Nothing quite compares to spending a few hours on the blazing hot roof, laying asphalt matting, to prevent water from seeping into the concrete walls that were designed by someone who should have %&!@ng known better than to build flat, unsealed concrete surfaces in a place that gets 18 feet(6m) of rain every year.

The roof itself was 148 degrees. Felt even hotter.	at least the views are nice!	You gotta love the puppy-dog art that the cracks had created
even the cool ocean breeze was a mixed-blessing	Who says roof workers aren't sexy?	pounding the asphalt with tar- wrist numbing fun
Only 114 on the wall itself	People start getting a little punchy after a few hours of this	That should keep the seepage at bay... next step: new scuppers! stay tuned!

Labels: house, photo, tamarindo, weather

Holy Late posting, Batman! If I don't get this wrapped up in the next few days, I'm about to get lapped by a whole year of procrastination! Yikes!
In case you haven't been sitting on the edge of your seat awaiting this installment in the saga you go back to the all the Moab trip posts or each installment: Day 1-3, Day 4, Day 5.

We started the day in Bryce Canyon, UT at a huge hotel where we zonked out the night before after a very long afternoon of trying to nurse along an automatic transmission that didn't want to go. You can also go see this story with fewer pictures per page.

woke up to see a teepee (tipi? teapea? TP?) across the pond	Ducks, too. You just never know what to expect in exotic Bryce Canyon.	Always sad to see a Cruiser on a towtruck. But better than seeing it drive 12mph for 4 hours. The truck and our travel buddies rolled off towards an auto transmission shop that came highly recommended by a friend in California. Soop and I pointed in that general direction, but figured we had many hours to kill exploring.	First step: drive through hole in rock.
I could post dozen of pretty shots with interesting rocks in them. I probably will. These are "hoodoos" and the stuff for which Bryce Canyon is famous.	The park itself is on my list of future places to visit, but they don't allow dogs, so it wasn't such a good idea for us on this trip.	This may look like your average, shot up road sign...	...but in fact, it is a shot-up road sign that limits access to a road that doesn't exist. Not the weirdest thing we would see today.
Old School Camper!	We climbed up into the mountains again, headed towards Cedar Breaks, which is purported to be lovely.	Turned off on a random fire road, trying to make the drive take longer, and see some sights. Great fire roads!	"the fence...protect from livestock..." Might work better if it were a little less.... broken.
Along the way, we stumbled onto this nifty spot. Big underground cave. Very big.	The entrance is basically a hole in the ground- lava formations- bats- good stuff.	Look! I'm in a cave! In Utah!	Colman was a little reluctant... so we left him at the surface, probably better for the cave denizens anyway.
Cave interior. I'll bet it is a lot of fun to go spelunking here, but that wasn't on our agenda for the day.	... and the batty areas are blocked off so that folks like us don't disturb their hibernation, which can be lethal as they could lose precious heat/energy that they need to make it till spring.	The mountains here are much different than those we were seeing just a few hours before. And the fire from 20 years ago had really left its mark on them.	Another entrance (exit?) for the same cave, some distance away from the first one.

But wait! There's more!

Antelope. They were pretty frequent along the road. Driving at night around here must be a little dodgy.	Crazy lava flow in the middle of nothing. We never did find out what the story is behind these... they seem to just be a big seam of lava rock that stretches a few miles from one non-descript point to another non-descript point.	Adding a Steve for scale	More lava flow (floe?)
Up up up goes the random road we chose.	Another change in trees.	Hmmm.... Ya think the road isn't open just yet? Bummer. No Cedar Breaks for us. :( We debated pushing through, it wasn't far to where we wanted to go, but we didn't have a winch, no snow clothes, didn't expect anyone else to come by, and didn't want to spend several hours shoveling ourselves out of being stuck. Discretion won the day.	So instead we stopped on the highway and had lunch. I'll bet that when the road is open, this isn't nearly as peaceful a place to eat.
Since we were killing time anyway, we made delicious fried sausage sandwinches and soaked up the view.	What a view!		Summit, Brian's Head in the background (which is probably more interesting when you are traveling with someone named Brian) Starkly beautiful.
Nice looking little town of Parowan, UT	Not hard to find churches in Utah, some are impressive.	We finally arrived at the Transmission Wizard- I've since forgotten his name, but the guy was great. He got Seth and Annette's truck running better than ever (a few tweaks) in just a few hours. Apparently we had the good luck to get a guy who had spent years perfecting the art or repairing this particular transmission.	Not every car gets in and out of there in just a few hours, apparently.
Considering the drug problem in this part of the world, we think they might consider changing the name of the place.	The old train station (mission?) in Caliente. I think Nevada, by now. Cool old building.	Gratuitous self potrait	Not much else to photograph out on highway 375

...and a few more...

Uhm, "How much fuel de we have?" "I'm sure that there is a gas station... somewhere"	You've seen these mountains before, in movies about barren places.	"So this is it? The actual *middle* of nowhere?"	Nowhere to the left
More nowhere that way too.	But there must be water, somewhere. Read the sign. I'm guessing this isn't such a fresh-smelling place on a hot day.	Impressive.	Yet another type of rocky rock
And then we found Rachel, Nevada. Probably the weirdest place I've ever been. But they had some gas, and they had cold beer, and the people were really friendly.	Yup. Rachel.	As it was getting late, and the "whole town" was sold out of rooms due to a bike ride, we pushed onward.	The bar. Rachel, NV. Not an outpost of liberal thinking.
Rachel's bar	What alien town bar would be complete without a mind-scan protector?	Happy travelers: Soop, Steve, Annette, Seth	They filmed part of ID4 here, apparently.
Rachel. I'll never forget you.	The Lisa Loeb look-alike bartender told us about some hot springs nearby where we could camp, but to be careful, because the owner was a real jerk and got mad at people for camping there... we checked it out...	...but decided to move along as it gave us a distinct "beginning of a bad story" vibe. After driving too far, we ended up in Tonopah, NV: the stargazing capital. Also a big stinky casino. But it was a warm place to rest and it had been a very long day.	The "view" from our room at the Ramada in Tonopah.

Labels: 4wd, 4x4, day trip, expedition, food, fuel, land cruiser, moab, nevada, travel, utah

A couple of weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised when someone popped into the office, introduced himself, and said "I found your site online, really enjoyed it." We chatted for a bit, and he invited me to go fishing the next morning.


We had a blast! We stayed inshore, mostly cruising around the Flamingo Bay. The fishing was decent, we hooked and landed several fish, each. The culinary highlight for me was eating some Spanish Mackeral, sashimi style, shortly after landing it. I was glad I had remembered to bring some soy and wasabi, as that really makes the sashimi experience just that much more fun.

I took a large-ish fish home under the impression it was an Amber Jack. While cleaning it I dropped a sharp knife on my toe (ouch!), don't drop knives on your toes, it hurts and your wife will call you a big baby when you get a little upset over getting blood everywhere (your big toe will bleed quite a bit when you drop a knife on it, I've learned).

Despite the wounded toe (a little super glue got it sealed right up), I was proud to present my fish to Brian and Carrie, who had invited us for dinner. Brian sadly informed me that my "Amber Jack" wasn't an Amber jack at all. As it turns out, it was a Jack Kravali, which isn't very good eating, good thing that they had a chicken on the grill already!

On the plus side, we enjoyed a little bit of "tuna mackeral" fillet that I also brought home, as sashimi.

Never one to accept defeat easily, the next evening I bbq'ed the Jack Kravali and made fish tacos which were decent, certainly not gourmet. The dog got some of the remaining fish, and we ate a little as tuna-fish salad: again, not gourmet, but certainly edible. Waste not, want not, after all.

Labels: day trip, food, tamarindo

I've been reading a wonderfully researched and entertaining book on Los Angeles history, written during the 1940s called "Southern California, An Island On the Land". I have a tendency to make exclamatory noises while reading this book like, "Huh!", "No way", "Wow". I do this whether anyone else is around or not, but if Steve is around, he'll often ask (and just as often not) for me to tell him what's so interesting.

That's probably an overstatement. I pretty muchly force my little factoids and quotes on his helplessly open ears. But, he obviously appreciates it some of the time, as he asked me to share some of these quotes with you all. They will be interesting to anyone who has lived in Tamarindo, and especially so to those of you who have been here for several years and watched a bit of its evolution. I think it's endlessly entertaining to compare the two developing places, then and now.

From "Southern California, An Island On the Land" by Carey McWilliams, copyright 1946:

"As a result of the boom-cycle phenomenon, the old and the new exist in curious juxtaposition throughout Southern California. Communities that have grown as rapidly as Los Angeles develop what Richard Neutra has called "an obsolescence praecox." Each wave of migration has brought modes of living and patterns of design that have been superimposed upon, or placed side by side with, the monuments of earlier migrations. There has been neither time nor inclination to remove the old."

And also quoted in McWilliams' book, a quote from "A Place in the Sun" by Frank Fenton:
"Los Angeles was not like some Middle-Western city that sinks its roots into some strategic area of earth and goes to work there. This was a lovely makeshift city. Even the trees and plants did not belong here. They came, like the people, from far places, some familiar, some exotic, all wanderers of one sort or another seeking peace or fortune or the last frontier, or a thousand dreams of escape."

Photo Credits:
Top Photo: Aerial view of California hills near Los Angeles, 1940, by David E. Scherman for Life Magazine
Bottom Photo: Arial view of El Toro, California, 1940, Taken from www.airfields-freeman.com

Try to make it a better place. It's the only planet we've got.

We aren't experiencing much of this around here, but I've always enjoyed this poem, so thought I'd share.

I lifted it from Rice University's website.

A Hillside Thaw

To think to know the country and not know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them made them run.
But if I thought to stop the wet stampede,
And caught one silver lizard by the tail,
And put my foot on one without avail,
And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed
In front of twenty others' wriggling speed, --
In the confusion of them all aglitter,
And birds that joined in the excited fun,
By doubling and redoubling song and twitter,
I have no doubt I'd end by holding none.

It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizard
By all I tell; but so's the moon a witch.
From the high west she makes a gentle cast
And suddenly, without a jerk or twitch,
She has her spell on every single lizard.
I fancied when I looked at six o'clock
The swarm still ran and scuttled just as fast.
The moon was waiting for her chill effect.
I looked at nine: the swarm was turned to rock
In every lifelike posture of the swarm,
Transfixed on mountain slopes almost erect.
Across each other and side by side they lay.
The spell that so could hold them as they were
Was wrought through trees without a breath of storm
To make a leaf, if there had been one, stir.
It was the moon's: she held them until day,
One lizard at the end of every ray.
The thought of my attempting such a stay!

-- Robert Frost

Labels: weather

Oatmeal cookie dough makes a delicious pre-breakfast treat (with coffee).

Just a reminder from your Costa Rica-based not-so-very-healthy-start-your-day service.

Labels: food

It rained. Not *hard* by local standards, but a decent little half-hour of rain. Enough to remind us of all the "we better get it done before rainy season" chores that we haven't gotten done.

So there you go: April 13, 2009

Seems early for our first rain. But I'll bet that if I wrote it down last year it is probably not too much later. Anyone who feels like hunting around on the site- do feel free to comment re: the first rain of 2008. I'm too tired right now.

Labels: Costa Rica, tamarindo, weather

Not only a travelogue... but a forum, and other goodies.
SouthBound Travels is a good read.

I'd like to think that if we had started out on the road in 2009 instead of 1999, we would have been web-savvy and motivated enough to make a site that is this cool.

Maybe.

Not to imply that Carl, Robert, Ben and Kyle are new to the game. They've been road tripping since at least 2000.

Just sayin... um... I like the site! Wish I had found one just like it 10 years ago.

Labels: 4wd, 4x4, Costa Rica, day trip, expedition, travel

So the Dean of Green just answered my question on the radio!

I don't want to steal his thunder, but the short version: I should use pots for my tomatoes... keep the diseases away. So that's on the list!

Labels: garden

Haven't chomped into one yet... but we've got some tomatoes on the vine that are juuust about ready for us. We are very excited.

And speaking of tomatoes: We are big fans of the podcast "The Dean of Green" on WGLT-FM. A few weeks back I sent in a question about growing tomatoes here in Costa Rica... and did they choose my question? Oh yes they did! I'm excited that we should hear an answer on Friday, April 10th.

This isn't big news, probably, to anyone but our garden... but you've got to embrace the little victories, no?

Labels: food, garden, tamarindo

Last weekend, we had a lovely time. We worked almost all day Saturday in the yard, swam, made dinner, then for Earth Hour- the international energy saving effort- we were supposed to turn the lights out from 8:30pm to 9:30pm, so we did. Flipped off the main switch to the house and we lit a candle to finish up dishes, which was actually really nice and relaxing, so much so, we fell asleep in the guest room and stayed there all night, enjoying a fresh breeze through the screen door.

We got up early on Sunday, puttered around the house until about 10 a.m., then packed up some drinks and went mango picking! Steve had found these trees out on a defunct farm where the trees are all on the public road (fruit on that side is public property!) and we picked two buckets full, probably about 80 mangoes. I thought up all sorts of recipes, though we seem to be plowing through the mangoes raw just fine. We fed a bunch to a cow who was hanging out in the neighboring field, which was really fun. After our two buckets and me picking mangoes right through the sunroof, we decided we could head home, and on the way we made a few detours.

We stopped to look at some chopped wood from a fallen, then chain-sawed tree on someone's farm. We were only checking out the wood in the road, again not wanting to steal anything. Then we stopped to let Caly play in a stream that we have to cross to get back home and next, we stopped to look at a dead cow we'd seen on the way out. I want a cow skull and she looked like she'd been out there a while. She had, she was all skin and bones, but she had no horns and she still had lots of skin, so we left her be.

Feeling very proud of our Sunday full of not much but play, we came home, swam in the pool, put on some jazz, made fried chicken and potato salad and had dinner on the patio. No reason to stop playing... we reasoned. So, we listened to more music, enjoyed a beverage or two, and hung outside until it was mostly dark, then reluctantly came inside and watched a movie. It was almost like being on vacation, only with the pleasures of not spending anything and sleeping in our own bed!

Picking mangoes!	It doesn't get much easier than standing up through the sunroof to pluck ripe fruit right off of the tree!	"Rebecca" the cow. Another big fan of mangoes.
Moo!	Gotta love the attention to detail displayed in this home. Level? Plumb? Why?	Typical pasture in Guanacaste with tropical hardwoods.
More bucolic beauty.	"Mango Avenue"	More Gte. farmland.
A real gem: guys pulling horses from a slow-moving truck. On the newly paved highway. You can lead a hick to pavement, but don't expect him to change his backwater ways all at once.	Just another fabulous Costa Rican sunset.	More setting, more sun, more silhouette.
Mango trees, shadows, dirt roads.	Hungry guy, pool, pretty flowers.	Wildflower surviving despite no rain for 3 or 4 months.

Labels: Costa Rica, day trip, dog, food, photo, tamarindo

This weekend, we mostly rested on Saturday. Steve spent a hard hour and a half on the 100+ degree roof, but wisely left it for Sunday morning. We did a bit of yard work and I cleaned house like a mad woman (think floorboards and corners), then Steve cooked us dinner and we watched "Three Days of the Condor", a New York Time's top-100-of-all-time rated movies. It's with Faye Dunnaway and Robert Redford and is definitely one of the best movies we've seen in years. Today, we got up early, Steve headed back up to the roof and we girls (me and Calypso) headed off to Langosta for some swimming (both of us) stick chasing (just Caly today) beach-glass hunting (just me) and general early-morning beach loveliness. After I got home, I spent some more time cleaning, we made a trip to the store for soap and limes, then we had the bright idea to work in the back yard (similar to a pizza oven in temperature) at the hottest part of the day. We made some progress on moving the compost pile and now we are convalescing inside in the cool living room with wine spritzers and bossa nova on the stereo.

Labels: tamarindo, weather

Jocelyn has taken to making wine spritzers these days, and somewhere along the way I tried a sweet vermouth and soda. Delicious. Light. Strong flavor but not so much alcohol.

The recipe couldn't be simpler: in a collins glass full of cracked ice, pour 3 ounces of Sweet Vermouth (Martini & Rossi Rosso, for example), then fill with soda and squeeze a wedge of lime on it. You could garnish it up with a cherry and a lime/lemon slice if you want to make it pretty.

The bitter herbal flavor really comes through. If you prefer sweet tall drinks, you could mix 7up or Ginger Ale instead. I don't much care for sweet.

This isn't probably a good choice if you're looking to catch much of a buzz- vermouth is 16% alcohol, 3 oz of the stuff has about 25% lower alcohol content than a short-pour of rum/vodka/whisky.

Labels: food, sunset