Costa Rica Journal - July 30, 2001 22:36 Local Time (typed later on Aug 06 at 02:14)

For breakfast, we drove into San Jose where we saw plenty of billboards, which I took pictures of, following my tradition: Bridgestone/Firestone, Primex watches and Breddy bread, Pepsi Twist and Yoplait yogurt, Nestle, Mickey Mouse shoes, Wear your seat belt, The Bimbo Truck, Campero chicken and Telepizza, McDonald's, Ronald McDonald House, Coca-cola, Denny's (sorry it's so bad, but we were driving in the bus and couldn't stop...but I just HAD to have a picture of it), Hampton Inn, Motorola and Panasonic, Don't drink and drive, Speed limit 80 kph, Cacique Guaro (very strong liquor made from sugar cane), Bungee Costa Rica, Valtra Farm vehicles, and a Shell gas station. Another interesting one was about Parmenio Medina, a radio broadcaster who was about to expose some government secrets, but was murdered right before he could make it public. I always think it's interesting to see what ads look like in other countries, since they're so different than ours. We then drove 4 hours to Monte Verde. Along the way, we also saw a monument to the coffee bean. The roads were quite bumpy, but still much better than Kenya. Other interesting sites were chickens that had apparently crossed the road, a Horse and a waterfall. Oh, yeah, and the scenery.

I should note that the PowerBook is acting up and that's why I'm handwriting this first...for some reason, it just refuses to turn on. Maybe the local power just isn't good enough? That makes things a little difficult when I'm shooting almost exclusively digital and I only have so much space on memory cards. I did look at other options, though, and called Apple Tech Support back in the States (only $3.50/min) since there aren't any in Costa Rica. I looked at buying another CF card or a Minds@Work Digital Wallet, but the closest FedEx location was a several hour drive away and it would take up to three days to get here. Oh well....

So, after settling into the Monteverde Lodge, we walked over to the town of Santa Elena and booked the SkyTrek for tomorrow. We also walked through a frog exhibit (called the Frog Pond of Monteverde) on the walk over. They had 8 different species of frogs and toads on display (the difference between a frog and a toad is that frogs have longer legs, they jump away from danger, they have smooth skin and they lay their eggs in a pile whereas the latter is always poisonous, has rough, bumpy skin, and they lay their eggs in a row). We also learned the sad tale of the Orange toad, which is now believed to be extinct because of a virus, possibly introduced by man. They went from having thousands of these toads to virtually none in just 3 years.....

After dark, we went on a walk in the nearby jungle, where we found a really neat fuzzy caterpillar. We were hoping to see some frogs, but weren't able to.



[Prev Day] [Index] [Next Day]