johnomadic

Quepos y Manuel Antonio

I'm back in the internet cafe now, and it's thunder and lightning outside; pouring rain.  I've been spending a lot of time at the beach, the water is fantastic.

But I´m getting ahead of myself.  Yesterday I was thinking that I would get some sort of snorkel and sailing tour for today.  I spent the morning going into the tour offices here... no luck.  Either the limited tours that were going were booked (it's the off season here, rain and all that), or none were willing to go with just me.

As it turns out, that was totally cool with me... because after a fruitless morning I went to the beach.  Much happier to be there than on a tour today.  From Quepos I took a twenty minute bus ride down to the beach at Manuel Antonio.  This is where I've spent the majority of these past two days (and I've got a little bit of sunburn to prove it!):

 

The water is so nice, I stayed in for hours.  While splashing around, I talked to a girl from Ohio who had just finished with the TESL school here, which is a consideration at some point.  She said she absolutely feels ready to teach a class after going to that school, which is good to know.

Had a friendly sunset dinner with Renee from the bus, the view from her hotel is much nicer than mine:

This morning I went to Manuel Antonio National Park and had a look around.  It was hot, as in, I think I lost a couple pounds hot.  But hey, it's a rainforest right?  I passed on getting a guide and just wandered around on my own.  Here is some of what I saw (wildlife pics ahead, Shell):

A knee-high deer:

Just to give a feel for what the trail was like:
 

A lizard... these little suckers are everywhere:
 

The reward for a long climb up a random path:
 

A sloth:
 

Monkeys!
 

 

 

Travis: Food is great!  It's not wholly different from what you can get in Georgia... so far it seems to be the usual with a latin twist.  Like scrambled eggs and sausage for breakfast, along with rice and beans.  It's pretty much Spanish food I guess.  Very tasty, yum.  Jealous, Adri??

Eric: Yeah, one side waits while the other side goes through.

Tomorrow I go to where I'll be staying indefinitely: http://purasuerte.com.  If I screw up any leg of this trip, this is going to be it.  I missed the bus ticket office hours today, so I don't have an advance ticket and I don't know if I'll need one.  I have to take a bus south to San Isidro and I have only the guidebook to let me know when they leave, and the guide book hasn't been 100% on.  Then once in San Isidro I have to find a 4x4 cab to take me to La Florida, then on to Pura Suerte... I have no clue how to get to either.  And I'm sure this will all be in Spanish.  Whatever, I'll start early, plenty of time to get lost and found.

From here on out, posts will go up less often I think.  I've got two per week in mind, but who knows?

Well... off to maybe find me a stack of empanadas and a couple of cokes, and catch game 4.

Quepos

Just two quick shots:

The tide is out across the street from my hotel:

Quepos.  Imagine several square blocks like this and that's pretty much it :-)

Arrived in Quepos...

... and I have seen the Pacific ocean... I guess I can die now?

The tour bus wasn't what I was expecting... no tour really, just a ride.  It was me, the driver and Renee from Chicago... very glad she was there, made a long ride much shorter.  We had a bit of a detour somewhere along the line, and a ride that should have taken about three and a half hours was more like 5 or 6.

No worries though, because the countryside is simply beautiful.  Lush and green, all sorts of plants... roads winding up and down through the mountains, mist in the valleys.  I could get used to it here.

Some pictures from the bus ride:

This is from when we were getting close to Quepos, a town built a long time ago on the banana trade.  Some years ago, blight wiped out the bananas, and palm trees are now grown instead for their oil.  So did I effectively cover up that I have no dates for said events?  Tricks from grade school...

And a shot of a one lane bridge, just seemed worthy of a picture somehow:

Today I got to Quepos, but my mind has been on San Jose.  I couldn't get to sleep for a long time last night, too much going on in my head.

San Jose is a dirty city, but not in a trash strewn Philadelphia sort of way.  I think it's one part abuse by the climate, and another part from not being the richest city in the world.  But there's still respect for the city, and it was rare to see any trash on the ground.

I liked it's openness.  Part of this is physical... for the most part store fronts are open to the street, no glass or walls.  People, motorbikes, cars and buses all blend together... the drivers that I've been a passenger for here are very good.  Another part is the people... as I was telling Renee on the bus, San Jose doesn't have that underlying sense of malice that Philly or NYC might.  I wandered around quite a bit, and at no point did my spidey sense go off... never felt unsafe at all.  Which doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, of course.  And people are friendly and eager to help the sucker with limited Spanish.

Something clicked for me there yesterday, and I really really like it.  To the point where I am tempted to ditch current plans and try to improvise a life there.  But there are other things to see yet...

A good night

Sorry peeps, no pictures from today.  Didn't really cross my mind to take out the camera.

This key- ç -is kicking my ass.  Keyboards are a little different down here, and that one is right where my pinkie finger goes for the enter key.

Today I bought an alarm clock and a pad of paper, which is a small adventure on it's own.  Generally I have to rely on the intelligence of other people to be able to put together what I'm asking for.

For example, this is how I asked for a notebook:

¿Tiene un liberio blanco para escribir?

Do you have a blank book for to write?  Or at least that's what I think I said.

Or the alarm clock:

¿Tiene un tiempo poquito?  ¡Ring ring, no mas dormir!

Do you have a time little bit?  Ring ring, no more to sleep!  I even trilled my R's for ring ring, because I'm cool like that.

Both cases, the guy led me to just what I wanted, so I must be doing something right.

The rains barely came today, so I had a lot of time to wander, so that's just what I did.  I am pleased with the hotel location, it's central to a lot of places to walk.  And today, my inner compass kicked in... for some reason it wasn't working yesterday.

Just behind the hotel is the central avenue, which is closed to vehicle traffic for several blocks.  There is also a street that crosses central ave that's also closed to traffic.  There are always lots of people walking there, and this evening I went for a stroll.  It was dark, and there was a cool breeze not unlike a breeze off the ocean at night.  People spoke in hushed voices, girl friends walked arm in arm, couples met at the fountain where the two streets cross.  It felt really good, and made me understand a little of why I'm here.

Tomorrow morning I head to Quepos, a small town on the Pacific coast, very near to Manuel Antonio National Park.  Although there are public buses going there, I'm taking a tour bus... I think it would be nice to learn a thing or two on the way.  And it's also picking me up at this hotel and dropping me off at the next, which is oh so nice.

Now off to watch the Phillies maybe win their second game...

San Jose

I guess this goes without saying, but I´ll reiterate:  It's humid here.  It's not oppressive humid like, say, Hong Kong in August... I only noticed when I looked down at my shirt and realized just how much I was sweating.  It must be something that you get used to, none of the Ticos were sweating like me.

B: As it happens, the first place I went looking for after I posted yesterday was the central market.  Found it and decided to go back for lunch later.  Here are some pics of your favorite place in all of San Jose:

This was lunch yesterday... chicken, rice, beans, fried plantain, pasta salad, spaghetti and what I think was corn and pears.  The soup was like wonton soup sorta... and with cilantro, I love cilantro yum.  The drink that you can see the bottom part of is a melon drink... You can have a bunch of different fruits blended with ice con leche o con agua (with milk or with water).  I also tried a drink called Can, which I think is made from guava.  I don't like Can.

Yeah, way to hold that camera steady John.  The place center left is where I ate above lunch.  The corrugated steel above is the kitchen.  Orders were yelled above and sent down by dumbwaiter.

A few more shots inside the market, which was huge.  The roof is made from corrugated steel too... very impressive when it rained.

Somewhere on the central avenue:

From the fifth floor of the hotel this morning:

Well, I´m not on any watch lists...

..which is comforting!  San Jose is so much nicer than Guantanamo, I'm sure.

I have just finished breakfast at the hotel buffet, and now I'm in the hotel business center waiting for the food to kick in so I can stop shaking from hunger.  Yay for free internet!

I had a flight early in the morning on Tuesday, so I thought it best if I was stayed at the airport through the night.  Philly airport is much more strict than I remember, and won't let you very far in... so it was a chair on the bridge to baggage claim for me.

Flights were fine, except that the plane was delayed getting to the gate in Atlanta (another plane was in our spot), so I had to run to make my connection, and the gate was all the way at the end of the terminal... not fun when you've been awake for a day.  I was convinced that if I was running, there was no way in hell my checked bag was going to make it... but there it was, third off the plane in San Jose.

Oscar drove me in his cab from the airport to the hotel.  He understands more English than he can speak, and I can understand more Spanish than I can speak, so we were able to talk a little.  He only drives people to and from the airport, not like a regular cab that you could get anywhere.  Evidently there's better money in doing that.

Not many things different around San Jose, or at least what I saw on that ride.  A lot of the same stores, fast food places, cars, all that stuff.  Minor little things are different, like how to get into the hotel room (hold the electronic key by the lock, there's no slot) or turning the ceiling fan on (turn the little dial that looks like it ought to be a button).  I expect that much more will be different once I get away from the capital.

Here's a picture of my room.  Not very exciting, I am just testing getting an image from camera to post here, and looks like everything is good:

I have to get used to the money around here.  I can count to fifteen in Spanish, and I´ll have to do better than than.  One dollar is equal to a little over 500 colones, so I'm dealing in thousands.  Yeah, gotta work on that!

So now I am off to wander.  I might try to find a small travel alarm, since the room has no clock.  And a small notebook, so I can write down a couple words and phrases to teach myself every day.

My Stuff

Here's the last of it, as it currently sits in my parents' garage.  Hopefully I can get rid of just a bit more.