When animals attack

We were down at the beach one day when the dog pictured above ran out to Candler in the ocean and started playing with him.
Sidenote - There are dogs everywhere here - I'm surprised I haven't seen one smooshed in the road yet. Ticos do not keep their dogs in the house, so they just kind of run around and will follow you down the beach. All the ones we have encountered have been really friendly.
Sidenote #2 - The animals here very lean compared with animals in the US. Cows, cats, dogs, horses, everything is just leaner.
On with the story...so this dog starts playing with Candler on the beach, and when it is time to leave, he follows us. Eventually we start getting closer and closer to a pelican that was just standing on the beach, watching to catch fish. The dog sees the pelican and runs up to it. To my surprise it doesn't fly away, it just stands there. The dog stops about 5 feet from the pelican and slowly inches his way closer. The pelican just watches the dog. Then all of the sudden, the pelican starts charging the dog with its beak flapping. This goes on for a few seconds, just long enough for me to get a shot with my camera. Candler and I are standing about 10 feet from the dog on pelican brawl when the pelican has decided he's had enough of our heckling and runs after Candler and I. We both run. I run off barefoot over the hot sand, in turn burning the bottoms of my feet in the process. So, apparently pelicans are mean. Who knew?

While on the subject of Costa Rican animals...the squirrels here look different than the ones back home. I wanted to get a picture of this, and one day walking into town I saw one not too far away in a tree. I took several pictures, and decided to see if I could get closer for a better pic. This squirrel would not move. When I got this close, I started to get kind of scared because it just sat there looking at me, like it was daring me to come one step closer. I really think it wanted to gnaw my face off. Don told me not to get any closer because it looked like it was ready to pounce on me, so I backed off.

Also, today on the way back from the beach we came across a bunch of howler monkeys in a tree. I never seem to have my camera when we find howler monkeys. Howler monkeys are maybe 2x the size of a house cat. To me, they sound like King Kong when they "howl". The first time I heard it when we were zip lining, I couldn't believe that the sound I was hearing was coming from something that small. The howler monkeys here are all black, except the males have white balls. Apparently this way the spermies stay at a cooler temperature. I can't help but giggle everytime I see them. So, Candler and I stop to look at the monkeys for a bit. One starts to poop. Then he pees. The pee is closer to us. Another one moves down the tree closer to us and relieves itself as well. We take this as our sign to leave before we get rained upon by monkey feces. I found this pic on the web, if you look, you can see that this is a male .

Don's Costa Rican run in with the law

This picture was taken with our first run in with these policia on June 24th. Don's mom came to visit for a week, and she was flying into San Jose. San Jose is not exactly close to where we are staying, the Liberia airport is much, much closer, but we had no idea what area we would be in when she booked her flight. San Jose is central and cheaper to fly into so that was the best option at the time. The shuttle she was trying to arrange from the San Jose airport to us didn't work out, so we drove the 4.5 hours to San Jose to pick her up. We rented a car to go pick her up, and about 45 minutes or so into the drive I asked Don if he had grabbed the copies of the passports. You don't really have to carry your passport on you, as long as you have a photocopy with the stamp that you've entered the country, you are pretty much ok. Of course as soon as I asked the question I had jinxed us, because the answer was no. 30 minutes later, we are flagged down by the fine men in the picture above. One walks into the center of the road and motions for us to pull over. Shit. The first cop asked for our passport and Don said no passport. He didn't speak much, if any english. He kept repeating passporta, passporta, driver's license? Don just kept shaking his head no. Cop number one then goes to get cop number 2 that speaks english. Cop number 2 asks for passport or driver's license, and we explain that we rushed leaving and left all id (other than a credit card) in our hotel, and we were on our way to San Jose to pick up Don's mom from the airport. He shakes his head and asks where we are from and we tell him the US. He asks again for identification and we explain again that we simply forgot it. He says, "no good, this no good." He then explains that we were speeding and shows us the radar gun that says 96, and the speed limit is 60 kph. Oh and he points out that Don is not wearing his seat belt, which is also illegal. And we don't have any identification on us. "No good, no good. Very big ticket. Like $150, and I hold car.", he explains to us. He stands there shaking his head and eventaully all of us are kind of chuckling at the situation. Candler is asleep in the back seat during all of this by the way. I start digging through the glove box, hoping to find the paperwork from us renting the car as some sort of proof of who we are and thinking they might have a passport # on the paperwork. Eureka! However, no passport # and it says we are from Afghanistan. The cop takes Don out of the car and talks to him on the otherside of the road while looking over the car rental paperwork. I remind Don on his way out of the car that offering me as collateral is not in his best interst. After about 3 minutes, Don gets back in the car. What happened? Are they going to hold the car? The cops told us we could go on, but if we were pulled over by any other cops we were to play stupid and this whole thing never happened. The cop did point out that the paperwork said Afghanistan and basically laughed at that. They didn't want to have to deal with our situation, so they told us to go on.
In the beginning of this story I said the picture was of our first encounter with these cops, because on the way back they stopped us again. Same thing, we were going 96kph. Only this time we know for a fact we were not, because we knew to expect the cops to still be there. The cops come over and start to laugh, and say Mr. Clark, Mr. Clark, speeding again. Passport? They laugh again, and we say still at the hotel. They look at Don's mom and say, this is your mom, right? Don's mom is fumbling for her passport and says that she has hers. The cop then says, very big ticket, $14 and we take care of it. $14?!?!? Where the hell did $14 come from? Don's mom then pulls out a $20 and I tell her to hide that because they are just wanting a bribe, and she will not be recieving any change back. Not wanting to deal with any more, we go on and pay $15. We hand the cop $15, and he says $14, counts it, smiles, realizing we gave him $1 more and then signals for us to go on. As we pull away, Don's mom asks if we know these guys and we explain the whole story. We all just laugh at the ridiculousness.
Basically they stand on the side of the road with the radar gun set to 96kmp and pull over the white people. They say they are speeding and will offer a cash bribe on the spot to not write a ticket. First time around, we said we only had a credit card, so we couldn't exactly give them cash. If they wanted to hold the car, and take us into a station for not having our passports on us, they would have to leave and not collect any bribe money for the day. On the way back, we had Don's mom in the car, so she probably had cash and would pay. I figure the $14 came from them wanting to make a certain amount for the day and it was almost 5pm, so they were $14 short of their goal.
We've talked with several Americans or Canadians that have said if you just let them write a ticket, a) it is usally cheaper than the bribe and b) they usually just rip it up after you drive off because it is more paperwork for them to write a ticket to a non-cititizen. If we would have had our passports we would have just taken a ticket, but since we didn't want to chance it we paid the $14 bribe. Goodtimes with the law.
On a side note, there is a drug den next door to one of the bars we hang out at. Every few days or so, the cops will pull up to it for a couple of minutes, go in, and then leave. Bascially being paid to look the other way. That's pretty much the way cops work here, if they are paid, they will look the other way. Being a cop here doesn't pay that great in relation to the job, so taking bribes or working after hours as a security officer is how they make money. DUIs here are pretty much a joke, if you actually are written a ticket, it's like $50 and they don't do anything further. That's probably the reason I have heard Costa Rica is #3 in the world for alcohol realated deaths. per capita. *though I'm not sure if that is an accurate statistic or not, I've tried to find info to back that up, but havent' come up with anything yet.

El Coco

We have been in a town called El Coco for the past month. It is a decent sized fishing town on the Northern Pacific coast of Costa Rica. The beach here kinda sucks, it's dirty. Although, apparently it was just awarded the blue ecological flag (which means it's a nice, clean beach). I have no idea who paid off what official for that to be awarded, because it's definately not worthy. The north end of the beach is decent for swimming, but towards the town center and south it's icky. I have more pictures of our tip posted here. Coco is convenient in that there are two supermarkets now (one when we first got here, but a new one just opened a week ago), a bank, plenty of bars and restaurants, and we can walk pretty much walk where ever we need to go. Hermosa beach is a $10 cab ride north and Ocotal beach is a $6 cab ride south of us, both of which are nice beaches.
We are staying in a large condo complex about 1 km from the main part of town. We were originally looking at a 2 story 2 bedroom condo, but the leasing company that condo was through was pretty frustrating. We met with a woman from I & M Realty at 9am the morning we got into Coco. The condo we looked at was owned by a man in NY , and this company was handling the rental of it. We liked the condo and when we went back to the office to attempt to rent it, the office power was out. The woman in charge said she had to get in contact with the owner of the condo before she could rent it to us, but since the power was out she could not call or email him. We asked how long she expected it to be out and she said that it would be after 3pm, so it'd be best to just come back tomorrow. This was frustrating because they were the only place in the area with the power out (we later found out it was disconect day for those that hadn't paid their electric bill, so that's why the leasing office's power was out). We were able to contact the owner of the condo by going directly next door to the internet cafe (where you could also make an international call), but she wouldn't even make the effort to attempt contacting the owner that way. Not wanting to pay another night in a hotel and move our stuff again, we went to several other rental companies in the area and found another 2 bedroom condo in the same complex for the same price. Finally, settled in one place of a month.
Honestly, the first week I was in CR I felt pretty stressed out. Things were more expensive than we had expected and I was trying to find affordable places with internet access everywhere we went. I was also kind of disturbed by the extreme lifestyle difference between the ticos and tourists. The tico houses were very shack like, and then next door you'd have a multimillion dollar condo complex or house (often with high walls with barbed wire). Below are your typical tico houses:
The first 2 weeks Don and I were thinking that we couldn't see ourselves moving here - it just didn't seem worth it worth it with costs similar to the US and having fewer conveniences. You have to drive to a fairly decent sized city for a hospital, to buy clothes or household items, and throughout the country there are rolling black outs. Where we are at there is a water sharing system, so the water will be shut off for hours at a time, and they are working on upgrading the electricity system, so that goes out too quite often.
Now, however, we are kind of just going with the flow and are reconsidering the idea of being down here. There seem to be more personal freedoms here, people are more laid back, and not driving 2 hours a day for work is pretty good. The weather is awesome. We are further south than Atlanta, yet its cooler and not as humid. Definately not sad to be missing out on the Atlanta summer heat. The rain isn't as bad as I expected for it being rainy season - although it is still the beginning of rainy season. The mornings are awesome and sunny, and you might get some rain midafternoon, though not every day. The rain is starting to pick up though, and seems to be heavier thunderstorms than when we first got here. One thing I do greatly miss about America though...EMISSIONS TESTING. Apparently they do have that here, but so many cars have been grandfathered in that I can't tell that they do. We drove to San Jose to pick Don's mom up from the airport and both Don and I had a raging headache from all the black smoke from the buses and clunker cars. Dust in Coco is just as bad as the smoke from cars also. The coastal areas are being so built up, and there is constant construction, which even though it's rainy season, there is constant dust (unless it just literally rained), oh and add in the exhaust from construction trucks. Black lung. Blech.

Potrero

After our canopy tour, we headed to the volcano hotel, packed up and drove for 4 hours to Potrero beach. We pulled up to hotel Isolina to see if they had a room for the night. They did, so we checked it out before paying and negotiated a cash discount for our two day stay. We were literally the only guests at the hotel and practically had the beach to ourselves since it's low season. The beach was pretty nice and had good swimming. This was the first time I've ever been in the Pacific and I was shocked at the undertow. Way more than the Atlantic or Gulf that I've been accustomed to. It wasn't so bad that Candler couldn't swim or anything, just stronger than I expected. Potrero was a quite town with not much there.
We had an awesome lunch at this local hole in the wall (the best meals we've had here are at the hole in the walls). We had asked the woman in the hotel office for a good place to eat, and she suggested many "Americanized" resturants, we said that sounded great and all, but we wanted to go where the locals eat. She told us about this good soda (sodas here are places where you grab small, cheap eats) not too far from the hotel, but warned us getting there seemed kinda dubious since it was down a dirt road, that looked more like a walking path, through a mini trailer park. That's definately where we wanted to go. I had fresh fish with rice and beans and a salad right on the beach. It was amazing, and cost like $4.
One day we went to the next town south of Potrero, Flamingo, because Alberto needed to go to a bank - there wasn't one in Potrero. Flamingo was really nice. Expensive houses, beautiful beach, windy roads up cliffs with awesome ocean views. If we had $3000 a month to spend on a mansion, it would have worked out great! This picture was taken from one of the cliffs we drove up to in Flamingo.
We originally went to Potrero because there was a house I had found on craigslist that we were thinking about renting for a month. The house was nice and had a pool (that we would have to keep up - I know nothing about pool maintenance), but as far as everyday convenience, being in Potrero for a month didn't seem like the best idea. We'd need a car and little was within walking distance as far as shopping. Rentals in Costa Rica in a beach town proved more expensive than we expected. I found another affordable ($750/month for a 2 bedroom) place on craigslist that was in a town 45 minutes north of Potrero. We packed up the car and off we went down a road called monkey trail. Monkey trail was not advised during raininy season in the Costa Rica travel book I was using for directions and hotel recommendations. Well, we were in the beginning of rainy season so I thought, no biggie, we have a 4x4 and the roads we've been down haven't been that bad. Monkey Trail was definately the worst road we've been down now in Costa Rica. Though, it was passable. It reminded me of when we went off roading with our dad when we were kids. Very bumpy, muddy, and I think we crossed 3 large creeks, and I'd advise on not traveling on it with a full stomach. Picture to the right is monkey trail.

Brief visit to Arenal

On day 4 we left San Jose and rented a car to drive to the Pacific coast. We decided to drive through Arenal and stay for a night to check out the volcano and do a canopy tour. Renting a car here can get quite expensive due to the required insurance each day. The insurance cost per day can often be more than the car rental itself. I think we had to pay $20/day just for insurance, and the 4x4 we were originally going to rent was $16/day. When Don got to the rental company he decided the 4x4 I picked out online was not large enough for 4 people and the luggage. Thank god he made that call, because the next size up(Daihatsu Terios) just barely fit everything. Alberto was hit in the head several times with the suit cases. The roads definately were not as bad as I had read about, there was the occasional pothole, but nothing the size of a car. The road to Arenal was really curvey and definately sucked to get stuck behind a slow moving vehicle. You didn't want to go around the car/truck since you didn't know if someone would be coming around the curve on the opposite side of the road, so you would be stuck behind it for 30 minutes until the road straightened out enough to pass. Often it was a slow truck with lots of exhaust that we were stuck behind.
It was about a 4 hour drive from San Jose to Arenal. Actually, we stayed in the town of La Fortuna. La Fortuna had a park and church in the the middle of town (which is common for most towns in CR) with plenty of restaurants, bars, and shopping. I had picked out two hotels to possibly stay at, but neither worked out. The first hotel did not have internet and the second hotel had no vacancies. Since it is green season (low season), we only made a hotel reservation for our stay in San Jose. It's pretty easy to just drive up to a hotel and get a room for the night in low season, and at many places you can get a discount when paying for the room in cash - they basically take off the 13% sales tax. Arenal was the only place so far that we've had an issue with just driving up and hoping to get a hotel room. It's the busiest tourist spot in Costa Rica. We finally found a hotel within walking distance to restaurants for the price we wanted. The hotel was called El Volcan, and it felt like we were actually staying IN the volcano. There were no windows (well there was one tiny window in the bathroom), and the AC was broken. Sweating bullets. We had already paid for the room and didn't want to bother driving around anymore, so we decided to just tough it out, it was only for one night. The hotel did have a view of the volcano, however since it is rainy season the volcano was covered by clouds, so we couldn't see any lava flow at night. The picture above is from our hotel the next morning. After unloading the car, we ventured out for the night in La Fortuna. We had dinner and drinks a the Lava Lounge and went into a few touristy shops. We came across several shops where people were selling packages for hot springs, canopy tours, ect. and bought a package for a canopy tour with Ecoglide the next day. Since we were to be picked up at 8 am the next morning for our canopy tour, we went back to the inferno to attempt to sleep. I say attempt because it was virtually impossible to sleep in the furnace that was our room.
After an attempted night's sleep we were up at 7:30AM to wait for a van to pick us up at 8 to go on our canopy tour. As we were waiting in the volcano hotel's parking lot for our shuttle, we noticed this sweet black van that said "A-Team". Turns out, this guy was a huge fan of the tv show, and actually purchased this from the set once the show was over. Hells yes. Anyway, our shuttle finally arrives and we go on our canopy tour. The canopy tour was awesome, and though I'm scared of heights this didn't bother me at all. It was a zip line through the jungle high in the air from tree to tree. We saw some howler monkeys and toucans along with awesome views of the Arenal area. The highlight of the tour was the "Tarzan Swing". Basically you sit in this harness and there is a rope attached. It's suppose to be like swinging from a vine. So you get in this contraption on a platform that has a gate. Once they have you hooked in, they open the gate and you are supposed to just step off. I didn't really pay much attention to how high up we were before I was strapped in...well they opened the gate and instructed me to step forward. I looked down, um, no thank you, I'm good where I'm at. This is when I started to panic. The heart began racing, got an ill feeling in my stomach and I started to protest that I didn't want to do this. As I tried to force myself further back on the platform, I fell off. Below is the video...the cackling you hear in the background is Candler, who was too scared to go, but took pleasure at laughing at me.

San Jose

We stayed our first 3 nights in Costa Rica in San Jose. San Jose had great weather - it was about 75 degrees each day, much better than the 90 + in Atlanta over the summer. There was an occasional shower or two in the afternoon. Usually light, but one day there was quite a downpour for about 3 hours. So, our first 3 days we stayed at a cute bed and breakfast called Casa 69. Yes, Casa 69 was really the name of it. The prices were good, the rooms were clean, and the staff was great. If you are coming to see us and you need to stay a night in San Jose, I highly recommend there. San Jose though as a whole, I did not like. It was dirty. I've never been to Detroit, nor do I ever plan on visiting, but I envision San Jose being a tropical Detroit. I felt like my lungs were black after the first day from all the exhaust. I don't really have too much to say about San Jose, other than the veiw from atop our hotel was of mountains and that's where I wanted to be.
We were going to rent a car from an ex mechanic from the states, but things started getting kind of sketchy so we bailed on that idea. We figure we will just rent a car when we need one and take taxis if we can't walk somewhere. The driving here is pretty crazy. Riding in the taxis in San Jose was kind of like a roller coaster. I never felt unsafe, but it was definately crazy and I was glad I wasn't the one driving. If you don't know where you are going and are driving in San Jose, good luck. The potholes were not as bad as I had expected, but lanes...what lanes? You make your own. Merging? As long as it's not a bus, you force your way over- eventually one of you will have to give, so just assume it will be the other person and keep going. Oh and if you are driving, the pedestrians will stop for you. Crossing a street on foot? Run. Also if you are behind the wheel please note that it is required to use your horn at least once every 3 minutes, not I say at least once...more is strongly encouraged.

Finally blogging

Ok, so I will finally start my Costa Rica travel blog. Don and I have had some computer issues since we have been here. Apparently my computer's wireless card is allergic to Costa Rica internet, I think it's got a VD. Don's sound card decided to die, which meant our phone # didn't work. I was confined to stealing Don's computer for internet when he wasn't doing work or better yet, an internet cafe where the computers were loaded with spyware. We are now settled at a condo in El Coco, and my computer has decided to start working again. So all systems are a go and you can now call us - if you email me, I'll send you the number.
With my excuses out of the way...