Happy Christmas! Merry New Years! Yeah now I've got that
all out of the way, phew!
Yesterday must have been the least christmas-like Christmas I've ever
spent. I don't remember Christmas in Memphis when I was a kid,
but maybe we always went north to visit family. Even so, it
would have still been cooler than the Carribean beach at Cahuita,
Costa Rica. We headed there after staying in La Fortuna to try
to get a glimpse of the Arenal Volcano. Glimpes we got, but
I wanted some serious lava, man. The red glow on the clouds,
the bright red and some orange sparks around the rim, and a few boulder
coming down the debris field were cool and all, but they did't live
up to the pictures. I think if I ever go back there I will splurge
on either the evening trip out to the viewing area from La Fortuna,
or stay at one of the upscale places that has a better view of the
debris field - however I don't think I'd want to be at one of those
places during a major eruption.
After 2 nights at La Fortuna, we headed for the beach. Cahuita,
in the Limon state on the Carribean side of Costa Rica. Hot.
Humid. Mosquitos. Kind of a nice sea breeze during the
day but it gets still as soon as the sun sets, and it acutally feels
even hotter there after dark. Granted this is the cool season
and it wasn't that bad, but it certainly felt a little different then
the massive powder storms at Kirkwood the last couple Christmases.
So did they get a massive powder storm this year? I'm a little
out of touch, this is the first Internet since La Fortuna. Cahuita
had a couple internet cafes but I heard they were real slow, so I
just hung out at the hotel most of the time reading. Read A
Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill, um, that guy Bill.
The the Rule of Four by a couple of Princeton graduates, can't remember
their names. Have I ever mentioned I'm not good with names?
Today we crossed into Panama on the little known Carribean border.
The road doesn't even show to go all the way through on our maps,
but it does. This was the easiest border crossing yet.
I really fail to see why a border crossing should be any different
than this one. You go through Costa Rican emmigration, they
stamp your passport, you go to the vehicle place and they take your
paper you had to carry, you cross the scary railroad bridge and try
not to go off the planks, but it wouldn't be the end of the world
if you did, and on the Panama side you get your bike washed for a
whole $1, they stamp your passport (free) and then they type up the
usual paper for you to carry, 10 minutes - gratis. After this
finding the correct road was a challenge, for an area that barely
shows a single road going part way through, there really are quite
a lot of different rodes out there. It wasn't long before, ta
da! We found another railroad bridge to cross. This one
was longer. There wasn't a nice panel on the outside to keep
you or your bike from falling through, but had someone fallen they
would have probably got snagged by the framing of the bridge.
Hopefully, because it was kind of far down, and I found out later
the river is full of crocodiles. I'm glad I didn't know about
the crocodiles. This bridge was scary enough to begin with,
the planks aren't particularly well secured. But all went well,
and it was the last railroad bridge. In fact the ride after
this point was really gorgeous. I thought the coastal route
would be all flat coastal banana plantations, but there were lots
of hills with views of the Bocas del Toro Islands, the Carribean and
the central highlands that we would soon be crossing. Everything
was downright verdant. I think that's the word. We crossed
the central highlands and decided to head a little north after so
we could stay in the highlands town of Boquetta (sp?), which
is cooler than the choices down on the Pan American. It's a
nice little town, full of Americans, we met several before we even
checked into our hotel - a family from Oregon and a guy from New Hampshire.
He was pretty surprised to meet other people with a New Hampshire
background down here. Everyone seems to own a piece of land
up in the hills. There's a big volcano nearby, maybe it keeps
the real estate prices down.
The 3 of us are all here at the Internet cafe, I think we're all supposed
to be checking into shipping info for getting to South America.
However I just spent an inordinate amount of time checking through
my email, *someone* signed me up to a list and it took a long time
to read through the emails. Then there was writing the blog,
and I know from past experience if I don't keep up with it I'll just
never get back to it. Okay, so, I gotta go drink another nasty
beer. Or if I'm lucky maybe a better one this time, and we are
heading to Panama City tomorrow, hopefully we will figure things out
in the next day or two. We are currently planning on flying
to Quito, Ecuador but there is some chance that Columbia will be so
much cheaper we will fly there. I've always leaned away from
flying to Columbia, but both Dick and Eric are interested in checking
it out. I guess I'm ok with that as long as we move through
it quickly, and only ride during the hours of day that we've been
told are safe.
Ok, gotta go drink that beer!
Monday December 26, 2005 - 05:54pm (PST) |
