Samara

Today we got up early and left the mountains for the beach town of Samara.  The first 20 km or so of roads were bad again. It got drier and drier as we went down. And hotter and hotter. Finally we hit pavement, never been so excited for blacktop in my life.  Though once you're on real roads, there are lots of sneaky speed bumps that hide in the shadows and surprise you.  Most of them have a warning sign and are painted a different color than the road, but not all (we learned that the hard way).  The paved section of the road down was crazy twisty and turny, and I think Steve was pretending to be a racecar driver. It was a bit hard on my nerves.

In Samara, we'd booked a room at Entre Dos Aguas, which is about 2-3 blocks to the beach.  Holy guacamole batman, his place is spectacular. We're on the top floor, with a private balcony and hammock.  There's no AC but there are lots of cats who love to hang around. This is the first time I've seen a cat begging for food like a dog. I tried to tell it that begging was beneath it, but it didn't understand, I think.  There's a nice common, open air lobby at the hotel, and maybe 6-8 rooms total, and a small pool.  There's also a common use kitchen, though the suite has a kitchen too.  We are here for 5 nights, and have absolutely nothing planned.

It was blazing hot in the heat of the day, so we went to find lunch with shady seating.  Then we stopped at grocery store and fruit stand for breakfast parts and snacks. The pineapple and avocados here are incredible. Nothing at all like what we get at home. Our plan was to make breakfast and lunch ourselves, then eat out for dinner.  It worked great.  This cost about $36, and was enough for the whole week (though we did have to get another pineapple and 6 more avocados):

Samara is a gorgeous beach town, just rustic and low-key enough to be feel like you're not in a city, several great restaurants, and not a crazy busy town.  We picked it because it is supposed to be a good place to learn to surf, which was one of Steve's goals for the trip.

The bay open to the south here, so this section of beach is to the west, and has lots of rocky tidepools that we explored in the evening and mornings.

Horseback ride on the beach?  This one had a cute tag-along.

Small crab coming out to sift through for sand.

Coffee and chocolate, made here

Thursday - today we went to grocery store to pick up some snacks.  Then we went on a tour of a coffee, cocoa, and sugar cane plantation and processor.  Loved it.  We got to taste fresh chocolate, coffee, sugar cane juice. 

This is the plant chocolate comes from:

Coffee beans on the bush.  Wait until they turn red, then pick.  But they don't all turn at the same time, so you go back to the bushes again and again.

De-pulping the coffee beans:

 Steve, enjoying the final product with a great view:

Swingin' llike Tarzan

Today we went to Selvatura park for a rainforest canopy/hanging bridge walk, a zip line tour with a kick butt Tarzan swing, a small herpetarium (not worth it) and a hummingbird garden (so awesome).
We think this is the same place (Selvatura) that we came to 11 years ago when we were here for Tami and Erik's wedding. 

The rainforest hike was fun.  We saw a couple of birds, a colorful millipede, and heard  a monkey in the distance.  Mostly, it's a lot of bridges and a wander through the (tamed, heavily touristed) rainforest.  There were great views from the bridges though!

 At one bridge there was a couple stopped and taking pictures of...something.  It wasn't until we were right up next to them that we could see what they'd found - a tiny snake!  It was on the bridge, and was so small it was thinner than a pencil!  I had a hard time getting a picture - this is the best I got.  Later someone told us it was not poisonous and maybe called a blond-headed snake (or maybe he said long-headed? it was hard to tell).

 In the hummingbird gardens, the are dozens of feeders set out to attract the birds.  If you stand quietly with your hand out in front of a feeder (and can ignore the bees), sometimes they will perch on your hand while they drink.

The hummingbird gardens were one of our favorite parts of the whole trip!

The zip line tour was fun. You get strapped into a harness and then zing along cables stretched between platforms (which are usually strapped to trees high above the forest floor).  The longest cable was 1000 m!  There's a "tarzan swing" too, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.  You clip into a rope, then jump (or get pushed!) off a platform and swing down (and back and forth a bit until you slow down and get lowered to the ground).  This was my favorite part of the zip line stuff.  I admit that I screamed my head off as I was pushed from the platform (and I even knew in advance he was going to push me!).  What an adrenaline rush!

Tonight the sunset was very pretty!  This is the tree across the street from out hotel, lit up from behind by the sunset.

Frogs, mostly.

Today we went to see ranarium (frog zoo), some dead insect exhibits, and a lovely butterfly garden, all in Santa Elena, almost walking distance from our hotel (though we drove). 

Our park entrance ticket was good for a second visit at night to see frogs since most are nocturnal, so we went back.  Indeed, the frogs were much more accommodating at night!  It's hard to get pictures of frogs behind glass, but I did a pretty good job with the one at the top of the page!  Steve used his flashlight to give me some light. : )

Overall the food here in town is ok, everything is rather expensive (once again, it seems like we are bleeding money), and people are friendly.  We're here for four nights total, then we head to the beach.  It's also really pretty cool here - almost cold at night.  We're up in the mountains, and once the sun sets it's pants and long sleeves!

Here's a bunch of butterfly pictures I took.  We were the only two on the tour, so we could take our time:

This one has spots that make it look like something with big eyes!

Also, there is also a sloth living in the tree behind our room.  That's pretty cool.

So tired.

Above: the countryside as you head up to Santa Elena and the Monteverde cloud forest area.

Today is Monday - day one of CR vacation.  We barely slept last night on the plane from Vegas to Miami.  I had the dreaded middle seat on a full flight, and the guy next to me (on the aisle, not Steve who was in the window seat) was a fragrant armrest hog with wide spread legs.  And he smelled like old man aftershave. 

A side note: I dislike the Miami airport intensely.  It's hot, noisy, spread out, and overall unpleasant.  On the Miami-Costa Rica flight, we flew right over the Florida keys and also saw Lago Nicaragua.

It was very hot in Liberia when we landed.  We breezed through customs, then got a shuttle to the car rental place.  I think this is the first time I've had someone holding a sign with my name on it at the airport. It was the guy from the rental car place.  :)


We were tired but excited to drive to the Monteverdi area from the Liberia airport.  Steve drove the rental car.  It's a small Hyundai SUV, 6-speed manual.  It was recommended to get the 4-WD if you plan to go to Monteverde because the roads are rough.  Good call.  They aren't just rough, they're wretched.  There are almost no road names in this country, traffic is busy but generally well behaved and predictable.  Leaving Liberia we immediately hit some major road construction. Things weren't well marked.  At one point we were driving on the wrong part of the road in the construction zone,  whoops. The roads really turned to ' spectacularly bad' phase after the small town of Tilaran.  The pavement ended, and the potholed, small-boulder-paved road began.  It took 2 hours to go 44 km (~30 miles).  Thanks goodness for the 6-speed with a very low 1st gear and 4wd or we would have never made it up the steep roads.  Overall, it was fine, but it was a bouncy, long ride.

The road before it started to get bad:  ('cause once it was rough, I was done taking pictures!)

When we finally go to Santa Elena (near Monteverde Cloud Forest) it was just dark, and super windy.  We checked into the Monteverde Rustic Lodge (which really isn't very rustic, but is nice an quaint), found a quick dinner in town, then finally, thankfully, bed.  We've been up about ~36 hours. 

So this is Vegas

 

Today we flew for leg 1 of our vacation: Juneau to Vegas. We used a combination of airline points and rewards for our tickets, so the Juneau-Vegas portion was a separate ticket from the Vegas-Costa Rica portion.  To make time for any delays getting out of Juneau, we built in a long layover in Las Vegas - enought to get out and see the city and take in some entertainment!

Us, in front of the Bellagio, waiting for a fountain show to start.

We spent the night at the Luxor, the giant pyramid-shaped hotel (not pictured) at one end of The Strip.  It was just ok, kinda dated inside, but close enough to walk to everything.  And boy did we walk.  We walked and walked and walked all over the strip. The Luxor was ok, room was nice size and clean but nothing special.

I loved seeing everything lit up at night.  It's a huge waste of energy, but still pretty cool to see.

The fountain show was pretty awesome.  It was cold out, so when the breeze blew the misty water over us, it felt really cold!

 It was just past the Chinese New Year, so one hotel still had decorations up.

 
We went to see the Cirque du Soleil show KA.  It was spectacular. I loved it. It is like someone really creative thought up the coolest things you could do with stunts and CGI and special effects then they figured out how to do them live on stage.  Wow.  The stage alone was amazing.  I highly recommend the show.  After the show we booked it back to the hotel to get our luggage and catch a shuttle to the airport.  We have a red eye flight to Miami, then another flight to Liberia, CR.

It's like you bleed money in this town...everything is expensive.  Shows, food, everyone wants a tip, drinks.  Ugh.  This is a crazy, crazy town. I'm glad I finally got here though!

More than a fart.

Fair warning - this is gross.  Don't read if you're going to be grossed out.

Last night, Seca pooped in her sleep.  In the bedroom.  On her bed.  Next to our bed.

Yuck.

It smelled so bad it woke us both up, and we laid there, both thinking, "Wow, that's a pungent fart.  It'll dissipate soon."  But it didn't.  So I got up to investigate, and didn't see anything, so I went back to bed.  A couple of minutes later, it still smelled awful, so I checked again, this time lifting up Seca's tail, and sure enough, our sound asleep dog had a nasty turd under her tail.  She didn't even wake up as I MOVED HER to clean it up. 

Such is life with an old dog, I guess.  Good thing she's cute.

New boat

Yesterday, my school's new boat was in town.  It is the Sikuliaq, 261 feet long and a sort of glacier-ice blue.  It was built in Wisconsin, finished and launched last year, and has spent the past year working it's way through the Great Lakes, down the east coast, through the Panama Canal, and (via Hawaii), now to Alaska.  She's an 'ice capable' boat, and can sail in ice up to ~3 feet thick by cutting through it with the sharp, reinforced bow.  In the past year they've done lots of sea trials, testing the new equipment, winches, etc.  Next, she heads to her home port of Seward, AK, then on to some ice trials in the arctic.  Actually, it won't be the first time in ice - when leaving the Great Lakes, there was apparently a lot of ice on the lakes!

Here's a panoramic shot with my phone, so it's a bit warped looking.

There was a lot of fuss over the boat, with public tours and a big reception.  Several students and I were volunteers leading people through the boat to the different 'tour stations'.  This is me and fellow PhD student Courtney, before the tours started:

This is a room where scientists can monitor all of the different scientific equipment they have deployed, along with sea floor maps, route maps, etc.  It's a pretty sweet operations room. There's also a huge, wide open back deck that can be customized for lots of different sampling operations.  The ship is mainly to to be used for physical oceanographic research, not biological stuff like catching fish. 

These two were up in the bridge.  A hula girl and a polar bear.  Ha!

A quick trip

This past weekend we flew south to visit Olympia, Washington.  I've accepted a job there, starting in May or June (still need to nail down the start date).  I'm *not* done with my degree yet, so this will be a big challenge to get up and running with a new job, in a new city, while still making progress towards my PhD.  But, I will find a way, and it will take a bit longer to finish because of the job. 

This is the view from the hill where the WA state capital building sits.  The water is Budd Bay, an arm of Puget sound, the land to the right is downtown Olympia.  To the left is west Olympia, which has residential and shopping neighborhoods (like REI, and a big mall).

We were supposed to fly down on Thursday evening, we Juneau was having an epic windstorm that made flying impossible (70-90 mph winds at the airport/downtown and up to 114 mph clocked just north of town on the water).  Friday morning the winds were still terrible, but by the time our 2 pm flight was ready, the winds were down to reasonable (but still windy) levels and we were able to leave.  We would have been so sad to miss the weekend trip!

One of the marinas downtown Olympia:

We loved, loved, loved the city of Olympia.  It's a good size - not too big, not too small.  It's close to Seattle but without the high housing costs and crazy traffic.  It's on the Puget Sound, and only about 2 hours or less to the beach (the 'outer coast'), and close to Mt. Rainier and the mountains of the Olympic peninsula.  We spent a lot of time driving around neighborhoods to see which areas we liked, and also a lot of time walking around the downtown area.

We also drove farther afield from Olympia and went to Nisqually national wildlife refuge (above), where we went for a walk and saw frogs, lots of birds, and on our way out, a coyote!

There were so many parks and green spaces around Olympia. I think we'll be really happy there.  The picture above is a good size park just 2-3 miles from downtown!

Finally, back to Juneau on Friday.  In our absence, the winds brought some really beautiful, fluffy snow, and the sun peaked out today for a bit.