Thursday Photos

We baked some soda bread, we made potato latkes to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah. Rusty hung out declining to go for a walk. He knows what he wants and I don’t force him.  It was a good day. We read books and swam at great length in lovely warm calm waters. Friday is definitely our last day before we drive south to look for the vet.

I got dinged on the head by a half chewed West Indian almond. It was dropped not by a squirrel but by a macaw. 

They squawk very loudly and fly like they are not built for flight but can only manage to stay airborne by some serious ferocious wing flapping. 

In a tree they look quite attractive.  

Other than getting bombarded by parrots it was another lovely day at the beach. 

Air fried potato latkes are delicious it turns out. Crispy and not greasy. Best Jewish food ever. 

Beach Days

We have neighbors, a young couple on a motorcycle with a tent and a boombox further along a family of three with a tent and their pick up truck and no boom box. 

Our days drift by with rounds of swimming and reading and cooking. Rusty is not keen on walking much but he enjoys napping under GANNET2, his home or under our picnic table. I scratch his chest from time to time and I see more gray hairs marking the passing of time. 

We spent two hours calling around Costa Rica yesterday looking for a vet to do Rusty’s papers for Panama but it was tough. Many vets speak English but their assistants and office staff are less likely to so it’s lucky we speak Spanish. 

Costa Rica and Panama are notorious for the most complex dog entry requirements in Central America. Fantastic. Mexico and El Salvador and the US are easy with no requirements at all. All the vets but one told us we need to budget a week to ten days to get Rusty’s papers for the border crossing. One vet in Jacó told us they only do papers for Nicaragua as Panama’s requirements are excessively complicated. Even more fantastic. 

A vet in San Vito, a small village in the mountains of southern Costa Rica offers a one day turn around. Believe that if you will but we’ll give it a try. This post (below) in iOverlander got us thinking it might be worth the two day drive out of our way. The English is a bit fractured as the poster is Swiss (their url ends in .ch) but the information is invaluable. This is what you look for as you travel:

So we called ahead and have an appointment for Monday morning as soon as they open at eight to catch the vets before they go on their farm rounds. The trick is that they have the government agriculture office SENASA next door and no doubt they get preferential treatment when they ask their neighbors for exit paperwork for one of their customers. It’s worth a try. 

So we’ll be lab to leave early Saturday morning and take the ferry to Puntarenas then drive down the Pacific coast until we get tired and stop for the night. Sunday night we’ll try to be as close as we can to the vet’s office to do this absurd paperwork dance. 

Meanwhile we hang at the beach and see what develops. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a swim. Perhaps more noisy neighbors! 

I’m reading a couple of novels simultaneously while I’m here. Webb recommended La Débâcle by Emile Zola, a story of the French debacle in the Franco Prussian war of 1870. And I like history so this was up my alley. 

On the more relevant subject of Central America I finally remembered the title of a half remembered novel by a former winter resident of Key West, Robert Stone who died in 2015. 

“A Flag For Sunrise” is set in two countries in Central America, Compostela which is Honduras and Tecan which is Nicaragua. It has a wide ranging cast of characters, smugglers, revolutionaries  corrupt officials, a whisky priest in the style of Graham Greene and so forth.  The plot such as it is revolves around the forthcoming revolt in Tecan on the largely forgotten Caribbean coast. It’s an odd story and I suppose dated but I find it easy to picture. Perhaps its greatest merited to ten food me not to lose my way with alcohol! 

Bahia Ballena

Yesterday I described the facilities we find so helpful on our journey and while I am certain the toilets and showers look rudimentary to a North American eye they serve us well. 

The other thing is the beach. It’s not bright yellow sand, most of Central America is basically volcanic so black rocks and black sand are the norm but this a lovely empty beach. All to ourselves. 

And if you look carefully there is no trash. Ticos are obsessive about picking up after themselves and they value the country’s eco-tourism reputation so trash is a scarce commodity in public places. 

During the day the tide goes out at the moment and I wanted to ask Webb Chiles, a sports fanatic, if that was a football length out to the water. I have no clue but I figure it must be close. Is that 200 yards? Perhaps I need a quarterback to come out and measure it for me. But in any event it’s a long walk for a swim…well worth it. 

The waves are mild and the water is warm here, shallow over black sand so it’s like a frying pan on low heat. 

The campground itself is huge though not all of it is accessible to tall vehicles. You’d be surprised how limiting a tall vehicle is when overlanding. Parking garages have height restrictions as do campground entrances and in Mexico even supermarket parking lots have height barriers. Apparently those are to keep buses and collectivo taxi vans from parking in front of the shopping malls, which makes life awkward for us. Around here the campground is criss crossed with low wires because each palapa has a light bulb and a twin 15 amp outlet. A van would bring all the wires down. 

We are too tall at 9ft or 2.8 meters but how the big expedition trucks cope I don’t know. Even on city streets sometimes we fear clipping overhead wires. 

For the moment we have found our happy spot. Panama is getting back to normal and the protests are over so the highways are open. One day we’ll wake up and feel the familiar urge to move and that will be the day we leave. We pay day by day here so any day may be the last. 

I’m sure you understand it’s not easy to leave. We have cabbage and apples but we’re out of bananas rambutans and lettuce. We started our back up bag of dog food and we have plenty of treats so Rusty is okay. Layne keeps cooking from her stores, smoked pork chops and air fried potatoes last night, and we are going to bake today. 

To get to Panama we need to pay a vet to organize Rusty’s exit papers. Some vets charge $260 according to iOverlander so we may have to go back up north to the vet who treated Rusty for ant bites as she seems much more reasonable. Panama and Costa Rica make pet travel expensive and bureaucratic I suppose because they can.

I wouldn’t get a dog if I were planning to overland a vehicle but I won’t leave him behind. 

I expect we’ll be on the road later this week back up into the mountains then when we have Rusty’s documents we’ll drive the Caribbean coast which I’ve never seen, passing through Puerto Limon and Puerto Viejo to Sixaola so we can drive the Caribbean coast of Panama too.

If like Joebob you are following along on the map you might enjoy checking out Rocking J’s in Puerto Viejo. We plan on spending a night there and I’m not sure if we will be laughing at the antics or clutching our pearls. It’s in the iOverlander app as well and also with mixed reviews…

Meanwhile we have some beach lounging to do. Soon enough we’ll be on the road and doing useful stuff.