Costa Rica - part 1

Three weeks ago Carrie left for Costa Rica for work, leaving me behind with a freezer full of food. (Incidentally, we returned home this week to a freezer full of food.)

Five days later I flew out with our friends Reuben & Irene to join her in the balmy south. Costa Rica is the farthest south I've been, at 10 degrees north of the equator. I don't imagine I'll get that close to the equator in future vacations.

Costa Rica is situated in Central America, between Nicaragua and Panama. It's a stable democracy with a population of 4.3 million, and it's the most visited Central American country by tourists. Tourism brings in more money than the three main exports combined (bananas, pineapples, coffee).

Costa Rica has significantly developed its ecotourism, and it's considered to be a very "green" country. Politically this may be the case, but you wouldn't guess it from the scads of people burning their garbage regularly in their back yards, or simply burning their back yards.

Costa Ricans are informally known as ticos (or ticas). It's a great label to which to aspire while travelling the country and trying to fit in.

When researching for our trip, we of course turned to the Internet for unbiased reports and reviews. Of course, much of what is reported is bad experiences by travellers. (Why would you report good experiences? That's just not worth sharing!) So we wondered about all the petty theft, rental vehicle risks (unscrupulous rental companies, crazy drivers, horrible roads, evil transit cops), the snakes, the bugs. Well, we braced ourselves for the worst, and as a result were rarely disappointed.

One tip when travelling to countries with a "minor" currency: consider not buying any of it in Canada! The currency is the colón, of which about 500 equal a dollar. We bought some at the Royal Bank before leaving (ordered in, as they don't stock much), and on a day when the official exchange rate was 514, the bank gave a lousy rate of 458. That means the bank charged us an exchange fee of 12%... ouch! In hindsight, we should have taken only US dollars, since those are accepted almost everywhere in Costa Rica, and exchanges were done on the fly at around 500 colones per dollar. We were quite amazed at the lack of ripping off by vendors accepting US cash. Also, bank machines there dispense both US and local currency, which is rather convenient.

Carrie had some time to see things during her work week. She took a day trip with colleagues to see the nearby Poás volcano. The nice thing there is that you can actually go right to the edge of the crater. Just don't hang around too long: the toxic fumes being emitted discourage prolonged exposure.

back to reality

I'm just back from a nice relaxing vacation to Costa Rica with Carrie and a couple of friends. (For the record: still friends!) Carrie was there for work and had a different flight back today than I had; her flight to Canada was delayed and she expected to spend the night in Toronto, but it turns out she caught the last flight to Ottawa, and I'm off in a few minutes to pick her up.

We had a wonderful time, and I shall endeavour to blogify our experiences before the week is out... but no promises. For now, enjoy a shot of a viper who posed nicely for me. Hasta la vista!

Wikipedia "blackout"

So Wikipedia decided that today it would make itself (the English part anyway) sort of unavailable for 24 hours, to protest some piracy bill that the US govt is considering. Well, it's hardly a blackout when it's so easy to bypass. Just press Escape!!

(It's also still available on mobile devices, and also on your computer if you disable Javascript, so it really, really isn't a blackout.)

Allow me to clarify.

Going to the Wikipedia home page still works no problem, so you can still use the search box. Or perhaps you're following a link from another website or from a Google search result.

Well, the Wikipedia page you want does actually load, but it then proceeds to forward to their blackout page shortly afterwards. All you have to do is stop the loading process before it starts forwarding to the annoying blackout page. So, as soon as you run the Wikipedia search (or load a Wikipedia page from an outside web page like Google search), just click the stop button in your browser. Easier yet, press the Escape button. If you're too slow and see the blackout page anyway, hit F5 to refresh and try again.

Maybe some Internet connections are so insanely fast that there's no time to cancel the forwarding once your desired content is loaded, but it works well for me.

Thanks, Wikipedia, for not truly blacking out. I'd be rather lost without thee.

2012 already

Hmm, a new year already. And not a blog post in months! Looking at 2011, I see I posted more than in either of the previous two years. Of course, slightly better than dismal is still pretty dismal... also, about a third of 2011 posts covered one single holiday! For shame...

Perhaps I'll do better this year. And perhaps not.

In just under a month, Carrie is off to Costa Rica for work. And in just over a month, I'll follow her there for a little sunshine break. (Not that there's never sunshine in Ottawa, but I rarely end up outside to actually enjoy it.)

We've conned talked another couple into coming as well, so we'll have a boatload of fun (and hopefully something to write home about).

Time to dust off those old español lessons!