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!!!

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... 

--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.

On thursday before leaving seward we stopped off at the alaska sea life center where we saw all kinds of animals, up close and personal and i bought katie a surviving alaska book; then, coming out of seward, we stopped off at exit glacier, and i picked up rockwell kent's book from his time on the peninsula back in the day. Simon and Seaforts's was Mark Shipham's recommendation for supper in Anchorage so we went there on our last night and it was wonderful.  An awesome lady name Faith was like the millie hagins of alaska and treated us very well while we were there. amazing food, ambience, staff, etc... on our plane ride b/w seattle and bozeman, they gave beer away...we were not in first class--that's the first time i've ever experienced FREE BEER anywhere but especially on a plane where normally it is way overpriced.  t was only one kidn though--mactarnahan's amber out of portland. 

i'm too tired to write about last night and today...

we left seward yesterday and i would be really upset about it except for the fact that i am moving there in march of 2011.  it is the most beautiful place i have ever seen!  Alaska>Montana  and montana is pretty freakin awesome!  really, the only thing on my mind right now is getting the heck home.  yeah, i will be there a short while before i am ready to head out again BUT i really wanna be home and recharge and see all the awesome york county folks that are my family and friends. i hope y'all are ready to ride bicycles, motorcycles, play tennis, go hiking, drink some SC beers, go tailgatin, and get a lot of bear hugs from me cuz i am on my way, and if i love you, i might tackle you when i see you!!!   

I don't know what i was expecting as far as denali national park. maybe i wasn't expecting anything.  the mountain itself is amazing (and i don't mean to confuse anyone by calling mckinley denali, denali is the native and hiker-preferred name so that's what i go with). the landscape was as close to himalayan as i think anything could be without being in asia--it was breathtaking, and we saw all kinds of animals, but i had an unsettled feeling while we were there--outside of the tremendous mountains, the whole place is wide open, exposed.  i felt like we were  gonna get peeled off the earth's surface at any moment--i mean, that sounds crazy but there was no  protection from anything.  to contrast it, we drove south toward seward upon leaving denali and i immediately fell in love with the kenai peninsula.  it had a completely different feel--deep green valleys with turquoise glacier lakes, pristine and absolutely still.  the mountains remind me of the beartooths and also of northern europe.  it was difficult to drive because i was trying to take in all the sights, but i managed not to kill us before we got to seward's resurrection bay camp site, where you camp right at the edge of the bay.  we cooked probably six pounds of halibut on a grill that it all barely fit on and made a campfire and had a big ol' time.  we are going on a six hour tour of the bay today so i will get some pictures and let everyone know how it goes.  I could totally see being in this area year! 

I got into Anchorage seven hours before mama, daddy joe, and grandma fred and got picked up by a guy named "root," which is just the phonetic sound, i have no idea how to spell it. he was a very nice native-looking guy, and he drove me over to great alaskan holiday rv rentals where i had to watch an orientation video. after picking up the rv and driving around in circles for 30 minutes, i met up with trayce and doug at their place in anchorage. i had totally blanked on them being in the area, but luckily trayce had seen on facebook that i was coming into town. they took me to some nbeat places in downtown anchorage and then they took me to the grocery store which was a TREMENDOUS help--i would have been in there forever by myself WHEN ieventually found the place. they had some awesome freebie coupons that made selection easy. whenever i have more than two options, my brain goes haywire trying to evaluate all the pros and cons all at once over something as simple as peanut butter (which is not really so simple if you know a lot about peanut butter!!!). then tracye had a volunteer function and i had to go pick up the folks. doug gave us some halibut and salmon which we cooked sunday night and it was AMAZING...best piece of halibut EVAH! anyway, back to saturday--picked up the fam in the rv without damaging it at all and got a move on to ward Denali. we tried to find talkeetna lodge and wound up on some dirt road that nearly shook our brains out of our skulls. when we finally got on the correct road and found the lodge, we tried to sneak into the parking lot against daddy joe's better judgment. as soon as we got parked, security was on us like stink on poo and recommended a spot down the road for us to dry camp. he recommended a spot down the road where we could dry camp for the night. not long after we had gone to bed, some rowdy jerks pulled up right beside the rv when there was plenty of space all around us. about the point i was irritated enough to get up and ask them to quiet down, they drove off...all i can figure is they were talkeetna lodge employees going off campus to smoke some dope. Other than the kids, some trains, and a liquorcycle, the night was uneventful and we all woke up staring at the highest point in north america--Denali, "the great one," aka, Mt. McKinley. AMAZING! wilbur justin and i talked about climbing denali in 2012, but circumstances within all our lives is gonna put that off for a few years--BUT after actually SEEING the mountain, it has renewed my interest, and i DEFINITELY want to climb it at some point, much to my mother's dismay...Anyway, after oooohing and ahhhhhhing the view for a while, we headed to a restaurant called Latitude 62 that a wooly booger of a man had told us was great. The food was good (reindeer sausage like trayce had told me about!) and the decor was NUTS--dead animals all over the walls, an eccentric unofficial host, a beergarden that could also serve as a fight cage, and a ceiling fan complete with snowshoes as paddles. some folks from kokomo, indiana were sitting next to us at breakfast and from them i heard for the 100th time that we needed to do a flightseeing tour outta talkeetna. BTW, due to doug, trayce, and all the good tasting dead animalsthat exist, my inner vegetarian has gone on vacation somewhere besides alaska. I'm fixin to go to france in a few months anyway so she might be gone til after christmas. talkeetna was still pretty much asleep when we got there but we are going back today (tuesday, sept 14th) so i can get on a plane out of talkeetna air taxi and fly around for a minute. before we went into the park sunday, we stopped in the village to get daddy joe some coors light and pick up some random stuff mama wanted so i ran over to the closest place to get a beer called the salmon bake restaurant and got myself their signature beer called baked blonde and an amazing bloody mary that had olives, cheese, meat, and a salted rim--yum! I also got some elk sliders and the best fish tacos i have ever had in my life!!! I talked to the bartender a minute about summer work. it sounds a few degrees more intense than the seasonal life in the yellowstone area and doug had kinda already clued me into that when we were chattin on saturday. I took a nap after we ot pulled into the park sunday afternoon and after i woke up, we started supper and the halibut that doug and trayce gave us turned out to be the best fish EVAH! i think mama wants to buy 100 pounds of it to send home.

alright, so we had to go redump the black and grey water monday morning prior to going on the 92 mile bus tour to kantishna. kim, our tour guide, looked kinda like Pat from SNL, as in the character julia sweeney did such a good job with from the skit, "It's Pat!" and she sounded like the narrator of some kind of kids' pbs show like, "Barney Goes to Denali...and Falls Asleep." she also crunched her burnt popcorn over her mic while shushing us...anyway, we had seven folks from korea in front of us on the 11 hour bus ride through the park and they were super-nice! they were doing his funny thing where they poked each other in the face and i taught them the circle lower than the waist thing, where if someone looks you punch them in the arm. they gave me a website they are affiliated with cafe.daum.net/auroratour (speaking of aurora, we saw the aurora borealis monday night just before going to bed!!!). so on this tour we saw pretty much every animal--dall sheep, moose, wolf, alaskan ground squirrel, caribou, grizzlies, and arctic hare and we got what seemed so close to denali/mckinley. when we got to kantishna, we got to get out of the bus for 45 minutes and pick wild blueberries. there are some private airstrips back in kantishna at the denali backcountry lodge so i got to see some planes and helicopters fly out of there. we had to cross a creek that had the absolute coldest water i have ever felt in my life, straight off a glacier i reckon. on the way back out (there's only one road) denali looked like an abominable snowman snoozing in the afternoon sun. at one of our stops,i managed to accidentally stab myself in the eyeball with my sunglasses so i have a wonked up looking peeper now. we got back, lit a campfire, drank some beer, and cooked red beans and rice with reindeer sausage. then we play some scrabble and went to bed. today we are headed like i already mentioned, back to talkeetna, then back to anchorage then on to seward and kenai fjords...

i went straight from one plane to the next without delay and my second flight was already calling final boarding when i got to it.  i have learned on this second leg why exactly my parents do not like for me to cuss--the guy behind me is cussing gratuitously, and it is ANNOYING. 

so back to the first flight:  susan was my seatmate--she read most of the time and i wrote most of the time, but we conversated a bit the last few minutes.  she was in bozeman for the montana brewers' association's annual brewfest as a malt supplier.  how did jessica leigh dunlap, beer's number one fan, miss this craft brewhaha???  i had no idea it was going on last night and i am so upset to have missed it.  luckily, it happens every year; so, good lord willing, i will make it in 2011.  good excuse to go back to montana!  anyway, i consider susan to be super cool for being an integral part of the beer-making process.  she lives in seattle and her favorite local beer is Mack and Jack.  she told me some fun things to do if i make it to seattle for more than 20 minutes. 

The summer is drawing to a close--the unofficial end known as Labor Day has come and gone and the official end, the autumnal equinox, fast approaches.  I left home secretly terrified of what the West held in store for me.  Soon, I will return home, scared of nothing in the world.  This has been a season of learning.  I came out here with the impression that I did not have much to learn, that I would be imparting knowledge more than receiving.  As soon as you have this mentality, someone, something or a wicked combination of someones and somethings will come along to prove you wrong.  I am humbled by my experiences.  More so, I am humbled by the amazing friends that I have who have helped me sift through lifes hard lessons as archaeologists excavating an ancient settlement, trying to make sense of the findings.  I hope I am as supportive of my friends as they have been of me. 
I don't regret being in love.  "Everybody plays the fool," so goes the saying. My turn came around this summer, and again, when i thought i was invulnerable, I was judo chopped in the heart to prove me wrong.  This is a good thing, though.  I needed it.  I now have all my self-destructive tendencies out of my system (except for that whole tattoo thing--which isn't necessarily self-destructive, just PERMANENT!). While I have an outer self-confidence that won't quit, the inner needed (and still needs to some degree) a swift kick in the rear end and there's nothing to do that for you like a bad relationship, fully equipped with a sadisitic loser alcoholic asshole who wants to use you as an emotional punching bag.  It's like miracle grow for the spine.  A reasonable degree of flexibility is expected in love.  I've heard dan savage say conditions that normally serve as deal breakers will be overlooked through the lenses of love and i have accepted deal breaker conditions because of my love for people.  Love, however, is not unconditional and it is not boundless.  While I have no empirical evidence to back me up, I believe it is a serious disservice to raise people on the misconception that love has no limits.  That idea makes us vulnerable to abuse and causes people to linger in bad relationships FAR longer than they should.  I'm not saying that people shoul bail at the first sign of rain, but to suffer within a relationship is unnecessary and many times we do so because we are taught to "hang in there."  SCientifically speaking, monogmay is not a natural state for humans (or any other creatures for that matter).  I'm not advocating adultery but if we could find a comfortable balance between teaching die-hard monogamy and for lack of a better term, "free love," the world would be a happier place.  That being said, the most important thing we could teach kids about relationships is honesty.  As long as you are honest with anyone you are involved with, it is impossible to go wrong.  The downside to that, however,  is that honest people normally assume that everyone else is honest too and can get taken advantage of as a result. 

Outside of the lessons in love i received this summer, I also attended a literal school--flight school at Summit Aviation right next to the scenic Bridger Mountain range. Flight school is the single-most mentally challenging activity I have ever done.  Not only did I GO to flight school but I FINISHED part 141 for a private pilot's certificate.  While it took me only 3 months of training, getting my private was far more taxing than getting a BA in English ever thought of being--probably because language comes naturally to us and flight obviously does not.  Less of a mental challenge but equally as fun has been learning to ride my motorcycle and in the process learning how dumb other motorists can be.  I laid the bike down recently  but I had learned from Wilbur that everyone is out ot kill you when you're on a bike so act accordingly.  I saw a guy at a stop sign, he began to inch out.  i anticipated him pulling out in front of me, and as a result of anticipation, I ended up with a bruised leg instead of a trip to the hospital or the morgue.  

The greatest thing I learned this summer is that I can do anything.  All I have to do is get off my fat ass and whatever I dream up will be realized with enough gumption.  I have a list of things I would like to accomplish in the next few years and I will undoubtedly get these things done!  This excites me--I DO have perseverance, I DO have sticktoitiveness, I DO have options for omnidirectional dispersement of my potential which means I will never get bored.  There's just too much to do to ever be bored or idle.  As I approach what is considered the prime of my life, I realize there is little time for self-pity, even less time for whining, and no time for self-loathing and its subsequent, associated behaviors.  There's only time for realizing your potential and surrounding yourself with those who support you in the process.