Border Run - Wrap

Rather than take the regular, more direct - and faster - main roads from Orosi to Volcán Poás, we decided to drive the back roads.  The white roads, if you will.  This turned out to be quite an adventure in itself - exactly what we wanted it to be, right?!  Small roads, in many places wide enough for only one vehicle at a time.  Small villages and beautiful views as we climbed up into the mountains southeast of the metro area.  This allowed us to skirt the traffic and congestion of downtown San Jose and enjoy the sights in the more rural parts of Costa Rica.  Well worth the effort and hair-raising hairpin turns and blind corners and steep climbs and perilous drop-offs through the mountains.  Awesome!

To share in the adventure, check out the Garmin map we captured of our drive: Orosi to Poas.

At one point we thought for sure we were off the road we had intended to take up to the volcano.  There are only a few routes up the mountain and I was pretty confident we had missed a turn or made an incorrect turn somewhere back a ways.  This was especially bad because Bex! was driving and I was map reading.  Oh well - that'll teach both of us to stray from our strengths.  

"What's that, sweetie?"  "No, no - I wasn't implying that I'm a better driver than you!"  "No, I wasn't, darling.  You are a great (ahem) driver.  Really."  "I was just stating that my inferior navigation skills aren't as mind-bogglingly amazing as yours, that's all."

Whew.

Yes, the wife was driving…

Which I was perfectly okay with...

After a while we realized that we were, in fact, on the correct road, although I was sure we had taken an alternate route than the one we intended.  Just because we were on the right road now didn't mean we hadn't taken a side road back there just a little ways.  I was sure of this.  [I was proven wrong once we reviewed the map later that day.]  It didn't really matter, though.  We were in beautiful, sunny Costa Rica on our way up the side of an active…  

Wait, what the hell?  It was raining sideways and the wind was trying to blow us off the road and tree limbs were down all over the place.  This wasn't beautiful freakin' sunny freakin' Costa Rica!  This was Kansas and I swear I saw Dorothy and Toto in a tornado!  We finally made it up the hillside to the Poás Lodge.  We forced the doors of the Bego open against the wind and leaned in enough to make it to the door of the lodge.  Holy moly.

Once inside we were greeted by Stephan and Jimmie, two of the coolest guys I've had the pleasure of meeting.  Brothers from Texas, they run the lodge and do a damn fine job of it.  Jimmie works the front and Stephan cooks amazing food in the back.  Both readily mingle with guests, offering advice on things to do, the volcano, the specials that Stephan is creating in the kitchen and much more.  These dudes are awesome!

Stephan (l) and Jimmie, proprietors of the Poás Lodge

They have connections, too, it seems.  Most bars down here have plenty of rum but scant offerings of other booze.  While their bar is one of the more well stocked ones we'd seen, I inquired about getting a shot of bourbon to enjoy with my coffee.  Stephan was so kind as to offer up his private stash, which he keeps in the kitchen.  Happened to be one of my favorite coffee pairing elixirs, too - Maker's Mark.  Like I said, these guys are great.

The lodge sits about 4 kilometers from the top of the volcano.  It's proximity to the summit was very appealing to us volcano hunters.  Clinging to the side of the mountain, great views of the central valley are the norm.  Yeah.  Except that there was a large tropical storm hitting the Caribbean side of the country and this storm was blowing up and over Poás.  The brothers told us they hadn't experienced a storm like this in all the time they'd been running the place.  High winds, heavy rain, fog.  It was pretty epic.  They accused us of bringing the bad weather.  When we told them we lived in Nicaragua, they promptly apologized.

Jimmie showed us to our room and then we settled into the storm watch.  We looked on as the flashing on the roof of a nearby building came loose and ended up somewhere down the mountain.  Amazed, we watched hummingbirds navigate in the gale force winds, hovering around the feeders in the midst of the wind and rain.  It's impressive to see a bird that weighs a couple of ounces eat from a feeder that is blowing around in circles while it pours.

The lodge has a beautiful stone fireplace which Jimmie lit up each evening to keep us warm while we got lit up.  Hunkered down on the comfy chairs close to the fire, the storm rattling the roof overhead made for a memorable evening.  It was great, actually.  And the food at this place!  Off the charts.  Being from Texas, the portions Stephan serves up are extra large.  The first night I had a vegetable stew served in what looked like a punch bowl and included garlic bread.  It was fantastic and the perfect thing for me as I shivered.  Seriously, the drastic difference in temperature up here compared to back home on Ometepe had me bundled up under blankets most of the time at the lodge.  I couldn't get warm enough.  The veggie stew helped, though.

The rooms there are amazing, too.  Big comfortable beds with down comforters, satellite TV, in-room coffee, and views down into the valley (only when the clouds broke, which was not often).  The beds reminded me of the ones at the Hotel Elliot in Astoria, Oregon.  If you've never stayed there, we highly recommend it.  But this place - the Poás Lodge:  hands down one of the more incredible places I've stayed.  And the weather sucked, so we can only imagine how much more fantastic the views would be on a clear day.  In fact, Jimmie told us you can usually see the Nicoya Peninsula and the Pacific Ocean.

You can sorta see how steep the drop is down to the valley floor

The main goal of our trip (beyond the visa run part) was to visit the volcano, of course.  We had already been denied a visit to Volcán Turrialba because it was rumbling and active.  We had a great visit to Irazú.  But, alas, Poás wasn't in the cards.  Bex! found the tourism website for Costa Rica's volcanos and they have cameras set up to monitor the craters.  Frequent checks of the Poás volcano cam showed it socked in with the storm.  It never cleared, which made us one for three on our volcano visits.  Oh well.  We were still having a blast. 

Even the cloud tinged glimpses of the view were magnificent

We sat in the lodge, watched the clouds roll across the valley, pushed along by the high winds.  Occasional quick breaks allowed us to pick out certain landmarks below.  We even ventured out the seocond day for lunch.  My travel agent found a place called Colbert's, a French restaurant.  And I mean French.  The owner is from France and his menu is stellar, as is the wine list.  We had a great lunch and a couple of glasses of good wine, plus we shared a dessert.  It was a little surreal enjoying authentic French cuisine in this tropical storm on an active volcano in Costa Rica.  Life is indeed interesting for us.

We also drove past a large ranch that we're pretty sure is owned by someone from Alaska.  Each driveway onto the expansive property had a large arched gate that had 'Alaska' spelled out over the top.  And we stopped so Bex! could snap a shot of this:

On the way back to the lodge, we decided to drive up to the entrance gate to the visitors center at the top of the volcano.  We knew we weren't going to pay the entrance fees - too damn stormy and foggy.  We just wanted to shoot a little video, just for you!

Dinner meant another great meal at the lodge that put me into a food coma, which was fine by me.  I had a burger that I could barely fit my mouth around to eat.  Any excuse to get under the covers in front of the fire, then in bed to watch TV while listening to the storm rage worked for us.  We made the brilliant decision to call Diego at the Alamo Car Rental office to extend our return time by a couple of hours, just so we wouldn't have to rush out too early the next morning.  He was great and didn't even charge us for the extra hours.  

After breakfast, we begrudgingly checked out and headed down the volcano.  We decided to go a different route back into San Jose, through Alajuela.  There was a festival and parade going through town, so we had to detour around a little to figure out how to get through Alajuela.  But with me driving and Bex! navigating, it all worked out.  See?  Strengths.

This one time, at band camp...

Stilt walkers are way cooler than color guard.

So many red knee sox

We dropped the car off, thanked Diego for the hospitality and flagged down a taxi to take us to our next hotel, this one in Barrio Amón - the Hotel Dunn Inn.  This is a boutique hotel in the heart of this trendy little neighborhood near downtown.  Great place, great bar.  We relaxed for a bit then walked out for dinner.  

Across the street from the Hotel Dunn Inn

After visiting with the Texas boys up on the volcano, we had us a hankerin' for some ribs.  We thought we'd give good ol' American BBQ a try and it did not disappoint.  JR's Ribs wasn't the best BBQ we've had but it worked well enough to fulfill the need, never mind the fact the San Jose Zoo is suspiciously right next door.

[Note:  In case you were curious, the best BBQ on earth is found just outside Austin, TX at the Salt Lick BBQ.  Don't even bother arguing this point with us.] 

For our last two nights in San Jose, we moved back to Hostel Mi Casa, both for price and convenience reasons.  Plus we just flat out liked it a lot.  There was an arts festival going on right across the street in Sabana Park, with craft vendors from all over Central America.  There was a lot of music, dancing and people.  Lots of people!  Bex! again scored us a great spot for dinner.  We went out for Italian and had amazing pizza at The Corner Pizzeria.  This place was situated in an old multi-story house, much like some restaurants and shops back home in Portland.  They also have rooms available for rent but me staying above a pizza place would be trouble.  Better to have some distance between me and the delicious pizza.  Mmmmm… pizza.

The next day we spent more time at the arts fest where we saw some really cool carnival games that were made from scrap.  You could tell the contraptions were made from spare parts from all types of machines.

Our last dinner in the big city was just a couple of blocks away - sushi!!  This restaurant is located close to the Japanese embassy, so you know it was good stuff.  We had a relaxing meal and shared a noodle dish in addition to getting our raw fish and wasabi fix.

We packed up the night before and were ready to roll.  The next day was our travel day back home to Nicaragua.  Booby did NOT want to get out of bed.

"Just ten more minutes?!  Puh-leeezz!  And close the damn curtains!"

We checked out, walked out to the main road and flagged down a cab to take us to the Tica Bus terminal.  We boarded and settled in for the loooong bus ride.  Except the trip seemed to fly by!  Before we knew it we were at the border.  Concerns that the crossing would take forever due to heavy Semana Santa traffic turned out to be unwarranted.  In fact, it was the quickest crossing yet!  Checked out of Costa Rica and into Nicaragua in 90 minutes - a record!

About thirty minutes later, we were standing on the side of the Pan American in Rivas.  We hopped a cab to Hotel La Mision, our favorite place to crash in this town, dropped our bags and hit a couple of stores and the market for supplies.  Pedro Pablo stopped by the hotel to drop off some toner cartridges we had him pick up for us.  We wandered out on the town to find dinner and ended up at Chop Suey, a very passable Chinese place in Rivas.  We shared chicken fried rice and pork chow mein.  De-lish.  A full day of travel and a good meal had us worn out so, as much as we wanted to stay up and watch 'Criminal Minds' non-stop while we had access to real live actual TV, we zonked out early.

The other errand we had asked Pedro Pablo to handle for us was to round up eye bolts and large 'S' hooks for our beautiful, hand-made-in-Masaya hammocks so we could fully enjoy the front porch of our little home.  The hammock is a mainstay in this part of the world but most folks just tie them off with rope.  Our porch isn't suited for that, so we needed hardware.  After trying to find the hardware ourselves (several attempts were made) we gave up and asked our amigo to help.  He came through - and then some.  Pedro Pablo stopped by the next morning to drop off the goods.  Of course, he couldn't find actual prefabbed eyebolts, either.  So what did he do?  He found someone to make them for us!!  Amazing and beautiful hardware, to be sure.  

We need a castle to go with this hardware

We checked out, said goodbye to the staff at La Mision 'until next time' and caught a cab to the port.  All of our gallivanting around Central America had me beat and Bex! fighting a nasty cold, so we had called our island driver, Miguel, to pick us up and get us on home.  A chicken bus ride didn't seem prudent or very exciting for either of us.

And while our border run was a welcome break, exciting and fun, an adventure in most every way, we were extremely happy to be back in Merida.

Home sweet home!!

How Dry is the Dry Season Here?

It's dry here.  

Yeah, yeah - we're in the jungle, the rain forest and all that.  Other than 2-3 small showers, it hasn't rained in 2-3 months.  This time of year is the dry season.  Most days, if we have running water at all, it's barely a trickle.  A lot of days we don't have water at all.  When we need to clean, do dishes, flush the toilet, BATHE - we head to the lake.  Fortunately for us, our place is on the lake.  Makes it easy for us.  Or 'easier' anyway.  Everyday we see our friends in the village, our neighbors, walking five-gallon buckets of water up the path to their homes.  No easy task. 

Living like this certainly changes ones perspective.  

Merida, the village where we live on Ometepe, is at the base of Volcán Maderas.  Water supply to the village is all runoff from whatever happens up the slopes of the volcano.  If it rains up there, the village has water.  If it doesn't, there is no water.

Let me tell you a little about our home.  Lake Nicaragua is huge.  Depending on the list you look at, it's ranked as somewhere between the 19th-25th largest lake in the world.  (Note: some lists include the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, etc.)  Suffice it to say that the body of water that contains Isla de Ometepe, where we live, is large.  

• The surface area of Lago de Nicaragua is almost three times the size of Rhode Island;  
• When I was in the second and third grade, when I was 7-9 years old, my family lived in Guam in the south Pacific.  Dad was stationed there for the US Air Force.  The area of Guam is 209 square miles.  You could fit over 15 Guams in the lake;
• On average, the lake holds a volume of about 26 cubic miles of water - miles!!

The people of Ometepe are, by and large, farmers and ranchers.  Water is key and many of the larger fincas (finca = farm, plantation) have pumps that pull water from the lake when necessary.  Between that and evaporation from the heat this time of year, the water level has dropped dramatically.

The following pictures were taken almost exactly two months apart from just about the same spot.  They give you a really good idea of how much the water level has dropped in just two short months.

Pic. 1  March 2014

Pic. 2 May 2014

Obviously, the rock the bird is on (Pic. 1) and the exposed rocky bed of the lake (Pic. 2) are the most glaring indications.  True.  But notice the background - how much less green/more brown the landscape is this time of year.

May is the month the rain is supposed to come.  With that, the water issues will be rectified.  

And then some!

Border Run - Part 2

The Orosi Valley is a beautiful and peaceful destination, located just outside Cartago and south of the San Jose metro area.  It's like a completely different world from the hustle and bustle of the city.  Many Ticos make it a day trip on the weekends just to get out of the city.

To give you a geographic reference for this post, here is a map of the area in which we spent these few days of our border run:

And here, also is a link to the Garmin map of our trip around the valley:  Orosi Valley Loop
We came in from Cartago, through Paraiso (upper left, above).  It was getting up on lunch time and we, of course, already had our sights set on a particular place on our food itinerary.  My personal travel agent (and wife) had read about a great restaurant that we had on our 'places to eat while off the island' list.  The Sanchiri Hotel y Restaurante sits high up on a hillside overlooking the Orosi Valley.  The views are breathtaking, even during this time of year when it's so damn dry.  We enjoyed the views and a fantastic lunch, as well as watching a very ingenious hedgehog sip lemonade through a straw out of a Tom Collins glass.

What an inviting little valley

Looking up from the bottom of the twisty road.  We ate where that open window is

After lunch we headed down… down... down the steep road to the valley floor.  At one point early on the descent we pulled off to take in the views.

But wait, there's more valley that way

Soon enough we arrived in the little town of Orosi.  Check in time wasn't for a few hours yet but we pulled off the main road to scout out the location of our place for later.  After swinging by the hotel, we left Orosi to drive the loop.  Heading south out of town, we missed our turn at Beneficio Orlich, a coffee finca (plantation) and processing plant.  The Orosi Valley is renowned for their coffee, by the way - it's delicious!  We reached the gate to the Rio Macho power plant before realizing we were on the wrong road.  Meh.  Flipped around, backtracked and made the correct turn toward the bridge over the Rio Reventazón (labeled on the map as 'Rio Grande de Orosi', for reasons unbeknownst to me).

The bridge that spans the river was pretty cool!  One lane only, a guard on one end that I suppose controls traffic on an 'as needed' basis.  Bex! got out and walked across so she could take pictures of me driving over.  We got caught up in Orosi Valley rush hour, however - another car came up behind me.  So I couldn't dawdle!  

I call it 'Puente Turnádose'

That one at a time thing must only be a suggestion.

After picking up my cute hitchhiker, we drove through the small village of Poloma.  Then we pulled over to check out an incredible footbridge that runs from the east side of the river to the town of Orosi on the other side.  It's the dotted line you can see on the map that extends into the right side of the Orosi inset rectangle.  

This bridge is even smaller than the last one.

"Come back!!"  "But I just want to see what's around this corner."
Bex! crossing Rio Reventazón toward Orosi

After exploring the footbridge, we continued the meandering drive through the valley.  The road follows the river for a while then cuts east where it hugs Lago Cachi.  This lake is formed by the Cachi Dam, which supplies hydroelectric power in Costa Rica.  
[Note: If you have any dam questions, I'd be happy to get back to you with the dam answers.]

The lake is all thanks to those little blue things; the green you can see is actually the lily pad covered surface of the lake

We decided to stop at La Casona del Cafetal for coffee because, well, I wanted to and I was driving.  Seriously, this place is pretty great, a large coffee finca with stunning views overlooking the lake, nature trails, a playground, and paddleboat rentals.  We shared a dessert, a dee-lish flan that went really well with our coffee.  Yes, I said 'our' coffee.  My tea-loving wife actually had her very own cup of coffee!!  When in Rome… and all that, I suppose.  It was extra cool because they serve - nay, present - the coffee like this:

Note the presentation includes the color of the Costa Rican flag

They had vines growing on trellises around the restaurant with these huge seed pod things that I bet contain some sort of alien life form:

File under 'C' for 'Creepy, Cool'

The artistic landscape helped the coffee and flan taste extra good

After gettin' our caffeine on we drove to the Cachi Dam and got a few pics there.  The Cachi Gorge is pretty amazing, from everything we've read - no time to explore it this trip but maybe another time.  

No diving allowed

This is not the workplace for ladder-phobes

After that it was on to Las Ruinas de Ujarrás, the site of an old church that was originally built in the 1500's.  Rather than reinvent the wheel, you can just read this from a sign on site:

Or, if that's just too many words, you can look at the pictures on this sign.  It doesn't tell you anything about the history of the church, however.

Adam and Eve are not welcome here

The Costa Ricans have this great habit of building parks around ruined churches 

We LOVE these old churches and their two foot thick walls!

The timber over the window (top) is about 8" thick; note the small cross on what would have been the altar

This church had many arches, these were a rather tricky building technique back then!

After touring the grounds at the ruins and tipping the guy who offered to keep an eye on our car for us while we did so, we left the valley floor and started up the hill to finish the loop.  To give you an idea of 'up', this road sign was pretty close to spot on.  The ol' Daihatsu Bego barely made it!  Up until this point, it seemed like a pretty nice road for a bike ride.

This sign is not an exaggeration.

After getting to the top, we felt like the car deserved a rest so we stopped at a mirador (viewpoint) that looks over the Ujarras area.

Five minutes from the church ruins, as the crow flies or the road climbs; the building right in the middle of this picture is the old church we had just visited

We made our way back to Orosi and checked into our room.  We stayed at the Montaña Linda in their Dragonfly Guest House.  They also run a hostel and a Spanish school here, as well as provide tours and other activities in and around the Orosi Valley.  Our room was very comfortable and the price was a great value, too.  Four thumbs up!  That evening, we had dinner at the Bar y Restaurante Coto, which was recommended to us by Ronan and Mathilde, some folks from France that were also staying in the guest house.  It was a Monday evening so the place was dead.  In fact, we had to walk around the rather expansive restaurant until we found a guy watching TV at the bar.  Then, suddenly, we had a server and we could hear people in the kitchen.  The food was fantastic and they had wine.  Like, real wine.  We were excited by that alone.

I've mentioned the need to be flexible in this part of the world.  Our original itinerary was to visit Volcán Turrialba bright and early Tuesday morning as the first volcano on our three volcano tour this trip.  However, due to increased volcanic activity on Turrialba they had it closed to visitors.  Thankfully, we found this out Monday at the hotel.  So we changed our plans, scratched Turrialba off the list and decided to visit Volcán Irazú instead.  Our new friends from France had plans to visit the same volcano on their way to the bus station in Cartago before heading back to Europe, so we offered to give them a ride.  They were quite happy about this, as it meant they could get an earlier start.  The volcano tour bus they were planning to take didn't depart Orosi until 10 AM and it was, you know, a bus.  

Before leaving Orosi to look at craters, we walked a couple of blocks to the Panadería Suiza, yet another place on our food hit list.  The proprietress, Franzisca, is the most energetic person I've seen in a long time, considering she works 14 hour days.  Seriosuly, she starts baking breads, pastries and other deliciousness at 2 AM, opens for breakfast at 5 AM and we saw her closing up shop around 4-4:30 in the afternoon.  Always with a smile on her face.  We selected a few pastries to fuel us through our morning and promised her we'd be back the next morning for a proper breakfast.

One of the perks of being away from home is that it puts us in a position to meet so many wonderful people.  Sure, you can do this at home but people tend to interact with a core group of family, friends, co-workers and are less likely to seek out newbies, which is completely understandable and fine.  Being in a foreign country I feel almost obligated to introduce myself and strike up conversations with locals and tourists alike.  It's like I don't want to miss the opportunity.  This is one of many new perspectives I hope to bring back with me from this experience.  It was nice to have the company of Ronan and Mathilde on the drive up the mountain, getting to know each other better.  Plus Bex! got to speak French.  (Cue brain cramp in 3… 2… 1…)

Can you spot the hedgehog and the blue footed booby?

Our early start meant we were at the park entrance before the park employees!  The clouds tend to roll in daily around 10 AM or so, so we wanted to have the best chance of seeing some crater bottom.  And we did!  

Proof we didn't miss a minute

The smell of sulfur in the air was a constant reminder we were standing atop an active volcano.  The best result from our early morning arrival was that for most of our visit we were the only ones there.  Being the dry season the crater was empty of the water that usually fills it.  Fine - seeing down to the bottom was pretty sweet!

I tried to channel Kenyon for this shot - D

Yes, I actually wore a jacket!  It was a little chilly!  And no, I'm not about to climb over the fence!

No one tells Beauregard what to do!

After having the run of the place for over an hour, we knew it was time to leave when the tour buses started showing up, one after another after another.  Several of them were loaded with school children on field trips; others with tourists.  It got packed fast!  Time to go!  Besides, the clouds and fog had rolled in so the views were limited.  It was a great visit!

Going with our new friends means we have a rare picture with both of us in it

We drove back down the volcano to Cartago, dropped Mathilde and Ronan off near the bus station and said our goodbyes.  Then we made our way to Costa Rica's Craft Brewing Company, a very cool place just outside of Cartago.  I worked at a craft brewery, Widmer Brothers Brewing, for almost 19 years and enjoy seeing small breweries in action.  We received a full-on company history lesson and tour with Fabiana, our tour guide.  She is awesome, by the way!  

A great tour and a great time!

Except they made us tend bar to work off the beer we drank.

Then we were fortunate enough to intercept Christopher, the head brewer, who hails from Colorado USA.  Brewing is largely about timing and a brewery this size does a lot of work by hand, with very little automation.  He was gracious with his time and stopped to chat with us.  Once he discovered our roots in the beer biz (Bex! also worked at Widmer for five years), Christopher started bringing some samples out to us at the bar, samples that weren't on the tasting menu, in particular a rum barrel-aged barley wine and a Pacific Northwest-style IPA.  (That IPA tasted like home!)  Plus we enjoyed the CRCB's flagship Libertas and La Segua as well as a couple of others.  This visit made me realize that I would love to work at a small brewery again someday - not the overly corporate, shareholder driven beast that my old company has become but something more like CRCB.  It is a fun industry!

Look familiar - Kurt, Rob, Doug, Joe, Ike, Ben??  Wait, never mind - it's the Rose Garden!

Buzz in hand, we drove up the road a half mile or so to a recommended lunch spot.  Food and a Coca-Cola were a huge help!  After that, we drove back to Orosi and our room, where we relaxed the afternoon away - and, okay, slept off the brewery visit.  Instead of going out to eat, we hit a couple of stores for fruit, veggies, some cheese and ate dinner at the guesthouse.  With a bottle of wine and plenty of water, it was a very nice meal.  Needless to say, we slept very well that night!

The next morning, we kept our promise and visited Franzisca for breakfast.  We ordered what might be called in brunch-crazed Portland a 'breakfast board' - three different fresh baked breads, meats, cheese, fruit and drinks.  I tacked on a couple of scrambled eggs and it was perfect.  Strong, black Orosi Valley coffee for me, tea for Bex! and fresh juice for us both.  Franzisca kept the coffee refills coming, too.  It was fantastic.  After we ate, and knowing we were hitting the road for the next leg of our adventure, we purchased some items to go.  Bread, pastries (both sweet and savory), a bag of ground coffee for me.  And Franzisca even threw in one of her huge, decadent double chocolate brownies as a thank you to us!  We considered blowing off the rest of our trip and staying in Orosi the remainder of the week.  Just kidding, although we'd go back in a heartbeat.  We had more grand adventure ahead of us!  We packed up, checked out and hit the road.

Next stop:  Volcán Poás.