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PNC

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City of bridges

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Too rowdy

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This hotel room is way too rowdy.

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LGA to PIT

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Much happier?

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Pwm to lga

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Ready for takeoff

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I just got back from a weekend in New York city. I stayed at the East Houston hotel in the Lower East Side. It’s a great, lively location. Lots of opportunities for street photography.
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I used my wife’s compact camera to make some short video clips of our trip to Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies and later turned them into a little mini movie.

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While traveling through Kentucky I couldn’t resist visiting Big Bone Lick State Park. My wife and I joked together about how fun it would be to wear a t-shirt that simply said “Big Bone Lick” in large letters with “State Park” in small letters below it. As it turns out, the idea was not lost to the folks who design the gift shop merchandise and I got my t-shirt. I also learned a few things about the area, too.

The first thing I noticed was a sign about Lewis and Clark. Lewis and Clark had visited the area to collect specimens for President Jefferson on their expedition West. Apparently, Big Bone Lick was a famous site of thousands of fossilized bones of prehistoric mammals. The bones reportedly were scattered across the valley and visible or lying on the surface. So that is where the Big Bone part comes from; Big Bones of prehistoric mammals.

There is a paved path to walk with informational plaques. The informational plaques are interesting and tell you about the history of the area, but the locations of the plaques is unclear as to the purpose. The plaque is positioned as if you were supposed to read it and then look past it as something relevant to the words on the plaque. In a couple places we had no idea what we were supposed to see that was related to what we just read.

Apparently the water in the area was/is salty and full of minerals. The animals came here to drink up the yummy water. Apparently this is the lick.

The Native Americans used to extract salt from the water. Later the water was boiled away in wood fired salt furnaces to extract the salt commercially. The area also enjoyed a period of time as a famous health resort where people would bathe in and drink the sulfurous water for it’s purported healing qualities. Very little of the marshy quagmire and treacherous wet earth exists today.

The little stagnant looking stream is milky white; presumably from the mineral content. But the stream is difficult to imagine supporting a industry of salt furnaces turning out 60 bushels of salt per day.

The park has some unexpected inhabitants: a herd of bison are kept in the park. When we were there, the bison had been moved from a smaller fenced area to a larger one because they had trampled the pasture so much. It was easy to see them anyway.

The Bison were lying in the shade of the trees. As we approached, the herd started moving out of the shade into the open field. Just on the other side of the trees was a paddock for rounding them up. The background settings was terrible, but the visibility was great. The bull was the proud papa of 4 little brown baby bison.

The big bull bison just lumbered around the females sniffing and showing flehmen behavior. In retrospect I should have taken of photo of him in the flehmen pose. Drat!

The National Park Service has an interesting page with more information about Big Bone Lick State Park.

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We survived the “raging” fires last night. Today my head is pounding and I can see fires burning on the hills across the Papagayo Gulf. Seriously, it’s like every day there is a fire here and it’s no big deal. This is like how they maintain the land. It’s so common the staff act like it’s no big deal.

My wife decided to go on the Congo Trail Canopy Tour with the rest of the group. She isn’t very happy about it. She was pretty quiet and introspective at breakfast. Doing the SCUBA in the pool was a big achievement for here because she doesn’t like stuff on her face and gags when she puts a snorkel in her mouth. Some snorkels make me gag, too. But, for my wife, it was a big deal to put on goggles, use a regulator and actually swim around underwater. So, today she is going to face her fear of heights.

Thankfully, the bus ride is only a half-hour. (Note to Self: next vacation, stay near all the attractions.)

The guides, Roberto and Jose, are pretty quiet and serious, at first. They drone on repetitively about the safety rules and how we need to listen to them. Once we actually start going the canopy tour, it turns out these guys have a great sense of humor and are very friendly.

My wife was a little panicked after the first zip line and was shaking uncontrollably. She balked at doing it herself, and came across last with Roberto. Everything is fine, of course, it’s just that she has such a strong fear of heights.
Another woman, Judy, was very scared and nervous about it and insisted on going first before seeing anyone else. But, she braked too much and got stuck. She was too scared to do the hand over hand to get the platform and needed to be “rescued”. One of the instructors came back down the zipline to get her and take her to the platform. I figure that, given how nervous she was, getting stuck was probably the worst thing that could happen to her. I don’t know exactly, but the feeling of just hanging there was probably overwhelming if you are afraid of heights. She did great, though and did the next one by herself.

She was refusing to open her eyes for most of the lines, but recovered her sense of humor and was a lot of fun. The guides were having a lot of fun about her fear and were playing around to get a rise out of everyone.

We ended up doing 11 zip lines, two after a short hike up a hill, and had a great time.

Tomorrow, we get up bright and early and head off to the airport to fly home. It has been an action-packed vacation. Costa Rica is a friendly place that I would like to come back to.

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Today we just stayed at the resort and relaxed after yesterdays long trip up to Arenal Volcano. We lounged poolside and did a little SCUBA in the pool. I was surprised how excited my wife was about SCUBA. She is actually considering going on a discovery dive tomorrow. I’m kind of trying to talk her out of and trying to convince her to do the canopy tour instead.

While we were walking the beach this morning, we saw some Coatimundi tracks in the sand and watched fish in the tide pools. A woman who was walking down the beach, while we were walking back, told us about the resort on the end of the peninsula and about the great view of the sunset.

When it was about time, we walked out of the resort and up the road to the next resort down the road. For some reason, the whole area smells like smoke today. You can see smoke coming over the hills across the street from the resort. The road actually ends at Costa Blanca del Pacifico. The resort is practically dead, but there are a lot of Costa Rican cars parked long the road in the resort. Maybe this is a popular place for locals?

We stopped at the bar first, of course. Costa Blanca has a great, big, outdoor thatched bar area. It’s huge. The bartender didn’t speak a lot of English but we didn’t manage to find out that there are only 10 people at the resort, for whatever reason. They have an assortment of beer choices (Imperial is not my favorite, at all) and I discovered Bavaria Dark. It’s delicious! It’s so good, we got a couple of bottles before walking up to the area where you can see the sunset.

At the end of the path, there is a large, flat area where you can watch the sun go down over the Pacific, between some rocky islands. It was beautiful.We stopped at the bar on the way back and ran into a couple from our trip who had come up a little too late to see the sunset. We threw back a few more Bavaria’s and decided to have dinner together at the Italian, because they had reservations for tonight. We got a couple more Bavaria Dark’s to go.

On the way back, you could see a line of brush fires had come over the tops of the hills across from our resort. Since the sun had set, you could see the red embers burning in a sagging line on the hill.

The staff at the restaurant was pretty impressed with our beer choice. Seriously. They acted all interested in it, said it was a good beer and actually found us a can of Bavarian Dark and a bucket of ice to keep it cold. What a riot!

Now that we have actually had some good beers, we are ready to party. I had actually complained around noon time that I was toast. I was done being on vacation and tired after yesterdays trip, on top of all other trips this week. But, now with a few good beers behind me, I and ready to dancing. We gathered up a bunch of people from the trip and hit the disco.

Apparently the fires started making a lot of people nervous at the resort. Some people from our trip started coming in to the disco, excitedly telling us about the fires and worrying about whether we needed to leave or not. It ended up that nothing happened, but someone did get a firetruck to show up. We tried really hard to get the DJ to play “the roof is on fire.”

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Today we went on a combined trip that includes a rain forest walk, a possible view of Arenal Volcano and ends with dinner and bathing at a hot spring fed by the volcano.

The first stop was at Eco-Lodge for the rain forest walk. Having spent the week in Guanacaste, which is a dry savanna ecosystem, we couldn’t wait to see some lush jungle forest. We actually stopped at a vista overlooking Arenal Lake, but the wind and the rain made the stop uncomfortable. The low hanging cloud cover obscured any real view, anyway. When we got to Eco-Lodge, the bus split up into groups. Our group stayed together because there we so many of us. Our guide, Max, gave us a little speech about the environment and the history of the Eco-Lodge and took down a path for our hour long walk.

Max was very knowledgeable and was willing to share lots of information about the plants and animals. But, one thing that most people would probably fail to realize, you can’t see animals in the jungle. The foliage is just too lush. There could be an iguana 10 feet from you, but you can only see clearly for about 3-5 feet, maybe, off the trail. Max was able to find a little frog and a dead centipede, though. And, we were able to spot some very loud birds, about the size of a large hawk. I can’t remember the name, and we didn’t write it down.

One odd part of the nature hike was the stop at the Maleku hut. Max had a focus on the types of plants that the Maleku people used to build their huts and crafts. About twenty minutes into the hike, there was a big old meeting hut, presumably built by the Maleku Indians.

Max acted like this was where the Maleku people could be found, although he did mention that it was a “representation” of their lifestyle. The Maleku actually live on a reservation and while these guys spoke the language, they also spoke Costa Rican Spanish and Max played along as part of the act. Some people in our group bought brightly colored rain sticks and spirit masks. If I wasn’t so skeptical, I might have thought it was cute.

When the Maleku people greet people, apparently they knock on each others shoulders and say “copi-copi”. We all obligingly knocked on the chiefs shoulder and spoke the greeting. When our group was leaving, the other two groups were arriving at the hut at the same time from different directions. All groups make a stop at the Maleku hut, apparently. Some people from our trip were on the same tour but hadn’t signed up with us, so they were in a different group. As we passed them on the way out, I knocked on their shoulders and greeted them with a hearty “copi-copi”. I walked away chuckling, pleased with myself, at the bewildered looks on their faces knowing they would get the joke in about 10 minutes.

After that, we ate lunch at a local restaurant. I’m digging the Costa Rican food. I love rice and beans, but the spices they use are good too. Everyone got rice and beans with a little salad, but the main choices were Tilapia, Chicken or Steak. And for Tilapia and Chicken, you had some choices about how it was prepared. Then we got to browse around for some touristy swag. The folks at the restaurant and gift shop were great. The guy in the gift shop asked me questions and told me people from the United States were very nice. I told him I thought Costa Rica was great and found everyone to be very friendly. He told me that they were friendly because we are friendly first. I didn’t want to get into an argument or anything so I smiled and thanked him.

We drove further up the volcano and passed the spot where you would see the pyroclastics if there wasn’t so much cloud cover. We went directly to Tabacon Hot Springs and Spa Resort. We had about 2 hours at the hot springs to soak and hang out before dinner and the ride back to the resort.

The hot springs are a river of water heated by the Arenal Volcano. There are pools for soaking and little water falls for getting a nice hot water pounding. All around the pools is a lush garden of native plants and natural looking landscaping. There were plenty of little pools for privacy, as well as a swim-up bar and slide. The water was fantastic and the atmosphere of cool, low clouds was very relaxing.

The buffet dinner was amazing. There was a 5 foot pan filled with a seafood paella that was to die for. And they had some sort of green salsa that one of the servers jokingly called “salsa, ay-ay-ay!”. It was pretty spicy.

The ride back on the bus was long and most people slept. I think we got back to our resort around 11pm. But, what a day!

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