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Archive for December, 2005

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Copa, Copacabana (what else did you expect?)

Friday, December 30th, 2005

After an interesting standoff with the hotel people in São Paulo over their insistence that we did not pay for one of our nights (which we totally had done), we hopped in our getaway cab, who took us to the Metro, São Paulo´s subway that is amazingly clean and efficient. Our timing was almost too impeccable, as the next bus to Rio de Janiero was leaving within minutes of our arrival, causing a bit of a rush in emptying the bladders and buying water to refill them. Due to Brazil´s lack of punctuality with bus departures, we actually had more time than we thought, and were off to Rio without a problem. [read on]

Posted in Brazil | 1 Comment »

Cali and the Seppo meet again

Friday, December 16th, 2005

Seppo. That´s me. It´s a nickname I acquired back in London living with a whole house and a half of Aussies. It´s actually a rather common nickname for Americans and comes from classic Cockney rhyme, or whatever you might want to call their form of speak. The Americans are called Yankees, or Yanks, which rhymes with septic tanks…from this they call Americans septics, a beautiful little moniker, isn´t it? So Sep, or Seppo comes from septic…not sure how proud of this I am, but it ain´t as bad as a few of the names we had floating around; at this point, it´s a term of endearment. Cali is Vanessa Cali (hers being one of the more benign tags), and we just happened to be traveling in South America at the same time, on the same schedule and all that after 5 years of not seeing each other, so it´s all pretty cool. [read on]

Posted in Brazil | No Comments »

Fun with Portuguese

Saturday, December 10th, 2005

Spending my last few Costa Rican colónes, I bought two small packages of dark chocolate covered coffee beans, which I had only seen in much larger packages and did not indulge. These small packages, though were perfect, and I quickly devoured one before getting on the plane, more interested in the taste than the caffeinated effects this would cause. Needless to say, I was wired. I ususally have no problems falling asleep on planes. In fact, on the contrary, I often can´t keep myself awake, such that I fall asleep before the plane even takes off. I blame it on the lower amounts of oxgen in the air (as for falling asleep on buses, I got nothin´). I tried to counter the effects of the caffeine with a healthy dose of free rum, but even that combined with the free inflight movie “Snow Day” still was not enough to put me to sleep. Arriving in Lima, Peru with less than an hour layover, excited about my first time in the southern hemisphere, I ran to the bathroom to relieve myself of the free rum, but more importantly to check if the toilets did indeed flush the opposite way. They did! How fabulous! I even flushed it twice for reassurance. Finally, a childhood curiousity realized, and not just from that faked-out coin donation demo at the Museum of Science and Industry! [read on]

Posted in Brazil | 1 Comment »

This canal totally kicks ass

Tuesday, December 6th, 2005

Missing the direct bus to Panama City meant I had a much longer journey ahead of me. I took the ferry to the mainland, where while waiting for the bus I met a local boy named David. He was a black kid who was really excited to talk to me. He loved where he lived (it’s like paradise), and told me you don’t even have to work, really…if you just want something, people will just give it to you, at least other black people will. Panama is a very interesting country…it’s more diverse I think than any other country in Central America. There’s a good black population (mostly from the West Indies who came here to work on the canal), several different indiginous tribes, a smaller white population, and then, of course, the biggest of all, the Mestizo population, which is just mixed indiginous and european. But within this mestizo population, people range from really dark to really light and all in between…this is more than I’ve noticed in any other country (maybe Costa Rica is similar). Anyway, I’m always curious to know about race relations in all of these countries between all the different cultures. It seems that usually the indiginous populations have the most struggle, and more often than not I’m told that there are fewer problems for the black cultures. Apparently, however, this is not exactly how it is in Panama. David told me a great story about how he went into some store (this was in a different part of Panama, where apparently there aren’t many black people), and the guy told him he couldn’t be in the store…no black people allowed, because they are all theives. David came back a while later with three paychecks, something amounting to about $550 (by the way, they use the US dollar in Panama, which I think is weird..American bills and both American and Panamanian coins, and the Panamanian coins are the same size and value as the US coins), and he told this man he would pay him $550 for every black man they found in the jail. If there was none, he would get $550 from the store owner. They went to the jail and there was not a black man to be found; David collected his money and was also then allowed in the store. Good for him. [read on]

Posted in Panama | No Comments »

Last words from Central America

Tuesday, December 6th, 2005

The bus ride to San Jose was pretty long…something like 17 hours. The bus company tried to kill the boredom by throwing on movie after movie. Four in a row. At first I was like, why don’t they turn the volume up? Well, that’s because it’s subtitled in Spanish,and there’s no need to listen to all that English jabbering if it’s not needed. So, I successfully watched 4 movies with Spanish subtitles, and although I missed a line here and there, was totally in tune with what was going on, surprisingly. [read on]

Posted in Costa Rica | 1 Comment »

Certified PADI open water scuba diver

Tuesday, December 6th, 2005

Yep, that’s me. After being washed out in Honduras by Hurricane Wilma, I figured I’d have to wait a little longer to try my hand at scuba diving. Flipping through my book, I realized it was just as cheap, if not cheaper, to take a scuba diving course in Panama, in a place called Bocas del Toro. So, I decided to check it out. It’s just over the border from Puerto Viejo, so I headed there the day after Thanksgiving. I actually had a really annoying day getting to Puerto Viejo, getting ripped off for a $10 cab ride (I knew it, but just gave in, for some stupid reason), and all this business…I got into town pretty pissed at the world (and myself), but I’ll skip the details because it annoys me to rethink it. Anyway, I got into town, found some crap hotel, and went right away to sign up for a diving course. [read on]

Posted in Panama | No Comments »

Giving thanks for no chicken

Monday, December 5th, 2005

I have to say that the weather really kind of sucked the whole time I was in Puerto Viejo. I heard there’s supposed to be great beaches and lots of surfing (not that I surf, but I’d like to watch some…I had a glimpse of a few guys having a go at it). Well, it was cold and rainy the whole time I was there. Now, cold means something like in the 60s, so I understand that it’s nothing like in Chicago. But, when you’re used to the 70s and 80s, hot, humid, and sunny, well then 60s and rainy is cold. [read on]

Posted in Costa Rica | 2 Comments »

Saving turtles

Monday, December 5th, 2005

I met some people at the hotel, who offered me a free ride to the boat launch place to Tortuguero, which was pretty cool. We drove past tons of Chiquita banana plantations. They put these blue plastic bags around them, and I’ve heard lots of different reasons for this…it keeps the bats and bugs away, they’re loaded with pesticides (which weaken their flavor), and it helps them grow bigger by holding heat and humidity in. I don’t know which of these are true, but I’ve heard the pesticides thing twice…maybe check if your Chiquita bananas are from Costa Rica and not buy them. It should say right on the sticker where they’re from. I heard bananas from Equador are good. Anyway, banana trees take 9 months to grow (from seed, or maybe just from really small), and they produce one stalk of bananas, and that’s it. At every tree, you see a little baby one starting to grow, to keep the supply running. I thought this was some pretty interesting banana information. [read on]

Posted in Costa Rica | 1 Comment »

Diggin’ the fiery bowels of the Earth

Thursday, December 1st, 2005

Crossing the border into Costa Rica was no problem. From the immigration office in San Carlos, Nicaragua, we were loaded onto a boat and taken down the Rio Frio into Los Chiles, Costa Rica. On the boat I met a girl working for Lonely Planet. I must say that their research is conducted quite differently than I thought. They don’t stay overnight at every hotel, and they don’t eat at every restaurant. They get paid a stipend for each travel project, and if they spend less, they keep the rest, but if they spend more, well, then that’s out of their pocket. Anyway, it was raining pretty nicely when I got into town and tried to find the hotel…got some directions from some old ladies who were really nice, but there was no answer at the door. I went back to the old ladies, asking them for another hotel. They insisted that I go back to that one because the others are “very ugly” (that’s the way they say that they’re awful, in direct translation). They told me just to knock louder or wait awhile, because maybe the guy’s in the bathroom (gotta love old ladies). I went back, and the man came running up the street with a plate of food or something. I was put in the “Tropical Suite”. The only thing tropical was a painting of a toucan on the wall. Otherwise, the room was completely bare and it reeked of mothballs. [read on]

Posted in Costa Rica | 1 Comment »