Incredibly, the infected woman decided to ignore health officials and broke quarantine so she could attend classes at her university.

Thirty-five others are under watch.

A third person, a youngster, has flu symptoms (not yet confirmed as Swine Flu) possible infected by her father who recently returned to Costa Rica from Mexico. If confirmed, that would be the first case of swine flu caught within the borders.

The Ministry of Health this morning asked the passengers of two other flights, TACA LR 631 and Mexicana  387, to call 911 emergency so they may be tested.

Employees at the San Jose airport are wearing surgical masks, and many incoming passengers are having their temperatures taken upon arrival.

I am not going to go into this swine flu deal because unless my readers are living on another planet, you have been deluged with probably more information that you want to know.

I am more concerned though as my wife works at Calderon Guardia Hospital.

Did you see it?

Frontier Airlines ran an ad during the Superbowl that may interest you if you live near or can get to, Denver, Colorado  (all flights specials originate there).

Price Denver to San Jose, Costa Rica is $139.00 (each way) and that ain’t bad… BUT you have to book and pay TODAY by 9 PM MST.

Rules:

* Purchase by February 2, 2009
* Complete travel by June 10, 2009
* 14 day advance purchase required
* Choose off-peak travel days
o Tuesday – Wednesday for US
o Monday – Thursday for Costa Rica

Can you do it?  If so, come on down to Costa Rica! The weather is fine… though I DID see a cloud the other day!

Oh… and the temperature here this morning (in San Jose):   72 F

How is YOUR weather?

However, I did not want to discard it, and I decided it might be of general interest to a lot of readers, especially to older folks considering a trip to Costa Rica and more especially to older women who might like to travel together! Here is the account or the trip taken by Della and her female companion and written by Della.

My friend Joanna was treated to a Costa Rica ‘resorts only’ trip by her son and daughter in law last December. She came back psyched about living there and wanted to explore more of Costa Rica. So, I signed up on the ‘Real Costa Rica blog’ and started following comments -

We left San Diego, Ca. March 27th, having taken Frontier Airlines (cheapest, and least time spent) to San Jose. We had reserved a 4wh. dr. SUV, and headed out to explore the Nicoya Peninsula. We had a map from the rental office, and headed out, the hair on our back rising as we maneuvered getting out of San Jose. Once accomplished, and taking the ferry from Punterenas, we were much calmer and happier starting on our adventure.

We did follow the ‘rules for tourists’ as you mentioned, always taking our bags in at night, always having our auto within our sight. We did not wander at night -

Ticos seemed curious, interested and surprised to see two Sr. Citizens out and about, through back roads and inland, through small communities and farmland, and everyone we met was friendly, kind, helpful, and informative. Most did not speak English, we do not speak Spanish, but we learned the important words and used sign language to get around. We had such a wonderful time. We wanted to be in the culture, among the people, and we did just that. Pharmacias, cabinos, bancos, agua, banas, fruitas, we got by. Oh yes, we learned to say ‘mucho gusto’.

We stayed in family run cabins, and felt very safe.

I did most of the driving, and the mountains were the adrenalin pumpers for me – blind curves, large trucks, with only room for one vehicle at a time – sideless bridges, ruts in the ‘roads’ more like mud or gravel trails, that was more scary than anything else, but, we managed well.

Being able to stop when we saw a little ‘art shed’ and seeing the lovely art work, and being invited to meet the family – see the baby parrots, and Tucan, in the back yard, meeting the family’s children, both of us willing to try to communicate, giggling at our attempts – even in the off the beaten path, money was no problem as nearly everyone counted in dollars.

We usually were given a ‘typical breakfast’ included with our cabin, in the a.m. I like eggs over easy, and this is not very common I guess so I asked if I could make them myself, so they let me make them, in their kitchen.
Fun…

We found a glorious little teak cabin that one family had put up, cut into the mountain, overlooking the vastness below, and the ocean way in the distance. Breathtaking.
Since it was the end of the dry season, water was sometimes low, and these people were so sorry the town had cut the water, that they gave us not only a wonderful breakfast, typical style, but made fresh corn tortillas and lots of rice and beans, and cut mangos to take with us for lunch. They showed us their cage full of quail and eggs they considered a real delicacy.

It was odd to me that near the ocean, it was so hot – due to the proximity to the equator. Hadn’t thought of that….

Montezuma we liked a lot, we stayed in a very nice hotel, and the restaurants were superb…. Cobano was like going back in time 60 or 70 years. our last two days we stayed in San Jose, with our auto parked in the hotel ‘basement’ at night. We found the hotel as it was getting dark, and were glad of it, because a few blocks away as we were looking for a bed and breakfast sign we had seen, we found ourselves in a huge very ‘ghetto’ neighborhood, then a few blocks further, a neighborhood with lovely homes, completely ironed in, driveway and all, and men with billy clubs and dogs guarding the streets.’

The hotel staff was friendly, informative and fun to converse with as well. A huge park several blocks away had an art festival every Sunday and we found some great treasures.

My friend is still interested in living there, but I have a bad back, and cannot imagine driving the roads there, where about l% of the country, it seems, is paved.

I am thankful we had the ‘Real Costa Rica blog’ as our guide -

If she does move, she has no rose colored glasses on now, and will more than likely rent, and not buy. Very good help on that.

I will come again to visit!!! – and learn more Spanish as well. We arrived back home on April l3th. It was the best l7 day adventure we have ever had. People are people, everywhere, and looking for the similarities, and being willing to explore the differences, using common sense, looking forward to each day’s difference as we headed out in the am was really very special.

So this is a great thank you for the time and effort put into keeping the blog going, and people contributing as well.

Thanks for the nice words and thanks for sharing your vacation with us. I enjoyed reading your account, and I hope my readers will also.

(Next time you come, do read The REAL Costa Rica main web site. Then you will know just how hot are the beaches in Costa Rica.)

The price of super gasoline would go up to ¢801 per liter and diesel prices would fall by ¢97. Gasoline today is $5.10 per gallon for super, $4.97 for regular and $4.82 for diesel. One US gallon = 3.79 liters, so after this change, a gallon of super will be ¢3,036 or $5.88. With the regular monthly increase coming in July, $6.00 per gallon gas is pretty much assured.

Currently, the cost for a gallon of diesel is $4.82, so this will drop to about $4.11. Sounds like a nice windfall for those who chose to buy dieseled vehicles right? Nope… the government giveth and the government taketh away.

To further offset the loss of tax revenue from diesel, the government plans another little surprise to those who own non commercial diesel vehicles i.e. not your personal car or SUV. Marchamo for non commercial vehicles will double. So if you are currently donating $1,000 per year in Marchamo for your reasonably late model diesel SUV, plan on taking a $1,000 hit come December. About 66,000 private cars use diesel fuel. Last year, owners of diesel cars paid about ¢8,500 million in property tax. If approved, this will double to around ¢17,000 million.

Why is this happening? The idea here is that by reducing the cost of diesel fuel, almost exclusively used by transport semis and delivery vehicles, the resultant savings in transportation costs would be passed on down to the consumer resulting in lower prices at the cash register.

Call me skeptical, but I am way to olde to believe that what amounts to a windfall profit for owners of dieseled vehicles will pass on anything. I expect it to go into their pockets and not into the pockets of consumers. As enforcement would be difficulty or impossible, I am not expecting a reduction in food or other prices real soon.

Whether this will come to pass is unclear, but at least the government is trying to be inventive and try new strategies.

Lately, the active volcano has been strutting her stuff, and this has been going on for some weeks now. Customers of mine witnessed a fine show just this week.

The volcano is near the town of La Fortuna de San Carlos, about three hours northwest of San Jose by car. We go fairly often and rooms are always easy to get, especially now in the low season. The beds in many of the hotels are positioned so you can watch it at night. Beats Leno!

Wanna see something cool? Come take a peak! Bring the camera.

To provide a bit of background for newcomers, visitors and tourists, there are currently two cell phone systems here in Costa Rica. The first, TDMA , often referred to as “the old system” and GSM, “the new system”. New is better, right? Often true, but in this case… totally not true.

The GSM system was installed some years ago by Alcatel, a French company under contract to ICE the government-run monopoly that controls all telecommunications in Costa Rica. Apparently not satisfied with just trying to win this huge contract in a competitive manner, Alcatel decided to spend some cash in order to bribe some key decision makers in ICE and in the Costa Rican government. About $11 million as I recall! This was also distributed to at least two and probably three ex-Presidents of Costa Rica, two of whom spent some time in prison for accepting these bribes, and a third who is currently hiding out in Switzerland, unable and apparently unwilling to return to Costa Rica for fear of also passing a few hours in the slammer.

This is important to know because the GSM system installed by Alcatel simply did not and still does not work well at all… and it will soon be the only system available.

Recently, ICE announced, in their incredible wisdom, plans to phase out the TDMA system over a three year period beginning in 2009. I am presuming that their intentions are good, pehaps wanting to update and maintain a more current technology. I would support this decision enthusiastically if only the GSM system worked! It does not.

There are huge areas where the GSM system simply does not work and far more areas where it just works poorly. I live and work midway between San Jose and the San Jose airport, and a GSM phone will not work in the home or office. I need to walk down the road 200-300 yards to get service. Many parts of Santa Ana, Urica, and other populous suburbs of San Jose have spotty coverage at BEST!

Even if you are lucky to be in a zone that does have coverage, you are often told that you cannot connect or are told to place your call later. I have lost count of the times I have called my son only to hear that service is not available. This does not mean he is out of service zone; it means the stupid system cannot process the call. During rush hour or bad weather, just forget calling anyone or receiving calls. Theoretically, GSM phones can be set up via Bluetooth to provide Internet access. Internet is offered as a costly service on GSM phones. I tried it and the service is terrible, often not working at all.

The Southern Zone (near the Panama border) has fine TDMA coverage but crummy GSM coverage. As many people use their cell phones as the only form of communication, when the TDMA system shuts down, they will be without communications. Remember it can take years to get a land line installed, so mobile communications is often the only option.

I think by now you get the point. GSM is not a good solution!

So how does this affect Ticos? It screws them of course!

ICE has announced that they want those TDMA phones back so they can be recycled. Good idea. So that means every person who is currently using TDMA must go out and buy a new GSM phone and return their old one. But… GSM phones are not cheap here. All are sold at retail. Buyers could easily have to pony up $300 or more for a new (basic) GSM phone. Some readers might think that $300 is not too bad, but you must consider that that is more than the entire monthly income for hundreds of thousands of Tico households! To place this in perspective, if you currently earn $60,000 per year in the USA, you would need to shell out $5,000 for a cell phone! That is a big expense and this will most assuredly be a burden on low and even middle income families. I am guessing that this will leave many low income families completely without communications. That, or they will buy on credit further exacerbating the huge outstanding credit problems in CR.

Another problem! Costa Rica is now becoming home to more and more foreigners who do not speak the language. The voice mail system on the GSM phones is not available in any language other than Spanish. Now I admit to not feeling real bad about this as it is my opinion that if you are going to live in a Latin country, you must learn the language! However few foreigners arrive here already speaking Spanish, and a cell phone really is a necessity.

All and all, this is a bad idea that helps nobody except the cell phone retailers and the credit card companies. It will hurt a lot of low income families. There should be a better plan.

Caution! Rant coming!

As most expats, I watch the current political battle for the Presidency of the United States. I watch as Barrack Obama and others make their stupid claims that they will “do something” about the price of gasoline in the US, now over $4.00 per gallon in 23 states. They just don’t get it. To me, it as is stupid as their claims that they will stem the outflow of jobs from the USA to other countries. I have news for them. The first will not happen without strong leadership and new ideas (which neither candidate has even remotely shown) and it is years too late the do anything about the second.

People love to blame big oil. It is so very convenient to blame those big companies rather than accept responsibility for what is the real problem. We are pigs, and this is not limited to those in the USA. The same is true here.

The USA has about only 4-5% of the world’s population yet uses 25% of the world’s oil! Oil is a commodity and nothing more. All countries use oil and therefore all countries must buy oil on the world markets. Demand affects this price as does supply. The new big kid on the block is China, a country that is now flexing its economic and manufacturing muscle and their needs are huge. Demand! They buy a LOT of oil and that is not going to stop. In fact, it will be just the opposite. The oil companies in the US, as the government of Costa Rica buy oil on the world markets and they pay whatever is needed to meet their demand. There is no real negotiation as someone else WILL pay the asking price.

So who is to blame? George Bush? YES! Bush and every single President of the United States for the past 25 years of so. Also, every member of congress, Republican or Democrat. Not ONE of these clowns has evidenced a modicum of guts and taken a leadership position to wean us off oil, and that CAN be done. Look at Brazil, a great example. Any action we start today will take years to bear fruit, so our leaders bicker, blame each other, blame the other party, blame the oil companies… whatever! Can you imagine a politician standing up and saying that he or she accepts responsibility for the lack of leadership? Many members of congress have been there for years, decades even… and they do nothing! It is time to throw the rascals out!

So what is needed and needs to be done? To answer that, we need to look at both supply and demand. To drop oil prices, either supply must go up, demand go down, or (preferably) both.

Supply

Drill new wells. Simple huh? It is not. Why? We now run afoul of the environmentalists. Everyone wants to do something about the environment. Hell, it is our earth, but oil is in places we want to protect and the oil companies cannot drill there. Much easier to drill in someone else’s country right?

The result? We become subservient to that bonehead in Iran, the Saudis, Hugo Chavez. An entire cadre of world creeps. In fact, is there one major oil producing country that even likes the USA? Between them, they exert enormous control on the USA and its economy. This can not continue. We are at peril.

So the big decision needs to be made. If we are not going to use self control and use less gasoline and oil products (reduce demand), we need to increase supply, but only from our own country (USA). That means drilling new wells in places that will give the environmentalists heart failure.

Even here in Costa Rica, that decision may need be made as there is evidence of offshore oil deposits on the Pacific coast. So far, Costa Rica has not even permitted exploration. I wonder how they will think when gasoline hits $9.00 per gallon. I cannot see how we can have it both ways.

Then there is nuclear power! Oops, here come those pesky environmentalists again. Coal? There is enough coal to produce electric power for the entire USA for 90 years! It is also VERY cheap and there have been new techniques to clean up burning coal. Not as clean as nuclear, but much better than years before. Do you think that 90 years will be long enough to find some real leaders who will wean us, forcibly if necessary, from suckling the breast of big oil? Well certainly not in this election year if McCain and Obama don’t stop stroking us with platitudes and start addressing the real issues.

Besides, silly me! The environmentalists will never permit us to use coal. Heaven forbid!

It also probably does not help that there has not been a new oil refinery built in the USA in 30 years. Why?

Demand

Everyone complains about the high gas prices but that seems to be it. Of course some folks have switched to using public transportation, riding a bike to work, etc. Do you know a lot of them? I do not. I keep in touch with people in the US and no one has really made a lot of changes. Couple of canceled drive vacations.

Here in Costa Rica, they interviewed a bunch of people and asked about the gas prices and how it is affecting them. The poorer folks already use buses as they never had a car in the first place, but the others? They are buying fewer clothes! No kidding! Rather than cut back on driving, they are using discretionary spending to buy maybe one less pair of shoes. Go figure. And Costa Rica has a huge and extensive public transportation network. Get the impression that folks are resistant to the process? Someone needs to do a similar poll or survey in the USA.

But some places in the USA, Los Angeles comes to mind, were never designed around a public transportation system. So how do they cut back? CAN they cut back? If they could, would they? People love their cars and love their freedom to hop in and get away.

Alternatives

So all this us with the alternatives. Hybrid cars are cool, but it takes about two years for the increased cost of those cars to be offset by the decrease in fuel cost. Down here it takes 3-4 years to offet the higher price.

Work from Home. Telecommute?

Alternative fuels? Brazil uses a fuel made from sugar cane I think. Far cheaper. Efficient. Clean. They are far less dependent on oil than most any other developed country. Odd then that our US congress has placed HUGE tariffs on the import of alternative fuels. Yup! Cross my heart!

I can go on, but I am tiring of my own rant. We need leadership. Someone who will maybe place a tax of 100% on any vehicle that uses less then 35 miles per gallon. Imagine a world sans SUVs, gas guzzlers, etc.

Back to Costa Rica. Today’s increase is the sixth this year with another most assuredly coming in July. Gas prices here are government controlled and prices at all gas stations are fixed.

Gasoline today is $5.10 per gallon for super, $4.97 for regular and $4.82 for diesel.

In July, you can pretty much be assured of an $.11 per gallon increase across the board.

When I arrived in Costa Rica, I bought the car that I currently own. Still runs great. To fill up cost me about 7,000 colones (about 8,000 colones in today’s valuation or $15.23).

Today, it costs 30,000 colones or $57.47.

I was gonna go out and buy a new pair of shoes for my wife’s birthday this week.

Changed my mind.

Most foreigners living here feel they do have that right. Perhaps they do. Certainly, it is hard to not form opinions and even harder to keep those opinions to yourself. However, I have yet to hear of a case where a North American was asked his opinion on an issue by anyone in the government.

Saying that, there are times when the government does something that to me just makes no sense whatsoever. A few weeks ago, the government announced a new policy that for the life of me I did not understand and still do not understand.

The announcement I am referring to involved a edict telling casino operators that henceforth they would be limited to allowing casino gambling only from the hours or 6 PM to 2 AM. Further, casinos must be part of, meaning inside, the hotel. Costa Rica’s casinos are for the most part inside the hotels, but a few, like the large Fiesta Casino near the San Jose airport, are not attached to any hotel, though it is across the street from the Garden Court. Other rules included no direct access from the street, and rules about alcohol being served.

I thought immediately of the huge sums of money that these companies had invested in building the casinos. Really, invested in Costa Rica. I thought of the tourists that would be affected. I thought of the thousands of Ticos employed by the casinos. Basically I just asked myself why would they do such a thing? Tourism is the cash cow of Costa Rica. Why do anything to screw that up? Why take the chance of losing just one tourist?

I read a statement by someone in the tourism bureau that visitors to Costa Rica do not come here for the gambling and I thought “This guy is making decisions that affect thousands of jobs and a ton of tourists, yet has not a clue as to what he is talking about!

While technically he is right and gambling may not be the prime reason for choosing Costa Rica as a vacation spot, I know that when most people make their vacation plans, they take into consideration things to do as a family, things their kids can do, and things they can do as adults, especially if there are no kids on the trip. When I do play at the Fiesta, Del Rey, Cariari (now Doubletree) and others, those are not Ticos I am sitting next to! Most are foreigners and they are tourists. Lots of people, especially from the US do look to see if gambling is available probably because so many states prohibit it and vacation is a great time for some harmless sinning!

Why is it so hard for Ticos to realize that tourism is a business, and if they want their share of those vacation dollars, they sure better offer services at least equal to all the other Caribbean vacation spots. They should be thinking of offering more services, not less.

If that is not enough, the cutback in hours and the closing entirely of some casinos would mean the loss of 3,000 jobs. 3,000 jobs would be a big deal in the US with what, close to 300 million people? The population of Costa Rica is under 5 million. 3,000 jobs. Incredible. For what?

I like to play Blackjack, or as that is not really available here, the Costa Rican version called Rummy. I play maybe every two months or so, so I am far from being a regular client. Still, it means I could now go only at night, and as that is the time I spend with my wife, I can not go when I want and now, maybe not at all. I felt really irritated.

I waited all this time to blog about this as I wanted to see if this would be read into the legal newspaper which is the final step in activation of any new law in Costa Rica. It was. I thought to myself that certainly someone would come to their senses and stop this silliness. They didn’t. It is now law. One newspaper on May 9 informed the readers that this law was now being enforced.

So this week, when I had an opportunity to meet with a client in the Del Rey Hotel (at 11:00 AM), I was surprised to see the casino operating all tables! Hmmm! How could this be? A quick stop at the Fiesta showed me that they too were open in the afternoon. Huh? What happened to the new law? Were the jobs lost? What happened to the law? Shrug.

Odd huh? Makes me wonder why I wrote this post.

Life in the tropics.

Costa Rica! No Artificial Ingredients! A types need not apply.

A couple of weeks ago, ML and I took one of our long weekend trips, this time to Tamarindo, a popular beach in the province of Guanacaste about an hour south of Liberia and about 4-5 hours from San Jose, the capital and where we live.  I especially wanted to visit as Tamarindo has been plagued with problems, namely high crime, drug use, overbuilding, and of course pollution of the Pacific Ocean.  I found the area to be expensive, terribly overbuilt, and generally not all that great.  I decided to forgo a dip in the ocean.  Say no need to do that much research.  We were not affected by the alleged crime problems, so nothing to report there, but we pretty much stayed in the hotel venturing out only two or three times.

In general, I loath all-inclusive hotels. However Luisa loves the damned things and after we spent a few days in an all-inclusive in Cancun on our honeymoon, and had a fine time with good food, I thought “Why not?”. We stayed at the Barcelo Langosta Beach, Langosta Beach being a few hundred yards south of Tamarindo.

Rather than driving to Liberia, once the only easy way to get to Tamarindo from San Jose, I decided to cut south and take the new Taiwan Bridge. See photo right.

This bridge was finished a couple of years ago and was a gift from the country of Taiwan totally free of charge… except of course for providing Taiwan with fishing rights that hurt badly the local sport-fishing trade and really screwed a ton of Ticos trying to earn their livings as fishermen.

The bridge was built to cross the Rio Tempisque River, that runs north-south above the Gulf of Tambor. See photo below left. Photo stolen from http://www.nicoyapeninsula.com/tambor/ a nice web site of you wanna know more about the Nicoyan Peninsula.

Before the bridge, the Liberia route was the only option. They say taking this bridge saves time getting to beaches around Tamarindo, but It really does not. What is is though is a very pretty drive and beats the Liberia route for that reason alone.

Barcelo Play Langosta

Arriving in Tamarindo, we made our way south to the Barcelo. About a ten minute drive past lots of North American fast food restaurants and US cloths stores. UGH!

Within one minute, I am now reminded why I hate all inclusives!

First, the lobby is jammed with 485 noisy teeny-boppers aged 15-20 (maybe), all waiting to check-in sans parents. Not a good sign if you too will be waiting to check-in in the 96 degree heat (lobbies are almost never air conditioned in all inclusives!).

Second, as I am getting out of my car in front of the lobby, I am told by the guard I must move. HUH? “I am checking in.” says I. “Then you cannot park here. You must go to the parking lot”, say he. He points. Now I am not blocking anyone and there is plenty of room for other cars/vans to get by. Why would a hotel ask the guest to park in a parking lot to check in? I decline and decide to get a place in one of the lines so we can check in. The guard says not a word… probably makes no sense to him either.

ML gets tired of waiting in the car (she’d have been a ton more tire if she had to wait in the sun for 30 minutes) and joins me as we get to the front desk. Reservations have been made for a ocean view room, king size bed. As you who have had the fun of going to all inclusives know, they do not guarantee anything… so I grovel. I am married and have experience in groveling! The desk clerk finds us am ocean view with a queen bed. Compromise! Fine say we… we’ll take it.

We register, get our bracelet IDs, and grab a bellhop to take our luggage. He tells me he is very happy not to have to go the opposite direction to the car park to get our luggage. I smile, but not for long.

The online photos of this hotel sort of indicate that they are on the ocean. Well they are I guess, but there is a lot of stuff between the hotel and the beach. Ocean view rooms are on the top floor (no elevator), so we clime the stairs and make our way to our room. The electronic key does not work. He looks at my wifes ID bracelet. “Wrong room, I am so very sorry”, says he. We head down one flight to another room and the key works fine. Nice queen bed, but the view is into the rooms of another part of the hotel. No ocean here!

He asks if we want to return to the lobby to get this problem fixed. ML and I trade glances, “No, we’re fine”. No ocean view and no king bed. Air conditioning works great, We’re tired and hot. We’ll make do.

So ML unpacks and gets into her bathing suit. I unpack and remove my cloths just in time to have our door open with the rightful owners of this room. Happily, I have sufficient cloths on to avoid a nasty surprise for the other guests who I am sure would not prepared to see me sin ropa when expecting the beauty of Costa Rica. Apologies are yelled, the bellboy (not ours) is having a panic attack, and they leave. I lock the door and immediately the phone rings. Front desk asking why we are where we are. I explain the bellboy put us here. They hang up. They call back. Why are we not in our room? We are! Not the room we assigned you. OK this is goofy. ML walks in, and sure enough we check the bracelets. We were assigned two different rooms! See photo top.

After more yacking, we decide to stay where we are. The hotel says nothing. No apology. Nothing. Have I mentioned I do not like all inclusives?

We head down to eat. The food is OK. A bit better than most all-inclusives, maybe C or C+. The deserts though are GOOD!

The pool is really huge and contains maybe 300 of the 485 teeny-boppers, another 327 children, and (I am only guessing here) a urine content of no more than 20%. No swim-up bar. I can tolerate just about anything if there is a swim-up bar! Oh well.

Evening! All inclusive hotels love to have “shows” at night and truly some of them (like the ones in San Andreas and in Guadeloupe, are first rate. This one was not. We are treated to kids playing a game. Later there was some dancing which was OK. A standout was a sax solo by one of the band members and THAT made the whole evening worth it.

Next day we traveled into Tamarindo with friends. On the beach I met a couple of Costa Rica’s newest weapons, tourist police. As mentioned, Tamarindo has a bad rep these days, and Costa Rica in general has been getting bad press because of crimes against tourists. Tourists who had problems were frustrated because of too few police and almost none who spoke English. Thus I was really interested to meet these guys in their distinctive uniforms and see how things really are in Tamarindo. The goverment promised that all tourist police woould speak English!

Well, the good news is that they were right their on the beach and their presence was likely reassuring to all. The bad news is that neither officer spoke 5 words of English. “I thought all the tourist police spoke English” asks I. Shrug.

Guess not!

I will say that during our trip, I saw NONE of the crime or problems that have been covered so throughly in the Spanish press here in Costa Rica. Qualifying this, I was not on the streets or beaches at night, but our friends were and they mentioned seeing nothing. Might be good news for Tamarindo!

Hotel Rating: Food: C Front Desk and Service: D-

Recently, my daughter Karen, 40 something mom of three, well actually two but we often count her husband as one of the kids, came a visitin’ from Chicago, and we all made the four hour trek to Monteverde, Costa Rica. With us was son Bill, his wifey and my granddaughter, Lucy all of whom live here.

I had the cool idea of renting a van and driver for the trip. Normally I drive, but there is a 10-15 miles stretch of nasty road and I figured I’d save wear and tear on the car and use taxis when we got there. Turned out to be a great idea. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every so often!

If this interests you, read on!

I figured we could take a cooler of beer and some munchies and sit back and be tourists! THAT is the way to go!

The trip took about 4 hours from our home near San Antonio de Belen. We arrived at Hotel El Establo right in the center of the action. OK action may be too strong a word here as Monteverde, while it absolutely should be on any tourist’s itinerary, is a bit short of really cool things to do after the first full day. Really, it makes a great 2-3 day trip max as after the horseback riding, the canopy tour, the tarzan swing, and the (poison) frog museam, there is not a whole lot more to do. OK there IS more to do if you are one of the eco-trekkking-hiking freaks. If you are, then the list is endless! I get tired even thinking of excercise and often just rest until the thought leaves my mind.

El Establo is a very nice hotel and very inexpensive compared to many hotels of the same quality. We did the suite thing, my daughter sleeping in the loft above us and ML and I below. Great views and the construction quality was first rate. “Why so cheap?” Thinks me. Nothing is cheap here… at least not for tourists. I soon found out.

Seems El Establo has two restaurants! I forget the names, but they should have been called “Really, Really, Expensive” and “Say the hell WHAT??”. “Say the hell What??” was the deluxe gourmet restaurant and we avoided THAT completely after having our first meal in “Really, Really Expensive” .

“Really, Really Expensive” had seating for perhaps 945 people and the prices were just silly. First meal… light lunch for five adults and my granddaughter (age 3) ran to about $155.00 and I did not even get a KISS from the cute hostess!

Now I knew how they could price the rooms so cheap. Guess they have to make it somewhere. Still, a LOT of people did eat there so we let them subsidize our suite while WE ate the The Treehouse and other spots. Hotel food B- Treehouse food B. Various others not remembered… B.

As I mentioned, I am not fond or excersize, so when all the others decided to go do the canopy tour thing, zip lining, the tarzan swing and horseback riding, I elected to sit on the balcony, read, nap and unwind.

The picture at the top of this post is daughter Karen. She was on the Tarzan swing. As you can see, she is enjoying it a lot. Brother Bill is yelling “Use the break!!!!” Bill is an instigator and so enjoys tormenting his big sister. To the right is Bill zip lining above the cloud forest. Note there IS a break on the zip line thingy. Poor Karen.

The REAL deal around Monteverde (for you outdoor types) is the horseback riding! For a stupidly cheap price, like $30.00, they were guided on a 4-5 hour tour through the mountains by truly excellent guides. Not sissy horses either. My campasina wife, who does know how to ride, said there was much trotting, galloping and sun glasses losing. Her nice guide rode back about 5 km to find them too! (The $200.00 sunglasses I mean).

All in all… great trip. It is very restful and we may well make the jaunt again. El Establo, while not expensive, is still more than many other hotels, so do your homework when choosing your place to stay.

Want more info?  Check out http://www.monteverde.org, the only web site I could find not trying to sell you anything.