Costa Rica Day 2

Breakfast buffet includes:

• cereals
• local fruits, including mango, pineapple, watermelon, papaya
• juices, including "banana milkshake" which is what we'd call a smoothie
• oatmeal--not sure why you'd want oatmeal in a place where it's 90°, but they had it
• several varieties of breads, croissants, etc
• eggs
• casado, which is black beans and rice
• queso fritos, three inch discs of fried cheese
• tortillas
• "sausages" which were actually hot dogs
• pancakes

The dining area is all open air. A magpie jay flies from perch to perch, looking for an unguarded table; I'm pretty sure he filches one of my "sausages" while my back is turned. 

Back to the room, where we happen to run into our housekeeper. As might be expected, she is a Christian, and she and Diana have a prayerfest. After that, it's a busy schedule: walk on the beach, swim in the ocean, come back and take a nap. On the way to the gift shop we meet Jorge, who took care of all our reservation questions, and we give him the Virginia Beach shirt we brought for him. Jorge is one of those people who smiles all the time.

Lunch for me is cucumber gazpacho with yogurt and shrimp.

We take a kayak out to El Capitan, the islet at the mouth of the bay. Much of the landward side is covered with white shells; the seaward side is all rough volcanic rock. There are hundreds of hermit crabs; we see clumps of a dozen or more, mobbing one mango. We also see a pelagic sea snake, washed up onto the rocks. It's probably dead, but we don't poke it, just in case. After that we go snorkeling. There aren't a lot of fish, and those we see are mostly of the "large minnow" type, brown and red; however, we do see one with yellow and black stripes, possibly a damselfish. 

We paddle the kayak back before 6pm, as that's about the time it gets dark. At the front of the hotel, we see the monkey bridge across the road; we see a troop of about a dozen, including adults carrying babies, come across, jump from one tree to the next, then onto the hotel's tiled roof and out of sight. Walking to dinner, we spot an iguana in one of the trees next to the pool, and a woodpecker, and there are geckos on the pillars of the dining area.

Dinner is ostensibly spaghetti bolognese although it doesn't have any detectable tomato sauce; I suspect they put beef stroganoff over spaghetti noodles.  Dessert is copa Danemark, which is ice cream and brown sugar, topped by whipped cream.

After dinner, Diana goes to sleep; I go to the front desk and see four raccoons in the lobby. They have a couple of dog dishes set aside from them.

Costa Rica Day 1

Get up at 4:15am, head for the airport at 5:40, flight leaves for Atlanta at 7am. All fine thus far. But our flight lands at Atlanta at 9:10 and our connecting flight is already boarding, five terminals away. Fortunately the airport had trams running every couple of minutes; we hustle and--while hearing "Passenger DeBoe, party of two, please report to the gate immediately"--we make it in time.
We take off and sail south at 35,000 feet, skimming down the west coast of Florida, crossing--is that Cuba?--and some small cays. We can see white wakes trailing behind invisible ships. The cumulus clouds are like tufts of meringue.
Cross the coast of...Honduras? There were isolated conical mountains, presumably volcanoes, near the shore. We pass over Lake Nicaragua and land at Liberia. It's a new airport, only two years old, and small, only six gates.
The drive to Tamarindo reminds me of driving in Appalachia, years ago. The road--the main highway for this region--is two lanes, no shoulders, and desperately needs to be repaved. If a vehicle breaks down, they just stop right there in their lane and put out warning triangles ahead and behind, because there's no place on the side of the road to pull off. Lots of barb wire fences, and some trash along the road. Poor quality houses, not set back far enough from the road, but they're gaily painted aqua or burnt orange or sand color. Better houses, or businesses, tend to have high fences or walls around them. No mown lawns, but lots of flowers and trees around the houses, including hyacinths and palms and mangoes. It's about an hour's drive from Liberia to Tamarindo. We're the only passengers in the van; the driver doesn't speak much English but he and Diana chat in Spanish and I can usually follow the conversation.
We arrive at Hotel Capitan Suizo around 4pm, and on opening the door of the van, I promptly drop my camera onto the driveway, after which it refuses to power up. Fortunately I only had about twenty pictures; if I had 500 pics from the whole vacation, I'd be ill, wondering if they could be recovered (on getting home, we find the pics are all on the SD card so even though the camera is dead, we didn't lose anything). We sit on the beach chairs to enjoy our "welcome to the hotel" rum punch, and then head to the bungalow for a nap--needed both from bouncing along the road, and getting up while it was still "last night".  Our bungalow main room is a square 20ft on a side, with 12ft walls and a central peak that was at least 20ft high. The room is divided diagonally into two levels, the sitting area being at ground level, and the sleeping area raised by three steps . To the right of the bed is the door to the bathroom, with a big jacuzzi, and an outdoor shower. The floors are concrete, but dappled green and warm enough to be comfortable. The bungalow is surrounded by trees--palm trees, three banana trees, and others. There is occasional noise from trucks passing on the road in front of the hotel, but not much and it's intermittent during the day, almost none after dark.
Dinner is at one of the tables under the trees between beach and pool. It's chicken cordon bleu and teriyaki tuna--there's almost no Costa Rican food on the menu, although they do have filets and quesoburgers and spaghetti Bolognese. While we're waiting for dessert, BAM!--something lands on the table. It's a mango seed, with teeth marks. Max the waiter explains that there are monkeys in the trees, one of them must have dropped it. A little later, as we're having cheesecake, two velvety raccoons come padding along; one of them climbs up the arm of Diana's chair (while she's sitting there, mind) and is starting to get up on the table. until I whack it on the nose with a cloth napkin. Cheeky blighter.
The beach is dark, but we take a short walk anyway. Bright stars, Orion overhead, Cassiopeia on the horizon, a planet in the middle of Taurus, the Milky Way making a river of stars. The beach is wide and flat;  breakers 75 yards out are down to little ripples when they reach us, smooth and flat enough that I can look down and see the stars reflected around my feet.

Costa Rica

Getting ready to go to Costa Rica for our 25th anniversary, which isn't until Feb 20th, so I'm not sure why we're going Feb 6-11, but we are.

Things involved in this trip thus far:

• download 778 photos then delete them from the camera
• get a scuba mask
• polish the inside glass of the scuba mask with toothpaste
• trim my stache sufficiently for the mask to seal properly
• order a book for the trip (The Mongoliad)
• mosquito spray
• suntan lotion
• batteries for camera
• better order a second book (Heirs to the Lost World)
• photocopy passports
• English/Spanish app for my phone
• pack liquids in 3oz bottles
• pick out tropical shirts
• better get a third book (Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy)

Shadow Ops: Control Point

Shadow Ops: Control Point has a good concept. Magic breaks out in the modern world. The government takes control of as much as possible; if you can use magic, you're pretty much limited to being in the military or being a hunted outlaw. The main character finds out that he has magic; we follow him through getting captured, taken to the military's off-world training base, and screwing things up royally.

And we don't really care, because there's no reason to like the main character. The primary thing I hated about him was that he can't make up his fuzzy little mind. He is torn between "I'm a slave for the government, I hate this, I don't owe them anything and would risk anything to escape" and "They're training me, discipline is good, I'm learning a lot of stuff, I'm helping people." And he's generally not feeling both at the same time and trying to reconcile them intelligently; it's all one way, and then in the next chapter it's all the other way.

If he were a hero, he'd decide what he wanted and then push to achieve it despite all obstacles. This guy can't get the first step right; and when he does accomplish something, it's because he was pushed.

I see the second book in the series has a different main character, so if I see the sequel in the library, I might thumb through it, but that's about the most I can recommend.

Mead

Mead is wine made from honey. Until recently, there wasn't anywhere around here to get it; however, now that Total Wine has opened a shop that carries so many varieties of alcohol that my boss, a foodie and former bartender, got overwhelmed and couldn't pick anything out. And they carry three different types of mead. And it turns out that "wine made from honey" tastes like...wine.  Quite a lot like wine. Wine with a little bit of a honey taste to it.

Labeled as "micro adventure" because I tried something new and different, even though it didn't turn out to be nearly as new or different as I expected.

Snow!

Snow! It started snowing at 3:15, and had accumulated about an inch by 5pm, when I started driving home from work. It took me 40 minutes to go the 2.8 miles from Hilltop to home. I passed several car whose owners had put in the extra effort to get into accidents or slide into a ditch, and I passed two cars whose owners had apparently just pulled over to the shoulder and abandoned them in panic. However, despite the traffic silliness, the snow is beautiful.
And cold. Last year it barely got below freezing, today it was 21°. Brrr.

Close Action: Battle of Cape Henry

Josh and I drove to Albert Parker's place in DC for a Close Action scenario, the Battle of Cape Henry. Full AAR at Battle Honors.