So here I am, near Jaco, Costa Rica.   I was surprised to learn the owner, named "Paco", had a computer on site.

My oldest son & I will likely be paddling the sea kayak tomorrow morning in the inlet, which is my back yard.  Water temps in the ocean & in the swimming pool out back verge on body temperature.  The wide Pacific covers the southeast horizon & a majestic mountain range is the main evidence of the peninsula across the bay.  Clouds hover halfway between the slope & those peaks.  Kind of neat.  As I type this, the sun sets between that range & the wide open sea, silhouetting those peaks in orange.  Sea breeze, no bugs, temps have dived down into the 80's, and beverage of choice is in hand.  It ain't Quetico folks, but it ain't all that bad, either....

Don't know what kind of fish are lurking beyond those rocks where the surfs spits up so high.  Sea bass, I suppose.  I sort of wish I had brought some kind of pole but I'm not much of a salt water fisherman.  I saw some local wade out to those rocks this morning with his girlfriend.  They were using live bait.  I don't know what & I didn't stick around long enough to witness a catch.

I'm glad my oldest boy speaks some Spanish.  I'd have been ripped off a few times by now, for sure.  Why did I pick "French" as my foreign language way back when?  Dumb....

Will probably do a treetop tour later in the week, shooting platform to platform, 100-200 feet in the trees on zip lines & harnesses.  Should be kind of neat, though this season has been especially dry & the jungle may not be quite as green as usual.  If we see a few monkeys & butterflies I'm sure the family will be happy.  My 78 year old mother says she will be doing the zip lines, too.

I'll keep you guys posted on this non-Quetico trip.  One of my boys & I should be doing the sea kayak in the morning between 7am & 9am.  The big surf gets up much after that.

Adios for now,

Jimbo   

Bogs,

Hey, the Minnesota River just north of Mankato runs right past my place of work.  Too bad you aren't paddling past them this morning. I'd have you plaster a sign on your yak for my 640 buddies there.  It might say, "Greetings from Jimbo!  He's thinking of you right now as he swims on a tropical beach...NOT!!"

One of these days I'll get around to paddling the Minnesota.  Lots of guys in the plant fish it.  They know most of the deeper holes where walleye can be found.

Temps here got close to 100 degrees yesterday...at least that's what the car thermometer read the one time I looked.  It sure felt it!  Scrounging around the local food market in the afternoon was a pretty sweltering experience.  No wonder most "activity" around here gets accomplished in the morning!  Don't know what the weather report is telling me this morning OR even IF it IS a weather report.  Can't understand a thing they're saying on the radio!!  The tunes they play DO have a nice beat.  Perhaps I should say tune, singular.  It is almost always the same rhythm...or so it seems.  The market for "drummers" down here must be phenomenal.

Anyway, I prefer going out on the back porch to catch the breeze off the Pacific, to admire sqwawking colorful big-tailed birds waft their way up the seaside cliff, & to watch strange-looking lizards jump from my roof top to branches of the trees above my head.  The whole thing is kind of ethereal.  VERY non-Minnesotan (which is neither good nor bad, just interesting).

The truth be known: I MUCH prefer the high-pitched song of white-throats in the North Woods in May/June, guys!

Catch you later, Bogs!  It's time to absorb "the Tropics" & to develop new appreciations... or, at least, so says my wife!!!

Looks like boys want to have a "surfing" day, today.  Ah, where is my old Greg Noll 9 foot board when I need it??  I could float the whole family on that one!!  Alas, the wife hawked it off about 10 years ago in a yard sale.   Geez.

My canoe??  She'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead fingers....

Jimbo

Seen any Lightning "Flash" ....LOL....you better watch those clouds close!

Glad you are having a good time, it sounds like a really nice trip. I agree with QP, bring some of that weather back & free the lakes up here of ice..... they are turning green, so it won't be long now

Jimbo,

Just keep rubbing it in, I am actually feeling the heat. It sounds great down there, but it won't be long now, all the snow is gone up here.

Is the hammock something you can use in the BW/Q or one for around the house?

Batman

Welcome to the ocean .... I sea ur (igrey) using a yak....look out for the sharks....very real, been there, done that, oh and welcome to the wave...lol!!! You aint seen nothing yet. Enjoy...have fun, this was how I was originaly introduced to the paddle...be careful.

Small tip... Seals on rocks barking? Sharks about.

Robin

PS.. you need to buy absolutly nothing to go distinctivly in the woods, however I kawish you would get rid of those tights. Put on some camo or something else man.

Sadly, our week in Costa Rica ends tomorrow.  This is truly a beautiful & developing country. 

There is good & bad with that "developing" part, I suppose.  As we have travelled about on the west coast of CR, I have had to sharpen my driving skills considerably.  Road challenges take many & surprising forms.  First of all, narrow roads - paved & not paved - twist along mountain sides.  There are no (or few) sidewalks.  Pedestrians & bicycles seem to have equal rights of way.  I watched frustrated drivers pass on BOTH sides of stopping busses at the same time, making roads where there weren't any.  Any those bus drivers?  They're fearless.  They'll pass vehicles on blind curves going down the mountain crossing a double yellow line to do so!  Those yellow lines & traffic signals, you know, the stuff the "law" is made of in our country?  Well, they're merely "suggestions" here.  By late morning in the dry season, many of the locals are burning their fields, effectively creating "smoke screens" to further complicate driving on the highways.  Then, as if then isn't enough challenge, several of the river crossings here are made on one-lane rickety-old bridges.  On the five such bridges we crossed yesterday (en route to a beautiful park called Manuel Antonio), many of the "rickets" holding those bridges together were missing!  Lots of airy spaces under one's tires but apparently close enough together to allow passage.  Nevertheless, all eyes - except mine - in my vehicle were glued to the brown, crocodile-infested waters which sluggishly flowed beneath us.

So, I guess you've figured out that is the "bad" part of the "developing country" comment. 

The "good part" has been just about everything else.  Beautiful seaside parks & vistas.  The Canopy tour was a great deal of fun.  We happened to go through at the same time as a large group from the states.  My 78 year-old mother strapped on the harness & flew 40mph from platform to platform - sometimes 1000 feet in distance - through the trees, always between 100-200 feet up in the air off the mountainside.  We covered 13 such cables on the way down from the top of the mountain, much of the time overlooking a gorgeous blue bay with white wave spray jetting over black rocks.  We encountered a tree sloth somewhere near the top.  Various jungle & sea birds flew above us, below us, & with us on our way down.  Mom earned loud applause from the entire group when she finished!  If you get to CR, DO the Canopy Tour!!!!

There is lots to see & do here.  Yesterday we visited the Howler Monkeys down at Manuel Antonio Park.  Somebody from another group slipped on the steep path & fell into the jungle-growth just below them.  The rascals up in the trees went berserko on that one!  I guess they're territorial.  Then we walked over to a nearby fine white sand beach & body-surfed some super waves.

There have been NO bugs & little rain.  Food is quite good & very inexpensive.  Beverage choices for beer are limited but Imperial & Pilsen aren't bad.  The locals are very friendly but remember (if you come down here)...they are ALL fearless when they get anywhere near a public road!  It's Costa Rican roulette on those roads, folks, so beware!!

Jimbo

Mad_Mat,

Zip lines, WOW!!  Excellent idea...at least in ONE direction, for most portages!!  My Costa Rican experience suggests an answer might be possible for the reverse up-hill route as well, however.  If we can only learn to train the howling critters, how about a dial-up phone service such as:  1-800-Portage-Monkey??  Several of the ones I saw yesterday would be big enough to do the job.  They could probably find a few short cuts not available to the likes of you & me, too.  On the other hand, the "down-side" is that they make so much howling noise, the moose, deer, & other wildlife would seldom come around.

Hey, so there I am this morning, out in the sparkling blue Pacific cove just below the veranda in our back yard.  I'm doing about a half-mile to three-quarter mile swim to the rocky point at the end of the cove in lieu of other local exercise options (I suck as a swimmer, so this is a REAL work-out for ME).  I'm taking in the scenery: watching the local vendor take sea kayaks off his truck; gazing over at the wide-spreading big-boughed trees with hanging vines; looking seaward where this fancy katamaran has been moored all week long; basically just soaking it all in.  Anyway, I'm doing some kind of a modified back-stroke & making slow progress & staring up at a powder blue sky.  Suddenly, three very large "birds" of distinctly sharp angles & long beaks (not far-removed from Pterodactyls on their family tree) start circling directly above me.  I swear I thought I was seeing a little pointy spot on the top of their heads that would have confirmed an ancestry closely linked to those in "Jurassic Park".  Hmmmm...now that I think about it, THIS IS where they filmed Jurassic Park.  Yessiree, it was disconcerting for a little bit but "reason" soon got hold of me.  So, I just kept back-stroking along.  Before long, this "predator-pack" flew off into some gum trees up on the cliff, where they scared several other strange large birds - all red - which, in turn, produced one heck of a "macaw, macaw" cacophony as they fluttered away.

Time to wake up the boys & enjoy our last full day here.

Adios,

Jimbo

Jack,

I couldn't remember the name of the place while I was actually down there.  I'll be sure to ask the family over dinner tonight.  They have better retention for such social & cultural highlights than I do.  Most of the locals were telling me that the town has grown five-fold in the past ten years.

We DID decide to visit a "mountain-top hotel/restaurant" at sunset.  The place is called Villa Caletas.  It has a spectacular vista that rivals that of any establishment I've ever seen anywhere, including my all-time favorite spots looking across at the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps!  Actually, we drove up, walked onto the terrace to watch the sunset over the Pacific, then left.  When the menus did NOT include prices and the price of after-dinner cigars exceeded what I expected to pay for dinner, well...the air seemed a bit too rarefied for my blood.  The place was about 5-6 miles north of Jaco just off the coastal Hwy 34.

I'll get back to you later re: the Hotel Cocal.  And, hey, that Imperial beer WAS very good.  I could very easily get used to that!!  My son & I raised one or two of them in your honor early on.....

Jimbo

Special K,

You know, I DO believe both my son & my Mom each grabbed some "volcanic" looking samples.  As for ME, however, it was MY pleasure to grab something I place much more value on...several bags of the Costa Rican coffee.  By picking it up in the local grocery store there (versus the tourist "gift shops") I probably saved 90%.  It's the exact same stuff & it's great! 

A bag of the precious beverage will make it into the Q with my group this year!

Jimbo