Life as a Tourist living in Costa Rica

I have been effectively living in Costa Rica for 5 years nearly and i have been coming as a tourist as getting the paperwork completed for residency is a nightmare. My application has been in the ministry for 2 years now and there is no indication as to when it is going to be completed. So i have to carry with me a copy of my passport showing the entry date, I have 90 days entry here. So occasionally when i go through the regular police check points, they have them along the toursit routes to stop people smuggling wildlife and animals in their cars and trucks, also trying to stop drugs being shipped to San Jose, doesnt stop anything actually. So when i hand over my pink driving licence from the UK they really have a long look at it, plus the card is stamped UK, for united Kingdom, and one officer asked if i was from Ukraine, very funny actually, he was handed the passport scan and he wasnt even interested as he was so taken with the driving licence.

Birding at the Beach in Costa Rica

It has been a nice and relaxing couple of weeks since i got back from the misery of Qatar. I went to the beach in the Caribbean and i saw some amazing birds and birding activity. Where we stay in just outside of a smnall town called Cahuita, and it is full of huge trees along the coast and i didnt realise that it is a major roosting site for the local vultures. Well you think a few vultures are nothing to shout about but the numbers of vultures was incredible. They would statrt arriving at around 4pm as it starts getting dark around 5.30pm and so the early ones would get their favourite spot obviously, including some large trees at the back of our hotel, called the Jaguar hotel. (Very cheap $25 a night, cold showers though)
They would arrive maybe 5 or 10 at a time but as it got later the numbers grew into hundreds at a time and i saw one flight of maybe 400 birds, one night i roughly counted around 1,400 vultures flying into here and that is a very large number of big birds. I spent a few hours every day checking out the birds and saw a new species for me nearly every day. I found a pair of small hawks called Double Tooth Hawks, very pretty birds they were just sitting about in the tall trees at the back of the hotel getting ready for the days hunting, i got out of bed really early one day maybe 5.30am. There was one bird i hunted the whole trip but couldn't find it only hear it. It had a wonderful warbling tune that went up and down in an almost sad lament. I was told by the hotel manager it was called a Bright Rumped Atilla, what a name. On the way back from the beach we stopped at a little cafe up in the mountians called Gorginas, not that the name matters but it is a typical little transport cafe, crazy self built architecture and insane toilets but they all have huge windows overlooking the mountains and at this point they are about 8000-10,000 foot high so pretty high, the reason we stopped here is they have a hummingbird observatory and you can eat your lunch while watching them have their typical territorial fights about who occupies the best looking feeding bottle, the nectar bottles were only 2 or 3 feet away from out plates and the birds were the most fantastic looking things i have seen for a long while. the most impressive looking one was the Fiery-Throated Hummingbird that when the light caught the colours right its chest burst into flames with a metallic red lustre along with a blue outline and all of these birds had a amazing metallic green body, The others were the magnificant hummingbird which does get into the lower USA states during the summer , there was also the Green Violet-ear, yes it has a violet ear patch that it can flap in display, very strange to see and the tiny Volcano Hummingbird which at about 2.5 grammes is probably the smallest hummingbird in the world. I will check the internet for that fact, according to wikipedia, the smallest is the Cuban Bee hummingbird at 1.8 grammes, isnt that insane, we all live and learn, isnt life wonderful sometimes,

Volcano Hummingbird



Fiery-Throated Hummingbird

Funny Quotes

The dodo died. Then Dodi died, Di died and Dando died. Dido must be sh*tting herself.

Cats have nine lives. Which makes them ideal for experimentation.

The right to bear arms is slightly less ludicrous than the right to arm bears.

Is it fair to say that there'd be less litter in Britain if blind people were given pointed sticks?

You have to remember all the trivia that your girlfriend tells you, because eventually you get tested. She'll go: "What's my favourite flower?" And you murmur to yourself: "Sh*t, I wasn't listening... Self-raising?"

I saw that show, 50 Things To Do Before You Die. I would have thought the obvious one was "Shout For Help".

I went out with an Irish Catholic. Very frustrating. You can take the Girl out of Cork...

It's easy to distract fat people. It's a piece of cake.

If you're being chased by a police dog, try not to go through a tunnel, then on to a little seesaw, then jump through a hoop of fire. They're trained for that.

Employee of the month is a good example of how somebody can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.

Beer and Food With an Old Buddy in San Jose

it had to happen eventually, I was tracked down and one of my old work buddies from the USA happened to be in town at the same time as me and we got together for a beer and some expensive food, expensive as far as Costa Rica goes anyway, I worked with this colleague in Texas in the little redneck town of Beaumont. We shared many laughs and did some good work and really had a great time down there and even though the years have gone passed we have kept in touch and he reads my blog from time to time and he did used to do a blog until it started to impinge on his studies as he went back to school to do a law degree. The only problem is that when doing the sort of work we do it is easy to make lots of money and live somewhere you pay no tax and effectively live a far more affluent lifestyle than a lawyer in the USA, he is claiming he is still trying to decide which way he is leaning, I actually am very envious of him to have gone back and completed that law degree. he has a long time to make lots of money as a lawyer. We shared a few storied and shared some info on the other guys we worked with and what we are both wanting for the future, I am still undecided about whree i want to work and with who and for how much. I think the far east would e fun as long as i could take my wife, middle east is probably more money but not as much fun being in a man camp and having no beer and no fun, we will see how this thing progresses, I have an interview in Yemen in mid April and then we'll see how much they offer me.

Back Home and Alive in The Garden of Eden

Well it is nearly 2 weeks since i left the miserable desert of Qatar and as soon as i got home i was forced, quite easily, to go to the beach on the Caribbean side of the country, we went to a newly refurbished hotel, in the tiny town of Cahuita. It was a typical type of place with terminte damage to all the woodwork, lots of holes in the roofs especially, there was a nice pool and a raving gay waiter serving us with food drinks and amusing comments. We had the kids with us for this trip and the little girl was learning to swim and within 5 days was doing an impressive attempt at breast stroke and could swim better under water than on the top,

We went to a few more places along the coast and went to a small reserve where we there were a load of howler monkeys obviously fighting amongst themselves, the funniest thing was the enormous swinging scrotum that was brilliant white in contrast to the black/brown body, i was laughing so hard at that everyone else was wondering what i had been smoking. The hotel was empty apart from a couple of travellers, who were on a love holiday, they had met in another resort and met quietly in this hotel and ended up staying in the same room. Actually two very nice people the guy from Italy and the girl from Sweden, she did have heavy thighs though.



I am now back in San Jose and doing the normal things a normal perrson normally does, like shopping and cleaning pots and getting the car sorted, but i am seeing an old buddy from the USA who is also down here on holiday and we are getting beer and some food tomorrow night, so we can share the good old days and things to come, i am arranging my interview for a job in Yemen and it is now going to be in April, they seem to be very keen as Yemen is not at the top of everyones list, plus it does get very hot but that could mean more money. Maybe going to the south for the weekend to see the relatives and do some more bird watching, the birds here are fantastic still, i am seeing more new species every time I go out. I saw a small bird of prey called the Double tooth Hawk, very pretty and lives amongst the trees like a wren, must eat the lizards. Off to Florida for a wedding this March end to another old buddy from the USA, just booked my hotel, and it is the cheaapest i could find, Motel 8, he thought i was joking when i told him i would be in the cheapest place, it has a pool and we get breakfast also, $60 a night and that is more than i would like to pay, the hotel in Costa Rica was $25 a night, but at least i get to go to Walmart again to stock up on more white socks and electronic toys.