Sentence of Dave

They Live in Pairs? Excellent . . .

I woke up early this morning, tip-toed into the bathroom-- as we are all sleeping in one room at the Villa Mango-- and was confronted by a Costa Rican scorpion . . . so I flattened it with my sandal; it happened to be on the bath mat when I did the flattening, so I dragged it out of the way but left it out so my wife and kids can see it when they wake up; I just looked up the species and apparently the sting is painful but not deadly, the only disconcerting thing is that, according to this site, they live in pairs, so if you see one then the other one is probably nearby . . . I am up on the veranda listening to the birds and monkeys as I write this, perhaps soon I will hear a scream from our room below (either when my family sees the dead scorpion or when they encounter the irate partner).

They Live in Pairs? Excellent . . .

No Crocs But A Plethora of Sea Slugs

Our last day in Samara we went in search of megafauna and drove down a dirt road to Playa Buena Vista-- a primitive driftwood covered beach across an estuary reputed to contain saltwater crocs; I watched a local net fisherman wade across and followed him and I was not eaten by a croc, but my wife and kids were having none of it and occupied themselves on the rocks while I investigated the beach and river mouth; no crocs to speak of so we headed back to the tidepools of Samara and found colorful dories, triggerfish, loaches, eels and sea slugs-- intriguing but minifauna, not megafauna . . . however, on the way home from dinner we encountered Costa Rica's largest amphibian: the giant marine toad (also known as the cane toad).

No Crocs But A Plethora of Sea Slugs

Can I Look At It? No . . .

A few days ago I thought Samara beach was the most beautiful and idyllic spot in the entire world: warm water, a fantastic view, soft sand, a two mile horseshoe shaped black sand beach protected by a coral reef so the waves are groovy for both surfing and swimming . . . but then everyone said we had to drive 7 kilometers south to Playa Carillo because THAT was the most amazing, uncrowded and picturesque beach in Costa Rica-- and they were right; Playa Carrillo is an undeveloped four mile horseshoe with even softer sand, even more palm trees for shade, even nicer water for swimming and barely any people BUT a local guy told us about a super secret beach called Playa Ezquerda, you have to drive a dirt road, hike through the jungle and then descend some dilapidated and dangerous cocrete steps down a cliff-- long ago someone planned on building something here but stopped after making the steps; so we followed the instructions-- Alex almost got run over by a stray horse-- and we made it to the most superb beach and there were only two lovely young locals there, sunbathing in bikinis, and the cliff shaded the beach and the tidepools were full of tropical fish, weird sea stars, sea slugs, and lots of other creatures . . . but I'm not sure where this ends-- perhaps a beach in the spirit of Nigel Tufnel's special guitar that he has never played and won't even let Marti DeBergi look at, a beach so wonderful that you can't even go to it; on this same theme, we've seen some monkeys on this trip, but this morning in the tree across from our window we saw a baby monkey . . . the only thing better than that is two baby monkeys.

Can I Look At It? No . . .

Moonball Fire Ant Justice League

Despite us urging him not to do it, Alex tried to bounce Ian's moonball off the thick palm tree next to the infinity pool, the plan being to bounce it back into the pool, but the shot was near impossible and the ball ricocheted off the big tree and then caromed off a little tree and shot into the jungle; Alex tried to retrieve the ball, but was karmically stung by a horde of fire ants, a deserved and entertaining punishment for his impulsiveness; we also took a lovely boat ride and saw Ridley turtles mating, caught a small, brightly colored dorado fish, and rode next to countless tropical spotted dolphins, most at close range and many breaching . . . but who wants to hear about that stuff?

Moonball Fire Ant Justice League

Glasshouse

If I were a free person in the 27th century cosmic war crime prison of Glasshouse, the Charles Stross sci-fi mindbender I just finished, I'd probably use a T Gate assembler to back myself up, then create a duplicate version of myself, have my duplicate write this sentence while my other self took a stroll on the beach, then merge the two neural nets into one version of me that contained both sets of memories . . . but before any of that, you have to solve Curious Yellow and the polity; a good fast read, as long as you don't get bogged down in the technical jargon; an exponentially advanced and precocious baby of The Matrix and Inception.

Glasshouse

Samara

We made good time on the long and winding road to Samara-- no student protests, luckily, as there were major delays in San Jose and at the airport; the drive around Lake Arenal was beautiful, the road snaked up and down through small villages, including one with a German bakery with delicious stuff full of coconut and honey, and there were windy heights with views of the lake and the surrounding windmills and lots of one way bridges; Alex assumed shotgun/navigator for the second half of the ride and heroically hooked up the AUX cable to my phone so we could listen to music but soon after he directed me onto a back road which led directly into a river and a failed river crossing voids the car insurance-- so though we rented a 4wD Daihatsu Rush, an amazing light stripped down SUV-- I turned it around and took the paved route; a few hours later we made it to paradise . . . our Airbnb condo has an absurd view of the horseshoe shaped Samara beach, the water is warm, the kids took a surf lesson and caught countless waves, we hiked to the tidepools, ate fish and drank beers at the restaurants on the sand, found a Mexican joint that makes incredible beer, etc etc . . . once you get to Samara there's not much to say, it's a safe relatively undeveloped tropical beach town at the edge of the jungle, sheltered by a reef, and the beer is cheap and the surf instructors are excellent . . . my wife says it's the Highland Park of Costa Rica, it's small and very chill and you can walk everwhere but I think it's a little better because the 84 degree ocean water is nicer than the Raritan.

Samara

Monkey Beats Ant

Yesterday we finally saw a monkey, while we were hiking at Mirador el Silencio-- a private nature reserve which I highly recommend because the admission is supercheap and because we saw a spider monkey swinging through the dense jungle, doing all kinds of monkey antics, and then the trail ascends out of the jungle into the cloud forest and finally ends at the 1968 lava field, where it is cold and cloudy-- a real winner of a place and we were the only people there so we had all the trails to ourselves for the three plus hours it took to navigate them; we then got snacks, plantain and yucca chips, and then descended the 500 steps the the La Fortuna Waterfall, an epic tumbling cascade of cold water that plunges straight out of the jungle; we swam in the river below the main falls, in a plethora of pacu, then we ate lunch and headed back to Los Lagos to enjoy the pools; we ran into the supernice one upper again and talked sports, we learned he was Tracy McGrady's point guard in high school and has his contact in his cell phone and then after a bit more one upping he left and we talked to some professional sporting parents from California who were so successful at raising up their giant atletic progeny that they didn't need to one up-- they talked strategy and made us feel like amateurs: their oldest son just got a full golf scholarship to Illinois and got endorsed by Foot Joy and Titleist and they retained their younger son once and were planning on doing it again so he could excel at football; both kids did not attend public school, instead they did sport specific schooling and these parents pursued all sorts of scholarships and funding, pretty wild and way out of our league; then as we were walking back to our cabana, the one upper drove by and yelled some amazing one upmanship info out the window: "I heard Soda La Hormiga, The Ant, has the best food around! Eight dollars a plate! A local guy told me . . ." and he drove off and we actually considered going there but first we needed gas and the station in town ran out so we had to wait in a line out of town and then La Hormiga was closing so we went to another place and it's a good thing because we saw the one upper's wife at breakfast and she said her son got sick from the food and it was lucky we didn't follow her husband's advice and then we sat next to them while we ate and the one upper mapped our route to Samara on his phone for us.

Monkey Beats Ant

1.5 Kilometers is more than 1 kilometer

We went ziplining down the mountain yesterday-- this was the first time for me but my wife and kids did it in the Poconos; however, they said our first "practice" run was much longer than the longest run back home; the lines got longer and longer, one of the was a kilometer, we zoomed over the La Fortuna waterfall and a deep jungle chasm before plunging into the bush . . . a little scary but mainly exhilarating and certainly big fun, we did 12 lines in all and there was lots of hiking through the cloud forest, our guide said he once saw a jaguar while riding one of the lines during the early morning safety check; after lunch at a local joint we returned back to the spring fed pools and water slides and our boys made friends with some kids from Florida; their dad was a friendly very eell traveled businessman and accomplished surfer, he had lots of information about Costa Rica but he was something of a one-upper; his family had gone rappelling down a waterfall in the morning and when we told him we went ziplining he said that the only place to go was around the mountain in Monte Verde because they have a 1.5 km line, which is .5 longer than one kilometer; he also told us where the BEST surfing wave is in Costa Rica, it's near where we are headed but not exactly where we are headed . . . he said the place we are going is good, but not the best, and then -- I'm not making this up-- he told us they were headed out for pizza, and he had made reservations at the best pizza place, Cafe Mediteraneo, and ee told him we had great pizza at Anchio-- which was true, it was better than most pizza in the states-- and he said he heard that was good but not as good as the place they were headed . . . I have to stress he was supernice about all this and I was probably setting him up a bit and he might have amiably one upped a bit more if his son hadn't wiped out on the wet stairs and hit his head and scraped his elbow (I did not mention to him that my kids were running on the stairs with his kid and did NOT fall, because one upping something like that is kind of mean).

1.5 Kilometers is more than 1 kilometer

We went ziplining down the mountain yesterday-- this was the first time for me but my wife and kids did it in the Poconos; however, they said our first "practice" run was much longer than the longest run back home; the lines got longer and longer, one of the was a kilometer, we zoomed over the La Fortuna waterfall and a deep jungle chasm before plunging into the bush . . . a little scary but mainly exhilarating and certainly big fun, we did 12 lines in all and there was lots of hiking through the cloud forest, our guide said he once saw a jaguar while riding one of the lines during the early morning safety check; after lunch at a local joint we returned back to the spring fed pools and water slides and our boys made friends with some kids from Florida; their dad was a friendly very well traveled businessman and accomplished surfer, he had lots of information about Costa Rica but he was something of a one-upper; his family had gone rappelling down a waterfall in the morning and when we told him we went ziplining he said that the only place to go was around the mountain in Monte Verde because they have a 1.5 km line, which is .5 longer than one kilometer; he also told us where the BEST surfing wave is in Costa Rica, it's near where we are headed but not exactly where we are headed . . . he said the place we are going is good, but not the best, and then -- I'm not making this up-- he told us they were headed out for pizza, and he had made reservations at the best pizza place, Cafe Mediteraneo, and ee told him we had great pizza at Anchio-- which was true, it was better than most pizza in the states-- and he said he heard that was good but not as good as the place they were headed . . . I have to stress he was supernice about all this and I was probably setting him up a bit and he might have amiably one upped a bit more if his son hadn't wiped out on the wet stairs and hit his head and scraped his elbow (I did not mention to him that my kids were running on the stairs with his kid and did NOT fall, because one upping something like that is kind of mean).

From Rustic to Resort

Full disclosure: we would have avoided waiting hours in Chilamate for the student protests to dissipate if I wouldn't have been "one hundred percent sure" that the way to Arenal was via Puerto Viejo-- I was a bit turned around in regards to my mental map and did not check Waze-- so by the time we figured out, or I should say my wife and kids figured out, that we were headed the wrong direction it was too late and our route was blocked; but we made it to the Arenal volcano region before dark, the road was smooth, the kids slept, and we stopped at the Iguana Bridge, from which we spotted some iguanas and a colorful Jesus Christ lizard-- they are so bright that when you see them, you exclaim "jesus christ!" And they can also run on top of the water; we experienced some cognitive dissonance when we got to Los Lagos resort, as we had been staying in a ramshackle open air joint that was slowly being engulfed by the rain forest and Los Lagos is an impeccably manicured collection of cabanas climbing Arenal and has several beautiful pools of various temperatures, fed by volcanic hot springs, a bunch of waterslides-- some dangerous and one full of scalding hot water-- a bridge you can jump off, a wet bar in a giant hot pool-- I had a local Costa Rican pale ale called Toro that was delicious and a general upscale family resort vibe; we hiked all around the volcano yesterday, the lesser traveled Peninsula trail down to the lake was particularly excellent, we saw turquoise hummingbirds, Montezuma orondolas, giant magpie jays, the broad billed mot mot, and others we could not identify and then we hiked the main loop to the old lava from 1992 and climbed the the viewpoint where we saw a pitcher plant but could not see the volcano-- apparently , because this is the cloud forest, you rarely see the volcano, though it is looming right above the trail and the resorts; the kids asked a lot of questions and it made me realize I don't have the slightest idea how volcanoes work, this one is still active so you can't get close but I'm not sure if there is lava right inside it or you need a shift in tectonic plates to send some magma out; I will do some research; anyway, after four hours of jungle and lava hiking, we stopped in La Fortuna for a giant meal at the Rainforest Cafe-- a little local joint not to confused with the bigger ersatz Rainforest Bar on the main drag; the food was great and filling, I had the casada lunch plate with tilapia and Alex had the same with steak, casadas are usually around five or six dollars and come with rice, beans and several sides, Catherine had fried plantain chips and guacamole and an empanada and Ian had two empanadas, and the empanadas were huge, three times the size of one at home-- so we have been only eating two meals a day here, both places provided enormous breakfasts with lodging and then we get so stuffed at late lunch that we having been eating dinner; while food isn't dirt cheap here, at the local places it is inexpensive and Imperial beer is always two dollars and we really love the typical meals and no one has had stomach issues-- aside from when I ate a bunch of very spicy pickled peppers from a glass jar-- I will also say that after a long day of hiking, it's really nice to relax in a hot spring fed pool, it's bizarre-- there's a bunch of these resorts on the way to Arenal and they all have infinite hot water; I am also enjoying the AC, but I can't stress how nice the weather is, we haven't worn sunblock yet; also, when Catherine ran out to get our laundry and some coffee, the road was all stopped up so we parked and just above the road, on an exposed branch, was the most active sloth I've ever seen, climbing around, grabbing stuff, all in full view and we finally got a view of the volcano just before dark, the clouds cleared for a moment and the cone was visible, minutes later it was gone, shrouded in gray.

Costa Ricans Back In

I'm tired and there's too much to report today . . . I will do a full summary tomorrow, but you'll be happy to know we discovered the source of the awful stink and it wasn't emanating from my person, it was entrenched in my hat-- so I washed it; also, Costa Ricans always back their cars into parking spots-- perhaps to make quick escapes from lava amd flash floods-- so if you want to look like a local and avoid having someone break into your car, back it in.

Protesta el Jefe

We did our last excursion in the Chilamate region this morning, or so we thought-- we took a hike in the spectacular Tirimbina Wildlife Refuge; first we crossed 264 meter hanging bridge to get to the east side of the Sarapiqui River and then we climbed into the dense forest, I was the only one totally decked out for the jungle, wearing pants tucked into my socks and longsleeves, which was a good idea because of the numerous bullet ants on the trees and the trail, my kids had on shortsleeves and Catherine was wearing Capri pants so they were lucky to avoid being stung; Ian also miraculously spotted the bullet ant's favorite prey, the glass winged butterfly, which was pretty much wearing a cloak of invisibility, aside from a red blotch below its transparent wings; Ian has great eyes and also picked out tiny frogs and other little creatures but Ian's most incredible sighting of the day was a large viper just below the trail-- it was either a fer de lance or a hog nosed viper-- and he also found a smaller one ON the trail nearby, I moved it off the trail with a stick before it sank its teeth into my wife's exposed leg; I will post the video soon enough; the rest of the hike we were surrounded by howler monkeys but saw none, but we did see a pair of Marail guans, which might be relatively rare and then when we headed back to the Eco Retreat to check out, but we ran into a student protest blocking the road so we took a bunch of pothole strewn back roads and circumnavigated it and then when we checked out we ran into the same protest, a vague movement against the new president and we couldn't get to the highway so we ate and it rained spectacularly so we figured the protesters had given up but they didn't and there is no other way to go to get to Arenal so we retreated back to the Eco Retreat and we are stuck here indefinitely, waiting for the protest to end, but it may be a while because apparently it is teachers and students, and the teacher's union-- who have been fomenting strikes and protest quite often-- are not to be trifled with.

Rainy Day in the Rain Forest

Serious rain last night and this morning in Chilamate, which was a good thing for both the jungle and our river rafting trip-- we charged down the Sarapiqui, which was flowing fast due to the downpour; lots of big rapids and we also plummeted over a smallish waterfall; Catherine was the only member of our group to fall out of the raft, I got to play the chivalrous hero and pull her back in; when we stopped for a rest, everyone jumped off a cliff into the river, even the tentative Belgian couple that accompanied us in the raft; I can't stress enough how pleasant the weather is, the humidity isn't as bad as New Jersey and the rain is keeping things cool, at some points on the rafting trip we were even chilly and last night we slept under the sheets (and mosquito netting); on the river we saw lots of birds, by the lodge we found a couple of enormous rhinoceros beetles, and the kids apparently found a red-eyed tree frog in our bedroom while we were at the lodge, they used a towel and Ian's sock to capture it and return it to the rain forest; we then at a huge and delicious meal at Rancho Magallanes: roast chicken, pork loin, fried plantains and black bean dip and Imperial, of course; then Ian and I took a nap and Alex and Catherine got lost in the jungle, I went out looking for them but turned around when it started raining, they had crossed several rickety bridges when my wife realized it might get dark-- it gets dark at 6 pm here because we are close to the equator-- so they jogged it in and my wife grabbed s celebratory beer from the shared fridge . . . it's raining again as I write this and we are relaxing the the airy main area, which is connected by covered walkways to all the rooms and cabins and hostel, the Chilamate Eco Resort is a great place to be when it's raining.