Friday, August 18th 2006
Today, our week of administrative activity culminated in a commitment. We are returning Rosinante to US through Miami. Also, due to lack of time, we have decided to fly to Colombia.
After a morning jog in the 100% humidity to work off last nights festivities (fourth use of running shoes in 2.5 months) we visited our on the ground logistics experts and started the ball rolling on sending the car to Miami.
It is quite hard to appreciate the true complexity of the car situation. It is quite fortuitous that Jose is actually flying to Miami enroute to his final California and New York rendez-vous before settling with the Mrs. in Ecuador. This facilitates pickup and sale. It is also quite fortuitous that the police report required for transportation, which is only valid for eight days, enables shipping the car on a boat that will arrive precisely two days before Jose does in Miami. The car will then be burned in Miami, no just kidding - actually, Jose is going to drive it to California and then sell it. (actually not kidding on this one - yes we obviously just have more time than money) Why the final trans america driving leg you ask? Cause the spreadsheet told Jose to do it. They wrestled, it won.
We were informed that if eveything went well we might be able to get the paperwork done on Monday. This made exit plans to buy a plane ticket to Colombia quite challenging, but we shrugged it off.
The rest of the day continued with recovery. I chilled at home with the kids and Jose visited the Bahai temple and a local Panamanian mall. We spent the evening sipping rum with the family and discussing issues from immigration to fishing. Pura Vida! Tomorrow will be a big day.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
10 Weeks and 8,000 miles down
Thursday August 17th
From the overwhelming responses to the blog poll supporting a swim-to-Colombia option, we have decided to seriously investigate this new approach. After a quick trip to the US Consulate to work on my never ending Canadian Immigration issues, Jose and I headed from the Pacific to the Atlantic to size up the swimming options.
Upon arrival to the Atlantic (two hours) we visited Portobello, the site of Christopher Columbus´landing on his fourth voyage to the ¨new world¨. Very cool little sleepy beach town with lots of forts, cannons, sail boats and fishing boats. Next we visited the port of Colon and its infamous zona libra (free trade zone) where we could find fantastic deals on ten digital cameras 50 pairs of shoes. Sort of a hong kong of central america. Of course, in another attempt to extort mony from gringos, we were aked for a bribe at the gates to allow entry of vehicle which would bypass the paperwork. Maintaining our ¨we don´t negotiate with those seeking bribes¨stance, we tried to aquire the required paperwork. We failed and parked the car outside.
We also made a stop at the Yacht club to investigate more rides to Colombia and ran into Captain Dennis Morris, who kindly offered us a cruise to Colombia for a cool $250. He didn´t seem too sketchy so we are considering it. While pondering the offer we returned to Panama city fighting the intense rush hour traffic leaving Colon. The sludge from mud/pollution covered out lights so much that we could barely see the road.
Upon arrival Joyce took us salsa dancing with Sara and Ketzary, who really were quite nice at putting up with my inability to move my hips in the latin fashion. We visited two establishments, the first was packed with hundreds of youngsters dancing all over the place with large beer bongs on the tables. Site of this scene: BENNIGANS. Next we went to a latin karaoke place where we heard everything from reggaeton karaoke to romantic love songs... Joyce owns this town!
Finally, I am pretty horrified that this vacation is more tha half done... quite depressing. 10 weeks and 8,000 miles down, but so much more to see!
From the overwhelming responses to the blog poll supporting a swim-to-Colombia option, we have decided to seriously investigate this new approach. After a quick trip to the US Consulate to work on my never ending Canadian Immigration issues, Jose and I headed from the Pacific to the Atlantic to size up the swimming options.
Upon arrival to the Atlantic (two hours) we visited Portobello, the site of Christopher Columbus´landing on his fourth voyage to the ¨new world¨. Very cool little sleepy beach town with lots of forts, cannons, sail boats and fishing boats. Next we visited the port of Colon and its infamous zona libra (free trade zone) where we could find fantastic deals on ten digital cameras 50 pairs of shoes. Sort of a hong kong of central america. Of course, in another attempt to extort mony from gringos, we were aked for a bribe at the gates to allow entry of vehicle which would bypass the paperwork. Maintaining our ¨we don´t negotiate with those seeking bribes¨stance, we tried to aquire the required paperwork. We failed and parked the car outside.
We also made a stop at the Yacht club to investigate more rides to Colombia and ran into Captain Dennis Morris, who kindly offered us a cruise to Colombia for a cool $250. He didn´t seem too sketchy so we are considering it. While pondering the offer we returned to Panama city fighting the intense rush hour traffic leaving Colon. The sludge from mud/pollution covered out lights so much that we could barely see the road.
Upon arrival Joyce took us salsa dancing with Sara and Ketzary, who really were quite nice at putting up with my inability to move my hips in the latin fashion. We visited two establishments, the first was packed with hundreds of youngsters dancing all over the place with large beer bongs on the tables. Site of this scene: BENNIGANS. Next we went to a latin karaoke place where we heard everything from reggaeton karaoke to romantic love songs... Joyce owns this town!
Finally, I am pretty horrified that this vacation is more tha half done... quite depressing. 10 weeks and 8,000 miles down, but so much more to see!
Thursday, August 17, 2006
READERS VOTE - Help us get to Colombia!
Wednesday August 16th, 2006
Today was rich in administrative activity as we have some critical decisions ahead. We have some of our own perspectives, but I wanted to get some comments from our readers (if we have any) before we make a final decision on our options.
Decision A - How should Jose and I travel to Cartagena, Colombia?
1. Plane tix - about $200USD
2. Small Private Sailboat for five - about $250USD (includes night in San Blas islands of the indians, and takes around 5 days depending on the winds)
3. Hitch ride on millionaire´s Larger Yacht - hopefully much less than $200 and 5 days assuming we help as crew members with cooking, sailing, cleaning etc.
4. Hitch a ride on a large container ship, Cabins are going for around $10 dollars per night, trip lasts about 4 days (we have done little research on this one, but is harder to arrange - perhaps we could go with the car??)
5. Land - brave the Darien gap including 50km of hiking, and 50km of hitchhiking or cab through some of the worlds most dangerous territory (for threats of kidnapping, infectious disease, animals, exposure, and extreme terrain-navigation)
Decision 2 - The whole ¨car¨decision
1. Ship Car to Cartegena - around $1100 landed - in container
2. Ship Car to Buena Ventura (southern colombia) - around $1140 landed
3. Ship Car to NYC - around $2000
4. Ship Car to Miami - less than $700 - ¨roll on roll off¨i.e. no continer
5. Ship Car to Oakland - unknown
6. Sell Car in Panama for around $9000 ( approx $3,500 undervalue)
- comments - shipping to US destiantions implies sale at a later date- arrival to ecuador intact implies sale near or above market value, but likely carries a $3000 import tax (through official means only) - cartegena implies traversing two extremly sketching kidnapping zones in a private vehicle, while to Buena Venturea implies traversing only one in a private vehicle
Let us know what you think!
In other news, we were quite excited to see the LFM employment survey today. We were were very proud that we represented half of the 9% of the class which was ¨Not seeking employment/Not Found employment¨. We were also curious who all those other people really were? Seriously, I promise that I will pull my weight next year. In the meantime, back to much more important things like what we did today...
We hardly did anything today! And it was great! I slept 9 hours for the first time in ages, we did piles of admin and web surfing, we ate two wonderful meals cooked by Mrs. Pinto De Gracia, we explored the old town on foot, visited a cheez mini indian village replica - Mi pueblitos, saw amazing views of the city atop the Acon, and we had a wonderful dinner-drinks-hooka session downtown while simultaneously watching an epic Peru vs Panama soccer bout AND soaking in local Panamanian culture (read- talent) ... life is good!
Today was rich in administrative activity as we have some critical decisions ahead. We have some of our own perspectives, but I wanted to get some comments from our readers (if we have any) before we make a final decision on our options.
Decision A - How should Jose and I travel to Cartagena, Colombia?
1. Plane tix - about $200USD
2. Small Private Sailboat for five - about $250USD (includes night in San Blas islands of the indians, and takes around 5 days depending on the winds)
3. Hitch ride on millionaire´s Larger Yacht - hopefully much less than $200 and 5 days assuming we help as crew members with cooking, sailing, cleaning etc.
4. Hitch a ride on a large container ship, Cabins are going for around $10 dollars per night, trip lasts about 4 days (we have done little research on this one, but is harder to arrange - perhaps we could go with the car??)
5. Land - brave the Darien gap including 50km of hiking, and 50km of hitchhiking or cab through some of the worlds most dangerous territory (for threats of kidnapping, infectious disease, animals, exposure, and extreme terrain-navigation)
Decision 2 - The whole ¨car¨decision
1. Ship Car to Cartegena - around $1100 landed - in container
2. Ship Car to Buena Ventura (southern colombia) - around $1140 landed
3. Ship Car to NYC - around $2000
4. Ship Car to Miami - less than $700 - ¨roll on roll off¨i.e. no continer
5. Ship Car to Oakland - unknown
6. Sell Car in Panama for around $9000 ( approx $3,500 undervalue)
- comments - shipping to US destiantions implies sale at a later date- arrival to ecuador intact implies sale near or above market value, but likely carries a $3000 import tax (through official means only) - cartegena implies traversing two extremly sketching kidnapping zones in a private vehicle, while to Buena Venturea implies traversing only one in a private vehicle
Let us know what you think!
In other news, we were quite excited to see the LFM employment survey today. We were were very proud that we represented half of the 9% of the class which was ¨Not seeking employment/Not Found employment¨. We were also curious who all those other people really were? Seriously, I promise that I will pull my weight next year. In the meantime, back to much more important things like what we did today...
We hardly did anything today! And it was great! I slept 9 hours for the first time in ages, we did piles of admin and web surfing, we ate two wonderful meals cooked by Mrs. Pinto De Gracia, we explored the old town on foot, visited a cheez mini indian village replica - Mi pueblitos, saw amazing views of the city atop the Acon, and we had a wonderful dinner-drinks-hooka session downtown while simultaneously watching an epic Peru vs Panama soccer bout AND soaking in local Panamanian culture (read- talent) ... life is good!
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Tying loose ends..
Tuesday, August 15th
Today´s order of business: taking care of fixing war wounds.
Once again our sleep was so great that we nearly overslept. What is Julissa´s family thinking of us now? That we are lazy? Oh well, we went to MIT with their daughter so at least we can pretend to be hard workers. In the morning we played a bit with Chloe and Andrea because today is Panama´s Foundation Holiday so Andrea did not have to go to school. Jana Karla also stayed at home so she hanged out with us.
Some time later, Don Gregorio came back home and took us to the logistics company that is researching what to do with Rosinante. So far we know that it would cost about $1700 to ship it to Colombia and only God knows how much to ship it back to the US. However, after the meeting with Mr. Hernandez he gave a round estimate of less than $500 for the whole thing including his services. We hope that this is right and he agreed to provide a final and more trustworthy estimate tomorrow. Let´s all pray. We went around town with Alexey after that and got the local newspapers at the Super 99 supermarket. Once there we also purchased some desserts and got my watch wrist band fixed (Honey, awesome watch but I have not been able to use it due to the band malfunction). The watch still does not work but the guy says it´s not due to the battery but he needs to do a thorough inspection for $25. I took my watch and decided to explore other options later in the week.
We looked for similar cars in the market using the classified ads in the newspapers. From the looks of it, we would be getting a lower price here than in the states for Rosinante which is not a good deal for us. So we will wait and see what the Mr. Hernandez says tomorrow to make a decision.
Next we went to a hostel in downtown Panama City. This place is packed with hippies and other Jamaican wannabe kinds. There is a bulleting board there that could have some ads for people taking sail boats from Panama to Cartagena, Colombia. The only ads that I see are for $250US per person. The guy in charge tells me that if I am not staying at the hostel I can´t look at the bulleting board. However, he tells me, there is a captain of one of the boats here and he can talk to me if I wanted to. We talked for a while but he looks weird. An older looking guy with a Swedish accent, an earing and skin that has been cut repeatedbly by the sun. Something was not right with this guy but he assured us that he was legit and could take us as soon as Sunday to Colombia. He only needs 2 other people (total of 4 passengers to make economic sense he says) and we are off. The trip would include a stopover at the San Blas islands. As our conversation nears its end, the hostel managers comes and reprimands the captain for conducting business in the hostel with people not staying in the hostel. He also blurs out something about ¨We have records and letters of all boat captains that have robbed tourists and are beeing looked for by the police¨. Now this is something that we want to know.
So I end my conversation with the captain and leave not before stopping by the hostel management booth. The guy tells me that this captain is looked for by the police because he got in trouble with the Kuna aborigens at the San Blas islands some time back. He tells me that he is not good news and look for some other boat. I give the house number since apparently he knows a more suitable captain. Now, I am not sure if he is just trying to take the business away from the original boat captain or simply being responsible with tourists but we will never know.
Back at the house we get ready with Doña Irma, Jana Karla and the little girls to go to lunch. We do this at a great chinese place near China town. It was immense! Tons of food. Jana Karla comes out on top and pays for the meal after Alexey gets distracted by Doña Irma. Chloe wants to keep eating and we end up waiting for a while because she keeps eating.. she is adorable.
Next we take my $12 vietnamese backpack for repair at the chinese shoe repair store. She quotes $8 but leaves it at $7 after tough negotiations. We will pick it up tomorrow. Now we go for a drive around town. We visited the Balboa Hotel, Clayton, El Charco, etc.. really cool stuff. We passed around the Canal again and saw giant ships passing through. I can only imagine the size of the ships that will be passing by here if the referendum approves the expansion of the canal to include access for PostPanamax ships!
After our long trip around the city, we head back to the house and Alexey does some internet and phone calling downstairs. He has found a way to bang the monitor just right that it allows us to work on the computer and have internet anytime (I am writing from here now). As far as we are concerned the computer is now fixed! I stayed upstairs however and had an awesome conversation with Don Gregorio about the old times when he used to fish around his old home. The way that he got lost in the sea once and the other time when he slept burried in the dirt after flipping his boat too late at night to come back home. I just finished reading the Old man and the Sea and everything he was saying just hit a chord. So this weekend we might be going for an overnight fishing trip with him. I can´t wait! Last time I went fishing with my uncle I was traumatized after seeing the little fish die a slow death gasping desperatedly for air.
So then Don Gregorio took Alexey and I to the celebrations of the Foundation of Panam Viejo. The holiday was being celebrated by the ruins of the old city. We went there and the Attorney General of Panama was present. We were certainly not dressed appropriately but the guard did not seem to care and let us in. We saw a bit of the ceremony and fireworks. Then we ate some street meat sitting at a roadside bench. The tamales were awesome as well as the chicken and the fried sweet corn balls (don´t remember the actual name of this delicacy).. really great!
The rain had poured down this afternoon so our shoes that were drying in the back terrace got soaken wet again. They are still recovering from rafting in Costa Rica. Don´t know if they will evern get dried. We wore sandals to the celebrations tonight and since everythig was mud our feet were covered in it. Got back and took a shower.. tomorrow we will try to finalize our car shipping situation and plan our trips through Panama to discover the country. Julissa´s family keeps going out of their way to make us feel at home. We do feel at home here!!..
Today´s order of business: taking care of fixing war wounds.
Once again our sleep was so great that we nearly overslept. What is Julissa´s family thinking of us now? That we are lazy? Oh well, we went to MIT with their daughter so at least we can pretend to be hard workers. In the morning we played a bit with Chloe and Andrea because today is Panama´s Foundation Holiday so Andrea did not have to go to school. Jana Karla also stayed at home so she hanged out with us.
Some time later, Don Gregorio came back home and took us to the logistics company that is researching what to do with Rosinante. So far we know that it would cost about $1700 to ship it to Colombia and only God knows how much to ship it back to the US. However, after the meeting with Mr. Hernandez he gave a round estimate of less than $500 for the whole thing including his services. We hope that this is right and he agreed to provide a final and more trustworthy estimate tomorrow. Let´s all pray. We went around town with Alexey after that and got the local newspapers at the Super 99 supermarket. Once there we also purchased some desserts and got my watch wrist band fixed (Honey, awesome watch but I have not been able to use it due to the band malfunction). The watch still does not work but the guy says it´s not due to the battery but he needs to do a thorough inspection for $25. I took my watch and decided to explore other options later in the week.
We looked for similar cars in the market using the classified ads in the newspapers. From the looks of it, we would be getting a lower price here than in the states for Rosinante which is not a good deal for us. So we will wait and see what the Mr. Hernandez says tomorrow to make a decision.
Next we went to a hostel in downtown Panama City. This place is packed with hippies and other Jamaican wannabe kinds. There is a bulleting board there that could have some ads for people taking sail boats from Panama to Cartagena, Colombia. The only ads that I see are for $250US per person. The guy in charge tells me that if I am not staying at the hostel I can´t look at the bulleting board. However, he tells me, there is a captain of one of the boats here and he can talk to me if I wanted to. We talked for a while but he looks weird. An older looking guy with a Swedish accent, an earing and skin that has been cut repeatedbly by the sun. Something was not right with this guy but he assured us that he was legit and could take us as soon as Sunday to Colombia. He only needs 2 other people (total of 4 passengers to make economic sense he says) and we are off. The trip would include a stopover at the San Blas islands. As our conversation nears its end, the hostel managers comes and reprimands the captain for conducting business in the hostel with people not staying in the hostel. He also blurs out something about ¨We have records and letters of all boat captains that have robbed tourists and are beeing looked for by the police¨. Now this is something that we want to know.
So I end my conversation with the captain and leave not before stopping by the hostel management booth. The guy tells me that this captain is looked for by the police because he got in trouble with the Kuna aborigens at the San Blas islands some time back. He tells me that he is not good news and look for some other boat. I give the house number since apparently he knows a more suitable captain. Now, I am not sure if he is just trying to take the business away from the original boat captain or simply being responsible with tourists but we will never know.
Back at the house we get ready with Doña Irma, Jana Karla and the little girls to go to lunch. We do this at a great chinese place near China town. It was immense! Tons of food. Jana Karla comes out on top and pays for the meal after Alexey gets distracted by Doña Irma. Chloe wants to keep eating and we end up waiting for a while because she keeps eating.. she is adorable.
Next we take my $12 vietnamese backpack for repair at the chinese shoe repair store. She quotes $8 but leaves it at $7 after tough negotiations. We will pick it up tomorrow. Now we go for a drive around town. We visited the Balboa Hotel, Clayton, El Charco, etc.. really cool stuff. We passed around the Canal again and saw giant ships passing through. I can only imagine the size of the ships that will be passing by here if the referendum approves the expansion of the canal to include access for PostPanamax ships!
After our long trip around the city, we head back to the house and Alexey does some internet and phone calling downstairs. He has found a way to bang the monitor just right that it allows us to work on the computer and have internet anytime (I am writing from here now). As far as we are concerned the computer is now fixed! I stayed upstairs however and had an awesome conversation with Don Gregorio about the old times when he used to fish around his old home. The way that he got lost in the sea once and the other time when he slept burried in the dirt after flipping his boat too late at night to come back home. I just finished reading the Old man and the Sea and everything he was saying just hit a chord. So this weekend we might be going for an overnight fishing trip with him. I can´t wait! Last time I went fishing with my uncle I was traumatized after seeing the little fish die a slow death gasping desperatedly for air.
So then Don Gregorio took Alexey and I to the celebrations of the Foundation of Panam Viejo. The holiday was being celebrated by the ruins of the old city. We went there and the Attorney General of Panama was present. We were certainly not dressed appropriately but the guard did not seem to care and let us in. We saw a bit of the ceremony and fireworks. Then we ate some street meat sitting at a roadside bench. The tamales were awesome as well as the chicken and the fried sweet corn balls (don´t remember the actual name of this delicacy).. really great!
The rain had poured down this afternoon so our shoes that were drying in the back terrace got soaken wet again. They are still recovering from rafting in Costa Rica. Don´t know if they will evern get dried. We wore sandals to the celebrations tonight and since everythig was mud our feet were covered in it. Got back and took a shower.. tomorrow we will try to finalize our car shipping situation and plan our trips through Panama to discover the country. Julissa´s family keeps going out of their way to make us feel at home. We do feel at home here!!..
When the trio sang the last song
Monday, August 14th
I don´t know if it was muy singing to eighties love songs during yesterday´s long drive or the fact that he was ashamed of his stinky tennis shoes but Greg decided to call it quits today. We had a great night sleep at our new home in Panama and were woken up by Doña Irma because otherwise we would have over slept and Greg would have missed his flight. In any case, we got up and we all went to buy some hammock that Greg wanted to buy before leaving.
We did just that and unfortunately traffic was horrible! It was about 11AM and we were still stuck in traffic. Greg´s flight was at 1:20PM. Doña Irma decided to take a cab with Chloe back home because otherwise we would be late for the airport and she would be late for Andrea to come back from Kinder. We reluctantly agreed to let her do this but time was running out.
Rosinante was going as fast as he could and we made it to the airport shortly after. We said good bye to our brave soldier, the second of a long lineage of adventurers, those that are not made anymore.. In any case, we cried a little and wished him the best. Last we heard is that he arrived safely into Miami but will have to wait until the next day for his flight to Seattle.
Alexey and I decided to dedicate the day to do house keeping and logistics. Traveling for so long has taken a toll on our personal hygene as well as our equipment and internet communications. We went for an internet cafe because the computer in our room has a monitor that only allows us to see a third of the screen. Alexey tried to fix it without luck. We almost broke the computer trying to fix it but we are all engineers and managed to pull through ;) We did about 3 hours of catching up on personal matters over internet and phone. Then we went home and hanged out with the family. Julissa´s sisters, Joyce and Jana Karla were so nice as to take us out to dinner. We went to this ex-US compound now turned shopping center is a peninsula formed by three islands very close to the city. The dinner was great and right by the water. They wanted to pay but Alexey went to pay the bill while I held Joyce in place. We are the guests here! They are really cool and very kind.
We went for ice cream afterwards and then went home through the scenic route. We saw a Chiva Pachanguera by the boardwalk and tons of gringos dancing around it. At arrival we said good night and decided to catch up on our sleep.. once again. Tomorrow we will try to figure out the options that we have to either cross our horse into Colombia, send it back to the US, sell it here, or dispose of it in a somewhat humane manner. We have a meeting tomorrow with a shipping company that Don Gregorio has arranged. Wish us luck!
I don´t know if it was muy singing to eighties love songs during yesterday´s long drive or the fact that he was ashamed of his stinky tennis shoes but Greg decided to call it quits today. We had a great night sleep at our new home in Panama and were woken up by Doña Irma because otherwise we would have over slept and Greg would have missed his flight. In any case, we got up and we all went to buy some hammock that Greg wanted to buy before leaving.
We did just that and unfortunately traffic was horrible! It was about 11AM and we were still stuck in traffic. Greg´s flight was at 1:20PM. Doña Irma decided to take a cab with Chloe back home because otherwise we would be late for the airport and she would be late for Andrea to come back from Kinder. We reluctantly agreed to let her do this but time was running out.
Rosinante was going as fast as he could and we made it to the airport shortly after. We said good bye to our brave soldier, the second of a long lineage of adventurers, those that are not made anymore.. In any case, we cried a little and wished him the best. Last we heard is that he arrived safely into Miami but will have to wait until the next day for his flight to Seattle.
Alexey and I decided to dedicate the day to do house keeping and logistics. Traveling for so long has taken a toll on our personal hygene as well as our equipment and internet communications. We went for an internet cafe because the computer in our room has a monitor that only allows us to see a third of the screen. Alexey tried to fix it without luck. We almost broke the computer trying to fix it but we are all engineers and managed to pull through ;) We did about 3 hours of catching up on personal matters over internet and phone. Then we went home and hanged out with the family. Julissa´s sisters, Joyce and Jana Karla were so nice as to take us out to dinner. We went to this ex-US compound now turned shopping center is a peninsula formed by three islands very close to the city. The dinner was great and right by the water. They wanted to pay but Alexey went to pay the bill while I held Joyce in place. We are the guests here! They are really cool and very kind.
We went for ice cream afterwards and then went home through the scenic route. We saw a Chiva Pachanguera by the boardwalk and tons of gringos dancing around it. At arrival we said good night and decided to catch up on our sleep.. once again. Tomorrow we will try to figure out the options that we have to either cross our horse into Colombia, send it back to the US, sell it here, or dispose of it in a somewhat humane manner. We have a meeting tomorrow with a shipping company that Don Gregorio has arranged. Wish us luck!
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Let´s cross the border.. and beeee alright!
Sunday, August 13th
This morning we woke up in the small town of San Isidro El General after a monster drive through the Mountain of Death last night. The town was actually very cool and we stayed in a pretty happening place. At least there were lots of little discos and bars near our hotel. We had come to this town last night and risking the dangerous drive because going straight from San Jose to Panama City would have been impossible in a single day. So we decided to use San Isidro as a staging place.
We started the drive rather early and ontime. We were on the road around 5:15AM and the sun was already coming out. Alexey was the driver for this monster leg and Greg was his copilot. I had the day off so I quickly resumed sleeping using the back seat and the two ultra comfortable pillows that I brought from Boston. After lots of driving through awesome scenery of green mountains and valleys we arrived to the border with Panama after 9:15AM. Alexey ran over some animals and killed two birds in the process of getting here. He must be feeling awesul now!
We had to cancel our temporary driving permit with Costa Rica but being Sunday noone was there. A guy collected the paper and said it was ok for us to go. I hope this does not come back to bite us in the future, perhaps in the form of a $200 fine. In any case, we finished all the Costa Rican papers quickly. Next, Panama imigration and customs. I must say that it was pretty easy to cross and we only had to bat off a kid and a big guy who wanted to charge us some money for helping us with the process. We know how these things work now and we just ignore them. It was fairly easy after that. Rosinante got a fresh fumigation bath before entering Panamanian territory so as to not spread Costa Rican diseases and we were on our way.
The road was terrific! Two lane hiway for most of the way and Alexey was finally doing what he does best, scarying the heck out of the passengers. But we arrived into David safely. David is the second largest city of Panama and we decided to stop here to eat breakfast-lunch and to check email to call Julissa´s father, Don Gregorio to announce our arrival. We did just that and agreed on a rendevouz at the capital. Scored some cheap Panamanian food at an eating outlet nearby, got a fresh load of greens off the ATM, and got back on the road.
After a small stretch of single lane road (Alexey reports since I was sleeping in the back) the road becomes the same wonderful 2-lane autobahn as before. We are looking for a road side fruit stand but just now that we desperately want it, it is no where to be seen. We settled for some sweets still in the province of Chiriqui which fail to please the delicate and refined American palads of Greg and Alexey. I happily munch on the sweets and we move on.
Arriving into Panama we decide to stop at the Panama Canal (which here is only the Canal) since it is still daylight, it is open until 5PM and Greg must leave tomorrow and probably won´t get a chance to see it. It was awesome to see these HUGE buildings moving through the canal and the locks at a slowwwwwwww pace. Really a great piece of engineering. You could see Greg and Alexey had a few tears gathering around their eyes.
At this point I took over the driving duties since Alexey was a bit tired from the long distance driving. It was about 5:30PM and we needed to head over to the Gas station across from Panama University to meet Don Gregorio. We passed through the city and suddenly right in front of our eyes was the beautiful skyline of Panama City. Really nothing similar to what we had seen in earlier places. It was reminiscent of Miami more than anywhere in Central America. The sea was right next to all the buildings.
Once we got to the gas station, we called Don Gregorio and he met us there in 10 minutes. By now, we had bought a few snacks at the On The Run store at the station and Greg had disposed of his stinky tennis shoes. I am glad Alexey realized that Greg´s shoes were stinking up the whole car!! See, after rafting all of our sneakers were wet and we had left them to dry at the rear of the car when driving. However, sometimes the smell was unbearable! In any case, some guy at the gas station asked for Greg´s shoes and took them away.
Don Gregorio and his family (thanks Julissa for helping us once again) are awesome! We got there and met Julissa´s entire family. Her nieces Andrea and Chloe are the cutest kids ever. We had an immense dinner (after taking showers of course) which consisted of prawns, plantains, sausage, etc.. etc.. reeeaaaallyyyy good stuff!. Next we settled down and we went with the whole family in two cars to drive the whole city. The thing is that Greg is leaving tomorrow and may not get the chance to see much so at least this will be remembered of Panama City. We visited the old town, Panama viejo, etc.. Really new stuff Miami style and really old stuff as well.
We were all by now incredibly tired and could not hold our eyes open. I think Don Gregorio noticed this and took us back home. There we all said our prayers and crashed in our own room!! Really, Julissa´s family has treated us like kings. Tomorrow will be Greg´s good bye and the beginning of the end for the VW diaries. Good night!
This morning we woke up in the small town of San Isidro El General after a monster drive through the Mountain of Death last night. The town was actually very cool and we stayed in a pretty happening place. At least there were lots of little discos and bars near our hotel. We had come to this town last night and risking the dangerous drive because going straight from San Jose to Panama City would have been impossible in a single day. So we decided to use San Isidro as a staging place.
We started the drive rather early and ontime. We were on the road around 5:15AM and the sun was already coming out. Alexey was the driver for this monster leg and Greg was his copilot. I had the day off so I quickly resumed sleeping using the back seat and the two ultra comfortable pillows that I brought from Boston. After lots of driving through awesome scenery of green mountains and valleys we arrived to the border with Panama after 9:15AM. Alexey ran over some animals and killed two birds in the process of getting here. He must be feeling awesul now!
We had to cancel our temporary driving permit with Costa Rica but being Sunday noone was there. A guy collected the paper and said it was ok for us to go. I hope this does not come back to bite us in the future, perhaps in the form of a $200 fine. In any case, we finished all the Costa Rican papers quickly. Next, Panama imigration and customs. I must say that it was pretty easy to cross and we only had to bat off a kid and a big guy who wanted to charge us some money for helping us with the process. We know how these things work now and we just ignore them. It was fairly easy after that. Rosinante got a fresh fumigation bath before entering Panamanian territory so as to not spread Costa Rican diseases and we were on our way.
The road was terrific! Two lane hiway for most of the way and Alexey was finally doing what he does best, scarying the heck out of the passengers. But we arrived into David safely. David is the second largest city of Panama and we decided to stop here to eat breakfast-lunch and to check email to call Julissa´s father, Don Gregorio to announce our arrival. We did just that and agreed on a rendevouz at the capital. Scored some cheap Panamanian food at an eating outlet nearby, got a fresh load of greens off the ATM, and got back on the road.
After a small stretch of single lane road (Alexey reports since I was sleeping in the back) the road becomes the same wonderful 2-lane autobahn as before. We are looking for a road side fruit stand but just now that we desperately want it, it is no where to be seen. We settled for some sweets still in the province of Chiriqui which fail to please the delicate and refined American palads of Greg and Alexey. I happily munch on the sweets and we move on.
Arriving into Panama we decide to stop at the Panama Canal (which here is only the Canal) since it is still daylight, it is open until 5PM and Greg must leave tomorrow and probably won´t get a chance to see it. It was awesome to see these HUGE buildings moving through the canal and the locks at a slowwwwwwww pace. Really a great piece of engineering. You could see Greg and Alexey had a few tears gathering around their eyes.
At this point I took over the driving duties since Alexey was a bit tired from the long distance driving. It was about 5:30PM and we needed to head over to the Gas station across from Panama University to meet Don Gregorio. We passed through the city and suddenly right in front of our eyes was the beautiful skyline of Panama City. Really nothing similar to what we had seen in earlier places. It was reminiscent of Miami more than anywhere in Central America. The sea was right next to all the buildings.
Once we got to the gas station, we called Don Gregorio and he met us there in 10 minutes. By now, we had bought a few snacks at the On The Run store at the station and Greg had disposed of his stinky tennis shoes. I am glad Alexey realized that Greg´s shoes were stinking up the whole car!! See, after rafting all of our sneakers were wet and we had left them to dry at the rear of the car when driving. However, sometimes the smell was unbearable! In any case, some guy at the gas station asked for Greg´s shoes and took them away.
Don Gregorio and his family (thanks Julissa for helping us once again) are awesome! We got there and met Julissa´s entire family. Her nieces Andrea and Chloe are the cutest kids ever. We had an immense dinner (after taking showers of course) which consisted of prawns, plantains, sausage, etc.. etc.. reeeaaaallyyyy good stuff!. Next we settled down and we went with the whole family in two cars to drive the whole city. The thing is that Greg is leaving tomorrow and may not get the chance to see much so at least this will be remembered of Panama City. We visited the old town, Panama viejo, etc.. Really new stuff Miami style and really old stuff as well.
We were all by now incredibly tired and could not hold our eyes open. I think Don Gregorio noticed this and took us back home. There we all said our prayers and crashed in our own room!! Really, Julissa´s family has treated us like kings. Tomorrow will be Greg´s good bye and the beginning of the end for the VW diaries. Good night!
Unleashing our RAFT
Saturday, August 12th
We slept in our mini-sized accomodations last night. Overall, the heat was nearly unbearable and I happened to lock Greg, in his little single cabin, out of the shared bathroom. Oh well, he found a way to another bathroom in the middle of the night. Today is going to be awesome!
Last night we arranged the white water rafting trip. They are supposed to pick us up at 6:30AM at the other hotel, Pangea where we signed up for the trip. So the first order of business is to call the rafting company and tell them that we are at Kap´s for a pick up. This goes without a hitch and we wait. The van arrived and it´s just this father and son pair and us. They are from Indiana and the father has 25 years of experience in rafting so I guess we´ll be in good hands. I have done rafting once but Greg and Alexey have not.
The trip lasted about 2 hours out of San Jose into the Pacuare river. During the trip, our new travel mates tell us how they got this student discount for the younger guy. We had paid $95 per person while he only paid $75!! This is $60 savings in the three of us! So we bring this up with the organizer in the van but he says that we already paid and there is nothing that can be done. From here on the trip got quite as we all were thinking how stupid we were for not having asked for the discount up front. Technically, we are not students anymore, but we´d like to get a break when we hear of it.
We arrive to rafting base and meet other rafters for the day that happened to come from different geographies of the country in other vans. They gave breakfast in a buffet style. Really american and tasty: fruit, granola, yogurt, juice, scrambled eggs, etc.. We indulged heavily here. Next, we are ready to jump on the water but first a consolidated van needs to take us upstream. We will ride down the river and end up at the breakfast place sometime in the afternoon.
It was past 8AM perhaps close to 9AM and we were now on the river after going down a steep downhill. I almost fell there to the amusement of some Californian girls that were walking next to us. Don´t remember their names but one of them had just been travelling through Ecuador and the other was in Costa Rica as a bartender part time. In any case, we got down to the river and jumped on the rafts. Our guide was Abel, one of the most knowledgeable rafters around, later we discovered. He trained us in basic commands as he would be the captain and us his crew.
Once there, we did some trial maneuvering to make sure we were kosher and off we went. We did some rescue drills where three of us would fall in the water and the remaining three had to rescue them into the boat. The water is a bit cold but refreshing in this potent sun! The boat consisted of the experienced father, the son, the three of us and another young guy who never talked, even once. Well, may be he coughed and that could count as something.
The rafting was cool! The rapids were class 3 and 4 with super high crests and big holes enough to fill the boat completely with water. The scenery out there was also beautiful with waterfalls coming down the side of the mountains jumping from up high into the river making the white liquid blend with the greenish colored water that flowed under us. All in all it was a great experience.. Forward! Forward! Abel screamed before we got into the rapids and our team was a well oiled machine, we could make the raft do what we wanted it to do. Abel also showed us some tricks on taking bends, etc.. A couple of times we nearly fell.
At some point our guide suggested to jump out of the boat to swin since the river was in a calm stretch. We did just that and it felt great! Really cool water in constrast with the super hot environment around. We were floating in the deep river and it took us downstream. Just before the next rapid, we got back in the boat and paddled. Soon enough it was time for lunch and all the rafts and their guides flipped a boat upside down on a shore where the water was calmed. All the boats stopped there and they used the bottom of the raft as a table. This table displayed pineapple, tortillas, cheese, palm hearts, cold cuts, vegetables, and some juice that I still don´t know what it is. It was yellow and tasted like gatorade though. Soon after lunch I went on to swing with the myriad of fish on the Eddy (that´s what they call the calm parts of water on the side of the river).
It was time to leave and we did just that. We hit a HUGE hole in a rapid which we had work by gathering all the crew and sitting on the back before the hit. Pretty cool trick. The time of exit was nearing and a final show was seeing these local kids climbing a train bridge over the river, at about 20 or 30 meters high and plunging into the river water!! These guys have nerves! You could count how many seconds they were in the air as it took a while for them to hit the water.
We clean up, purchase the CD with our raft´s pictures (hence pics are to be added) and head out back to San Jose and hope to arrive there around 6PM. We had left our car and luggage at the hotel last night and we need to pick them up and drive somewhere closer to the border with Panama tonight. Otherwise, the trip to Panama City tomorrow would be unbearable. We arrived in a torrential rain. First thing we needed to do was to try to get some of our raft money back taking advantage of the student discounts. After making phone calls, running and driving around the city like chickens with heads cut off, we got our money back minus a few bucks because they charge an extra percentage if you us credit card. However, we were happy that the trip was fun and the right price.
We started driving violating our no-driving-at-dark rule from the get go. My vote was to stay in San Jose and just put up with the monster drive the next day since I really don´t like to ask for directions at night which can be dangerous. Also, we heard the road is really dangerous specially at night due to foggy conditions and curvy geography. We reached a compromise and we decided to at least get out of the city and get to a city called Cartago to spend the night. The road was not too bad getting there but once there, we realized that the time it would take us to search for a room, find our way in this new city, etc.. would be more than reaching San Isidro El General where we had already made arrangements for three beds. So we decided to go for it. The total trip was about 2h30m from San Jose to San Isidro even though it felt like an eternity. At times, you could not see what was 7 feet in front of you due to the fog. Very dangerous and not many people around. But we arrived there safely and were ready to sleep and drive to Panama tomorrow.
At arrival, we went to eat at a fast food restaurant that Alexey had eyed. It was called Dulji or something like that. It was ok and cheap so we went with our stomachs full back to the hotel where we crashed. Tomorrow will be an early start: 5AM we are thinking.
We slept in our mini-sized accomodations last night. Overall, the heat was nearly unbearable and I happened to lock Greg, in his little single cabin, out of the shared bathroom. Oh well, he found a way to another bathroom in the middle of the night. Today is going to be awesome!
Last night we arranged the white water rafting trip. They are supposed to pick us up at 6:30AM at the other hotel, Pangea where we signed up for the trip. So the first order of business is to call the rafting company and tell them that we are at Kap´s for a pick up. This goes without a hitch and we wait. The van arrived and it´s just this father and son pair and us. They are from Indiana and the father has 25 years of experience in rafting so I guess we´ll be in good hands. I have done rafting once but Greg and Alexey have not.
The trip lasted about 2 hours out of San Jose into the Pacuare river. During the trip, our new travel mates tell us how they got this student discount for the younger guy. We had paid $95 per person while he only paid $75!! This is $60 savings in the three of us! So we bring this up with the organizer in the van but he says that we already paid and there is nothing that can be done. From here on the trip got quite as we all were thinking how stupid we were for not having asked for the discount up front. Technically, we are not students anymore, but we´d like to get a break when we hear of it.
We arrive to rafting base and meet other rafters for the day that happened to come from different geographies of the country in other vans. They gave breakfast in a buffet style. Really american and tasty: fruit, granola, yogurt, juice, scrambled eggs, etc.. We indulged heavily here. Next, we are ready to jump on the water but first a consolidated van needs to take us upstream. We will ride down the river and end up at the breakfast place sometime in the afternoon.
It was past 8AM perhaps close to 9AM and we were now on the river after going down a steep downhill. I almost fell there to the amusement of some Californian girls that were walking next to us. Don´t remember their names but one of them had just been travelling through Ecuador and the other was in Costa Rica as a bartender part time. In any case, we got down to the river and jumped on the rafts. Our guide was Abel, one of the most knowledgeable rafters around, later we discovered. He trained us in basic commands as he would be the captain and us his crew.
Once there, we did some trial maneuvering to make sure we were kosher and off we went. We did some rescue drills where three of us would fall in the water and the remaining three had to rescue them into the boat. The water is a bit cold but refreshing in this potent sun! The boat consisted of the experienced father, the son, the three of us and another young guy who never talked, even once. Well, may be he coughed and that could count as something.
The rafting was cool! The rapids were class 3 and 4 with super high crests and big holes enough to fill the boat completely with water. The scenery out there was also beautiful with waterfalls coming down the side of the mountains jumping from up high into the river making the white liquid blend with the greenish colored water that flowed under us. All in all it was a great experience.. Forward! Forward! Abel screamed before we got into the rapids and our team was a well oiled machine, we could make the raft do what we wanted it to do. Abel also showed us some tricks on taking bends, etc.. A couple of times we nearly fell.
At some point our guide suggested to jump out of the boat to swin since the river was in a calm stretch. We did just that and it felt great! Really cool water in constrast with the super hot environment around. We were floating in the deep river and it took us downstream. Just before the next rapid, we got back in the boat and paddled. Soon enough it was time for lunch and all the rafts and their guides flipped a boat upside down on a shore where the water was calmed. All the boats stopped there and they used the bottom of the raft as a table. This table displayed pineapple, tortillas, cheese, palm hearts, cold cuts, vegetables, and some juice that I still don´t know what it is. It was yellow and tasted like gatorade though. Soon after lunch I went on to swing with the myriad of fish on the Eddy (that´s what they call the calm parts of water on the side of the river).
It was time to leave and we did just that. We hit a HUGE hole in a rapid which we had work by gathering all the crew and sitting on the back before the hit. Pretty cool trick. The time of exit was nearing and a final show was seeing these local kids climbing a train bridge over the river, at about 20 or 30 meters high and plunging into the river water!! These guys have nerves! You could count how many seconds they were in the air as it took a while for them to hit the water.
We clean up, purchase the CD with our raft´s pictures (hence pics are to be added) and head out back to San Jose and hope to arrive there around 6PM. We had left our car and luggage at the hotel last night and we need to pick them up and drive somewhere closer to the border with Panama tonight. Otherwise, the trip to Panama City tomorrow would be unbearable. We arrived in a torrential rain. First thing we needed to do was to try to get some of our raft money back taking advantage of the student discounts. After making phone calls, running and driving around the city like chickens with heads cut off, we got our money back minus a few bucks because they charge an extra percentage if you us credit card. However, we were happy that the trip was fun and the right price.
We started driving violating our no-driving-at-dark rule from the get go. My vote was to stay in San Jose and just put up with the monster drive the next day since I really don´t like to ask for directions at night which can be dangerous. Also, we heard the road is really dangerous specially at night due to foggy conditions and curvy geography. We reached a compromise and we decided to at least get out of the city and get to a city called Cartago to spend the night. The road was not too bad getting there but once there, we realized that the time it would take us to search for a room, find our way in this new city, etc.. would be more than reaching San Isidro El General where we had already made arrangements for three beds. So we decided to go for it. The total trip was about 2h30m from San Jose to San Isidro even though it felt like an eternity. At times, you could not see what was 7 feet in front of you due to the fog. Very dangerous and not many people around. But we arrived there safely and were ready to sleep and drive to Panama tomorrow.
At arrival, we went to eat at a fast food restaurant that Alexey had eyed. It was called Dulji or something like that. It was ok and cheap so we went with our stomachs full back to the hotel where we crashed. Tomorrow will be an early start: 5AM we are thinking.
Monkey see, monkey do..
Friday, August 11th
This morning we woke up relatively early and found that our shared bathroom was busy for a long time. Greg and I had to use the bathroom attached to another hotel room since no one was staying there last night. However, everything got cleared and we just waited for the tour minivan that would take us to our canopy and bridges tour.
Of course, yesterday I hit my head against this steel beam that served as the structure holding the roof of the garage where Rosinante was sleeping. Today, just wanting to remember how it felt like, I banged my head in the same beam once again.. ouch! The French couple who had stayed at the same place saw how I graciously picked up the pieces of my dignity and insulted the beam. We met them and found they were going to the same exact tour as we were.
After the short ride to the Aventura headquarters where we stopped to dropped some other passangers, it was just the 3 of us and the 2 French people in the minivan. We were all going to go to the bridges tour first. It was great to see a slug in the wilderness, colorful butterflies, hallow trees, squirrels, spiders, etc.. during our hike. The bridges were cool too! I must say though, we were dissapointed to see the bright green snake on a plant right outside the Aventura hut at the beginning of the hike. As soon as our van pulled up and we settled in our couches to wait for the guide, I saw this guy trying to drop something out of a plastic water bottle into a plant. He tryied repeatedly until whatever was inside the bottle fell. I did not think much about it.
At the beginning of the hike, the same guide walked with us next to such plant explaining a few of the ground rules. Next, he proceeded to pull some of his best acting moves and pretend that he had just encountered such snake in the plant.. Everyone including the young Spanish couple we had just picked up went OHHHHH!!!. I was disgusted to say the least. However, I must say that aside from this flop, the trip was awesome and we got to see lots of vegetation and other cool stuff.
It was the end of the hike and while our guide was desperately trying to find his snake by the plant (which he never did in the end) we were boarding the van to get back to Aventura headquarters to do our canopy (zip line) tour. We got our safety harnesses, helmets and gloves ready and went for the wire. It was incredible flying in the air with the wires. The guides were pretty cool and seemed to be having fun. We went through all 16 lines. The last one was really nice and was about 600 meters long (1800ft) and 100 meters high!! (300ft). However, this last one we had to do in pairs so Greg and I went together and Alexey went with one of the guides. See, this is one of those sports where people with a few extra pounds actually do better than athletic types ;) Greg and Alexey had trouble avoiding getting stuck in the middle of the lines because their skinny bodies did not carry much momentum. My sizeable mass allowed me to fly in the sky like a pro. This is why Greg recruited me first as his partner for the last line! :)
Ok so after this enjoyable experience we came back to Santa Elena and had lunch with Olivier and Charlotte, our new found French comrades. We went to a falafel place. You could see the discomfort of our friends eating in a place for less than 4 bucks and full of flies but they managed and had fun, I think! We certainly did and their company was really cool. After this, we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags and car and got ready to drive to San Jose. This went without problems after I banged my head 3 more times in a row in the same beam described earlier.. Our French friends were amused.
The drive to San Jose went without a hitch. The city looked awesome! Really a city full of lights and lots of life. We tried to get a place to sleep at the Tranquilo and Pungea Hostels but were not able to in the first one and the latter refuse to let us keep the car there unless we paid $20US for the extra day tomorrow. We said.. forget it and found a happy place with garage at Kap´s Place. However, we did manage to reserve 3 slots in tomorrow´s White Water Rafting expedition with Exploradores Outdoors. It wasw $95 each.. ouch!
We happen to get 2 rooms. A single one (read 1 bed) and a double one (read bunks). After a very complex method (read rock, paper, sizzers) of determining the winner of the single bed room, Greg came out the winner. The two rooms were soooo incredibly small that we could barely fit two people in the double room standing at the same time. It was, however, very cozy. Really, it felt like we were in Guliver land.
We went for dinner at this mexican place in San Jose. It was adequate and we went back to simply crash in our miniature sized accomodations. We will go rafting tomorrow!!!!! Awesome!.
This morning we woke up relatively early and found that our shared bathroom was busy for a long time. Greg and I had to use the bathroom attached to another hotel room since no one was staying there last night. However, everything got cleared and we just waited for the tour minivan that would take us to our canopy and bridges tour.
Of course, yesterday I hit my head against this steel beam that served as the structure holding the roof of the garage where Rosinante was sleeping. Today, just wanting to remember how it felt like, I banged my head in the same beam once again.. ouch! The French couple who had stayed at the same place saw how I graciously picked up the pieces of my dignity and insulted the beam. We met them and found they were going to the same exact tour as we were.
After the short ride to the Aventura headquarters where we stopped to dropped some other passangers, it was just the 3 of us and the 2 French people in the minivan. We were all going to go to the bridges tour first. It was great to see a slug in the wilderness, colorful butterflies, hallow trees, squirrels, spiders, etc.. during our hike. The bridges were cool too! I must say though, we were dissapointed to see the bright green snake on a plant right outside the Aventura hut at the beginning of the hike. As soon as our van pulled up and we settled in our couches to wait for the guide, I saw this guy trying to drop something out of a plastic water bottle into a plant. He tryied repeatedly until whatever was inside the bottle fell. I did not think much about it.
At the beginning of the hike, the same guide walked with us next to such plant explaining a few of the ground rules. Next, he proceeded to pull some of his best acting moves and pretend that he had just encountered such snake in the plant.. Everyone including the young Spanish couple we had just picked up went OHHHHH!!!. I was disgusted to say the least. However, I must say that aside from this flop, the trip was awesome and we got to see lots of vegetation and other cool stuff.
It was the end of the hike and while our guide was desperately trying to find his snake by the plant (which he never did in the end) we were boarding the van to get back to Aventura headquarters to do our canopy (zip line) tour. We got our safety harnesses, helmets and gloves ready and went for the wire. It was incredible flying in the air with the wires. The guides were pretty cool and seemed to be having fun. We went through all 16 lines. The last one was really nice and was about 600 meters long (1800ft) and 100 meters high!! (300ft). However, this last one we had to do in pairs so Greg and I went together and Alexey went with one of the guides. See, this is one of those sports where people with a few extra pounds actually do better than athletic types ;) Greg and Alexey had trouble avoiding getting stuck in the middle of the lines because their skinny bodies did not carry much momentum. My sizeable mass allowed me to fly in the sky like a pro. This is why Greg recruited me first as his partner for the last line! :)
Ok so after this enjoyable experience we came back to Santa Elena and had lunch with Olivier and Charlotte, our new found French comrades. We went to a falafel place. You could see the discomfort of our friends eating in a place for less than 4 bucks and full of flies but they managed and had fun, I think! We certainly did and their company was really cool. After this, we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags and car and got ready to drive to San Jose. This went without problems after I banged my head 3 more times in a row in the same beam described earlier.. Our French friends were amused.
The drive to San Jose went without a hitch. The city looked awesome! Really a city full of lights and lots of life. We tried to get a place to sleep at the Tranquilo and Pungea Hostels but were not able to in the first one and the latter refuse to let us keep the car there unless we paid $20US for the extra day tomorrow. We said.. forget it and found a happy place with garage at Kap´s Place. However, we did manage to reserve 3 slots in tomorrow´s White Water Rafting expedition with Exploradores Outdoors. It wasw $95 each.. ouch!
We happen to get 2 rooms. A single one (read 1 bed) and a double one (read bunks). After a very complex method (read rock, paper, sizzers) of determining the winner of the single bed room, Greg came out the winner. The two rooms were soooo incredibly small that we could barely fit two people in the double room standing at the same time. It was, however, very cozy. Really, it felt like we were in Guliver land.
We went for dinner at this mexican place in San Jose. It was adequate and we went back to simply crash in our miniature sized accomodations. We will go rafting tomorrow!!!!! Awesome!.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Monteverde: The Green Mountains await..
Thursday, August 10th
The real truth about last night was that we had tons of fun dancing and drinking with all the friends we made at the hostel. Jenn from Ireland, Alicia from LonGGIsland, Scarlet from Singapore, Debbie from Israel, and Maggie from Georgia. We also met a few guys but their names are irrelevant :) No no, we also met this Irish guy who just happened to have been a bartending at a bar that we knew in Granada, Nicaragua.
In any case, today we were expected to wake up early and go surfing. We were supposed to wake up Jen who was going to join us for an early round of waves. However, we went to bed too late and we were not really in the mood for anything too physical. Greg and Alexey did get up but found the waves were not challenging enough to merit getting wet at the early hours of 9AM. So we decided to leave the beautiful beaches of Tamarindo and drive to Monteverde a little further in the interior of the country.
We packed up and settled our bills at the counter of the awesome Playa Tamarindo Hostel (because it has AC!). Next, we managed to get the car through some deep craters on the dirt road and got to the center of town. The center of Tamarindo is really just like if you were in a city of the US. You can find any fast food restaurant from the US here and banks, etc.. etc.. So we went for Subway for lunch just to take a break from the rice and beans. It was great!! Even though it was at almost the same price as in the US.
So we started our drive. Now, we do not have good maps for our trip so we have to do with what you have. It was my turn to drive today and Greg was my copilot, navigator, documenter, financial accountant, and other things (these are all copilot duties in the car while the person in the back, Alexey, has to rest for a future drive). The drive there was uneventful really. We tried to visit the campus of the EARTH school in this area (very good and famous agricultural university) but the guard did not let us in. So we continued on to the Panamerican hiway. Once there we found that the conditions of the road did not improve by much. It was still tough to go through all these humungous holes on the road.
The rain started pouring down.. When it rains here, it really rains. Once the rain subsided we started going a bit faster since we want to arrive into Monteverde early enough to plan our activities for tomorrow. We are going around 100+ kph and a copy with a radar gun stops us. He shows us that we are going at 115 kph. So he is telling me the whole story of how this is so incredibly bad for us and he is going to take off our license plates until we can pay it and we cannot leave the country, etc.. etc.. "This is very bad news, very bad" he says in Spanish. Then I said "ok so give me the ticket and we will pay it". You know, corruption is not one of those things that we support. However, he asked us, as it is customary, for "a little something for drinks" or "Algo para las colas". So after consulting with the guys, we decided to give him 2000 Colones (Just for the record, I wanted to give 500 but the guys thought it would be insulting). The 2000Cl equate to about 4bucks US. The guy then let us go freely.
Our next hurdle was a 2 hour journey through a road out of the Panamerican hiway which was in the worse condition we have seen so far. There was no pavement aside from a 20 meter stretch that was actually worse than the dirt road. The pot holes were immense!! Our car had incredible trouble passing through these and the rocks near them. Our velocity was nearing an average of 10kpm. However, we made it!
After searching for a hotel around the town of Santa Elena (Only 3 kms away from the actual town on Monteverde) we settled for a place called Posada Sinai. It turned out to be awesome! The kid in the front desk was nice and we basically had the whole place to ourselves since the only other people staying there was a French couple. There was shared bathroom and kitchen. We quickly went to shop for some food and decided to cook instead of eat out.. yeah!!! This is really awesome because we have not had this opportunity elsewhere in the trip. We made spaghetty with some sauce there. It tasted great. I had to make my own non-tomato base sauce due to problems with my digestion.
The guy at the front desk helped us arrange the canopy tours through the jungle tomorrow and also a visit to the wilderness on a hike that would take us through 7 bridges. The company is called Aventura. We will tell you more about this tomorrow. Now we go to an internet cafe to catch up on blogging.
The real truth about last night was that we had tons of fun dancing and drinking with all the friends we made at the hostel. Jenn from Ireland, Alicia from LonGGIsland, Scarlet from Singapore, Debbie from Israel, and Maggie from Georgia. We also met a few guys but their names are irrelevant :) No no, we also met this Irish guy who just happened to have been a bartending at a bar that we knew in Granada, Nicaragua.
In any case, today we were expected to wake up early and go surfing. We were supposed to wake up Jen who was going to join us for an early round of waves. However, we went to bed too late and we were not really in the mood for anything too physical. Greg and Alexey did get up but found the waves were not challenging enough to merit getting wet at the early hours of 9AM. So we decided to leave the beautiful beaches of Tamarindo and drive to Monteverde a little further in the interior of the country.
We packed up and settled our bills at the counter of the awesome Playa Tamarindo Hostel (because it has AC!). Next, we managed to get the car through some deep craters on the dirt road and got to the center of town. The center of Tamarindo is really just like if you were in a city of the US. You can find any fast food restaurant from the US here and banks, etc.. etc.. So we went for Subway for lunch just to take a break from the rice and beans. It was great!! Even though it was at almost the same price as in the US.
So we started our drive. Now, we do not have good maps for our trip so we have to do with what you have. It was my turn to drive today and Greg was my copilot, navigator, documenter, financial accountant, and other things (these are all copilot duties in the car while the person in the back, Alexey, has to rest for a future drive). The drive there was uneventful really. We tried to visit the campus of the EARTH school in this area (very good and famous agricultural university) but the guard did not let us in. So we continued on to the Panamerican hiway. Once there we found that the conditions of the road did not improve by much. It was still tough to go through all these humungous holes on the road.
The rain started pouring down.. When it rains here, it really rains. Once the rain subsided we started going a bit faster since we want to arrive into Monteverde early enough to plan our activities for tomorrow. We are going around 100+ kph and a copy with a radar gun stops us. He shows us that we are going at 115 kph. So he is telling me the whole story of how this is so incredibly bad for us and he is going to take off our license plates until we can pay it and we cannot leave the country, etc.. etc.. "This is very bad news, very bad" he says in Spanish. Then I said "ok so give me the ticket and we will pay it". You know, corruption is not one of those things that we support. However, he asked us, as it is customary, for "a little something for drinks" or "Algo para las colas". So after consulting with the guys, we decided to give him 2000 Colones (Just for the record, I wanted to give 500 but the guys thought it would be insulting). The 2000Cl equate to about 4bucks US. The guy then let us go freely.
Our next hurdle was a 2 hour journey through a road out of the Panamerican hiway which was in the worse condition we have seen so far. There was no pavement aside from a 20 meter stretch that was actually worse than the dirt road. The pot holes were immense!! Our car had incredible trouble passing through these and the rocks near them. Our velocity was nearing an average of 10kpm. However, we made it!
After searching for a hotel around the town of Santa Elena (Only 3 kms away from the actual town on Monteverde) we settled for a place called Posada Sinai. It turned out to be awesome! The kid in the front desk was nice and we basically had the whole place to ourselves since the only other people staying there was a French couple. There was shared bathroom and kitchen. We quickly went to shop for some food and decided to cook instead of eat out.. yeah!!! This is really awesome because we have not had this opportunity elsewhere in the trip. We made spaghetty with some sauce there. It tasted great. I had to make my own non-tomato base sauce due to problems with my digestion.
The guy at the front desk helped us arrange the canopy tours through the jungle tomorrow and also a visit to the wilderness on a hike that would take us through 7 bridges. The company is called Aventura. We will tell you more about this tomorrow. Now we go to an internet cafe to catch up on blogging.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
7000 miles down
Wednesday August 9th 2006
Today we headed from Granada, Nicaragua down to Playa Tamarindo in Costa Rica. We blew past the beautiful volcanoes in the middle of Lake Nicaragua (and the 7,000 mile maker or the trip) and were on our way to Costa Rica!
The border crossing led to yet another ripoff plot which was foiled by Jose. The fellow charged us 300 cordobas - (15 bucks) for immigration, but the receipt he wrote us was for $6 dollars. After being discovered, he simply handed over 200 cordobas with a chuckle. We dumped our old currency, had a few fresh squeezed orange juices later and we were off!
We are now expert border crossers. (By the way, it should be known that not all members of the party need be present for immigration, just a passport is needed to stamp, the person can be waiting in the car. )
Now, Costa Rica is widely known as the most developed and richest country of central america. However the roads didn't show it and we have faced some of our most challenging terrain yet. We finally arrived in Playa Tamarindo (also know as playa tamagringo for the disgusting number of americans there) with the sole purpuse of getting a little quick surfing under our belts. Greg and I got battered by some beautiful pacific waves and we were happy. We got Jose hooked on surfing as well.
There was a torrential downpour which turned the whole town to mud, but that didn't stop us from heading out on the town (we had been good boys for a few days). We made several friends at the hostel and broke out our Nicaraguan Rum Like heroes. Alexey and Jose got some salsa dancing in, while Greg concentrated on street meat. We need more dancing practice.... the plan was to get up at 8:00 and surf some more.
Today we headed from Granada, Nicaragua down to Playa Tamarindo in Costa Rica. We blew past the beautiful volcanoes in the middle of Lake Nicaragua (and the 7,000 mile maker or the trip) and were on our way to Costa Rica!
The border crossing led to yet another ripoff plot which was foiled by Jose. The fellow charged us 300 cordobas - (15 bucks) for immigration, but the receipt he wrote us was for $6 dollars. After being discovered, he simply handed over 200 cordobas with a chuckle. We dumped our old currency, had a few fresh squeezed orange juices later and we were off!
We are now expert border crossers. (By the way, it should be known that not all members of the party need be present for immigration, just a passport is needed to stamp, the person can be waiting in the car. )
Now, Costa Rica is widely known as the most developed and richest country of central america. However the roads didn't show it and we have faced some of our most challenging terrain yet. We finally arrived in Playa Tamarindo (also know as playa tamagringo for the disgusting number of americans there) with the sole purpuse of getting a little quick surfing under our belts. Greg and I got battered by some beautiful pacific waves and we were happy. We got Jose hooked on surfing as well.
There was a torrential downpour which turned the whole town to mud, but that didn't stop us from heading out on the town (we had been good boys for a few days). We made several friends at the hostel and broke out our Nicaraguan Rum Like heroes. Alexey and Jose got some salsa dancing in, while Greg concentrated on street meat. We need more dancing practice.... the plan was to get up at 8:00 and surf some more.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Visa everywhere you don't want to be, aka how to survive in San Pedro Sula on $0 a day
So as the guys mentioned my little vacation is over and I arrived safely into Chicago. Things have been kind of hectic as I have nowhere to live and am still sleeping in random hotels, but at least I'm getting paid to type this blog entry. Chicago looks like it should be a good time and I even found a Pollo Campero that I dined at for dinner yesterday. I think Jose will be excited to hear that I found out they have some located in Ecuador as well. So far so good with the new city and the new job, but I'm sure people would be more interested in hearing about my Honduran adventures.
When last we heard from Todd the guys had just dropped him off at a sketchy hotel in a shady neighborhood in sleezy San Pedro Sula. The one thing San Pedro Sula does have is the best airport in Honduras and thus is the location where the majority of tourists fly into. Since I had a day there before my flight I decided to head to the ruins of Copan, the most popular tourist attraction in Honduras. I figured it would be no problem booking a tour from the most popular airport in Honduras to the most popular tourist attraction. I couldn't have been more wrong. All of the tour agencies in San Pedro Sula were only interested in helping you get out of Honduras, not a good sign. Now I had been travelling around Central America for a month and had grown fairly street savvy so I decided I could just bus it down to Copan and take care of things on my own. Wrong again. I had no Honduran money and the buses did not take credit cards. Or at least do not give them back. Rather than take that risk and since it was still relatively early (~7:00am) I went looking for an ATM. Around 10:00am I eventually gave up. Another abysmal failure. Not that there weren't ATMs around, it was just that they only worked on the Visa network and I was stuck with a Mastercard ATM card. I tried over six different bank ATMs and none worked. Poor showing for Honduras and I don't think I was the only one having difficulties as the lines to get into any given bank rivalled Disneyland as people waited anxiously to access money that people in other countries would get at an ATM.
So Copan apparently wasn't meant to be. Too bad as I hear that it is really amazing. That's okay though as it gave me all day to take in the beauty that is San Pedro Sula. This lasted 5 minutes. It has a decent church and the chicks are reasonably hot, but in both cases no pictures are warranted. With the rest of my day and no money to spend I did the only thing I really could do and went back to the hotel to finish reading Wuthering Heights (much better than I thought it was going to be) and watch some TV. Luckily the hotel had numerous stations and so I was able to catch up on world news and watch Point Break twice. "We'll get'em when he comes eeen!". The hotel took credit cards and so far no strange charges have shown up, so that was a relief. Although I was forced to eat at Pizza Hut since they were one of the few places that took credit cards. I ordered the Canadienese pizza which we normally call the Meat Lovers. Apparently Hondurans perceive Canadians as being meat eating socialists. I think they pretty much nailed it. At least it was much better than the Canada Burger at McDonald's in Liechtenstein.
After my uneventful day in San Pedro Sula I woke up early the next day to catch an 8:00am flight to Miami. I spent my last $10US on the cab ride (actually quite a good deal as it was a good 20km ride). Much to my chagrin Honduras is one of the those unfortunate countries that has an exit tax and doesn't take credit cards (can't someone look into incorporating these into the price of the airfare to avoid the added inconvenience of paying at the airport. If only I knew someone that worked for an airline). I tried to sneak by with a blank expression and my pockets pulled out to show they were empty, but they pointed me in the direction of an ATM that worked on the Mastercard network. Where were you when I needed you yesterday ScotiaBank? So if nothing else, that is my helpful advice on Honduras, get all the money you need at the airport or else bring a solid supply of greenbacks to exchange.
After a long layover in Miami and a delayed flight to Chicago I eventually got into O'Hare airport at 1:00am on last Thursday and hit the road back to Michigan to visit the family for the weekend. Had a nice visit with my cousin Michelle who was in town with her adorable little kids Joseph and Caroline. Also got a chance to meet my best friend Josh's first child, Hannah. She was a little cutie and the proud parents, Josh and Beth, couldn't be happier. So far work has been good although I'd rather still be with the guys in Central America.So this will be the last you hear from Andon, except for the occasional comment. The beard is gone and fun has ended although the memories will live on forever.
Monday, August 07, 2006
A capital and Granada with a cigar flavor
Monday, August 7th
In exactly 1 week from now we will be voting one participant off the Golf. Who will it be? I get a feeling that Greg will be kicked out.. what do you think?
In any case, this morning we have a bit of logistics to work out. This is because Todd´s uncle set us up with Perdomo Cigars in Esteli, Nicaragua for a visit to their plant here. Last night, we slept in this nice little town in the western mountains once ruled by the Sandinistas. However, we had not been able to work out the details of our visit to the factory since it was the weekend. So this morning we catch us with the president of the company and he sets everything up for us in one swoop.
After breakfast at a local hole in the wall, we head back to the hotel and wait until 10AM when we are going to head to the Perdomo plant. We arrive there but our contact is still in the tobacco fields with some employees so he orders Mr. Miguel Rivera (very nice gentleman and now our impromptu tour guide) to show us around. The tour was awesome!!! We all enjoyed watching tobacco being cured for flavors and local workers doing all the work of rolling, cutting and packing cigars by hand! The smell in some of these rooms was so strong due to the fermentation of the tobacco that we almost broke into a sneezing attack. After Mr. Rivera explained everything there was to know about the manufacture of cigars, we treated ourselves to the purchase of a box of high quality cigars. We will be smoking them one of these nights to celebrate something (not sure what yet, but we´ll let you know). We say good bye to our gracious hosts at Perdomo Cigars, pick up our stuff from the hotels and hit the road. We have to thank a few people immensely: Todd´s uncle, Todd, Mr. Nick Perdomo Jr., Mr. Miguel Rivera, and Mr. Gonzalo Puentes for all their help setting up the tour.
On to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. We are expecting to see something very similar to central San Salvador there. That is, very busy people, people looking at your every move, etc. On the way there, still in Esteli, we take the car for an 6700 mile oil change. We have not been able to fit an oil change in our schedule but we did it today so Rosinante is feeling much better already! After this and a top up of our gas tank, we are in Managua in 1 1/2 hours. Managua proper was destroyed by repeated earthquakes and after the goverment discovered that the capital had been built on top of a major seismological fault line, it decided to relocate the city to nearby grounds. They basically took of right after the 1972 earthquake and the buildings were left there. It is a weird feeling to see these goverment buildings that once housed important people and now they have nothing inside. There is a eerie feeling in the air around here: emptiness everywhere and somewhat, danger.
We take some pictures in the remnants of this city and drive through some areas of it. There is nothing in this city, home to about 1 million Nicaraguans that would resemble a downtown area. Everything is spread out an built in a hurry. However, it´s very cool to see how this city came to be. After a couple of ours, we head for Granada, our final stop for the day.
On the drive to Granada, we see the Masaya volcanoe which has a really nice crater with steam coming from it on the right side of the road. (FYI: The Pacaya volcanoe that we visited near Antigua, Nicaragua has just started erupting again according to CNN a couple of days back). Granada is a cool little colonial town which gets hit most heavily by tourists then any other Nicaraguan city. It looks like an Antigua but has not reached the level of manicured tourist gardens and architecture that Antigua flaunts. However, this same fact is what enchants many visitors. It has a flavor of realistic beauty, the down to earth type of beauty.
We settled for a hotel a couple of blocks away from the city center. The air in the room is super hot!! This is going to be one of those a-la-Roatan style nights. But it will have to do because all other hotels here were very expensive. This was somewhat of a good value for the money. Rosinante is sleeping over at a private garage half a block away. Tonight we will try to enjoy the city and a bit of its night life. Tomorrow we will take some time off to visit historical sights and who knows? Perhaps we could even do some diving in the Lake Nicaragua where it is said there are some fresh water sharks to see under water!!!
In exactly 1 week from now we will be voting one participant off the Golf. Who will it be? I get a feeling that Greg will be kicked out.. what do you think?
In any case, this morning we have a bit of logistics to work out. This is because Todd´s uncle set us up with Perdomo Cigars in Esteli, Nicaragua for a visit to their plant here. Last night, we slept in this nice little town in the western mountains once ruled by the Sandinistas. However, we had not been able to work out the details of our visit to the factory since it was the weekend. So this morning we catch us with the president of the company and he sets everything up for us in one swoop.
After breakfast at a local hole in the wall, we head back to the hotel and wait until 10AM when we are going to head to the Perdomo plant. We arrive there but our contact is still in the tobacco fields with some employees so he orders Mr. Miguel Rivera (very nice gentleman and now our impromptu tour guide) to show us around. The tour was awesome!!! We all enjoyed watching tobacco being cured for flavors and local workers doing all the work of rolling, cutting and packing cigars by hand! The smell in some of these rooms was so strong due to the fermentation of the tobacco that we almost broke into a sneezing attack. After Mr. Rivera explained everything there was to know about the manufacture of cigars, we treated ourselves to the purchase of a box of high quality cigars. We will be smoking them one of these nights to celebrate something (not sure what yet, but we´ll let you know). We say good bye to our gracious hosts at Perdomo Cigars, pick up our stuff from the hotels and hit the road. We have to thank a few people immensely: Todd´s uncle, Todd, Mr. Nick Perdomo Jr., Mr. Miguel Rivera, and Mr. Gonzalo Puentes for all their help setting up the tour.
On to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. We are expecting to see something very similar to central San Salvador there. That is, very busy people, people looking at your every move, etc. On the way there, still in Esteli, we take the car for an 6700 mile oil change. We have not been able to fit an oil change in our schedule but we did it today so Rosinante is feeling much better already! After this and a top up of our gas tank, we are in Managua in 1 1/2 hours. Managua proper was destroyed by repeated earthquakes and after the goverment discovered that the capital had been built on top of a major seismological fault line, it decided to relocate the city to nearby grounds. They basically took of right after the 1972 earthquake and the buildings were left there. It is a weird feeling to see these goverment buildings that once housed important people and now they have nothing inside. There is a eerie feeling in the air around here: emptiness everywhere and somewhat, danger.
We take some pictures in the remnants of this city and drive through some areas of it. There is nothing in this city, home to about 1 million Nicaraguans that would resemble a downtown area. Everything is spread out an built in a hurry. However, it´s very cool to see how this city came to be. After a couple of ours, we head for Granada, our final stop for the day.
On the drive to Granada, we see the Masaya volcanoe which has a really nice crater with steam coming from it on the right side of the road. (FYI: The Pacaya volcanoe that we visited near Antigua, Nicaragua has just started erupting again according to CNN a couple of days back). Granada is a cool little colonial town which gets hit most heavily by tourists then any other Nicaraguan city. It looks like an Antigua but has not reached the level of manicured tourist gardens and architecture that Antigua flaunts. However, this same fact is what enchants many visitors. It has a flavor of realistic beauty, the down to earth type of beauty.
We settled for a hotel a couple of blocks away from the city center. The air in the room is super hot!! This is going to be one of those a-la-Roatan style nights. But it will have to do because all other hotels here were very expensive. This was somewhat of a good value for the money. Rosinante is sleeping over at a private garage half a block away. Tonight we will try to enjoy the city and a bit of its night life. Tomorrow we will take some time off to visit historical sights and who knows? Perhaps we could even do some diving in the Lake Nicaragua where it is said there are some fresh water sharks to see under water!!!
Sandinista Territory
Sunday August 6th, 2006
Sill picking at our large mini-stalk of bananas from the previous day, we headed south from Tegucigalpa along windy roads leading us to the coast. The geography was quite similar to that of northern California. As has seemed to be the trend for many central american countries, lots of political propaganda preparing for the upcoming elections has been painted on many of the walls of the cliffs. Passing San Lorenzo and Choluteca and brought us the the border with Nicaragua.
The border crossing was relatively uneventful (ie 2 hours and tons of paperwork) and upon arrival in Nicaragua, the roads immediately went to crap - 1.5 potholes per square meter. We purchased car insurance from a twelve year old boy operating out of a strange wooden shack (see picture) which came in handy when ...
... we were immediately pulled over by a cop in Leon not 40km later. The alleged infraction was a right turn onto a two way street which had a red construction cone five feet from the curb. This crooked cop insulted Joses driving ability (which, as we have learned long ago is sensitive territory for all three drivers in the triad) and moved immediately towards a hard stance setting himself up for the easy bribe. Not taking the bait, Jose opted for the "Take me the to US Embassy, in Managua and I will be back here tomorrow" stance, which worked okay. But thrown in with the ole - writing down badge ID number at photograph of the cop (which is illegal fyi) we suddenly had more bargaining chips. After a few more questions and 15 more minutes of arguing we were on our way.
Leon is a beautiful colonial town which is not too gringofied. Similar to Honduras in nature, the town felt a little sleepy and the locals were quite friendly. After a nice buffet-over-a-womans-stove type meal, we explored the town a bit. There seem to be a lot of young Nicaraguans which we are attributing to the post war baby boom. We decided to head to Esteli, site of a cigar factory for tomorrows tour.
The Nicaraguan landscape is spectacular! There are literally TONS of volcanos which litter the landscape from the flats alone the coast to the mountains of the center. We took some fairly country road (1.7 potholes per sqmeter) through some very interesting farmland. All of the towns we went through were brandishing the black and red Flag of the Sandinista party FSLN - with the elections coming up in October-November, things were getting into high gear. Flags were on trees, trees trunks were painted, it was pretty impressive. After reading nicaraguan history en route, it was clear that this country has had its fair share of politics - election turnouts are in the high 90s %.
As the sun was setting we were thankful to make it off the country road which we dubbed as "quite a good car jacking road" ... we of course had to snarl our way through some extremely intense mosquito clouds and through another police checkpoint. This time we faced fines for lacking our front plate. Again, claiming ignorance and that Massachusetts does not issue them, we made it through unscathed after a healthy discussion.
The town of Esteli is was beautiful, we had a nice stroll and were entertained by an intense evangelical church band before bed.
Sill picking at our large mini-stalk of bananas from the previous day, we headed south from Tegucigalpa along windy roads leading us to the coast. The geography was quite similar to that of northern California. As has seemed to be the trend for many central american countries, lots of political propaganda preparing for the upcoming elections has been painted on many of the walls of the cliffs. Passing San Lorenzo and Choluteca and brought us the the border with Nicaragua.
The border crossing was relatively uneventful (ie 2 hours and tons of paperwork) and upon arrival in Nicaragua, the roads immediately went to crap - 1.5 potholes per square meter. We purchased car insurance from a twelve year old boy operating out of a strange wooden shack (see picture) which came in handy when ...
... we were immediately pulled over by a cop in Leon not 40km later. The alleged infraction was a right turn onto a two way street which had a red construction cone five feet from the curb. This crooked cop insulted Joses driving ability (which, as we have learned long ago is sensitive territory for all three drivers in the triad) and moved immediately towards a hard stance setting himself up for the easy bribe. Not taking the bait, Jose opted for the "Take me the to US Embassy, in Managua and I will be back here tomorrow" stance, which worked okay. But thrown in with the ole - writing down badge ID number at photograph of the cop (which is illegal fyi) we suddenly had more bargaining chips. After a few more questions and 15 more minutes of arguing we were on our way.
Leon is a beautiful colonial town which is not too gringofied. Similar to Honduras in nature, the town felt a little sleepy and the locals were quite friendly. After a nice buffet-over-a-womans-stove type meal, we explored the town a bit. There seem to be a lot of young Nicaraguans which we are attributing to the post war baby boom. We decided to head to Esteli, site of a cigar factory for tomorrows tour.
The Nicaraguan landscape is spectacular! There are literally TONS of volcanos which litter the landscape from the flats alone the coast to the mountains of the center. We took some fairly country road (1.7 potholes per sqmeter) through some very interesting farmland. All of the towns we went through were brandishing the black and red Flag of the Sandinista party FSLN - with the elections coming up in October-November, things were getting into high gear. Flags were on trees, trees trunks were painted, it was pretty impressive. After reading nicaraguan history en route, it was clear that this country has had its fair share of politics - election turnouts are in the high 90s %.
As the sun was setting we were thankful to make it off the country road which we dubbed as "quite a good car jacking road" ... we of course had to snarl our way through some extremely intense mosquito clouds and through another police checkpoint. This time we faced fines for lacking our front plate. Again, claiming ignorance and that Massachusetts does not issue them, we made it through unscathed after a healthy discussion.
The town of Esteli is was beautiful, we had a nice stroll and were entertained by an intense evangelical church band before bed.
Getting back to the jungle
Saturday, August 5th
Ok ok.. so we had to leave the comfort of tourist-town Roatan and prove to you guys that we can also travel in the mad real Central American cities, the ones that are never mentioned in your travel agency brochures. Today, we need to get to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.
The day starts really early while it´s still dark out. The nice germanic owner of the Boulangerie, with whom we´ve been doing business every morning for breakfast, tell us that unless we catch a bus to the pier in Coxen Hole before 6:15AM we would not make the ferry back to La Ceiba (continental Honduras). It is 6:15AM so we decide to go for the cabs waiting around near our hotel. A whole bunch of them come with offers about the same price: 40 Lempiras per person. Our bread-making friend advices me to offer them 100L and one guy bites into it. We flee to the pier and experience this wonderful drive through the coast of this paradise packed into a tiny island, the sun is slowly rising leaving the sky in a mixture of orange, light blue and black.
Once at the pier, we buy tickets and check in our luggage. The ride goes smoothly and since we had partied the night before with our Danish and American friends, we are totally beaten. I slept most of the 2 hour ride while Greg watched some really aweful movie and Alexey helped free some guy trapped in the gents bathroom.
At our arrival, we needed to pick up Rosinante so the first thing I do is check on our horse and find he is doing A-OK. Greg and Alexey stay back claiming our bags which seems to be a time consuming adventure on these ferries. They basically scream your bag number and you have to jump over a mass of people to trade the tickets and get your bag back. Imagine 300 people doing this at the same time. Oh well, in the mean time, I paid the parking bill and once ready, we packed up the car and left.
On our way here on Tuesday, we told you how the cheap breakfast place in La Ceiba was actually very good. So we decided to go back there and see our old pal at the Pulperia. After a few rounds around the block trying to remember the exact location of this grocery store, we find it and once again we scrape the bottom of Rosinante against a concrete mound. See, the problem is that we have to park on the sidewalk and it is kind of steep. However, breakfast was awesome once again, and cheap.. There was this crazy girl next to us that kept bugging us repeatedly. Don´t know what she wanted but she left soon enough.
After we devoured our plates of traditional Honduran breakfast (again: beans, plantains, pork, and this time making an appearance for the first time, the tortillas and avocados), we start the drive. This is Alexey´s turn at the wheel so we are assured of two things: we´ll get there quickly, and Rosinante will grind his teeth at every gear change :) No no.. in all seriousness, he has been treating Rosinante much better now a days.
So after heading back in the direction of San Pedro Sula and passing by Tela we reach the town of Progreso once again. This is where we connect to our road to Tegucigalpa. The drive there was uneventful aside from a stop to buy fruit on the side of the road. We negotiate to purchase 1 pineapple (freshly cut into pieces for us), 1 cold coconut and 1 whole brach full of baby bananas. The price tag is all of 30 Lempiras or about $2US.. not too bad. These bananas kept us well fed through the next 2 days of driving!
Tegulcigalpa is the city in Honduras where the regular people leave. That is, you find the sense of insecurity that you expect. In school we learned how this product called Resistol (aka Resist-all, an extra strength glue) was used by kids in the streets as drugs. We have verified this and seen kids sniffing this glue around the markets in Tegucigalpa. We find the city has its own charm, however. The very quaint church and plaza (which Alexey thinks it´s cool because of its asymmetry) were really nice. We walked around a little and saw the presidential palace that is printed on the Honduran currency.
At this point we have checked into this really nice hotel. Our hotel in Roatan was not the best nor comfortable so we have decided to splurge for tonight! The room rate at the McArthur Hotel was $60US but we negotiate it to $50 and we get air conditioning!! So we are ready to go to an Internet cafe nearby to update the blog. However, on the way there, we pop into this local drinking hole. Most people in this establishment are not eating but drinking. Every table has at least 6 empty bottles so we have some catching up to do. While there, we meet Craig who is an Aussie who has spent the last few years of his life here. He is an old man with lots of stories. Most of such stories evolve around seafood trading and young Honduran women. After we are done with our food, he invites us over for a beer and tells us the story of his connections with the mafia and how one time some guys told him that his lobsters arrived dead (all 1000 of them) from Australia to Asia. Oh well, we found it quite amusing.
So it´s time to update the blog. It´s around 10PM and it really looks dark and unsafe outside. I talk a bit with the woman in charge of the internet cafe and she sees that as foreigners we don´t really understand this area of the city (the center). Therefore, she sends her two best men around (really cool guys), who agree to walk us to our hotel about 4 blocks away. Once there we say good bye and get back to the comfort of the McArthur. Tomorrow will be a big day. We will attempt to cross the border into Nicaragua. Wish us luck!
Ok ok.. so we had to leave the comfort of tourist-town Roatan and prove to you guys that we can also travel in the mad real Central American cities, the ones that are never mentioned in your travel agency brochures. Today, we need to get to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.
The day starts really early while it´s still dark out. The nice germanic owner of the Boulangerie, with whom we´ve been doing business every morning for breakfast, tell us that unless we catch a bus to the pier in Coxen Hole before 6:15AM we would not make the ferry back to La Ceiba (continental Honduras). It is 6:15AM so we decide to go for the cabs waiting around near our hotel. A whole bunch of them come with offers about the same price: 40 Lempiras per person. Our bread-making friend advices me to offer them 100L and one guy bites into it. We flee to the pier and experience this wonderful drive through the coast of this paradise packed into a tiny island, the sun is slowly rising leaving the sky in a mixture of orange, light blue and black.
Once at the pier, we buy tickets and check in our luggage. The ride goes smoothly and since we had partied the night before with our Danish and American friends, we are totally beaten. I slept most of the 2 hour ride while Greg watched some really aweful movie and Alexey helped free some guy trapped in the gents bathroom.
At our arrival, we needed to pick up Rosinante so the first thing I do is check on our horse and find he is doing A-OK. Greg and Alexey stay back claiming our bags which seems to be a time consuming adventure on these ferries. They basically scream your bag number and you have to jump over a mass of people to trade the tickets and get your bag back. Imagine 300 people doing this at the same time. Oh well, in the mean time, I paid the parking bill and once ready, we packed up the car and left.
On our way here on Tuesday, we told you how the cheap breakfast place in La Ceiba was actually very good. So we decided to go back there and see our old pal at the Pulperia. After a few rounds around the block trying to remember the exact location of this grocery store, we find it and once again we scrape the bottom of Rosinante against a concrete mound. See, the problem is that we have to park on the sidewalk and it is kind of steep. However, breakfast was awesome once again, and cheap.. There was this crazy girl next to us that kept bugging us repeatedly. Don´t know what she wanted but she left soon enough.
After we devoured our plates of traditional Honduran breakfast (again: beans, plantains, pork, and this time making an appearance for the first time, the tortillas and avocados), we start the drive. This is Alexey´s turn at the wheel so we are assured of two things: we´ll get there quickly, and Rosinante will grind his teeth at every gear change :) No no.. in all seriousness, he has been treating Rosinante much better now a days.
So after heading back in the direction of San Pedro Sula and passing by Tela we reach the town of Progreso once again. This is where we connect to our road to Tegucigalpa. The drive there was uneventful aside from a stop to buy fruit on the side of the road. We negotiate to purchase 1 pineapple (freshly cut into pieces for us), 1 cold coconut and 1 whole brach full of baby bananas. The price tag is all of 30 Lempiras or about $2US.. not too bad. These bananas kept us well fed through the next 2 days of driving!
Tegulcigalpa is the city in Honduras where the regular people leave. That is, you find the sense of insecurity that you expect. In school we learned how this product called Resistol (aka Resist-all, an extra strength glue) was used by kids in the streets as drugs. We have verified this and seen kids sniffing this glue around the markets in Tegucigalpa. We find the city has its own charm, however. The very quaint church and plaza (which Alexey thinks it´s cool because of its asymmetry) were really nice. We walked around a little and saw the presidential palace that is printed on the Honduran currency.
At this point we have checked into this really nice hotel. Our hotel in Roatan was not the best nor comfortable so we have decided to splurge for tonight! The room rate at the McArthur Hotel was $60US but we negotiate it to $50 and we get air conditioning!! So we are ready to go to an Internet cafe nearby to update the blog. However, on the way there, we pop into this local drinking hole. Most people in this establishment are not eating but drinking. Every table has at least 6 empty bottles so we have some catching up to do. While there, we meet Craig who is an Aussie who has spent the last few years of his life here. He is an old man with lots of stories. Most of such stories evolve around seafood trading and young Honduran women. After we are done with our food, he invites us over for a beer and tells us the story of his connections with the mafia and how one time some guys told him that his lobsters arrived dead (all 1000 of them) from Australia to Asia. Oh well, we found it quite amusing.
So it´s time to update the blog. It´s around 10PM and it really looks dark and unsafe outside. I talk a bit with the woman in charge of the internet cafe and she sees that as foreigners we don´t really understand this area of the city (the center). Therefore, she sends her two best men around (really cool guys), who agree to walk us to our hotel about 4 blocks away. Once there we say good bye and get back to the comfort of the McArthur. Tomorrow will be a big day. We will attempt to cross the border into Nicaragua. Wish us luck!
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Dejavue: First day of school, all over again..
Wednesday, August 2nd
This morning we had classes starting at 8:15AM. Our instructor, Melia is going to go over the schedule of classes and we will take our tests. After leaving our laundry (we badly needed it) at the laundry lady down the beach, we have breakfast at the Boulangerie, owned by this German speaking guy. He is pretty cool and everyone in town seems to know he makes the best bread in the island. Perhaps he is the only bakery around. But no, certainly, his bread and sandwiches are great. Also, he gives free internet if you buy something which is great here!! The reason why we have not posted blog entries in the island is due to the incredible price of internet here.. it´s $10US per hour!! By far, the highest we have seen so far including Belize.
The night was not too good for us since the blackout did happen. It was about 4AM when the energy failed. This meant, of course, that the only fan in the room stopped working. The stupid fan did not swing in the first place so Alexey and Greg were mad because the fan was stucked pointed towards my bed! They both woke up after 4AM and tried to sleep outside to take advantage of the limited breeze coming from the beach. However, the sand flies and other bugs made sure they came back to the room before 6AM.
So we are ready to start our class, a bit sleepy still, but ready. Melia gets us started with a review of Modules 1, 2 and 3 and after each review, we each took a test. Of course, we all passed with flying colors (were are MIT students after all). And now, it was time for the true test.. the confined water skills lesson. We all put on our diving gear and headed for the water near the hotel. At first, I had problems breathing. I almost freaked out since you kind of have to pull air from the tank and it does not feel normal. However, we all got used to this. Alexey got reprimanded for not doing the exercises right but quickly recovered.
After the Melia was convinced that we had what it took to be divers, she took us to the opèn water in the 2PM boat!!! This was going to be skills under 15 feet of water! It was extremely exciting to say the least. We were enchanted by the coral reef and the myriad lifeforms under the sea. I know now why these guys are spending their lifes here doing diving and living on a budget. It´s really an amazing feeling of weighlessness and just humility.
We are all pumped up after we came back to the beach. We cleaned our equipment and went out for a celebratory drink at Sundowners once again. Alexey met these Danish girls, Hella and Meia, at the bar and we all kind of said hi and left. They were pretty cool though. So we came back to the hotel hoping to get in the water once again soon and that the blackouts don´t continue. Alexey bought some ice and a small bottle of Nicaraguan rum called Flor De Cana (really good and cheap). We ended up coming home and drinking at the hotel/diving school´s porch. Then, these divers we had met earlier today arrived and we all shared a drink of our rum and their rum (a much cheaper kind, think $1 a bottle). The Danish girls (also staying at the hotel) also got there unexpectedly and also shared a drink. In general, we drank enough to be pretty happy and still look under control of the situation. We get back to the room, it´s almost midnight.. once again, it´s an oven inside here.
This morning we had classes starting at 8:15AM. Our instructor, Melia is going to go over the schedule of classes and we will take our tests. After leaving our laundry (we badly needed it) at the laundry lady down the beach, we have breakfast at the Boulangerie, owned by this German speaking guy. He is pretty cool and everyone in town seems to know he makes the best bread in the island. Perhaps he is the only bakery around. But no, certainly, his bread and sandwiches are great. Also, he gives free internet if you buy something which is great here!! The reason why we have not posted blog entries in the island is due to the incredible price of internet here.. it´s $10US per hour!! By far, the highest we have seen so far including Belize.
The night was not too good for us since the blackout did happen. It was about 4AM when the energy failed. This meant, of course, that the only fan in the room stopped working. The stupid fan did not swing in the first place so Alexey and Greg were mad because the fan was stucked pointed towards my bed! They both woke up after 4AM and tried to sleep outside to take advantage of the limited breeze coming from the beach. However, the sand flies and other bugs made sure they came back to the room before 6AM.
So we are ready to start our class, a bit sleepy still, but ready. Melia gets us started with a review of Modules 1, 2 and 3 and after each review, we each took a test. Of course, we all passed with flying colors (were are MIT students after all). And now, it was time for the true test.. the confined water skills lesson. We all put on our diving gear and headed for the water near the hotel. At first, I had problems breathing. I almost freaked out since you kind of have to pull air from the tank and it does not feel normal. However, we all got used to this. Alexey got reprimanded for not doing the exercises right but quickly recovered.
After the Melia was convinced that we had what it took to be divers, she took us to the opèn water in the 2PM boat!!! This was going to be skills under 15 feet of water! It was extremely exciting to say the least. We were enchanted by the coral reef and the myriad lifeforms under the sea. I know now why these guys are spending their lifes here doing diving and living on a budget. It´s really an amazing feeling of weighlessness and just humility.We are all pumped up after we came back to the beach. We cleaned our equipment and went out for a celebratory drink at Sundowners once again. Alexey met these Danish girls, Hella and Meia, at the bar and we all kind of said hi and left. They were pretty cool though. So we came back to the hotel hoping to get in the water once again soon and that the blackouts don´t continue. Alexey bought some ice and a small bottle of Nicaraguan rum called Flor De Cana (really good and cheap). We ended up coming home and drinking at the hotel/diving school´s porch. Then, these divers we had met earlier today arrived and we all shared a drink of our rum and their rum (a much cheaper kind, think $1 a bottle). The Danish girls (also staying at the hotel) also got there unexpectedly and also shared a drink. In general, we drank enough to be pretty happy and still look under control of the situation. We get back to the room, it´s almost midnight.. once again, it´s an oven inside here.
Scuba Steve and Friends
Thursday, August 3rd, Roatan, Honduras
Today was our second day of diving. We had another wonderful night's sleep (heavy sarcasm) thanks to a blackout around 3AM which shut down our fan and caused the ambient temperature in our room to reach a point where we could have baked bread, so we were very refreshed in the morning. Hit our usual bakery for breakfast before meeting Malia to brief our morning dive. We did our second confined water dive in about 7 feet of water just off the beach, mostly skills work. Highlights included Alexey accidentally pulling the regulator out of Greg's mouth, seeing a green eel and finishing the majority of the skills work so we could start diving for fun in the afternoon.
We ate lunch at the same bakery (that place was awesome, run by a German dude) and then reported back for the 2PM open water dive. This dive was a blast. It was about 10 minutes away by boat, we reached a depth of 55' and were in the water for about an hour. We did some skills work like hovering, establishing neutral buoyancy, etc. and then we were free to explore for a while. The coolest part was when we went through an arch in the coral, coming out at a dropoff where all you could see was deep blue, both in front of you and down, just sitting on the edge of the abyss. Floating motionless in the face of this void was a pretty surreal feeling. Only minor downer was Greg slashing his finger on coral going through the passageway when the three of us caused an underwater traffic jam by not allowing enough spacing between us.
After the dive we showered up and then visited this rotisserie chicken place that we had heard a lot about, and man, was it worth the hype. For a reasonable price you got a quarter-chicken and two sides. I had the potato salad and mamalot, I think it was called, kind of a cross between orzo pasta and couscous, just awesome. The boys got coconut-flavored beans and rice, which was also incredible.
AFter dinner we decided that we didn't feel like paying for all of our drinks at the bars and also that we wanted to try some of this Nicaraguan rum that we'd heard so much about. So we bought a bottle of Flor de Cana (missing accent; sorry julissa but i'm on a gringo keyboard), a bag of ice, some coke and a couple of decks of cards and went back to the hotel. We sat outside (our room was too brutally hot to stay in side), poured some drinks and played some poker; Alexey and Jose were nice enough to give Greg a primer in Texas Hold 'Em. Our two Danish friends, Hella and Milla, showed up shortly with another bottle of rum, the really good stuff, and joined us. We hung out drinking rum with them for a while and then crashed as we had two morning dives the next day and we were fully expecting another horrible night's sleep.
Today was our second day of diving. We had another wonderful night's sleep (heavy sarcasm) thanks to a blackout around 3AM which shut down our fan and caused the ambient temperature in our room to reach a point where we could have baked bread, so we were very refreshed in the morning. Hit our usual bakery for breakfast before meeting Malia to brief our morning dive. We did our second confined water dive in about 7 feet of water just off the beach, mostly skills work. Highlights included Alexey accidentally pulling the regulator out of Greg's mouth, seeing a green eel and finishing the majority of the skills work so we could start diving for fun in the afternoon.
We ate lunch at the same bakery (that place was awesome, run by a German dude) and then reported back for the 2PM open water dive. This dive was a blast. It was about 10 minutes away by boat, we reached a depth of 55' and were in the water for about an hour. We did some skills work like hovering, establishing neutral buoyancy, etc. and then we were free to explore for a while. The coolest part was when we went through an arch in the coral, coming out at a dropoff where all you could see was deep blue, both in front of you and down, just sitting on the edge of the abyss. Floating motionless in the face of this void was a pretty surreal feeling. Only minor downer was Greg slashing his finger on coral going through the passageway when the three of us caused an underwater traffic jam by not allowing enough spacing between us.
After the dive we showered up and then visited this rotisserie chicken place that we had heard a lot about, and man, was it worth the hype. For a reasonable price you got a quarter-chicken and two sides. I had the potato salad and mamalot, I think it was called, kind of a cross between orzo pasta and couscous, just awesome. The boys got coconut-flavored beans and rice, which was also incredible.
AFter dinner we decided that we didn't feel like paying for all of our drinks at the bars and also that we wanted to try some of this Nicaraguan rum that we'd heard so much about. So we bought a bottle of Flor de Cana (missing accent; sorry julissa but i'm on a gringo keyboard), a bag of ice, some coke and a couple of decks of cards and went back to the hotel. We sat outside (our room was too brutally hot to stay in side), poured some drinks and played some poker; Alexey and Jose were nice enough to give Greg a primer in Texas Hold 'Em. Our two Danish friends, Hella and Milla, showed up shortly with another bottle of rum, the really good stuff, and joined us. We hung out drinking rum with them for a while and then crashed as we had two morning dives the next day and we were fully expecting another horrible night's sleep.
Roatan, the caribbean packed in a small Honduran island
Tuesday, August 1st
In Tela, we woke up really early. We knew that the drive to La Ceiba would take about 2 1/2 hours and we needed to make the 10:00AM ferry that would take us to the paradisical island of Roatan. Of course, the locals were once again wrong and we did the trip in about 1 1/2 hours. Once there, we bought tickets and had plenty of time to have breakfast so we ventured into La Ceiba, the town.
La Ceiba is a smallish town primarily used for tourists as a jumping off point to the islands of Roatan, Utila and others. We drove for a while and went to a restaurant whose guard told us they were not serving breakfast yet even though it was about 8:45AM. It was very interesting to see his gun stuffed the front of his pants like in the wild west movies! However, he did tell us the name of a Pulperia (grocery store in Honduras) that served good breakfast.
The meal was fantastic! For about 34 Lempiras (local currency 18.5:1 with the dollar) we got plantains, beans, a piece of pork, cheese, bread, etc.. Really worth it. After this, we headed to the pier where we dropped off Rosinante. He was going to be there alone for about 4 or 5 days in a parking lot. So we decided to take off the Mass plates to avoid a potential break in. On the way to the boat, we noticed two cars with Louisiana plates dismantled inside. We don´t know if they were stolen cars or they drove there, went to Roatan, and their car was broken into. We left with a bit of aprehension towards leaving the car there but we had no choice. If something bad was going to happen to Rosinante, it would have happened in Belize City.
The boat ride was expensive at about 300 Lemps. It took about 2 hours. The nose of the ship rocked up and down and if you stand in the very front, the view is great and when the ship hits the waves in the right pattern you feel as if you are in a roller coaster! We saw the movie ¨Shall we dance¨ with JLo and Richard Gere. What a tear jerker. I think greg was eye balling when we saw the port of Coxen Hole, Roatan.
People in Roatan speak English, Spanish and Garifuna. Mostly English and Spanish though. We had arranged our SCUBA diving lessons to start at noon and it was about 12:45PM so we took a taxi. The ride took about 15 minutes and at arrival we decided to stay in the hotel next to the dive shop.
The Native Sons diving outlet was great. Our instructor, Melia and the other instructor in the shop, Ryan were awesome! We started with a few hours of videos today itself. Modules 1, 2 and 3. Tomorrow we´ll take a test on each module and finally hit the water. The sea looked so tempting that we went to the beach (talking 20 feet outside of our hotel room door) to swim for a bit after the video watching.
Of course, we went to dinner at this Thai/Vietnamese restaurant. Intuition would have told us not to eat something so foreign to this island here, but we foolishly went for it. We were mostly dissapointed with the meal, the price and of course, the flies! Everywhere! We even fed the flies with their own plate made of a mix of our food to see if they would bite into the trick and leave us alone. No such luck!
After this we went to the drinking outlet in the beach spot in front of the hotel (amazing place called Sundowners). This place has the best Margaritas in town just so you know.. We chilled there for a while and saw the sunset. After the beach fire was done, the bar closed. This town has set up a drinking bar hopping schedule on their own. Sundowners closes at 9:30PM!!!! Then, you go to the Purple Turtle, which closes at midnight, then blah blah.
We did some exploring in the town and I swear that I think we saw Odalis Garcia, a Cuban TV host for a show called Lente Loco in Univision. Not 100% sure but I think it was her. We are so exhausted at this point that we just go to our extremely hot room to sleep. No aircon for us tonight but accomodations and perfectly located and somewhat cheap (relatively). We miss you Todd. There are some talks of a blackout tonight since the local energy provider is going bankrupt, we´ll see what happens. Tomorrow is our first day of actual diving.. YEAH!!!
In Tela, we woke up really early. We knew that the drive to La Ceiba would take about 2 1/2 hours and we needed to make the 10:00AM ferry that would take us to the paradisical island of Roatan. Of course, the locals were once again wrong and we did the trip in about 1 1/2 hours. Once there, we bought tickets and had plenty of time to have breakfast so we ventured into La Ceiba, the town.
La Ceiba is a smallish town primarily used for tourists as a jumping off point to the islands of Roatan, Utila and others. We drove for a while and went to a restaurant whose guard told us they were not serving breakfast yet even though it was about 8:45AM. It was very interesting to see his gun stuffed the front of his pants like in the wild west movies! However, he did tell us the name of a Pulperia (grocery store in Honduras) that served good breakfast.
The meal was fantastic! For about 34 Lempiras (local currency 18.5:1 with the dollar) we got plantains, beans, a piece of pork, cheese, bread, etc.. Really worth it. After this, we headed to the pier where we dropped off Rosinante. He was going to be there alone for about 4 or 5 days in a parking lot. So we decided to take off the Mass plates to avoid a potential break in. On the way to the boat, we noticed two cars with Louisiana plates dismantled inside. We don´t know if they were stolen cars or they drove there, went to Roatan, and their car was broken into. We left with a bit of aprehension towards leaving the car there but we had no choice. If something bad was going to happen to Rosinante, it would have happened in Belize City.
The boat ride was expensive at about 300 Lemps. It took about 2 hours. The nose of the ship rocked up and down and if you stand in the very front, the view is great and when the ship hits the waves in the right pattern you feel as if you are in a roller coaster! We saw the movie ¨Shall we dance¨ with JLo and Richard Gere. What a tear jerker. I think greg was eye balling when we saw the port of Coxen Hole, Roatan.People in Roatan speak English, Spanish and Garifuna. Mostly English and Spanish though. We had arranged our SCUBA diving lessons to start at noon and it was about 12:45PM so we took a taxi. The ride took about 15 minutes and at arrival we decided to stay in the hotel next to the dive shop.
The Native Sons diving outlet was great. Our instructor, Melia and the other instructor in the shop, Ryan were awesome! We started with a few hours of videos today itself. Modules 1, 2 and 3. Tomorrow we´ll take a test on each module and finally hit the water. The sea looked so tempting that we went to the beach (talking 20 feet outside of our hotel room door) to swim for a bit after the video watching.Of course, we went to dinner at this Thai/Vietnamese restaurant. Intuition would have told us not to eat something so foreign to this island here, but we foolishly went for it. We were mostly dissapointed with the meal, the price and of course, the flies! Everywhere! We even fed the flies with their own plate made of a mix of our food to see if they would bite into the trick and leave us alone. No such luck!
After this we went to the drinking outlet in the beach spot in front of the hotel (amazing place called Sundowners). This place has the best Margaritas in town just so you know.. We chilled there for a while and saw the sunset. After the beach fire was done, the bar closed. This town has set up a drinking bar hopping schedule on their own. Sundowners closes at 9:30PM!!!! Then, you go to the Purple Turtle, which closes at midnight, then blah blah.We did some exploring in the town and I swear that I think we saw Odalis Garcia, a Cuban TV host for a show called Lente Loco in Univision. Not 100% sure but I think it was her. We are so exhausted at this point that we just go to our extremely hot room to sleep. No aircon for us tonight but accomodations and perfectly located and somewhat cheap (relatively). We miss you Todd. There are some talks of a blackout tonight since the local energy provider is going bankrupt, we´ll see what happens. Tomorrow is our first day of actual diving.. YEAH!!!
Guerillas in the Mist
Monday, July 31st
Our exit from El Salvador led us back up into the mountains where we were the day before, deep into the heart of the old Guerilla territory of the leftists, aka izquierdistas of the FMLN. Now, as an election nears, colors of the conservative party blanket telephone poles, are posted on street signs, and even are painted on cliffs all around the country.
Jose puked due to motion sickness on the curvy roads and was promptly directed to drive from there on out. The torrential downpours of the day before gave us a little surprise as we rounded a bend in the road near the Honduran border. The both lanes of the road were nearly covered from a massive landslide, Thankfully the Golfs 4 inch clearance was enough to get us past the spill.
The Salvadoran-Honduran crossing clocked in at 2:30 minutes, involved 8 separate transactions, and yielded approximately 12 pieces of paper. We even had to hire a person there to help with all the paperwork. However, we were soon rewarded by the stunning Honduran countryside. We had lunch in a picturesque town Santa Rosa de Copan where we observed some of the nuances of the new territory (read: they still serve tortillas and the women are hotter in honduras than we have seen thus far)
We proceeded onto San Pedro Sula and dropped off Todd in a sketchy hotel by the bus station. We were quite sad to see Todd go after all those weeks, but c*est la vie. Hopefully he does not get mugged or shot after we leave.
We flirted with danger (sundown) and made a last minute dash to the coastal town of Tela. We are now quite good at dodging pot holes. The town showed some caribbean flair and we introduced ourselves to the Plato Tipico de Honduras.
Our exit from El Salvador led us back up into the mountains where we were the day before, deep into the heart of the old Guerilla territory of the leftists, aka izquierdistas of the FMLN. Now, as an election nears, colors of the conservative party blanket telephone poles, are posted on street signs, and even are painted on cliffs all around the country.
Jose puked due to motion sickness on the curvy roads and was promptly directed to drive from there on out. The torrential downpours of the day before gave us a little surprise as we rounded a bend in the road near the Honduran border. The both lanes of the road were nearly covered from a massive landslide, Thankfully the Golfs 4 inch clearance was enough to get us past the spill.
The Salvadoran-Honduran crossing clocked in at 2:30 minutes, involved 8 separate transactions, and yielded approximately 12 pieces of paper. We even had to hire a person there to help with all the paperwork. However, we were soon rewarded by the stunning Honduran countryside. We had lunch in a picturesque town Santa Rosa de Copan where we observed some of the nuances of the new territory (read: they still serve tortillas and the women are hotter in honduras than we have seen thus far)
We proceeded onto San Pedro Sula and dropped off Todd in a sketchy hotel by the bus station. We were quite sad to see Todd go after all those weeks, but c*est la vie. Hopefully he does not get mugged or shot after we leave.We flirted with danger (sundown) and made a last minute dash to the coastal town of Tela. We are now quite good at dodging pot holes. The town showed some caribbean flair and we introduced ourselves to the Plato Tipico de Honduras.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Brown Outs, Mosquitos, Scuba
Thursday August 3rd, 2006
Computer access has been limited but we are alive and well on the island of Roaton in Honduras. We are in the midst of scuba certification and are suffering from the power outages at night (last night, 3-6am) which are preventing us from sleeping much. Once the fan turns off, we roast, go outside and brave the bugs.
In other news, it seems that Greg and I seem to be the "best in bed" aka, most wanted sleeping partners. Todd is now safe in the US - we will update more with details in a couple days when we have improved internet connection.
Alexey
Computer access has been limited but we are alive and well on the island of Roaton in Honduras. We are in the midst of scuba certification and are suffering from the power outages at night (last night, 3-6am) which are preventing us from sleeping much. Once the fan turns off, we roast, go outside and brave the bugs.
In other news, it seems that Greg and I seem to be the "best in bed" aka, most wanted sleeping partners. Todd is now safe in the US - we will update more with details in a couple days when we have improved internet connection.
Alexey
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Two plus two is three..
Saturday, July 29th
Ok, so San Salvador is a city of chaos. At least that´s the impression that you get after visiting the city center. We left the orderliness of our posh neighborhood and drove into the busy streets of this Central American capital. The law here is made by the toughest and only they survive.
After avoiding being hit by a bus, waiting behind a green light just because some driver thought he could make it through his yellow light, and negotiating people on the streets we made it to a parking place. The attendant was kind enough to tell us where to go from there. We visited a the cathedral were mass was being given. Then, we walked around to another church with a very particular shape. The environment was getting sketchier by the minute and yes, a bit dangerous. I am not sure if the guys noticed but there were a couple of people going around us, checking out out at all times. In any case, we walked back towards the center and saw more of the city.
Todd and Greg purchased some shirts at the market and then we were off.. out of the center. The next stop was suggested by Emily as well and it was the Museum of Salvadorean Art (MARTE). This was very very nice! Also, we got a student discount and entrance was only $0.50 per person. Art there consisted of local painter´s works. Very nice! Some of it touching, some of it alarming but all in all, very colourful. The restaurant there seems to be very high end so we don´t eat there.
At this time our stomachs are asking for a meal. However, the guys want to take me out for my birthday (next Monday) to a nice place. So we drive down to the beach at La Libertad. Emily, whom we have not met yet in person, highly suggested that we go to a place called Sunzal. Once on the road, we did not know if this was the name of the place or the name of the beach or what it was.. However, we asked around and made it to Cafe Sunzal.
What a wonderful beach.. flat long stretches of waves being ridden by skilled surfers. The sand was black and inviting. Now on to Lunch/Dinner. We all ordered the combo which consisted of a seafood coctail, main entree, dessert and beverage. This place has to be the nicest and most expensive place we have eaten at so far. However, the setting and the food were amazing!! Clams, fish, squid.. you name it, it was in our table. The flan tasted like heaven. The guys paid for it.. (Thank you guys!) but stopped short of singing happy birthday in Spanish. Luckily, during the whole meal we were serenated by the speakers to the sounds or Air Supply, Brian Adams, Phil Collins, Lionel Ritchey and other heavy hitters of this caliber.
Now it was time to head back as apparently and according to the Lonely Planet, this area gets hairy at night. So Alexey drives back to San Salvador and we are there in 45 minutes.
At this point we are thinking that we are going to go out to a club or something. At the very least we were planing to have a few beers at the bar next door. However, today was tiring and I fall asleep. For some reason the last thing I remember from last night was Alexey glued to the TV watching Arnold in Terminator I. Was I dreaming?
Ok, so San Salvador is a city of chaos. At least that´s the impression that you get after visiting the city center. We left the orderliness of our posh neighborhood and drove into the busy streets of this Central American capital. The law here is made by the toughest and only they survive.
After avoiding being hit by a bus, waiting behind a green light just because some driver thought he could make it through his yellow light, and negotiating people on the streets we made it to a parking place. The attendant was kind enough to tell us where to go from there. We visited a the cathedral were mass was being given. Then, we walked around to another church with a very particular shape. The environment was getting sketchier by the minute and yes, a bit dangerous. I am not sure if the guys noticed but there were a couple of people going around us, checking out out at all times. In any case, we walked back towards the center and saw more of the city.
Todd and Greg purchased some shirts at the market and then we were off.. out of the center. The next stop was suggested by Emily as well and it was the Museum of Salvadorean Art (MARTE). This was very very nice! Also, we got a student discount and entrance was only $0.50 per person. Art there consisted of local painter´s works. Very nice! Some of it touching, some of it alarming but all in all, very colourful. The restaurant there seems to be very high end so we don´t eat there.
At this time our stomachs are asking for a meal. However, the guys want to take me out for my birthday (next Monday) to a nice place. So we drive down to the beach at La Libertad. Emily, whom we have not met yet in person, highly suggested that we go to a place called Sunzal. Once on the road, we did not know if this was the name of the place or the name of the beach or what it was.. However, we asked around and made it to Cafe Sunzal.
What a wonderful beach.. flat long stretches of waves being ridden by skilled surfers. The sand was black and inviting. Now on to Lunch/Dinner. We all ordered the combo which consisted of a seafood coctail, main entree, dessert and beverage. This place has to be the nicest and most expensive place we have eaten at so far. However, the setting and the food were amazing!! Clams, fish, squid.. you name it, it was in our table. The flan tasted like heaven. The guys paid for it.. (Thank you guys!) but stopped short of singing happy birthday in Spanish. Luckily, during the whole meal we were serenated by the speakers to the sounds or Air Supply, Brian Adams, Phil Collins, Lionel Ritchey and other heavy hitters of this caliber.
Now it was time to head back as apparently and according to the Lonely Planet, this area gets hairy at night. So Alexey drives back to San Salvador and we are there in 45 minutes.
At this point we are thinking that we are going to go out to a club or something. At the very least we were planing to have a few beers at the bar next door. However, today was tiring and I fall asleep. For some reason the last thing I remember from last night was Alexey glued to the TV watching Arnold in Terminator I. Was I dreaming?
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