pocoyo!

oh my god sooo cute. i may start dancing this way from now on.

hemos vuelto

we’re back. after getting up at 5am, fighting through the san jose airport, unsuccessfully trying to buy some duty-free parfumee stuff (reasons given by three different counters: 1. it’s a liquid 2. it’s too late 3. it’s a liquid that is not liquor, which would be ok because it’s a different liquid), swapping window seats with canadians, spending a couple of hours at the lax tomorrowland-themed “encounter” restaurant, and then finally being allowed to fly up the coast, we arrived home last night. mika is ok, and after giving us the silent treatment for a night, is back to her yappy self this morning.

lots of pictures to sort through, which will be flickred eventually, and perhaps retroactive blog postings, just to make you scroll back and forth and not know when i’m actually done with my trip. whee!

books read while gone:

• orhan pamuk - my name is red
  
• salman rushdie - haroun and the sea of stories (exchanged at a book swap at lapa rios)
  
• michael chabon - the amazing adventures of kavalier and klay (liberated from book swap at la costa de pepito)
  
• johnathan lethem - men and cartoons (bought from echo books)

the next vacation we take that’s over two weeks long i resolve to just bring my copy of gravity’s rainbow and finish it instead of continually running out of things to read.

day 18-19: bumpy

and that’s it! our whole trip! all i can remember, anyway.

heeding everyone’s dire descriptions of playa tamarindo being “just like san diego”, we decided to stay in nearby playa negra, which was supposed to be a little more unspoiled yet have a fantastic beach. because at the tail end of the trip, all you really want to do is lay on the beach and do absolutely nothing, right? the hotel playa negra was pretty cute with their thatched roof bungalows, but the 15km drive took a good 45 minutes or more, on a series of roads hmc unaffectionately calls “the sickmaker”. as it turns out, there was a newly graded road which was a lot smoother, only no one told us about it until we checked out. thanks!

as for tamarindo, while it’s touristy and contrary to the costa rica experience, it’s certainly not san diego. in san diego, there’s actually a telephone at the airport. this was more like some small tourist beach town in mexico. i will say that some of the restaurants here are pretty great, especially pachanga.

finally, if you need a place to stay before flying out of the country, definitely hit the hotel 1915 in alajuela. just beautiful and the people are lovely. although they speak almost no english. but who needs to?

pura vida!

day 17: baulamania!

to recap: what did hmc want to see most of all in costa rica? turtles. where do you go see turtles? tortuguero. when are the green sea turtles in tortuguero? not in the winter.

thus, we went back to the pacific side (that, and the fact that it’s actually warm and sunny over here, like vacations are supposed to be) to make a visit to playa grande and the parque nacional marino las baulas de guanacaste.

you have to make a reservation to see the turtles in advance, providing your passport number to make sure you’re real and not some sort of fictional anti-turtle terrorist. then depending on what time high tide is on the day of your appointment, you show up and wait and hope and pray for a leatherback turtle to come up and lay some eggs. in the meantime, you can watch a very cheery video detailing the myriad of ways that humans have cleverly tried to kill off as many leatherback turtles as possible through industrial fishing. since you can’t see the video, i’ll sum it up for you: if you’ve ever eaten fish, like fish, or even thought about fish, YOU’VE JUST KILLED A TURTLE! it’s pretty sad and horrifying: whereas something like 700 turtles would come and nest here 20 years ago, there were only 60 or so last year.

thus, the odds didn’t look good, especially since one had already come up last night. since the high tides were early in the morning today, we arrived around midnight to begin the possible five hour wait, as they nest anywhere between two hours before and after high tide.

however, we lucked out as we got the call within half an hour that a turtle had come up and started laying eggs! they shuffled us off towards the beach, single file and frequently counting us off like schoolchildren. the beach while open to the public during the day is closed at night and totally darkened, with no light from any man-made structures to ensure that the turtles are not alarmed by neon lights, or say, candy-ravers with glowsticks. during nesting season, the entire beach is staffed with spotters who watch for turtles coming out of the ocean, and they relay the spottings to the rangers and biologists who quickly descend upon the turtle to measure it and watch to see how many eggs are laid.

we finally reach the turtle after walking along the beach at night, and are allowed to circle around the back of the turtle, an arm’s length away. i could only think of two things: 1. this thing is HUGE! 1 1/2 meters long! 2. man, these leatherback turtles really look like gamera. i’m not kidding.

before we knew it, the turtle was already burying her eggs and we were being led back off the beach. apparently 60 days later, those little turtlets will pop out and try and make it to the beach, where they have a ONE IN ONE THOUSAND CHANCE of making it to adulthood.

but how are your fishsticks?

day 14: sloth center

perhaps inspired by our sloth crossing yesterday (or the fact that it’s fucking raining again so beach activities are just flat out) we decided to attempt a journey to the sloth rescue center.

this entails: sharing a cab with the french-canadians into puerto viejo, then hopping onto the bus to puerto limon, getting stopped and searched by the police, and then nervously trying to figure out where the hell the place actually is, whether the bus driver understood where we were going and was going to stop the bus there, and how to actually say “is the stop for the sloth center coming up soon?”

as it turns out, perhaps the avarios del caribe is a popular destination, as several locals warned us that it was coming up anyway and made sure we got off at the right place, about 10km north of cahuita. what do you find at a sloth center?

well, duh. sloths.

it seems that about 15 years ago some local girls brought an orphaned sloth to a american woman living here. she tried to find information on how to raise sloths, and none was to be found. instead she ended up becoming the authority on sloths, and rescuing and adopting more sloths, and now there’s an entire center where they adopt and raise orphaned or injured two and three toed sloths. we got to see several of them, including two baby two toed sloths who were hanging out in a cardboard box. crazy cute.

it’s a cool place and very informative, although pretty steep for costa rica ($25!). but you get a nice boat tour through the canals and lagoons. plus, it’s for the sloths!

day 13: sloth crossing

perhaps the most exciting thing we did all day was to watch a three toed sloth cross the path between the cabinas and then slowly make its way up and down several trees, its limbs and joints bending awkwardly and seemingly the wrong way while crawling on the ground, but perfectly suited for tree scaling and precarious branch-hanging.

day 11: wellington east

everyone talked about how fun and fantastic the carribean coast was, how laid back the carrib vibe, how wonderful the beaches were, how hot and humid the weather would be, and how delightful the swimming would be. maybe someone could have also mentioned that this time of the year is THE RAINY SEASON IN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY? oh, sure, i suppose i could have perhaps figured it out with careful examinations of graphs and inferred it from descriptions of seasonal surfing conditions, etc. but you’d think that one of our two native travel agents would have mentioned something? it’s like fucking NEW ZEALAND OUT HERE ALREADY.

instead of being nice, hot, and sunny like the rest of the country is now, it’s cool, damp, and rains intermittently. at least the little place where we’re staying has a spa so hmc can be entertained, returning smelling of cacao after her chocolate body wrap.

but honestly, i feel like we’ve left sydney for wellington all over again.

day 10: hoofing it

we flew out in the morning not really having firm plans as to where we were landing (see difficulties sin el teléphono, etc.). it turns out that unbeknownst to anyone except the locals, this is the first day that the drake bay airport is closing for repairs, meaning that all flights are now going through palmar sur. this results in a lovely dawn boat ride up the rio grande de térraba through the mangroves.

back in san jose (because everything goes through san jose) not without a little bit of todo we make arrangements to stay in puerto viejo de talamanca on the carribean coast and take a public bus for the four hour journey. the long ride results in assigned seating and everything is relatively comfortable. the only unfortunate part is the end when we get to puerto viejo where we realize that our cabins are actually in playa cochles over 2km away, resulting in an unpleasant hike in the light rain. carrying all of our bags. in the dark. did i mention the rain?

if it’s any consolation, it doesn’t really start pouring until we’re safely checked in.

day 9: delfin no more

delfin amor is set in the beautiful bahia drake, over on the other side of the osa peninsula. you’d think we might be fortunate to stay there as they are soon closing their lodge in a few months and converting it to a marine research center, dedicating themselves to their shale and dolphin tours, research, and non-profit activities.

the reality is that it seems like they’ve already given up. the cabinas are a little run down, the pillows and bedding have distinct signs of mildew, the towels are worn and holey, and everything is in a little bit of disrepair. and let’s not even talk about the not-as-advertised “hot” showers.

as we might have expected from a facility called “the divine dolphin” everything is decorated with a dolphin motif: the bedding, the bathroom accessories, the shower curtains, the mirrors, the tissue holders, and of course there are new agey dolphin murals everywhere. granted, it is a great place to see dolphins, as we saw a group of them escroting us out to ano island when we went snorkling yesterday. however the permeating sugary frosting of dolphin love may have led up to skip the recommended dolphin/whale watching tour and instead opt for lazing about on a deserted dolphin-free beach.

despite the actual state of the cabins, delfin amor does have two things going for it: 1. the food is excellent, outstanding, really. 2. maybe more than anywhere else we’ve stayed, you really get the feeling that you’re remote and in the middle of the rainforest. off the deck are huge trees and ferns with birds coming and going and the fragrant smell of flowers as the hummingbirds stop by.

what’s really funny is how common the sight of lapas (scarlet macaws) is around here on the osa: now they’re hardly worth mentioning despite how bright and fantastic they look. even here one of them follows the housekeeper around all day, sitting on her shoulder as she goes around to clean the cabinas.

day 8: stone sphere

after snorkling, we go visit the native burial grounds on cano island. it’s famous for the perfectly round stone spheres that have been mysteriously created by the natives just using hammers and chisels, and brought here from a quarry miles away. two of them remain at the original site, one of which has never been moved, and at 18” in diameter, still weighs around 700lbs.

on the way back, our guide roy shows us some red ginger plants, which if boiled is useful as a medicinal tea to aid digestion, and if not is useful as certifiably organic toilet paper.

day 8: saved

not that one has to plan their entire trip in advance, especially when travelling for more than a week, but can i remind you that it’s a little difficult (if not impossible) to make plans on the fly when nowhere you stay has a telephone, much less a fax machine or internet access?

on the other hand, in the rainforest you get the strangest solutions to your technology problems. it turns out if we had brought our cellphones, we would have gotten a signal out here, making our planning much easier. and at the delfin amor eco lodge, the nutty former professional ballroom dancer now real estate agent/frequent osa peninsula vacationer had a sony t-1 digicam: i asked to borrow her battery charger, and while my battery didn’t actually fit in correctly, i was able to jury rig something using a hair tie. now my battery is recharged!

speaking of jury rigging, i do like hmc’s laundry washing trick: if the sink has no stopper, just lay a plastic bag over the hole and do your washing on top. it’s not perfect, but much better than letting your detergent repeatedly go down the drain.

day 7: collectivo taxi blues

to save some money and “to throw off the shackles of privilege and experience the way of the common man,” we took the collectivo taxi from the tent lodge back to puerto jiminez instead of hiring a driver. the collectivo is pretty much the only way to get back and forth betwen pj and carate, since there is no formal bus service or other public transport.

but when it pulled up at 8:30am, that’s what it was: a short blue school bus. having experienced the horrors of what lonely planet bollocks calls one of the worst ten roads in costa rica (and that’s saying A LOT) on the way in riding in a range rover discovery, i didn’t know if i believed if it was possible to make it back in this thing. where’s the four wheel drive? for crossing the rivers? the ones that we drove through on the way here? and remember the car-swallowing potholes?

and yet we made it fine as they do twice a day every day, stopping to pick up locals, packages, messages, and maybe just to chat for a bit. somewhere in the middle the driver picked up a friend of his and let him drive the rest of the way—why not?

day 6: corcovado national park

we hiked all day through the southwest corner of the park, which is to say not very much of the park at all. maybe if this goddamn rainforest wasn’t so big and biodiverse and there weren’t so many TREES everywhere it would be easier. man, if they just fucking paved this thing we could make it across it in no time. instead, we saw:

• (sleeping) bats
  
• silky anteater
  
• sleeping raccoon (see? i told you we were out too early.)
  
• white faced monkey
  
• gulfo dulce anole
  
• coconut filled crabs. actually, a coconut filled with crabs. which were, i guess, filled with coconut. so i really mean: coconut filled crab filled coconut.
  
• baby boa constrictor.
  
• and a bunch of stuff we already saw. you do realize i’m just naming the new stuff, right? otherwise we’d be here FOREVER.

i have to admit that i was amused by the fact that during our night hike, as we tromped through the jungle in search of dangerous poisonous snakes, while we carefully trod step by step wearing hiking boot and long pants, our guide was wearing shorts and crocs.

day 5: corcovado tent lodge

i feel like the corcovado tent lodge may be the first honest lonely planet bollocks place where i’ve ever stayed. most of the time we end up in nicer hotels or higher end places that are certainly listed and covered, but not really their true target market. however, i think this finally hits the mark: simple little tent houses right on the beach each with two twin beds, shared bathrooms and cold water showers, no electricity except in the common lodge and dining areas until 9pm, and communal family style meals where you share your experiences and stories with your fellow world travelers. it’s a long way from the four seasons lana’i.

which is not to say that it’s not a lot of fun, as we got to meet muki and lina from hoboken, as well as marguerite, her husband the doctor and their surfing/artist son bradley from new york/amsterdam. hmc’s one complaint: it was actually too close to the beach. while she loves the sound of the ocean, we were so close that it sounded like the waves were crashing down right on top of us.

seen:

• bullfrog
• baby iguana
• spiders
• crabs
• marine toad
• scorpion vs. grasshopper: duel to the death!

piropos

from the costa rica phrasebook: piropos, which are little romantic poems, or “friendly compliments.”

quisiera ser tus lágrimas
para nacer en tus ojos,
recorrer tu cara y morir
en tu boca.

i would like to be a tear
to be born in your eyes,
to run down your face and
die in your mouth.

me gustaría ser el sol
para iluminar tu habitación
y todos los dias mandarte
un rayito hasta tu corazón.

i would like to be the sun
to light up your room and
send a ray of sunlight
to your heart everyday.

los que se masturbatan
pensando en vos se
mueren de sobredosis.

those who masturbate
thinking of you,
will die of an overdose.

day 4: the early birds

astonishingly (for us) we decided to take the 6am early bird tour, hoping to see some of the wildlife that we’re hearing constantly. just by being up at dawn you see more animals out and about— squirrel monkeys were jumping around the trees and the roof of our cabin as we awoke. it turned out that our wake up call was 20 minutes too late, so we had to rush up to the lodge, but on the paths at that early hour there were coatis scurrying about, as well as toucans sitting in the trees. there were lots of birds that we spotted and as a bonus we met a three toed sloth on the way back!

in the afternoon, standing in the shallow water just off the deserted white sand beach (unknown for the area), i watched the pelican and the many smaller birds as they fished. the pelican would fly up, glide around briefly, and then plunge down into the water, digging around with its beak, coming up with a fish that he quickly gulped down. sometimes the smaller birds would hand on his back or even his head as he was digging around, which made for a funny sight. as i watched this, fishes splashed and jumped around me. perhaps they were showing off, knowing they were safe from the birds for the moment?

it’s hard to describe how wonderful it is to be able to walk out of your room and see a horde of monkeys playing in the trees, jumping around, little ones awkwardly hanging upside down by their tails. and then the toucans fly in and perch, while the hummingbirds flit around the nearby bushes.

seen:

• coati
  
• squirrel monkey
  
• 3-toed sloth
  
• white ibis
  
• toucan
  
• kingfishers
  
• black vulture
  
• king vulture
  
• turkey vulture
  
• cattle egret
  
• parrot

day 3: those damned canadians

D3
in the morning the howler monkeys sound less like the screetching in 2001: a space odyssey and more like the gutteral moans of imagined yetis.

we went on a kayak trip through the mangroves which was lovely, desite the best efforts of canadians to ruin it. from the get go: “do you have asymmetrical paddles? how about feathered paddles? you do have feathered paddles? ah, but are they asymmetrical? i prefer an asymmetrical feathered paddle, myself. the best kind are the ones that you can break apart at the middle and adjust yourself…” mind you, this is BEFORE WE HAD EVEN LEFT THE TOUR OFFICE. we tried to ignore the canadian former kayak tour guide and listen instead to laura, our costa rican present kayak tour guide as she described the ecosystem of the different types of mangroves while we paddled through the calm streams. the water is amazingly warm: mild just like bath water.

seen:

• scarlet macaw
  
• cane toad
  
• baby iguana
  
• great egret
  
• blue heron
  
• frigate bird

day 3: oddly prepared

it’s funny how well prepared i am in some ways but not in others.

somehow although my camelback bite valve has a small hole, i actually have a spare with me.

what i don’t seem to have at all is the charger to my camera. in the rush, i grabbed the wrong one: not the sony, but the canon. damn you similarly form-factored chargers!

what else: travel clock? who needs it? i’ll just use the alarm on my g-shock. which would have worked great had i made sure to check the battery. as it is, i only noticed on the plane that when i pushed the backlight button, everything went dim, which wasn’t a good sign. and then today it went dead for good. ah well, we are now dependent on our ipod for time.

once again, god bless apple.

day 2: lapa rios

flying into puerto jiminez in the little twelve passenger cessna, we look down over the two gravel strips cut into the forest and the small metal bus stop that passes for a terminal. as we land, you notice that there’s a graveyard right next to the airport. just in case.

lapa rios is a beautiful ecolodge on their own private reserve in the osa peninsula. this may be where i want to go if i only have months left to lie. sixteen little cabinas up on the mountain overlooking the beach, right in the middle of the rainforest. there are critters and creatures all around.

the insects at dusk sound like a million tiny car alarms.

day 1: quick dry fashionista

i realize as we get off the plane that i’m a ridiculous rei commercial: rei quick-dry pants, rei quick-dry shirt, rei one jacket. i know i decided to eschew fashion in favor of functionality on this trip, but this is ridiculous. oh, and did i mention my rei travel duffel that i borrowed from wanda? also, how do you avoid matching with the wife if you both have the same gear? we could potentially end up both wearing the same jackets and waterproof hats. it’s hard enough to find good gear: do we have to find two brands of each thing so we don’t look dorky in that way as well?

hahaha i realize later that when i got money out at the airport, as i selected the second highest denomination of 8000c, it only turned to be $16. well, that’s not useful. fortunately the taxi driver taking us back from the restaurant that evening understood when i said, “…y necesito un cajero automatico.”

gosta rica: voy a salir pronto

that’s it! we’re outta here. off to the pura vida!

i don’t expect to be online at all during my trip, unless they’ve installed a mandatory internet cafe in the rainforest that’s staffed by tapirs and howler monkeys and toucans. you want to go to that one, not the one run by sloths and turtles. do i need to explain that? really?

during lunch yesterday with some guys at work, my sales rep said it was good that i was actually going for so long, as he’s always still thinking about work so it takes him a couple of days to actually check out and enjoy the vacation. yet in the back of my head i’m thinking, “three days to check out? are you KIDDING? who says i ever CHECKED BACK IN from the xmas/ny break? i’ve been checked out since mid-decenber!”

here is me officially checking out.

teeseless

i’m not sure why, but i’m strangely saddened by this:

it could have been the photo shoot in vogue detailing the crazy wedding. maybe it’s just the ending of your classic playmate/devil worshipper fairy tale. perhaps we should all buy some of lisa prichard’s dita tiles to make everyone feel better.

albums 2k6

getting stuff off my plate before we go— favorite albums of last year:

1. cat power - the greatest
   
2. jenny lewis with the watson twins - rabbit furcoat
   
3. lily allen - alright, now
   
4. lady sovereign - public warning
   
5. cut chemist - the audience’s listening
   
6. mike relm - radio fryer
   
7. gnarls barkely - st. elsewhere
   
8. neko case - fox confessor brings the flood
   
9. devics - push the heart
   
10. laura veirs - push the meteor

movies will have to come later. still haven’t seen babel, the queen, or letters from iwo jima.

it's not me. honest.

so it looks like not only am i getting inundated with spam, some spammer has now taken to faking my domain name as a return address while SENDING THEIR SPAM. thus i’m getting bounces from around the world from mail daemons complaining about spam or failed attempts to send penny stock pitches from addresses like blsdfh[(at)]sassyass.net.

i don’t know if there’s anything i can do about this other than wait for the forces that be to mistakenly start blocking all mail from my domain name, if not the whole domain name itself.

soon we will be reduced to guerrilla pirate blogging via trained pigeons or something.

in the meantime, anyone wanna buy a monkey?

like there's a chance in hell i'm not going to take this quiz

You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 75% The Flash 70% Robin 63% Catwoman 60% Superman 60% Hulk 60% Green Lantern 55% Wonder Woman 51% Supergirl 46% Batman 40% Iron Man 35%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz


on the other hand…
You are Mystique

Mystique 70% Riddler 68% Magneto 66% The Joker 64% Dr. Doom 62% Mr. Freeze 61% Poison Ivy 61% Lex Luthor 60% Catwoman 60% Apocalypse 55% Green Goblin 54% Dark Phoenix 54% Juggernaut 50% Venom 50% Kingpin 42% Two-Face 34%

Sometimes motherly, sometimes a beautiful companion, but most of the time a deceiving vixen.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

mayfly 2006

my mayfly project entry for 2006, which is to sum up the last year in 24 words or less, although somehow i always end up doing a haiku:

oracle, yahoo
flew to asia, hawai’i
still not in L.A.

colbert shmolbert

how can you not love this: how do you get around the muslim taboo of having women speak about sex on tv? just have a bisexual man in drag do it instead! from the nytimes:

breaky new year!

i go downstairs prepared to drive to work for the first time in two weeks, to find that my car’s been broken into again. i suppose “broken into” is not technically correct, since i no longer lock it in order to prevent people from slashing the convertible top or smashing the window. regardless, it’s been burgled. gone is nothing much, as i don’t keep anything really of value inside because of this, but the choice of things they did take is always curious: they didn’t take my nice rei wool hat that i had lost until now, but they took the bright red calvin klein windbreaker i keep in there just for emergencies and had been passed up on two previous break-ins. cell phone charger gone, as is the decoy cell phone charger as well as the new ipod charger (do crackheads have ipods?). they may have taken my tire pressure gauge as well, which i’m sure will do them a world of good.

i keep thinking, this is what i want, right? i want them to not slash my top when breaking into my car. because i can replace all that crap, but it’s a pain to repair or fix my top. again. but then i think now the crackhead knows, “look, it’s the miata that’s never locked. let’s go steal some more crappy stuff!” i think what i really want is for them to STOP STEALING STUFF FROM MY CAR.

speaking of which, my car seems to have decided today that it also needs a new master clutch cylinder. so much for pretending to work. at work, that is.