Category Archives: Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Where I wonder who texted me

January 26, 2009 – 11:38 am

It’s rained pretty much non-stop the past few days leaving me without much to do. It’s one thing when it rains or snows nonstop at home. I can still have people over or go to someone’s house or run down the stairs to a bar. Or even just sit home and spend the day watching movies or online. Here? I’m pretty much stuck in a hotel room. I tried to hit the hotel bar, but it just wasn’t cool because the rain was freezing and the workers were scarce. I ended up spending most of the day in the hotel room watching all three X-Men movies in English with Spanish subtitles. Which, if anything, taught me that in Spanish “esta bien” means a LOT of things. The good news? Wolverine is still awesome. Since I have nothing really exciting to write about I will just throw a few thoughts up that I’ve had over the past few days.

  • I think the perfect length for a vacation is 5 days. 6 is you are flying out on that sixth day in the morning. Eight days was entirely too long for me to be gone. By day three you start to wonder what people are doing back home, but don’t really care because you’re in the pool. By day four you are doing something fun, but it’s starting to get old like “oh gee another adventure”. Then you start to think, you know what would really be cool? If someone from home was here to do this with me. By day 5 you start to actively miss home and by the sixth you just want to go home. I spent most of my day yesterday wondering who went to Fat Cats after work. Yeah. So, five is the ideal amount because you don’t want to leave yet but going home isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
  • I’ve had the strangest dreams since I’ve been here. Maybe it’s because I’ve actually been dreaming since I haven’t been drunk enough NOT to dream. I had a dream that Oscar, my stepmom and I went to Brewers opening day only the Brewers were playing the Mariners who were wearing large suits like Fat Joe would wear. I wasn’t sure what this dream meant so I consulted a dream book and it means that I’m awesome. Phew.
  • I finally found the one thing I hate more than douchebags in Red Sox hats, French douchebags in Red Sox hats. It’s almost like they took their douchery and turned it up to 11.
  • Speaking of douche-y Sox, White Sox hat sales are up 25% since Obama was inaugurated. If you ever wonder why I think you should have to take a test when you register to vote, here it is. If change means more White Sox fans, we don’t need change! (This should have been McCain’s entire platform.)
  • I probably shouldn’t tell people this, but I spent a solid 45 minutes working on my fantasy baseball team for next season before deciding that I should wait til I got home to go any further. My draft is two months away.
  • Let’s talk about tipping. In Costa Rica (just like pretty much every country that is not America) you don’t have to tip. They add a 10% service charge to your bill and you can go above this if you like. It’s an interesting way to do things and in theory it makes for better service. No pushing to upsell and just more about getting you what you want. However, (and maybe it’s just the places I’ve been) there is a certain amount of failure in this approach. Mainly when it comes to drinking. NOT ONCE since I have been here has someone asked me if I would like a second drink. I’ve had to ask every single time. Yesterday when I went out to eat I decided I wanted a white russian after dinner, but I couldn’t track down my server in time to do it. (Here, you also pay a cashier instead of your server which I am 100% behind and think is the greatest thing ever.) As I write this I am at breakfast and it’s buffet style so I don’t even really need a server, but couldn’t they have someone walking around seeing if I want a bloody mary or a screwdriver? Here’s a hint: I do. I am on vacation. I don’t have to drive ever, I want to drink the majority of the day. Not get wasted, just ABD (always be drinking (I just made that up)). Is that too much to ask? If this is what it’s like in a world where you don’t have to tip, then take my service charge away.
  • I miss my son, bad. Not that it’s likely that I would have seen him all this time, but I hate being this far away. What if something happened? I wouldn’t be able to get there. This kills me. I may never leave the state again.
  • Yesterday, I woke up and there was a video facebook message on my wall. While watching it my parents asked me what I was watching and I told them. This turned into a conversation about social media in my generation. My stepmom said that “they can use that stuff against you in a court of law” which is laughable to say the least. I told her that I didn’t think it was against the law for girls to tell me that they love me, even if it does seem that way sometimes. My dad’s point was that he read my blog one time and I had a post about drinking making me gay and that maybe it wasn’t that good of an idea to have this stuff up there when I am in the midst of a custody battle for my son. He has a point, I guess, but I don’t see how that is going to keep me from my son. If we are going to use my blog as evidence of my quality as a father, then the good outweighs the bad.
  • If I turn my cellphone on and I receive a text, it’s like another 10 bucks on my bill (international texting). If I turn it on and receive a phone call it’s like another 20. So, I haven’t turned it on. I’ve checked my voicemail a couple of times, but there hasn’t really been anything. What I’m REALLY wondering is what texts I have received. I had to remind most people I was leaving 3-4 times before it sunk in so I am thinking there is quite a few “out?” texts. I don’t know why I’m looking forward to this, but I am.
  • You know if I owned a hotel in a resort location I would just have people walking around at all times with cold beer and blenders to make pina coladas. It’d be like a backpack full of tropical drink materials with secret compartments filled with pineapple and rum. That’s just me though.
  • Here’s another reason not to travel to a foreign country: you can’t watch Hulu, Netflix online or any of the major networks video sites. Yesterday would have been nowhere near as frustrating if I could have caught up on How I Met Your Mother and The Office. I’m going to have to take an extra day off work to catch up on my DVR.
  • I am not going to fully comment until I see The Wrestler, but screw the Oscars (after The Wrestler this should be upgraded to FUCK the Oscars). Where’s the love for Wall-E? Or even The Dark Knight? These are the movies people are going to remember in 50 years.

Alright, that’s it. I could go on like this all day, but I’m going to have a few screwdrivers and enjoy the last of pura vida. I fly home tomorrow and then go directly from the airport to Metallica at the Allstate Arena. Needless to say I will be drinking on the plane.

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Costa Rica

Zipline adventures… you know for kids!

January 25, 2009 – 11:11 am
This isnt me (for instance this person isnt peeing their pants), but is the same line I went down.

This isn't me (for instance this person isn't peeing themself), but this is the same line I went down.

I went ziplining yesterday. We take a sky tram up to the top of this mountain and then zipped down on wires. The first one we did was a quarter mile long and 600 METERS TO THE GROUND. The thing about ziplining is once you get to that point is there is really no turning back at that point. Once you’re up there and you do the little test wire, you’re stuck. There is no going back. So I had to do it. No wimping out, which sucked because I wanted to wimp out. I did the first one and I looked around at first, but holy crap was I high up in the air. If I fell off this thing they would probably have never found my body. That wasn’t necessarily something that could happen, but you know. I got to the end and my heart was racing pretty hardcore. So hard that I had to go last on the next run. Of course, I hit the next run and try to just keep my eyes straight as not to freak out and ended up going about 10x faster than anyone else on the entire run. I hit the end of the wire so hard I scratched my arm on the wire. Great, so not only am I having a coronary I am having it at 60mph. By the time I did the third one my heart was beating so fast that I felt like Rachel McAdams in The Notebook. The views were pretty amazing, but I’m a bit of an acrophobic so it wasn’t as amazing as it should have been. Plus, I’ve never really liked riding motorcycles after my moped accident so this wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. By the time we got to the final run of wires I was actually enjoying it. Maybe it was the extreme altitude that we started at that freaked me out or just the general shock of doing it, but by the time we got to the home stretch my heart started to slow down and I felt more comfortable. Of course, I was still going entirely too fast for my own good but what can I say? I have perfect ziplining form. One of the guys that was with us got some video of me coming down and promised to email it to me when he gets home so I will try to get that up here at some point.

When I got back to the hotel, I thought I was over my nerves. Then I drank three beers in about 15 seconds, so yeah, maybe I was a little freaked out. That’s okay though because beer is fucking awesome.

In the end, it’s just like when I was 12 years old. When I was twelve I went to Wisconsin Dells with my family and another family. The kids in the other family (who I found annoying) wanted to go bungee jumping and I said if these fucking d-bags are going (actually, I probably didn’t say that. I was 12.) so am I. So I climbed up this thing, tied on the rope and jumped. Did I want to? No. Did I do it? Yes. Was the only reason I did it to show everyone that nobody is cooler than me and nobody can do anything that I can’t do? Of course. You would think I would have changed in the past 15 years, but I say why change a winning recipe? I’ve been awesome all this time, there’s no point in changing things now.

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Costa Rica

Where everyone drives like a FIB

January 24, 2009 – 10:28 am

Costa Rica Day 2-5

The first three days of my trip were spent in a Alejuela. Alejuela is a city near San Jose, which is pretty big and absolutely packed with people. It’s not in the mountains or near the ocean and the hotel we stayed it did not have a pool. This is not to discount these days. The weather was nice, played some awesome golf, hit a few casinos and actually did some work related things. This is not to complain. I got my teeth cleaned for $20 bucks (owwwww-uch) and ate real good. That being said, Alejuela is the Costa Rican equivalent to taking a vacation for three days in Milwaukee in the summer. Only the Brewers were out of town and you didn’t go to SummerFest. Now, I love Milwaukee but that’s not what you might call ideal. Sure, it was relaxing and I did some fun stufff but overall I felt like I wasn’t accomplishing anything. Not doing enough vacation stuff to be on vacation, not doing enough work stuff to be productive. This is a problem I know. In my freetime (during breakfast, before dinner, late night) I decided to launch a new website. Free Daily Golf Tip.

The idea came to me while my dad and I were golfing. He was telling me a story about how he didn’t like reading golf magazines, but would instead flip through and read the little boxes with small tips. Being the same way I realized this was a good idea for a website. Small tips, no more than 100 words with Google Ads. After doing a bit of research I found that Google pays $1.25-$1.75 per click for “golf tip” and related keywords. That’s when I knew this was a good idea. Maybe it will even make me better at golf, which is worht the $10 it cost for the domain alone.

On Thursday my stepmom and nephew arrived. We ended up going to dinner at a hotel with some people we are loosely related to and a guy my parents know from the hotel. (Quick aside: My closet patriotism crept up on this day as my dad said “there is so much opportunity here” to which I replied “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? We live in the land of opportunity! Sure, there is opportunity here but nothing could match the greatest country in the history of the world.” He agreed, but not without a who-are-you look.) It just so happened that his salsa band was also playing at a bar that night so we decided to hit that up. Frustrated with the vacation/work feelings I’d been having I decided that on this night I was going to drink it up as I hadn’t really since I’d been here (this could have also been my problem). That worked out marvelously as I tried a local shot called guaro. Then tried it again, and again, and again. I would explain the taste as somewhere between tequilla and grain alcohol, only sweeter. If that makes any sense. It definitely goes down smooth. I resisted the temptation to salsa with 50 year old anti-cougars and ended up going home and sleeping GREAT.

Now for a quick aside about Costa Rican beer and Costa Rica in general

The local beer is Imperial, I haven’t seen a Bud Light anywhere I’ve been. WTF Anheuser-Busch? Where you at? Instead I have been drinking this local beer which is pretty good, except for one thing. When you pour it into a glass it foams, like a lot. If you did that asshole move where you hit your bottle on top of mine with one of these things I am fairly certain there would be nothing left. This could be the all natural ingredients, which if that’s what it is I look like an insane asshole for complaining about. Honestly though, unless you pour this into your glass PERFECTLY you are getting a ton of foam and it’s not the type of foam you can drink. It’s the type of foam you have to sit there and wait to settle before you can drink. AND I HATE THAT TYPE OF FOAM.

Now, Costa Rica is great. The weather is nice, everyone I’ve met is super friendly, the whole works. Yet there is barbed wire everywhere. I went to a bank and the security guards there are strapped. I went to the golf course and it was a gated community, the guards are strapped. Then I was in a cab and there was an accident. The cop directing traffic was SUPER STRAPPED. He honestly had the biggest gun I’ve ever seen outside of a DMX movie. Add this on top of the razor wire I see everywhere and what gives? Are they just completely overprotective? Or is there some secret super shady underworld that I am just not seeing? I saw a cop the other day with a SAWED OFF SHOTGUN. Seriously. A shotgun, sawed off so as to kill you faster. Does this make sense? This is supposed to be the most peaceful nation in Latin America, why are there guns everywhere? It’s freaking me out.

Oh, and everyone drives like a FIB. I met someone from Chicago who thought the driving “wasn’t that bad.” Meanwhile, I almost threw up on the ride to Arenal.

Back to the trip

On Friday we decided to vacation-ize our vacation by heading up to Arenal, which is actually an active volcano with like lava running down it and everything. If in the next few days I don’t do any updates and you see on the news about a volcano erupting in Costa Rica, you know what to do (delete this bookmark). The hotel is all inclusive which is nice because I just wear this stupid pink bracelet and sit in the hotel pool bar all day drinking my life away. This is more like it. We hit a natural volanic hot spring last night, which was pretty damn cool. I topped out at 116 degrees. I was honestly thankful that pool was that hot because looking at some of these weird European couples (speedos!) you know there was some fluids floating around in that thing. Which made me, oddly, homesick.

Ahem.

TODAY, I am going ZIPLINING down the volcano. Followed by a lot of drinking in the pool. It’s going to be fun, but I miss home real bad right now. I can’t quite figure out why. Is it because I don’t like to leave America? Possible. Is it because I barely like leaving Wisconsin? Quite possible. Is it because I don’t like going anywhere without my friends or at least one of my cousins? Definitely possible. I love my family very much, but it’s hard for me to be gone for eight days without someone to get drunk with. Sad? Pathetic? Stupid? All possibilities, but anyone who knows me knows that it’s true.

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Costa Rica

wtf

January 20, 2009 – 11:27 pm

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Costa Rica

I am an international businessman on very important international business

January 20, 2009 – 1:36 am

Was a little hungover this morning when I left for my flight, but nothing too major. The weather was nice and the ride down to O’Hare was no problem. Security went smooth and the flight to Dallas flew by as I did a soduku puzzle while listening to More Songs About Buildings and Food. I was stuck in the middle, but it wasn’t a big deal on a short flight.

Dallas Airport is a weird place. There is Cowboys shit everywhere so I automatically hate the place, but there is also more stores and restaurants than any airport I’ve ever been layed over in. It’s insane how many different places there was to eat. My dad had to talk me into going to a bar because I just don’t see a lot of value in getting a $7 beer, but he convinced me that since he doesn’t drink he needs to drink vicariously through me. Who was I to argue? After sitting down about ten minutes this gay guy from across the bar comes over and asks if he can sit by us. He’s a total twink, the kind of gay guy that other gay guys hate for making them look so faggy. My dad tells him to knock himself out and he sits down next to me. We continue our conversation and after about twenty minutes or so I forget all about him. Then he put his hand on my leg.

He put his hand on my leg.

He put his hand on my leg.

Immediately I was like “woah dude, what are you doing?” before settling into the more nice version of “was there something I could do for you?” (Quick defense: I am on VACATION! I don’t want to be cussing out drunk homosexuals on my vacation. That is not my idea of a vacation. That is my idea of work.) He slurs something about being drunk and doesn’t bother us again. I see him try to order another drink and the bartender tells him no. At this time I take a peek at his tab and see that he had been served:

  1. 2 Ketel One – Tonic
  2. 5 Jack Daniels – Coke
  3. 2 Absolut – Tonic

Just a classic case of overserving. The last time I drank that much I… well, actually it was probably Friday and I didn’t really do anything that stupid on Friday. He then stands up and is trying to pay his tab, but the bartender is ignoring him. He’s stumbling all around and finally like falls and braces himself on me. Before I can even say anything my dad jumps in and tells him “I think it’s time for you to leave.” He slurs a what and my dad’s like “You’ve had enough pal. Finish your drink and get the hell out of here.” I was taken aback actually because it was more funny and creepy than anything to me, but it was still pretty cool. I guess my dad did work in bars for something like twenty years.

After boarding our flight I was AGAIN stuck in the middle. This time though a total douchebag sat down who decided that our arms should be touching the entire flight. That actually isn’t even what pissed me off the most, what pissed me off was that we had a slight delay due to electrical problems and he called his wife/girlfriend in Costa Rica and bitched about it. Seriously dude, shut the fuck up. I don’t know about you but when I am going to fly over the ocean (or worse, Mexico) I want my plane to be in 100% working order. I don’t want to crash and die. Call me crazy. But that’s not even the worst part of it, the worst part is when he’s complaining he says “typical America”. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? You are seriously going to talk shit about the greatest country in the world? That quite obviously gave you life you skinny Anglo Saxon motherfucker? Fuck you. Don’t come back.

(When did I get so patriotic?)

The in flight movie was Ghost Town, which wasn’t that bad. Followed by episodes of The New Adventures of Old Christine and The Big Bang Theory, both of which were horrible. The flight was saved by the How I Met Your Mother “sock” episode at the end.

Upon landing there was a sign (and I WISH I had taken a picture) that read DEAR TOURIST: Having sex with a person under 18 in Costa Rica is a serious crime and we will arrest you. I know this is a serious thing, but I found the sign hilarious. If I see it on the way back I’ll definitely snap a pic. Outside of the airport there was probably 20-40 guys just trying to give people rides which made for a hectic scene. We got a taxi to the hotel and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much razor wire in my entire life. It surrounds pretty much every nice house or businesses fence, which is pretty weird. Then we hit a casino where I had my first interaction with Costa Rican money. Here’s how it works: $1 US dollar = 563 colones. That means that most of the trip I will be walking around with like 60,000 colones in my pocket. I could potentially have a bartab over 28,000 at one point. In fact I plan on doing that so I can say I drank 28k worth of booze. I’ll be like a king. Seriously though, this money thing makes no sense to me.

The casino had a band which was crazy because they just played all the popular Spanish club hits I hear at bars. Everyone was dancing and all I could think was, isn’t it Monday? Why is everybody gasolina right now? I didn’t win anything (the money thing really messed me up on the slots, wait I’m betting how much? Screw it bet max) and headed back to the hotel for bed. I, of course, have too much energy for that and wrote this. Not sure what’s going on tomorrow, but I think we’re going to golf which I am SUPER EXCITED for and eat lots of local cuisine which I am also SUPER EXCITED for.

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