ahhhh, baby monkey on mama´s back.
Man, those damn coconuts are hard to get open,
but it´s quite satisfying to finally crack them.
Howler monkey testicles
Spent a few more days enjoying the awesome beaches of Manuel Antonio, I even borrowed a buddy's surfboard and gave it a try for 20 minutes but the waves sucked....yeahhhh, that's it, it was the waves.
Next few nights were spent in the quiet surfer town of Dominical, further down the coast. It was a peaceful and relaxing contrast to the trinketed and touristed out public beach in Manuel Antonio. Felt like I was the only non-surfer tourist in town. Just kind of walked around the area and tried to let my numerous mosquito bites heal. The hardcore surfers kind of have their own little in-group thing going on and can talk endlessly about surfer related stuff. It´s easy to feel out of the loop, but whatever.
After Dominical, I was off to the remote area of Drake Bay, down on the Osa Peninsula. Took a scenic hour by boat through mangrove lined river channels to reach the tiny town. Was even more remote than Dominical, with miles of un-touristed coastline, and a permanent population of only 300 or so people, spread out over miles, with a small town center. Power was out half the time I was there and a thunder-clap was so loud and close one night that I literally sat bolt upright in bed. I think I had flashbacks to wars that happened before I was born; scared me senseless for a second. Really enjoyed myself there, felt like I had the town to myself, got to drink with the locals, eat sea bass fresh caught and practice my spanish.
Did a crazy hike hours long each way hike down the coast to a ranger station, San Pedrillo, in remote Corcovado National Park and saw a ton of howler monkeys, spider monkeys, snakes, and an unidentified little mammal guy eating mangoes. Also, spent a couple hours kayaking up the mangrove rivers which hosted caimans gliding around me *gulp*. No camera unfortunately, was too scared of capsizing, but you'll have to take my word for how awesome and beautiful it was. Made it really far into the jungle up the river, you have to carry your kayak and walk at times though to get that far in. Next was the day long excursion to Caño island an hour off the coast. Spent the day snorkeling and saw white-tipped reef sharks gliding not 10 feet underneath. Our snorkeling guide assured us they were safe, but something about that shape and those fins swimming so close still evokes some primal fear and got my heart pounding. Despite the sharks and myriad different cool fish and coral formations, the highlight had to be a sea-turtle that unconcernedly surfaced for air just one foot away from me and was swimming with me for a while, was so freaking cool, I really wish I'd had the foresight to buy a disposable underwater camera.
The river I kayaked up
Some as yet unidentified guy hanging out in Corcovado
Leafcutter ants doing what they do
Well, I'm now back where I started in San Jose, there's some huge party tonight that I'll be attending and then I head to the Carribean Coast town of Puerto Viejo tomorrow. It´s funny, ever since the ¨futbol¨ world cup qualifying game where Costa Rica beat the United States, upon learning I´m an American, the residents of San Jose give me sly smiles and teasingly ask whether I saw the game. It´s mostly good natured though, and they´re welcome to their justifiable pride. I´m just amused at how often it´s been happening and how happy they seem to be to have an American to rub it in that I don´t bother trying to shatter their jpy by pointing out that most Americans probably don´t even know there was a game and wouldn´t care if they did.
The party was interesting, I´m thinking of buying a small digital camera that I can bring out with me at night without fear of attracting the unwelcome attention my large and expensive one would generate at night. Their were ¨Jagermeister Strippers¨and the hostel invited a bunch of locals to come party. Was fun, and it´s always cool to mix with the locals and practice Spanish.
Puerto Viejo has one of the chillest vibes of any town I´ve been to yet and I took my first swim in the Caribbean. The town has lots of Afro-Caribe residents with a real Rasta feel and everyone is super nice and always nods and says hello when they pass by. Also, everyone rides bikes, they´re four dollars a day to rent, and it´s cool to just kind of cruise around the town and up and down the coast to the various beaches. Nights are spent partying, dancing and listening to Rasta, which is certainly a fine way to spend an evening on the ocean.
Cock shot...
I met some crazy indigent American in his mid-twenties at the beach who was all bruised up and absolutely out of his mind. I got to listen to him tell me about his fights with the devil, his drug addictions, and he shared some weird obsession with numerology, finding signs and portents in all numbers he came across. Was kind of disturbing and I was a bit relieved when I finally managed to extricate myself from his company. There was also a hilarious old white guy who was a ¨magician¨ and entertained us at breakfast with kind of crappy magic tricks and a constant stream of dirty jokes.
After a few days in Puerto Viejo, I decided to cross the border into Panama, a beatiful land of canals and hats, and then a little way down the coast and then a boat to the island archipelago of Bocas del Toro. The main town on one of the bigger islands is a backpackers paradise, with tons of travelers from all over the world. Been hanging out with some cool guys I met from Las Vegas, partied with a wild Norwegian and had a great time hanging out and talking to an Israeli and a German. Sounds like the start of a joke, ¨so, a Persian, an Israeli and a German all walk into a bar...¨
Me and a couple of Israeli guys I met and chilled with
The days are spent chartering boats to various little islands and hanging out and the nights are like Spring Break every day of the week. Every night is ¨ladies night¨at one of the various bars and is usually packed and jumping. There´s one popular bar a short .75 cent water-taxi ride away and it was absolutely crazy. Right on the water with tons of drunk people jumping into the ocean and flying off swings into a ¨pool¨cut into the deck. Unfortunately the only naked person I saw that night was a guy running around. Around two o´clock the local police decided it was too crazy a party and came and broke it up though. The hostel I´m staying at has a ¨free¨ shot called, ¨Tequila Suicide,¨but the catch is you first snort a line of margarita salt, then get a shot of their cheapest tequila, have to turn around and lean back and the bartender opens your eye and squeezes a lime wedge directly into it. Surprisingly a lot of people were doing it, it looked extremely unpleasant.
Lime in the eye...ouch!
Played cricket, well a beach version anyway, for the first time ever. Met some Aussies on a beach and they invited me to join their game. So that was an experience.
Met a really cool Jamaican dude named Livingston on one of the islands and he made us all some great food. Never knew Spanish could be spoken with a Jamaican accent. He was really funny though, spoke good English, and railed against the ¨fake Rasta¨gringos that flock to the various tourist towns to sell homemade jewelry.
Cool guy named Haroon, spent a few days with him and his buddy
Malloy. Awesome guitar player, kept us entertained during happy
hour with orginal songs.
Was hanging out a local beach the other day with some friends I´d met, just kind of chilling and swimming after our hike out to it. A ways down the beach were a group of dutch girls and some others and apparently they´d recently all smoked a couple joints but left the bag of weed just sitting out and a couple of ¨Park Rangers¨materialized out of the forest and noticed it. So the rangers start giving them grief, telling them how much trouble they could get them in if they call the real police and so on. The group asks what they can do to make this go away, probably hoping to just pay a bribe I imagine. The rangers though are apparently uninterested and pointing to a nearby little lagoon some ways back from the beach tell the group that they want them to build a canal from the lagoon to the ocean, seemingingly for some obscure turtle-nesting reason or something. So we´re chilling there, we talked to them later and got the full scoop, watching this big group of people dig this deep canal through the sand in the blazing sun. The rangers are supervising the project and just absolutely having a great time, laughing like it´s the funniest damn thing they´ve ever seen, which it might have been. Anyway, it took this big group 2 and a half hours of digging to finally finish the thing. The rangers walk around inspect the work, and then tell them, ¨now fill it back in.¨Ouch! Once it was filled back in, which didn´t take all that long, they gave them back the weed and wandered back into the jungle, still laughing. I have to assume the irony of forcing white foreigners to dig a canal in Panama was not lost on them, rather a cleverly ironic punishment actually. Better them than me I guess. I´ve been led to believe that the 5$ entry tax that Americans have to pay to get in to the country, people from the U.K. and Australia I know don´t have to pay it, is explicit revenge for when we taxed the Panamanians to use the canal in their own country prior to us giving it back to them. Go figure, right?
Today, I went on an island hopping/dolphin watching/snorkeling tour with a bunch of people I´d met the night before. The weather was pretty crappy at the start, raining good during the dolphin portion and I was afraid of getting my camera wet, which is unfortunate cause we saw some really cool dolphin action. Captain Willy drove the boat in circles, making waves, and got some dolphins to follow us and ¨surf¨our wake, jumping out of the water every few seconds. It was awesome, they couldn´t have been more than 2 meters away from the boat (some heathen unit of measurement, don´t ask) and you could see their pink noses and watch as they glided through the water. Got sunny for the snorkeling and beach portion and was a great day.
It´s funny with all the stray dogs in every town, I think I´d almost forgotten that dogs have balls too, since I almost never see ones that haven´t been nuetered in the States. Also, and this might be too much information, the female dogs all have extremely long, low-hanging and distended nipples. I swear I´ve seen some that actually drag on the ground. Just thought I´d share.
The last couple of days I´ve been nursing some scratched mosquito bites that are starting to get infected. I swear these biting insects love my blood for some reason, my poor legs and ankles look like some medical picture in a textbook illustrating the symptoms of some rare foreign disease like monkey pox. I guess I just need to be better about putting on insect repellant at all times. Careful cleaning, dressing and application of neosporin seems to be doing the trick, and I´m hopeful amputation wont be necessary. Honestly, even worse than the mosquitoes are the sand fleas, too small to really see but just as aggressive about biting.
At least I avoided being bitten by that thing!
All in all, I´m having a great time, and it feels good to be on my own travelling through foreign lands, meeting strange and interesting people and seeing amazing sights. Talking to people from so many different countries has been one of the best parts, and I´m endlessly fascinated by their perspective on us and all the idiosyncracies and quirks of different nationalities. I still miss home, with all its familiarity and friends, but don´t regret for a minute embarking on this trip. I plan on being in Nicaragua by this weekend and am looking forward to a new and even cheaper country. Miss you all and hope you´re having a great summer!
The party was interesting, I´m thinking of buying a small digital camera that I can bring out with me at night without fear of attracting the unwelcome attention my large and expensive one would generate at night. Their were ¨Jagermeister Strippers¨and the hostel invited a bunch of locals to come party. Was fun, and it´s always cool to mix with the locals and practice Spanish.
Puerto Viejo has one of the chillest vibes of any town I´ve been to yet and I took my first swim in the Caribbean. The town has lots of Afro-Caribe residents with a real Rasta feel and everyone is super nice and always nods and says hello when they pass by. Also, everyone rides bikes, they´re four dollars a day to rent, and it´s cool to just kind of cruise around the town and up and down the coast to the various beaches. Nights are spent partying, dancing and listening to Rasta, which is certainly a fine way to spend an evening on the ocean.
Cock shot...
I met some crazy indigent American in his mid-twenties at the beach who was all bruised up and absolutely out of his mind. I got to listen to him tell me about his fights with the devil, his drug addictions, and he shared some weird obsession with numerology, finding signs and portents in all numbers he came across. Was kind of disturbing and I was a bit relieved when I finally managed to extricate myself from his company. There was also a hilarious old white guy who was a ¨magician¨ and entertained us at breakfast with kind of crappy magic tricks and a constant stream of dirty jokes.
After a few days in Puerto Viejo, I decided to cross the border into Panama, a beatiful land of canals and hats, and then a little way down the coast and then a boat to the island archipelago of Bocas del Toro. The main town on one of the bigger islands is a backpackers paradise, with tons of travelers from all over the world. Been hanging out with some cool guys I met from Las Vegas, partied with a wild Norwegian and had a great time hanging out and talking to an Israeli and a German. Sounds like the start of a joke, ¨so, a Persian, an Israeli and a German all walk into a bar...¨
Me and a couple of Israeli guys I met and chilled with
The days are spent chartering boats to various little islands and hanging out and the nights are like Spring Break every day of the week. Every night is ¨ladies night¨at one of the various bars and is usually packed and jumping. There´s one popular bar a short .75 cent water-taxi ride away and it was absolutely crazy. Right on the water with tons of drunk people jumping into the ocean and flying off swings into a ¨pool¨cut into the deck. Unfortunately the only naked person I saw that night was a guy running around. Around two o´clock the local police decided it was too crazy a party and came and broke it up though. The hostel I´m staying at has a ¨free¨ shot called, ¨Tequila Suicide,¨but the catch is you first snort a line of margarita salt, then get a shot of their cheapest tequila, have to turn around and lean back and the bartender opens your eye and squeezes a lime wedge directly into it. Surprisingly a lot of people were doing it, it looked extremely unpleasant.
Lime in the eye...ouch!
Played cricket, well a beach version anyway, for the first time ever. Met some Aussies on a beach and they invited me to join their game. So that was an experience.
Met a really cool Jamaican dude named Livingston on one of the islands and he made us all some great food. Never knew Spanish could be spoken with a Jamaican accent. He was really funny though, spoke good English, and railed against the ¨fake Rasta¨gringos that flock to the various tourist towns to sell homemade jewelry.
Cool guy named Haroon, spent a few days with him and his buddy
Malloy. Awesome guitar player, kept us entertained during happy
hour with orginal songs.
Was hanging out a local beach the other day with some friends I´d met, just kind of chilling and swimming after our hike out to it. A ways down the beach were a group of dutch girls and some others and apparently they´d recently all smoked a couple joints but left the bag of weed just sitting out and a couple of ¨Park Rangers¨materialized out of the forest and noticed it. So the rangers start giving them grief, telling them how much trouble they could get them in if they call the real police and so on. The group asks what they can do to make this go away, probably hoping to just pay a bribe I imagine. The rangers though are apparently uninterested and pointing to a nearby little lagoon some ways back from the beach tell the group that they want them to build a canal from the lagoon to the ocean, seemingingly for some obscure turtle-nesting reason or something. So we´re chilling there, we talked to them later and got the full scoop, watching this big group of people dig this deep canal through the sand in the blazing sun. The rangers are supervising the project and just absolutely having a great time, laughing like it´s the funniest damn thing they´ve ever seen, which it might have been. Anyway, it took this big group 2 and a half hours of digging to finally finish the thing. The rangers walk around inspect the work, and then tell them, ¨now fill it back in.¨Ouch! Once it was filled back in, which didn´t take all that long, they gave them back the weed and wandered back into the jungle, still laughing. I have to assume the irony of forcing white foreigners to dig a canal in Panama was not lost on them, rather a cleverly ironic punishment actually. Better them than me I guess. I´ve been led to believe that the 5$ entry tax that Americans have to pay to get in to the country, people from the U.K. and Australia I know don´t have to pay it, is explicit revenge for when we taxed the Panamanians to use the canal in their own country prior to us giving it back to them. Go figure, right?
Today, I went on an island hopping/dolphin watching/snorkeling tour with a bunch of people I´d met the night before. The weather was pretty crappy at the start, raining good during the dolphin portion and I was afraid of getting my camera wet, which is unfortunate cause we saw some really cool dolphin action. Captain Willy drove the boat in circles, making waves, and got some dolphins to follow us and ¨surf¨our wake, jumping out of the water every few seconds. It was awesome, they couldn´t have been more than 2 meters away from the boat (some heathen unit of measurement, don´t ask) and you could see their pink noses and watch as they glided through the water. Got sunny for the snorkeling and beach portion and was a great day.
It´s funny with all the stray dogs in every town, I think I´d almost forgotten that dogs have balls too, since I almost never see ones that haven´t been nuetered in the States. Also, and this might be too much information, the female dogs all have extremely long, low-hanging and distended nipples. I swear I´ve seen some that actually drag on the ground. Just thought I´d share.
The last couple of days I´ve been nursing some scratched mosquito bites that are starting to get infected. I swear these biting insects love my blood for some reason, my poor legs and ankles look like some medical picture in a textbook illustrating the symptoms of some rare foreign disease like monkey pox. I guess I just need to be better about putting on insect repellant at all times. Careful cleaning, dressing and application of neosporin seems to be doing the trick, and I´m hopeful amputation wont be necessary. Honestly, even worse than the mosquitoes are the sand fleas, too small to really see but just as aggressive about biting.
At least I avoided being bitten by that thing!
All in all, I´m having a great time, and it feels good to be on my own travelling through foreign lands, meeting strange and interesting people and seeing amazing sights. Talking to people from so many different countries has been one of the best parts, and I´m endlessly fascinated by their perspective on us and all the idiosyncracies and quirks of different nationalities. I still miss home, with all its familiarity and friends, but don´t regret for a minute embarking on this trip. I plan on being in Nicaragua by this weekend and am looking forward to a new and even cheaper country. Miss you all and hope you´re having a great summer!
So we'll call this the "genitalia" update? Sheesh! As usual, nice pictures and it sounds like you're taking full advantage of your time!
ReplyDeleteAlso - no warning before you post a picture of a giant spider?
Yeah..that picture of the spider could give some people to remain nameless, serious nightmares...and thanks for the NSFW pictures of animal testies
ReplyDelete