Vietnam

This adventure has been a long time coming.  Mark has been here many times but now I have the opportunity of working with him on a wonderful project.  We are conducting training for Vietnamese national police, and right now I am watching as Mark delivers content.

travelling in luxury

I certainly got to travel in style.  Mark used his points, and I did the whole trip here and will do the trip back in Business and First Class.

 The restaurants in the airports all display menu items as plastic food in the cases.  It looks real, but sometimes it makes me questions whether or not I would have wanted to eat i, just because of how it looks.








In Singapore, at Narita and in Hanoi, you have a smorgasbord of ways to experience toilet luxury.  You can go slumming, and just do your business, wipe and go.  Or, you can choose a toilet with this sign, and get ready for variety.  You can decide the direction, strength and design of the flow, the temperature, the spray pattern and choose hand held or automatic.  You can even set the temperature of the toilet seat.

I saw this sign in a restaurant toilet, and, while I figured out what it meant finally, it certainly is amusing language.

 This is not a real tiger, but it caught me off guard.  It is part of an ecological display at the Singapore airport.

This is just part of the group in the training.  It is our pre-training briefing, with the police and UNICEF staff.

The People

Ticas are wonderful people.  They were all friendly, open and helpful.  Everywhere we encountered Costa Rican citizens we had lovely interactions.  In Quepos, we quickly established a regular routine of going to cafe Milagro for breakfast and coffee.  It is a casual, friendly place whose cooking staff wear brightly coloured uniforms, a different colour every day.  We love talking to Cindy, our regular server.  She has lived in CR her whole life, her English is incredible and her personality and style is cheerful and open.  The whole team, including the cat, got to know us and what we wanted for breakfast.  The coffee was incredible, and is roasted next door.

One day when we were relaxing over our coffee, the landscaper showed up for work.  He brought his lawnmower with him, and demonstrated for us how it worked.  Of course, since there is no rush to get the grass cut, as a matter of fact, in CR there is no rush about anything, he had a cup of coffee before he started his tasks.  He was, like everyone we met, gracious and cheerful, happy and comfortable in his skin.

The guide that took me horseback riding was another charming character.  He sat on the sturdy pony with confidence, and had a light touch with all the tourists on the trek.  He let us go at our own pace based on our experience, but had his attention on us all the time.  He brought water and pineapplE in his saddlebags for our break, we really didn't have to worry about anything.                     

When we went to Manuel Antonio National Park, it took us some time to get over our tourist cynicism to realize that we were in the hands of a qualified, knowledgeable guide, who, in the end, helped us get some incredible pictures of animals.  It might have been the fastest tour of the park ever, because he walked very fast, and seemed to have some secret agreement with the animals that they would be where he wanted them to be at a certain moment, so we could snap a pic and move on. 

PURA VIDA!!!!!

Beaches (not the Bette Midler one)

 

 

Oceans don't make it easy to get a hug.  The beach seduces you into walking forward, looking at the tiny ripples on the edge of the dry sand.  Then you look up and see the breakers.  The waves just beyond the little ripples crash on to the shore and then suck the sand out from under your feet, tipping you over.  Walk another few feet, and another comber flies at you.  If you try to take it full front on, you'll lose and your reward will be a nosefull of salt water.   If you try to get into a wave full back on, it will dump you on your face.

The best way to get into the ocean's healing arms, is to slide in sideways, letting the water wash on either side of you.  Each building wave comes higher up your body, but as long as you stay standing sideways, you will penetrate the foam and breaking crests and then suddenly the chaos is over and you can give yourself up to the floating, rocking reward that is salt water.

We floated, joined by a hand and an ankle, light and relaxed, until we were pruny.

The only way to find the best local beaches is to have bourbon with a local.  Mark took care of this duty one night at the Hotel Plineo.  They didn't have any bourbon at the bar so they called into town to have some delivered.  After the guy on the scooter got there with the bourbon, Mark and his new friend started talking in earnest. 

The local told Mark about a beach called Playa Rey, and drew him a map, going over the directions with him time and time again to be sure we wouldn't get lost. 

My wise husband decided we needed to do a scouting mission before we actually provisioned ourselves for a few hours at this private beach.  The first mistake we made was to think there would be an actual "sign" on the lamp post indicating the turn.  After all, that's what the guy said, turn right at the lamp post sign. Through some quick deductive reasoning, we found the turn and the alleged sign.

 

After we bashed our kidneys to pieces and became airborne, we finally did come to the most beautiful, unpopulated beach.  Miles of break

ers and sand, no people.  In the course of the drive we saw crocodiles, monkeys, several iguanas, beautiful birds and a pod that I thought was a breadfruit, turned out to be a poison gourd used for carving.  So much for childhood memories!

We went back to town, loaded up on beer, towels, papaya, chips, beer, water, ice, beer, books, beer and this time flew down the rutted path to paradise.  Well, maybe we didn't fly, but it was much faster this time. 

There is just something healing and soothing about miles of sand, palm trees, waves and sunshine, and I defy anyone to disagree with me.

Critters

There are lots of dogs and cats here, and most of them are running loose, with a surprising lack of dog poop anywhere.  Maybe that's part of what makes the jungle so fertile.

The guidebooks are correct when they describe the variety of animals in this country. The only thing we didn't see were snakes, and I'm OK with that.  Some creatures we saw up close and personal, others from a comfortable distance.  Some even tried to take the food off my plate.

During our brief stay at Arunal, the volcano side of the country, it rained constantly.  We looked for a potential activity so that our time would not have been totally wasted.  We discovered a tiny nature preserve a short distance outside of the town, Ecocentre Danaus.  It used to be a farm, and now has been reclaimed to preserve both the flora and the fauna of the area.  Our guide was a young Swiss man who was a passionate volunteer and he opened our eyes to a new world in the jungle.










Owl Butterfly



We were guided through the whole life cycle of the butterflies, right from seeing the eggs to walking in a butterfly garden.

There is a large variety of frogs, and they are surprisingly small and hard to see.  This one happened to be on the stairs at the hotel 

in Quepos, driven out of hiding by the torrential rainstorm.

The monkeys are cute, but vicious and unapproachable.  At the Ylang Ylang resort, they save old bananas for a few days and the monkeys seem to know the day and time, because we were sitting quietly enjoying coffee, and suddenly the air was filled with screeching, and at least 20 capuchin monkeys gathered for their weekly treat.  At the same resort, we also saw the local version of a racoon, the choati.  Also cute but with very sharp, large teeth. 

Choati



  





We were travelling to a private beach (more in a later post) when we stopped to take a picture of some birds.  We looked down, and this guy was just lying there enjoying the sunshine.  It's a good thing I didn't pick this canal to cool off in!

                                         


This is an agouti, a cute and quiet relative of your average rat. 
It is very different to see these creature in person, so to speak, rather than in a book or on the Internet.  They are quite awesome, particularly in their natural environment.



                                                                    The only toucan I have
                                                                    ever seen was on a cereal box.  These guys were 3 feet from us.

It's fun to keep your head on a swivel, because you never know when you are going to see a bush move, a monkey jump, or a crocodile dive into the water.

You have to be aware, so your senses are heightened and there is a constant sense of excitement about what you might see next.  "Look!" becomes a  
                                                                     common exclamation.

This was one of the iguanas we saw in Manuel Antonio National Park. (More on Mark's scam vigilance in a later post) The smaller one is called a "Jesus Christ" lizard, because they can walk on water.  I've always thought I could do that, too, but no one has ever mistake me for JC.


Jesus Christ Lizard



This is the cat that camped with us during our last couple of days.  Bold as brass and very insistent on cuddling!

Another yearly adventure

As 2011 moves into full swing, I try to keep myself in vacation state by looking at the pictures of our latest trip every day.  We decided to go to Costa Rica, a warm destination this time.

San Jose

I am in awe of my husband's ability and willingness to dig deep for the extra push it took to get in a rental car in a strange country and follow me in the cab to the B&B for our first two nights in San Jose. 

It smells different.  Every country, every vacation has its own aroma.  They are aromas that resurface, like the melodies that surround the central theme of a symphony.  The different scents are like the surrounding notes, and then you turn a corner, and there it is again, the central theme returning.  Costa Rica smells like sweet tea, with an undertone of wind and sun and freshness from the breezes.

Animals followed us everywhere.  On the first morning when I opened the door of our room at the B&B, there was the house cat, who did not hesitate a moment before jumping up on the bed to snuggle with Mark.

Downtown San Jose is like big cities everywhere, except with more pot holes, ditches, garbage, exhaust and noise.  All the taxis in this country are red, and most of them are in San Jose.  No wheelchair access here! 

The B&B is a stately old mansion, run down around the edges, and mixed in with all the bric a brac and chachkes is an original Rembrandt and a Lautrec!

There was a great place for dinner just 5 minutes walk from the B&B, and on our second night we discovered the joy of take out cognac.  We wanted a night cap,and when I inquired about a store or bar close buy, I was told we could take it with us.  We wandered "home" in the soft darkness with two styrofoam glasses of cognac to sip on the porch.

The house dogs were part of the fun also, as was the parrot, who was more effective than a guard dog if people decided to wander around the house in places they didn't belong.

Tomorrow, we are going to hit the road in our rented 4-wheel drive.  Watch for the next post.