i m off

That was fun!... read more

Well, I sit here with an hour to burn before doing the airport dance. I have been in a nice place called the Hotel Pacande for the past two days enjoying the nice park area, mango milkshakes and awesome hamburgers. I also visited the dentist yesterday for an hour doing cavities and this morning getting the whitening treatment. That was actually pretty painful because they put this lip separator on you that feels like you are having a baby out of your mouth. I was actually doing the lamaze breathing method that I learned with Midorii in class when Arisa was born. Midori never did use it, so it was nice to know that I could put the knowledge to some use all these years later. I spent over 4 hours total in the dentist between ... read more

Imoff Central America I feel like I have a coat an inch thick of slime and grease on my body now that I have been up since 3 am to catch first a boat in the dark, then wait for 4 hours in San Carlos Nicaragua for another boat to the border of Costa Rica and Los Chiles and now another 5 hour bus ride in sweltering heat to San Carlos Costa Rica. I have been out on the Island of Mancarron located at the Solentimane Island. Check it out --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solentiname_Islands I rode the barge overnight from Isla Ometepe to get to San Carlos. The barge ride was cool except for the crazy violent movie that off course was playing. I watched the first one with Bruce Willis shooting machine guns and throwing bombs ... read more

Deciding to come to Nicaragua was a literallly a coin toss. After the girls left for home and me alone to travel in San Jose I couldn´t decide on going to the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica or coming up to another country. The border crossing between Nicaragua and Costa Rica is famous for being confusing and after the Panama fiasco, I was kind of hoping the coin would land heads for the Osa. Tails won and so I headed north. After a couple of relaxing and quiet days in La Cruz, I caught the early bus to the border and was indeed greeting with a mass of confusion. Trucks and busses were parked all over the place and we were dropped off next to a line that made a July Saturday at Disney´s Space ... read more

I finally found a hotel where I can actually sleep for 8 hours! It took a month, but here in the tiny town of La Cruz on the Costa Rica border with Nicaragua, there is a hotel I would recommend called La Mirada, right near the park. Once again I am the only tourist in town and the hotel staff is at the ready to serve my needs even though I have none except to watch soccer, movies and sleep. I stayed another day here just to relax for awhile before I head to unknown territory tomorrow - the Nicaraguan border. I have heard that the officials are pretty hilarious in their power trippingness. It should be fun to see what kind of rigamarol I get put through. I don't have my surfboard anymore, it went ... read more

We had the opportunity to visit one of the prettiest towns in Central America. I won´t tell you where it is on this world wide blog, find it yourself. But it is set in a valley at 2000 feet above the sea surrounded by cliffed faced mountains verdant green with primary and secondary forest. While we were there we took advantage of the closeness of the pueblo to the forest trail to do some of the finest hiking you can imagine. Midori and I spent the first day conquering hills to the most awesome waterfall I have ever seen in thirty years of travel. Midori was too shy even out in the middle of nowhere, but I swam like a naked baby there for an hour. Pure heaven and I felt like Adam must have ... read more

We have some time now here in San Isidrio, a nice town three hours away from San Jose. Oh, don´t worry, it still comes with the standard non stop noise that Latinos seem to love at all hours of the day. After another virtually sleepless night listening to idiots race each other in their hotrods, we were awaken from our half hour nap at 5:55 ( I looked) by the fruit stand moron BLASTING music as he opened his store. No, I won´t be buying fruit there. I have some valuable advice for those of you who like to save a little cash. Don´t try to cook soup in your hotel shower. In the ongoing effort to keep our budget to $50 per day, I thought that our very cool and homemade alcohol burning cat ... read more

We have basically been without computer access since we arrived in the surf town of Santa Catalina two weeks ago. This is a beautiful spot overlooking lush forested islands on the Pacific coast and is also a place known now for the point wave. It is one of the better waves I have seen in Central America, so that now means that there are a ton of people visiting there. We stayed at the Hostel Blue Azul, which translates to the Hostel Blue Blue. Try to make sense of that, I did for hours laying in the hammock staring at the sign wondering what genius thought of the name. Anyway, it is a pretty cool setup. Clean with hot showers that are electrically connected to the light switch. If you want a hot shower, turn on ... read more

I have been holding this in for a couple of days now and can´t wait to get it off my chest... the road trip down from the lovely mountain town of Guadalupe was a three hour torture chamber on 4 wheels due to quite possibly the most obnoxious radio station in the world. Radio Maxima. Maxima Over Production is what I would call it. Not once in the whole three hour tour ( sounds like Gilligan´s Island, right?) did we get the opportunity to actually hear a song played to it´s completion. The longest we were able to hear any music without an interuption was 47 seconds. Yes, I counted. I just couldn´t believe what jerks the d.j and production staff were. I was waiting for someone on the bus besides us to have their ... read more