Richard's Travel Blog

We headed up the coast from Los Angeles. Malibu is world famous so, like good tourists, we snapped a few pictures and continued on.

Myung has a friend in Santa Maria, Jasmine. We visited with her and her husband and stayed the night in their home.

She put on a nice Korean feed for us. Well, it was kinda mixed cuisine. At any rate, it was hecka better than the Korean restaurant in Koreatown, LA.

The full day we stayed with them, they took us to nearby Avila Beach. Harford Pier there is a good place to look at seals and sea lions. We neglected to bring our camera with us, so this picture from Jasmine’s phone is all we have. Trust me, though, it was good seal viewing from three meters away.

I was always telling Myung that the US Pacific coast is still alive with wildlife. Not quite all the birds, animals and and sea life has been eaten, like in much of the word, particularly Asia. Further up the coast, we were at I forgot which beach. There were hundreds, at least, of sea gulls and pelicans. Actually, that was about the most pelicans I’ve ever seen in one place. The photos of any quality we have is mostly sea gulls, but you’ll get the picture.

Myung was giddy with excitement when she could walk right out among them and capture her experience when they finally took to flight at her presence. It was a swirl of birds all around her. I wish I had a picture of her in bird tornado, her mouth open, firing away with the camera.

When you know a place, you know there is so much to see and do. This happened as we went up the coast. We wanted to get to the Bay Area in a couple of days, so we hit the highlights. The next highlight was Hearst Castle. Everyone from California knows this place. For those who don’t, William Randolph Hearst was a media mogul in the 20’s till the 40’s. Over a number of years in the late 20’s and 30’s, he had built a splendid estate in the hills overlooking the Pacific. Now it’s a state park.

On the slopes down to the ocean, he had herds of animals from around the world.

Care for a swim? There was a Roman bath outside, too, but it’s a construction site right now. It was in disrepair and leaking water terribly during the drought in California at this time.

You can see clips from then in a movie they show there. Hearst invited everybody who was anybody to come up. Movie stars, corporate figures, artists. royalty, you name it, all sat around together at the banquet table or pools. This is a diving platform. Picture the pretty starlets of the era taking a plunge.

The photos from inside are pretty bad.

Next up the coast is the beautiful Big Sure area. It’s all nice, but this is the most famous. As you saw in the bird pictures, it was foggy and drizzly, so these aren’t exactly postcard quality.

Again, here is a famous spot, familiar to many if not most Californians. It’s the view from Nepenthe Inn (or is it “Lodge”?). It’s THE place to stop, sit on the deck or in the inside restaurant having a cappuccino or glass of wine and some food, and gather in the view.

Here are good birds up to the left of the people.

Movin’ right along, next up is Monterey (spelled differently than Monterrey, Mexico). Monterey Bay is a lovely protected area, teeming with fish seals, sea otters, birds, and everything else you might want to see but is nearly gone from many areas. The coastline is beautiful and the aquarium is world class. One could spend days there. We spent one day. Most of the pictures Myung took are of or from the aquarium.

Forgive me for boring those of you who have been there a number of times. I like these pictures.

One of the main attractions is the sea otters. Once thought to have been hunted to extinction for their fur (They are unafraid of humans) there are now about 2700 left. The aquarium has a number of rescued otters. The thing to do at the aquarium is to watch them at feeding time.

They are plentiful out in the Bay. There’s a deck to look at them and the seals and sea lions frolicking in the kelp beds. This park ranger was telling me that the otter population has stopped increasing because they are getting toxoplasmosis probably from kitty litter entering the ecosystem. Amazing, if that’s the case. Kitty litter is an infinitesimal amount of the waste draining into the ocean. There’s a lesson in that, eh?

Somebody with a good telephoto lens could get this picture of kayakers getting up close to a couple of otters lounging on their backs in the kelp bed. It’s a little distant for Myung’s camera.

Here’s the street outside the aquarium.

That whole area is nice, but we didn’t hang around. We did the driving loop around Pebble Beach and headed up to the Bay Area. Next entry is about being tourist there, before and after our wedding. I’m going to post this and get that one up in the next day or two. In real time, we are currently in Popoyan, Colombia. We made a two day forced march south to here from Bogota, and plan to chill here for at least a couple of days. So, I should be able to post about the rest of our time in California.

Besides getting married in Oakland, Myung and I were total tourists for much of the month we were there. Some of the things we saw I had seen once or twice, some many times, and couple of things, never. Myung, however, had never been to the US. It was fun to take her around. It felt like a honeymoon, really, starting two weeks before we actually got married.

Bear with me while I write and show pictures of things many of you have seen many times and know all about.

We spent three days in Los Angeles. LA is a huge place with many things to see and do, though the vibe there does little for me. Our agenda was to visit with my niece, Anne, and her family, take in a Dodger baseball game, visit Koreatown, and maybe something else without lingering long.

The first thing we did was the Dodger game because the Korean player, Hyun Jin Ryu, was supposed to pitch. They changed the rotation and Zach Greinke pitched instead, but we had fun. Myung likes baseball. I have been to hundreds of games and may ballparks, but never Dodger stadium, so it was fun for me, too. Here is Greinke warming up in the bullpen before the game, and Dan Haren and Clayton Kershaw looking on, sort of. Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball.

Here is the birdseye view of the field from the cheapo nosebleed seats we had behind the plate.

That evening and again before we left, we went to Koreatown. Although it is actually quite a large area and has a genuine Korean character, it is not photoworthy. We had a respectable dinner there and looked in some stores selling Korean products. Nothing special. Myung feels the same. She’s not the type who needs to hang out with other Koreans. If someone else did, and they wanted to be in LA, that might be a place to live. Bring money if you want to buy anything from Korea there. Think 1000% markup.

The next day was the real reason we lingered in La before going north. I wanted to visit my niece, Anne, her husband, Nico, and their new son, Zachary. Here they are:

I really looked forward to spending some hours with them. The last time I was in the US in December 2012 was to go to their wedding. Their plate was full then, for obvious reasons. Plus, I’ve been out of the US for 8 years, except for a few months here and there, while she’s been in LA, where I never go. And even when we were both in Northern California, she was in high school, more than 20 years ago. We had a nice day, visiting in their home for a while, then walking around with the pram and going out to lunch. For a 6 week old, Zachary travels well. Suffice it to say, we enjoyed out time with them.

They live in Venice, which is a small beach town adjacent to LA. We didn’t take any pictures of them during our walk around Venice, but we have pics of Venice, one of the fun places in the LA area. It’s named Venice because of it’s vague resemblance to Venice, Italy. It has many canals and is on the sea, in this case, of course, the Pacific Ocean. Unlike Venice, Italy, the canal area is neighborhoody, though obviously not a World Heritage site.

The seashore is definitely not like Venice, Italy. It’s a semi-fun, borderline grotesque tourist haven, for the most part. That said, you can block that out and focus toward the ocean. The beach is contiguous with more beach with different names, like Santa Monica beach to the north.

Off the beach is weird fun.

The weirdest of all there is the unabashed display of narcissism at an open air body building gym. I’m told some of these cats have been showing off here for years.

LA can be about it’s own brand of weird. Anne loves it there, even though she isn’t weird. Me? I prefer Bay Area weird. For those of you not familiar with the US, LA or the Bay Area, you just gotta go there for a while to know what I’m talking about.

I’m going to break up the California travelogue into three chunks. That’s going to be it for this one. Coming up maybe even later today will be our drive up the coast.

Just in case you didn’t know, Myung and I came to America and got married. Besides us loving each other, there are other reasons I wrote about in previous entries. You can go back a couple of entries ago and read all about it.

I won’t bury you in photos. Here are some we like. I’ll just go in chronological order. This first one is at a little rehearsal happy hour we had a a restaurant by the Berkeley Pier. Here’s the side of the restaurant and the view.

I’ve known these people for over 30 years, except Brian on the far left who I’ve only known 20 years, and of course Myung who I’ve known 7 years.

As I wrote before, we originally planned to only get quietly hitched. Many people wanted to share our moment, though, so it became a genuinely heartwarming event.

Roz and her husband, Jesus, are a couple who contributed greatly to our experience. Not only did they invite us to stay at their place for several days, Roz made a wedding cake. The cake says “Congratulations” in Korean.

Actually, that last one was at the dinner after the ceremony. So much for chronological order.

The day before the ceremony, we put on our best wedding clothes for Roz to take pictures outside her home. We like this one.

Here come the wedding photos. The room where they marry you has a simple setup. The commissioner who performed the ceremony was nice, and good at walking people through, even though they haven’t planned anything.

Here we are posing right after the deed.

Here are the people who came to the ceremony. We were pleased they made the effort to come, even though the ceremony took maybe 10 minutes. They are, left to right, my great friend Mary, Fred from my old men’s group, Jesus, Frank Daar from the men’s group, Cornelia wife of Giuseppe from my men’s group, my sister-in-law Rita, me, my brother Bill, Myung, Giuseppe, Roz, Liam the son of Frank Holden, Frank H., and his wife Chris.

Right afterward, outside the front door, we posed with my brother and his wife.

About 25 people joined us for dinner at my favorite barbecue place, Everett and Jones BBQ in Oakland. I was really looking forward to this, and it camae off well. Here are pictures from in there.

Cornelia took a video of the ceremony on her smart phone. I’m trying to figure out how to let you see it. My blog host can’t handle anything that big, and when I tried to copy and paste the URL, the video itself tries to appear. If I figure it out, I’ll post it later.

I’m going to keep this entry short and to the point. We did lots of stuff around the San Francisco Bay Area while we were there. The next entry will be about that. Meanwhile, right now we are in transit (Fort Lauderedale, to be exact) to Bogota, Colombia.

Be well. all of you.

Hi y’all. We left Panama yesterday and are now hanging out in Alajuela until we leave for the States on Friday. Nothing much left for us to do now, so here is the second and last blog about Panama.

After spending 10 days or whatever it was in Boquete, we spent another week or so in the capital. No more tropical beaches for us, at least for a while. Actually, the only pressing desire I had was to see the Panama Canal. I might as well get right to that.

For those of you who don’t know, construction of the Canal was started by the French in 1881, they gave up in 1904 due to engineering problems and high mortality from diseases like malaria. The US took over in 1904 and, with mostly West Indies labor who continued to suffer greatly, it was completed in 1914. Panama took over canal operations and had the Canal Zone returned to them in 1999. Panama is having a big 100 year anniversary now.

As interesting as going to watch the ships use the locks to rise or fall to the level of the sea on the other side was all this history and pictures. It’s really quite amazing the project was pulled off at all, given the technology of the day. The Chinese will have a much easier go of it in Nicaragua. It sure won’t take 33 years to build this time.

Here are some pics. The ships are pulled along by “mules” on rails on either side. It’s really very simple, in principle. The main area for viewing the goings on is the Miraflores Lock visitors center. That’s where these were taken.

By the way, there’s a modern lock system being constructed along side of here which will accomodate larger ships.

We went to the old city, as all good tourists do. They are working hard to turn it into a good tourist destination. One place the tourists all see is the fish market. It’s sort of like how Cannery Row in Monterrey, California was until about 50 years ago. It’s still functioning and it’s popular to have fish meals at the many outdoors restaurants around it.

It may be only a matter of time before all this is moved outside the center of downtown. Beyond this area is the new town.

Looking to the left is a modern plaza.

Behind is the old town which is rapidly being gentrified from slum to snazzy tiourist destination and center for many goverment offices.

When you walk around the old town, you see a mix of very old, as in 16th century…

…to more modern, renovated…

…to nicely maintaned, privately owned…

…to shabby.

I’m sure you won’t be able to recognize the place in five years.

Myung is the people pictures photographer. It’s generally safe to take pictures of Panamanian kids. One day she went somewhere around the old city and there as a cultural festival going on. Many in Panama are still the real deal, and most are only a generation or two removed.

That’s going to do it for now. I’ll write when we’re in the US, maybe after we’ve done a few things and before we get married on the 19th. Until then, be well all of you.

Getting to Boquete from southeastern Costa Rica was a breeze. We had some trepidation crossing the border because the guy who owned the land and hostal on the Osa Peninsula said we could cross without an onward ticket, that all we had to do was get one of those American Airlines 24 hour holds and show it to immigration and they wouldn’t know the difference between that and a ticket. I was thinking, oh right, like the immigration guy doesn’t know that trick. Well, either he didn’t know or he didn’t care, because we breezed in with it. Or maybe he figured if we would try that, we would certainly be able to buy a refundable ticket and show him that before we cancelled it. The whole thing is stupid.  You can do the refundable ticket thing and get into the US, too.

Anyway, it’s only about three hours from the border to Boquete, via Panama’s second biggest city, David, which has a hundred and something thousand people. So, voila, we got there in the early evening.

It was nice to be back up at 1500 meters elevation where it’s not hot. At this point, we’re just cooling our jets and waiting till it’s time to go to the States. We figured to hang out there for at least a week, cool off and let our mosquito bites go away. Turned out, we had to stay over a week because my ATM card pin was stolen. That’s a major problem in Boquete. There are many foreigners and the thieves have that card they can put in the machine and recover the PIN from the previous user. It took about 10 days to get my new card from Citibank. As I said, though, it wasn’t a problem because we were planning to hang out there anyway.

Boquete is a nice place, for sure, but after Costa Rica, it was sort of not as good. It’s quite developed, so there isn’t much funkiness. and the wild areas aren’t as wild as some of Costa Rica. There are some wild parts of Panama, especially in the east as you near the Colombia border, but not so much around Boquete. And, the mountainous spine of Central America peters out there, East of Boquete, Panama is all low tropics.

We didn’t do much while we were there. The hostal was very comfortable and quiet, except for the river running behind it. Our place is the one on the left and our room faced the river on the second floor.

Here’s the view the other way from ground level.

Another creek runs through town.

There are more indigenous people who still wear traditional clothes than in Costa Rica. In general, Panama has more of that than Costa Rica. You might think because the Canal Zone was governed for so long by America, and there is a lot of wealth from that to be shared among a couple of million Panamanians, that Panama would have lost that, but it hasn’t (yet).

I just put this in because I like the picture and it reminds me how much especially Myung likes rembutans, which are a kind of lychee. I thought Thailand was the rembutan center of the universe, but I now think Costa Rica/Panama is, except here they call it mamoncillo.

One of the nice things to do around Boquete is go to some hot springs about 45 minutes away by bus, plus about a 45 minute walk. It costs $2 each way on the bus and $2 more to get in because they are on private property. It’s basic, but well worth practically no money. there are two places where the spring has been dug out and surrounded by rocks.

There are many hikes up and near the Baru Vocano. One popular one is the Trail of the Quetzales. Honestly, we’ve been in Central America for over a year and have not seen a quetzal. Oh well. We have many photos of yet another forest hike. Here are a couple. (Yes, that’s real bug in the top left.)

Actually, that was kind of a hard walk. Steep up and down in many places for about 14 km. After coming down on the other side of the mountain, it was still three hours on two buses to get back to Boquete.

I don’t have much else to say about Boquete. It was mostly about hanging out. Hey, there were a couple of good supermarkets, a fine bakery, and some nice restaurants. The kitchen was good where we stayed. What else do you need?

As soon as my card came, we left for Panama City, where we are now. I don’t know if we will stay here till we return to Costa Rica to fly out on Sept 5. In any case, I’ll have another post before we go.

Be well, all of you.

This is the last Costa Rica post until we leave for the States. Maybe we’ll spend more than a couple of days in Costa Rica after visiting Panama and before we depart from San Jose, but I very much doubt there will be anything of interest to write about Costa Rica then. The next posts will be about Panama, where we are now.

The most pristine lowland tropical area of Costa Rica is the Osa Peninsula in the southwest. Much of it is parkland. There is a paved road down the east side about a quarter of the way around, and a poor dirt and gravel road for another quarter of the way. In the northern part, there is a road, but we were told it’s closed in the rainy season. In the northern part, there is a resorty area called Drake, after the explorer, but it’s only reachable by boat. In the southeast, the paved road goes to a proper town called Puerto Jimenez. That’s where we based ourselves and where, conveniently, there was an Alamo to drop off the car.

Puerto Jimenez has nothing to distinguish it. We have a few pictures of the shoreline.

Here’s a beach several kilometers along that bad dirt road beyond the town.

Myung got her toes wet. I mostly sat among the driftwood piles and stayed out of the rain.

The beach bar scene isn’t exactly Cancun. This is it. Party down!

Most tourists either just visit the town or go on an expensive tour to Corcovado National Park, which starts at the end of the bad road. We did probably the same thing, though without the guide, by heading for a “hostel” deep in the forest on private land abutting the park. One dirt road goes about 10km into the forest to a hamlet called Dos Brazos. Just past there is the home of a guy who bough A LOT of land, put a place to stay in it, and had locals build a trail system. I’ve been in several jungles, and this qualifies as out there. All kinds of animals, birds and insects are common. We still don’t have great pictures of the scarlet macaws, but we saw many. These are the same birds that were on the fence at Copan Ruins.

One nesting spot is tricked out with a place to hang out and gaze at them up in the trees.

A little farther up is a better view back toward the little gulf between there and the main part of Southern Costa Rica.

So many big views and little views.

When we went to Tortuguero, we felt very fortunate to see a couple of toucans from a distance and one flying overhead. Here, they are everywhere.

These trails are narrow and overgrown in many places. This one goes around the right side of the tree. You often can’t see where youre going till you get there and, even still, we made a few wrong turns.

Then it goes along the mountainside. Where’s Waldo?

Here’s the look back. It goes on like that for many kilometers.

And it’s hot and sloppy. That shirt was soaked with sweat within about 15 minutes and the rubber boots are muddy. The photographer is tough as nails.

We spent three days and two nights there. The digs were more than adequate.

Believe it or not, guys carry canisters of natural gas up, and there are 7 burners to cook on. A little solar panel provides enough electricity to power a few LED’s and charge a phone. There’s drinkable running water, showers and a sit down toilet.

There’s room to hang out and/or eat.

Sleeping is upstairs. That would be alright except my mosquito net didn’t stay closed very well. I must have a hundred bites, right now as I write.

Then it was time to return the car and head for Panama. From Puerto Jimenez, you can take a ferry to Golfito. From there, it’s only a two hour bus ride to the border. Golfito’s pretty nice. Very many local and foreign tourist go there. It was a big port for the United Fruit Company when it ruled much of Central America. That’s all over with, of course, and the big houses are falling apart now. What’s left is a quiet town that reminds me of a biggish Tamales Bay (for those of you who know the San Francisco Bay Area).

After that sweltering lowland scene, we headed straight for Boquete, Panama, in the Panamanian highlands. Ahhhh, it’s nice to be cool again. I’ll write again soon. Be well, all of you

Each year, about 40,000 turtles, mostly greens, lay their eggs on the beaches around Tortuguero. I was told Tortuguero is the second largest newsting site in the world. We did what most people do. We went there one day, checked out the turtles making their nests and laying their eggs, spent the night, and left in the morning. Some people hang around. It’s a perfectly nice Caribbean tourist beach place, tranquil with hardly any hard partiers. You can go on nature tours by canoe or electric outboard, or just chill. We did the turtle thing and went back.

To get there, you get yourself to Cariari, then to La Pavona. That’s the end of the road. From there, it’s about a 10km (I’d guess. It’s hard to say on a boat) ride down the river to Tortuguero. No road goes to there and there are no cars there.

We kinda got the ecotour on the way there. The public boat wasn’t leaving for a couple of hours, so we cadged a ride with a group of about 20 year olds who were being taken there by their leader to do something eco with the turtles. They had a spotter who pointed out a lot of things we wouldn’t have seen ourselves and the public boat drivers wouldn’t bother to stop for.

Here’s where we started and what we looked like.

This is what much of the river looks like.

Here’s caiman. They are like crocodiles but not so aggressive or dangerous. Still, you probably don’t want to go swimming in this river. There are crocs, too.

Here’s an iguana.

Here’s the only good picture we have of a toucan.

After about an hour, you get there.

The town looks like this.

This guy is selling breadfruit.

The beach looks like this. Typical.

The turtles start coming up around sundown and might come up any time during the night. Sometimes they don’t return to the sea till after morning light. Sometimes they change their minds, turn around, and head back.

Mostly, they come up, do their thing which takes about an hour, and go back the way they came.

They clear the area, and make a shallow pit to lay their eggs.

Then they lay them, leaving one to four on top so the predators think they already got the prize.

Then they dig a smaller deep hole. They hope this leads predators to think maybe that’s the real nest.

Then they go back. They lay eggs every two or three years for up to 150 years. The turtle watching groups are more restricted than anywhere else I’ve been. You can only watch for several 5 minute periods. I remember in Malaysia in 1999, I was left on a beach and some teenagers took me to the sites and we watched all we wanted all night. That was a different place in a different time. Shoot, you could buy turtle eggs, and turtle meat was one of the most common and cheapest meats there. You can’t have either in Costa Rica. Poaching turtle will get you six years in the clink, and I was told tey enforce every minute of it. During our 5 minute periods, we watched nest making, eggs being laid, and one turtle heading back to the water. No photography is allowed because someone might use a flash, and that’s prohibited.

That’s the story, morning glory. We’re headed for the southern Pacific Coast with about five days left on our car rental. Talk to you later.

We headed toward the other side of San Jose, toward the southeast, in our quest for a perfect mix of urbane and country that would be juuuust what we want. About 30 km southeast of San Jose, the next urban center is around Cartago. We went now because August 2 is the day for the patron saint of Costa Rica, La Negrita. Now, technically, La Negrita isn’t a saint. It’s a black statue of the Virgin Mary kept in the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles. To make a long story short, miracles have been attributed to it, especially the curing of illnesses. Every year for about two weeks, starting Aug 2, at least tens of thousands of pilgrims come to pay homage and get relief from their maladies. Some crawl from as far away as San Jose, but most either walk in or crawl the last bit in front of the basilica. That black statue in the right foreground is a replica of the much smaller La Negrita inside.

We weren’t going to brave that to look at La Negrita, so we just hung out around there and left. That seemed to be all we wanted to do it Cartago. It didn’t feel holy, not like Medjugorie, Bosnia, or someplace like that. The crowd was kinda cranky.

We based ourselves near Paraiso, about 10 km from Cartago. Our place was in the country, away from everything. It was relaxed, quiet and had a view. We spent a fair amount of time just sitting outside our door with our computers and the owners dogs.

Here’s another typical view from a couple of kilometers away.

Things to do around there included nice drives through the countryside, visiting an old church ruin…

… and lounging in cheap public hotspring pools. Reports of my death are greatly exagerated; I was just sleeping.

That all was down in the Orosi Valley below Paraiso. Above, Irazu Volcano rises up 3432 meters (over 11,000 feet). Luckily for us, it was clear enough to see, unlike Poas.

We continued going in that direction, with the goal of reaching Tortuguero of the Caribbean Coast, and stopped above Turrealba to look at Costa Rica’s most notable archaeological site.

Guayabo is no Pelenque. No one knows yet much about the people who lived here. They do know it existed from about a thousand years ago and is the biggest find in Costa Rica. The walk through the forest to get there is better than the site itself.

After going to the coast, we came back this way, and I’m writing this from Turrealba. We like this place, too. Again, there are no noteworthy photos. It’s just pleasant. We stayed at this hostel, overlooking the town.

There’s a nice path down to the town. It goes through grassy scrub where thousands of butterflies were flitting around. A National Geographic photographer could have had a field day when we went down there this morning.

That’s going to do it for now. As soon as I can, I’ll blog about Tortuguero. Be well, all of you.

Before coming to the mostly urbanized area around the capital, San Jose (Chepe to the ticos), no place seemed like anywhere we’d like to live. Our first stops in the central valley didn’t appeal to us in that respect, either. We’d read a post on the International Living magazine website by a couple who retired on the hillside above Grecia, so we headed for Grecia. It’s a city of a few tens of thousands. For us, it was too sleepy. The church to the left is just one of many churches in town. Towns like this everywhere, including America, have no shortage of churches.

Even sleepier was Sarchi, even though it’s hyped as a center for artisans. The day we were there was a Catholic saint’s day, and there was a little life in the park in front of the church. I think that was what passed as action for Sarchi.

Oxcarts are emblematic of how ticos see their heritage. The park’s main attraction was this brightly painted, giant oxcart.

The high energy in Grecia and Sarchi was too intense for us, so we went on closer to San Jose, to Heredia. It’s a university town, sort of. There IS a university there, and a little student ghetto around it, but mostly Heredia is run down and a little creepy after dark. The hotel was weird; I don’t even want to talk about it.

It’s obvious the city is trying to brighten itself up. The street corners have funny busts on the top of the posts, and the park has these.

Saturday is market day.

Usually, the closer you get to the capital of countries like this, the grottier it gets. We thought, well, if Heredia which was supposed to be a college town is like that, it’s going to get worse as we near San Jose. We were driving around the hills north of Heredia and got lost, eventually finding ourselves down in Alajuela, the second largest city in Costa Rica, population 50,000. We figured, oh man, this is where the airport is and it might be seedy and worse than Heredia. To our pleasant surprise, Alajuela is nice, even at night. It’s not run down, maybe because so many people spend a day or two there arriving or leaving Costa Rica from the airport. I’m thinking that brings loads of hot money into town, and that provided the prosperity. It’s not a tourist destination for any reason other than the airport. It’s just comfortable. Myung likes it a lot. I think we have added it to our list of possible places we could plunk down, at least for a while.

You’d think we’d have photos. We have five, and they don’t say much. Alajuela isn’t photogenic. Here’s what we have. Here’s a shot down a narrow street. I put it here because Alajuela has a lot of lorikeets, whereas most cities have 99% pigeons. Some of the lorikeets make their homes in the wall of that yellow building on the right.

Here are the other three pics.

About 25 km from Alajuela is a famous volcano, Volcan Poas. At this time of year, you are lucky to be able to see down through the clouds that usually blanket the peak. Here’s a picture from the pamphlet you get at the entrance.

Here’s what we saw of the main crater for a few minutes when it wan’t totally obscured.

The smaller crater with the lake at the top was more visible.

There have been 39 eruptions from the main crater since 1829. The last time was in June, and the last major eruption was in 2009. The little one hasn’t blown in nearly 10,000 years.

While we were up there, we ran into some Korean people. The woman in the lower left lives in Quito. She is visiting the people on the right, who live in Heredia. Needless to say, we got the Ecuadoran’s email and phone number.

Complete change of pace… We went to the capital. The total population of Costa Rica is 4.5 million, and the greater San Jose area, which would include Alajuela, has about half the population of the whole country. San Jose proper has about 350,000, so it doesn’t feel like some huge city. Even right downtown is fairly mellow.

There’s a little Chinatown there.

A lot of markets in the big cities are hectic and rude. I’ve gotten to the point where I try to avoid them. This one is chill, like the ticos. This mahi mahi is very chilled and fresh.

The most interesting thing to happen the day we wandered into town was coming across this yellow building. It’s called the Yellow House, and is the foreign ministry.

It looked like something was going on, which is probably rare in a country that hasn’t even had an army since 1948. Turns out, Ban Ky-Moon is here for a vacation from dealing with countries who definitely do have armies. We hung around till he came out.

Then he came out. Myung was excited about seeing her famous compatriot. Security was a joke. No one seemed to even look at us with our day packs. hanging out across the street. I think we could have walked right up to him and shook his hand.

That’s going to do it for now. Next up is the Cartago area, where we are till tomorrow. Be well, all of you.

So, we left the Pacific coast and headed back into the Central Highlands. Here’s the view back toward the peninsula.

The number one mountain destination for Costa Ricans (who call themselves ticos) is Monteverde. Almost all tourists who get off the beach go there. I can see why. The parks, Monteverde and Santa Elena, are in a cloud forest about 1400m (4600 ft) up. The constant mist creates a cool jungle. You can have a jungle experience without the heat or the mosquitoes. The town everyone stays at is Santa Elena. It is the classic tourist town, with dozens of sleeping options from backbacker dive to upscale. This appeals to most tourists, including us. The first non-indigenous people to settle there were American Quakers who refused to be drafted into the Korean War. After their imprisonment, they emigrated to here. It was a hard life then. You wouldn’t know it now, Costa Rica is no Honduras. Life’s good, Or as they say here, pura vida.

There are quite a lot of animals here. As always, we have some pictures, mostly bad, and didn’t see the rare animals. There are mountain lions and ocelots, and many others we haven’t seen in Central America. We did see an armadillo. It was dark in the forest, so the image is out of focus.

What I would call a coati, and they call a pizote, was hanging around a picnic table at the entrance.

There are loads of butterflies and birds. We went on a night walk with a guide, and saw a sloth and another kind of racoon-type creature that lives in the trees. No good pictures of them in the dark. He pointed out a couple of cute frogs I never would have seen by myself. There’s so much life in the forest but, like when I’m diving, I just don’t have a good eye for seeing, especially little things. These frogs are about the size of your thumbnail. Looking at them reminded me of looking for nudibranches while diving. I know they are there, but don’t see them as often as a lot of other people.

Heres a taranchula, a couple of venomous vipers and a colorful bug.

Myung is really into flower and foresty pictures. She takes about 90% of the pictures. I’ll put a few in here to give a feel for the places. I know, these all look the same after a while. You gotta be there, though. It’s beautiful.

Where’s Waldo?

It goes on and on.

Y’know, if, by chance, anybody wants to look at sometimes hundreds of pictures of some place we’ve been, I can send you “albums” have have stored in the cloud. Those go all the way back. India, Southeast Asia, Korea, China, Nepal, Mongolia, Africa, South and Central America, Myung’s pictures from Turkey. Just ask and I’ll email it to you.

That’s it for now. Coming soon is a post from the urbanized central valley around the capital. Be well, all of you.