I am the Burgerfan!

The following is from a series of emails sent out during our three week trip to Costa Rica in January 2004:

Hello once again!

Sometimes you hit a better internet spot than others ,and sometimes you get a bit more free time than others to send out an iupdate. Also sometimes ytou get a grossly sticky eyboard (thats also a spanish board) which makes you type a lort of typos, so thats why the internet will be slower as you download all my typos toady.

We are in Monteverde until tomorrow morning now, and this plae is high up in the mountains (translation is litteraly “Green Mountain”) The weather is weird here. Not like the “wait 5 minutes” addage in Alberta. Here it is extreemely windy, and rainy (its uyp in the clouds, so had I thought about that it would have made mor sense BEFORE coming here). The rain is not usual though, its like these tiny water particles you can see, just swirlking around in the wind untill they hit somethuing (like you). And they are so thick that it makes things very foggy, much like when it snows a lot. And when its sunny and clear out, its still raining like this! So anyways I will be glad to be in warmer locales again soon (not that this was a bad place)

So today we took a “Sky Walk” which is a walk in and above some rainforest (also called Cloud Forest, being so high up) and its part nature trail and part walks over suspension bridges. Very fun but the rain kept me from taking too many photos.

This afternoon we went to a frog pond thing, which has a bunch of frogs local to Central America on display in booths that recreate their natural habitat (else they´d be dead). I think the Telus guy was there too further exploiting these guys. But seriously it was neat to see.

The local bus system in Costa Rica is excellent, and cheap! There is no equivalent that I know of in Alberta and makes the Greyhound look rediculous. For usually a few bucks you can hop from town to town, varying between 10 kms to 200 kms (there are longer too). The buses are pretty frequent as well, but the most amazing part is that a trek between towns is not trivial at all! The roads are windy, bumpy (Edmonton doesnt know what a pothole is), and very hilly. This in my opinion makes these bus drivers heros, equivalent to what firefighters are to the USA now.

Technology highlight: The tilley hat is not only stylish but functional as well! For $65 (available at your finer local outdoors verdors) you can have a hat that floats, will never leave your head in the craziest of winds, will keep your head dry in the craziest of rains, shade you from the sun, and is guaranteed for LIFE (yours) not to break or get lost (or they will replace it!)!!! This is a definite must have for any traveller!

No that wasnt a plug, it was a serious testimonial.

Okay take care and hope to hear from you all real soon

Chris

The following is from a series of emails sent out during our three week trip to Costa Rica in January 2004:

Nasa gets to Mars again!!!!! Horray!!!!!!

Meanwhile, the Christou Costa-Rican rovers have been busy crossing the crazy central american lands on their own exploratory mission. Considering I have already written a fair bit in my own book, I will pick and choose from this, and try and give a more detailed account of what goes on more frequently in the coming week. Locations wont mean much to you, so go over to mapquest.com or something and try and look these places up.

Dec 29 we got to San Jose (the capital) in the evening, after waking up at 4am to start this adventure. Add to this that we were both still pathetically sick from before Christmas, and this was a sad sad start to the trip.

San Jose actually smells like an exhaust pipe, so we took off on Dec 30 for the Pacific Coast, a beach town called Jaco. Descending from the higher grounds gives you a definitely noticable change in humidity. It is very scenic there, and the food is great. With one exception — Here is a ‘Christou style’ excerpt from my journal:

*** …walking around after supper I still hadn’t found pineapple, which is supposed to be plenty, delicious, and white. A pizza kiosk looked to be closing for the night soon so I asked to buy some slices of pineapple. Apparently he had some pre sliced fruit wrapped up. 200 colones (pronounced co-LONE-ehzzz, about 60cents CDN), thanks, and start walking down the road. Oh buy, unwrapping, I cant wait to eat this! BLAAAAAAAAAA! IT TASTES LIKE BEER! I think it sat there all day and was very rotten. I want pineapple :( ***

Since then I have learned to get it sliced up fresh in front of you. I have also found some pineapple since then, and it was indeed delicious!!!

okay where was I… we were there a few days, and then went to Manual Antonio (further south along the Pacific coast) for a few days. It is another beach community. There is a national park here, at which we saw some monkeys, sloths, iguanas, and a boa constrictor. Also we took a tour into a rainforest, which had numerous zip lines (some 120 feet into the sky on the massively tall trees), and repell lines straight down. This was very cool!

Today we took off for the mainlands/mountains, it couldnt have been better timing. A huge downpour started yesterday and continued into the morning, which wouldnt have allowed for anything outdoors anyways. One transfer, 6.5 hours, and hundreds of windy roads later, we are in the mountain regions of Monteverde (Santa Elena). It rains a lot here and its actually chilly. There is not as much humidity since we are not near the coast, but the big upcoming attraction will be a continuously active volcano! More in that after we get there.

Okay we are bring kicked out of the internet cafe as it is closing, so I have to wrap it up here!

talk to you all later

Chris