EricHolsinger.com

We woke up early this morning to the sounds of birds in the trees outside our room. Being good bird watchers, we scrambled outside and were greeted by a cacophony of bird calls. We didn’t recognize any at the time, but we made some mental notes and decided to get a Costa Rica Bird Guide as soon as the resort gift shop opened. Later on, we figured out that we saw Magpie Jays, Groove Billed Anis, White Winged Doves, Orange Chinned Parakeets, Great Tailed Grackles, and a Streaked Back Oriole.

A few weeks ago, I sold my telephoto lenses to buy a new short telephoto lens, and I am missing them. The new lens is great, but I have no range to get a close photo of the birds, so the Magpie Jay above is a cropped image.

We strolled around the grounds and found more birds before working our way down to the beach. At the beach, some of the resort staff showed us our first Howler Monkey. He was just slowly eating his way across a tree limb. I had been warned that they like to pee on you if you get too close. It didn’t happen, but I tried to stay clear of the pee-zone.

While I was taking photographs of him, there was a distant sound like what I remember a howler monkey sounding like. The monkey in front of me stopped eating for a moment while the other monkeys howled. Then he went right back to business.

We made our way to the breakfast buffet and ran into some people from our group who said they were going to take one of the rental cars to Coco Beach (Playa del Coco). We weren’t sure about whether we wanted to do that today, but we agreed to go. We heard from some of the staff that nothing would be open on Sunday, but it was only an 8 minute drive to the beach. In the end we decided that we wouldn’t go today, but maybe a different day when things were open. When everyone got back, they had gotten lost for a while and found the shops were open anyway. Oh well, live and learn.

We picked up a slim book called Photographic Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica. There was a larger book, A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica, that seemed more thorough, but we decided against it because we weren’t sure how much we would need it (we didn’t even bring binoculars on this trip) and we didn’t want to lug around such a large book.

Later on, when we got back to our room, we found three more howler monkeys lounging in the trees. One was a little baby clinging to his mothers back. The photos didn’t come out very well though.

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We are staying at Grand Papagayo by Occidental in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Guanacaste is the Northern Pacific side of Costa Rica; just South of Nicaragua.

The flight from Atlanta to Liberia was excellent. We saw some movie about the Royals in England that I didn’t find very interesting. The flight was comfortable and easy though. We had a great view of the Florida Keys, Cuba and when we were landing we saw Lake Nicaragua, in Nicaragua. The lake is enormous (we heard the lake was anything between 2nd and 7th largest lake in the world. It may be, but Wikipedia has Lake Nicaragua as the 13th largest lake by surface area).

Two remarkable things I noticed while landing: there is a large mountain range buried in clouds and the land looks very much like parts of West Texas or Arizona’s hill country. There is a lot of brown landscape, but it’s obviously heavily agricultural. You can see the classic patchwork overhead while landing in Liberia.

Oh, another thing I noticed, the airport is small and the field around it is on fire. Also, the waiting area is open to the runway. There is no wall. Security is around, but it’s open air with a giant, giant fan that is not rotating.

Inside, or outside actually, we went through immigration and got our passport visas and luggage. You have to fill out some forms on the plane and show them as part of the process of entering the country.

Outside was a mob of people holding placards for rental cars and travel agencies. We were only asked once where we were going, no one really bothered us, but the sheer number of people pressing around the exit area was really overwhelming at first. Once we stepped through the crowd we noticed everyone was pretty much just holding up a sign, not shouting, not bothering anyone. It was so laid back, it was actually hard to get people to help you out. We had some trouble finding an Adobe Rental Car (Latin America’s version of Alamo Rental Car) agent to straighten out the confusion over the vehicles that were supposed to be waiting for our group. A brief stop at the local Adobe office, a six pack of Imperial and we were off on our own.

If you have visited Latin America or the Caribbean, you’ve seen the houses. They aren’t made of wood. They are made of a much more practical cinder-block construction. No termites are known to eat concrete. Also, it’s not legal to just chop down wood, even on your property. You need a permit and have to replace what you take, apparently. At least that is what I hear.

Our hotel was very easy to find and we only stopped once for directions. Everyone is very kind and relaxed. Very helpful. This experience is already much nicer than the constant drug offers in Jamaica.

On the way, we saw a Caracara hovering over the road between some cane fields. I recognized it but was unable to confirm my identification without a bird book or another birder. My wife wasn’t sure. We also saw three unmistakable horses just hanging out in the middle of the road.

The hotel seems nice and everyone is friendly. The resort overlooks Playa Buena and the Papagayo Gulf. It’s kind of windy and warm. Not too warm.

Our room is nice. It has a king size bed and a nice view over the Papagayo Gulf and a bit of the Pacific Ocean. In the fridge are only two water bottles, an Ice Tea and a Mango Juice. In the bathroom is one cake of soap, one washcloth and one coffee mug. There is cable TV with Spanish and English channels, but the room is lacking Wi-Fi, or an ethernet connection.

The buffet was really good and we plan to make reservations for the two restaurants and plan some trips through the travel companies on the resort.

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I get to go on a on a working-vacation with my wife to Costa Rica with one of her customers and a bunch of his customers and friends. Everyone is from the Cincinnati Ohio/Covington Kentucky area so we flew to Cincinnati first and then to Atlanta and on to Costa Rica.

This morning, we were at the Cincinnati area airport scrounging for food and coffee and last minute stuff like books for the flight. My wife went looking for some coffee and egg muffins and I went to the bookstore.

I picked up a copy of Freakonomics, revised and expanded edition. It’s by two guys, one is a maverick economist, who look at things like the value of parenting, why crack dealers don’t have their own homes and whether your real estate agent is really out to get you the best deal. I’ve been hearing a lot about it and after reading about 20-25% on the plane, I’m eager to read more. It’s written in a neat casual, almost college class kind of way without the formulas and number crunching. Instead of presenting statistic after statistic and formula after formula they explain how they looked at information and teased out bits to find the real correlations between things like going to a good school and getting good grades vs. being poor and getting good grades. It’s interesting stuff, and not all of it is easy to accept once you become aware of their conclusions. But they also discuss the difference between correlation and causal relationships, and the difference between correlation and conventional wisdom.

So, I got my book and I went to the gate area to accept a much anticipated coffee from my wife. She was talking to her customer, Mark, and we started exchanging conversation about their last trip to our home state of Maine. I raised my coffee up to take a sip and I kept tipping and tipping the cup, waiting for that scalding hot contact on my lip. But it seemed like the cup wasn’t full. I tipped and sucked at the cup and then my stomach started to burn. The lid on the cup was open on the sipping side. I was pouring coffee down my shirt and pants and it soaked through and burned my middle-aged tire.

Mark looked at the streak of brown still steaming my frontside and said, “That sucks.” He was right.

But, I had one of those spf 35 North Face travel shirts on. It’s kind of light, but keeps it’s shape and looks nice even if you’ve worn it all day. I couldn’t bear the idea of wearing this stinking coffee shirt on the plane for three hours so I went to the mens room took it off and rinsed it under cold water in the sink just to try to get the coffee out. Then I dried it under the hand dryer; all in like 5 minutes. The shirt looked great!

I also had some North Face pants on that are pretty light. I have had them for years and wear them for everything. They have a hidden pockets behind both front pockets that help hold bills and flat stuff. They have stretchy inner cuffs to keep critters from crawling up your leg. I decided not to take them off and rinse out the coffee, since they are brown and it’s barely visible. But, I bet it would have worked.

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After watching the NASCAR Busch Series FoodCity 250 the night before, and swimming and wakeboarding on South Holston Lake in the morning, I went to the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Sharpie 500 race on Saturday. We got there early and went to the exhibits outside the race.

The exhibits were really cool. I didn’t bring my whole camera bag because it was so heavy lug down the highway the night before, after the race. I decided to just bring the Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 EX DG lens this time since it’s the most versatile. I was in the parking lot for about 5 minutes when I wished I had my wideangle Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG lens. Arrgh!

I do this all the time. No matter how many times I try to convince myself, I forget how important it is to have all my camera gear; usually faced with a long day of lugging a backpack full of gear around.

I did the best I could with what I had, though. I tried, mostly, to get the exhibit cars. It was a little tough with the usually-very-versatile Sigma 28-70mm. I had to think about angles and capture parts of the cars, mostly. This Compuware car was under a canopy and I had to shoot it at ISO 800 to get anything. I liked the details of the car, though.

The Lowes car was easy to get around, and out in the sun, but it was tough to get an angle that showed the car looking it’s best. In the end, I caught Larry Clarke, my host, in the frame.

The best exhibit has to go to Aarons Appliance. Nothing looked better than the “Dream Team.”

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After a night at the FoodCity 250, we got to go wakeboarding with our hosts son. The scenery around South Holston Lake is just amazingly beautiful. The day was hazy but the mountains were just amazing.

We did a little swimming and socializing in the water before wakeboarding. The water was perfect. The Ikelite underwater housing for the Fuji F10 came in real handy.

The wakeboarding got starting with some cool tricks from our host. After a couple of flips, he handed the board over and offered to drive for everyone else.

Everyone who wanted got a chance to ride. I went last, just before lunch, and was unable to get up on the board. I could get out of the water, but it was concluded that the board was too small for me to actually ride. Kind of a bummer, but I’ll have to try again sometime with a bigger board.

After all this, we managed to get in a little rest before heading off to Bristol Motor Speedway for the Nextel Cup Series Sharpie 500.

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I got to go to Eastern Tennessee and see some NASCAR at Bristol Motor Speedway. We were in town for both the Bush series FoodCity 250 and the NASCAR Sharpie 500. We got to stay with some fantastic people at the mountain-side home on South Holston Lake.

We flew in on Friday night and had just enough time to get settled before heading off to the race. Bristol is a mecca for race fans in August with fast and furious short track action under the lights. We weren’t disappointed; The FoodCity race had no less than 14 cautions – a tie for the record for this race.

Our seating was in one of the suites above the grandstands. The view was excellent and the service was great, too. A television broadcast the TNT coverage of the race into the suite so we could listen to the announcers and race analysis.

But, to experience the race, we had to go down to the mezzanine and stand in the crowd. I was standing in the crowd when the cars started, after the ceremonial and much anticipated, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” I was still standing in the crowd when the pace car left the track and the cars began racing. The sound of the cars was something I hadn’t expected. The roar was deafening. But it was more than that. The rumble could be felt in your chest. It was almost scary at first.

It was a long night and we had to get up the next day for some wakeboarding and more racing action.

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It wasn’t raining. That was good. But, the wind was making the water pretty choppy. Every minute or so there would be a “good roller”, too.

I caught my first walleye. Not a monster, but a good sized fish to me. I was holding it together and we were catching fish.

It was cold. I had a couple layers under my gore-tex jacket, but I needed to go down below and get my fleece.

Down below, while I was digging through my backpack, the boat was tossing and moving erratically. My stomach started to flip.

I grabbed my fleece jacket and climbed the stairs. I dressed in doorway to the cabin. I felt kind of light headed and my stomach was broadcasting signals that the moment was near. I tried to sit in the wind and look out to the horizon. I just couldn’t hold back.

I actually waited too long. I couldn’t make it to the side of the boat in time and made a mess. Everyone looked at me stunned, confused.

Was there a fish? Was he running for a rod? What happened? Do you get seasick often?

I’ve never been seasick, as far as I can remember. Admittedly, I’m no long-liner who fishes the Gulf of Maine. But, I don’t get sick in the back seat of a car, either.

For the next 5 hours I perched on the gunwale of the boat – an area not made for sitting – trying to pull it together, staring into the horizon and feeling the cold wind. Every once in a while someone would put a rod in my hand. I would reel in a fish, take it off the line, have a photo taken, go get sick over the rail, and sit back down.

After noon, the captain turned the boat and headed closer to shore. I was secretly hoping this was the end of the day, but I knew it couldn’t be. I don’t know anyone who fishes for a half-day. Especially if they’ve gone to the trouble to charter a boat. But it was even better than I hoped.

We moved closer to shore and started fishing for smallmouth. That was fun. I regained my composure in the calmer water and we reeled in bass after bass. Big bass. Big bass for my experience, anyway. What a blast.

All in all, it was a great day of fishing with a great bunch of guys. All the ribbing for getting sick was well deserved and a good laugh for me, too.

Thanks to Kevin for the invitation. Thanks to Capt. Pete Alex for putting us on fish. Thanks to Mark and Shawn for the well deserved ribbing.

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