Saturday, December 31, 2005

Is It Possible to Celebrate the New Year Without Beer or Family or Friends??

Well once more i am away from home at a party time of year and i am in the depths of the Amazon Jungle with 500 ugly men and no beer, what can be worse, i could be in india with 500 stinky men. We do have a party arranged and there is going to be a huge barbecue from 8-10pm and then karaoke at 11pm until midnight when we are all supposed to be good people and go to bed for another normal working day in the jungle tomorrow. There has to be more to life than this, there is but it is paid badly. it is the ultimate sacrifice, my life alone and bored for money. well if just has got worse, it has been a gloriously sunny and very warm and humid day all day and just as we are all getting ready for the barbie the goddam heavens have opened and it is beating down only like it can in a tropical rain forest. ah well there is the internet to look at and crappy peruvian tv,

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND WE'LL SEEYA NEXT YEAR.

Caribbean Holiday to Relax Before the Next Peru Trip

Sometimes whatever the plans you have you know it is always going to turn to shit without any trying and this holiday was particularly prone to that phenomenon. The morning we set off we had been shopping the previous night and gotten loads of food and things but when you are trying to shop for food for the coming week and not take a lot with you then it is hard to get what you really fancy so we ended up taking lots of tuna and bread and no bad things as we had hoped for a healthy eating week. So we loaded up all the foody things and my snorkelling things and beach towels and huge beach umbrella. Then Jenny had packed all the little girls things and her own and she had put a load of things on the bed and I could have sworn that she had told me that it was all my clothes for the holiday, I got out the big suitcase and packed all the things on the bed, like beach towels and more towels and things that looked like my swimming trunks and lots and lots of t-shirts. So I was happy, I stuck everything in the boot of the car and we set off with very sunny but fresh weather. It was a fantastic day over the mountains that we have to cross to get to the Caribbean and the mountains are a lush tropical rain forest mix of huge tree ferns and trees that are covered with climbing vines or all types. So as we were coming out of the mountains on the other side I was mentioning something about what underwear Jenny had picked out for me and she gave me a blank stare that could only mean one thing, she had actually packed me nothing for the beach. Nothing other than swimming trunks as it turned out. She told me that since I never let her touch my bags that I take with me when I go away on working trips she had only put out on the bed the swimming trunks that had been sat on the shelves with her swimming costumes. So I was going on holiday without underpants and socks and shirts and anything at all other than what I was sat in driving to the beach. Great start I thought but I could live with swimming trunks in the Caribbean or going commando in my shorts.
This is the end of the rainy season and usually the roads are crap at this time of year as they seem to never do any maintenance over the rainy season and the quality of the construction is appalling. This year was no different the holes in the roads were actually worse than before and they were huge maybe 6 inches deep and sometime were over half the size of the road, maybe 8-10 foot across, not many of them thankfully. The main highway from San Jose to Limon the main Caribbean port was pretty good though easy driving. After Limon it was shocking we had to slow to less than 30 mph to be able to avoid the huge holes and weave, one thing I commented on was this annoying habit the church goers have is painting symbols on the road around religious dates of the year, like Easter and Christmas and we kept seeing this huge yellow square with a large heart inside it and a halo over the top, it was everywhere, like every 200 yards or so it seemed, I was cursing about the goddam catholic church and their crazy painters, we have since found out that it is nothing to do with the church, it is a thing the government have done indicate where a pedestrian had been killed by a car or truck. I was stunned by this as it means there are people being killed all over the place while walking at the side of the road, literally thousands of them, I knew the problem was bad but this is just scary, far too many bad drivers and far too many poor people who have to walk or cycle everywhere and no sidewalks just the road or the ditch, no choice really.We took a little over 3 hours to get to the small tourist town of Cahuita a long beach of about 25 Km and a small coral reef. It has many small cabins and 1 or 2 hotels which are basically for rich American tourists so I stay clear of them. We always got to the quieter cabins and which are more remote with better environments and always much cheaper. We went back to the cabinas we went to the last time we came to this resort and found the owner ever more lazy than last time as he basically doesn’t do anything there anymore even though he lives in the big house in the place.



The only person who was there was the gardener who was not very helpful other than he was saying we could take any room even though we didn’t know the price. We found the same room we had last time but as we only had the small girl with us this time we decided to make a small bed out of towels for her and put her on the floor. I wasn’t sure this was good practice but she can sleep anywhere at any time. We went for a drive up the beach area to check out what other cabins were available just in case he had gotten expensive. We found a place that was on the beach called the Diosa, (Goddess) poorly names as it didn’t look that great and they were charging $120 a night for what they laughingly called a chalet. We walked away with a disgruntled owner looking on, they almost seemed offended. Get used to it buddy, your in dream land thinking that is the going rate. We checked out a new place and found they hadn’t even opened yet and they were rushing to get all the rooms ready for the Christmas period, again typical Costa Rican efficiency. So we gave up that night as we had a room even if we didn’t have the price. That night was surprisingly fresh for the Caribbean and we did have the normal problem of the mosquitoes they were buzzing into our ears and keeping us waving our hands about in the dark trying to kill them all, and at about midnight after we got to sleep the little girl was crying and stood by our bed and the mosquitoes were harassing her mercilessly and sucking the blood right out of her. We ended up all in the same bed, with Jenny pointing the other way as the girl is all arms and legs while asleep keeping everyone awake. So we all got up early next morning and put on our beach gear, well actually I only had swimming trunks and it is nice not to have to wear underpants once in a while. While we were eating breakfast the manager who really was the pool attendant and leaf collector and probably everything else, came and told us the room was $40 a night, which I was happy with, I was happy again and we ate breakfast to the sound of all the tropical birds warbling and screeching and hiding in the trees around the cabin. We went down to the beach and found the waves pounding the black sands and were actually eroding the beach back. I was surprised at the rate as the beach was much bigger a year ago. It was full of trees and debris maybe from some huge rainy season floods that occur every year or even Hurricane Beta that hammered Nicaragua. This year was worst on the Pacific coast and many people were drowned. So we were able to sit alone on the beach as you can see from the pictures, and enjoy the peace and tranquillity as nearly always on these beaches.




It is a very peaceful place only a few hardy tourists come this far and it is not very touristy as there is only a few bars and maybe two clubs and a couple of restaurants. All very average so we eat in the cabin all the time. We would have gone to the clubs if we hadn’t had the little girl with us. So we just took my Laptop and watched the movies I had copied onto my external hard drive. We did see a new guy arrive that first evening and he was Italian , same as the owner and probably a friend from back home, we went to bed with the little girl under a mosquito net this time and I didn’t seem to have many bites this time so we didn’t bother with anything else and I think repellent doesn’t work anyway. At about midnight we were awoken by some horrendous loud rock type music in our cabin group and found the new Italian playing racist German heavy metal while engaging in what can only be described as entertaining the local nightlife on his veranda, she was a young girl about 20 with dreadlocks and very tight jeans over her huge ass. I found it funny that he would be doing this while playing the racist rock. It didn’t last long and we went back to sleep to the sound of the buzzing mosquitoes and of the jungle buzzing and clicking in our ears and wondering what the next day will bring in this poverty stricken paradise.

Friday, December 30, 2005

And I Was Blaming the Catholics

In all the time I have been driving around Costa Rica I have always found it crazy that the local churches encourage people to paint symbols on the road at religious times of the year, so we get two fishes at around Easter, and it is all over the place and I curse them for doing it as I find it very distracting and pretty pointless. So this last couple of months I have been cursing the churches for adding a new and very large road painting, it is a heart and a halo in a yellow box and we were finding them all over the place, it seemed like they were every 200 yards. So when we went to the beach we were laughing at the huge number of them all over the place and it seemed odd that they were evenly spaced not clustered around the churches as normal. Anyway it wasn’t until my wife got a parking ticket back in San Jose a week later that there was an explanation on the back of the ticket, the government is painting the road where folks get run over and killed, and so all those yellow symbols are for the dead. So I shouldn’t have been cursing, perhaps only the bad drivers and drunk drivers and stupid jay walkers.



This one managed to conveniently die outside the local hospital, no need for an ambulance they probably wheeled him in on a trolley

Thursday, December 29, 2005

The Biggest Most Stupid Looking Cell Phone Ever

I can only that i was feeling pretty silly in the airport holding my laptop up to my ear like a goddam humungous cell phone and i hope i dont end up in that situation again. I had found that San Jose Airport has a free hotspot for wireless connectivity and i was taking advantage of it and doing some last minute E-mail and i have Skype set up as a startup feature and just as i was logging on i got a call from a work buddy who i was with in Equatorial Guinea and i wasnt about to cut him off, so there i am sat in the departure lounge shouting loudly for him to hear me and holding the laptop up to my ear so i could here him, it must have looked hilarious and everyone for 30 yards around me could hear what i was saying and i felt so silly but that only lasted for a few minute until i got over it, it was great to speak to him and here that he is getting a nice little job in Bilboa , northern spain and that his house buy had falllen through in Barcelona, so goddam expensive. anyhow i will get myself some nice headphones one day to stop me looking like a total nerd.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Trying to Get Back to Normal Life

I was home for one day only and then had to fly to Florence in Italy, just letting you know if you didnt know where Florence was, It was supposed to be a meeting with my project manager and i wasnt sure what it was meant to be about, i had a bad feeling that it was purely for meeting and greeting all the guys in the office, now this is exactly what i did 5 months ago and to be honest flying trans-atlantic is that fun after 4 weeks away from home and missing all my normal things in life so i feeling a little pissed off even before i got on the plane. They left the booking of the flight very late and could only get me into business so that was a nice consolation, i slept like crap as always and got into Florence pretty late but at least the raind had stopped and it was cool but not freezing like Paris, so i went to the office and met my project manager and all we did was take the tour of the offices and meet everyone, exactly as i thought, i got back to my regular office and saw everyone including my direct manager, i was then asked if i would like to join everyone for a meal that night to celebrate the ending of a two week training course for 6 guys, i agreed of course and i met 2 of the guys who are still working in that wonderful country of Equatorial Guinea, Malabo being the previous project i had been on, so we went out and ate a lot and drank alot and actually had a great night, i was then invited to the nightclubs and more beer but i was so jetlagged i couldnt handle it and went to bed, i slept like a drunken lord for 10.5 hours and i felt fantastic , i managed to complete all my expenses and timesheets and then went for another whole day of meeting and greeting everyone, as long as they hadnt gone on strike that day which was pretty funny, and went out for another night of wine and delightful nice food and i couldnt sleep long as i had to be at the airport for 5.30am, i hate early flights but i did want to be home that day, i was almost bumped from the flight as they had a stupid comment on the monitor saying all normal visa procedures had been stopped and than i missed my connection in Paris and i did make my connection finally to Costa Rica, so i got home 5 days later and felt like crap, it took me 5 more days to get over the crappy jet lag, i spent my time planning my holiday to the beach on the Caribbean, life is too short to spend it all in those goddam cigar tubes watching crap films and eating rubber food, i need more holidays and worst of all , i found out i am not going to Trinidad at all as it has the worng sort of control system, which means i am going to work in some shit hole in some shitty country who has no respect for life, lets hope it is not as bad at Libya or Iran, Iraq i woud quit.