Many of you are asking “Why are you in Costa Rica, Jeff? What business are you involved in?” Well, I promise to reveal these to you all in time, but at this moment the details are being ironed out between us, the Canadian gov’t people as well as the Costa Rican gov’t people, and we are still in the process of recruiting some bilingual assistants and what not, and the details are changing at times. I won’t reveal anything but the fact that the business plan is developing quite well, and also that I am very much enjoying my fabulous trip to Costa Rica.

July 4th was a photo-less day. We had a meeting with the Minister of Labour, Sr. Morales, at his office in San Jose, Costa Rica. He as well as his directers and aides attended the meeting, and we were a party of 4 ourselves. I wasn’t going to snap photos at such a spot, obviously.

July 5th - Friday was the beginning of our days off, and we took off to a resort owned by my client’s old family friends, in the San Carlos region. It’s called the Tilajari Resort. It is a 2.5 hour drive, but we sent our driver off with our luggage, and we took a helicoptor in the morning.

I’m not supposed to do that but I managed to climb on while the airfield staff were not around. It was a private airfield.

There’s the rest of my group onboard before take-off.

View of the city right after taking off.

Foggy countryside of Costa Rica

More fields, ranches, pastures, trees and all that stuff.

These gorges are incredibly deep, although you cannot see how deep it is. The gorges are all covered with thick forrests like this.

A mill that my client used to own/run. Well, she still owns it but nothing goes on other than land value increase.

Fields after fields of crop.

We arrived at the resort within 30 minutes of take-off, even after circling and zig-zagging a bit trying to find that mill that my client used to run! We landed on their soccer field.

The first thing I noticed was the wealth of wild animals in the resort. Here are some gigantic iguanas!!!

An array of tropical plants.

This is the trail/driveway that runs through it.

Unfortunately I was having too much fun that I forgot to take photos of the pool and jacuzzi… sorry. But apparanlty I’m being treated to that place again before I leave so I’ll see what I can do!

We had a fabulous dinner with the owners of the resort:

Notice the orange canister of “Off” bug spray? Yeah, most place in Costa Rica has a lot of mosquitos, and you need to diligently keep that stuff on you to avoid itchy spots.

The downside of this resort was the fact that they had no wireless internet whatsoever, but instead, 1 computer with a small CRT monitor, which was hooked up to a 12kb/s dial-up type modem (a Motorola Brand) which was basically hell for me. Considering that Cable internet is rated at 100Mbps (although you never get the full speed), this internet speed was 1/8333 of the usual speed I am used to!!! One of the reasons why it’s tough to get internet into rural places in Costa Rica is that the telecommunications industry is under a monopoly through a government agency, and that is simply destined to bring inefficiency, lack of speed and service to the industry.

We came back to San Jose today by car. The drive would have been beautiful had it not been for the fog on the way - no pictures of the white misty landscape.

July 2nd :

A few days ago my client bought a puppy (she’ll be living here, more or less, so she bought a house and a puppy, and will be buying a car soon too), so I thought I’d put some photos up.

The dog literally licked my eyeball in that photo actually. If the camera went off a few tenth of a second earlier it would have caught the disgusting moment. And as you can tell by the big noticeable red spots on my face, there are mosquitos in Costa Rica. The rest.. well. Do I need a facial or something?

The dog’s name is Bella, and she loves the new place.

At night, our good friend Jose, who is in charge of driving us while we’re here (that’s right, I have a maid and a driver! muhahaha), took me out to the bars while the rest of the group did their own things. We went out about 15 minutes away from where our house is at, and checked out some bars.

I tried talking to some Latin girls but my Spanish is still weak so I had no luck. But then I met some beautiful girls from the USA. Here they are :

From the left : Dori (I hope my memory is correct), Jose-Migul, Myself, and Kristen. Odd thing : Vancouver’s area code (aka my area code) is 604, and Kristen, who is from New Hampshire, USA, has an area code of 603. I wonder how area codes are distributed anyways…

July 3rd:

On July 2nd, we picked up our friend, Sukh Dhaliwal, who happens to be a Canadian Liberal Party MP (Member of Parliament… US equivalent would be a Congressman, if you don’t know what that position is) in the Greater Vancouver Area. Today we picked up our friend Jag, who is visiting and is interested in buying property in Costa Rica.

Our friends Carmen and George (in espanol, pronounced “Hor-Hei”), who are local developers of fine condos and beachside properties, as well as the above mentioned parties, and our friend and driver, Jose-Migul, who is a 23 year old local guy who knows his way around, went out for dinner. We went to a place that is supposed to be one of the top places in Costa Rica for steaks.

From the left : Sukh Dhaliwal, Myself, Carmen, George, My client, her friend, and Jose-Migul.

The veal steak I had was delicious, but it’s pretty common - a steak, so I didn’t bother taking a picture of that dish. However, there is this thing called “Palmito”, although I’m not sure if it is spelled that way. It’s the center of a palm tree trunk, and it is a delicacy in Central America. And, apparantly it’s illegal, and not served in too many restaurants. But it’s a country where you can get off with $50 US if you get pulled over after drinking and driving - for a restaurant of this statute in this country, they could serve up Pandas and get away with it!

It’s a very soft, tender appetizer, and it had an interesting taste to it - a very clean and mild one yet with some sort of taste. It was served with that sauce (I believe it’s a special kind of tomato sauce) and other vegetables such as avocadoes on the side. It was quite an experience.

The best part of this :  dining out at one of the finest restaurants in San Jose, Costa Rica, cost us only $125 US. A meal like this in an exquisite restaurant in Vancouver for 6 of us, with drinks, would have easiliy blown $1,500!!! How?

Well, the bill came to about $250 US, or, 104,918 colones (Costa Rican currency), but MasterCard is running a promotion in this country with select restaurants, where they burden 50% of any food bill on Tuesdays and Thursdays! So it came out to $125 or so, plus tip.

It was quite a dining experience. And, once again, the veal (baby beef) steak - so freaking delicious!!!

Well Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canucks, and I’ll be sure to celebrate Independence Day with my American readers on the 4th of July. Too bad I don’t get to watch fireworks of the 4th of July from Costa Rica!

Today I had some food at a seafood restaurants recommended by locals as one of the best, and the most noticeable dish I had was called a Cervichè, which is a mix of vegetables and seafood in a salsa-like manner - plenty of fruit juices to keep it wet and still chunky and fabulous! You can eat it with a spoon, or you can put it on this chip-like thing, except it’s freshly fried and looks more like a tortilla, but very crispy!

These two photos show 2 different types of Cervichès.

Seafood happens to be one of my passions (and I love sushi, as you can imagine), and this was quite a treat for me to try out!

June 29th :

Due to some minor problems my client ended up moving on the same day I landed (28th) so the next day we went shopping to get stuff for the new place. This complex is a closed-gate community with security, smack in the middle of a long winding road in an ordinary Costa Rican neighbourhood. It’s the real way to travel instead of going to some fancy resort which is more or less a replica of living in Vancouver (or any other high-end city) except in a warmer area.

Here’s the place I am in :

June 26th :

I left Vancouver in my rental vehicle to get to Seattle to catch my flight. It’s not that we don’t have flights out of Vancouver, it’s just that it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to fly out of Seattle. My rental vehicle had GPS on it, but after I stopped by at the small town of Sumas to pick up some shipments for my client (yes there’s a lot of that going on in order to save money on duties and taxes - ship it to a location right across the border), my GPS lead me to a dead-end street. I was sitting in my car listening to the damned machine screaming “Turn right in 0.2 miles.” at me while I’m looking at a cut-off streeet with a large red fence put at the end, with nothing but fields beyond it.

After that small incident, I finally got to Seattle, and checked into the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Seattle, on Pike St. and 6th Ave.

It was my first time at a 4 star hotel, and I had a great time.  I checked in at 4, so I figured I’d do some playing. I wasn’t going to leave the downtown area - I was too tired to drive far. So I took a brief walk around the neighbourhood in Downtown Seattle.

After that, I drove out to Pike Marketplace (which I found out later that I could have just walked), and after checking it out, I had a quick fish & chips dinner at this place :

After that, in the evening, I went to some bars, chatted with some locals but no hot women were found… I’ve heard some bad things about the nightlife in Seattle, and the bartender tried to tell me how there are some other parties if you drive 10~20 mins away but I was not going to go through so much trouble. I called it a night at 1 AM.

June 27th :

I left the hotel, and got to the airport. My flight to Dallas was not delayed by much so it was quite smooth. However, the flight in Dallas got delayed a lot - 3 hours to be precise.

Dallas was an interesting place for me. It was my first time in a Southern state since I was a child. The people I met (or rather, just sat beside) at the bar had a totally different attitude. While the people in Seattle were very happy to meet me and willing to chat with me like people usually do in bars, these people had a very cold, odd attitude towards me - the only Asian guy in the vincinity. It just confirmed to me the rumours of racism remaining in the Southern states - something that is very hard to find or experience in more open-minded places like Vancouver or Seattle. The exceptions to this would be Dan and Jennifer - we actually tried to see if we can meet up briefly and have coffee at least, since they live in Dallas, but my flight was  scheduled within 2 hours so we couldn’t pull it off. Although, if I had known of the delay, we could have made it work!

Once we got to San Jose, we couldn’t land. After two failed landing attempts (which spooked some of the people in the plane, as it’s uncommon to have a plane pull up sharply right before touching the ground), we ended up having to fly to Panama City, and stay the night. It was local time 4AM when I got in there.

June 28th: 

The hotel that American Airlines put us in wasn’t anything fancy. If anything, it was rather grungy and messy, and the shower knob was a bit loose. The heat in Panama was unbearable, especially without my shorts, which were in my luggage.

The bartender at the hotel bar (which I obviously hit the next day as our shuttle wasn’t til 3PM) taught me some Spanish, on how to order beer. “La cerveza, por favor” is “A beer please.” and “uno mas” is 1 more, and “dos mas” is 2 more, which I said more often once I had a drinking buddy, Phil from California who was on his honeymoon.

On the flight, I made friends with a very kind and beautiful lady named Madeline, who was from Tuscon Arizona, traveling with her two children. She was fluent in Spanish and came in handy at the hotel and at the airport once we landed! Here is a photo we took once we landed, with her husband and her mother-in-law greeting the family.

My client found me outside the airport, and we drove back to the place we are staying, and I finally got a comfortable setting to stay in and relax for a bit. I developed a severe headache due to the several beers I took in while I was in Panama that day as well as the additional ones I had once in San Jose. I guess the long trip with very little rest and comfort took a small toll. After taking some pills and getting a massage from our maid (who also happens to have massage training) I fell asleep.