I have an immediate issue with this. First, I have been to Puntarenas several times over the years, mostly to take the ferry that departs from there to cross the Gulf of Nicoya to a really nice part of Costa Rica. Every time I have gone there, I told myself I will not go there again. Every time I go again, there is some overwhelming reason why I do go there again, in this case, the wife.

Might as well get this over with now as I know I am going to lose the battle. “No… I really don’t want to go. Silly to drive all the way there just for a 7 PM meeting, then return.”. “We can spend the night!”, says she. Great. Just what I want to do. “So what is the name of the hotel?” says I, knowing that Puntarenas is not a exactly hotbed of tourist activity. “The Portobello” says she “or something like that”.

It is pointless to argue this, so rather than risk the obvious result, I give in. “OK, I’ll go”. She is happy. I am…. umm, doubtful.

So I call my trusty Costa Rica based travel agent and ask if he knows this hotel. He says he has never heard of it. It is not a good sign when a travel agent actually located here in Costa Rica does not know a place.

OK, I Yahoo it (Yahoo being the only search engine that actually gives a hotel’s web site rather than 3,298 travel agents as does Google). Nothing! A few TA’s give very little info. I am now really worried.

It gets worse. We are going to leave San Jose at about 2 PM for the 2 hour trip to Puntarenas. The problem of course, is that we are in the middle of what some advertising guy has dubbed “The Green Season”, a really clever way of saying that it rains like a sonovabeech every afternoon. I am powerless to stop what I am sure will be a disastrous overnight stay.

So Thursday rolls around, and we find ourselves in the car heading for dismal, smelly Puntarenas and the probably no-star Portabello. It begins to rain as we leave the house. No biggie. Just normal for this time of year.

I hop on the Pan American Highway near our home and plug in the iPOD to ease the way. However, about 45 minutes later, as we pass San Ramon and begin the gentle ascent into the mountains, it begins to really come down hard… like no visibility hard. Traffic comes to a near halt as we edge up the mountain. We proceed at about 15 KPM (about 10 MPH) for what seems like an eternity. This two hour trip will soon be a 4 hour adventure.

Past the peak and heading down the other side, I begin to really worry about what this rain is doing to the mountains. It is very common at any time, but especially in heavy rains to be exposed to a derrumba, or landslide. Derrumba actually is a word that I think means to demolish… but here it is used to describe these landslides where earth and often huge rocks fall from great heights. I am giving this some serious thought and I conclude that if there is a landslide, our only course of action would be to place our heads between our knees and kiss our butts goodbye. There is no place to go.

As I complete this thought process, there is an E N O R M O U S crash and this huge bolder lands on the highway about 5 inches outside the passenger side door. Luisa and I jump so hard we hit our heads. The boulder does not move. Does not roll or touch the car and we glide safely on by hoping to get soon to anywhere that we can change our underwear. Another foot or so and I am a widower. Another three feet and my kids get to read the will earlier than expected. Oh well…

The rain does not let up and we eventually take the turn-off to Puntarenas. We have semi-directions that tell us that the hotel is just past the Yacht Club. To even think there is a Yacht Club in Puntarenas is pretty funny,but lo and behold, there it is. The Puntarenas Yacht Club in living color. Go figure.

Another couple of hundred yards gets us to the Portabello. We drive in to register and ML hops out to go to the registration desk. It is barely visible. I am thinking power outage, but then I realize that the light source is perhaps a 40 watt bulb suspended in the lobby. Not a good sign.

She finishes registering and we head to our room.

It is worse than I imagined. First, you could smell it before you actually got there. As my male readers undoubtedly know, many men’s bathrooms have a roundish disk emitting some “disinfectant” odor, conveniently placed in the urinals. In fact, I was always told that you could tell a really “tough bar” if you saw the men’s room sign that said, “Please do not eat the big white mint!”. Anyway…Our room has that same odor… a STRONG odor. I am wondering if there is a negative star rating.

There are two queens beds, but I am not at all comfortable with the thought of actually touching them. I say this as there are many things moving around on the walls. Some are mosquitoes… others…?

The toilet seat is not screwed down. I can tell this from my wife’s scream as one cheek plunges downward.

She wants to shower, even more so after the toilet seat incident. Sadly, all there is is a suicide shower. For those of you not knowledgeable on this, it is common in Costa Rica to NOT have a water tank for all hot water needs. Many showers (though normally NOT in hotels), are equipped with a coil type device that heats the cold water as it passes through. This might be an OK thing if you thought for one minute that this device was attached to a good earth ground, something that is found almost never in Costa Rica. Thus the term, “suicide shower”. She forgoes the shower.

I walk her to the hotel conference room that is amazingly located off a very nice looking restaurant overlooking the water! HUH? THIS is a shock and makes no sense whatsoever! Here is this very nice appearing eatery part of a hotel that you would choose only if you had no other choice. Why the hell the owners would not invest in upgrading the rooms is a question that must go unanswered. Some stuff is just inexplicable here in the tropics!

The moment she enters the conference room, I am G O N E. I jump in the car and head out looking for other accommodations knowing that there are but three chances I will sleep in that place. Slim, fat and none.

Heading back out of Puntarenas, I see a sign for the Fiesta Hotel and Casino and I lose no time in getting into the lobby to check availability. There is S P A C E! I nearly break my wrist getting my credit card out and in five minutes, I am back in my car heading back into Puntarenas to collect my wifey. While she is busy presenting, I am packing and loading the car. As she steps out of her meeting, I grab her and we are on our way to our news digs!

Now the Fiesta is an all inclusive hotel. Normally, that means crummy food and not too clean rooms. I am happy to say that our room was very clean and spacious and the food, while certainly not award winning, was at least quite acceptable. There are nice facilities, tennis courts, and maybe 38 swimming pools. In fact, the Fiesta must have the largest baby pool in the world. It covers about an acre and has islands and trees!

So… the rest of the weekend took a upward turn! We stayed a couple more days. ML aged herself nicely by the pool and returned to me every daily a darker shade of woman. Love those tan lines!

The bar had wireless so I kept my businesses going during twice a day visits while sucking down umbrella drinks.

Wudda been nice to have Internet in the rooms… but that may be asking too much… this being Puntarenas!

This made me want to know exactly where ARE these countries in relation to one another. Therefore, you may click the thumbnail map above for a full sized view of the area.

I believe this will place everything in perspective for my loyal readers!

In any case, I learned something very important today, and I must share it. My doctor tells me I must take Metamusil on a daily basis. Actually, he told me this last year… but I ignored him as 1. I hate those Metamusil commercials, 2. I want to do nothing to help fund them, and 3. taking Metamusil is somehow like giving in to the fact that I am getting olde… and I hate that.

I guess I actually learned three things from all this.

A. It generally is not a good idea to ignore your doctor even if you hate Metamusil or getting old. It would be easy to dispel too much info here about my internal processing plant… but I expect you catch my drift.

B. Metamusil isn’t so bad if you mix it with fresh squeezed orange juice and drink it down promptly (and quickly),

and most important…

C. Do NOT wait more than maybe 1-2 minutes before you drink it (the timing to begin after adding the Metamusil to the OJ)!!

I got busy this morning and let it sit on my desk for about 30 minutes. BIG mistake!
Metamusil, left to its own devices, chemically bonds with the OJ to become this HUGE orange booger. It is gross beyond imagination. I drank it (ate it?) as I was too damned cheap to waste the OJ or the Metamusil, but I can assure you this was a lesson learned!

I am sharing this with al of you as from the email I receive, my regular readers are quite possibly of a Metamusil age. For those of you for whom this does not apply, know this: Getting olde sucks.

Bottoms up!

In her hand, she is holding a cloth and it appears to be moving without assistance. In fact it is wiggling!

Maria makes me nervous. She is a country girl and loves any living thing. While I have known many people who loved “any living thing”, almost all of them drew the line at things that had more than four legs. Many drew the line at two… but I digress.

She flops down on the bed to unwrap my surprise. “Rolando!” “Se llama Rolando!”. She has found a bug… technically a scarab (I think), she has named it Rolando, and it is now heading in my direction.

“Does it bite?” sez I.

“No, sez she, but it has claws and it can hold tight!”.

“Swell”, thinks I as Roland approaches, (and I am running out of bed as I retreat).

Those of you who have read this blog with any regularity know that while I am not exactly afraid of bugs… OK… I am a little afraid of bugs but not a lot… I DO have bug boundaries, though for sure I never knew I would need a bug boundary in my bed. It turns out I do.

Ever since the famous flying cockroach affair, ML has has taken delight in tormenting me with tales of the plethora of creepy crawly things common to Costa Rica.

“Get the camera!” sez she! You don’t have to ask ME twice! In fact I am thinking of the early hollywood movies where the actor sez, “Come on feet, don’t fail me now!” I head to my office to get the camera all the time wondering “If I just keep going, would that cause a rift in our relationship?” I decide it would, so I return with the camera.

Rolando is now apparently 1. Happy and 2. Active. I find that it is very hard to photograph a moving bug, especially when the bug is moving towards ME and looks REALLY big in the viewfinder. I snap off maybe 217 photos in hopes of one decent one. Sort of bracketing to the extreme!

Maria is ecstatic! She has her photos and can now takes Rolando to the garden where he can busily find other bugs of his specie and make another zillion little Rolandos.

On the way to the garden, she cheerfully explains that in her home town near the Caribbean coast, these bugs grow to at least 3-5 times larger in size. I am thrilled.

I also wonder how she knew to name it Rolando and not… ummm maybe… Betty.

Naw. I don’t wanna know.

Bbaale County MP Sulaiman Madada said any girl in his district who wanted to take part in the scheme aimed at promoting girls’ education would be given a gynecological examination by health workers to check they were virgins.

Probably don’t have a Ugandan Civil Liberties Group there huh?

The orginal article is here Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.com but they don;t leave them up for long.

Oh… and The MP did not extend his offer to young men… apparently because he was unwilling to accept a boy’s word that he was, in fact, a virgin. Whatta surprise!

If you have given yourself food poisoning, you can also kick back at home and watch them on TV. This is not as much fun, but if you have no choice… it’ll do.

Now before you animal rights folk start jumping out of your undies… chill out. In Costa Rica, we don’t kill the bulls. Here’s how it plays out:

Tico style bull fighting is done a the redondel (bullring). They build a new one every year. Now as I mentioned above, in Tico Bullfights, the Bull is not harmed, though I suspect he does get pretty frosted.

So now a bunch of ummm… none-to-bright folks, (99% men! Wudda guessed!) get into the bull ring and annoy hell outta the bull by trying to touch him, pull his tail, swat his butt, and other not-particularly-well-thought-out things.

All this has the not-unexpected affect of ticking-off the bull who (yes, he has his horns and all other required bully type body parts) then chases, and several times each night he catches, these people. In other words… at least a few times each night, the BULL wins! It is often pretty hilarious though the risk is real and a good goring is not uncommon.

New rules apparently limit this activity to those who are sober… though I have not yet figured out why you would get into an enclosed area with a 1,400 – 1,800 pound bull if you in fact WERE sober. Anyway…

Watching this in person is a hoot, but even if you can’t get there, the TV version is pretty excellent as they don’t cut away during the gorings… something I always thought might be a tad insensitive to those moms and dads who may not know their teenager has decided to run with the bulls.

Watching from the hospital is fun too, but if you’re there for the food poisoning thing, try to get a room where you can sit on the toilet and watch TV using the mirror. Passes the time!

1. The middle of the night
2. Everything was closed and locked for the night
3. The gentleman in question was well-known to our elite fuerza publica as a bad person not respectful of the law.

Well, to make a long story short… the dogs pretty much ate him while a crowd of bystanders and the policia looked on.

This young man’s mom is says her son was a good boy and was just there visiting his girlfriend… in the middle of the night… at a bodega (warehouse)… something the girlfriend says is nonsense.

Either way, the Nicaraguan govermment is demanding an investigation… not a surprise as our diplomatic relationship with the Nicas is not so good after we got into the squabble about the San Juan River… sigh.

In this case however, the Nicas may well have a point as, depending on which news source you read, the attack was permitted to go on for 2-4 hours. Some folks think the dogs should have been shot to stop the attack… a valid point if true. Standing around and watching any human get eaten by dogs for more than a few minutes without taking any action is sorta bush league behavior. Given Costa Rica’s bias against Nicas here in Costa Rica, the whole thing probably should be reviewed. I doubt it will.

I had the pleasure of meeting Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, Jones, Smith, Heinlein, Kasnowsky, Blah, Blah and Blah, who is the head cheese and main blogger at Jacqueline Passey, Incorporated, LLC, SA, DDS, and BS and 2004 winner of the “Most Affiliate Links on any One Web Page Award”.

Jacqueline has recently made the move to Costa Rica with her (also) prize winning “novio del dia”. I say this because he was the winner of the Big Contest wherein JP went online to solicit a traveling companion and sex A LOVER! Terrence was the prize! How cool is that! I shudda applied!

Actually, advertising works! I met ML when I put an ad in La Nacion for a hot, long legged, beautiful, romantic, Tica with an bent sense of humor. ML applied and regular blog readers know we are getting married in THREE DAYS! ARGH.

Anyway, I generally do not do much in depth analysis of other bloggers (except for the famous Stephanie Klein thing which will never die methinks. Anyway, it is probably unfair to treat her her like someone who had to go to eBay for romance. In person, she is bright and funny… a bit offbeat, and MUCH better looking than any picture on her blog, and always wears big clunky shoes… a habit she will soon probably forego once she knows that wearing those things in the tropics will give her a raging case of toe nail fungus. Ewwww!

JP appeared at the ARCR Seminar and later blogged the experience. Incredibly, she got ALL the names spelled right… except MINE!

Sadly, she only covered Day 1 and skipped entirely Day 2, the far more important (and interesting) day as that is the day I spoke. Dissed me… Snot.

Anyway… we really fooled her! She writes: “(I)…joined Christopher Howard, Ryan Piercy, and Tim (author of The Real Costa Rica website and the blog His Fault and a couple other people lingering over lunch and drinks. I felt so special being at the “cool kids” table of Costa Rican insiders!

Cool Kids? LOL! Chris, Ry and I are about the least cool kids in CR, but cool enough to fool HER! I am guessing we were all nerds in high school, but have been reborn in Costa Rica. Now we are commonly referred to as “The Costa Rica Insiders!” Actually, I think she just felt really comfortable sitting with the Costa Rica geek squad. JP was probably one of those overly bright kids in high school who suffered fools poorly.

She posts to her blog every 90 minutes, and it is clear that she types at around 289 words per minute. I use three fingers, and average 20. This post will be two hours in the making. I have typing envy.

I also have Google Page Rank envy as HER blog has a PR of SIX and mine has been assigned a -3, something Google denies. It happened right after I wrote this. Before then, I had a NINE!

Anyway… her blog is a good read, and she is a nice lady… and if she ever recovers from her current disease, she will be a nice addition to Costa Rica. I have not yet added HER blog to my blogroll cuz she has not YET added MINE!

Oh… and J? I have your phone! Heh Heh… put the link somewhere near the top, OK?

She said her husband drops her off for work each night after watching the evening news. Now THIS guy must just be a gem! How thoughtful he doesn’t make her take the bus!