bentley and me as we travel North. We’ll be leaving Costa Rica next week and intend on spending a week or so in Nicaragua.

From about Sept.3rd to 17th was nearly solid travel. We spent a few days in San Jose, then ventured to the Caribbean side of the country, then back to the north Pacific coast.

On the Caribbean side, we spent a morning snorkeling off the Cahuita Reef. Just chock full of colorful fish. I’m sure I spotted Damsel fish, Parrot fish, … and many more that I can’t name.

We mostly cruised the coast to get the flavor of the area. It’s just as the guidebooks describe - more Jamaican than Latino. Fewer people, surprisingly different terrain, and a very laid back attitude. We stumbled into their dry season, which was a relief after lots of rain.

On our return, we stopped at Caño Negro reserve. This is a unique area, where the rivers flow from the volcanoes (Tenorio and others) towards Lake Nicaragua. It’s important as a nesting area for many birds. We took two boat tours - one AM, one PM, to catch (figuratively) as many birds as possible. Caimans (like half-size crocs) like to lounge on the beaches here. The crocs are there, but rarely seen.

After Caño Negro, we drove to Playa Hermosa and stayed for three days. We updated our diving skills with what they call a “Resort Course” sanctioned by PADI. It covers the basics you need for a closely escorted dive. We spent an afternoon in their pool clearing masks, clearing our ears, giving each other the OK sign, and so on. Then the next morning out on their boat for 2 dives. It was perfect for us, not having been in SCUBA gear for nearly 20 years. Like the geezers we are, we reminded the instructors that the last time we dove was before they were born. I think they gave us some extra lead weights for that.

And then back to Playa Grande.

We haven’t lost interest! We’ve just been without adequate Internet access for a while. Still lots of photos and stories to tell.

Our friend Sid arrived in Tamarindo Friday afternoon Sept. 2 by air. After a quick introduction to the village and beach of Tamarindo, we drove back to Playa Grande. Before we left Tamarindo, the rain began. Before we had reached Playa Grande, the water was pouring down in 50 gallon drums full.

So a few little problems. First, the reservation that we’d made for Sid at the RipJack Inn had been inadvertantly given to a group of surfers who had pulled in during the day. In the downpour, we got a little wet checking out the problem. The power was flickering as we left. We darted back to the car to install Sid at the Cantarama hotel in the Palm Beach section of P.G. We got a little wetter. By the time we got back to our lighthouse we were a little wetter we had two problems: the lights were out, and our bedroom was 2 inches deep in rainwater. It was probably good luck that put out the lights before we electrocuted ourselves! The hotel owner, Louis, offered to put us up in a nearby room, which sounded pretty good at this point.

Between all these extra visits in and out of the ‘cruiser, we we pretty soaked. And, for the first time in weeks, actually chilly! We dried out and went to dinner at the Cantarama. Chef (and owner) Manfred cooks some outstanding cuisine. By morning, the storm was past and we had clear skies and sun. After a great breakfast at Cantarana, we set out for Monteverde, a mountain village in the cloud forests.

Sid’s a great bird watcher, so we went on a couple of guided nature hikes in the Cloud Forests of Monte Verde. This area is nearly all primary forest, in its original form. Here’s Sid with his camera aimed at some very cool birds. We saw the elusive and magical Resplendant Quetzal that every guide wants you to see - and for good reason. Its tail is long and the bird is large and colored in every tropical bird color you can imagine! Here’s Sid with us on his last night before flying home (and then on to Australia and New Zealand a few days later!)

Lesson #2 When you live in your bathing suit, it’s a good idea to rinse the sand out from time to time.

Last week, we took the immersion course at the Wayra (y-rah) language school in Tamarindo. We were in two separate classes, and spent time on conversation, verb conjugations and vocabulary. We’re both a little better off for the training, but disappointed that the classes didn’t propel us forward more. We’re practicing often and getting better. See the Spanish lesson at the end of this session!

Here are our instructors at Wayra: Edwin and Geovanny.

What We’ve Learned
After nearly 8 weeks of travel in Spanish speaking lands, we’ve made some interesting additions to our vocabulary. Some of our real-life lessons appear below …now here is your Spanish lesson for today

Sentences

Quiero una ventana trasera para un 89 Landcruiser FJ62. (I need a rear window for a 1989 Landcruiser FJ62. Uh, it was a dark and stormy night and the tree just jumped out at us and smashed the tailgate window. Not so easy to get things fixed here.)

Por donde se va a San Ramon? (How do we get to to San Ramon?)

Por donde se va a {insert many names here}? (How do we get to to …? Repeat as needed.)

Vocabulario

multa (Fine - as in traffic fine or border crossing “formality”. Count on forking over some cash.)

placas (plates, as in license plates. We removed our California plates, on the advice that they are often snatched as souvenirs. It turns out that as a means of enforcing traffic fines, the CR police confiscate plates, so we are often stopped on the mistaken idea that we owe traffic fines. The officers are invariably courteous and friendly and wave us on once we show our auto import paperwork.)

quince dias (fifteen days, as in “it will be ready in 15 days.” In practicality, translates to “never”)

exento (exempt… as in your dog is exempt from the $20 import fee. Had we known this word at the time we crossed the border into Nicaragua, we would have saved $20 in “fees” paid to our border crossing “assistant”!)

tivon - (t-bone steak - and a good one, too!)

Doctor de chiropractica (Chiropractor. The roads here are horrible and Carolyn’s neck has been compacted and twisted like an old tree. (no jokes, OK?))

repuestas - parts, most often auto parts. Part of our quest for a new rear window.