Costa Rica

Hey All,

I arrived in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica on Tuesday morning, fell back an hour to Mountain Time, I picked up a rental, a small Daewoo 4x4 and drove 5 hours to the town of Tamarindo, on the Pacific Coast. That was pretty much the day, I had stopped for lunch and by the evening I was tired (I had effectively gotten up at 4 a.m., and something wasn't agreeing with my system, so I just crashed.

I have to say that the two airports are interesting. I think it is easier to judge siz by the number of luggage carousels, than the number of gates. Panama City had 5 carousels, it had a lot of duty free shopping, alchohol, cigarettes, perfume and electronics. San Jose had 3 carousels, but the shops were more along the lines of souvenirs that you may have forgotten to get, oh and it is in the middle of a major remodeling project.

Wednesday I got up and started the search for a dive shop and surf school. The only dive shop in town was booked for a few days, so I drove over to a neighborhing town and got signed up for a trip on Thursday. I returned to Tamarindo and signed up for surfing lessons in the afternoon, at high tide. I spent the remainder of the morning getting a little sun and walking aroung the town browsing. I guess it is a sign of how much of a tourist town it is on the number of shops, not just souvenir places, but clothing and the like. I did pick up some neat coasters that have slices of cinnamon embedded in rosin, they smell real nice.

I showed up at 3:00 p.m. for the surf lesson, fortunately some other students showed up and that kept the cost down. It was a familyfrom Dallas, with three teenage all giving surfing a try. We carried the boards to the beach and the instructor gave us lessons on how to get up, easier said then done. Then we headed out to try it. Suffice it to day, the waves were rougher than they had been in several weeks and it wasn't a good day for novices. I did get to ride a few waves, but never successfully got up. I chipped one of my two front teeth when I was paddling out and encountered a wave that tossed the board up and made me chomp my jaw. It was an experience, I may try it again, maybe. I was going to do the blog last night, but then the news of the brige collapse came on.

Today was a two tank drive trip in the neighboring town of Flamingo, it is a nice dive shop run by three Germans, the only other divers were a couple of German guys. They joked that they were going to do the brief in German and then if I had any questions, I could ask in English. They were pretty good dives, both about 60 feet, and 45 minutes. The visibility was a little low, only about 20-30 feet, but the schools of fish were bigger, I even saw a school of sting rays. The top picture is a picture of the beach Playa Flamingo (Flamingo Beach). On the way out to the dive sites, we even saw a whale playing around. I also thought it was interesting that I could see the thermal layers as we descended, it was like how you see as heat raidiating off the highway.

The picture below is from the hotel where I am staying, just of the little breakfast area. I had noticed a squirrel messing around with the coconuts yesterday, then today I noticed that the cocnuts had stayed on the tree, just chewed through. The squirrel was sort of interesting too, it had a mostly brown body, but with a big gray strip down it's back and tail.

Evan

My Two Days in Panama

Hey all,

I´ve had two very busy days here in Panama, and as the guide today stated, two oceans in one day. I´ve taken scores of pictures (thank goodness they´re all digital) and it will take some time to get them uploaded, depending on the internet back on base. But I start with this one I took yesterday at the gift shop at the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal. I have actually seen a number of signs to this effect, I´m not sure if there is a suspicion of counterfeiting or what.

Sunday I woke up, had the buffet here at the hotel (included in the price) and then was met by a tour guide. We went over to another hotel to get a couple more folks then headed out to the Panama Canal. Along the way he pointed out all the places that had once been US military bases and what the Panamanians were doing with them.

We got to the locks and it was quite something to see. There was a four story building with an observation deck on top, and a museum that wound through the rest of the building. I thought the most interesting thing was one of the ship´s and it´s cargo (you might be able to see it when I post the pictures). It was a ship that carries other ships and in it´s hold was a Swedish submarine. Not real easy to see since the sub was so small, relatively speaking. I´m not sure what the story is, but I do recall reading sometime ago that the US Navy had contracted with the Swedish Navy to play the opposition force in submarine war games. The Swedes are supposed to be pretty good submariners, and their boats are desiel, but have a pretty lengthty underwater duration.

After the trip to the locks, we went out through Balboa along a causeway to what used to be a couple of islands, some nice boats in the Marina. Then a city tour into the heart of the historic district, which is very, very decayed. You could see that many of the buildings were nothing but walls standing, nothing inside, no roof, etc. The guide stated that the Panamanian government is investing heavily to restore the buildings and make them nice, into restaurants, hotels, condos, boutiques, etc. I have to say, as we looked across the bay, there is a lot of construction going on. It almost made me think of Dubai in terms of the number of cranes and number of high-rises going up.

Today, a different guide picked me up and we went across to the other side (Carribean side, north) and saw the Gatun locks (more pictures) and it was even better since the observation deck was closer to the locks. Along the ride, first on the Jungle Highway, then on Roosevelt Highway, what sturck me were the number of billboards for the Duty Free Zone in Colon, the guide called them ¨propaganda¨, what an approriate word. Then it was a trip to Portobello, a historic old town that was the financial center for the Spanish Empire for 200 years. Some real neat old forts, all fallen down, but neat never the less. A qick lunch, then back to Colon, the northern terminus of the Canal. I took the Panama Canal Railroad back to Panama City, it was only the second train ride in my life. It was a nice ride, but it was late, rainy and I only saw one ship in the Canal. As I was sitting there at the train station waiting for the train to pull in, I started taking pictures of the chicken buses as they passed. I probably took about 6 or 7 dozen. I decided to start a sister blog with nothing but chicken bus photos :)

One other note, the driver today drove me crazy. He was more passive than I am aggresive. He would leave the turn signal on forever. He would forget to turn off the wipers, twice he turned them on when it wasn´t even raining. He would slow to a near stop in traffic to try and complete his merge. He frequently drove 10-20 kph below the speed limit, and this is in part of the world where they don´t even bother to respect the speed limit. Really truly, I was beside myself. Oh well, the rest of the day was good.

Evan

P.S. I´ll add notes later when I get photo albums of the places visited and the chicken bus blog.

Trip to Panama

Hey all,

So I left this morning for 9 days of leave, starting in Panama. I took the shuttle from the base to the airport, a 44 passenger bus that had two passengers. I got to the airport with six hours until my flight. I guess it beat having to pay 50-60 bucks for a cab from base. I was so early that I couldn´t even check in since the counter wasn´t manned yet.

Since I had so much time, I started with a cup of coffee at the ¨starbuck¨ of Honduras, called Cafe Americano, it is actually pretty decent coffee, especially when compared with the foul stuff they serve at the dining facility on base. I sat there and started readling this new book, a reprint of a pulp fiction book from the 50´s call ¨Home is a Sailor¨. After an hour, I checked, the counter had just opened up and I was able to check my bag. Then I went for lunch at a chinese place across the street from the airport and for four buck, got enough food to serve two and a half people. I thought it was comforting to see a group of eight cops come walking in to have a chinese lunch. I continued to read the book. I walked back to the airport, sat down in the food court and continued on the book. I finally made my way to the gate (having my water confiscated enroute, thanks to the Latin American inclination to emulate the foolish rules of the paranoid, senseless administration of the north) got on the plane and promtly finished the book. It was perhaps the easiest read that I have had in a long while, but really fun reading complete trash.

The flight was on Copa Airlines, a pretty good sized airline based out of Panama, it is a partner with Continental and their entire network. The plane was nice, clean and newer. There were two legs, the first stopped in San Jose, Costa Rica where I was a bit surprised to see a big tent like hangar emblazoned with the NASA logo, and a medium bodied jet with UND on the side and the NASA logo on the tail. I have no idea what they are doing down here, but I am curious. The second leg took me to Panama City, I really enjoyed looking down on the final approach and seeing dozens of ships at anchor, waiting to transit north from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Tomorrow I tour the city and see some of the canal, Monday I take a train ride along the length of the canal.

A final thought, I think it was interesting that on both legs of the flight, they offered not just a beverage, but food!! The first leg it was a turkey sandwich that was fair, and a little packet of oreos. The second leg it was a warmed cheese and ham thingy, which was less than fair. But I do give them a whole bunch of credit for at least serving something other and peanuts or pretzels.

I think that is about it for now. I changed time zones, ahead one hour, so now I am back on central time. I was looking through my ¨Lonely Planet¨ guide to Central America looking at the times listed and I found such a tremendous editorial error that I am really peaved. For El Salvador, it listed GMT minus 6, for Costa Rica, GMT minus 6, Panama GMT minus 5 (all of these are right) but for Honduras, it lists GMT plus 8, which is incredibly wrong, it should be the same as El Sal and CR. GMT minus 8 would be somewhere like India...

Until Later,
Evan