The Whale's Tail

Going to the beach here is pretty much obligatory. The whole middle Costa Rican western coast is a bunch of beautiful coastline with rolling waves, perpetually warm and crystal. So when we were kicked out of our rented house one afternoon so our floors could be varnished, we decided it was time for a trip to the Whale's Tail, part of Uvita's national park and beach.

Getting there took longer than expected. We took a wrong turn and found ourselves at a dirt road dead end surrounded by cow and horse farms, and had to turn around. And the 'right' way to the beach involved fording a river (no oxen lost). Infrastructure here is somewhat lacking, but to be fair, there is a paved road to the beach. We just took a scenic detour.

Once we got to the beach we started making our way to the Whale's Tail. The beach was wide, very wide, and with a lot fewer people. From (palm)treeline to waterline was a large expanse of wet sand (since my homestate is pretty much a unit of measurement anyway, let's say four Rhode Island beaches could fit inside). This was since we went at low tide; otherwise there would have been almost no beach.

The strand of beach between the rocky tail and the mainland.

We got most of the way out on the tail and couldn't resist the ocean to our left any longer. We waded out into the warm water, but unfortunately the waves were pretty pitiful, so we soon went back to explore the end of the tail, with all of its rocks and threatening waves beyond. We carefully walked around it for a while then scrambled up some small artificial rock tower amidst the rocks. Well, Nick and George climbed up it, anyway. I, the "reasonable one" as Nick and George like to call me, stayed on the ground and simply observed as they looked from side to side for a safe way down like pitiful cats in a tree.

Would you climb the pillar at the Whale's Tail?

On the way back we checked out the other side of the tail, and went for another swim. Nick and I had a good time in the comparatively high waves there. We attempted a series of invented challenges involving the waves: standing ground against them, jumping over them, riding them, and at the end, closing our eyes and trying to stay in one place whenever a nice big one would suddenly crash over us without warning. We waded back to shore once we agreed we had gotten a sufficient amount of salty water up our noses.

Back at the treeline, we all three went under the canopy in search of coconuts, George leading the way. We found plenty on the ground from unripe green to overripe brown. It was obvious what we had to do; we immediately set to work diligently smashing them against rocks and trees like cavemen of the tropics, grunting accordingly. We devised various strategies, from throwing it like a baseball at a tree to peeling off a sort of handle to smash it against a fallen trunk. We got several open and drank from the delicious inner juices; it was pretty handy how much was in there and how good it tasted. If you got through the outer webbing without smashing the inner core, you could have two or three mouthfuls of coconut water. The meat was also fairly good, and ranged from soft like a cooked egg white to very hard, which I could see why you'd want it in shaved form. As we imbibed, George teased Nick and I for probably breaking our diet (how much fructose is in coconut?) but Nick and I agreed this was a worthy exception. You can't go through the effort to break open a coconut and NOT drink the insides, right?

Delicious coconut, worth every bit of effort

Since the sun was getting a bit low, we decided it was time to return home, seeing as there is little artifical light in Uvita after dark. We opted to try a different dirt road back into town, to see if it was better. We didn't have a good map or anything though, so we were somewhat uncertain of our way.

"Is that a paved road up there...? Wait no that's just more mud."

"Should I run ahead and see if we're going the right way?"

"We could just ask a local which way to the main road."

"Now where's the fun in that?"

"The road has to be SOMEWHERE between here and the mountains."

"How long before it would be too late to just go back the other way?"

"I hear cars. I don't know guys, they sound far away..."

On top of that, it began to downpour as we wandered down the unfamiliar road. None of us really minded though since it felt so nice in the weather and we didn't have any electronics with us anyway (those pictures were taken by us separately). Finally we spotted a car moving through the trees on the highway, so we were saved from walking home in utter darkness (or getting a taxi I suppose). We got back, thoroughly exhausted and entirely soaked from the rain. You know how you're usually really tired after coming back from a day at the beach? Yeah this was way more exhausting than your average beach run. To soothe my aching legs I got in the pool and soaked for a good long time as twilight descended upon our home.

I slept very well that night.

Even More Uvita Fauna

We've already had several more run ins with a bunch of new and interesting creatures here. Stories and pictures abound. I have a feeling this won't be the last post about creatures in Uvita.

Remember how I said that Gumerzindo's chickens that are running around in the yard are the luckiest chickens in North America? Well one of them wasn't so lucky. One day Nick and I were on the porch, getting some sunscreen on in preparation to go into town for our first Spanish class. Gumerzindo was on the porch as well, on the other side of the house, mending the screens. Then suddenly we all heard a squaking on the nearby hillside and saw a chicken struggling in the brush. Crying out something in Spanish, Gumerzindo quickly ran around the porch and down the stairs to investigate. He scrambled into the brush just as the chicken was going quiet, and after a minute or two he was able to get the chicken out from under some plants.

Holding his chicken under his arm, he inspected the wings and body for damage and seemed to be satisfied that he was fine (we're never quite sure what he's saying, Nick and I are very much novices at Spanish). He mentioned "perro", and after leaving, Nick pointed down to the river where we saw the little dog looking up at us and shaking himself off. We took a few pictures as best we could from the distance as he trotted off back into the jungle.

As Nick and I were heading into town though, Gumerzindo called out to us from his house and held aloft a motionless chicken by the legs. Looks like the one we saw in the bush made it, but the other one didn't.

We were minding our own business one night, at our computers, having our nightly struggle with the internet, when George abruptly yelped in surprise. A rather large grasshopper had jumped onto his laptop screen, wiggling its giant antennae about and giving him a start. Nick ran over and got the camera and started getting all up close and personal with the large insect, getting some good snaps. Apparently deciding Nick was some sort of mountain that needed to be conquered, the grasshopper jumped onto the side of his hip. "Take a picture!" Nick said as he excitedly thrust the camera into my arms, but unfortunately I was not fast enough to catch what happened next. It rapidly climbed up Nick's side and jumped right onto his cheek, at which point Nick flipped out and instinctively swatted it off his face before it could reach his bald spot, which we could only assume was his goal. George, deciding we had been tormented enough, unceremoniously squashed it and sent it to the trash.

A vertiable flock of these guys visited our lawn. Some sort of buzzard or vulture? Nothing particularly interesting happened with these guys, though they looked rather cool...

But later that afternoon...

Nick and I had finished our work for the day. It was getting dark and we wanted to get into the pool. Our Danish neighbors had been occupying it most of the afternoon and were just leaving, and George was away learning how to surf for the day in Dominical.

So I go to the guest house to change. As I open the door, for the umpteenth time a cute, harmless little gecko scampers out of view. They really seem to like being in and around the houses, or perhaps there are just tons of them in the area; either way we see them on pretty much a daily basis. As I hunch over to look at it hiding under my bed, I think to myself "well I'm glad I don't see as many scorpions here as I see those lizards!" Then I grab my swimtrunks and start to stick my leg in, at which point a thin black scorpion just drops out onto the bathroom floor right in front of me.

As I stand there hunched over, stepping back into the bedroom and cursing in surprise, the little guy scuttles away into the corner and hides behind a piece of wood of the wall, and into my nightmares forever. Later, upon informing Nick and George of the close encounter, we lamented that it had snuck into my trunks, which had been hanging on the wall, which means ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE IS SAFE. So from now on it's going to take me about five times longer than before to get dressed as I very carefully shake out every piece of clothing I've got.

And getting to sleep? Well... that's taking a little while longer as well.

Tech, and Lack Thereof

Like food (see Slow Carbing It Up), our ability to communicate with the outside world is on our minds and in our conversations every day. After all, running an internet company basically requires being connected all the time, and we use the internet for a lot of our recreation as well. Before we got here, we knew that if the connection was unusable, we would just have to go back home. So it was a gamble coming here. While communication technologies here have turned out to definitely be a big step down from what we're used to, we've adapted and are still fairly efficient at getting things done and staying connected.

For internet access, we use cell phone network USB sticks. The speed of these things is highly variable. Usually it's decent, getting as high as 1Mbp/s download, or 125kB/s, if you're lucky. All too often though the sticks are highly uncooperative, and the internet essentially becomes unusable, with pages taking minutes to load or simply not loading at all. So when the internet is working, you use it while you can, and when it isn't working, you just do something else.

Our difficulties were compounded when one of the sticks stopped working at all a week ago, and now only two of the three of us can be online at the same time. We're constantly juggling the sticks between each other, figuring out who needs to be connected at any given time. It takes some coordination, but it hasn't been too hard to adapt.

Straight up internet access covers about 90% of our needs, but there are still some things we need to do through mail, fax and phone as a business. This is especially true for George, our business guy. And so we have become familiar with a number of internet services (recommended by Tynan in his book, Life Nomadic) that fill in these gaps.

Take mail for example. There is no postal service here, it seems. There's barely an address system, in fact. In the words of Wikitravel:

There are no formal street addresses in Costa Rica, but two informal systems exist. The first (often used in tourist information) indicates the road on which the establishment is located (e.g., "6th Avenue"), together with the crossroad interval (e.g., "between 21st and 23rd Streets"). In practice, street signs are virtually non-existent, and locals do not even know the name of the street they are on. The second system, which is much more reliable and understood by locals, is known as the "Tico address", usually involving an oriented distance (e.g., "100 meters south, 50 meters east") from a landmark (e.g., "the cathedral").

So we've been using mailaletter.com to mail things. George tried it for the first time earlier this week, but he was not pleased with the process. It took him three or four hours to fill out and mail just one form digitally. I also had difficulty getting a fax service, fax1.com, to work, which took some extra time. While they are inefficient, these tools are thankfully not needed very often. And it is handy to be able to do this sort of thing from anywhere with an internet connection and a computer and nothing else.

Receiving mail has been much nicer though. I signed up for Earthclass Mail, and I've been managing all my mail through it's online interface. While it's not cheap, and they nickel and dime you for every little service you request, I think it's worth the cost for a traveler or someone who moves often.

Phone calls can be tricky. I have a toy-like Telestial cell phone for emergencies, but for the most part we try to stick to things like Skype. Great price for making calls anywhere, but subject to the whims of the internet connection. Receiving calls involves Google Voice, which I have my US phone forwarding to for the duration of the trip. I can have Google Voice further forward those calls to my Telestial phone or to Google Chat, or hypothetically to Skype if I were to pay for a Skype phone number. It's a bit of a mess honestly, and breaks down under its own complexity.

While all these things are kind of a hassle, I don't think it's too bad; it's not unduly onerous. And anyway, if the internet refuses to work and there's nothing else work related I can do, I'll just go read a book by the pool in the 80 degree weather. I can wait.

Uvita Fauna

Time for some photos of a small selection of the animals we've ran into here in Uvita. The wildlife is rather prominent!

Right outside our house is this hive of industry. I was not aware ants could do this.


While exploring the river, we came across this little guy, the smallest frog we'd ever seen. Not easy focusing the camera on it.


This big guy decided to just build a web all over the front porch of the guest house. We managed to take a few snaps before Gumersindo, the grounds-keeper, took care of him.


A couple times now these forest frogs made it into our house. Adowable.

Besides the ones we've captured on digital film, there are also a ton of noisy creatures, mostly bugs and birds. The birds in particular seem in an awful hurry to wake us up at dawn. I tried earplugs for a while but gave up and now wake up at six. We've also got a couple hens just running around our house, who are being taken care of by Gumersindo. I declared them "a couple of the luckiest chickens in the world. Or at least in North America." Nick, who has been reading Omnivore's Dilemma, readily agreed.

We haven't seen any monkeys though, which has made Nick despondent. "I was advertised monkeys," he lamented. In desperation he has left out grapes and almonds on the porch railing in the hope that a simian would show its innocent face. No such luck. George is perfectly glad they're not around though, given their reputation as kleptomaniacs.

We also haven't yet seen any of the creatures we were warned about: snakes and scorpions. Snakes are easy to avoid, just don't go traipsing through tall grass willy-nilly, no problem. Scorpions though, they for some reason like to hide in such hilarious places as bundles of clothes, shoes, and crumpled up bedsheets (so make your bed!). Our landlady warned us to shake all of these things out before using them, having found one in her bedsheets only two weeks prior, after sleeping in said bed. And she knew someone who had one hiding in the hood of a jacket, and got stung on the head after putting the hood up. She informed us that this friend of hers was "tripping for several days after that."

No problem!

Slow Carbing it Up

Food has been a daily, almost hourly concern since we got here. Getting it is no problem; the grocery store is just a walk up the highway, about thirty minutes by foot. And most of the stuff you'd find in an American grocery store can be got here. The problem is making sure we eat the right stuff and enough of it.

You see, we're all giving the Slow-Carb Diet a try so we can get our body-fat down. It's described in Tim Ferris' book The 4-Hour Body, and it basically means cutting out every kind of carb that will get into your body fast and spike your blood sugar, which happens to be pretty much all carbs we tend to think of. Rice, flour, pasta, and anything with sugar are all out. Even fruit and dairy products are not allowed. It's kind of a variation of the Atkins diet, or so I'm told.

We had varying degrees of ease getting accustomed to it the first couple weeks. While we can eat pretty much however much we want of non-carb foods (beans, eggs, meats, and vegetables constitute most of our diet), we still get hit with cravings for all the other stuff, at least George and I do (Nick is not mortal and does not really count). That and apparently Nick and George need about half again as much food as I do. I tend to undercook, making however much fits into the pan, and in response they claim the meals just make them more hungry! So lately I've been trying to compensate for their voracious appetites. And we have to make sure we eat enough beans with their relatively high amount of carbs, or we get tired and cranky from low blood sugar.

George would like some more carbs now.

Cooking this stuff has been an exercise in improvisation. We basically buy all the foods that we like and are allowed to have. Whenever it's time to cook I tend to take a meat or two, a veggie or two, and maybe a handful of beans, then cook it all in butter or olive oil on the stove and season it with spices or (sugarless) sauces before serving. One of the more successful meals was pan-fried beets, pepperoni, and Canadian bacon with a bit of kalameta olive/feta sauce. Breakfasts have all involved eggs, to make sure we get our protein in the morning.

My first time grilling. Didn't go very well, but the setting was nice.

Now this diet has a twist: you get one day a week to go all out and eat whatever junk you want to put into your body. In fact you're encouraged to. Essentially it's controlled binging. It helps keep your metabolic rate up, and lets you satisfy your cravings every so often so you're not as likely to cheat on the other days. My first "Cheat Day" (also known as "Reverse Lent") I ate three eggs, a couple sausages, a Snickers bar, a banana muffin, garlic cheese bread, three slices of pizza, a bottle of pepsi, M&Ms, some chocolate cookies, a few chips, and a delicious banana milkshake. And that was before dinner! One of the ideas behind the day is you get so sick of this carb stuff that you don't want to even look at it for the next few days.

Conquered two large delicious pizzas on our first cheat day. It was GLORIOUS.

Oh and George hates Tim Ferris, the diet's author, with a "burning, fiery passion". Having read some of his book, I have to admit he's kind of an egomaniac. But we all agreed to judge man and method separately, so we're seeing if his various body hacks will actually work. Still, George appears aggravated most times we talk about him and his writings, which is pretty regularly now. At this rate we'll be talking about Tim and his body hacks more than about Tynan and his minimalist, nomadish ways.

What happens when you mention Tim in earshot of George

Getting to Uvita, Part 2

The following day we took our time getting up, not needing to rush to get to Uvita. We got some native currency, breakfast, and sunscreen, and criss-crossed the city looking for the right bus to our destination.

Being all touristy in San Jose

The first part of the trip would be to San Isidro on a road through the mountains. The cool air in these elevated regions made the inside very comfortable despite the heat, and we had about three hours to relax. George and Nick sat a row back and discussed various deep life decisions, and I chatted with the natives next to me and across the aisle. The one next to me had been to Tennessee and also Ohio, doing construction work, and the mother across from me had also spent some time in the US. It seems like many Costa Ricans have traveled to the states at one point or another, at least given what I've heard. While I was talking with the the mother, her child interjected from time to time, teaching me a little Spanish and proudly showed off photos on her Nintendo DS, her family's first video game purchase.

The second half of the trip to Uvita was a bit more exciting and off the beaten track. We stepped off the bus in San Isidro and were promptly offered a taxi ride as a faster but not too much more expensive alternative to the bus to Uvita. We figured why not and got in the car.

Granted, this taxi wasn't really part of any larger service, it was just this guy's car, but it went well. We chatted with our driver all the way there. He had also been to the US, up and down the west coast, and started off the ride by showing us a bunch of pictures of his adventures up there. We drove over and around the mountainsides, quickly passing several buses and trucks that were going at a much slower pace up the steep roads. A couple times he pulled over and, wrench in hand, muttered "The breaks are not working quite right..." and hopped out to crouch by the front left wheel and give his car a bit of a tune up.

We got to Uvita only an hour or two before dark, justifying our decision to go with the taxi. Our driver insisted on taking us all the way up the dirt road to our house, overriding George's preciously mentioned desire not to impose on anyone. The car went up and down violently on the rocky dirt road, a few times making loud bangs you could feel with your feet as the underside made contact with the jutting rocks. Finally our house came into view as we descended from a large hill. A pool area on the side, a nice big house, a small guesthouse off to the side and a river running just beyond it down a steep hill. Mountains beyond and beach back where we came. Perfect.

The River House, in all its splendiforous glory

The guest house. While smaller, it does have one advantage: air conditioning.

Dinner, again, was our main concern upon arriving, and this time we hadn't had lunch so we were doubly ravenous. Our new house being devoid of any kind of food, we stopped by the neighboring house to say hello to our German landlady, who pointed us up the mountain to a hotel with a restaurant. She and her father also suggested going into town via taxi, but we knew the mountain was where the glory was! We grabbed a flashlight from the house, returned to the landlady's house to get directions since we really didn't know where we were going, then set on our way, hungry as ever.

It was a brutal climb, constantly going up. It reminded me of climbing up and down Vermont mountain sides in Marlboro four years ago, though back then I didn't have to go nearly as far by foot. Night was falling quickly, and we only just made it to the hotel near the top of the mountain before it became completely dark, and not before accidentally intruding on someone's property in search of the road.

The hotel attendents were pleasantly surprised by the panting, sweaty Americans that had just arrived at their classy establishment. We sat at a table overlooking the green lit hotel pool and the pitch dark mountainsides toward the ocean. We promptly had our dinner and were supremely satisfied. The long arduous hike up a mountain before dinner made it all the better.

After chatting a bit more with the attendents, we walked back down to our house, the flashlight an absolutely necessity given how dark the steep road was. Fat and happy, we retired for the evening in our new home.