Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Car Rental

October 26, 2013 – 4:00 am
Following a day of body surfing and not much else we decided to head out to La Fortuna, one of the most visited places in Costa Rica.  La Fortuna boasts an active volcano and an entire city complete with a large church beneath a lake.  Look it up.

We initially inquired about taking a bus, but found that only shuttles were available.   We opted to rent a car.  I made a deposit and was told they would pick me up at nine at my hotel the following day.

The driver was prompt and we soon left with him to the office which was on the outskirts of Quepos near the airport.  A small lot was populated with three or four cars and an office which was a converted shipping container.  I managed to convince the clerk to give me several upgrades for free, he didn’t even bother to ask me if I wanted the numerous options, $7/day for a replacement key and emergency gas service, $20.95/day for some insurance coverage that was already covered by my credit card.  The tricky part was getting out without showing a driver’s license.  That is a long tale that I won’t detail.

Back to the hotel, Karl captured a few screen shots of maps of our route on a pretty bad WIFI connection.  With that and a low detail map we headed out, there was no GPS to be rented.

I can’t do justice to the clusterfuck that followed.  Our first leg was to Jaco.  Signs were literally one hundred meters apart.  Hotels, restaurants, casinos.  Leaving Jaco the signs were nowhere in evidence.  The way out of town was unmarked.  The maps were very low resolution.  The roads had no signs. The GPS on my phone showed me a general area of the country but only very major roads.  One particular intersection we drove through five or six times.   Dirt roads, rutted.  It became dark.  Repeatedly the roads disappeared around tight curves on mountain switchbacks or due to the road precipitously falling off.  At one point we found ourselves on a road that was unpassable and had to turn around and ended up getting stuck.

A muddy and gravelly simple incline was insurmountable, the front wheels on the little car just spun. Had I had a driver I could have pushed it out but Karl has never driven a manual.  We gave it a shot, but the smoke of burning rubber quickly called that attempt to an end.  Had the wheels made purchase he doubtlessly would have ended up wrapped around a tree while panicking. Deep in the jungle on an unlit road we locked up the car and started to walk.  Presently we came upon a person who easily pushed us out.  Thirteen hours later I finally stopped at a nasty little place and we retired nowhere near our destination that was ostensibly but three hours from our origin.

Permalink | Comments Off on Car Rental
Uncategorized

Manuel Antonio Park

October 24, 2013 – 12:25 am
Hiking boots seemed the order of the day.  Down the hill.  Breakfast at the hostel we had vacated, eggs, rice and beans, pineapple, papaya, bread, mango, banana and a lot of coffee.    The Costa Rica hustle requires no music; taxi drivers solicited rides.  Are you friggin’ kidding me?  I know the road ends a few hundred meters from here.

Tourist guides offered us available right now $70 specials for guided tours of the park.  Admission is $10 per person.  I see sloths a few feet away all the time in Bocas, I don’t need a guide to let me see one through a spotting scope two hundred feet away, mostly obscured by leaves.   
The trail was a gravel road, closed to most vehicular traffic.  Hundreds of tourists in groups of two to four walked the road.   Every couple of hundred meters a guide would be showing people a clump in a tree several hundred meters distant.  Iguanas were in great abundance.  I seldom encounter them in Bocas as the Indians eat every one they find, consequently they reside almost exclusively in the tree tops.  Here, they walked everywhere on the ground as I have observed in my many travels to Costa Rica over the last twenty years.   A raccoon wandered around near a ranger station unconcerned with human presence.  This was not really much of a wildlife experience so much as a walk in the park.  The jungles near my house offer many more surprises.
Through the park, down to the beach, across a small river, back to another beach, back to the town, bus ride back to town for a little shopping.  We stopped off at the airplane bar and got some really cool pictures, which I can’t share right now, including one where the food elevator was a converted missile.
Two sweaty guys returned to the room and showered.  A monkey show began within feet of our balcony, a

dozen white faced capuchins and a few squirrel monkeys.  Back down to town for sunset pictures and dinner.

Permalink | Comments Off on Manuel Antonio Park
Uncategorized

Manuel Antonio Park

October 24, 2013 – 12:23 am
I just realized that the following was previously blogged, here, have a variant…
 

A few minutes checking emails and Facebook was followed by a few blog entries.  Expansive views of the surf and the sound of waves crashing created a pleasant ambience for my consumption of massive amounts of strong Costa Rican coffee while I waited for the sun and my son to rise. He finally greeted the day with “My fucking legs are sore as shit.”  We had done a fair amount of hiking the previous day and I could notice it but I sure wasn’t sore.  Despite years of relatively sedentary activity consequent to generally engaging in little more than snorkeling and boating the hundred steps that lead up to my house conditioned me a bit for the hills we had been walking all day.   My son, Karl is in good shape and bikes forty miles a day and a hundred a day on weekends.  Immediately after his pronouncement I felt less out of shape.

We walked down the hill and entered the town of Manuel Antonio.  We stopped for breakfast and talked to a fishing guide from California.  For $450 he would take us three miles offshore and maybe we could catch some roosterfish.  For $900 we could go ten miles off shore and perhaps hook into a sailfish.  He laughingly said that for $1,200 he could pretty much guarantee that we would hook into at least one fish.  We gave it a miss.

Scuba diving was out of the question due to Karl’s head cold and the surf was insufficient for worthy body boarding or surfing.

Brigade after brigade of guides solicited work.  It’s just a walk in the park.   I felt no need to pay $50 for guides to show us wildlife.   We have both seen innumerable monkeys, sloths and reptiles over the course of visiting Central America during the last twenty years.   Close up and personal encounters are a daily occurence, if a sloth can only be seen as a dark clump, obscured by leaves and viewed through a fifty power spotting scope, I will give it a miss.

The admission fee was ten dollars a person.  A wide gravel road meandered gently through the lush environs.  Iguanas were spotted in great abundance.  Back home in Bocas any living iguana inhabits the tree top.  Those that habitate the ground are consumed by the numerous Ngobe Indians that constitute the majority of my neighbors in my jungle neighborhood on the sea.

Toward the end of the trail raccoons sauntered around the ranger station though feeding them is illegal and highly discouraged and there were no trash cans overflowing with edibles.  These animals were so well fed that the iguanas near by didn’t even give them a second look.

We walked back to Manuel Antonio and caught a bus up to Quepos, six kilometers up the hill.  After a little shopping, Karl secured a pair of board shorts and we bussed back to our hotel.

White faced capuchin monkeys scampered, climbed, and roamed on rooftops, tree trunks, branches, rails and trails.  A squirrel monkey paid a visit and moved on.

We just walked around and killed some time, looking around, wrapping up the waning hours of daylight capturing sunsets.

Permalink | Comments Off on Manuel Antonio Park
Uncategorized

Quepos Bound

October 23, 2013 – 1:53 am
A large breakfast, pay the bill and hit the road.   We walked a short ways, then quite a bit more.  Where the hell are the taxis?  Finally we caught one and I instructed him to go to Coca Cola, which is a bus station. I have no idea why it is called Coca Cola.  Shit! I didn’t even know there was another bus station.  Of course if there were two, we were at the wrong one.

It was ten minutes after ten.  The next bus wasn’t until noon.

I sauntered off in pursuit of a SIM for my phone that would work in Costa Rica.  Inside the bus station many food stands, all selling the exact same small selection of goods including some beautiful cake like bread, sold cards that could be used to obtain additional minutes but none sold SIMs.  Many blocks from the terminal I located a pharmacy.  Apparently the word in use in Costa Rica is “chip”.  I bought one and a paid for some time, which was registered on my phone by the seller making a phone call and registering it electronically.  
No internet.  I handed the phone to the guy.  I had enabled packet data but I couldn’t get a connection.  He grabbed my phone and started typing and swiping maniacally.  No button was pressed once, but tapped repeatedly as fast as he could tap.  I had to offer my passport five times.  He made seven phone calls.  I had a confirmation message that my internet service purchase was successful.  This idiot pulled up my text messages, pressed delete all, confirm before I could stop him.   The phone was set to Spanish, the icons moved around, settings changed.  The guy was a lunatic.  Twenty minutes later I left, short seven thousand colones, still without communication and having suffered the loss of a good deal of information, geographic locations of interest, phone numbers of people and more.  Nothing tragic, but completely senseless and annoying.
At noon we stood in line for for the bus.  We arrived at the front and were told by the conductor that our tickets were for tomorrow.  I looked at them for the first time.  Sure enough 10:30 the next day.  WTF? Our consternation was evident as we stepped out of line.  Jesus!  Not much time in Costa Rica and I sure as hell didn’t want to spend it in San Jose.   
A few minutes later he told us that we could sit in seats 52 and 53, the back of the bus.  We made our way back and found that we had six seats all to ourselves, folded up the arm rests and snoozed the way toward Quepos.
A few hours later I awoke to miles of coconut plantations, tree trunks in straight lines, layed diagonally to the road.  Then a small town with a twenty four hour restaurant a twentyfour hour internet cafe and little else, very strange. A short while later we arrived in Quepos and disembarked.   With some effort we managed to get our bags, they  were bound for the next stop, Manuel Antonio.
Enough getting ripped off on exchange rates, I went to the ATM to secure some Colones.   I inserted my card and withdrew 250,000. (Actually that would be written as 250.000 as most countries use dots as a thousands separator).  That was quick and easy.  “Would you like another transaction?” No.  I turned and left the booth.  The next guy in line told me I had left my card in the machine.  Oh, yeah, in Costa Rica, they retain your card until the transaction is done.  No big deal, the bank was open and half an hour later I had my card back in hand.  I think working very slowly is a requirement to work in a Central American bank.
We briefly explored Quepos, a compact town that was a strong contrast to Bocas del Toro.  The buildings were concrete, freshely and gaily painted and fronted with large expanses of plate glass.  Wide sidewalks were separated from the street by curbs.  Their was neither trash nor large amounts of idle people peddling weed and coke.  A couple of large grocery stores served the town of five thousand.  
The buildings in Bocas have peeling paint over decomposing wood and steel or wooden shutters.  The streets are strewn with trash when they are not overflowing with garbage being picked through by vultures.  Sidewalks are narrow where present and crumble into the street.  Eight out of ten buildings are either Chinese run grocery stores, hotels, restaurants, bars or water taxis stands. 
Quepos did not appear to be the place to lodge and we took a taxi the six kilometers to Manuel Antonio. Four thousand Colones?  The Costa Rica hustle requires no music.  That turned out to be the standard, fixed, tourist fare, locals pay far less.
We spent little time picking out a spot and I rented a room in a hostel for two for five thousand colones per person, per night.  That’s $10 per person.  We threw the bags in the room and went out to explore. By this time it was after 4:30 another day pissed away.  A long winding stretch of well maintained asphalt ascended back to Quepos a few hundred meters from the shore.  Lush ornamentals hugged the sidewalk, large palms spread out near the edge but never low enough to be a bother.  Beside the road were beautiful hotels, one after the other as soon as one leaves the beach.  A sign declared “Still more monkeys than people.” 
Perhaps a kilometer up the hill I spotted a place that interested me, we rang the bell and inspected the only room for rent, the rest of the quarters functioned as apartments.  The balcony overlooked a sparkling swimming pool, palms, various hardwoods and the ocean bay.  Time to move.  We walked back down the hill to get our stuff and at a good meal at a Thai restaurant.   Everybody spoke English, the menus, were soley in English.  This is seriously a tourist town, but a very beautiful one.  The three square mile park is the second most visited park in Costa Rica.  
We grabbed a taxi up to our room, dropped off our stuff and proceeded up the hill. A World War II bomber served as a bar, a restaurant with a wooden box car on rails fronted with cool old stuff, a mechanical sugar cane press, a wooden fruit press, a cast iron pump, an old cash register and other miscellany.  More exploring.  A monkey on the overhead power line, then an opposum, then a sloth, a large tree frog posed, peeking between the fronds of a palm and our phones and cameras were in the room charging. We finally happened upon a fish and chips shop and I enjoyed some ceviche. We putzed around some more and returned to the deck.  
Hmm. My notebook would no longer recognize my SD cards.   My camera takes a special USB cable, not a micro, not a mini, yet another frigging specification.  Ahh well, pictures will have to wait for a while.

Permalink | Comments Off on Quepos Bound
Uncategorized

Off to San Jose

October 22, 2013 – 12:31 am
Light! SHIT!  What time is it?  My phone had turned itself off in the night and had failed to wake me with an alarm.   I had put off packing until the last minute.  I woke and had a cup of coffee and was immediately prompted to evacuate the pound of granola I had consumed the previous evening.  The discharge was quick and effortless was sufficiently massive to block the the drain pipe from my bathroom toilet.  I grabbed a sufficiently long stick and prodded it, the end result being a quick discharge of the water from the bowl and sunlight greeting me from below.  My hasty and temporary repair of several years prior had failed.   I had no time to tend to this.

I stuffed clothes, toiletries and electronics into a backpack and had a few more cups of coffee with a neighbor who had shown up to give me a ride to town.  My boat was far better off at my house and water taxi drivers are not very reliable.  Besides, I had no desire to give notice that I was vacating.
While walking toward the company that was to take me to the mainland I ran into a wonderful couple I know who work for the Red Cross.  They too were bound for Changuinola.  I had to stop off and pay a fine, they were visiting the hospital.  We chatted for a bit and the conversation somehow turned to black people and their distribution in the various Central American countries. I mentioned that Livingston, Guatemala is the only place blacks live in Guatemala.  Truthfully and perhaps ingratiatingly as all the other passengers were black I mentioned that that was the place to go in the country for the best cooking.  The driver said that blacks always have the best cocaine and marijuana.  I told him what I had said and we all had a hearty laugh.
The stop at the immigration office was quick.  I paid my $150 fine for having overstayed three or four months and the woman was kind enough to take my passport and make three copies for me for thirty cents which was a significant improvement over searching out a pharmacy to make me some copies.
Onward to the border.  The immigration office had been moved a short ways and now the waiting area was covered, better to shelter those coming and going from rain and sun.   A new steel bridge had been constructed next to the dilapidated wooden bridge one must walk employ to walk over the muddy, crocodile filled river.  
The Costa Rica side had a long line and the officials were working particularly slowly.  Having fulfilled my requirements I headed down the hill to the bus stop.  I had missed the last direct bus to San Jose for many hours and caught one to Limon and transferred from there to San Jose.  Almost ten hours after leaving my house I was at the bus terminal in San Jose.  My phone, with the location and phone number for my destination was dead again.  I plugged it into my laptop to charge it while standing in a light drizzle.  A Colombian guy approached me and asked if I needed a taxi.  No help is necessary, taxis are everywhere at the bus stop.  He wiped my computer dry and I showed my phone to a taxi driver to make a phone call.  Once again the owner was not available and the maid had no idea where they were located.
In a broken down, $600 taxi cab, the engine repeatedly surging, I sat in the passenger seat, unable to see through the fogged over windshield or to roll down my window due to a missing window I handle we sat in traffic and discussed tastes in women.  He mentioned that women from the Dominican Republic were black and that they had no appeal to him, a pretty random statement.
Ten phone calls later, there are no addresses in Costa Rica we finally arrived.  Maria was standing out front and greeted me warmly.  Last time I was there she washed all my clothes for free and gave me her son’s shirt. 
My son was asleep.  He had arrived earlier and was picked up by the dentist’s driver and taken to the office. I woke him and he groggily gave me a hug.  The dentist had sliced open Karl’s gums to reveal the titanium studs that had been implanted nearly two years prior. He was not looking his best.
Another couple, from Montreal, was staying there, the wife was being treated by the same dentist and sported a toothless grin.  Presently we had dinner and the husband dominated the airwaves.  What ensued could hardly be considered conversation.  We were unfortunate enough to learn about his moles, his treatment of same with garlic, his prostate, his worthless 42 year old son, his ex wife thankfully dying (why is it spelled with a “Y”?) of cancer, yadayayayada. STFU!  
Permalink | Comments Off on Off to San Jose
Uncategorized

Adventure

October 20, 2013 – 5:23 pm
I am enjoying my third cup of strong coffee and smoking far too many cigarettes as I sit on my deck on a drizzly Sunday morning.  The parrots who generally would have flown in from the west and departed to the east wither I know not have eschewed their usual perches.  Other birds have taken the opportunity for a brief rest in the large tree that rises from the shore and spreads into a large canopy that welcomes a wide array of birds of different types throughout the day.

Sarah, my companion for the last few days remains in bed three hours past dawn.  Early risers sleep late in the quiet and comfort; it is the usual state of affairs.
This evening Sarah departs to Panama City to visit some fellow Germans, then enjoy a few days in the San Blas Islands and will hopefully return to share my last few days in Bocas with me.  In the mean time, I am off to Costa Rica to meet with my son Karl.  Nearly two years after having titanium screws implanted he has made time to “get his grill fixed.”   
Having been remiss in my responsibility to exit this country every 180 days I shall have to stop off in Changuinola and pay a fine before I can exit.  The border rules are in a constant state of flux.  Every time I crossed the border to Costa Rica I simply had to buy an $18 bus ticket, never to be used from Changuinola to San Jose, Costa Rica.  Now the border officials in Panama are generally insisting on documentation substantiating an exit flight some times even insisting that the flight destination is in the country that issued the traveler’s passport.  This is a strange policy when most of the tourists who enter Bocas del Toro arrive by bus, those arriving from Costa Rica are generally bound to Cartegena, Colombian and often sail out from the San Blas Islands. As my next flight is to San Diego, California,  this strange and counter productive policy will not trouble me this trip.
I doubt I shall have much time to document my trip as I will be spending what may well be my last adventure with Karl.  We intend to SCUBA dive a great deal, do some trekking and if offshore fishing isn’t too expensive attempt to get some big game fish.  Now if only I could get my dog Jessica to stop licking my big toe.  I stubbed the hell out of it a couple of days ago and bent the nail backwards to the quick.
One day in San Jose and then it is off to Quepos for some scuba diving and fishing while the teeth are being made, then back to San Jose for the final work.  Karl will return to the states in time for Halloween and I will have a few days to tend to matters before I head off for adventure.  I leave on the sixth of November to Panama City and then to San Diego on the eighth to visit my son Mark, sister Mary and her daughter Cheryl.  
I will do provision a bit, head up to San Francisco for a day or two and head out to Bangkok, the first stop on a long adventure around Southeast Asia.
BCD Boyancy Compensation Device
The house will be watched by a Cuban guy who lives in Bocas.  It wasn’t easy to find a trustworthy soul to watch the house.  One has to have his own boat and gas money.  That rules out almost everybody in Bocas that doesn’t already own a house. I have sold off a few things and will be leaving the rest.  The house is for sale, but I expect many years will pass before I even get an offer.
I intend to dive a great deal, perhaps become a dive master.   I am trying to decide whether travelling with dive gear is worth the trouble. Fins and a BCD take up far more room than all the clothes I intend to take, will require a separate bag, and are awkward to carry.
The parrots have belatedly arrived after the drizzling stopped.  I took Sarah for a brief walk in the jungle behind my house to see the tiny red frogs.  We were but three feet onto the jungle and they were everywhere.  “These things sell for $400 apiece on the black market, they live nowhere but the islands of Bocas.”
Sarah is going to take my Nikon SLR camera with her to Panama City to be dropped off for repair. I tried to get a taxi driver to do this, it ended up costing me $150 dollars and I got the box back unopened.   
I have little to pack.  Wow! just listed and sold my Kayak in five minutes.  C’mon girl, pack, I’ll deliver the kayak, we can go to the Oktoberfest and I will drop you off in town.  To be continued.
Permalink | Comments Off on Adventure
Uncategorized

Boat Work

October 2, 2013 – 3:46 pm
Please come to my house today to put on my lower unit.

Yesterday I got off my ass and put the panga in running order.   I have no intention of buying a new outboard for the skiff.  

My Panga had been sitting at my house since my return from David, several weeks ago.  It had spent many months in front of a fiberglass guy’s house, he was going to give me a quote in May to rip out the floor and replace it with planks of treated pine.   The 3/4″ marine plywood floor is topped with a ridiculously thick layer of fiberglass.  Extropolation of the weight of a section that had been removed last December yielded an estimate that the boat would be a thousand pounds lighter.   I should have tended to that while I was tooling around on the skiff.

Oh well, you can’t change history.

I called a mechanic to have him bring out and install a new lower unit I had bought.  Actually I bought an entire engine as the price for the whole thing was barely more than the cost of repairing my lower unit.  A few days later a friend’s boat sunk and I notified him that I had a parts engine.  He got a $2,000 computer and an $800 starter for $475.  I got an $800 lower unit for $475.  I could have probably gotten him to buy his parts for more than the $950 the engine cost, but, what the hell.  Is everybody happy?

I called Casa Verde, one of my favorite in town hangouts.  Why is it a fave?  It is frequented by a lot of cuties just passing through, by friends who live on sailboats, moored in the south anchorage, shuttling to town in their inflatable dinghies, and it is water front so it gets a breeze and water views sure beat looking at the street.


Oh yeah, Casa Verde.  I had the lower unit, the part that sticks in the water with the prop, a battery, a bilge pump and switch contraption and a gas tank.  

Putting on a lower unit is not a big deal, one slides the shifting rod into the matching orifice and installing a few bolts.  Nevertheless it was easier and cheaper to have the mechanic, who had the bolts, come out than to take a water taxi to town and then back home with the parts.

The mechanic called to tell me that he had arrived.  I  could see him coming over a mile away.  He asked me to come down.  I walked down to the dock, he had nothing to say. Back up a hundred stairs.

He called me down many times, could I turn the flywheel?  Did I have a set of pliers? Pliers? What kind of hack???  Now I had to watch.  The drive shaft is stuck?  Put it in gear and turn the prop, bonehead.

The lower unit was installed and he asked me to start the motor.  “Is there oil in the lower unit and in the engine?” “I didn’t check.”  Jesus.   “Do you have a screwdriver?” Back to the house.

The boat was pulled into water deep enough to get the lower unit in the water.  Outboards need the water to cool.  Shit, back up to the house to get the keys.  The engine was lowered, but the battery was dead.   I inspected the wiring and found that while the fiberglass guy was “watching” my boat he had hastily stripped a couple of wires and twisted them together without so much as a wire nut. Both wires were floating in the water.  Well, that battery is toast a short does more than drain the battery, it fries it.  Yeah, well, Texas toast is fried.


The little battery I had been using to power the bilge pump in the skiff didn’t have enough juice to start the motor.  It made more sense to tow the boat to town to work on it than to run for a battery when surely something else would be needed.

It was a long slow ride on a relatively cool, sunny day.  Chow Kai, the only waterfront hardware store closes daily from noon to two.  At our rate it would be well past two before we arrived.  

I picked up a new battery, didn’t pay for it and told Shakey to keep my ticket open.  Back in for new terminals.  The mechanic attached the wires.  The gas wouldn’t prime.  In for a new primer bulb.  Still wouldn’t prime.  One hose at a time was disconnected and a clogged one was found.  The plastic lining had dissolved and formed a plug.  Cutting off a couple of inches, the line was cleared, but now too short to attach without a strain.  I bought a new line and installed it while my mechanic worked on a generator on the dock that someone was trying to start.  He kept asking me for tools, my tools, that were in my boat, while I was trying to work.  Get your fat lazy ass in the boat and fetch them yourself, I am doing the work I am paying you to do.

Then I put the battery in the console, managing to rip out the clip for the wire to the bilge pump.  The wire was all corroded, probably wicked up the entire length.  As far back as I could strip it was virtually dust.  I put on a new terminal anyway and pull new wire manana.


I primed the bulb and fired her up and she ran smoothly and quietly but I immediately shut it off as the water discharge from the cooling was not pissing into the ocean. There really isn’t a risk of damage as the computer will shut down the motor if it starts to overheat but there was no point in just idling it.  Damn, I hope it’s not the impeller.  Impellers are made of rubber and can dry out and crack if the engine is not periodically started.  Nope, a simple probe with a wire, cleaning out the opening, fixed it.
The interior of the boat was filthy, but the hull was far worse.  Months of being idle resulted in dense, thick coverage of barnacles.  I bought some plastic scrapers and hired an Indian to scrape the bottom of the boat.  The scrapers were not nearly up to the task and were quickly torn to shreds.  I reluctantly bought a steel scraper, which I feared would fuck up my $600 anti fouling paint job, but the boat was cleaned and the paint looked none the worse.

I ended up giving the mechanic $30 for what I should have paid $10, the agreed upon balance to put the lower unit back on but I was feeling magnanimous.

Eventually I took off for home.  The steering was stiff.  I had best lubricate the steering rod before I destroy my teleflex steering cable and control box.   The low cost of acquisition of tiller operated two strokes is the primary reason they are the most popular way to power boats around here, lower maintenance is a factor for people with money who have lived here a while. Keep it simple.

My trip seemed slow, but my phone GPS reported that I was travelling at 18 MPH.  That speed just seems slower when riding in comfort.  Even six miles with the plug out was not enough to drain all the water out from under the floor.
Today I shall go off to town, run some new wires for the bilge pump and clean the interior.
I am still waiting on my bank card.


Permalink | Comments Off on Boat Work
Uncategorized

Slow Week

September 28, 2013 – 11:16 pm
Not much, you?

I didn’t do shit all week.

Yesterday

Yesterday, I woke up, had a coffee and checked my stocks.  WTF? Lumber Liquidators has been yielding me an effective annual yield of over 100% and now this.  The stock was only down a bit more than 5% at the end of the day and I think it will fully recover. Fortunately, this time my trailing loss % sell order was not executed as it had been cancelled by trading company as a result of a corporate action.  I wish they wouldn’t do that, but this time I came out ok else I would have been down more money than I live on for a year.

This morning I got online and ordered things I would need for my forthcoming trip.  Hopefully I have some good fitting, high quality, lightweight, durable hiking boots coming soon. Other supplies were ordered and I have more to go.

My bank card has been sent from Texas to Florida where it should be on its way to me.

Time to get out and do some things.  I bought a kayak a while ago and hadn’t used it yet, so I took it across the bay and walked across Bastimentos to Red Frog Beach.  

One cutie with whom I spent a week was over there, came over and gave me a big hug.  I didn’t see her again and asked for her whereabouts.  She was staying on somebody’s boat.  As they say in Bocas “She is not your girlfriend, it’s just your turn.”

Somebody came up to me, told me his boat had been stolen last week and then asked if I would be willing to rent my house out long term. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Yowzah! They are currently paying $450 for a house much smaller than mine, farther from town and without a refrigerator or water.  Not quite sure how that all works out for them.

Feeling pretty good about things. My health is fine and shit is coming together.  My goal is to be out of here by November.  We shall see.

Permalink | Comments Off on Slow Week
Uncategorized

Moving On

September 23, 2013 – 12:07 am
Yesterday I took the skiff to town and then headed a short distance to the Pickled Parrot on Carenero for the monthly third Saturday of the month pig roast.

After a few hours I headed back to town.  I had to make an emergency turn to avoid a lunatic water taxi driver.  I pushed hard to the left to turn right and was left holding air, by the time I turned around there were nothing but expanding rings were my new outboard had sunk to the depths.  I was but a few hundred yards from my destination.

After travelling nearly a thousand miles in day trips of over 100 miles the shortest ride I ever took was shorter than anticipated.  I took note of my position and called a friend who quickly arrived with his boat equipped with side facing sonar.   We were pretty sure we saw the motor and a small plume of gas.  As the 15 HP has an external tank there is not much gas in the engine.  The coordinates were recorded and I was pulled to town.

“How’s it going Jim?”  “See my boat? Notice anything different?”  Few people noticed that it no longer had an outboard.   Ahh, well, what can you do?  I chatted with people a bunch of girls who had gone on boat rides with me, some locals.   The usual bullshit from uninformed residents born here, saying the water was only 20 feet deep.  It was 52 to 60 according to the depth finder.  Not bad, but I was in a muddy section.

After a while I just took a hotel room and went to bed early.  I managed to convince the hotel to let me stay without ID or payment, “I’ll pay you later.”  Don’t forget my wallet was given to the sea a couple of days prior.

In the morning I contacted Tony Sanders, owner and operator of Starfleet Scuba.  He agreed to help me and asked if I would help him with some plumbing problems in exchange.  Nobody can plumb worth a damn in Bocas.  It’s going to be an easy job for me. The dive was delayed on account of rain.  I wish we had had a lot more, remember my tanks were empty.

A boat was dispatched with four divers and a search was conducted but the motor was not found it is probably under a few feet of mud.    He traded me the services for some plumbing work, calling it a more civil arrangement.  I have about four hours of plumbing work to do, he offered me four hours of divers, with equipment and a boat.

Hopefully I can get some divers in the water at the same time as some guy with a side facing sonar and

I went to a chili cookoff, got too hot in the sun, and left shortly after the band started as it was too loud to talk so I walked down the street, hung out with some friends at a quiet spot where we could just hear the music.  They were kind enough to give me a ride and drop me off on the way home.

What’s next?  I need a change.  A big change.

First I will get the lower unit that I bought put back on my panga then I will probably only go to town to get groceries while I plan my next adventure.  I really need to put that kayak to some use and I could use the exercise.

So, I have to prevail on some friends to give me some cash and I will pay them via paypal.  Then I will cancel my debit card and order a new one.  It will have to be mailed to Texas, then to Florida, then forwarded to Panama City and then to Bocas.  It’s a pain in the ass.  I really don’t want to book a flight until I have it in hand but that would put my flight out at least a month.  I won’t replace the outboard on the skiff as I might not be coming back.  In any event it would just sit here, depreciate, probably get used without authority and possibly get stolen.  I couldn’t possibly burn up enough gas in a month to justify it.

But my days of hundred mile boating excursions for fun have come to an end.  My panga has about two weeks  worth of work to be done on it that I should have had done long ago, but it’s Bocas, not entirely my fault, but mostly, I was just not up to it or having too much fun to deal with it.

Permalink | Comments Off on Moving On
Uncategorized

Exhausted, Sore and Without Water

September 21, 2013 – 2:56 pm
Exhausted, dark, peeling, healing, waterless.

Where the hell have I been?  For a couple of months I was bed bound, anemic, weak, pale and fighting an auto immune disorder that I have had for thirty years.  It’s not life threatening, but it wears me down from time to time.

During that time I had few adventures, but one notable one to Rio Cana and the Island of Escudo.

Allow me to break for a coffee, using the last of the bottled water I have with me.

I won’t go into the details of my health, suffice to say that covered with bleeding, supporative wounds, hair matted with pus and blood, sticking to the sheets.  Every time I rolled something peeled off and exuded more vile bodily fluids.

An Ngobe I knew had a brother that needed some work.  Between clearing land and planting pineapples, palm trees, banana trees and various fruit trees I dispatched him to town to buy food.  The doctors in Bocas were not much help.  Eventually I went to David for medical treatment.  That was a medical disaster and I ended up leaving my wallet in a cab, getting it returned shortly thereafter sans money, getting a night club jammed in my sternum for entering a grocery store without shoes and losing my new tablet computer.

One night I went out for dinner and on the return trip asked the driver for his name and number in case I wasn’t up to taking the four hour bus ride from the Pacific to the Caribbean. The cab fare was $2.  He didn’t have change for a twenty so I popped into my hotel to get change and he took off.  I tried to flag him down but he ignored me.  He didn’t respond to my phone calls. The next night I saw him on the street in front of a bar with my tablet.  He had already paid somebody to do a factory reset.  How do I know it was mine?  It was in a very distinctive case.  As he was surrounded by a group of locals I couldn’t exactly grab it from his hands.

I went to the police station to report, they sent me to the office of judicial investigations, who sent me to the corregidor (a type of sheriff).  That office was closed and was closed the next day.  Ahh, to hell with it.  I wasn’t going to stick around for a couple of days to prosecute on the off chance that I would get it returned at an expense greater than the value of the lost equipment.

After a frustrating week and feeling significantly better I returned home but convalescence wasn’t in the cards. At one point I diagnosed with cutaneous leishmanias but a blood test proved that to be incorrect, thank the stars.

A woman was visiting from Brooklyn, another from Germany.  So, I did the usual and showed them around, boating to exotic and wonderous places. A long couple of days with Julia and sunshine and I started to feel human.

Tamika came down from Brooklyn with a camera I had bought online at Amazon.  Turned out  that all of the menus were in Japanese.   She also brought me a hammock I had ordered, complete with mosquito netting and a rainfly to be used on my overnight forays in remote jungle locations.

A neighbor had a kayak for sale, I bought it.

The Ngobe gardener who was going to watch my house while I was gone, with his family extended his stay for another three weeks.  They left a couple of days ago after consuming all of my water.  Without my knowledge he switched to my secondary tank, drained it and then decided it was time to move on.  No good deed goes unpunished.

Then, boating.  Girls, girls, girls. I don’t know, Olivia from Australia, Amy from New Zealand, a couple of German girls, a couple more German girls, more girls, girls from Panama City, Santiago, I lose track. Where do they all come from? They run into other girls in other countries, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua.  You’re going to Bocas?  See if you can spend some time with Jim.
Locals give them my number.

Expats cruising the hangouts looking for pretty young things.  A guy named Bill approached a beautiful tall exotic looking Australian woman. I overheard Bill say, “Jim Schmidt? Good luck with that!” as he stormed away.  I walked over to her.  “Hi, I’m Jim.   I heard Bill say my name are you looking for me?”  “You’re Jim Schmidt?”  “Yup.”  We chatted, bill glowered.  “hat guy is scary.  He got very angry when I mentioned your name.” “Bill is always chasing girls and is always alone, he is one frustrated guy.” We chatted some more and headed out to snorkel. An afternoon of snorkeling turned into four days of adventure, smiles and fun.

Seven hundred miles of boating in ten days.  This place is fairly small but full of new things to see if one explores.

Snorkeling, dolphins,  fish, Indian Villages, pizza, beaches, a bat cave, dropping in on friends, stopping off to check out random rivers.

An afternoon lazing on a hut built over the water miles from nowhere.

Then there was yesterday, day two with two German cuties.

We headed to explore the river to Changuinola, off to Bird Island where we watched frigate birds and boobies in great abundance and actually drove the boat through the opening in the island.  A giant crab fell down on one of the girls.  The most exciting day they had experienced in five days of travel had yet begun to unravel.

We were hot and decided to take a dip on an isolated beach on the windward side of Isla Colon.  Bad call.  The sand fell away precipitously, the waves picked up and started throwing the boat around.  Waves washed up over the stern and splashed the cowling.  We tried to drag the boat up on the shore but it was several tons heavier on account of the water in the boat.  Sand was thrown into the mix.  The contents of the boat floated around and with the withdrawing seas, out to sea.  

My water resistant backpack, with a camera and smart phone in it floated around in the sea water.  Water is bad for electronics.  Sea water is death.  Everything was double bagged, but these bags have seen a lot of use.  Good for unexpected rain, not good for immersion.

I tried to get the boat turned around, bow away from shore.  The girls were trying to drag the boat up onto the beach.  I was yelling at them to get away. The boat was lifted and thrown on me repeatedly.  One of the girls was going to get help.   I had to yell at her as loud as I could.  “Come back here.”  Don’t need a girl wandering barefoot through miles of jungle as the sun is setting.  Give it a couple of hours the sea will calm down at sunset.  With each big wave the boat was dragged up a little farther.  The seas were calming.

I  pulled the plug and a thousand gallons of water drained out of the little boat.   One of the girls insisted I consume some homeopathic remedy.  Homeopathy, what a crock of shit.  I pretended to consume her curative and drank two liters of water.

Finally I decided it was time to go.  We needed the aid of the seas to get the boat off the beach.  Wait too long and no waves would reach the boat.  We pulled the bow around and rapidly threw our belongings back on the boat.  Fortunately the upper unit on the outboard had received nothing more than splashes on the cowling as I had tilted it up full.  Now was there salt water in the tank?  That would be death.  I tilted the tank so that the pickup was at the upper point as gas floats on water.  It fired up right away and we took off.

Soon I was checking through my possessions.   The phone worked, the camera worked.  Where is my USB cable?  While checking for a three dollar cable I flipped my walled overboard in fifty feet of water.  Fortunately, I was just about out of money and there was little to replace.  I dove in anyway and upon pulling myself over the boat lost my pants.  The pockets were filled with sand.  I was naked on the bottom of the boat for but a short time as I had a spare pair of shorts in my backpack.

Back to town, the girls took me to a lovely seafood dinner.  On the way Bill glowered at us as he sat alone at the balcony at the wine bar.  Someone had picked up the octopus, crabs, fish and lobster I had bought at sea from a fishman in a dugout canoe.   Home to a deep sleep.

There you go, kind of caught up.  Working on putting together a real adventure, but the vagaries of my life warrant that I should actually begin the adventure before posting a plan.

Pictures

Permalink | Comments Off on Exhausted, Sore and Without Water

« Previous Page — Next Page »

« Previous Page — Next Page »