Traveling with Emily!

Nauyaca Waterfall Hike

Hello All: I did a super fun waterfall hike yesterday and this time, there was a professional photographer so I have some good pictures. It took about an hour to get to the Nauyaca Waterfall. It’s not close to anything, and the last part of our trip was in an open trailer pulled by a tractor because nothing else can make it up and down the side of the mountain we were on. We are on the edge of the Talamanca mountains here, and it feels like everything vertical – either up or down. We hiked down to the waterfalls through a beautiful jungle path. It was a little muddy and slippery but really pretty. The pictures below are the very beginning of the tour.

We hiked down to the first waterfall, where there was a shallow pool to swim and jump into. We also got mud face masks. The guides picked up special rocks that had the consistency of wet chalk and smeared it all over our faces. We had to let it dry then wash it off. It’s supposed to be really good for your skin. I talked to another woman who was about my age with three kids and we felt like we needed a full body experience to peel back more layers of aging. There are also a bunch of tiny glass frogs. Part of my tattoo is a glass frog, but I had never seen a real one. They were amazing! They are called glass frogs because they are almost transparent and very hard to see. These were tiny – about the size or your little fingernail.

The first waterfall is the highest. After that, we went to the lower waterfall, which had a deeper pool but a much swifter current. You could do cliff jumping here, but it looked crazy dangerous and unpleasant. You had to climb up through the waterfall, with water pounding your face the whole time. It was very slippery. When you got to the top, it was a 30 ft drop down, which is a fairly long fall. Landing wrong would be unpleasant at best. I love the idea of cliff jumping, but I don’t really enjoy the feeling of free falling anymore. I did the 5 ft jump, which still had a fairly difficult climb up. I could have gone a little higher, but I’m not up for long falls anymore. Plus, everything was slippery and the rocks were sharp. I’ve got some bruises but nothing serious. There was a family with a couple of fairly young boys. They wanted to do the 30 ft jump, but their dad absolutely refused and didn’t care how mad they were. They are luck he had the good sense to tell them no. The boys got to do the 5ft jump too, which was dangerous enough. They seemed like a nice family from the Chicago area.

The hike back up the mountain was rough but still pretty. It felt like a vertical climb. There is another waterfall in the area much higher up on the mountain. It’s a 5 hour climb to get there and up a little further is a second waterfall with a cave behind it. The cave has been all set up for campers, and people reserve it a year or more in advance. You would need to be an exceptionally good hiker with a lot of strength to do that one.

We also passed a resort out in the middle of nowhere that apparently serves pregnant women who want to give birth in the river or something like that. I’m very support of people who want to avoid drugs and hospitals, but I hope they have a helipad nearby. If something went wrong, we were miles from anyone who could help. The resort also functions as an ayahuasca retreat for people who want to do psychedelic drugs. That’s a growing business here in Costa Rica. I don’t know if there’s any overlap between those two groups?

I had supper with Brandon and his family yesterday evening, but I’m wiped out by the end of the day and I’m usually asleep by 9pm or sometimes 8:30pm. I’m taking today easier. I’m currently camped out in my hammock, but I’m planning to take my snorkel gear to the beach soon. Brandon’s family should be back from jet skiing soon so I’ll probably do something with them sometime today.

Whale Watching

I had a very fun morning whale watching. Unfortunately, I only saw the fin of a whale in the distance. In two weeks, there will be hundreds of humpback whales here, but right now, there are only a few. But, there were a number of super cute spotted dolphins and it was a beautiful day for a catamaran tour. The tour provided a 30 minute snorkeling option, but apparently some guy died a year or so ago so they make everyone wear life vests now. I hate wearing life vests in general and it’s impossible for swimming and snorkeling. I was pretty upset about this at first, until I learned that you didn’t have to wear a vest while using the boat slide. So, while everyone else did some pretty bad snorkeling, I had the boat slide all to myself for about 20 minutes. It was fantastic! I love boat slides. The tour also provided a good lunch with fish, beans, rice and vegetables plus a delicious pineapple.

This afternoon, I swam for a while in the pool then camped out on my balcony watching the animals. There was a group of white faced capuchins in the trees around my apartment. One of them apparently broke into the house on the hill above me and robbed a sugar contained. I heard some yelling and things breaking from that house. There was also a small group of squirrel monkeys down the path a ways, a yellow-billed toucan flew over and there was a big iguana in one of the trees. The wildlife here is really spectacular. Unfortunately, the wildlife has not cooperated for pictures.

Brandon and his family did horseback riding/waterfall tour and had a lot of fun with that. I had pizza with them this evening. Tomorrow, I’m doing an all day waterfall hike that I’m looking forward to. Right now, I’m completely wiped out. I have just a few pictures to post.

Manuel Antonio

Hello All: I’m currently back in Costa Rica for the next few days. Bill wasn’t able to come with me this time because he didn’t have time off work. We will be somewhere in January. Since Bill is not here, the pictures probably won’t be as good. He’s our picture taker. I am here with my brother and his new family, which has been a lot of fun.

I arrived yesterday after a very long travel day. Manuel Antonio is 3 hours from the San Jose airport and traffic was slow so I think it was at least 3.5 hours for me. It’s worth it though because we are staying at a beautiful resort right in the middle of the jungle. I’m currently on my balcony surrounded by trees and wildlife. I can see the ocean from the balcony too. This morning, there was a howler monkey somewhere right outside my apartment. I got up at 5am to listen to the monkeys and watch the sun come up. I took some video from the balcony but apparently I don’t have a plan with WordPress that allows me to post video.

This is the rainy season, so we have to plan activities in the morning because it usually rains in the afternoon. That’s fine though. Tonight it’s a soft rain, and we swam in the ocean for a while even with the rain. It has made everything super green. It’s lichee season here so there are fruit stands everywhere with piles of really good lichees. The mangos are good too.

Today, Brandon and Heather’s kids went zip lining. I’ve been zip lining a couple of times, and it’s fine, but not my favorite thing to do. Heather doesn’t like heights, so she didn’t want to go either. Heather and I walked around the very small town here and got groceries, then we swam for a while in the pool. We also ate at a falafel bar across the street. I love falafels. These were okay, but not the best I’ve had. I saw a baby sloth this morning and Heather and I saw another sloth and some monkeys by the restaurant. One of the monkeys had a tiny baby on her back. It was really adorable! Unfortunately, it’s hard to get good pictures of them.

It was a very pleasant day, but I’m wearing down. I’m going whale watching and snorkeling tomorrow. There are a bunch of humpback whales here with babies. I’ve talked to several people who have seen them, so I’m very excited about this. Snorkeling is supposed to be so so, but that’s fine. I’m not sure what the rest of the family is doing. They had a long zip lining trip today and they couldn’t decide what they wanted to do tomorrow. Having a free day to go to the beach is always nice and they may do jet skis. Hopefully I’ll have whale pictures tomorrow.

Boat update

So last fall I had taken the boat to be painted. It was a major fail. So it had to be redone. There was a lot of sanding to be done. The original color I had picked was a blue metallic but it did not get stirred well and all the metal flake was left in the can. It wasn’t thinned enough and it ran something terrible. I wish I had done it myself the way I did this time . It actually was easier than I expected and turned out well.

First I took the boat to have the motor tuned and the carbs cleaned. While it did run fairly well I was informed that the lower carb did not work at all. This was not a surprise. I had a feeling it was not doing much. In the end it has not worked since I have owned the motor, the mechanic said whoever worked on it last basically glued it together with gasket sealer. The mechanic also replaced what electrical parts that I didn’t and a couple I did. They are now covered by warranty.

I have not been able to test it out yet since all the local access has been closed to the water. I am considering doing a test run on a lake a bit further away. Maybe next week.

In the meantime I have repainted the boat. Or most of the boat. Some of the top still needs done. I was going to wait on the top until fall or next spring but we keep getting rain!

In addition to painting I have started on some of the upgrades. I have added a new ladder and a humminbird depth finder. It has gps speed, temperature and maps. I would have kept the original speedometer but it didn’t work properly.

I will be redoing all the wiring in the future to include a fuse box and updated switches for everything.

I added a foam marine flooring to the floor. I will recover the seats at some point. It turned out decent. There is a couple places where I had to use some scraps to finish but it still was pretty good.

Hopefully the rain will be more normal for a while and the lake here will open back up. I am looking forward to seeing what kind of power increase it got. It did fairly well last year pulling us on a tube.

In between Vacation Content

Hopefully everyone is doing okay with all this heat and here in Iowa, the humidity!!

I thought I would share my current priority project as it is getting to a point where I’m going to put the finishing touches to it lower on the priority list.

1967 Starcraft 17 foot Jupiter V with 1983 Mercury 70 HP 2-Stroke Outboard

I got this boat a couple years before I met Emily and had it in the water a couple of times. It was in need of a new floor and the original motor was having problems so I switched motors and used it a couple more times. It was in need of tires when I parked it and was thinking I would replace the floor the next year. Well it took about 6.

This was the year, my schedule and money allowed the two things you need to be a boat owner, time and money.

I was assisted in removing the floor and replacing it from My friend Hannah who was my partner when we both worked in Cedar Falls. She is now on Waterloo Fire and I’m working for AMR in Independence.

The removal of the floor revealed that the styrofoam underneath the floor had been saturated with water and was the reason for the worse damage. I was able to use what was left of the floor as a template to get the new floor cut. One corner we had to guesstimate as there wasn’t much left.

New closed cell foam and marine grade plywood coated in two coats of waterproof paint, it was time to work out the seating. I started out thinking I would reuse one of the back to back seats that pull out into a bench and a captain’s seat for the driver. Captain’s seat didn’t work with this boat without some extra work. Maybe one day I will find someone who can make a mount for it or I will build one. I added a little bench to the back that I built for added seating and a little extra storage space.

Next up was the addition of a sun shade. The boat had come with a vinyl top that was short and hot, it had to go. I’mon the fence about the look but it definitely is nice to have out on the water.

I probably should have started with making sure the motor still ran, it did not. But I replaced the starter and solenoid and we were in business, until no water came out of the drain. So a new water pump became a learning experience for myself and the neighbor Jeff who was interested in what I was up to when I dropped the lower end off the motor. He just recently bought himself a boat. He ended up helping me for about 3 hours and his help was very welcome.

I did rebuild the fuel pump and replaced the spark plugs. I think it needs some tuning but I’m currently looking for a mechanic for that, I’m not good with carburetors and this has 2. It does run and has been reliable but, I want to see about a little more power and smoothness from the motor. I think it is running a little rich as well and I wouldn’t mind a little more fuel efficiency. It will use about 10 gallons running it almost wide open for about 2 1/2 hours. My friend Mike from High School and I took it out for a test.

Trolling motor is on for backup, I wouldn’t want to try and paddle.

With everything working and reliable we took it out July 26th for a bit of fun on the water. We did some tubing and swimming out at George Wyth State Park on Brinker Lake. During the day, during the week is a wonderful time to be at the lake, not much traffic since most people have Monday through Friday jobs. It did start getting busy when we were getting off the lake.

I changed up the trailer some and rattle canned some paint on it, I am not a painter! But it will help with keeping the rust to a minimum.

Tubing was fun, we did learn that we need a booster ball due to the set up for towing I have. I have one coming and I ordered a Knee board, Emily and I tried that when we went to Jamaica. I’m looking forward to getting some more days in on the lake.

All that is really left is repainting the boat itself and recovering the seats with a matching color. That may be next year…

Stay cool, be safe, drink plenty of water!

Probably a return is in order…

Hello readers!

We have made it back to the states, I am home and will be able to make my shift on Saturday. Emily gets to spend time down home for a couple days.

Our trip was short to begin with and then another day shorter due to the fires. We probably would have been okay leaving today but sometimes it better to be safe. We didn’t have too many issues yesterday, a delay leaving Roatan followed by a delay in Dallas. We would have been able to make our flight in Dallas even if it wasn’t delayed.

My foot has yet to fall off, when dry I can see there are a few spikes still visible. Mostly tiny black dots. They will dissolve before long. No signs of infection. I’m still waiting to see what happens with the insurance claim. Hopefully they pay it, I felt that the urgent care facility was practiced in these things and was common that it gets covered.

Overall the trip was very good. We enjoyed the Splash Inn, the owner seemed like a good fellow, the place was clean and we were informed that the employees are paid well for the area in comparison to other hotels. I really enjoyed the diving experience there, I was especially pleased with having my own dive master and the overall cost. Emily enjoyed their hands off policy for snorkeling, they’d let her out of the boat and either go pick her up or wave her in when they needed to collect the divers.

May was a great time to avoid the crowds, the weather wasn’t bad and no sargassum where we were. Down side was the airport closing. We really need to look deeper in our google search for the things that are hidden about vacation destinations.

I’m happy to be home, tomorrow I will unpack and if it’s not raining I’ll mow the grass. I missed the big storms that rolled through earlier this week, kind of like the snow last vacation.

I don’t remember if I posted these pictures or not? Maybe. Until next time, be safe.

No urgent care this time!

Hi everyone, hope you’re all doing well! Today we made our last snorkel trip for this vacation, it was a night snorkel with no incidents.

We have gotten a lot of time in the water for this trip even though it’s a shorter trip than normal. I was able to get in six good dives. The book says I’m up to 22 which doesn’t seem like enough. I will have to work on bumping those numbers up!

Roatan has been a great spot for us. There are a few other things that could be done here but a lot of the tourist stuff is pretty unethical and we don’t want to contribute to that. There is a private park here that does a tour but it’s probably in the same business as the other “sanctuaries” here. Excellent place for snorkeling and scuba though. Plenty of dive sites to choose from and dive shops to go out with. There is a good variety of restaurants and bars if that’s your thing. Not many souvenir shops and the grocery stores are small and light on options. Some areas are cleaner and taken care of and some not so much. There are two dive equipment shops here which are the first we have seen on vacation. Mares and Cressi, we use Cressi snorkeling equipment. I do have a couple new items that are not Cressi, my new mask is Ataclete Hombre, it’s a nice mask. I didn’t have any trouble with it and found it to be comfortable and it required less clearing of water leakage. It does want to suck onto my face and needed adjusting the deeper I went. My new Shredder SAR U.S. Diver fins did fit in my suitcase but they have a large foot pocket that accepts dive boots and shoes. It takes up some space. I used the a few times and they work fairly well. I think with some more time with them they will be okay for snorkeling. They are too short for scuba maybe. The longer, thinner ones are more comfortable and can borrow those from the dive shop when diving.

The Splash Inn Dive Shop uses Mares equipment and is seemed like good stuff.

I don’t think we tried anything else out unless you count urgent care. I am interested to see if my health insurance covers it when they get the bill submitted. I don’t know how all that works but I will find out.

Our night snorkeling trip tonight was okay, not a lot of creatures out, maybe it needs to be later. We got in the water probably close to 6:15 as the sun was going down. By the time we were out it was pretty dark. it’s hard to get good night pictures but here are some.

Free Diving

I found out late this evening that there is a free diving school right down the street from our apartment. I’m super disappointed that I didn’t know this sooner. I would love to take a free diving class. Apparently, you can get certified in free diving. If we come back to Roatan, I’ll definitely add that to the things I want to do. I don’t have aspirations to do competitive free diving but I think I could learn to be a better snorkeler and stay under longer if I took some classes. Our snorkel guide tonight was a really good free diver. He has done free diving competitively and his record is 65 meters, which is about 213 feet. That’s impressive! At 30 meters, the pressure of the water starts to push you down and you have to swim against it when you come up. People regularly die free diving. There is a blue hole off the coast of Egypt and more people have died there than on Mt. Everest.

This was our last full day in Roatan. We leave tomorrow around 3pm provided the weather is okay, but we will head to the airport around 12:30. We didn’t have a packed day today. I’m reading a book called Salt, Fat, Sugar: How the Food Industry Addicted Us. It really makes you think differently about food and how the food industry manipulates people. Some years ago, Kool-Aid produced a product called Kool-Aid Kool Burst. They added 1 tbs of fruit juice to each container, then marketed it as a healthy fruit juice product for kids. I read that for a while this morning, then Bill and I went for a walk to look for a Honduras coffee cup. This is not a great place to buy tourist items, which is probably just as well since there are plenty of other ways to spend money. I found a cup. It’s not spectacular, but it can join my other international coffee cups.

We swam in the pool this afternoon, then had a quick supper at a restaurant that had coconut cream pie and key lime pie. We got a piece of each to bring back to the apartment for after our night snorkel trip. They were really good.

The night snorkel trip went well this time. The water was a little murky, but we saw a huge crab, a little Spanish crab that I had never seen or heard of before, and three little squid. The squid were the highlight of the trip. They are super cute! They also seemed interested in our lights and didn’t swim away. It wasn’t the greatest night snorkel I’ve done, but it wasn’t a bad way to end the trip. Bill should have some pictures and our snorkel guide also took pictures and video that he’s going to send us.

I guess that’s all I’ve got. We should be home tomorrow provided that the weather isn’t too bad.

Snorkel Day

Hello All: Above is the only picture I have. Last night we ate at a place with vegan food. They had falafels, which I love, but the best thing about this restaurant was the mural on the wall. I’m pretty sure it was spray painted. It’s definitely not something I would put on my wall, but it’s technically impressive for a spray painted mural with a lot of detail and shading. My falafel was terrible. It’s not that easy to mess up falafels and French fries, but if you burn them and add flavorless tahini sauce, or no tahini sauce, that will do it.

We just finished two snorkel days. Yesterday, I was wiped out tired and didn’t have energy to do a post. Today, I came back to the hotel and took a nap so I’m more energetic tonight.

The snorkeling here has been awesome! It’s great that I get to go with the divers because the focus is on them. I get dropped in the water to do whatever I want with no guide while the divers are down. That’s how I like things! Fortunately, I brought a bright yellow shirt to swim in. Since I was visible in the water for boats, I didn’t have to take a life vest. I got a little bit lost in the water this afternoon and swam to the wrong boat, but both boats belong to Splash Dive so it wasn’t a big deal. They all look the same and I didn’t remember the name of the boat we were on.

We’ve seen several turtles, some adorable little squid, and a bunch of rays. The variety of fish and coral here is impressive and the water, for the most part, is super clear. We’ve scheduled a night snorkel for tomorrow night with one of the boat drivers. I think it will be better than our previous experience. This guy seems to know what he’s doing. I hope we can see some squid because they should be flashing at night. I’ve been surprised at how curious a lot of the fish are here. The eagle rays will swim with you and so will some of the fish.

After super tonight, Bill went back to the room, but since I’d had a nap, I went for a walk. I found a fruit shop with some more mangos. The mangos here are fantastic! They also had lychees. I haven’t had lychees since I was in France and I’ve never seen them in the US or other places in Latin America. I found a picture on the internet to post below. They aren’t my favorite fruit but they are unique and interesting. They are really sweet! I also found a gelato shop and got a small cup of chocolate gelato and I found a place to get a coffee cup tomorrow when the shop is open. The coffee cup selection here isn’t great. A lot of them were fairly inappropriate and not things I want to bring home.

I’m currently in the hotel restaurant because the internet in our apartment is spotty. I was able to change our flights so we can come home Wednesday to make sure Bill can get back to work. Flights have been delayed because of the smoke so we decided not to chance it. There is no one to cover his shift. At least we got to do everything we wanted to do here.

There is currently a guy here at the reception who sounds Italian but is speaking angry and furious Spanish. He lives here and tried to call to place an order with the restaurant. The restaurant didn’t get his order and went on a tirade about bad service for the 15 minutes he had to wait for his food. There must be some other stuff going on in his life. There is currently a group of young American men here. I’m pretty confident they are drunk, and still drinking. I hope they are ordering food because they could use some to go with the alcohol. I should have spent more time at the reception/restaurant. It’s quite a show!

I guess that’s all I have. Hopefully we will have a good story about our night snorkel tomorrow that doesn’t end at Urgent Care!

All six are in the book

I did my last 3 dives for this trip today, Emily snorkeled through I didn’t see much of her. I stayed deeper today for most of the dives. I had a 45 minute dive the first go and then the last were 59 minutes for both. I tried to hit an hour on the computer but I was having trouble staying below the surface for it to count time. Those last minutes seem like they took longer than the beginning minutes.

There were a lot more divers in the water today. I got to see more turtles and a lot of grouper. My guide showed me little crabs and flamingo tongue snails. Few lobsters and many fish. There are a lot of corals here, tubes, barrels and fan type. Not a huge amount of color really but it is neat to see. Visibility was pretty good for about 20 feet, which makes getting good pictures hard if they don’t let you get close. Some things like barracuda are better if they stay away.

All 3 dives went well, having my own dive master was very nice. I didn’t have to worry about ending anyone’s dive early, I was allowed to use up most of the tanks today. I’m not sure they would do that in a group. We ended most of the dives with a swimming safety stop so after that we just stayed above 19 feet and when I hit the limit I would just surface. The safety stop is usually 3 minutes at 15 feet, the computer I wore would count down the time at 19 feet and above. Not sure if it would have issues above 14 because I never tried it.

Emily is working on rescheduling our flight to come back a day early. I am bummed about this but we didn’t anticipate flight issues due to the fires. We had some good days recently but there still has been some delays getting planes here and they have closed the airport a few times. It seems harder than it should be to get accurate information about an international airport. I also have trouble finding out about the fires themselves.

The internet is messed up today and she is having trouble getting things switched. Hopefully we can get it fixed. It might be interesting trying to get the pictures on this post.