Swords, hair removal and firemen – City Chase 2010 recap!

Another year down, another day of fun and mayhem on the streets of Vancouver, and now we have 365 days to recover for next year’s City Chase!   My legs have that kinda sore “you had a good workout” buzz, my feet are tired, I have turf burns on my knees and am missing a patch of hair from my right arm, and it was totally worthit.  It always is.  For those of you who didn’t read my blog from last year, shame on you.  Because of that I now have to explain again what the City Chase is (everyone always asks), so here’s the reader’s digest version: you and a teammate join 300-plus other teams, are given a clue sheet with a whole bunch of locations/tasks on it, and you have a maximum of 6 hours to get to and complete 10 of these challenges before racing back to the finish line.  How you do this and what order you do these challenges in is totally up to you, the only rule really is that you can only travel by foot or public transportation. Now that’s out of the way, here’s the annual awesome blow-by-blow recap of how we, Team Llamaface! completed the 2010 Vancouver City Chase.

If you saw a whole bunch of people in red jerseys, some with capes and one guy in a banana costume running around on Saturday, particularly around the start/finish line at Granville Square, that was us.  As one tourist commented, “I don’t think it’s the Gay Pride parade, but I’m not sure” which, of course, made us all cheer and high five her as we ran past.  It started right at 10am, when they told us to run to the Olympic torch.  We were off!  Adrenaline was pumping, excitement was swelling, and we still had no idea what the hell we were going to have to do.  At the torch we finally got our clue sheets and set about deciphering where we needed to go.  From advanced hints sent out via Facebook and Twitter on Friday night we knew that there was going to be something at Portside Park, so we decided to hop a bus right there and figure everything else out on the way.

Chasepoint #1 – 8 Legs or None

One team member had to reach into a big bowl of mealworms and wood chips and find a marble.  The colour of the marble determined what your teammate had to do.  I’m better with creepy crawly things than my teammate Eric, so we figured he would draw the marble, because whatever I had to do was undoubtedly going to be worse.  Yep, it was.  We drew the “mystery box”, which meant that I had to draw a number from a bowl and whatever number I drew was the number of Madagasgar hissing cockroaches I had to dig out of a box and put into a bowl.  I’ve actually held one of these things before (long story) and knew they were dry and harmless, so I just jumped in and was done before Eric had the chance to take my photo.  Nine to go.

Chasepoint #2 – Chasepoint #1

This isn’t as confusing as it looks, the Chasepoint was actually titled “Chasepoint #1″ but it was the second one we did that day, so it was our Chasepoint #2.  A clue we had received via Facebook a few days before the race (but we expected this, because this is the only Chasepoint they actually have every year) said that if we raised CAD$50.00 for Right to Play we would get a Chasepoint stamp that we could pick up at one of two places on the course.  Portside park was one of those two places, so fifteen minutes after the race started we had two of ten checked off.  Sweet.  Eight to go.

Chasepoint #3 – BOWLERAMA

The course this year was probably the most logically laid out of all seven years they have had a Vancouver City Chase, as 90% of the points followed the Canada Line Skytrain line, which is exactly what I had hoped for.  The plan was to hop on the train, go to the farthest away point and work our way back, since the finish line was right beside Waterfront Station. This also gave us more time in transit to plan the rest of our route, so we headed to Richmond.  The idea was to find the Richmond Lawn Bowling Club, which we, thanks to our phone-a-friend online at home, had the exact address to.  Well, we get there, are standing at that exact spot, and find… nothing.  It was a housing development.  After wandering around for twenty frustrating minutes, including asking a whole bunch of people, including other lost Chase teams, we decided to cut our losses and abort.  So we hopped back onto the train, pissed that we had spent all that time on the train for nothing.  Damn.

Chasepoint #3 (revised) Fling it Good

I work at Oakridge Mall, so when the clue said to get to the frisbee golf course at Queen Elizabeth Park, I was on my home turf.  We got off at the Oakridge stop (it was hard, but I resisted the urge to run into my office and say hi to my co-workers) and were soon there.  One team member had to try to get a frisbee into the goal in under four shots.  If they succeeded it was all good, but if it was four shots that meant the non-throwing team member had to have a strip of their arm hair waxed off.  Six or more shots they would loose an eyebrow.  Eric is a much better frisbee-er than I am, not to mention he’s go the arm hair of a shetland, so it was very clear right from the start he was going to throw.  The feeling of helplessly watching the fate of your body hair fly through the air was nerve, wracking let me tell you!  But a good first shot got him close and he was nearly done in three, but a missed “put” meant I was getting my arm waxed.  Poop.  That hurt.  How invented this process?  Medieval torturers?  Thankfully you still can’t really see the missing patch of hair, but the wax didn’t all come off my arm, and when I tried to peel it off all it did was make my hands sticky, so I had to complete the rest of the race with a two-inch square of orange wax on my arm. Seven to go.

Chasepoint #4 – The Wanderers

This one was conveniently located right beside the frisbee golf, so for once we didn’t have to worry about bus schedules or how far we had to walk.  Using high-tech orienteering gear (little beeper tags) and a map we had to navigate a portion of the park and clock in at 12 hidden checkpoints in order.  If we got the order wrong there was a penalty.  This one we made up some good time on, even passing some teams who were already on the course ahead of us.  I might not know my left from my right most days, but I can sure read a map   Four down, six to go.

Chasepoint #5 – Barefoot

This one required about 20 minutes of walking to go from Queen Elizabeth Park to Douglas Park, and we didn’t succeed in finding a bus, so our only option was to hoof it all the way.  By now we were tired, but our successes at Queen ElizabethPark had us invigorated.  We were in good shape.  This challenge was to be tied to your partner, three-legged-race style, and dribble a ball with your foot in a slalom pattern between wine bottles.  At each bottle you had to stop and pick up a glass of water and carry on a waiter’s tray, eventually making a pyramid 6 glasses high.  This was frustrating, damp, and my waxy arm kept sticking to Eric, but we did it, no worries.  As we were putting our shoes back on afterwards the announcement went out on the crew’s walkie-talkies that the first place team had crossed the finish line already.  Damn.  We were only half way there.  I don’t know how they did it… they must have run the whole thing or something.  Damn those uber athletic people!  But we were still in pretty good shape compared to most of the other teams we encountered along the way.  Five to go.

Chasepoint #6 – Blind Grams

Once again, this point was only a block away from the last, so we were there before we knew it and ready to rock.  One of us had to be blindfolded and go out into a field and retrieve seven puzzle pieces, directed by their partner’s voice, and then once all pieces were gathered we could remove the blindfold and both put it together in the shape of a swan.  We learned last year that Eric gives good directions (he actually does know his left from right, go figure), so I was blindfolded.  Besides, nobody would believe us if we said he was the better listener ;P !!! Retrieving the pieces was cake, and putting it together only took a bit longer.  Six down, four to go.

Chasepoint #7  Thumb-athalon

A quick five block walk brought us to the Rogers store at the corner of Oak adn 15th, where we both picked up blackberry smartphones.  We sere seperated, and Eric got a clue sheet with 6 questions on it, which he texted to me.  I had to run around the neighbourhood and find the answers, like what the cost of a shwarma plate was at the nearby flafal joint, or how much the transaction fee was at the ATM inside Esquires Coffee.  The questions were the easy part, but for a tech newbie like me, figuring out how to text/send pics back to Eric took 90% of the time!  All told, though, we powered through this and were soon on our way again.  Three to go.

Chasepoint #8  Local Heroes

Another short five minute walk got us to the plaza behind City Square mall, and a whole bunch of firemen.  Insert happy dance here.  When I wasn’t staring at the firemen we had to don firemen’s hats and jackets, drag a weighted dummy around a course, knock over a cone by spraying a firehose, unroll a full-length firehose and then roll it back up and carry it over a marked line.  This is actually the identaical chasepoint they had in East Vancouver last year, so Eric and I powered through this, already knowing exactly what to do.  Which was good, because it gave me more time to stare at the firemen.  Mmmm, firemen…. Two to go!

Chasepoint #9 – National Defense

This is where reading what the challenges are, not just if their location is convenient, is a good thing.  We didn’t do this.  I have a tendancy to never do this.  Hence the fact that last year Eric had to eat canned smoked oysters adn make this awesome gag/puke sound.  Still apologizing for that one.  A few blocks’ walk got us to Jonathan Rogers Park, just off Broadway, and it was only when we rounded the corner that we realized this was a military obsticle course.  Crap.  This is the type of chasepoint that the really athletic people do.  Like the Olympic Triatheletethat won in Montreal.  He would have been all over this.  We, on the other hand, actually went so far as to pull out the clue sheet, determine there really was nothing else remotely close to us and this fit so perfectly in our master plan, and resign ourselves to the fact that we had to do the freaking thing.   At this point in the day anything more than a strong walk took effort, so, like prisoners walking the green mile, we reluctantly reported for duty, Sir.  They smeared war paint on our faces and fitted us with 20-lb tactical vests and helmets, then our (incredibly nice – we lucked out) drill seargenthad us run up and down the embankment four times, then do 15 push ups and 15 sit ups.  Then came the belly crawl, which tore up the insides of my knees and got a really big wad of dead grass stuck to the wax blob on my arm.  Eric, exhausted and the last in line, cried “but I make video games!” as he put what effort he had left into the crawl.  Hilarious.  But we weren’t done.  That would have been too easy.  Run ten feet, drop to your belly, jump up and repeat the pattern 5 times.  Then, holding hands withanother team, run the lengthof the football field and back, ending with a scramble over a picnic table.  Suddenly I felt like a Survivor contestant, the slow one who gets dragged along by their teammates when they’re all tied together for a challenge.  Not good, but we were done.   One to go!

Chasepoint #10 – En Garde

After a few minutes to recover, it was back onto the Canada Line to Waterfront station and our last challenge of the day.  We had specifically worked it so that this point was our last: it was close to the finish line, we knew where it was without assistance, and I was not going home until I’d done the swordfighting chasepoint.  This is the third year they have had fencing/swordplay, and the first two I had missed because it just wasn’t logical to go all the way there on the route I was running.  This year, however, they had given us the clue the night before (in the form of a facebook-posted crossword I was frantically filling in at 11:30 pm) of Academie Duello, the fencing academy right downtown.  Perfect.  We could make our route specifically so this one was included.   So we crawled in, were fitted withfencing helmets, and I got on a wooden horse (can’t help but insert the Old Spice parody here: we now smell like the team you want your team to smell like, and I’m on a horse) holding a shield and six foot wooden spear.  Eric pushed the horse along a course and I had to spear 3 rings as we went.  Then off the horse, he had to do 15 diamond push ups while I fought off an attacker with a longsword.  SWEEEEEEEEEEEEET!  This wasn’t a play sword, either, it was ten pounds of ting!ting!ting! metal and a crazy guy swinging at my head.  Let me tell you, if it wasn’t for that helmet, I wouldn’t have a head, because his sword was bouncing off me like nobody’s business.  After that, to prove that torture is always fair, I had to do 15 burpies(I HATE BURPIES) while Eric defended himself with two metal shields against an equally crazy guy wielding two swords at his head.  Yay helmets.  We made it out barely alive, but we were done!

The finish line was only three blocks away, so we sprinted (read: walked until we knew the people holding the ribbon could see us then ran to make it look like we had energy left) across it.  Done!  Chased and conquered.  We were exhausted, happy, hadn’t fought all day, and thought we had done pretty good.  The official results were just posted today (if you’re not first you’re in the dark for a few days following the Chase, as it takes a few days for the judges to make sure everything is accurate ), and we finished in 98th place!  Out of 351 teams!  In seven years this is the first time I’ve ever broken the 100 mark, and we beat our record from last year by over a hundred teams.  High five!

All told it was awesome, fun, exhausting and I’m totally doing it again next year!

Tags: adventure, City Chase, crazy, fun, The Amazing Race, vancouver

Gearing up for the Vancouver City Chase!

It’s that time of year again: time for the Vancouver City Chase!

Quite possibly my favorite day of the year, it’s the only day that I get to run around like a madwoman, doing all sorts of random adventures in the best city in the world!  At this point all we know is where the start/finish line is and that a secret hint delivered by facebook directs us to Portside Park, but what we have to do there is still a mystery.  Awesome.  And just because they love me (yes, I choose to believe this), they have decided this year to hold it on my birthday.  Yep, Saturday is all about meeeeee!!

So now we’re in prep mode, which is always an interesting thing to do when you don’t know what you’re prepping for.  My teammate is hitting the gym (of course, two whole days of exercise is going to make a huge difference, lol!) and I’m hitting the streets, trying to familiarize myself with the areas downtown I don’t often get a chance to see.  Like I had no idea where Portside Park was until I google mapped it.  With the Canada Line getting you from downtown to Richmond in 20 minutes, that opens up a whole new section of Vancouver that we never could access before, since you would loose too much time in transit to actually complete the race in the allocated 6 hours.  My spider-sense is telling me to check out areas around the Canada Line stops.  Since my office is not too far from a Canada Line station, I already have my coworkers prepped that if I call they’ll quickly do anything I need (love them!).  Going near work would be too awesome for words. But, of course, I could be way off and doing all this for nothing as the route this year could be completely in the other direction.  That surprise is the wonder of the Chase. 

So far this year, in the other City Chases accross Canada, they have done stuff like strip bowling, holding a live crocodile, whitewater kayaking, shooting machine guns and completing a military obsticle course, so God knows what we’ll be asked to do, but one thing’s for sure: it’s going to be epic. 

And I’m going to love every second of it.

Full recap to follow!!!

Tags: awesome, City Chase, race, The Amazing Race, vancouver

In my next life I want to be a Japanese tourist!

No kidding.  Japanese tourists really have it down.  I’m jealous.

Think about it:  they’re everywhere.  You could be in the middle of arctic Canada watching the Northern Lights or wandering the Beriloche region of Argentina, and, inevitably you will encounter a Japanese tour group.  Usually led by a man in a suit carrying a little flag or an umbrella with cat ears on it, something so that he doesn’t get lost in the crowd.  I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing, that the Japanese are culturally obligated to explore this world, or if it’s down to sheer population (there’s only so much room in Japan, so 30% of them must be on vacation at any given time? Yes, I’m kidding.  Sort of), but they just seem to appear in more places all the time than any other culture.

It could also be that they’re easier to notice, too, as they tend to travel in large groups.  This is a great idea.  There’s nothing more fun then hanging out with a whole bunch of your friends in a cool corner of the planet, the memories you’ll share can last a lifetime.  The only downside to large groups is that the logistics of arranging them are a royal pain, as, in my experience, as soon as you find a date that works for 80% of the group the other 20% will not be able to go/find it too hot at that time of the year/be called for jury duty, and then the group that was alright with the date in the first place won’t want to go without them, so you scrap the plans and start again.  After three or four attempts at this, most groups just say screw it, divide into smaller two to six people groups and each get the vacation they want.  The Japanese just seem to manage the group dynamic so much better.  If there’s a secret, please share it with me, because I’m dying to know.

There’s another reason why I tend to notice Japanese tour groups, too: their fashion sense.  It’s insane.  In the best possible way.  They just don’t play by the same fashion rules that us boring westerners do, and it rocks.  I was walking downtown Vancouver the other day and was passed by a tour group entirely made up of Japanese students in their late teens/early twenties, and I had to stop and marvel.  It was hot and sunny, and there was a girl in a floor length lace dress (housecoat?) with cowboy boots and a giant flowered hat, while her friend was in rainbow striped leggings and a floral blouse, and the guy behind them was wearing gangster baggy jeans, high-tops and a frilly tuxedo shirt. If I tried to wear any of that crap someone would ask me if I got dressed by grabbing random things from the bargain bin at Value Village and then probably ask me if I needed a lift to the halfway house, but on these uninhibited kids the looks worked. I’m gobsmacked.  And totally envious.  Because they looked so purely, truly happy.

And then there’s the photo thing.  At any given moment there will be 400 Japanese tour groups around the world posing for photos.  Every ten minutes they must stop and take a giggling, squealing “look where we are now!” photo. While flashing the “peace sign”.  Anything can be the subject of the photo, as pretty much everything this world has to offer is cool enough to be commemorated in your digital camera.  I work in a mall that, for all intents and purposes, looks exactly like every other mall on earth, and six months ago we had a tour group walk through the mall and they posed for group photos in front of our boring travel agency office window, the mall directory, the water fountain… and they had the same enthusiasm for that as they would if they were in front of Buckingham Palace or the Arc de Triumph.    Photo finishing companies in Tokyo must be rolling in the cash!  Now that’s how to make a buck, let me tell you.

I’m inspired.  I want to travel the world while having a joyous, “I don’t care what anyone thinks” attitude and taking ten million photos.  So if you’ll excuse me, I need to charge my digital camera, round up some friends, don my duck hat and see the world.

Peace sign.

Tags: camera, fashion, funky, groups, Japanese, tourist, tours

I want to go to Vietnam for the food.

               Yeah, I know, I’m thinking with my stomach again.  But blogging about food has so many fewer calories than actually eating it, so it’s worth it.  Plus, this keeps me on my Jillian Michaels meal plan (that I’m following loosely, with emphasis on the “loose”, but that’s another blog altogether).  So anyway, back to the topic at hand: I have a craving for Vietnamese Pho, and I’m tired of settling for the yummy westernized stuff they serve in Vancouver.  I want real Vietnamese food, and the only way I can get it is to actually go to Vietnam.  There it’s just called food.  Alas, I am still in saving mode after the last trip, and am already paying off the next (California in September – stay tuned!), so my Pho craving will have to wait until next year, at least.  Big pout.  In the meantime, lets all take a moment and fantasize about that cuisine you love and can’t wait to try the authentic version of, or that plate of steaming awesomeness you once had and wish you were back there again. 

                   One of my clients told me, which is probably why this is on my mind in the first place, that he was once in Texas and had a steak so good he actually cried.  I, of course, told him he was a lunatic.  Kidding.  I just thought it.  He had a point though, global cuisine can transform a vacation into an experience.  The local delights are as much of a cultural experience as a dance performance or a museum, but they can be much easier to find and, depending on your tastes,  either way cheaper or waaaaayyy more expensive. 

                Some of the best food in much of southeast Asia can be found at street carts for next to nothing, but it’ll keep you coming back for more.  When I was in Bangkok there was this cart on the corner near my hotel that was little more than a single burner run by jumper cables hooked to a car battery, and there was this real and very dead rooster head hanging from the side, but every morning the line up was practically around the block for a container of their stir fry.  I never tried it, the combination of the line length, the rooster head, and my weenie Canadian palette made me chicken out, but I still think about it, and vow that if I’m ever back there I’m totally eating from the rooster guy’s cart.  If the locals like it, it has to be good.

                  What’s the deal with Korean Kimchi, anyway?  It’s just fermented cabbage buried in a vat underground for like six months, but every time I’ve been out for Korean food, they use it on everything.  I have not acquired the taste for it.  To me it’s like sour… something nasty… but I can’t help but wonder if the stuff you’ll get on your plate of braised short ribs in Seoul would be so much better.  Does the shipping process make it nastier?  Is it less pungent straight from the ground?

            Mmmmm… chicken tikka masala…. another of my faves.  Admittedly, the BF does cook one hell of a home version, but it blows my mind thinking of the layers of rich flavour that can only come from a spice mix hand-ground daily by the women of the village.  Yum.  Just wait until I find myself in India one day and all the spices are ground by your standard coffee grinder, but in the interim I will happily allow my mind to wander to the romantic fantasy I have created.  Besides, I’d go to Vietnam before India, the flight is shorter

              So tell me, what foods would you love to try fresh from the source?

Tags: eat, Food, interesting, kimchi, rooster, stomach, Texas, Thailand, travel, Vietnam, weird

Motivating your motivation

I’m just curious – what makes you want to get up and travel?  What is the kryptonite to your contentment that hits you upside the head and makes you check your available vacation days at work?

For me, it’s my miniscule attention span.  Well, now it’s my job (God knows, talking about all these incredible places all day every day has me in a perpetual state of “where next?” -ing), but even before I was in the industry I had an outbreak of “get me the hell outta here!” at pretty regular six-month intervals.    I just reach my quota of home and need a change of scenery to maintain my mental stability. 

Ooh, and television.  Gets me every time.  Yep, I’m the dork who finds herself in Paris trying to find the same flag on the Arc de Triumph from the 2nd level of the Eiffel Tower that they searched for on the Amazing Race.  Or went to Rainmakers adventure forest in Quepos, Costa Rica, just because the family edition ran through there. 

So what spurs you into action?

Tags: action, Arc de Triumph, Costa Rica, Eiffel Tower, motivation, Paris, travel

ATVs are the new black – Costa Rica, days 8 & 9 – the finale.

So, I’ve discovered I like going fast and I drive like a madwoman.   Plus, I’m capable of doing them both at the same time.  On roads that are little more than goat paths and have ever expanding water features as the rivers roll over them.  All the while giggling like a mental patient and hoping my thighs don’t stick to the seat.  I’m totally okay with all of the above.

Got up bright and early and were picked up by Chino, our super sweet guide (who tried to broker a deal to have me as his fourth wife.  I passed, but I did promise to hang out with him next time I’m in Quepos, although something tells me I’m going to “forget” this) and driven out to London, Costa Rica, population, like, 80.  It was tiny, but cute, with chickens and dogs wandering the street more than people.  We pulled into someone’s driveway (this seemed a little weird until we saw the fifteen ATVs parked there) and, after a quick training course in the fine art of not killing yourself on an ATV, we were off.

It was fantastic.  The path was steep and rocky and wet in places, but that just let you really enjoy what an ATV could do.  This was supposed to be off-roading, and it satisfied. I thought it had been purpose-built for the psycho tourists like us, but after the fact we learned that this actually was the public road in the area.  Fourteen families had no other way in or out of their little isolated village.  Wow.  We had also brought a change of clothes in case we got muddy and messy as the website had warned, but I discovered quickly that if you went faster (and cheered, that was an important part) then teh water sprayed outwards and kept me all dry.

Midway through we stopped and had an hour walk through a beautiful forest and across a suspension bridge that was nothing more than a bunch of metal ladders trussed together a hundred feet up in the air to a waterfall.  This is a perfect place to play and swim, but as it was just the two of us, we opted to just take lots of pictures and dip our feet instead of making the poor guide stand around awkwardly as we splashed in the falls.  Then it was back onto the ATVs and retracing our route back to the start.  On the way back he knew we were capable drivers, so the speeds were much higher, topping out about 50mph.  Sweet.  Only once, when I was trying to avoid some horseback tourists, did I confuse the break and the gas and nearly go shooting off into the jungle.  Leave it to me to only make a mistake when there’s a crowd of people to see it!

Did not want to give that ATV back.  I tried to just drive off, but it just would have taken me too long to drive it all the way back home, and it’s hard to find a good parking space for your ATV in downtown Vancouver, so I left it.

Spent the rest of the day hanging out at the hotel to escape the heat and avoid the torrential downpour that left me epically soaked even under my umbrella when I walked down to the local bodega for supplies.  After that, we deserved a nice dinner, so we cabbed it to El Avion and we got to watch the lightning illuminate the sky from our table under  a plane.

The last full day in Quepos started early, as we had a 6am pickup for our mangrove tour.  They have to start super early to hit the tides at the right times.  Luckily, since the sun rises and sets at 5:00 here, your body clock gets you up early anyway to greet the sun and puts you to sleep early, so that wake up call was not too bad.  The tour group was us and a French family that spoke almost no English, and on our two and a half hour boat tour we saw a few monkeys, some vultures and a couple of skinny raccoons, but that was pretty much it.  Three years ago I had taken the same tour and seen so many animals it was incredible, but today everyone was playing hide and seek from us and they won.  It honestly felt like a colossal waste of time.  And it finished at 9am, so we still had the whole day to fill.

Like every woman, we went shopping.  We got a great deal on a taxi and headed right down to Playa Manuel Antonio, the beach paradise.  I’m far too pale to be a beach bunny, and the sun here fries skin in the blink of an eye (half the people walking around are a painful red colour, and that had already happened to me once this trip, so there was no way I was going through that again), but there’s a few cute souvenir shops and a street market where you can get some good tacky tourist shit (I love this stuff!) as long as you barter for it.  We got a great carved vase for half the price we would have paid in the stores in Quepos.  Of course, today had to be the day it decided not to rain in the afternoon and we tried not to melt as we shopped, took the incredibly cheap public bus back to Quepos, shopped more, and then got all packed up and ready to depart the next morning.

The drive to San Jose was kind of anticlimactic compared to all our other Interbus transfers, as the roads were, well, actual roads the whole way, including an extended stint on a brand new highway.    Our driver took advantage of this by driving super fast, which actually didn’t scare me as much as it should have, I loved the speed.  Clearly the ATV ride has broken my common sense when it came to speeding in this country.  Soon we were back at the Casa Conde, where we discovered our pickup time the next morning for our 10am flight was 515am.  Great.  So we dropped our bags, had some dinner, watched a tiny bit of TV and went to bed early to prep for our 430am wake up call.

Our airport transfer the next day was even early.  He showed up at 5.  Luckily, we were ready anyway, but that got us to the airport at 545.   Cranky and tired and hungry we checked in for our flight, cleared security and hit the food court for a giant cinnabon breakfast.  Normally I wouldn’t  eat 1500 calories of sugary goodness for breakfast, but it just seemed to be a fitting send off for our time in Costa Rica.  It had been a hot, sweet and sticky(with both sweat and rain) trip, and was thoroughly enjoyable.

Pura Vida!

Tags: ATV, beach, BlogSherpa, Costa Rica, crazy speed, hot, mangrove tour, Manuel Antonio, Quepos, sunny

I totally just ate under a plane! – Costa Rica days 6 & 7

I totally just ate under a plane.  I know I said that in the title, but that doesn’t take away from the awesomeness of it.   El Avion, a plane turned restaurant in Quepos/Manuel Antonio, is quite possibly my favorite place to eat on the planet, right up there with the seafood restaurant in the middle of Temple Street night market in Hong Kong.  What can I say, I’m a sucker for ambiance.  And this place has it in spades, because IT HAS A FRIGGIN PLANE in it! 

The plane itself is perched on the cliffside so that your table along the railing looks out over nothing but lush trees far below and the uninterrupted Pacific ocean.  We were even lucky enough to have a pair of Spider monkeys dine parallel to us on a tall tree limb, but that’s just de rigeur in Costa Rica   The building (if you can call it that, it has no walls, so it’s technically more of a roof) is constructed over the fuselage itself, complete with a little bump up for the tail fin, and you eat at tables around the engines and cargo hold.  Inside you’ll find the bar (I can just imagine the conversations that occur when people wake up the next morning: ”Dude, I was so wasted last night I thought I was drinking in a plane in the jungle” – “You were drinking in a plane in the jungle, Steve” – “Woah”), and the kitchen is downstairs.  In what I think is an ingenious space-saving technique, the kitchen is downstairs, and all the orders are lifted to dining level in a giant dumbwaiter constructed from parts of old, much smaller private planes.  Now you’re getting why I love this place, right?  The food is good, and not any more expensive than your standard meal at Applebees, but I’m honestly not paying any attention to the food when I’m here.  And I have a sneaking suspicion I may be back here again to eat before leaving Quepos.

Were picked up by Interbus for another life-altering drive down the “holy crap I’m going to die” roads from Monteverde to… well, pretty much everywhere from there, but we ended up in Quepos.  This is our longest stay of the trip, 4 nights instead of the 2 in the other cities.  It’s also the largest city we’re spending any amount of time in, although when we drove in I found myself thinking, “this is it?  Isn’t it supposed to be bigger than this?”  The other cities had grown up so much in the past three years, but Quepos really hadn’t.  It, as I discovered later, had grown out, so that the suburbs were larger and more developed, but the city center was the same two-hundred-foot square of shops and services as before. 

Our hotel, the adorable and friendly Hotel California, is nestled up in the trees, and, since it was low season and there was tons of space available, we got upgraded to an oceanview room.  That was pretty damn sweet.  I may be a travel agent, but I’m still too cheap to pay for something as trivial as a view, although getting one free rocks.   

OMG, it’s hot here.  After the chill and dampness of Monteverde, this heat is oppressive.  Came back into our room this afternoon and it felt freezing – we thought we’d left the AC on too cold until we checked it and discovered it was a chilly 27 celsius in our room!  It had to be at least 40-45 outside for 27 to feel that cold.

Spent the first afternoon wandering town, shopping and trying to get aclimated to this heat again.  This morning it was a very early wake up call for our Manuel Antonio National Park walk.  When in Manuel Antonio, this is a must - it’s called the most-photographed place in Costa Rica for good reason, it’s stunning.  Plus, there are so many animals that no two hikes are the same, and you never know what’s going to pop up.  The guides carry a big-ass telescope, and when they spot something (god knows how they do it, some of the frogs and lizards are so small you can barely see them after you’ve stepped on them, but the guides can do it at a hundred feet) they focus in and get you a great view.  Plus, digital cameras take pretty sweet pics through the telescope lens, so  you can get your pics home and tell everyone you really were that close to a sloth, eventhough it was sleeping forty feet over your heads!

Immediately following the tour and a quick lunch, it was on to tour number 2 – the Villa Vanilla spice plantation.  Cannot recommend this place highly enough (www.rainforestspices.com) the guide explained to us all about vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, chillies, turmeric, oregano, and whatever I’m forgetting – holy crap these things are super labour intensive to produce.  It’s no wonder they’re so expensive.  And who would have thought that the second layer of bark on a tree would taste so good (cinnamon)?  Did they just decide one day to start gnawing logs?  After walking through the fields we were taken to a hut with another great view and given samples of all sorts of decadent desserts prepared with their spices by their own pastry chef.  Heaven.  I then proceeded to spend USD$40.00 in their gift shop and it was so totally worth it! 

Tonight we’re going to recover from all the walking today, because tomorrow we’re ATV-ing!!  I’m the girl who gets in trouble for her driving on Disneyland’s Autopia, so this is going to be interesting.  And awesome!

Tags: awesome, BlogSherpa, El Avion, Food, Manuel Antonio, national park, Quepos, Villa Vanilla

The land of the weed-whacker: Costa Rica Days 3, 4, 5

Because of the terrain here being so vertical and rocky, conventional lawn mowers aren’t even sold in stores.  But everywhere you turn there’s a guy with a giant weed-whacker showing all that rapid-growing grass who’s boss.  With that little hand mower, if you will, the Ticos will tackle any area, no matter how big.  We were 2km from pretty much anything on the way to La Fortuna and there were two guys on the side of the road just weed-whacking away.  They were doing the entire shoulder of the whole road by hand.  Damn, that’s a long job.

So today we ziplined.  One of my favorite things to do, the incredible feeling of flying without the fear of falling, as your harness really holds you securely up there.  Costa Rica is probably the best place on the planet to do this, and the company I recommend more than any other I’ve experienced is Sky Adventures.  Conveniently they have a great setup in La Fortuna,  with incredible views of the (still clear and erupting) Arenal  Volcano and Arenal Lake.  We were picked up early and driven up into the hills at the base of the Volcano, where they harnessed us up (there is nothing more glamourous than a climbing harness and a helmet, really) and loaded us onto the Sky Tram.  They have such a beautiful set up here, so clean, so professional and the platforms, guides and equipment are all top notch.  You never feel like you’re in danger or could fall off the flimsy platforms like some other operators, so if anyone’s at all nervous, this is a good place to start.

The tram takes you 20 minutes up above the dense forests (monkey-eye level) and deposits you at the first platform.  There’s always a great rush of adrenaline looking out at that first line, 200ft up in the air, and from the platform all you can see is the cable going off into infinity.  All the while you’re thinking, “I’m going there?!!!”  Love it.  There are eight lines total here, with the longest being 3/4 of a mile long, and they are high.  I don’t particularly like heights (I know, I know, but I love ziplining, get over it) so I focused on looking out over the unparalleled views of Costa Rica and Arenal more than looking down as I flew past at a top speed of  75kph.  There were a handful of very scared people in our group, with one girl getting off one line in tears, but once you cross that first line, there actually is no other way back to the entrance except to keep zipping.  The guides were really good with them, crossing with them if they needed the support, but we all tried not to get too over-excited to freak them out more.

Back at the hotel after the zipping we discovered I was sun burned.  Like, crispy critter burned.  I hadn’t been wearing sunscreen because all the platforms are completely in the shade, so the only time you’re exposed to the sun is while you’re zipping across, for a grand total of about 4 minutes in the whole 2 hours, but it was all it took.  I don’t get it, I go to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore where it’s equally (if not more) hot and humid, never were sunscreen once and I don’t even get a tan.  But here, all it takes is 4 minutes and I’m stick-a-fork-in-me-done.  Couldn’t wear my purse on my shoulder for the next three days. All boils down to the positioning of the sun I guess.  Needless to say, I didn’t step out of the shade without a thick coating for the rest of the trip.

After a relaxing afternoon and night in La Fortuna, Interbus came the next morning and collected us to head up to Santa Elena and the Monteverde cloud forest.  This is where you really notice the biodiversity of Costa Rica, as you leave the tropical, semi-arid farming plains to enter the dense, steamy and dramatically cooler jungle.  The roads to get up here are mainly paved for the first half, and, despite being incredibly winding, don’t have you gripping the edge of your seat.  This changes after the mandatory bathroom and souvenirs break in Tillaran.  From there you’re essentially on what we would here call cattle paths, insanely bumpy, unpaved dirt tracks scaling nearly vertical hills with blind turns that leave you practically hanging over 400-foot cliffs.  They call it a Costa Rican massage, going over the bumps like that for two hours.  By the time you get out you’re vibrating.  And thankful you’re not dead.

Santa Elena is dramatically larger than last time I was here three years ago.  The downtown (if you can call it that) is still the same size, with like ten shops, restaurants, a grocery store, a church, a giant cement armadillo and a good ice cream parlour, but this time it’s paved, which was a pleasant surprise.  The biggest difference though is the number of hotels, which has at least tripled.  For such a small, remote place, Monteverde has a wealth of activities, from hiking, rappelling, sky bridges, butterfly gardens, bat forests, bird watching, to ATVs, horseback riding and whitewater rafting.  Our hotel was one of the new ones, the El Sapo Dorado (Golden Toad), and each room was it’s own private cabin set back amongst it’s own personal patch of garden that glows with thousands of fireflies at night.  I had never seen real fireflies before, only the fake ones in Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, so that was super cool.  The rooms are really nice, though they don’t have a lot of the amenities you normally expect from a hotel, like any electronic devices and heat.  Yep, I said heat.  You get a fireplace and a box full of wood and the rest is up to you.

We spent the day exploring Santa Elena (we saw it all and had to go back to some places twice to fill the time) and had a cool dinner in the treehouse restaurant, which, as the name implies, has a giant tree growing through it.  You eat on the second level amongst the branches, and your tables and chairs are all random-shaped logs fashioned into dining furniture. I’m a sucker for cheesy ambiance, so naturally I loved this.  Took lots of pictures.

About now I was freezing.  I’m a really cold person on a regular day, and it rains every afternoon here, so after the tropics of La Fortuna, my system was not liking this.  You can see the weather coming in here, it moves in fast and just takes over, the clouds literally rolling down the main streets and in minutes you’re lost in the fog.  On the upside, I love fireplaces, though, and can sit and poke at one for hours, so you can guess how I spent my evening.  Had a slight problem with the smoke and kinda filled the room – my clothes are going to smell like fireplace for the rest of the trip – but the warmth was totally worth it.  Actually, all night it wasn’t as cold as I expected it to be and I woke up with warm toes.

Day 5 brought us more ziplining.  Skytrek has a course that I missed out on doing last time I was here, and, as the lines are supposed to be some of the highest out there, straddling the continental divide, it was actually the whole reason for trekking up here at all.  The setup is even more impressive then La Fortuna’s, and although the tram system is much the same, the view is dramatically different up here.  You’re very exposed, up on the spine of the mountain that, on a clear day, would allow us to see both the Caribbean and Pacific oceans at the same time.  We weren’t so lucky, as the grey clouds blocked out the water, but stayed high enough for us to still have an insane view of the jungle as we flew over it.  This was the only time I felt the altitude, as there were a lot of tall towers to climb to reach the ziplines, and by the time I reached the top my heart was hammering in my chest.  The zipping itself was great, although because of really high winds we had to go across in tandem for all the longer cables, just to have enough combined weight to make it to the other side.  This was a new experience for me, but it did allow me to get some pretty sweet video as my co-zipper did the breaking while I played videographer.

We could see the ominous clouds bearing down on us as we finished up, but miraculously we made it back into the van before the skies opened up.  And did they ever.  As soon as the rain started, it became pretty obvious that this was not a small passing shower and that our plans to visit a local orchid garden were going down the drain.  So instead we picked up dinner fixings at the supermercado and tucked into our cabin for the day, where we could at least stay dry.  Normally spending nine hours in a small room with no TV and radio in the middle of nowhere would be my definition of hell, but here it isn’t so bad.  I’m enjoying a couple of Spanish magazines, and have discovered that poking at a fireplace really can keep me occupied for hours on end.

Tomorrow it’s onwards to the sea again, and it’s going to be hot, hot, hot!

Tags: adrenaline, altitude, Arenal, BlogSherpa, Costa Rica, fireplace, Interbus, La Fortuna, rain, Sky Trek

Finding Pura Vida in Costa Rica – Days 1&2

I’m here!  The land of verdant forests, howler-monkey wake up calls and one sweet active volcano in my back yard.  Costa Rica is such a great destination, about the same price as a quick beach vacation in Hawaii, but the diversity of climates, wildlife and crazy adventure activities is so much better.  All you have to do is deal with the eight hour flight time from Vancouver, but it’ s so worth it.

Flew into the Rich Coast with a three hour connection in Dallas on the way.  The Dallas airport is really nice, super modern and clean with some nice artwork (nothing compares to Vancouver international, BTW, but this was pleasant). You can find a hundred different things to eat, but there is pitiful shopping.  Only a small hand full of stores, and they’re mainly convenience stores, so I had to make do with only an armadillo floaty pen and a cow-wearing-a-stetson fridge magnet.  Total shopping fail.

By the time we arrived in San Jose it was late, and we crashed at the Casa Conde Aparthotel and Suites just long enough to wash the flight off, begin adjusting to the crazy humidity and watch some food network subtitled in Spanish.  This property really impressed me, it’s a beautiful Spanish hacienda with attractive stained glass and murals and the condos were fully equipped – I had my own bedroom!  The only downside was that it’s in the middle of nowhere.  You couldn’t just walk down the road, you’d find nothing but small houses, and it wasn’t  particularly the best part of town, either.

For us, it didn’t matter, though, as we were picked up by the ever-prompt and comfortable Interbus for our four-hour transfer to La Fortuna.  This is the only way to travel in Costa Rica, as everything is approximately four hours from the next major center, the roads are hilly, winding, sometimes unpaved, sometimes balanced delicately on the edge of a three-hundred-foot cliff and sometimes completely washed out and consisting of nothing but a couple planks of wood and some caution tape.  I’ve been here twice now and wouldn’t drive here if you paid me.  Interbus is cheap, easy, professional and the person behind the wheel actually knows what they’re doing at all times.  You just have to put up with the sales-targeted souvenir and bathroom break halfway through.  Oh, and the speeds.  Costa Rica does fast.  Carsickness-inducing, swinging from one side to the other fast.  It was awesome.

Later we were deposited at the Volcano Lodge, our haven for the next two nights. Love this property.  Each room is in it’s own little three-room casita, and all have a private veranda with two adorable rocking chairs that looks out to the impressive gardens and the active Arenal volcano.  I can’t get past the irony of my life being total hell at work for the past week with all the canceled flights due to the Iceland volcanic eruption, and here I come on personal vacation to another active volcano.  But it’s worth it, as the clouds have lifted, revealing it’s perfect smoking top, something that happens only like 9 days every year.   We lucked out.  And consequently took ten thousand photos of it to prove it.

The town of La Fortuna is small, cute, and has really good souvenir shopping.  It’s also incredibly hot here.  After the clouds and coats of Vancouver, this 99% humidity and 30-degree sunshine is a real shock to the system.  It really zaps your energy and gives you that wonderful red, damp and glowing complexion all the time.  I’m having to be super careful already, as I’m arctic white and can burn in minutes out here, but really hate the feel of sunscreen on when I’m already sweating my ass off.

So far we’ve essentially been on the road for two days straight, so it’ll be nice to be able to actually rest a bit tomorrow.  That is, after the freaking awesome ziplining!!!!!

Tags: Arenal, BlogSherpa, car sickness, Casa Conde, Costa Rica, Dallas, Interbus, San Jose, shopping, Volcano Lodge

More Travel Porn – Chefs Vs City

        So I’ve discovered a new fun armchair travel addiction, this time on the Food Network of all places:  Chefs vs City.  It’s a great way to combine two of my favorite things – The Amazing Race and the Food Network, with teams of 2 foodies racing through one city a week completing 4 different food-related challenges.  Sometimes it involves eating a large amount of something (in Las Vegas they actually had to eat one of everything from the Bellagio’s buffet), cooking/creating something (stomping grapes/decorating a 50-lb cake/making liquid-nitrogen ice cream) or stomaching something difficult (scorching chili in LA), but it’s a great way to see what culinary treasures each city has to offer.  Plus it’s exciting and competitive.  But mainly its an interesting food travelogue.  I mean, who knew there was a place in Chicago where you can eat all sorts of edible, flavoured paper?  Check this one out.

Tags: armchair travel, Chefs vs City, daydreaming, fun, travel porn, TV