Grampies Go to Costa Rica

I have just been looking back at some pages of this blog, and I must say it is fabulous. Just a few days since we returned home, and I had forgotten how many unique and colourful bird shots we had, and how interesting the tale of our odyssey among the various locations and ecosystems was.  Just as is often said, Costa Rica is a really amazing patchwork of very different eco zones, each filled with its own birds, animals, and plants. And these surround the traffic clogged central valley containing San Jose. Dodie still maintains she hated San Jose, but it did have a very lively and car free core that I found fun to walk. The idea of being on a tour with a group and a bus was something new for us, and as independent cyclists we usually look down on bus tours. In this case, while it is true that we were being dragged around, and dumped out at various points of interest, at least our group of just 10 did not totally flood the destination points. And we really did get to see and learn t...

This was the most expensive excursion, on a daily basis, that we have ever attempted. Although it was a group tour with ten people to share certain costs, it featured a full time guide and driver for whom we were paying the daily wages plus food and accommodation. Also, although Costa Rica has sort of normal costs within its general economy, we were enclosed in a tourist bubble, where resorts and restaurants change rather fabulous rates. For example, a chicken, rice, veggie, and salad lunch at a "soda" (normal restaurant) in the San Jose market came to 5000 colones for the two of us ($Can 14) and dessert and coffee at a nearby bakery cafe was $Can 6. By contrast prices at the sorts of resorts and restaurants we were brought to by the tour could normally be 12,000 colones ($Can 34), each, while at one place it was more like 18,000.  It took these ten people to finance the guide, driver, and bus. The arrangement with the tour was that at any place we were brought to, we could o...

  The Cancun airport offers almost no seating for people waiting for flights, and certainly none of the very limited seats had room to lie down.  So we found ourselves sitting upright at the 24/7 "Guacamole" restaurant in Departures. Every few hours we would order something, but the staff were very used to people hanging out for long periods, and they did not try to chivy us along. The only exception seemed to be that you could not be asleep. Periodically they would try waking those that had slumped in place. It did seem that your posture while slumped was important. If you could lean straight forward, maybe onto your scrunched up jacket, in the manner of a drunk doing a faceplant, then you were ok. Slumping sideways, though, seemed to cross a line. When I realized that 17 hours sitting in that chair was not really possible, I started to search for nearby hotels. Only thing, I started this about 11 p.m., and almost none had reception desks that were open. I did reach one, but...

 With our flight scheduled to leave at 8 a.m. , respecting the "arrive at the airport 3 hours early"  rule had us waking up at 4 a.m. for a 4:30 a.m. taxi ride to the airport. Continuing the amazing service level of Costa Rica Focus, a knock came at our door at 4:10, revealing a man with a box breakfast of coffee, banana bread, and yoghurt. And dead on 4:30 a taxi driver appeared and .. I would like to say whisked us to the airport. In truth it only took 15 minutes, but it was 15 minutes of battling San Jose area traffic, already heavy at this hour. Also, just before entering the city traffic, we again noted the dangerously curving country road. For a final time, we again realized that this is no place for a bicycle. Although we already had boarding passes in our phone, we went to the Volaris desk to get the more secure feeling of a paper pass. That's where they nonchalantly informed us that our flight to Cancun was delayed four and half hours! That shifted our comfortabl...

  From the sea back to San Jose Our observation deck was "invaded" by another tour group, this one focused on bird photography. That meant, much more than in our group, it was festooned with two foot lenses, tripods, and $12,000 cameras. This started me thinking about what we all are actually doing here. My thoughts rambled like this: First a chess analogy (sorry, that's how my brain works!) It used to be fun for everyone to play chess and to try to get the best moves and strategies. But chess (not to mention Go) has now been "solved" by computers, and if you want the answer to any position, the algorithm can supply it. So is chess dead? In the analogy, we like to get the best shots of various exotic and colourful birds. But all these have already been posted in Merlin, or many other locations. If you try your best to position for the shot, and bring to bear your $12,000 rig, you may get a shot equivalent to the one on Merlin. So then, it looks like a Merlin sho...