Heading Home

Time to go.

We pack up, drive back over the mountains to San Jose, and slide by degrees back into the ordinary. The plane is supposed to fly out at 1345 h local, but the sense of dislocation is already starting. In several hours, we will look at Houston and then Detroit, and wonder why anyone would want to live that way.

See you all soon.

Rob

Acclimated

A sure sign that a vacation is nearly done here is that everything about life in Jaco has become... not necessarily ordinary but unremarkably familiar. We have spent the last few days on matters of the magazine and the phone book, with daily trips to the beach for David to continue to practice surfing. (Rainy season is nearly done; there was enough direct sun yesterday to give me a bit of a burn.) Either we eat at home, cooking our variations on local food: gallo pinto and vegetables and dorado or chicken, or we eat local foods at a couple of sodas - and the details of each meal no longer stand out. We shop at Mas Por Manos or Mega Super, the latter as little as possible because although it is nearer, the selection is not as good and the prices are higher. The assorted vagaries of the infrastructure are hardly worth noting any more; the power went on, off, on, off, in rapid sucession, and then on and finally off for an hour and a half last night. And the drains had been repulsively reluctant since yesterday midmorning. This seems normal.

A quick glance at my watch says it's the 7th. Of course - we leave tomorrow.

Aftermath

We drove only as far as Playa del Coco, as Lay Mey had to work that night at La Vida Loca; there was a Halloween Bash on. We saw Eddie, rented a room at a B&B, and went to L.V.L., where much fun was had by all and I lost at both pool and table tennis. Then we drove back to Jaco on Saturday, eventually arriving at dusk all hot and sweaty from the trip and anticipating long, long showers.

Where we found that the water to the house had been shut off with one day's warning over a bill of about $US 5.00, delivered the day after we left. (As far as we knew, all payment arrangements had been followed; we were in error.) There is nothing like not being able to flush a toilet in tropical heat to remind you of how essential modern plumbing is, and I cheerfully invite anyone who derides it to give it up.

It was too late to call anyone on Saturday, and on Sunday, there isn't anyone to call. I stuck a pot under the leak in the rain gutters that night for enough water to flush about once and our neighbour put his hose over the fence on Sunday afternoon, so I could fill up pots and pop bottles and so on for Jane; I 'showered' in the yard. We were not cooking because unwashed dishes here attract hundreds of little ants in minutes if you don't keep your kitchen clean. We couldn't go out because all our clothes needed laundering from the trip, except one clean outfit each that wouldn't be for long unless we had showers... all in all, a less than happy thing after the great fun and excitement of our side trip to Granada.

Which is why I didn't bother to post on it as it was happening; it didn't deserve official notice.

On Monday morning, an official was proclaiming to Ruth that he had been out on Friday and turned everything back on, even as nothing still poured out of the taps when we opened them. He then said he would be right out, and he was in half an hour, but he hadn't brought the right tools with him, and borrowed some from Chuck across the street, but the shut-off was broken - of which he was aware, he said, because it had broken on Friday... this translates to still no water. He went away. We just shrugged our shoulders and waited. After a while, six city workers showed up, there was a gush of water down the sidewalk as they replaced the shut-off, and the Great Drought was over with. Back to the business of business.

I have still not resolved to my own satisfaction the political feel of Granada. There is a big election coming up on the 9th, I believe, but there did not seem to be a lot of posters about the town. It has been touted by some as a referendum on the current government. An English language daily paper on the main desk in the hotel lobby had an article slagging former Sandinista leader and now-president Daniel Ortega, for arresting members of some NGO charity type thing or other on charges of corruption and money laundering; he had their computers and files seized too. The paper suggested that he was doing it to deflect criticism for failed policies. I think it is because ultimately he knows of no other way to govern. But on the other hand, he has nowhere near the power he had thirty years ago; he too shall pass.
Some of his offical posters seemed to me to have a little too much cult-of-personality, concerned-leader-knows-best tone to them, but remember, this is an outside opinion. I do not know, one way or the other, how the locals take him.

And I finally did see one of those movie cliche trucks with large speakers driving about loudly exhorting something or other. No one seemed to be taking notice. Obviously the details of daily life were more important.

Getting out of Dodge

And on the third day, we left. Eventually. After breakfast at Kathy's, an encounter with parrots and packing, we decided to go to the mercado in Granada, and found that although laid out somewhat differently that the one in Masaya, the spirit of the place was just about the same. Some things were purchased, a very slick pick-pocket managed to unzip a pouch on Jane's purse and got absolutely nothing of worth, and the taxi mentioned a few entries below drove Lay Mey and Geoff and I all over town before we corrected his belief that we wanted the Hospital Colcibolca. We scrap cars that are in twice as good shape back home as that cab. We were returning to get our luggage and then meet Jane and David at the park where our taxi driver who brought us from the border would show up.

Simple, no? Well yes, except that none of us had any cordobas after paying off the cab, so we rushed back on foot overladen with everything (trying to make up time for the inadvertant scenic tour of Granada), and Geoff sat in the park with a big pile of luggage, and I took some magazines to Jimmy Three Fingers'. And then we waited for Jane and David and Lay Mey, who had returned to the mercado, and then I waited while Geoff went, and then Jane and Geoff and David came back, and then Geoff and David went to buy the previously descibed calzone -and then the taxi showed up early while we didn't have everyone.

And then Lay Mey came back... do you notice a trend here?.. and we waited. No calzone is ready before its time and all are very much worth the wait. Jane and I bought some drinks and ice in plastic bags from a vendor and didn't die from intestinal diseases. We got in the cab, and got to work on the food and we were in the countryside before one tenth of it was gone. This was either a long or short time, depending. Eventually I could eat no more.

Without warning, the cab developed a serious case of the staggers, probably due to water in the gas. We had an anxious few minutes before the engine had enough power to get the car back up over 15 miles per hour. After a while, the taxi driver stopped and bought a package of cigarettes, explaining that he had talked to the cops and found that this was what they wanted to not notice him driving past. And eventually, we slowed down at a checkpoint and the hand-off was neatly done, and we continued on our way. The driver was happy, were were happy, the cops were happy...it is probably best, however that this does not catch on at home, as I can't see anyone there being satisfied with mere cigarettes.

Back at the border, the beggar cluster was bigger than before, but thoroughly thinned out by passport checkpoint into the crossing proper. There were people trying to sell us for two dollars the forms that the officials would give us for free, but we ignored them and went directly to the spots we needed to, watched each other's baggage like hawks and declined politely all the vendors. With everything stamped, we went through three more checkpoints, dodging around puddles and huge semi-trailers and buses, and then got the car. We drove a couple of hundred feet and parked at the Costa Rica building, where someone tried to sell us forms that we could get for free inside. More stamps, and we were back.

But not done with roadside passport checks. There were four more of them along the road home from the border.

Day Two, Part Two

It looks like Jane is too busy with work to do the next post; so I'm going to fill in for her; and probably at greater length than necessary as usual.

We took the bus to Masaya for a few cordobas each, and very quickly were outside of the the oldest part of Granada. Here the shabbiness of all things came more strongly into focus; the closed court-yard houses and impressive government buildings of the old city either hide away or do not emhasize how badly the last few decades have treated these people. Something about more modern structures makes their decay scream for attention. Roads seem more potholed, garbage less collected, tourists far less obvious, everything needs repainting.

We hired a taxi that pulled up to the bus stop as we stepped down, as soon as his passengers were out of the car. The cab was a Hyundai Breadbox (not its real name, but that should give you an idea of its general size and shape), well dented and scraped. There were six of us in a vehicle designed for five again, but headroom is not a problem in this car. It is even narrower than the Gnat, for those of you who remember that late unlamented Festiva. On the way to the market in Masaya, our driver gave us a price to go to the volcano, and we arranged for him to meet us back at the market in an hour and a half. It should have been in two days.

Take some corrugated tin and nail it up to keep the rain and the sun off whatver tables, pipes, scrap lumber and beams take shelter under it or hold it up - and keep nailing tin up until you've covered maybe half an acre. Maybe more. Fill every square inch underneath with booth after booth after booth of every product imaginable, suspend them from the roof on cables or hooks, ropes and wires - everything that won't fit on the shelves and tables, leave crisscrossing aisles of two and a half feet or so to walk between, have no maps, no booth numbers, no directions, cram it with vendors and their children and their babies, and their dogs, import a constant stream of customers...and you will get an idea of how confusing we found things under that tin roof. The prices here are cheap even by Nicararguan standards, a leather belt $US 3.00, a turned wooden box $US 4.00. Ripped videos are $US 1.00 each, and they will put them on so you can see the quality of what you are buying. Shoes, clothes, rice, watches, toys, rice, slabs of unrefrigerated meat, chickens killed and dressed while you wait. Fish, wallets, purses, shirts, other clothes, haircuts, perms, pots, pans, souvenirs, things repaired, stereos, pinatas, icecream cones, sunglasses, spices, baskets, cleaning supplies, beans, candy, hammocks... you get the idea. We got separated from Geoff and Lay Mey, got lost and probably never saw 75% of the market and still came out with most of everything we needed in little plastic bags.

From the moment we entered, we had two persistent guides who wanted to 'help' us find things, and it took some firm words from Jane three or four times before they finally left us alone. I was ignoring them and that wasn't working.

There are no pictures of the market because we forgot to re-charge the camera's battery; this will account for the misleading dates on photos from the volcano because we used Geoff's camera there and I did not know that the date stamp was on and incorrectly set.

Our taxi was waiting for us at the appointed time and we all squashed in, with David sitting on my lap in the front seat - and we were not even out of the parking spot before a traffic cop wrote the driver a ticket for being overloaded. Then we left anyway, because the driver said that they could only fine him once, and the ticket could be now considered a pass. But it was going to be for more than the price of the trip to the volcano. After a some discussion, we stopped and put David in the trunk - relax; the Breadbox is like a little van - and here is the first photo of that adventure.

Off we went, and my opinion of the financial state in which most Nicaraguans live was not altered by anything I saw. We drove quite some distance to the volcano, which is a state park and the fees to get in are probably priced high enough that most locals do not go (unless there is an unposted Nica price.) We covered the cost of the taxi driver to get in, and he drove us directly to the top of the mountain. Here are pictures of the lava fields through which we passed; there is some vegetation growing over the rock but its rough structures would make it nearly impassable on foot.

At the crater... there is a reason for these signs in the parking lot...

...and it is this. When I first saw and smelled the gas coming off the crater, I named it the Mouth of Hell, which echoes what the Spanish priests thought of the place when they raised a cross there and put an end to the locals flinging children and virgins into it to placate some old hag spirit who lived down in the lava. The gasses are unpredictable, and the crater is potentially active at at any moment, and you might want to leave in a hurry. There are stairs built to the top of the peak over the crater, and by the time David and I and Lay Mey got to the top, the sulphurous fumes were too much to bear and we only stayed long enough for a quick picture or two. Jane had some issue with the sulphurous gas - the damned stuff seemed to cause a sulphite reaction - and we got her out of there as quickly as possible; if we had thought the whole thing through clearly, we never would have come up to the crater. **Jane's note, I would have, I just would have taken extra meds and a mask!! :)**

There is a museum at the entrance to the park, and we had a quick look through it; this is where I found out about the hag spirit.

Jane needed a new inhaler; the taxi driver found us a hole-in-the-wall pharmacy where merely from description and without a prescription we purchased a ventalin inhaler of double strength/ double dose (compared to that at home) and a vial of epinepherine in case of anaphalactic shock, for about $US 6.00. Why is it that former dictatorships treat you like an adult, capable of deciding things for yourself, and democracies like ours swathe you in bubble wrap and smother you in regulations and laws and bureaucracy, and pervasive nanny-statist clap-trap and insist that you can't take care of yourself? Jane has had asthma attacks progress so far that she ended up in emergency for treatment because a pharmacy at home that had sold her countless inhalers before could not give her another inhaler when she obviously needed it because the prescription had run out.

The taxi driver said he could give us a ride all the way back to the hotel, and we agreed as this would be faster than getting back on the bus... so he stopped and took the taxi sign off the roof, because he was not permitted to drive into Granada. This did not bother us in the least. He had said nothing about having to swallow the fine back in Masaya, and deserved a chance to get back whatever he could, and for his patience, trouble and excess distance covered, we paid him about double + tips what we had originally hired him for. We had had use of his cab for two hours, and it cost us about $US 18.00.

Back at the Hotel, we cleaned up and walked across the park, and stopped for the fireworks being set off in the town square. This was an eye-opener; there did not seem to be even the rudimentary safety precautions that we took all those years ago at Alice and DJ's neighbourhood fireworks night in place. There was nothing between the crowd and the mortars that launched bigger and ever bigger charges skyward. And the historic structures behind them? Nothing burned down, so it was all good. But I guess that's all part of what I mentioned above: fireworks are dangerous, so it's your business to figure that out and stay away. Which we did.

We went down a street off the park to Jimmy Three Finger's, a restaurante run by Jimmy himself, who is from Alabama and can cook up steak dinners that you must simply see and try to believe. I had 10 0z of filet mignon perfection, and regretfully declined the brownie desert at the end, although by the time I made it back to the hotel, there was room. Steak dinner and drinks for five, $US 52.00. Do you notice a trend here?

David took a picture of his dinner, both before and after.

Swimming thereafter, Flor de Cana 5year-old rum and cokes ($US 4.00 per small bottle) and sleep.

Day Two

After a morning on the computer - this is Jane in the VUI Nicaragua office - doing the far-flung business empire thing, we tottered off to the bank (see below), then to have breakfast at Kathy's, a restaurant across from the Convento San Francisco. We sat at tables outside under the porch roof and ate a delicious breakfast while watching the citizens of Granada go about their business. This involved using a lot of contrivences made of recycled junk pulled by scrawny horses, new European, Korean and Chinese delivery trucks, women carrying wicker baskets of foodstuffs on their heads, battered fourwheel drive pickups with cargoes of workers, innumerable dented taxis beeping at every corner, bicycles with three family members aboard, a motorcycle with the rider holding a yellow Tropigas propane cannister onto the seat behind him, and the inevitable street vendors who wanted to sell us flowers, pottery, cashews and brightly painted, hand-carved whistles. These were usually children, sometimes an older sister/little brother combination, and although they were supposed to stay on the sidewalk, no one in the restauant seemed to care if they came up by the tables to try their luck.

And I got a thousand watt faceful of beaming encouragement from a very pretty young thing of about twenty who seemed to find me attractive.

Did I say the food was delicious?

The former convent across the street has been a museum for a century or so. While we ate a tour bus pulled up to the ancient steps and disgorged a load and I cast a mental sneer at them for doing touristy things when they could be stuffing themselves like me on gallo pinto. It was not until we returned to Costa Rica that I learned the museum has one of the most extensive collection of pre-Columbian statues anywhere, which I would have found completely fascinating, and I didn't lever myself away from the table to go and see, then or the next day either when we had breakfast at Kathy's again.

It's not like the street is any wider than any other street in Granada. And the museum is very inexpensive.

We went to a bank west of the square, where through the unremarkable miracles of modern technology, we could load up with American dollars drawn on a Canadian bank in mere seconds and convert them to cordobas with the helpful money changer who operates from the bank's doorstep immediately thereafter. He is making his living on the percentage difference of about 0.61 percent, and perhaps accumulating hard currency in the process.

Back to the hotel, and more far-flungery; we talked to Athena over Skype and found out that life in Brantford was cold and miserable, if you were outdoors. Always nice to know how the rest of the world, or the bit of it you are familiar with, is doing. Because of the old-style architecture of the hotel - high ceilings of about twenty feet, big doors and a courtyard open to breezes - the heat of the day was merely hovering in the background without the necessity for air conditioning.

Enough of my blather; Jane can tell you of the rest of the day.

Tele-pizza

There is only one best pizza in the world, and it is in Granada.

No, really. In one of the old buildings just off the town square by a block northish, and two easterly, you can sit down in the Tele-pizza restaurante and eat the absolute utter best pizza you will ever eat anywhere. Or at least the best pizza I have ever eaten anywhere, and in spite of my extremely limited experience around the world eating pizza, or doing much else for that matter, I challenge you to try it and compare to your personal favourite. And Tonas are 20 cordobas (about a dollar US), making it a sin not have at least two. A large pizza with five toppings, six drinks, five desserts - flan, chocolate cake, tres leche - about $US 15.00.

Three tres leche and the two others make five desserts, see?

Still not convinced? I tried to eat, on the day we left, a calzone from Tele-pizza, which is to pizza pockets what Arnold Schwartzeneger is to PeeWee Herman... if Arnie was made of delectable crust and crammed with freshly cooked ham and most of a block of superlative melted cheese and a little bag of wonderous tomato sauce to drizzle on to taste, and Paul Reuben was disinterestedly thrown together by Mccain out of sawdust and recycled cardboard. Or something. This metaphor isn't working; but I stalled with about a fifth left, unable to eat any more no matter how much I wanted to, which was quite a lot.

Update: I see by my notes that we spent $US 19.00, not $15.00 as originally posted on that supper, which obviously is far too much, and we never should have gone.

Wandering the streets - Wednesday.

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As Rob implied, some of the most interesting and fantastic things about Grenada can be seen by just wandering the streets. I have to leave it to Rob to write about the events, since it is beyond me to keep the snapshots that impress me straight in time and sequence.

Instead, I shall report with pictures on the scenes that burned into my memory as examples of the beauty and spirit of this unbelievable city.

Colonial buildings, remaining exactly as they have for hundreds of years, but now hosting cel repeaters and satellite dishes;
On the other side of the square we can hear music. As the sun was going down the kids you hear singing in the background were celebrating their first communion.

Here we have a 10 foot tall figure heading to the Square. "She" was accompanied by a boy of about six who was wearing a large can around his neck, and laying it like a snare drum. It also happened to have a hole cut in it so that you could toss a few Cordobas in it if you liked the show.

Granada

I guess I don't get out much; nothing I had seen before prepared me for Granada. The oldest city I have ever been in - 584 years old this Dec. - the streets are more than wide enough for horse-drawn traffic and the buildings come right to the edge of the narrow sidewalks. My first impression from the taxi was as if the buildings had suddenly clustered up and walled out the openness of the countryside which I had grown used to, and within seconds I was lost. There are no street signs, and no business signs not painted on the face of the building where each exists. There are no modern buildings. Many of the existing ones have not been painted in a long, long time, and the roofs are of ancient tiles over bamboo and wooden beams. The gutters are deep, to handle rainy season, and the sidewalks sometimes quite high for the same reason. The outer walls of the houses present few windows, but many high doors, most closed and guarded by gratings or panels that were new a century or two since.

Only rarely do I get to experience the sensation of being cut loose from everything I know. Sometimes when I am reading for the first time a very well written book, (just about anything by Dave Duncan, for example) and the author has a tightly constructed fictional universe, a mild version of what I felt on first encountering Granada will persist until I figure it out. In fact, that is often the mark of my favourite books. Suddenly I now had no valid points of reference, and it was like living in all the best books I have ever read. Small wonder that I enjoyed this city so much.

The taxi driver had to ask for directions to the Hotel Colcibolca from people on the street, as he thought we wanted the Hostel Colcibolca. (Later on another taxi driver thought we wanted the Hospital Colcibolca.) He pulled up in front of a typical Granadian building, and then I discovered the next truth: those same structures that present a worn face to the world can open up inside to clean ceramics and antiques and polished wood, to high ceilings and fresh paint and plant-filled courtyards and fountains and gracious service. After we checked in - and staff agreed that the web-site listed prices were in fact still in effect - we got cleaned up and went out for something to eat at the Zoom Bar, a favourite place of Geoff. The food - Nicaraguan variations on North American staples - was excellent, and I had my first Tona, a beer that is miles above every other one which in my limited experience, I have ever tried. (I cannot get the computer to put the little accent thing above the n; it is roughly pronounced Ton-ya.) Here we got to see our first Dog of Uncertain Parentage. But not our last.
Then we walked around the streets, before returning to the hotel, and I don't think I ever lost my bemused expression.

Back from Granada

Wow. Double wow, in spades. Nicaragua was not what we expected, if only because our bar had been lowered by years of news reports slanted for the effect of selling more newspapers/ holding the attentions of more viewers. In short, if it bleeds, it leads.

Not that life in that country is all sweetness and light for everyone who lives there. I saw cattle sheds in the middle of cow pastures that were houses, for crying out loud. I was pestered by people who have to beg for a living because they can't find work ( and by people who probably make a relatively decent living from begging too). But this revolting poverty does not sum up the country either. It will probably take weeks to sort in my head everything we saw and did into some greater narrative, so I will just dump here things as I remember them. I will attempt to withold from the following my contempt for Che Whatshisface and commies in general, because I saw that both were still respected in Nicaragua, and my disdain for that bearded murderer will not give you or me insight into why.

Getting there:

We left Jaco early in the morning, but still an hour later than planned. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant at which I last ate in June (food as good as ever), then went on to Playa del Coco, with everything looking utterly familiar. Sometime around noon, we picked up Lay May in Coco, and drove for two hours to the border, where we parked the car in a 'secure' parking lot in the no-man's land described below - and no one touched it while we were gone. I'm including this apart from the next bit because until we got out of the car, we really were still in Kansas, so to speak.

Take a strip of land maybe a kilometer long, maybe a fifth of that wide. Wall it off (in places with old concrete and wire (and other places nary a barrier in sight), pave it with whatever is is at hand and let it go to dirt and puddles and ruts otherwise, fill it with stationary semi-trailers, their drivers and assistants, police with automatic weapons, boarder officials, buses, bus drivers, travelers, backpackers, beggars, pick-pockets, transient workers, taxi drivers, vendors, money-changers, etc. and so on... all of them doing whatever all at once. Do not include any signs explaining where to go or what to do when you get there, Fill it with 'entrepreneurs' who will 'help' you fill out paperwork for money - yours - and are probably scouting you out for their partners to rob while they do it. Load us up with all our bags and start walking. I had my cheap shoulderbag (positioned behind me because I was carrying more stuff on my other arm) slit open while we stood in line to get the passport stamped. Turned out they got nothing; the bag held only laundry and I turned around a second or three later and discovered the slit. Miraculously the crowds behind me soon vanished once it was obvious that I had noticed the rip. There was no point in making a fuss about it; I should have been paying closer attention, and could not have identified anyone if asked. There had been three or four 'guides' all trying to get my attention as they 'helped' me. But it would not be until we made it to Granada that I could confirm that nothing was taken.

Getting to Granada... we had two choices at the boarder, a taxi or the chicken bus. This last is exactly what it sounds like, an old school bus probably made in Brantford with a massive roof-rack added since, with Nica passengers and occasional livestock, that stops about a billion hand, does not stop, and we wanted to get there before dark. However, there were five of us, and the cab seats four. "Two cabs, $US 50.00 each," we were told. When we said we would rather take the chicken bus, we were told "One cab, $US 50.00" When we declined again, the price became $US 4o.00, and we accepted. When I say we, I mean Jane and Lay May and Geoff, who speak Spanish. I took no part in the discussions. We were led through another passport checkpoint to a... well, see the picture David took of the cab in Granada, after the ride. Now the beggars swarmed us in earnest, for we were outside the crossing, and in Nicaragua proper and the thick of the poverty. There was nothing to do but squash in and wonder why the driver had taken the cab sign off the roof before we left. We found out. Five seats - six occupants - transit police who can count. Plus no authorization to take passengers into Granada. On the other hand, $US 40.00=800 cordobas, a great return on two hours of the driver's time, from his point of view.

I did not take pictures of the things I saw on the way in. It seemed somehow wrong to record for posterity the rickety hovels I saw in the beautiful landscape, the spavined glue-factory rejects we passed pulling carts made of old truck tires and axles and rough, weather-beaten lumber - so help me, I saw carts with wheels made of solid wood - because none of it seemed the fault of those people we saw forced by circumstances beyond their control to live there. I might as well be calling it all 'quaint'. People do not make houses out of salvaged hurricane-bent corrugated tin and black plastic because they just don't feel like driving the new truck down to the lumberyard right now.

But there was no universal level of poverty, no lack of effort on the part of anyone to get ahead as best they could. There was no sense whatsoever that the population had given up and was waiting in stunned misery to be saved. For every shack patched with cast-off rubbish, there were twenty houses that were merely a hundred years or so old, and many more newer ones that hadn't been maintained or updated in the last few decades. The cars and trucks were well-worn, and not present in numbers sufficient to create congestion. There were motorcycles, scooters and bicycles everywhere. The scenery was lush and green and the fields of the ranches and farms we passed show not only great potential for wealth, but active use: that money is going into the economy somewhere. The flurry of begging at the boarder, of hanging around waiting for the gringo to explode in showers of money, vanished as soon as we left the area; there are no other opportunities available right there. We would encounter few more outright requests for money, but these would be heavily outnumbered by street vendors who wanted to sell us something, and they would be polite and simply move on when we declined to buy.

I do not know enough of the history of this beautiful country to justly apportion the blame for its current economic state among the various governments local and foreign that have mucked about with the people for decade after decade, but the one running things now ought to be as ashamed of things as any. At that, I have been told that the real power here resides in several ultra-wealthy families, and that it always has.

The roads were remarkably free from potholes, compared to Costa Rica, perhaps because there is much less heavy road traffic to batter the pavement to pieces. Very often we would pass a cow or two, all horns and ribs and hipbones, cropping free grass at the side of the road. For a while, we were right beside Lake Nicaragua, and the water was brown, with choppy waves. I have seen the lake from the air; at umpty-thousand feet, it appears calm and flat and green. We passed an island of two volcanoes, and our driver told us that the lake is home to the only fresh-water sharks in the world.

Two or three times, it was necessary for Lay May to duck down as we passed transit police, and once there was a complicated little drive around Rivas until the coast was clear. At one stage there was rain blowing in the windows, mostly on me, but it passed. We found that in Nicaragua, all the drivers beep at all intersections, and as a polite way to let everyone else know they are coming, in circumstances where it looks like someone is going to step out in front of them. In Costa Rica, everyone assumes that you know what they are going to do - and that you will get out of their way. There was nothing about our cab that was not battered, bent or broken but our driver was a good sort - and we ended up hiring him to drive us back. He took us directly to our hotel in Granada; one moment you are still in the countryside, the next you are on narrow streets laid out centuries ago. As that city deserves multiple entries, I will end this one here. If there are not yet pictures included, there should be by tomorrow when I am awake enough for Jane to add them.

Surf's Up

Since the rest of us really needed to work on Monday and Tuesday, and get ready for our trip to Nicaragua, we booked David's surfing lessons for Monday at noon.

Gustavo Castillo, a surfing champion from the Costa Rican team set up and supervised the lessons, giving David a unique opportunity for one on one with one of the best surfers in the world. This shot is of David's fourth or fifth attempt to ride a wave, and you can see the professional instruction paying off already.

The lessons start off with 20-30 minutes of beachside talk. Safety procedures, (don't go near anyone else, stay in white water...) are taught, and careful demonstrations of how to get up on the board from a lying down position.

Once they are sure that you understand and can duplicate all the steps on land, they take you out in the water, and coach you through it all over again, because by that time you are so overwhelmed that you have forgotten much of what they told you.

From that point, it is just practice. Gustavo loaned David a board, and he was surfing Monday afternoon, and Tuesday morning. When we went back Tuesday afternoon, David had graduated to a smaller board.

I have been very pleased with the way they have monitored the process. Always while David is surfing now, Gustavo or one of his instructors are watching. When he comes in, they give him some pointers for next time, and the same as he is heading out to the water.

We have a lot of work to do from now until we head back to Canada. At least we won't have to worry about David enjoying his trip!

Seafood...eventually

On Sunday we went to the beach at Punta Leone. There is a good road in to it, at the end of which is a private resort/secure community and some security guys who charge you $US 20.00 per person to go down to the beach.

But there are no private beaches in Costa Rica, you say? You are right; the private owners cannot block access to the beach. But nothing says they have to make it easy.

There is another road to the beach, this one long and carefully paved in ruts and potholes, and whimsically decorated with the occasional roadside washout, frame-wrenching creases, deep puddles and streaks of clay gruel. At the resort end, a security guy radios ahead so the next security guy knows we're coming and haven't stopped to park in any driveway to one of the expensive houses that we pass before we get to him. These guys are just trying to do their job and scowl fiercely at us for being dastardly interlopers - and then wave back when wave and smile at them.

There is one last security guy at the skinny lane at which the road terminates; his job is to make sure that no one parks anywhere but in this twisty cul de sac barely two vehicles wide and capable of holding less than twenty cars. If it is full, shame about your luck, but you will have drive the car back to the other side of the resort and leave it at the side of the Back Road in. And walk back.

But we didn't have to cough up $US 80.00. We got one of the last two spots in the twisty lane, and tottered down a rough slope, over a deep gully bridged by long cement planks, clambered oversome massive exposed tree roots... and were there.

The beach itself is spectacular, and when the tide is in the right spot, you can leave it for another beach even better (see Jane's old entries about the battering effects of tides that sneak in when your back is turned). Perhaps I will get to see this beach yet, as just about the time the tide was out enough to let us cross to it- some two hours or so after we got there - someone switched on the rain, and we decided to leave. Rain here fails straight down, and the word 'heavy' doesn't even come close to descibing how much water there is splashing around.

While the tide was still going out, and I was puddling around in the surf picking up bits of coral and shells, I realized that the rock on which I was standing was laced with with big fossilized shell thingys, whose age, name and classification are not known, at least by me. I also don't know how far the fossil bed extends down under the water and back up under the sand, but maybe forty or fifty feet would be a good guess. In the picture, you can see that the waves have worn away some of the fossils to expose the chambers, but one of the most intact is front and center.

On the way out , David and I had to get out of the car and walk so that it would not get stuck as it scraped bottom in a particular steep and concave, mud-slick bit of uneveness - and the car didn't even slow at all, in spite of the graunching noise it made. Not bad for a little Hyundai Nothingmobile. Thereafter we drove to the Fiesta del Mariscos.

The boats in the pictures - shot from the table at which we ate - were used to go out and catch that day the same food on which we stuffed ourselves... and when the gods themselves die, they hope they're going to Better Place, where food like this is served. I had the filet especiale, which is an understatement.

Ollie's Folly

As you near Manuel Antonio National Park, you pass a curious structure as the road winds up over the hills: there is a large airplane – a Fairchild C 123 cargo plane - resting in a parking lot under a metal roof that covers its wings and fuselage. It’s faded, dented, and has been made into a combined bar, restaurant and coffee shop, a use about a hundred light years from its clandestine past.
About a century ago, in 1984, when the USSR was still in one monolithic piece, the Democratic-led US Congress passed a piece of legislation designed to stop any more American government money being spent to overthrow the communists in Nicaragua. Administration officials decided that this didn’t mean ALL money from every source, and started a strange three-cornered deal where they sold overpriced weapons to a country (Iran) they had sworn not to deal with, and re-invested the profits in aircraft to carry weapons to the anti-Sandinistas, and flew them in to a secret airfield on a privately owned ranch in Costa Rica… and flew out drugs, ‘cause that’s what their pilots did for their day jobs.
No one is saying exactly where the profits from the dope went.
There were two Fairchild ‘El Avion’ cargo planes doing this shuffle. In 1986, one of them was shot down by the Nicaraguans, and a CIA agent on-board captured. With the proverbial waste hitting the air circulation device, the other future restaurant was flown to the San Jose Airport and immediately abandoned thereafter, as everyone onboard went back to being whatever name was on their most current sincere passport, and left the country.
Lt.Col. Oliver North took one for the Gipper, and became the public face of this scandal. This was easy enough as he had been involved in it up to his eyebrows, and he refused to pass the buck up the line to those in the Regan Administration who had okayed this operation. The fuss received world-wide attention. (Google Fawn Hall and her shredding of documents, appearance in Playboy, etc.). North eventually did three years… except he didn’t, as his sentence was suspended. There were fines, probation and community service, also set aside in the 90’s.
In 2000, the remnants of Air Ollie were purchased, taken apart and hauled to their current location, reassembled and restauranted, if that is a word, and the computer doesn’t think so. You can sit down in a piece of recent history, and raise one in commiseration to Ollie. Unlike you, he is persona non grata for life in Costa Rica, which is the last country from which I’d ever want to be banned.

Manuel Antonio State National Park

I finally made it! I had heard about the park from, well, everyone I know that has been in Costa Rica, and had wanted to visit, but each time I have been here fate has intervened and made it impossible.

Friday was a work day - we closed negotiations for a canje (trade) with surf lessons for David and a board for the time we're here for a 1/3 page ad in the phone book. Sales wise it was a good day, but not a fun one for David, so yesterday we took a day off and went to the park.

This is an amazing place, not unlike our national and provincial parks with wildlife running er...wild and small animals easily seen. Because we're here, there are monkeys, sloths, odd little deer things, rabbit sized rat-like creatures (rodents of unusual size) and mapaches. The animals here have no reason to fear people, and basically ignored us. An annoyed monkey may throw something at you, and mapaches will steal your food right out of your hand, but other than that, you are at most an obstacle that has to be walked around on the search for food. The beach is wonderful, and the weather was fantastic, considering we are supposed to be experiencing the worst weather of the year. We are planning to go back one more time before we leave, due to time considerations we couldn't take the trail to the waterfall, and missed the best lookout point.

On the way there we saw the non-existant Ollie North drug plane, now a restaurant, and visited the town of Quepos, which is a great little place I would like to spend more time in.

We managed to grab some sunset pictures at Jaco beach, which is unusual for this time of year, since it usually clouds over at around 4:30. As usual we were 10 minutes late for the best shots.

We ended the day laughing at music videos from the 60s 70s and 80s.

Unfortunately Geoff wasn't able to come with us to the park, as he and Mauricio had a trade show to go to , so sadly we have to go to the beach today, in order that he can have a day off. It is my favourite beach on the other side of the rocks. I wonder if I will get any new bruises...

We've arrived! And to prove it, we're here!

Although there were times today that I wondered if it would ever happen. I don't want to make a long-winded and boring post, but I can say that David has enough material for his school project journal just from today, and we've only just arrived!

I shall hit upon the main events:

1. We were nearly an hour late getting to the airport, actually arriving with less than an hour to go before take off. This was a combination of Rob remembering me telling him we were leaving at 6:30(it was 6:00), me forgetting to leave time for the long term parking shuttle driver to meander through the airport and get us to the terminal, and me telling the hotel staff to wake us up at 4:00, when we absolutely had to be at the check-in desk at 4:30.

2. In Houston, they lost the plane. Yep. A Boeing 737. "It came in last night" they said, "but now we don't know where it is". Eventually someone found it and brought it to the gate. We were 40 minutes late leaving.

3. We had a medical emergency on the flight. The poor girl (between 20&25) was standing in the lineup waiting for the washroom, when she fell over like a cut tree. She took some time to come around, and while that was happening we kind of hovered over Texas, waiting to figure out what we should do, then the oxygen seemed to help and they decided to keep going. Then while we were over El Salvador, she started seizing. What the poor girl really needed was air pressure, but she had to wait for Costa Rica for that, so she just kept seizing periodically. Fortunately there were a couple of nurses on board that helped her out, and by the time we landed and the medics arrived she was stablized and had an IV started. Another long delay while they got her safely off the plane.

4. Visit to Ruth's went without incident, and we stopped in Atenas for bocas at Los Mangos Dos. Mmmmmm. Ceviche.....

5. There was a landslide between Atenas and San Martin and the road was closed, so we had to detour down some very windy, poorly paved mountainous back roads. It was (of course) dark, and rainy, and we really couldn't see anything.

We finally made it here to Jaco at about 8:00pm (10 our time). We had expected to be here by about 2:30 or 3:00. So we're tired and kind of grimy, but in some strange sort of a way it is really good to be back.

Heading Back, for now.....

So tomorrow we get up and head for the airport - another trip done. Yesterday we spent the day doing paperwork things and not much of anything else.

Today we had planned an early start and had a big list of things to do. We only finished a few of them, due to waking up late, spending nearly two hours at the bank, and taking a long drive south to make some sales calls.

Take a look at this sand! You will note the complete lack of footprints? It looks exactly the same in the other direction too. This is only about 25km from Jaco, and is the most spectacularly deserted beach I have ever seen. Beautiful! It is also an indication of how the economic downturn in the US is seriously affecting Costa Rica. The business owners here are understandably nervous as they begin looking ahead to the upcoming high season. Many of them experienced a bad season last year, and a second one will put them out of business altogether. From a personal perspective, this is the Costa Rica I prefer, it is just a matter of whether we will be amongst the survivors as everything falls apart.

The jury is still out on whether this trip was worth it. I figure we won't really know for a few days until we start to see the results, or lack of them. I will be back here on the 23rd of October - this time with Rob and David, and we will be staying for neary three weeks. Poor David who has to take nearly three weeks off school in order to come. We have vacationy things to do when I return as well; surfing lessons, a crocodile tour, maybe a zip line canopy tour, and a weekend in Nicaragua are all in the works for next time - depending, of course on how the $$ situation is as always.

I am off now to the bank machine, and to finish some last minute paperwork. So buenas noches, and hasta luego.

Busy Day

I started off today with a cup of cafe con leche, and an unbelievable drive. I hesitate to try and count the number of times I have actually done this trip, but I can say with absolute certainty that this was the best of them. It seemed that I had my side of the road completely to myself for the most part, only having to pass one car on a double yellow line going around a bend in the mountains. I did the drive to Orotina in a record 48 minutes!

At this point, I ran into the Costa Rican cycling team, or maybe some other group of 30 or so cyclists. All in helmets and spandex with a number of support vehicles behind them. And taking up the entire road in to Jaco. So I figured that this was a good time to stop for breakfast. I was just coming up to the "crocodile bridge" which is basically a bridge over a river that is home to many crocodiles, and from which you can see them sun themselves and act like logs. There are more surfers attacked by crocodiles here than there are by sharks - mostly when inexperienced surfers are trying to surf by the mouth of a river. I am hoping next time I'm here to go on a crocodile tour, where you can get much closer to them! The red spot by the face of the second guy here is actually a butterfly. It kept landing on the tip of his nose.

We decided, soon after I got back to Jaco, to head back to the beach at Punta Leone again, this time with a friend from Coco who dropped in for a visit. We timed it a lot better this time, and were actually able to walk on sand on the way there - although we did miss the ideal exit time by 10 or 15 minutes and did have to do some crazy rock stuff to get back. Of course, I had to add to my many bruises, or it just wouldn't be right. I ventured out into the surf to cool off, and as I was pushing my way through the waves, stepped into a big dip created by a pile of rocks under the water, lost my balance, got smashed by a huge wave then dragged across the rocks by the undertow. One more fairly big wave and I was back on my feet, with a new crop of scrapes and black and blue bits.

Then soaking wet and covered in sand we drove to La Fiesta de Maricosas - arguably the best seafood restaurant in the world. Certainly the best I have ever been to. The picture at the top was taken there. They take those boats and go and get the seafood. You don't get much fresher than that!

Finally we headed back home to watch a silly movie and relax. I have forgotten the name of the movie, but it is a Ben Stiller comedy/drama. The whole plot is cute, but the greatest bit involves a conversation about "permanent vacationers". The premise is that most people spend all kinds of money to go and visit a tropical paradise for a couple of weeks a year. And then there are some crazy people that move there permanently, set up small businesses and basically live their vacation all year round.

Hmmm.

Low Season

Also known as Rainy Season, it refers to the six months of the year that very few turistas come to Costa Rica. At the moment, its immediate meaning to me is that I am the only guest at Colinas del Sol, up here at the top of the hill in my suite overlooking the mountains north of Atenas.

The owner and staff members who run the place have either left for the night or gone to bed in the “main house” across the little glen, and all the lights are out in the common areas. The pool is closed, the TV is off, (there is only one, in the rancho where they serve breakfast) and even Blackie (the hotel cat and boa constrictor chaser) is in for the night. I am very, very alone.

I can hear some a couple of dogs in the distance, the occasional moo from the cows in the field at the bottom of the hill, lots of crickets, and the light rain falling on the tin roof of my room and patio.

Today I drove into San Jose to meet with Ruth, our business partner down here. This is a beautiful trip, involving crossing over the western bit of the continental divide, which in this case means winding up to the top of the mountains, then back down again into Atenas, down further into the river valley and up into La Garrita, then onto the main highway into San Jose.

There is nothing like a drive through San Jose to boost your metabolism and get you running to the nearest pharmacy to refill your Xanax. (Ah, I have just been joined by a gecko). Our neat little car has one teensy, tiny little flaw. You can't see out of it, except in optimal conditions. The windows are so darkly tinted that I have to roll them down to see in the side mirrors, and the defogger is actually a fogger. No matter what setting you have it on, in the slightest bit of coolness, warmth, humidity or dryness it fogs up, and nothing you can do will clear it.

So today, after the excellent drive in, the rather intense navigation through San Jose to Ruth's house, (the best bet is to allow yourself to go into a zen state of no mind, and allow your subconscious to drive, otherwise it is just too dangerous for the uninitiated) the even more intense rush hour exit as the sun was setting, then the dark, the rain, (can't roll up the windows or I won't be able to see), the foggy windshield, the major accident on the highway that resulted in a 25 minute delay and the crazy windy mountain roads, I got as far as Atenas – and decided enough was enough. I just didn't have it in me to do the hour/3 hour depending on circumstances trip back across the mountains to and all the way down to the coast in the dark and rain.

Colinas del Sol is a lovely place, (just as well because it is also the only place in Atenas) and maybe a quiet night is just what I need to clear my head.

Hasta manana.

Another Day in Paradise

...or so read the real estate ads anyway. Jaco Bay must have been an extraordinary place 30 years ago, though. Imagine living in a place where the sun sets at (almost) the same time every day, and in (almost) the same spot. I would like to set up a permanant camera on the beach, or on a balcony overlooking the beach, anyway, and take one picture at exactly the same time every day all the way through the year, then edit it together to make a short movie. It is rainy season now, so very often you don't actually see the sun on the horizon as clouds tend to move in and settle over the water.

The quality of light tonight was magical, and all of the surfers trying to get in one more wave before it was too dark were lit up with gold and orange highlights. Spectacular!

I went down to the beach tonight to try and clear my head. Far too many things are balancing on a cusp between total success and abject failure. We only need one or two of these things to be successful, but at the moment there is no certainty, so, North American style, I stress and worry and lose sleep.

I paced up and down on the beach for a while, not really taking anything in, but as the sun started to set, and the warm/cool breeze picked up, I actually started to look around. I watched the surfers for a while. (Mostly) young people having fun and enjoying the idea of being alive; I spotted a young couple on a bench, arms wrapped around each other as their children, about 4 and 2, played in the sand in front of them; I saw an older woman and what was probably her daughter, and granddaughter walk along the edge of the water arm in arm.

And then the sun was all the way down and it was time to go. I watched from the bench beside my car as the Dad of the young couple produced a stroller. "Papa's Taxi!" he said to the youngest boy, and he picked him up and gave him a hug before seating him in his stroller, then the Mom put her arm around the four year old and they headed off.

Pura Vida, I thought back to them. And thank you.

The last couple of days have been, or at least seemed, a bit more profitable, and I am starting to feel like we may not have turned the corner, but we are approaching it cautiously and have an idea of what is around the bend.

We have one signed contract, and lots more artwork in the works. Athena's ad went over very well with Cap'n Josh and we will be finalizing that soon, and many of Jaco's inhabitants (denizens?) are getting to know Geoff by sight and reputation.

In other words, his hard work is starting to pay off.

I'm hoping that some of our other issues have been cleared up over the course of the last two days. It looks like we are all in agreement with how we need things to work at least.

Last night a couple of friends of Geoff's from Atenas dropped by. They had been in town celebrating Rosh Hoshana and one of their birthdays, and decided to come and take us to their hostel for a continuation of the Jewish New Year and Festiva de compleanos.

The hostel is really cute, with some private rooms, some dorms, high speed internet access, barbecues and a kitchen area for the use of the "guests" and a pool, not too far from the beach. And it runs between $12 and $25 per night, depending on the level of sleeping privacy you need.

We also learned a new word..."amigable". It means friendly.

Today we spent a few hours at the bank. For those of you who have never been here, I won't even bother to try and describe banking in Costa Rica. You would never believe me. Those of you who have been here will now be nodding their heads in agreement and sympathy.

I have met a number of great people here, both gringo and tica, but I am not as happy here in Jaco as I have been in other places in Costa Rica. In Atenas, or Coco you can walk outdoors alone late at night and would never feel threatened. Here I always feel like I have to be hanging tightly to my purse.

I figure eventually we will move our center of operations back to Atenas, and that Geoff will drive in for a couple of days a week to take care of business in Jaco.

Jaco

You know, Jaco has a certain charm, a touch of je ne sais quois, and I'll bet nobody else really does either. It could be the strange mixture of frontier village and Florida High Rise buildings, or the busy, hectic badly paved roads that give way suddenly to fields or rainforest canopy.

I will give you some examples, but unless you come here, I don't think you could understand. I am here, and I know I don't, but here goes...

The Driving. I know driving is not really considered anything that anyone needs to really do well in Costa Rica. Managing to get a vehicle from one place to another with no more than a few bumps or scrapes is considered a success, and traffic lights are just pretty roadside decorations. Geoff and I, for example, saw a young couple drive down one of the side roads that lead to the beach, with the idea, we figured of driving out and along the ocean. Someone had put some large rocks, just over knee-high, to make a barrier. We watched as the man continued to drive towards the rocks, then in to the rocks, seemingly trying to go through. We turned into the parking lot we were looking for, and a couple of minutes later were followed in by that vehicle. And discovered that after smashing the front of his SUV, he had then backed into a palm tree and smashed his rear window. He and his date seemed quite unconcerned, continued into the restaurant, and even LOCKED THE CAR!

The Food. It is all delicious, but you can buy a full meal at a soda for $3 including a drink, or the same meal at a Gringo restaurant a few doors down and the drink would cost you $2.50

The Cleaners. I can either pay a laundromat $9 to do my laundry, or pay a Nica to clean my three bedroom house and do my laundry for $8.

Jaco is a town of opposites. Having grown up as a happy-go-lucky, anything goes sort of town, it is now being built up by large corporations, like DayStar, and Sonesta - some of whom are trying to "clean it up" and make it a Family place. As for the Gringos, everyone has an angle and you never really know if they are sincere.

And Business! It is enough to drive any North American totally mad. If my few remaining hairs are not grey by the time I get home I will be very surprised.

Lots of Good Food and a Near Death Experience

We're back. Bruised, battered, (but not broken) and with soaking wet belongings - and with some new friends that we will be hopefully going to meet again when Rob and David and I come back in October.

From the beginning though...We got all of our pictures taken for Geoff's U.S. builder people yesterday, then headed off to Atenas for dinner with Mike and Sharyn, and to stay with them for the night.

Dinner at Los Mangos Dos was incredible as always, and since it was Saturday and therefore NOT Kareoke night, also fairly uneventful. Los Mangos has "Bocas". Roughly translated this would mean "mouthfuls", and they are little mini meals. I had ceviche of course, but also had two other Bocas, which included fish, salad of two different sorts, and a Quesadilla with chicken and cheese. I was stuffed. Then we went to El Balcon (The Balcony, but it sounds so much more sophisticated in Spanish) for dessert/coffee, where I consumed more sugar in one sitting than I normally would in a week. They have an iced Cappuchino that puts the Tim Hortons equivalent on a level with a Slurpie. It honestly has to be the most sinful thing ever to be put in a milkshake glass.

We had planned to go out after dinner to Puerta del Sol, to visit with Cali and the others. Geoff did go, but Mike and Sharyn had opted to stay home, and I had eaten 'way too much and decided to stay home with them. Flaca (the dog) had donated blood and was a little tired and sappy so she fit in well with the rest of us.

Today Geoff and I started out eating Breakfast at a little soda near the market in Atenas (mmmm, gallo pinto con queso frito y cafe con leche!). Then we headed to Punte Leone, and the beach.

This is definitely the most beautiful beach I have seen in Costa Rica. The sand is white, the water is blue - almost but not quite Carribean, and you can see across the gulf of Nicoya to the mountains on the penninsula. There are very few people. There is a resort here, and the owners have tried to block access to the beach for anyone who is either not staying there, or willing to pay $20 per person for the privilege. The law does not allow them to do so completely, though, so we went in through the back way, down a long, very rutted and muddy lane to some roadside parking.

A short walk brought us to the "bad" beach, then Geoff showed me the route around the point to the "good" beach. The downside was that the tide was pretty high, so getting there involved a bit of climbing, some slippery rocks, and getting pretty thoroughly wet.

It was well worth it! We sat and drank iced tea, attempted to get in the water (a little too rough), and lazed around under the trees. Eventually (being rainy season) the weather turned and it started raining, so we decided to head back....

Er...

The tide, high when we got there was now, well, highest. The little bit of beach that we had been able to walk on was gone, leaving a bunch of sloping and slippery rocks, and a rather excited ocean pounding on them. Following the "never leave anything in the car" rule, we were carrying all of our overnight stuff, plus purse, camera etc... with us. We managed fairly well for the first while, playing a sort of leapfrog game, where one of us would go ahead of the other, find a more or less secure and somewhat dry spot, grab the bags and try and keep them out of the water, then the other one would come to that spot, then move to the next more or less secure spot - then we would perform a combination tightrope, juggling and clown act to pass the bags between us, and so on.

This had resulted in nothing more than bruised knees, shins and elbows until we got to the last corner and discovered that the waves were smashing on the rocks, and that there was no way to go except to climb along the rock face above the water, or be smashed against the rocks at the bottom. Geoff had both bags at this point, with no way to go forward, no way to go back, and no way to pass them to me. Even without the bags it was next to impossible.

Fortunately a family that had been on the beach and that was just about to leave looked back at us, about half a km away, and figured that without help we would never make it. They turned back and hiked towards us through the rain, and reached that nasty final corner about the same time we did.

At great risk to themselves, the Dad and his older son started out along the rockface to us, initially retrieving our bags and taking them to a safe spot on the beach. Geoff at this stage found he was more or less able to manage, although he was moving rather like a fiddler crab at one point. Naturally the men had all assumed that I was unable to climb around the face, so while all of this was happening they were all yelling at me to stay where I was! This meant that I couldn't move until they weren't looking or I would provoke another round of shouting and gesticulation. I was fine until about the last 20 feet. I did the rock face itself without incident, or help much to their surprise, but then had to slip into the surf and try and move fiddler crab style over the final little bit.

For those of you who were with us at Cypress Lake, the bottom was like that bit of Georgian bay. Loose rock or very slippery underfoot, but the water was warm, salty and full of bits of sand and coral and the waves were much, much bigger and felt like sandpaper.

Needless to say I slipped, landed on my stomach and started to be sucked in by the tide. I floundered there, being swamped by waves and bashing my knees and elbows on the rocks under the water, with our new friend hanging on to me like grim death, (which it actually would have been if he hadn't been there), then finally managed to flip over on my back and grab Geoff's hand and got my balance, and with only one more wave and a scraped elbow managed to get on my feet.

My circumstances were not improved by the fact that I had a visualization of what I must have looked like floundering around and splashing my arms up and down, being sucked back and forth in the waves and bouncing on the rocks, flipping over on my back and so on, that I started laughing. And laughing. And laughing.

Geoff was laughing at me as well, but our new friends did not really see the humour so much.

But we made it. Everything we own is wet, including the inside of the car, and with the exception of my purse and camera, which somehow managed to stay dry despite all.

It could have been an awful lot worse. I have a bruised back, and front come to think of it, and have managed to bash the same knee that I always do. But I still have an intact spine and skull, many thanks to Geoff and our new friends.

To end the night on a fun note, Geoff and I, too weary from our escapade to cook dinner, decided to go out. We went to Clarita's, a restaurant/bar on the beach named after the owner's dog, and for less than $20 had tuna steak and half a kilo of ribs. (Geoff had the ribs). The tuna steak was in a teryaki sauce, and came with mixed cauliflower, broccoli and carrots (all fresh) and about a tablespoon of wasabi. In the dim lighting, I mistook the wasabi for a broccoli tree, and put the entire thing in my mouth, and started to chew.

Poor Geoff thought I had eaten nuts or something and was now foaming at the mouth as I spat the wasabi out into my hand. I can still taste it. You can bet I won't ever look at broccoli quite the same way again.