For Orchid enthusiasts out there, this may not be impressive. Apparently these are very easy to grow, so I take no particular credit for having gotten them to bloom, but hey are darn pretty and I'm happy to see that they are happy, so I figured I may as well share. Also interesting: there are some ants that have been hanging out on the closed buds for the last few days. At first I worried that they might attack/eat/maim the blossom, but it seems that they aren't doing anything of the sort. They might be stealing nectar, which is fine with me, I suppose. Another theory is that perhaps they are "milking" aphids for a sugary substance that aphids produce. The thing is, I don't see any aphids, and aphids usually don't hang out on flowers, but rather on the sepals or stems of plants. So I'm at a loss. If you know more than I do about ants and orchids, please do enlighten us.

As a side note: if you like gardening, Costa Rica is your kind of place. A little bit of work, a little bit of attention, and POW! stuff grows gangbusters. It is even easier as you work your way up in elevation a little bit as the dry season is less dry, the wet is less wet, and the temperatures are more constantly in the high 70s. IF you are lucky (I consider us lucky) you might even have a little iguana decide to take up residence in your compost pile. I imagine that if (s)he is capable of complex thoughts, (s)he thinks of it more like "If you are lucky, you'll have a human come dump snacks on your sun-mound every day or two". Either way, so far we both seem to be enjoying the relationship.

Of course, there is no surf up in them thar hills, which has been a deal-killer for me, so far.
Speaking of surf, the minimal rain the last two days has allowed the bays to clean out some and I had a great session this morning. Only four of us in the water, nice sets of just slightly overhead.

A little sunshine in the swimming pool makes any day a little bit better.

Labels: garden, photo, surf, weather

If you, like me, tinker with your vehicle, sooner or later you are probably going to install something electrical and you may find that you want to make sure that the wiring work that you do is of high enough quality to not burst into flames.

First: use fuses! And remember, fuses are there to protect wires, not to protect the stuff at the end of the wires. So size the fuse according to the max current of the wire in question. Or rather, use a fuse that is slightly less amperage than the wire can handle.

Second: Use wire capable of carrying the current that you need for the gizmo on the other end. Remember that if you are using the car chassis or body for your ground, you've still got to figure the distance from the battery. A good rule of thumb is to measure the distance of your + wire, then double it.

Third: use this chart to help figure the correct wire size.

Mostly I posted this wiring information so that later, when I want to find the wiring chart again, I can search my own site for 12V WIRE CAPACITY and hopefully find this link again. But I hope that it is helpful to someone else as well.

Labels: landcruiser

The rains have finally paused. Not stopped, I'm sure. It rained cats n dogs last night, for example, but most of yesterday was flawlessly beautiful (though a tad warm from the humidity) and today is looking equally lovely so far. With a little luck, things can dry out some- the house and cars and dog are all taking on a musty smell, so some breeze and sunshine are much appreciated.

The rain with occasional little bits of sun seems much appreciated by one of our aloe plants as well, it is blooming with what promises to be a really pretty flower.

Back to cars: I'm excited to report that I've finally fixed one of the things that bugged me the most about my 80 series Landcruiser. The "gas" pedal has always had a very stiff and unresponsive feel to it. You've got to really push it to get any sort of get up and go out of the Cruiser. Well, I've got real doubts about the way that the injection pump is tuned, I suspect that the installers of the diesel did a "good enough" job instead of making sure that all of the cool bells n whistles work correctly. So while looking online for some info on how to adjust a particular feature (the Auto Cold Start Device, ACSD), I noticed that there is a spring attached to my IP that isn't stock. It looks almost stock. So I removed the spring and noticed... "Hey, this armature works much better now." Sure enough- the spring was pulling on the AC idle-up arm and due to leverage and friction, that meant an awful lot of extra work from in the driver's seat. The truck feels like a new animal. I've got to relearn to drive it as now I'm burning rubber every time I accelerate. I love it.

I've still got the 2nd most-annoying feature of the truck to contend with-- the windows have really bad hard-water stains on the outside. I've tried a variety of cleansers, yesterday I even tried a little muriatic acid. No good. Still has water spots. I think that the next step is to soak some paper towel in muriatic acid and let it sit there for a while. All window-cleaning tips are welcome at this point.

Labels: garden, landcruiser, tamarindo, weather

This is good little widget, fun for travel-nuts and armchair travelers alike.
I was actually surprised to see that I had only visited 12% (as of this writing) of the world. I guess it means I need to get hopping!

Labels: travel

I was recently reminded of something that everyone traveling to Costa Rica *shouldn't* do. Don't use traveler's checks here. Local businesses hate them. Banks hate them. If you try to exchange them, you'll probably learn to hate them as well. Typically, in order to convert a traveler's check into cash, you'll sit at the bank for about an hour (sometimes two or three) then you'll speak to a non-english-speaking bank clerk who will slowly and reluctantly take your check and give you colones. Typically, they'll refuse to accept more than $100 or $200 in checks at any given time. And you better bring your passport (not a photocopy) or you'll be out of luck. Woe is you if your signature on the passport deviates in any way from the ones on the check. You'll also be out of luck if you've signed the 2nd line on the traveler's check prior to showing it, unsigned, to the bank teller. It is a slow and trying process that you will prefer to avoid, I promise.

Just about anywhere you find yourself in Costa Rica, you are probably less than 15 minutes from an ATM.

My recommendation is that you carry at least one ATM card (two is better) and a credit card (Mastercard/Visa is more widely accepted than Amex). Pull out around $100-$200 in local currency (colones) when you get here. When you go to use the ATM, even if you are using an ATM card from the States, be sure to hit the Credit Card button on the ATM as that is how it is going to process the transaction. Don't miss your pin, the machine *will* eat your card. It can take 2 or 3 hours to get it back.

Also carry five or ten $20 bills with you as just about everyone takes US dollars as well.

Carry some money loose in your pocket vs. keeping it all in your wallet, that way when you have to pay for something, you aren't pulling out the entire shooting match for everyone to see.

But don't bring traveler's checks.

Labels: Costa Rica, travel

There are good ways and bad ways to start the day.
To be roused from slumber by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee being delivered by your beautiful wife: Good way to start the day.

Bolting up from your pillow to the sound of a loud crash/thud from downstairs: Not so good.
Walking downstairs to see a pile of moldy, sodden drywall at the foot of the stairs, and a gaping hole in the ceiling with water steadily emptying from it: Bad. Trust me on this one.

The only thing that made it not-quite-awful was that it was not-quite-surprising. Last week we noticed a pretty serious drip coming from the ceiling. Since then we've been waiting for a break in the deluge to get outside, on the roof, to figure out from where the darn leak is coming. But the rain has been nothing if not persistent. The odd thing is that the roof that fell in is on the 1st floor. There isn't any roof directly above it at all. Which is somewhat worrisome as it makes us think that the water is getting in on the 2nd floor, then seeping between the concrete wall and the stucco, to arrive at the first floor. Somewhere down the line we can look forward to either more damage or some mold issues. Yippee.

But all this rain seems to have an upside as well! A few months back we saved some plumeria that someone else had thrown away by the side of the road. With all this fresh water, the clippings seem to have rooted very well and one has already blossomed! There is another plant that is trying to bloom as well. I guess that this is part of the the old "silver lining" for which we should be on the lookout.

Labels: garden, tamarindo, weather

You may have noticed that we've added some ads and such to Sandcruiser (so far: Amazon and Google ads). We have mixed feelings about this move as on the one hand we've always tried to keep things ad-free, on the other hand we dispense a lot of information, some of it relevant and/or interesting and wouldn't mind having the site pay for itself.

If the ads bother you, you can eliminate them very easily. There is probably a way to do this in Opera, Safari, IE and whatever other browser you may choose, but I know how to do it in Firefox, so that is the info I'm going to provide. If others care to offer comments on the other browsers, I'll be sure to include them.

In Firefox there is a neat feature called "Add-ons". Essentially, you can add functions to the program by adding in little sub-programs. You do this by going to [Tools] and selecting [Add-ons].

On the resulting menu, click on the little window near the top with the magnifying glass and type "Ad block" then click the magnifying glass. It should find Ad Block Plus. Click that. Follow the directions to install it. You may have to restart Firefox at some point.

Once you've done that, go back to [Tools], [Add-ons], [Extensions] to see that you indeed have adblock installed.

Then direct your browser to Sandcruiser and check it out... it should look exactly the same as it did before :)

Hover over the part of Sandcruiser you don't want to see ever again. Hopefully that is the ads and not the content/photos/real estate info/jewelry info/etc.
Hover over, and RIGHT click on about the center of the advertisement. Then select "Adblock iFrame". It should pop up a window that says "Add new Filter" and there should be a long bit of html in the window. You can click OK and it should block that ad... but you may want to be a little smarter than that and instead edit the content there. On our site, for example, the amazon ad starts out with "http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=stevebroylesc-20" and goes on and on. Well, if you want to stop all the amazon ads on our site, just insert a * after the stuff above. Or cut n paste the following http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=stevebroylesc-20* into your window. Then click ok.

That should effectively block all amazon ads from your browser!!

You can do the same for the google ads on our site and any other site. You may have to tinker a little, but once you get it figured out, you'll be blocking ads on sites all over the place. I block the heck out of them!

On the other hand, if you don't mind the ads, go ahead and take a look at 'em. Click 'em even. Every time you do we run the chance of making a little money with which to keep this site running. Who knows? Maybe some day we'll make enough that we can quit our day jobs and start traveling full time again. But that seems darn unlikely!

Labels: blog

Another crazy couple is traveling. Like us, they are making it up as they go along. Unlike us, they are doing it by catamaran, and aiming for around the world. The site is a good irreverent read, I strongly recommend it.

They are somewhere near Tahiti right now.

Labels: expedition, sailing, travel

As of now, there are 14 major rivers in Guanacaste that have flooded their banks. That's an awful lot of rivers for a province that is only 10,140 km2 (3,915 square miles- about half the size of the San Francisco Bay Area).

Spanish speakers can read more at La Nacion. But the short version is: Gustav soaked us down, Hanna is overwhelming us a little. We should be thankful we aren't suffering the way that they are in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, etc... but we sure are getting a lot of rain!

Labels: news, weather