The Vacation from Hell to Heaven and Back incuding Macaws

My first day at trying to get away on holiday was pretty hopeless, my sister in law had rang us and wanted a lift back to her home town which was pretty close to where we were heading. The problem was that the old lady who we get to look after the kids just never arrived until it was nearly dark and the roads in Costa Rica over the mountains are a pretty hazardous place. They are very twisty and full of heavy overloaded trucks and crazy locals intent on trying to die in a nasty crash and taking as many others with them. Speed is the big problem, they just want to die in a fireball as they fly off a mountain side at 100mph. So we set off late and the traffic was bad and it was raining and as it is the rainy season the roads deteriorate badly so you’re for ever manoeuvring around huge holes in the road. So 3 hours of this nerve wracking driving I hit a hole that could have hidden a VW beetle, it burst the tyre and buckled the wheel, it was dark and luckily I was only 100 yards from a side road that had a light, I pulled over and as I was taking the wheel off there was a very strong odour of cow shit in the air and realised that the side road lead to a farm and the cows must have been up and down and the place was inches deep in it, my hands got covered in shite and I was wearing my normal clothes which got splattered with the offending material, I wasn’t happy, I managed to whisper my complaints about the silly old women getting late to the house, hopefully Jenny doesn’t pay any attention to my muttering said in anger. We continued and had to go very slow to avoid some even more huge holes and at some places the road completely fell apart and was just broken totally and very dangerous. This happens every year they make very poor quality roads, just an inch of asphalt on top of dirt. The trucks just kill the roads. We pulled over in a roadside café and I managed to wash my hands of the shite and we ate some very nice barbecued chicken, it made me feel a little happier, the sister in law left us there as the bus which went to her town pulled in to the same café, so we went on to our cabin in the town of Palmar Sur, it was as quiet as I was hoping and our cabin was as rustic as I remembered and unfortunately the shower was broken so no hot water to shower with but as the air temp was about 80, a cold shower was quite refreshing in the morning. I awoke in the morning with a strange sensation all over my shoulders and found I had been eaten alive by mosquitos, I had about 50 bites dotting my more irritable spots. This is one thing you do have to be careful of on both coasts, I also have a fond disregard for repellent as I think it doesn’t work. But I seem to be very sensitive to a tiny bite and Jenny doesn’t ever show any marks at all. We went for a walk around the town after breakfast and saw to my amazement two scarlet macaws sat in a tree eating some fruits by the bank.

Not only are they huge they are just an unbelievable colour. We drove into the neighbourhood where we were hoping to find a house or plot for sale but we found only very run down houses, probably 50 years old all wooden and in very poor condition. There was one plot for sale but it bordered a canal and it was only 10 feet above sea level and after hurricane Katrina I am not interested in that. We looked all over but the town is so small and the housing market is tiny and very few houses for sale, we felt totally deflated, so that night we went out and got drunk. The next day Jenny had an appointment with the Dole pineapple plantation people as she wanted to carry out some reseach in forest fragmentation involving their network of farms, but they showed her some forests they have planted and then kindlt smiled and showed her the door and said “not interested”, she was devastated as she had planned her whole thesis around it, we sat in the car and wondered what could happen next to our trip, the next episode tomorrow.