Friday, 28 December 2007

31st December – Our travels in a nut shell!!

New Years Eve 2007!!

Here's a quick Year in review.

On the 19th May, I asked Tan if she would like to take my hand in marriage and share the rest of our lives together. She said "Yes!!"
After a call from a mate, Brendo, we took the plunge to move overseas. Tania and I both finished up with our long term employers for a change of scenery in Canada.

We have visited another six new countries (not including Panama) on this years adventures. We have experienced some amazing things and wild weather. We have had a ball and so glad we started this North American adventure (which has now extended into Central America!)

Here is some video highlights!!

Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada - the Maid of the Mist tour at the foot of Niagara Falls. An absolute must!


Cape St Marys, Newfoundland, Canada - the most foggiest place we have visited to date and the wind was so strong!

Points North, Saskatchewan, Canada - first time in a massive helicopter, a Bell 205 or Iriquois (ex-Vietnam chopper) with Jimbo. A fantastic day!!



Points North, Saskatchewan, Canada - Tan got to see her first snow fall. After that we were the only people out in it watching the big fluffy flakes falling from the sky. Oh yeah, we lived at an airport for a while.

Points North, Saskatchewan, Canada - first time driving in a snow storm!

Raven Camp, Saskatchewan, Canada - watching the lakes freeze over from nothing to 5cm thick in three days. I'm in a t-shirt in -8 degrees throwing rocks onto the ice! We lived in a tent by this lake.

Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA - one thing we weren't expecting to see in 2007. Breath taking!

Playa Del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico - I convinced Tan to parasail. It was so tranquil floating 100m in the air over the aqua blue waters of the Carribean.

Volcano Pakaya, Guatemala - standing at the toe of a slow moving, active lava flow watching new crust being made in fromt of my eyes. A geologist's dream!

These are some of our favourite vids of 2007 and we look forward to sharing more adventures in 2008. Happy New Year!!

30th December – San Jose, Costa Rica

We moved hotels to the much nicer Hotel Don Carlos. We flagged down a cab, these little red taxis are everywhere in San Jose. It cost a “red one” or 1000 colones ($US2) and it was a bargain. After dropping off our bags we caught our mini-van. After picking a number of people from different hotels and driving all over San Jose, I asked if “This was the San Jose city tour?” Compared to the rain of yesterday, today was a clear sunny day with a few patches of cloud.

We drove to Volcano Poas, stopping off at Tres Generacions coffee plantation. The plantation has been in the family for three generations and had lovely views of the Central valley. We had to sample the coffee on the verandah! Outside a fellow had the traditional ox cart, used significantly on the trade routes through Costa Rica 100 years ago.
Being a Sunday and a wonderful day everybody wanted to go to the Volcano. The queue of tour buses was long but most them weren’t full. We did the 10 minute walk to the crater through low lying shrunken cloud forest. Volcano Poas has a large cloudy blue crater lake with steam rising from the surface. The crater is 1,320 mteres wide and 300m deep and sits at an altitude of 2,574m above sea level. The water temperature in the small highly acidic rain filled lake is 40 degrees and the pH approaches zero! Small fumaroles were billowing the acrid smell of sulphur.
Either side of the volcano in the valleys, one towards the Caribbean coast were filled with cloud which was quickly rising up the valley. The look out was somewhat crowded and after Max’s (our tour guide) poor speech on the volcano, we bailed. We took the windy trek up to the Lagoon Botos, another crater filled with rain water. On the walk we saw some squirrels, adding to our fascination for these furry little creatures. The surrounding cloud forest formed a canopy over head. There was one plant, called the poor mans umbrella with large leaves. Tan protected herself from the sun for a while.
We had a traditional lunch which in Costa Rica includes rice and beans. These are staples for this area. Grecia is a town along the way and here after the first church burnt down and the second was demolished from an earthquake, some Germans come to the rescue and supplied the town with steel frames to build the church. The steel sat in the park outside the demolished church until one of the German team come back to show the Ticos (Costa Ricans) how to construct it.
In the park we played under this dome that had great acoustics.
We had some great talks with Sheila was a nice girl from Washington DC, who had just about finished her trip around Costa Rica. We got some tips and decided we should go surfing (or learn to) at Manuel Antonio on the Pacific Coast.

In Sarchi, we visited the Worlds Biggest Ox Cart! The ox cart is a symbol of Costa Rica and this one is in the Guinness Book of World Records. It was brightly coloured and was of a decent size.
The reason for visiting Sarchi was to go to the ox cart factory. It was Sunday so it was all closed up. No problems, our guide showed us through. Imagine going to the factory and turning the power on (in this case it was through the use of diverting water into a water wheel which rotated all the belts and pulleys) to show some tourists? Well Max did and it was great. The belts run saws, lathes, planes and rotated some of the wheels. The factory was awesome. No electricity and rustic with rusty corrugated iron, over grown with grass and aromatic wood shavings. The ox carts are no longer in agricultural use but are used for decorative and festive purposes. It’s good this long running traditional factory continues as the ox carts they produce are unique and brightly coloured and we appreciated the work that goes in to making them.
Next stop was the co-op, a huge souvenir shop, with some ultra-tacky stuff. The wooden toucans and tea candle volcano were highlights. To be fair, the co-op had some really good stuff but we weren’t too keen on getting anything as it was the start of our trip here. The co-op had a huge ox cart wheel, but no record books for this one. Tan still hasn’t let me buy anything tacky (or has she???) Back at the hotel, Tan hung out on the spacious balcony before going to meet our group for dinner.

29th December – San Jose, Costa Rica

This morning, after a very good nights sleep, we had breakfast and asked the front desk to ring the airport for an update on the luggage situation. Success!!! Our luggage would arrive in around two hours. We weren’t going to get excited until we actually saw the luggage though. We went for a quick walk around the part of town that we are staying in (that can best be described as dodgy). Lots of rubbish, reinforced bars on windows, razor wire and the occasional prostitute were highlights of the walk around the block. Not wanting to leave the hotel as we had to provide our passports to get our luggage, which turned up thirty minutes later.

We have never been so happy to see our bags and never want to repeat that experience again!!
With the luggage safely in our room, we headed off to have a wander in the city. Four blocks south, the seediness disappeared to Central Avenue, a pedestrianised street which extends for nine blocks. Families were walking along the street and people having fun out doing their Saturday morning shopping. We found Plaza de la Cultura, like a mini Piazza San Marco in Venice (not really) with kids feeding and chasing lots of pigeons. We found our next hotel to find out what the plan was for tomorrow. Nothing until 7.30pm, so we arranged a tour outside of San Jose. Back along Central Ave, we had to visit the Museo de Oro Pre-Columbino. Here we learnt about Costa Rican history, the foundation of the nation, herbal medicine from the huge variety of trees and plants and the history of gold and it’s use in the culture.
Afterwards, we went to Café Parisienne in the portico of the Gran Hotel Costa Rica. Very swish and we were both in our best thongs too! I ordered a Costa Rican beer, Rock Ice with Lemon. Here I was thinking it was a beer with lemon. I was right in some ways but so wrong as well. It was like a horrible chelada (like in Merida) in a bottle. Half lemon juice and half beer. It was terrible!! Not I was smiling here only moments before tasting the beer! On the way home we walked through the Mercado Central. These markets were winding down with some stalls closed. It was mix of souvenirs and homewares with a large section dedicated to produce and local eateries. We were bemused by the chicken feet and livers for sale but the clincher was the pigs head hanging up for sale! We came back admiring the view from our room. Rusty corrugated iron roofs and the occasional burning pile of rubbish. We are both happy to be heading out to see the real Costa Rica tomorrow, small villages and a volcano!!

28th December – Playa Del Carmen, Mexico – Panama City, Panama – San Jose, Costa Rica

Today is the worst day ever since we initially left Australia in June. The airline has lost our luggage. Let’s backtrack first.

We awoke at 3.15am bleary eyed from no sleep as the street outside the hotel had been cranking the night before and the noise had kept us awake. We headed up the street to meet Victor, our taxi driver who drove us the 45 minute trip to Cancun International Airport. The airport was absolutely packed….not! We were about the only people there are that time of the morning and we had to wander around for ages until a coffee shop finally opened and we could get our café fix.

The plane (Copa Airlines) left on time and we flew the two hours and fifteen minutes to Panama. The highlight was flying over the Pacific Ocean near the Panama Canal and seeing lots of ships lined up for passage through to the Atlantic Ocean. Our baggage and ourselves had supposedly been checked through to our final destination, San Jose in Costa Rica. We had five hours to kill in Panama with not a whole lot to do. We ate lunch at the one and only café in the airport, wandered around the shops and exhibits and tried to sleep for a while. Dan had the Panamanian equivalent to a VB, a Balboa, and bought two very expensive and ultra-tacky fridge magnets of the canal.Our plane (Mexicana Airlines) left on time and we were off for a short 50 minute flight to San Jose. We landed at San Jose, cleared immigration and headed down to baggage. It became obvious after around 30 minutes of waiting that our bags weren’t going to arrive. An airline representative came and over and between his poor English and our even poorer Spanish, he tried to find out which part of the world our bags might be in. No luck though. We then got palmed off to another representative from the airline who bore the full force of my fury at them losing our bags. We filled in our paperwork, were told to come back in 24 hours if our bags had not arrived and we would be eligible for an intial $100 US compensation. We left the airport (along with a number of other people) with literally the clothes we were wearing and a small daypack each and not all that confident that we would every see our bags again.

We arrived at the hotel and rang back to the airport as requested at 7.30pm for an update. Again, language was a problem, so the front desk rang on our behalf to be told that the luggage would arrive the following evening around 11.00pm. Still, we really weren’t all that confident in seeing it again. We have a problem in what to do if the luggage fails to turn up as we leave early on our tour on the 30th and have to have at least some clothing and items other than what we are wearing. We will also be traveling all around the country making it difficult for the airline to find us. We’re missing one of my passports, birth certificate and money (split up in bags for security reasons) and also electrical cords for our computer and camera not to mention most of our belongings whilst we are traveling. We’re trying not to think about the worst case scenario though that we will never see our bags again.

Tan decided she would model her new sarong, an airline blanket. She has two outfits now.

26-27th December – Playa Del Carmen, Mexico

Relaxing on the beach, walks and eating and drinking good food and beer/wine – this is what it is all about.

Christmas dinner ended up being somewhat non-traditional. We ended up walking the streets looking at menus and the best was the Italian ristorante / wine bar where we shared a bottle of vino tinto with Claudio and Sara two nights before. Tan had foie gras and crab ravioli while I settled for lobster and grouper fillet. It was a great meal. A quick side trip to Cancun on Boxing Day to pick up some left luggage. A feast of Mexican at Gory Tacos really hit the spot. The food was much better than the name suggested.
We really haven’t done much in Playa, it’s all about relaxing and getting everything ready for the next adventure to Costa Rica. We leave tomorrow.

Wednesday, 26 December 2007

25th December – Playa Del Carmen, Mexico

Felice Navidad!!!

It’s Christmas Day here in Mexico and we got up late after a big night of catching up with friends and family on Skype.

By time we got breakfast, it turned out to be Christmas lunch!! We swapped the traditional assortment of roast meat and veggies for a fruit plate and a bagel!!

Here’s a video Christmas message by the beach! Merry Christmas to all our friends and family and whoever likes reading the blog.

24th December – Playa Del Carmen, Mexico

Another cruisy day, with coffee and a walk along the beach. It’s pretty tough!

The highlight of the day was seeing a converted combi van into a mobile taco truck. It was pretty cool.
We spent most of the afternoon and evening talking with friends and family in Australia where it was already Christmas Day. It’s strange as it doesn’t really feel like Christmas away from family and friends.

We were most happy to see our cats Mitchie and Sophie on Skype (and the rest of the family wasn’t bad either).
We had a pre and post dinner Christmas drinks and the owner of the hotel was drunk and kept us awake until 3am in the morning!