November 2010 Archives

omg, i am too tired to write at the moment (wednesday night) BUT i will say that johnny, the GM@ las gemelas made me the best shot of tequila i have ever had and i will expound upon that AND the entire day after supper or tomorrow morning before we head back to sn jose to drop caroline off at the airport!

Oh-kaaaaaaaay, so we didn't get caroline out of quepos today...and we have had to cancel our already postponed canopy and horseback riding tours BUT on the bright side, we are partaking in a half price spa package at 3pm today...

back to yesterday--

we went shopping in downtown quepos fater making our way down the old road that is now part of a detour because the new road collapsed with all the rain.  i managed to buy more ridiculous costa ricantourist STUFF but we stopped into Wacky Wanda's which is an american owned joint.  wanda(wanda szczeniak, says-nee-ack) IS wacky and awesome--she is what i will be like in 30 years, caroline said.  they used cut-up squares of carpet padding for coasters and had numerous signed pictures of ronald reagan!!!  The Lower the Latitude, the Better the Attitude!!!  next we rode back out to the beach to find wilberth so we could see what was going on with our postponed tours and what the stipulations were for getting our money back.  he said no problem getting money back but to wait and see if the weather will get better friday (at this point, we know we are not going to get to do the canopy or horseback riding)  so we ate some lunch at rapahel's terrazas, whish has some of the friendliest staff we have met in this already overly-friendly area.  alberto and his brother giovanni made us feel like we were VIPs.  someguys stopped in to peddle pastries and i bought giovannis recommneded banana cake. alberto made me some coffee in the traditionla costa rican way, and then went shopping AGAIN down at the beach--i had to skip it and hit up las gemelas.  i ad a beer with wilberth, who in his ever-optimistic way said we should have no problem getting caroline back to the airport even though we have heard many opinions to the contrary (we have indeed NOT gotten caroline to the airport and we hope that we will get her out of here saturday, along with getting ourselves out on sunday).  anyway, johnny the bartender remembered me from yesterday and asked, "tequila," and he poured me (yes, proper pronoun usage, thanks) and himself the most amazing shot of tequila ever--EVER!  i will be utilizing his methods when i come back.  josephine is a supermodel hot blond chic that was hanging around las gemelas both days i was there.  italked to her for a minute, asked her where she was from and  she moved to costa rica from sweden last year sometime.  she has NO discernible accent, none, which comes from 8 years of super-awesome english teaching.  we were in bed by 9pm last night, folowing supper at the hotel. it stopped raining while we were eating and we got our hopes up that the rain was gone for good.  no such luck!  woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of torrential downpour!!!

just got word that nikki haley is the GOVERNOR--w00t, w00t!!!  I am in costa rica as i get this news--don't really know how to act because no one here gives a rat's and i am ECSTATIC!!!!  

Working in reverse here: right now i am listening to the song rasputine by boney m, it's some crazy disco song. rah, rah, rasputine, russia's greatest love machine...and everyone i'm with is playing pool while i blog...we are at billfish bar and casino.  i'm tired.  it's raining STILL.  which i do not mind at all because i have ample time to chill and write.  so we had supper at RESTAURANTE CAYUGA on Isla Damas.  it is owned by Ricardo and Ana Alfaro. their son Daniel waited on us. first of all, best food so far on this trip.  turner and zach took us out here. it's north of quepos, back in the san jose direction.  ana cooks everything in the open air restaurant, ricardo greets and smiles, daniel is a server far beyond his 20 years of age (after he waited on us, he split to give dance lessons to the table that came in before us).  i will post photos but the food was unbelievable--apps of ceviche, homemade guac and fried pork.  i ordered two entrees, per usual and between the five of us, we polished off nearly everything--shrimp, chicken, pork times 2 and fish times2...AND ana gave us two desserts on the house--coconut flan and rice pudding (rachel pointed out it beat any indian rice pudding either of us had ever eaten).  before we went to damas island, we picked the boys up at their hotel the blue monkey.  we walked in and asked which way to room 15 and the receptionist totally handed us the key...uhhhhhhhhhh.  so the boys took longer than the girls to primp and get ready but we enjoyed a couple of drinks at the blue monkey which is an awesome place.  cheap, centrally located, awesomeness.  we had been at mariscopa chillin out looking at the pacific through a sheet of rain from one of their pool bars and having adult conversation when we made the decision to go to to isla de damas for supper ,and prior to that we had ben hanging out by the pool at our place, the karahe hotel fater an afternoon of shopping at one of the two stores that were open on this super rainy day.  right before shopping we had an amazing lunch at the hotel/restaurant we had been at the previous day for afternoon cocktails that marks the end of the roadtoward the national park.  fried green plantains are awesome, they come with black bean sauce and a serious sour cream--like super wangy, truly sour, sour cream that we don't know about in the states.  that was an app and after my main course for lunch i ordered a second plantain app.  i don't mess around with food, y'all, NEVER.  well before they met us for lunch, turner and zach completely shocked us by actually showing up to have breakfast with us at our hotel.  again, these are fun, funny guys that play off each other like they are a paid comedy act (and a good one, at that).   i left out a lot... 

 

I LOVE drawing blood.  It's so...it's so...DIFFICULT!  

--Caroline Smith

so, apparently we are in an extremely diverse place--I mean Darwin visited here or something.  anyway, all this diversity was what i woke up to when i stepped out the front door of our villa at 830am.  the first thing i saw was the black arm of a monkey swinging around in the trees; then the next thing i made out through the torrential downpour (it's the end of the rainy season here) was the pacific ocean, after being in awe of the pacific for a few moments, i then notice the enormous iguana chillin about 6 feet away from me [insert super girly scream and a couple of cuzz words].  i talked rachel out of getting a shower in the death trap of a bathroom and instead, we go down to report the problem and go EAT!!!!  The continental breakfast we had was, first of all, less than 50 yards from the beach.  we ate breakfast RIGHT BESIDE the pacific ocean in an open-air cabana! a plate of fresh fruit, coffee, passion fruit juice (which is the best juice i have ever had in my life!!!), fried eggs, and black beans with rice is my current favorite thing for morning chow.  I am trying to figure out who invited the ants. they were scurrying around the juice/coffee bar like busy little waiters, not a concern at all for the staff and since hey weren't concerned, neither was i, very different from america!!! after breakfast, we walked out onto the beach.  ther was a tree i had to climb, and we stuck our feet in the pacific ocean--for me, that was a first.  we went back to our villa and figured out the toilet leaks so between that and the shower, we ask if we can just move into the place next to us which is fine. we end up driving down the road toward the national park  which is closed on mondays and everyone is trying to get us to pay to park in their lots but we keep driving to the end and park at a hotel where we have a few drinks and discuss what exactly we are gonna be doing for the next few days.  Favian, a local peddler comes up to us and we end up buying a bunch of clay pottery from him which he says he made himself and i really hope that is true.  somebody is getting some neat stuff when i get home.  Wilberth is a guide for the canopy tours and he comes and chills with us and talks to us about costa rica, the canopy, explains why the young people make out with each other on the side of the road, i show him a video of me playing the ukulele, and he is now our friend.  his english is really good because he lived in chicago for a couple of years.  he asks us if we want to see some monkeys and starts throwing pieces of banana out for the monkeys to eat and they descend like vultures...this is on the edge of the national park, which, after having the rules of wildlife drilled into my head in yellowstone, is completely in contrast to what i have learned--FEEDING wildlife???!!!  anyway, we go with wilberth to quepos so the girls can exchange money which takes FOREVER and i sit in the car and read and people watch which is pretty interesting.  the exchange thing took so long that i really thought at one point that the girls had been abducted.  luckily, wilberth is a good guy and we drop him off in downtown quepos which i am pretty sure is why he told us the place to exchange money was like 200yards from where he needed to be.  imma hustla, baby!!!  oh, i forgot to mntion the part about caroline screaming when she saw a bug in the bathroom.  during the time i was sitting in the car, i came to understand the draw of the place for my mimi which makes me feel closer to her even though she isn't with us anymore.  there are lots of gay bars in manual antonio and wilberth says he loves the gays and labians because they are very courteous and nice, no kids to deal with.  he says old people are the worst, they are grumpy and mean.  on the way back from quepos, we stop off at Aqua Azul to pee, get a drink and get some grub.  biggest hamburger i have ever seen in my life, it is 500 grams, which judgiing by the size, has to be around a pound.  caroline ordered that.  rachel got blackened fish of some sort and i got a calamari wrap.  rachel and i drank the house special which as the waitress informed us, VERY strong.  think: moonshine strong with some rum-soaked watermelon floating around in it.  they played american classic rock at this place and the view was incredible!  we went back to the hotel and showered then heaeded to El Avion again so rachel could get pics and because caroline had not gotten to see it the previous night.  same bartender, Juan Jose Mejias and he has some awesome latin tunes playing.  apparently, this didnt suit caroline.  she whips out her ipod and dominates the dj role for pretty much the rest of the night but we do manage to get juan jose introduced tothe music of those darlins, specifically their song "Wild One."  Two guys fromt he previous night start chatting with us, Zach and Turner. Ends up, they are from Georgia, know Rabun County, and even worked at YMCA camp High Harbor.  they were funny and awesome and i hope to stay in touch with them.

caroline (now carolina) and i met up at CLT and our plane was an hour late leaving.  we flew over cuba and grand cayman on the way into the san jose airport.  we got a rental car from hertz after we picked up rachel (now known as raquel) outside of customs. it´s the tiniest SUV i've ever seen but it is purdy sturdy.  the first stop after getting wheels was FOOD!!! the guy who rented us the car recommended Inka's House, a good seafood place, not too far form the airport.  Carlos was our waiter there and he ended up falling in love with carolina in the hour's time we were there.  the food was piled up on our plates and it was all amazing--we started out with a mixed ceviche, the hot sauce that accompanied the ceviche and the entrees was incredible but we were not able to weasel the recipe out of the chef.  carolina had a seabass dish, rachel had fried shrimp and i had a heaping pile of paella.  the only thing wrong with inka's house was the damn music--synthesizer/karaoke style ABBA, Celine Dion, The Eagles, Simon and Garfunkel, etc.  We passed on dessert b/c we were so thoroughly stuffedand headed out toward Manuel Antonio, and i must say, i was intimidated byt the furious, sans-rules driving and the fact that it was getting dark.  our GPS definitely lead us to a VERY wrong way intially...we ended up at a ditch the size of the grand canyon after passing through a dirt road neighborhood where my butthole was clenched tight enough to tear the apholstery of the car seat because of the unpleasant sights, smells and sounds.  i definitely thought we might die for a few miinutes. we made it back to the main road and figured out the correct route on our own.  after the harrowing experience of getting out of san jose, we stopped at a bar called Tico-Tico (tico is a word for local, from what i gathered).  everything is open-air here and about half the price it would be in america (depending on where you go, it can be more or less).  at tico-tico 3 beers, a shot of jager for rachel and a half pack of cigarettes was less than ten bucks. awesome.  i had a beer and a cigarette to calm my nerves from the drive, then we got back on the road. let me just say the little car we bought is resilient, the road here are pretty rough in some places--we had been warned multiple times about this but in spite of the wearnings, we managed to catch air a few times due to bumps on bridges that we did not see.  no one pays attention to lines in the roads here or speed limit, or signs...it´s anarchy of the highway.  when we got to karahe hotel aroun 9pm, there was no one to greet us except the handy man who spoke ZERO english, and we of course know about ten words between the three of us...SO we finally got the point across that we were checking in and the handy man got someone, pretty sure a guest, out of his room to talk to us...that got the handy man to get us a key.  we hiked up a, no exaggeration, MOUNTAIN of stairs to get to our cute villa and when the handy man tries the key, it of course does not work...so he takes the batteries out of another door lock and puts them into ours and VOILA!  the puerta now abras.  Caroline decided to crash out and rachel and i rode back up the street to El Avion, an bar made out of an old plane, the aboslute coolest bar i have been to in my entire life of drinking.  we had a drink ther to unwind then promptly headed to bed.  when we got back, caroline informed us that the shower was smoking from an elctrical problem--yep, there is a socket IN the shower, it's weird and i will get a photo, but it's all screwy...slept well in spite of AND because of the awesome noise coming from the trees--monkeys and birds!