Leaping lizards, people who cut of their hands

Sorry that it has been a while but I have not had access to a computer for several days. First I want to talk about Max. Max is pretty cool. He is 20 years old and has his own exotic animal business based in Denver CO I met him in the hostel in Uvita, this guy knows all sorts of cool stuff about all different kinds of reptiles, animals etc. He told me about a lizard called a basilisk. The cool things about basilisks is that they run across water on their hind legs. One day I was at the beach at Uvita and saw Max there with a local guy and both of them were using local herbs to attain a favorable state of altered consciousness. He saw me and called me over and of course I joined them. He explained that he had seen a basilisk or many basilisks actually and they were only a little way behind us. So after attaining said favorable state of consciousness we went to where the basilisks were. Man are they cool! They look like tiny dinosaurs and when they are scared they run across the water on the water on their hind legs. Max explained that the way it works is that they move so fast that it creates an air pocket which prevents their feet from going in the water. It is this ability which gives them the nick name Jesus Christ lizards.

Cortes Costa Rica
I didn't go here. So why am I writing about a place that I didn't go. Well let me explain. I was looking at the map in the hostel in Uvita deciding where I was going to go the nest day. I saw Cortes. I asked the owner of the hostel, an American expat about it. He told me I didn't want to go there. When I asked why he said that at one they imported people to work in the sugar cane fields. These people were covered by insurance and when they saw the payouts for things like lost fingers lost hands etc. They started chopping off their hands because they got $5000.00 for a lost hand. These are the descendants of those people. So for this reason I didn't go there.

Panama

I got into Panama yesterday, July 28 and it was raining like hell. None of the shuttles would take me to David City, where I am now.So at about130 in the afternoon I got a cheap hotel about 1 kilometer from the border. Of course as luck has it about half hour after I checked in the rain stopped but what hte hell it was only 13 dollars per night. I love the highway in Panama it is 2 lanes in each direction and it actually has a shoulder. Thank god. This makes riding much less stressful. I can actually relax. They use American currency here in Panama so I don't have to figure out how much something costs in dollars. It is also a lot cheaper than Costa Rica. Beer is only .60 per bottle down here compared to 1.50-2.00 in Costa Rica. Guinness is available here at the grocery store for only 3.30 per 6 pack. Those of you who have known me for a while know how happy that makes me. kSo I am here in David City Panama and will probably be here until the 1st and then start my way to Panama City where I will catch the ferry to Colombia, home of cocaine tea, can't wait.

hasta la vista baby
It has been a while since anyone has emailed me, I sure would like to hear from ya'

Charlie

Greetings from Uvita

I made it to Uvita and it wasn´t THAT bad although it is not an experience I would like to repeat soon. It was 40 km. (25 miles) of dirt road. For the most part it wasn´t any worse than some of the rail trails I´ve been on. At no part was it wash board, thank god. I´m sure I went farther than 40 km. however because of all the weaving back and forth across the road avoiding potholes. Otherwise the road is just what I was looking for, very wide and little traffic. I took me about 3 hours to do the distance, nothing to brag about certainly. When I got to Dominical and finally hit pavement again I was very happy. I went about 25 km. past Dominical to Uvita which is where I am writing from. I am at the Tucan hostel. I knew i was in the right place when I saw the sign with the yin yang symbol out front and a sign that said massage. This was confirmed when I went to the front desk and classic rock was playing and I went to my room and there was a large framed picture of the Grateful Dead on the wall. A very cool place. I decided to stay at least one more day. Maybe go to the beach. Today i am treating myself to a 1 1/2 hour massage. I am going to try one more time as this woman is an american and was trained in the U.S. The weather has been very consistent if it is going to rain it does it late in the afternoon and if the sun is going to shine it does it in the morning. I have been trying to time my rides to get to where I am going for the day before it rains. That´s all for now.
hasta la vista baby
Charlie

Costa Rican vibes

White Water rafting

I went rafting the other day and it was a gas! The trip lasted about one and a half hours and I loved it. There were 4 of us in our raft plus the river guide. We went down the Naranjo river which had a number of class 3 and 4 rapids. At one point everyone but me and the guide got dumped into the river. About 5 minutes later it was my turn. The other passengers besides me were a couple from Denmark and a cop from Brooklyn. Great company and a great time was had by all.

Finca Amanecer

It was actually difficult to leave the place because it is such a cool place. It is in a rainforest, there is beautiful scenery all over the place. The owner, Elena Ross is a fabulous, laidback, helpful, fun hostess. I will actually miss her. However tomorrow she is leaving for Bulgaria to do some spiritual dancing up in the mountains. She had a couple of people working there for their rent when I was there one of whom has since left (thank god) and the other one who is going run the place for a while when she is gone. The first one is:

LOONEY LARRY
Looney Larry is a real piece of work. He is a retired post office clerk. To know Larry is to know how they came up with the term "going postal" The guy is obviously slightly off his rocker. Ever know someone who just took one too many hits of acid. That is Larry. As I said he is a worker and nothing more the owner made that quite clear but apparently he has other ideas. Everything was fine until one time we were talking about massage and alternative health and stuff like that. Elena says that she does some massage and I said so did I. She seemed sort of stressed so I offered her one as she has a massage table. Well all of a sudden Larry gets real weird and he and Elena go into the kitchen to have a talk. It lasts quite a while with the upshot being that he tells her that she cannot receive or give a massage without having sex with the person. Sex was never either one of our goals but there it is. A day later he tells me that if we have sex he is going to chop my legs off with a machete. So it just went on like this until we both decided on detente. Well that´s Larry.

The CARMENATOR

Carmen is a young woman from Colorado. She is also a guide in Alaska. She is going to watch the place forElena for a while when Elena is gone. Her attitude is "I´m the Carmenator I can do anything" I love people with attitudes like that. She is always at work doing something. She doesn´t talk a lot she just lets her actions speak for her. When she goes about her work she does it with a competence and confidence that is a pleasure to watch.

MANAÑA

Tomorrow I continue heading south. I understand I have about 25 miles of dirt road ahead of me. I want to make it to a town named Dominical. I am not looking forward to it. But it is what it is. If I wanted everything to be the way it was at home I would have stayed at home. After Dominical I understand it paved all the to Panama City, so I guess that is not too much to put up with. So moving right along I am going to sign off and start drinking.
hasta la vista baby
Charlie

Greetings from the rainforest.

As much as I enjoyed San Jose it was time to move on. The hostel is absolutely fabulous a and if you ever go to San Jose I highly recommend the Costa Rica backpackers inn. they have a pool, 6 computers, a restaurant that sells beer and also shows 2 movies per night. They have a common with a large tv with cable. The staff is fabulous and it is close to everything. While in San Jose I visited several museums including the National Museum. the national is interesting because it is in an old fort. You can still see the bullet holes in the outside walls from the 1948 revolution. As part of the museum they have a butterfly preserve where are 20 varieties of butterflies flying around.Really a cool place. I also went to the national Numismatic and pre-columbian gold museum. An absolutely fascinating place. Right now I am in a tiny little town named Londres (spanish for London) which is about 10 miles in from a coastal town named Quepos (pron. kaypos) I am staying at a hostel named Finca Amanecer (sunrise farm). It is the opposite experience I had in San Jose. This is not to say that San Jose was good and this is bad, just different. It is owned by an American expat named Elena Ross. She is a fabulous person and a great hostess. She has a 7 acre farm in the middle of the rainforest. The scenery here is incredible. She has given directions to several different destinations one of which was this incredible waterfall. The water was refreshing which is to say a little bit brisk but it was a great place to get naked and jump in, which I did. The place is really remote and I was the only one there. Tomorrow is whitewater rafting which I'm really looking forward to. I will report how that is later. Until then
HASTA LA VISTA BABY!

Greetings from Costa Rica, land of hills and good beer

Welcome to my country now go uphill!

May be it's just me but it seems that everytime I cross a border as soon as I get to the other side I start climbing. Is there some reason for this? Do countries purposely have their borders in valleys to make it easier you know the mountains on that side are yours the ones on this side are mine kind of thing. Who knows who cares tune in next week for the continuation of this exciting saga. Well I've been in Costa Rica a few days now and so far I really like it. There seems to be a pattern here that the further south I go the nicer and prettier the countries become. Nicaragua was really beautiful and now Costa Rica even more so. One difference between Costa Rica and other countries is that here there is a feeling of prosperity that pervades everything. This is something that is definitely missing in all the other countries I have been in. Costa Rica is very hilly especially compared to delightfully flat Nicaragua. There is an awful lot of ascending and descending here a bit more than I would like. The roads are really nice and smooth. But they are narrow with nada, zero, zip for a shoulder. It is also the busiest road I have seen since the libre in Mexico. The Pan American highway is not only the highway through Costa Rica it is also the route through San Jose the capitol. So yeah doesn't that suck. So there are a lot of trucks on the road and no shoulder and they don't usually give you much room. Note to the Costa Rican gov't. PUT SHOULDERS ON THE DAMN ROADS! There, got that off my chest.

Liberia, giraffes, zebras and warthogs

My first day in Costa Rica I spent in Liberia. It's about 50 miles inside the country from Nicaragua. I thought I was in heaven. There were real stores and in front of every store were little decals telling which credit cards they accepted. Imagine they not only accepted cards but a whole bunch of them. There was a huge grocery that sells all sorts of beer and other stuff. In Nicaragua there is a choice of maybe 2. They even have a dark beer here yayyyyyy! My first day in the country and I got rained on not just rain a serious downpour. I stopped at the first motel in Liberia and asked how much and he said $36 which was more than I wanted to spend but it was raining like hell and I was soaked so I said "Why not" of course the minute I got settled in the rain stopped and the sun came out. For dinner that night I ate at the Taqueria Mazatlan. I mean I had to right? It was good, expensive considering, but good. I mean 1 fish taco with beans rice and a salad for $7.00 as I said expensive. The next day I went down the road and came to a place called Africa Mia it is an animal preserve and pretty damn pricey. Basically they take you on a tour and you get to get up close and personal with the animals in the park. You get to feed the giraffes and get close to the zebras and all that good stuff. It was nice, it was fun but it was pricey. That night I ended up in the town of Las Canas nothing special about it but it seems like a nice quiet little burg. From there I went to Puntas Arenas. Basically a sand bar in the ocean. Nice enough place but nothing to really recommend it. It has black sand beaches. I guess I've been spoiled by Mazatlan because I haven't seen anyplace that I would trade for it so far. Well that's all for now, I feel like I'm becoming boring so
HASTA LA VISTA BABY!

Greetings from Ometepe Island

Well I´ve been on Ometepe for a couple of days now and I have to say it is an incredibly beautiful place. It is sort of like Maui in that it is an island with a volcano on either end and strip of land in the middle. It is very lush and green with water falls and beautiful scenery and rainforests. The people are incredibly friendly, I am told that there is no crime here and to make it even more eden like real estate is very cheap here. I looked at a small farm here with a very tiny bulding on it ( I am loathe to call it a house) it is about 10 feetx20 feet basically 2 rooms with an attached bathroom. There is water to the house, a septic tank has been installed and there is electricity at the street. It is 1.75 acres (What they call a Manzana in Nicaragua) it has all been planted with corn, tomatoes coconut trees, grapefruit tree, banana trees and you can buy it for $10,500 U.S. Believe me I was tempted to buy my little piece of paradise but then figured that I would rarely if ever use it as I wouod never give up my places in Mazatlan. Of course no paradise is perfect. And this one is no different. The biggest challenge here is getting access to money. There is only one bank on the island, hence only one atm. The atm has been out of service since I´ve been here. The only way I´ve been able to get is that there is a store here that will run your credit or debit card and give you money and he gets 10%. Today is Sunday and he is closed so I am leaving the island because I am tired of the inconvenience. I stayed in a nice hotel here it is run by an American couple. The room is spacious, and it has HOT water. I have not had hot water since I left Mexico. It is named appropriately enough the American hotel and cafe. I haghly recommend it if you ever get to Moyogalpa on Ometepe Island. That is all for now, I head to Rivas on the 11:30 ferry and start heading south. The next time you hear from me I will be in Costa Rica.

Hasta la vista baby!
Charlie

Greetings from Granada

well I finally got my money and made it out of Managua and am now in Granada. Not much of a distance but a whole other world in experience. Granada is really a nice little place. They are really going after the tourist dollar so it is a nice clean place. They've got a nice plaza area with lots of vendors selling any manner of things. One of the streets off the plaza is blocked off to traffic for a few blocks and has a lot of nice little boutiques, restaurants and restaurants. It is right on Lake Nicaragua and all in all a very nice place I am enjoying quite a bit. Tonight I am going to a free piano recital. So far since I have gotten a massage and also an acupuncture treatment for my shoulder. I enjoyed the massage it was nice to relax and it is the best I've had since I left the states but it still wasn't that great. The acupuncture helped somewhat perhaps it will assist it in healing faster. It seems that each day it is a little bit better maybe the only thing that is going to heal it is time and maybe tequila. I can sleep on it without waking up it's just that it is always there. OH WELL! I went to the local archeological museum today and had my own lovely guide who took me around and explained everything-in spanish and I even understood a lot of it. Speaking of spanish I had an interesting experience the other day in Managua. I decided to do the tourist thing so I went and checked out the museum at the Palacio Nacional and took a guided tour there and when I finished I thought to myself "self what should I do next?" I saw on a tourist map that the archeological museum was nearby (they seem to have in just about any city of any significance) So I got a cab and asked how much to go to the Museo Arqueologico he told me the fare (30 cordobas about 1.50) so I said lets go. Now I'm far from fluent in spanish but people have told me that I speak it well so I was sort of surprised when we ended up at the Centro Nacional Dermatologico (National Dermatology Center.) Of course when I pointed his mistake he said that he had no idea where the museum was. So I said the hell with it take me back to the hostel. Tomorrow I'm hopping on the bike and heading to Rivas and then hopefully find a way to Oemeteppe Island. Spend a couple of days on Ometeppe island and then head south to Costa Rica. So my next find me spot should be from Rivas and next blog from Rivas or Ometeppe. Until then

HASTA LA VISTA BABY!