San Jose to Tortuguerro

Sunday morning we got up early (6am), ate a hearty breakfast of egg omelette, fresh fruit, pastries and Costa Rican coffee (YUM), settled our bill and loaded up the car for our trip to the boat launch that would get us to Tortuguerro.

Tortuguerro is a remote nature preserve in the north part of the Carribean side of the country. The only way to get there is by boat or by plane.

On the way to catch our boat, we got lost. Very very lost. There comes a point where you can make a left onto pavement or continue straight on gravel. We went straight. Bad idea. After an hour of rattling our kidneys near to death over steadily deteriorating gravel roads, we finally figured out from the locals that we were in the middle of a gargantuan banana plantation.

Them there are baby banana plants:


Our banana plantation "adventure" might not have been an all bad thing if we didn't have a boat to catch. We had to go all the way back to our missed turn, make the *correct* choice, and then go the rest of the way. Yeesh.

It did make for interesting picture taking though. As you drive through a banana plantation, you see all these pole-arch thingies snaking through the fields of banana trees.


And you realize, after a while, that this is how they get bananas from point A to point B. Wow.


They even have contraptions to get the bananas across the road. (See above and below.)


Here's a cute cow we saw on the road...interesting that most of their livestock is...well...less rotund than ours here in the states. Hmm.


Tell me these aren't a coupla the cutest kids you've ever seen! They were playing by the side of the road at the exact point where we finally figured out that the road was going to continue to deteriorate...and we needed to turn around.

I don't think they held our foolishness against us! :-)

More Costa Rican adventures to come.......................

First Days in San Jose

After flying into San Jose on the afternoon of Thursday November 19th, we set out for the Hotel Aranjuez near downtown San Jose. For $13 USD, we caught a cab for the 25 minute ride from the airport, and were gratified to find we'd done well with our internet research. The hotel is a sprawling, brightly painted, clean, comfortable and remarkably affordable oasis...in a really rotten part of town. The place costs $25/night USD for a small room with a double bed and a shared bathroom...and a phenomenal breakfast spread that really must be experienced to be believed.

The first lesson we learned in Costa Rica is that you don't go there for the city life. The cities we experienced are dirty, smelly and not tremendously safe. If you make good choices, you're fine, but it's very easy to make choices that are not so good (more on that later).

After spending an uneventful first night at Hotel Aranjuez, we got up the next morning and went on a tour of the Cafe Britt coffee plantation, which was easily one of the best things we did. As a matter of fact, I'm drinking Cafe Britt Dark Roast coffee as I write this!

For $34USD per person, Cafe Britt sends a driver to come pick you up in a van full of other touristas, drives you through the lovely countryside between San Jose and Heredia; then they take you on a very educational (not to mention hilarious) tour of their coffee plantation and their factory; then they feed you a fantastic gourmet meal.

These are ripe coffee cherries from the first harvest of the season at Cafe Britt:


Saturday morning, we set off for the Jade Museum in San Jose. On our way walking through the city, a "helpful cabbie" stopped and told us to put our cameras away. After quite some work in our broken Spanish (he did not speak any English), we understood him to say that we were in danger of having our cameras stolen. After quite a lot more work, we learned that the museum we were interested in was closed, but that he would be happy to take us to the zoo, a butterfly preserve, and the bank instead. When I asked him how much it would cost to have him do all this, he said "don't worry about it". (Danger, Will Robinson....)

So, off we go with him to the bank. After a bit of a struggle in broken Spanish, I manage to convert some USD to Colones (Costa Rican money), and then we looked at a map to see if we wanted to go all the way to the zoo. Oddly enough, when you look at maps of San Jose, it is almost always deceiving how close things are. The maps somehow make things appear a lot farther away than they actually are.

Helpful taxi driver says it will be less than a 15 minute drive. So, we start driving, and after a little bit more conversation, we decide that we'd rather go to the butterfly sanctuary, which appears to be near-ish to the zoo. So, once we communicate this to him, he pulls over, stops the car with a grumpy grimace, points, and lo and behold, there's the sign for the place he was describing. It seemed odd that we happened upon the very place we wanted to go right as we made the decision.

Anyways, he said he wanted 18000 colones for his services...which sounded like a hell of a lot to me...which is where the meter should have come in...but I then noticed that it was not even attached to anything so that he could have turned it on. ( ! ) The wires for the meter were hanging down on the floor of the car. So now I'm in a bit of a pickle. 18000 colones converts over to about $32USD, but I had only changed over $20, or about 10000 colones. We ended up settling the matter for all the colones I had, but I still felt like I'd been taken, based on our previous experiences with "official" cab services in the city. So...second lesson learned...make the cabbie turns on his meter, or walk away.

Here are a couple of the butterflies we saw:



While we were walking around, enjoying the butterflies and gardens, it became clear that the zoo was right behind the butterfly farm. Ah, the strange, small world of San Jose. :-)

Being a little gun-shy now, we consulted our map and decided to hoof it back to our hotel. It was only about a 20 minute walk, and while it was not at all a good part of town, we at least felt a bit more in control of our own destiny.

More adventures to come...

Back from Costa Rica!

Costa Rica is an incredible place. If you ever get the chance, you should go. Rather..............it would be worth making the chance to go.


We're back, with stories to tell. My brother in law is going to have a great promo video out of this. Here he is:


Stay tuned for more pics. There are a LOT of good ones.

Pura Vida!

Costa Rica

Things are probably going to be quiet around here for a couple of weeks. I have a pretty cool opportunity to go and shoot a promotional video for a wilderness adventure guide in Costa Rica starting tomorrow. You may know of that nation as the only stable "banana republic". Apparently there are internet cafes everywhere, but I don't know if I will be able to do anything about posting pictures. We will see how things play out.

This is a pretty big opportunity for our business, so it will be interesting to see what we come up with. Here's another site with info about Costa Rica if you're interested.

Fall in Ann Arbor Part Three + Sad News

Few more Ann Arbor Fall pictures -


Squirrel!


This one is dark, but look carefully, I think you'll find it interesting...both theatres in view at Liberty and State, and a Stop sign too. Such a deal.


It's been a weird day. My grandma West (that's my stepdad's mom) passed away yesterday morning. It was a long, slow, unpleasant way to die, I'm sad to report. The only comfort I feel I can take in it is that the doctors were able to keep her comfortable for the three weeks (three weeks!!) that she was without food and water at the very end. I'm glad she's finally free of the tough times that were her last couple years of life - she did nothing to deserve the troubles she suffered through.

Strange, it seems that it doesn't really matter how long you know it's coming...doesn't seem to change the way it feels when it finally arrives. I'm kinda in a fog...which I hope to come out of sooner rather than later, but I know better than to put a timer on these things.

Her name was Grace. She was a good and kind grandmother to me. If you have a moment to spend, send some thoughts & prayers out to our family.

Thanks for listening.

Fall in Ann Arbor Part Two

Here are some more views around Ann Arbor.

The great Dawn Treader book shop:


The finest "unsanitary sheik" drinking establishment in Michigan:


Part of the skyline at sunset. Admittedly not the most published view in the history of the city, but I think it's interesting.

Note the Stadium and Crisler arena at the horizon:


Speaking of the Stadium, time for Michigan to start acting like a football team and beat Indiana.

Go Blue!

Fall in Ann Arbor Part One

I was in Ann Arbor a couple of days ago. Saw some really lovely stuff. I'd forgotten how pretty Ann Arbor in the fall can be.

Here's an angel keeping watch over the entrance to the cemetery on Observatory:


More cemetery:


Old headstones are so interesting:


Sunset over the city:


And, just for fun, a parting thought from the Daily Dig:

Afraid of the Light?
-- Plato

One can easily understand a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when grown men and women are afraid of the light.

Cloud Nine 2005 Recovery

This past weekend, we had a gig at Michindoh Camp, near Hillsdale MI (which is also near OH and IN, thus...MICH - IND - OH...get it? *rolls eyes*). For all that the name is a little corny, the camp itself is absolutely lovely, and a first rate venue for a retreat of any description.

Here's a view of the lake from the back of the main building. Check it out:


My friend Donnell had invited us to do the "video recap" for the Cloud Nine retreat. Cloud Nine is an annual retreat that has served Vineyard's youth groups of the Great Lakes region for the past nine years. The video recap is something that the leaders used to stay up all night on the second night of the retreat piecing together...and then present it in finished form on Sunday morning to 500 highly sugared, caffeinated and sleep deprived teens. Yikes.

Needless to say, the leaders "aren't getting any younger", so they needed an alternative to staying up all night. This is where we came in. And, the reason for the title of the post: Cloud Nine 2005 RECOVERY. We needed it. Recovery, that is. Ten total hours of sleep over 48 hours...but the great news is, we delivered a top notch professional result that was well received. Whew!

Here is Donnell speaking to the youth leaders on the first day of the three day retreat:


The retreat uses the following ingredients:
Stir
500 teenagers with
50 youth leaders
lots of loud music
some *slightly* too deep for the room teaching
and a dash of humor

Bake for 48 hours.

The result should be 500 edified teens, hopefully no pregnancies, not too much vandalism, and 50 seriously frazzled adults.


Crowd shot:


Here's a cool collage I put together - on the first night, there was a girl dancing off to one side of the stage:

Remember, click the smaller picture for a larger version. More to come! :-)