Nicaragua

Granada was quite a busy place and my hostel was located very near the main market, making it extremely crowded. It was fun to walk around the city and see all the happenings.

My first day there, I took a day trip to nearby Laguna de Apuyo, a lake created from an old volcano crater, bragging to be the cleanest lake in Nicaragua (which I suppose, could mean just about anything). I spent the day swimming, reading, and napping. There was an American college group there, I guess from a semester abroad program, so the beach was a bit crowded and loud, but overall, it was humorous to listen to their oh-so-American conversations about their dramatic daily lives. I pulled out a beautiful sunburn that day as well, which started peeling right as I was ready to go back to the states.

The beach house where I spent the day on the lake:

The laguna:

Costa Rica

I don't have many pictures of the house Brian rented "Villa Olivia" in Playa Grande, since everyone else had plenty of pictures, and I was on vacation afterall.

Here's the moon setting over the Pacific out the back of the house. It's insane to me how fast the sun and moon set. Once it's near the horizon it's only a couple minutes before it's all the way down. We were blessed with many good sunsets, and I have yet to see the sunrise (around 5:30am or something ridiculous like that).

After the week on the beach and all of his friends had flown home, Brian and I camped out near 'Pirates Beach'. Once we got to the beach, there were a couple houses and some cars and we figured we'd be better off exploring more options, so we went down the road a bit further to a small beach where no one was. We climbed around the rocky beach as the sun was setting, teased some hermit crabs (they were everywhere!) and then went to sleep with howler monkeys barking in the treetops.




The next few days we went surfing in a couple of spots. We went back to Playa Grande on Sunday, and then to Playa Avellanas that night through Tuesday. The best day was on Tuesday morning when we beat the crowds out early in the morning and had all the waves to ourselves before locals came and 'took over'. I also saw a baby leatherback turtle swimming for it's life out to sea. He/she made it past the surf, but with all the pelicans swarming around, it's a miracle that any of them ever survive.
Tuesday night landed us in Santa Elena in the hills in the interior of Costa Rica and ate dinner in a tree house. It reminded us both of Queenstown, New Zealand, the countries 'adventure tour' capital, only a little tamer. This area of Costa Rica is big on Eco-tourism and perserving a lot of the forest around and they run a lot of zipline, coffee plantation and nature tours. We went to 'Sky trek' the next day, and 13 platform zipline tour. It was kind of cloudy and rainy, which I think made it even more fun. When you can't even see the other end of the zipline through the fog, it makes it even more exciting. It was neat to fly over the canopy and get an inside look of the forest. On our same tour there was a family from Seattle who knows a high school friend of mine from sailing and also an LA English teacher on a sabatical through a ton of spanish speaking countries which was interesting to hear about.


We made it back to San Jose on Wednesday, and ate at an Italian restaurant, which surprisingly enough (to me) was decorating for Christmas. Is it that time of year already? I suppose so. Thanksgiving morning, Brian dropped me off at the bus station before he flew out and I spent the day on a bus to Granda, Nicarauga. It was a tad interesting. I've ridden on a Mexican bus before from Denver to New Mexico so I knew what it was like to be the only english speaking person on the bus, but I didn't know what crossing a Central American border was like, and wasn't familiar with the city I was going to. But I made it safely, even though the bus driver could talk on his cell phone, eat a meat tortilla, put in 'Greatest Romantic Hits Volume #2' in the DVD player and manuever the windy 2 lane highway through the Costa Rican mountains all at the same time. The bus 'helper' was not so helpful, especially to me, so I had to try to ask the pregnant 15 year-old who was sitting next to me to go over anything important. But I made it to Granada late in the day and streets were very colorful and exciting and more importantly, they were actually marked as to what street they were, which made finding my hostel easy.

It's Not THAT Burnt....

I've finally had a chance for a little update on my travels. I got stuck in McMurdo for an extra two days as well, so I had to push back my Costa Rica ticket once more and hope for the best. I spent Sunday in Christchurch and left Monday afternoon after doing multiple errands that morning and running to the airport with a stress-attack.
View from the 11th floor of my hotel. I was actually staying on the other side of the floor, which was a sweet view at night of the whole city:

Street view in Christchurch:

I was then in for a marathon flight plan. I flew to LA overnight, then spent all of Monday at LAX where I took a red-eye to Miami and then to San Jose that morning. I took a taxi to the bus stop in the city, and onto a 4 hour bus ride to Liberia. I rolled in after dark and was getting a bit nervous walking around loaded with luggage, and when I came into the internet store, the rendevous point, Brian wasn't there and I was already late, but he walked in the door just after and finally the weight of travelling was off my shoulders, since I could be chauffered by someone familiar and would not be sleeping in a car/bus/plane/terminal for awhile.

Who cares you say? You want to hear about what life is like after being out of the Pole? I could hardly have told you until I came here, since I was rushing around from spot to spot, getting things organized and always trying to beat the clock for the first week. But, the best it gets is when you wake up at 7:00am in Playa Grande, Costa Rica with sun pouring through the windows, and roll over not to open your eyes again until 2:00pm. Not a bad first day. The waves break just in front of the house and it's great surfing at high tide. And although sleeping has been great, floating on a surfboard and watching the sun set (and it doesn't mess around with setting when you are on the equator) and the waves glowing orange and pink has been amazing. We were staying with several of Brian's friends from College Station, TX but they all left today. We had plans of heading to the east coast, but decided to stay on the peninsula since it had great remote beaches and we've enjoyed the last week so much. I might get some pictures one of these days. Maybe when this burn fades to a tan...

What is One More Day?

After all the delays, I finally made it out of the Pole on November 8, ironically, the day that I was originally supposed to leave, but begged to change to the 3rd so that I could make my vacation happen. So, I had to push back my Costa Rica trip which was a bit of headache, but I was sure even more relieved when I finally got there. Here is watching my plane come in:

The wait seemed atrosously (there might be a huge spelling problem with that one..) long, give it was the first "new" experience to come our way in several months and we'd been hoping for it all week. Getting out of that place was nearly as exciting as pulling in for the first time:

Because of the delays we picked up several other flight manifests with severalsummer people who were only down for a couple weeks. I just wanted to shake them on the plane and say "Hey, do you know how cool it is to get out of here!!!" since they didn't have the same glow as the rest of us. Some excited (and pale) faces as the plane took off (Me, Terry and Katie):

The always necessary porthole picture over the Transantarctic Mountains:

My time in McMurdo was hectic, and a my sleep schedule was slightly messed up. We left the Pole at 10:00pm so we got to McMurdo after 1:00am, then I visited Andrea at work, slept for a bit, and then got up for coffee at the Coffee House with a friend and then went right back with Andrea when she finished work. Ann Curry, from the Today Show was still delayed in McMurdo as well and since Andrea had already met her and told her I was coming out of Pole, she chatted for a bit, but was very preoccupied with typing 600 words per minute on her blackberry. Apparently the notes for her story. She was very congenial though and was buying coffee for nearly everyone who came in that morning. I think she got about as much sleep as I did that weekend, because she slept the whole flight back to Christchurch on Monday:

Between catching up with Andrea, visiting friends at work or at the bar on Saturday night, beating Super Mario Brothers, mailing back my snowboard and other errands, my weekend filled up fast and before I knew it was enroute to Christchurch. Up to that point I had taken much for granted on 'how things work'. The flight out from the Pole nearly seemed standard as it completed my 4th trip there in a bit more than a year, and the familiarity of McMurdo apparently hasn't worn off either, but sitting in the C-17 after take-off, which I had only done once before, I had an awakening that there were a lot of 'new' experiences ahead and life as I have known it was about to get more complicated and "full" again.

Bored Researchers Meet Bored Winterovers

Flights have been a bit hairy lately. Our weather has finally cleared up, but McMurdo's weather went down the tubes. Our closest call was on Saturday when we actually heard (and some even saw) the C-130 buzz by station, but visibility here had got downhill only 20 minutes before they arrived and they couldn't see the runway. How about you leave on time next time, A.N.G.? They had three planes in the sky when McMurdo's weather got real windy real fast, so they all turned around at once. The first plane landed ok, they had just left station, the second flight circled endlessly around McMurdo creating some 'sick' passengers and the third flight (the one that made it all the way here) aborted and landed at Terra Nova, the Italian station. They only had a few passengers, and we were all depressed that we had almost gotten on that same flight and would have been spending our weekend at a different station the few ever see. Sunday, the guard doesn't fly, but really, they should have. Monday more high winds in Mactown had them delaying and cancelling our flights all day. Yesterday was a joke, they shouldn't have even added the flights to the scroll, the last cancellation being at 7:00pm. They didn't even announce all of the cancellations on the intercom.

There are some benifits in staying longer than expected (one of them was NOT having to change my flight to Costa Rica yesterday).

1) I suddenly have no problem getting up at 7:00am for breakfast when I can sleep whenever I want.
2) I wear socks around the station all day, and don't bother with shoes.
3) Living out of one bag makes life so much simpler.
4) I work if I want to and sleep if I need to, and get paid all the same either way.
5) Free time to make travel plans I didn't make already.
6) The "midrats" dinner (at midnight) is WAY better than the rest of the meals.

Some things that aren't so great:

1) "Oh, you're still here. Weren't you supposed to leave on Saturday". Chuckle, chuckle.
2) Endless whining in the galley from everyone else who is delayed (it's easy to get sucked into that trap.)
3) Not knowing if I should put sheets back on my bed.
4) Not being able to open the door in my new room/closet even though I only have one bag (they kicked most of us out of our winter rooms.)
5) Gazing out the window at crystal clear weather and still seeing 'Weather Delay' on the flight scroll.

Since the MAYO clinic who is doing reserach on high altitude effects is missing most of their patiences who are stuck in McMurdo, and since we have nothing better to do, about 8 of us got suited up late last night in 'life vests' that monitor sleeping behavior. They are studying people's adaptations to high altitude when they first get here, but thought they would throw some well-adapted people (which I think we've got covered after 12 months) into the mix for further research opportunities. Creepy huh?


I slept pretty good last night, but when I got up this morning I felt like Elliot from E.T. ripping through his monitors.... only I wasn't in such a rush, since I woke up at 7:00am to "indefinite weather delays" over the intercome, a whole 2 and half hours before our flight was even supposed to leave McMurdo. And so, the drama continues. Brian and I pushed out our Costa Rica flight yesterday, which should cover us unless I can't get out in the next three days.

And this lovely poem from my friend, Kevin, in McMurdo, who was supposed to come hang out at the South Pole five days ago:

At the South Pole there’s a chica,
Who should be in Costa Rica,
But she’s stuck at the Pole,
It must be taking its toll,
And now she must feel like Guernica.

Pretty much sums it up.

Cancelled

Just came through that they cancelled all the flights due to weather today....

So, what does that mean? The Guard doesn't usaully fly on Sundays unless it's real important, but they might. If not, then it's a straight through on Monday. (Fly to McMurdo and fly to Christchurch the same day). That would be unfortunate since I wouldn't get time in McMurdo with Andrea and friends, and I'm restricted on my plane ticket to Costa Rica, so I can't really ask to stay a day or two anyway. Argh. That ain't good.

Although, they are opening the Post Office here tomorrow, so at least I can send out my packages from here instead of working out some convoluted flight path for them to get to Andrea. And I can take a breather before I leave!

The Waiting Game

I wish I had some good thoughts for my last day at work. It's been very hectic getting ready to leave and I'm still finishing up things for work before I'm supposed to leave this afternoon. The flights keep getting pushed back, this time for McMurdo weather, so we'll see what happens. All I know is that whether I am still here or not, I will be done with my job and ready to go to Central America.

It's definitely our time to go. I just walk around station like I always have and I have ended up bumping into or nearly blindsiding all kinds of people. Station is heavy with new folks and we already feel as if we've been squeezed our of our community. Since the last flight of winter-overs didn't make it out 2 days ago, they are all lumped into our flight too, so after this flight, there will only be a few winter scientist stragglers around.

Sort of a mixed blessing: I got the crud (bad cold) a couple days ago. Not fun since I was still trying to finish everything up, but ok now, because I think I'm nearly over it, so I won't be too sick when I get to Christchurch.

I'll come up with a better post season review later I suppose.