Broken News: Quepos-Quickies (New Parking Regulation, Bus Fares Skyrocket, International Living Interview, Gecko for Lunch)
Rumble Talk: Turrialba Still Active, Central CR Shaky
Feature: Playa Diversiones (Other Fun Things to Do at the Beach)
Feature: Coffee as Health Food (From Scourge to Health Aid in a Few Years)
Feature: Body Transplants (The Ultimate in Health Care)
What's-in-a-Word (Tectonic)
ROMEO Corner (BLUE, Quepos)
Wisdom of the Ages
I was always taught to respect my elders,
but it keeps getting harder to find one.
Broken News (All the News That's Fit to Reprint)
Quepos-Quickies (Heard on the Street)
New Parking Regulation. In a rush to add new sources of revenue, the Municipalidad of Quepos has instituted a system of parking tickets for certain spaces that were recently marked off in downtown Quepos. This reporter made an attempt to understand how the system works and was only partially successful. The tickets are purchased at the Muni office in downtown Quepos in multiples of 350 colones each (about 65 U.S. cents) for an hour. You can also buy one that is good for a half hour.
Marchers Blocking Intersection
on Main Street
Can You Pick Out Several Local
Business Owners? I Can
GG attempted to determine how one uses the system and came away confused. Evidently the ticket has columns of years, months, days and hours printed on them. You circle the appropriate figures and put the ticket on the dash. Does anybody but me see the potential for cheating and system abuse here? Hopefully, more will be revealed.
Many people think that paying for parking spaces in a town the size of Quepos is a bit of overkill. Included in this group are many of the merchants, restaurant, hotel and shop owners who view this regulation as negatively complicating their business lives.
If the lack of parking is a problem, maybe something could be done to recapture that large area behind the fire station, owned by the city and currently being used as a dump for miscellaneous city materials like drainage pipes and rusting pieces of metal. It would probably hold fifty cars and be dead center in the town. Too logical and easy a solution, my Muni amigos?
All this reinforces GG's appreciation for making the decision almost seven years ago not to have a car here. Pura Vida.
Bus Fares Skyrocket. While the municipalidad was busy crafting new systems to extract money from downtown car parkers, the bus company was occupied in recalculating new bus fares for the seven kilometer/four mile Quepos-Manuel Antonio route. What they came up with was an increase in the fare from 315 to 320 colones. That's up from 59.8 to 60.7 U.S. cents or an increase of 0.9 cents. Was it really worth the change and the splitting of this kind of hair amigos? The fare signs on the bus, computer printed, hand written or stenciled on the windshield, all had to be changed as well as the cheat sheets the drivers use for multiple pays up to 20 passengers. Drivers spent the next few days educating old and new passengers on the new fare and getting them to cough up another tin nickel.
But GG can't complain too much because, with a valid residency permit (cédula) and being over 65, the fare on all local busses is 0 colones or 0 cents.
International Living Interview. A few months ago GG was invited by a friend to participate in a small group interview with a representative of International Living Magazine, one of the more popular publications for those that travel a lot, those who actually live in other countries or those who are contemplating doing so. The IL reporter was interested in how ex-pats who have lived here for a number of years viewed their experience with the Central Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. Our group had varied experience levels from a few years to over 40 living in Costa Rica.
Personally, I was impressed with the IL reporter's ability to take prodigious written notes. If you'd like to read the article go here: IL Link May 2015 Issue. I also have a PDF copy of the entire issue which I can send you on request.
Gecko for Lunch. There we were, a friend and I having lunch at a popular downtown eatery in the heart of metropolitan Quepos, a place open to the atmosphere as are most restaurants here, when the dude in the picture to the left decided to join us. I could have reached out and grabbed him as he was less than two feet away but I probably would not have been fast enough and he'd have scurried away.
Having lived in Florida and Costa Rica for the last seventeen years, I've come to appreciate geckos as being good housekeepers because they sweep my place clean of ants and other small critters. And God knows I need a replacement for my first pet, Gerry who either moved on or passed away recently. He probably left rather than passed on to that great reptile heaven in the sky as geckos have a life span of 15-20 years. My guess is he probably ran out of ants and chiggers and gave up on me for not supplying him nutritionally.
What can I say, everyone needs a pet and now that I know how to call like a gecko ("thwack, thwack, thwack"), I'll keep trying to find a new Gerry.
¡Pura Vida!
Rumble Talk (Shaky Happenings On or About the Pacific Rim)
The Turrialba volcano continued its activity as a series of eruptions during most of the month of May and was the subject of almost daily reports in the press. On Thursday the 14th an eruption sent enough ash westward to close the country's major airport in San José for the third time in a month. Operations resumed at Aeropuerto Juan Santamaria some hours later. Two days earlier, two strong quakes had occurred at the Turrialba site and just before the eruption on the 14th, another one occurred. And just before that, on Sunday the 10th, there was a series of 4+ quakes that hit just off the west coast of Guanacaste province.
Could all these all be related? Some scientists think yes. The main cause of all this activity is the interaction of the Cocos tectonic (see What's-in-a-Word below for the origin of this word) plate which forces itself under the Caribbean plate; Costa Rica basically rests on top of the Caribbean plate. This has been so for somewhere between 3 and 15 million years, which scientists say is a short time in geological terms. Back then, the early action of these plates literally caused the floor of the ocean to rise and form the Costa Rican/Panama isthmus which cut off the connection between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
The new land that resulted eventually turned green due to tropical temperatures and much rain coming from both sides that hung up in the mountains. Le voila, Ticoland and Panama were born and the result of that violent upheaval became the central mountain spine of Costa Rica which you can see more easily on the relief map to the right (the height gauge is in meters, multiply by 3.3 for feet).
Scientists theorize that when the Cocos plate pushes under the Caribbean plate it can push a lot of water with it and Turrialba was the most convenient for this latest round of plate slippage to allow the trapped water to escape as steam and cause the eruption. So when quakes hit the west, eruptions can manifest themselves even in the east and that's the connection between the two.
Meanwhile Turrialba continued its rumbling and the main airport was again closed on the 18th for three hours. Authorities have instituted a restricted zone for a five kilometer radius around the funnel and will maintain that zone until further notice.
Living on the rim is living on the edge, amigos.
Check Out Recent Earthquakes Around the World
Posted by the U.S. Geodetic Survey:Today's Quakes
Playa Diversiones (Other Fun Things to Do at the Beach)
So you go to the beach to unlax, laze around in the sun, bob in the water (isn't that what you call a man with no arms and no legs floating in the ocean - Bob; oh sorry, old joke).
The video left shows how beach life can be as simple as playing in the water. You might go to the beach to get peace of mind, veg out, molt, reduce your blood pressure to near zero without flatlining, or attain a state similar to cryopreservation suitable for interstellar travel. Man and woman alike seek solace at the beach. And recently scientists found that at least part of the therapeutic beach "effect" has a physical cause, it is enhanced by the negative ions produced when waves crash (see "ions").
In visiting some areas here, near Mar y Sombra and the Restaurant Balu for example, you can walk to the beach and will pass under a canopy of vines and interwoven tree branches that are like a large overhead net. Look up. It's not unusual to see monkeys playing overhead, sloths slowly working their way to their next resting place or even a boa slithering across the maze looking for a juicy iguana for lunch. If you look closely at the photo to the right, it shows three carablancas (white-faced monkeys) chattering away at each other (can you see them?). The one in the center is pointing a finger at another one to the left in a very wifely manner: "Out swinging with the boys again last night, were you?".
Some visitors here are surprised by the number of entrepreneurial vendors at our main beach. Freedom from vendors can actually be more easily found at many busier U.S. beaches than it can here. That's because almost every kind of activity (at least at the east coast beaches GG knows) is strictly monitored and controlled by a myriad of regulations. But there you also have to deal with the crowds and perhaps serious parking and beach access fees. To get that kind of vendor freedom here, you need to go to the more remote areas north and south of Manuel Antonio.
The beach I will be talking about here is not the beautiful, smaller crescent shaped beach in the National Park that is officially Playa Manuel Antonio but the mile-long-plus public beach contiguous and north of the Park, known commonly as Manuel Antonio Beach but which is officially Playa Espadilla. At this public beach there are many other things you can do besides molt. Constantly being offered are a myriad of pleasant diversions to occupy your attention should you so choose to entertain them or be entertained by them. Here are some examples:
Parasailing
Banana Boat
Surfing
Boogie Boarding
Kayaking
Parasailing right off the beach is one of them. One to three people, each with a life preserver, can be harnessed into a carrier attached to a parachute and, with a running start, a speedboat will pull you up, up and away. The ride gets you floating above and around the various rock islands of Manuel Antonio. At the end of the hour ride you are gently dumped into the sea near your starting point to be rescued by assistants in a speed boat and/or on jet skis. Great view and very refreshing.
For a little less stimulation or for those that do better at ground level, gather a few of your friends or family (up to 10) and try the banana boat (again, life preservers are worn). Lots of fun sloshing over the waves. It is traditional with this ride that the last run made by the boat pulling you is done in such a way as to dump the group into the drink near the starting point. What fun!
Then, for the physically fit (GG is exempt from this category), there are surfboards for rent at several places along the beach. And for a fee you can take surfing lessons from some local dudes like Jungle Jessie and Juancho (Johnny). These guys have spent most of their lives at the beach and know how to do it, surfing that is. If you encourage Juancho enough, he might even show you how to surf a wave standing on your head (well at least he can do it).
Another similar, but somewhat easier activity to surfing is boogie boarding. Boogie boards are also available at several places along the beach, usually with the surf board dudes. This is a somewhat less vigorous version of surfing and it doesn't demand the balance skills of surfing. Note the photo left with the boogie boarder - am I the only one that sees the image of my seventh grade nun teacher on the second island in from the left? But again I diverge.
Then there are the purveyors of "stuff". Now some gringos, make that norteamericanos, no make that northerners in order to include many Europeans, find the frequent hawking of food and trinkets mildly irritating. That's because they're used to that highly controlled and regulated atmosphere one finds at their home beaches.
But to we locals, bantering with the vendors at Manuel Antonio has become a ritual and an art form; they have become our amigos de la playa (beach friends). Of course, once the vendors know you, you get solicitation on only those things they know you buy regularly so the intensity of offers to we locals is much less than to the tourists.
Want My Ceramie?
Under the category of "things" we have the ceramics. Up to six young people will be plying the sands offering these rather attractive and decorative bowls and vases all fired at one factory in Nicaragua. Ramon (photo right I don't think the SWAT team hat is a true indication of previous employment) has been a friend nearly all of the time I've lived here. Like GG, he lives in Barrio Los Angeles in Quepos about four blocks from my apartment. You know you've arrived as a local when you no longer get a pitch at the beach from the ceramic vendors like Ramon .
Horseback Riding on MA
Geraldo Offering One of His Beach Towels, Note the Parasail in the Background
You or your kids can also ride horses along the beach. There is at least one gentleman that offers chaperoned rides up and down the mile-long plus Playa Espadilla. The horses are strategically bagged in the rear to avoid unnecessary deposits of unplanned pollution (cleaned that up well).
Then there is old Geraldo, a mid-octegenarian Tico offering large toallas (beach towels) of good quality for about 10,000 colones (<$19). Under the limited protection of his large sombrero, Geraldo (no photo available) slowly trudges the entire length of the main beach several times per day. What a dude, what stamina. Also, there are a few who pass by offering trinkets such as necklaces and bracelets, some of which are quite artistic, as well as a couple of sunglass purveyors and a guy with cigars (real Cohiba the box says - not). GG hasn't gotten to know the trinket vendors well yet and no longer can avail himself of the Cohiba dude.
Ceviche Lady
José, or is it Tom Cruise
And then there are the food people. GG's best ceviche award goes to the lady in the photo to the left. Her ceviche style is Peruvian and I have talked her out of her secret recipe that includes a touch of Fresca in the marinade. She usually has fish, shrimp and mixed fish with shrimp versions. Yummers.
Our buddy José (lower right) has the best empanadas in this part of Costa Rica; several combinations of chicken, chicharones and beef with cheese, potatoes or yucca. Again, yummers. Just say "Tom Cruise" to José and he'll go into his impersonation
of Tom in the movie Cocktail, complete with Spanish rap and over the shoulder back flips of the spicy sauce bottle (no extra charge for the entertainment).
Jaime & His Snow Cones
There is no shortage of sweets either. Jaime (left) and another fellow I call Señor Saprissa (because we sing the theme song of that best known Costa Rican futbol team together), both offer good snow cones with fruit syrup and two kinds of condensed milk. There are also a couple of people who push Eskimo carts along the beach if you'd like ice cream.
If you prefer a healthier dessert, there are several vendors of pipas (fresh coconut water) which is light and much less sugary. Watch the dude chop off the top of a fresh coconut with a machete. He'll also use the knife to split the nut into pieces for you to get at the meat after you've finished drinking the pipas.
If all this snacking doesn't satisfy you, there are a few dudes who almost continuously pass through the area and who will show you menus from some of the nearby restaurants, take your orders and deliver a full meal to your chair. Just because you're at the beach doesn't mean you have to go primitive. You can have your camping amigos, this is what GG thinks that roughing it is all about.
Oh yeah, and do you really want to relax? How about a massage. There are several masseurs and masseuses who ply their trade right on the beach. This is particularly true around the Mar y Sombra and Balu restaurant area where there are always a few tents set up with massage tables waiting for you.
Some of these rubbing entrepreneurs are quite creative, like the young lady to the right who I caught walking on the back of her client while using an overhead branch of a tree for leverage. What a tree-mendous idea (sorry, I can't resist the pun).
Or how about grabbing your partner or friend and treating yourselves to a joint massage at sunset. There is at least one couple that offers that specialty and the video to the right shows them in action. The couple is being treated to a massage at sunset under the umbrella by a massage couple. It's rough, but someone has to do it.
Picture it: It's late in the afternoon, the sun is slowly cooling off, the cool Pacific breeze is blowing and the kinks are being worked out by a masseuse. It doesn't get any better than this amigo.
Coffee as Health Food
(From Scourge to Health Aid in a Few Years)
GG has been around this planet long enough to see that some problems are cyclical and by that I mean some things that were considered problematic or a health problem in one age were later found to be beneficial at a later date in one or more ways. Coffee is a perfect example. GG has always liked coffee and has drunk ample quantities of it over the years, admittedly sometimes to excess.
First let me issue a disclaimer or at least a cautionary. Caffeine still can be a problem to someone with high blood pressure; that fact hasn't changed. People with that condition need to avoid or minimize caffeine intake. That's why decaffeinated coffee was invented. GG has been fortunate in never having had a blood pressure problem so the issue of needing to drink decaffeinated coffee never arose.
That's good because I never liked decaffeinated coffee, neither the taste nor the idea of how it's made. The most common decaffeination process uses a chlorinated hydrocarbon (dichloromethane) to extract the caffeine from green coffee beans. As an old and somewhat withered chemical engineer, the idea of using a solvent, which also is used as a paint stripper, to treat a consumable product leaves me cold even though experts say residual DCM in the coffee is very low (~1 part per million). This is so because it has a low boiling point and is supposedly driven off in the roasting process. So say the DCM boys; and the FDA agrees. Maybe so but the idea of any residual paint stripper in my morning java still unsettles me (once a chemical engineer, always a chemical engineer).
In recent years, positive reports about health and coffee have emerged. Here's a quick summary of some of them:
In 2012, the American Chemical Society issued a report on a study stating that people who drink four or more cups of coffee per day have a 50% less chance of developing Type II Diabetes (see Coffee vs Type II).
In 2013, the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center in Japan, reporting on a 13 year study of 83,000 adults, that the combination of drinking coffee and green tea had a synergistic effect of reducing the occurrence of intra cerebral hemorrhage (i.e., stroke) by 32% (see Going Green with Coffee).
In 2014, a "double blind" study (sounds like GG before cataract surgery) from Johns Hopkins concluded that caffeine has a positive effect on long-term memory, but offered little help for those of us who have short term problems (see Coffee and Memory). OK, where did I put that article?
One of Many Brands of "Specialty" Coffee Available Here
Now comes a study from Lund University in Sweden that confirms an earlier study and report from the University of Bristol in England that caffeine and caffeic acid, particularly in combination with tamoxifen but also on its own, reduce the risk of getting breast cancer and can actually reduce the size of tumors in those that already have it. The experiential data also shows that drinking two or more cups of coffee per day resulted in smaller tumors even at time of diagnosis before treatment began. With tamoxifen the effect is synergistic and can reduce reoccurrence of the cancer by as much as 50%.
Sorry, but I never drank java for the health benefits, just for the taste but I'll take the health benefits along with the great flavor.
And we have some of the best and richest coffee in the world right here in Tiquicia (another name for Costa Rica). The country, of course, has a long and rich history with the coffee bean. The development of the coffee industry was intertwined with the first railroads and the birth of the banana industry. Check out this article for the history of these important industries: Choo Choo Chiquita. The photo to the left shows just one of dozens of boutique brands of good, rich Costa Rican coffee. I seem to come across a new one almost every month and Costa Ricans and ex-pats are beginning to treat their coffees like the French treat their mineral waters; everyone has their own favorite brand and type.
I'll have another cup of the dark roast with my chocolate muffin please (chocolate is another one of those things that's enjoying a reversing health assessment).
No sugar, no cream, for me amigos, just pura café de Costa Rica.
So, if the coffee, green tea and all the nutritional goodies in tropical fruits, exotic and otherwise, don't do it for you, there might be another way. Recently, the press has been abuzz about the possibility of a full body transplant. Even the renowned English rag, the Guardian, reported on this in its February 15, 2015 edition.
Seems a certain neurological surgeon named Dr. Sergio Carnavero of Turin, Italy (pic left) claims we are apt to see a full body transplant, i.e., grafting the head of one person into another's body soon. He expects to do the operation himself, barring governmental interference and the overcoming of obvious ethical questions. He even has a volunteer, a 30 year old Russian named Valery Spiridonov who has Werdnig-Hoffman disease - a rare genetic muscle wasting condition, also referred to as Type 1 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Spiridonov's brain is very functional but his body is withered and he will not live much longer. To see Valery, go here: http://rt.com/news/248473-transplant-head-body-canavero/
Carnavero claims that the technical capability to do such a complex operation will be available within two years and he himself will have developed it. Dr. Carnavero, whose name would support a weak translation from Italian into English as "true meat", has as his goal the prolonging of the lives of terminal patients. And as history proves, if something can be done, somebody will do it.
Transplants of major body parts are not new. Normally, these have been restricted to internal organs such as the heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas, intestine and thymus. Kidneys are the most transplanted organs around the world. Tissues that have been done include bones, tendons (both referred to as musculoskeletal grafts), cornea, skin, heart valves, nerves and veins.
An Early
Transplant Effort
Head transplants aren't totally new either, at least in animal research, having been done in the past on monkeys, dogs, cats and mice with some success. The work goes back to the early 1900's by doctors in the United States and Russia. This research provided valuable information about how the vascular system works and what it takes to repair it. (If there are any PETA fans out there, please hold the comments, I'm only reporting here, not taking an ethical or philosophical stand about using animals in this way)
In more recent years, major attempts at grafting operations around the world have been physically successful, for example:
In 1968, a French doctor grafted a face onto a woman who had been severely mauled by her own labrador retriever after she had accidentally taken an overdose of sleeping pills.
In 1970, a team at case Western Reserve University performed a head transplant from one monkey to another. They reported success in restoring breathing, circulation and visual awareness but they stopped short of connecting the brain stem, so the monkey was unable to move. The monkey survived only 29 days.
In the 1990's some Chinese did research on grafting heads on mice and demonstrated that circulation and breathing could be restored and maintained. Like the Case Western team, they didn't get around to connecting the brain stem to the spinal cord, which is the trickiest part (Dr. Carnavero thinks he has a technique that will work).
In 2001 a 50-year old New Zealander received a transplanted hand that healed and functioned well but which was later voluntarily amputated (see explanation below).
In 2006, the Chinese (there they go again) performed the world's first penis graft on a man who had lost his organ in a severe accident. They attached a 10 cm (4") donation onto the 1 cm stub of his wound and restored normal circulation including full blood supply and urination capability.
Although there has been great progress in surgical techniques and restoration of functions in this effort, there continues to be problems with longer term immunodeficiency as well as serious emotional and psychological problems associated with major transplants. In the latter category, the history of grafted transplants is replete with physically successful operations that carried with them major psychological problems. In the case of the New Zealander, he became so mentally "detached" from his hand that it became withered and eventually had to be amputated. In the case of the Chinese penis transplant, it was cut off two weeks later because of psychological concerns of both the recipient and his wife (maybe he should have gone for the 20 cm model?).
Many doctors believe that although the process for successfully performing the transplant may be ready in two years, successful survival rates after transplant and psychological acceptance by the recipient will still have to be demonstrated. Much further testing in animals will need to be done and that brings on a whole new series of ethical questions.
Personally, methinks that the good Dr. Truemeat is thinking too small. Certainly there will be people who would want a transplant not only for reasons of extending their lives but also for aesthetics. GG has already chosen his new body - shown at the left. I can see me now, walking down Manuel Antonio beach - eat your heart out Ticas.
Of course, thinking a little deeper, one is confronted with some concerns and presented with certain anomalies in this idea. Like, for example, the sight of a gorgeous 20-year old body being piloted by a shrunken, withered 71-year old head might cause some consternation among the beach folk, as well as bring on some of those old bag-over-the-head jokes.
So then I started to think about doing only the brain as a transplant, sort of like the Frankenstein model. With that approach there would be a whole new body directed by my old consciousness. But this might not necessarily work because the brain I've got has gotten a bit tired. Once removed from the old GG, it sure could use a tune up, a cleaning to remove the corrosion built up over the years, maybe even some electrotherapy to re-stimulate the short-term memory. Some degree of brainwashing is certainly suggested.
The terminal is neat and clean, the attendants courteous, the pilots capable. The fleet of lear jets the carrier operates is immense, your jet takes off without a hitch, pushes above the clouds and, and at 20,000 feet, explodes without warning.
What's-in-a-Word
Tectonic
Tectonic is an adjective meaning "related to building or construction". When used in geology it means pertaining to the earth's crust and referring to the forces or conditions that cause movements of the crust.
The origin of the word is Latin (tectonicus) and/or Greek (tektonikós); the stem tektōn means carpenter in Greek, hence the attachment to building or construction.
Location: Second floor of the Centro Commercial La Garza, half way down the street that runs between Banco Nacional on one end and El Gran Escape on the other. Hours: Lunch and Dinner Parking: Limited in front of the Centro, usually plentiful on the street. Contact: Tel.: 8336-4047; Email: info@bluequepos.com; Website: http://www.bluequepos.com
Reviewing ROMEOS: Anita M., Brian M., Davis H., Bob N.
This is a fairly new restaurant in an old location. It's quite small as the picture left, which captures virtually the entire restaurant, shows. The motif is simple but the blue color scheme reinforces the name of the restaurant and results in a pleasant dining atmosphere. The restaurant is located on the second floor and is open to the atmosphere but street noise was not significant. Three and a half sloths for atmosphere.
We were given a mix of menus, two of us got the lunch version and two got the dinner version. Because of the experience we had the previous month at another restaurant (see ROMEO Review May 2015) we picked up that anomaly before we committed to ordering. The restaurant literature, its outdoor sign and the website emphasizes the fact that they won the "Best Ceviche Award" at the ceviche competition at the marina in 2014. That, of course, required that we order some.
GG had the fish ceviche which was very good, the fish being quite tender and the flavor being slightly sweet (one ROMEO suggested that was because they used ginger ale in the marinade).
GG and another ROMEO decided on a seafood platter billed as suitable for two persons. It actually would have been more reasonable for one and was accompanied by a small amount of mashed potatoes and steamed veggies. It included a small crab from which I couldn't render any meat and which appeared to have as its main function taking up space. The highlight of that dish was a light orange and slightly spicy sauce.
Others noted that the fish and calamari were a bit tough. The best we could do here was a 3 1/2 sloth rating for food quality and quantity.
1/2
$$$$
Value Index = 88
Service was courteous and pleasant but not as attentive as we might have liked as we had to ask for a few things that seemed obvious, like extra plates for splitting the dish for two and an additional plate for shell scraps. They also had a difficult time splitting the check and delivered three bills for two of us, one for each appetizer and drink that we ordered separately and a total for the shared plate. We did the reconciling arithmetic ourselves. Three and a half sloths for service and an overall rating of 3.5 sloths for atmosphere, food and service,
For the cup of ceviche. one pepsi and half the seafood plate, the total came to 12,500 colones (about $24). Considering the quantity of food served, that gives BLUE a cost rating of 4$ and a value rating of 3.5/4x100= 88.
For a summary of other restaurants reviewed by the ROMEO group in the past three years, go here:
Golden Gringo Chronicles Novel and E-Books Now Available!
The story of the Golden Gringo Chronicles is also available as a hard copy novel of 192 pages available through Amazon and all major online retailers. ($9.95)
Follow GG through the first six years of his odyssey in making the decision to retire in Costa Rica, overcoming the trials and tribulations of moving and obtaining residency there and the fun and experience of actually living in Ticoland.
Ride along with the Golden Gringo as he learns about the rich, varied culture of Costa Rica, the incredible bio diversity, the charming nature of the Costa Rican people and the ease with which a sometimes clueless ex-pat can assimilate into a small southwestern town on the Pacific coast.
Whether you are already a Costa Rican resident, someone contemplating a move here or just a traveler who enjoys different cultures, you will find the Golden Gringo Chronicles interesting, entertaining and informative about Costa Rica.
A narrative version of the Golden Gringo Chronicles is now also available as a trilogy of E-books in formats compatible with virtually all electronic platforms.
Click on Part Number above for E-book sample downloads or click the price above right for purchase.(The best price is on Part 1; it's FREE)
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The Golden Gringo Chronicles is a free newsletter that is non-political, non-commercial and, hopefully, entertaining. By signing up you will receive an email each month around the first of the month giving you the links to the latest edition as well as to each feature and departmental section.
Gecko for Lunch. There we were, a friend and I having lunch at a popular downtown eatery in the heart of metropolitan Quepos, a place open to the atmosphere as are most restaurants here, when the dude in the picture to the left decided to join us. I could have reached out and grabbed him as he was less than two feet away but I probably would not have been fast enough and he'd have scurried away. 
Could all these all be related? Some scientists think yes. The main cause of all this activity is the interaction of the Cocos tectonic (see What's-in-a-Word below for the origin of this word) plate which forces itself under the Caribbean plate; Costa Rica basically rests on top of the Caribbean plate. This has been so for somewhere between 3 and 15 million years, which scientists say is a short time in geological terms. Back then, the early action of these plates literally caused the floor of the ocean to rise and form the Costa Rican/Panama isthmus which cut off the connection between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
In visiting some areas here, near Mar y Sombra and the Restaurant Balu for example, you can walk to the beach and will pass under a canopy of vines and interwoven tree branches that are like a large overhead net. Look up. It's not unusual to see monkeys playing overhead, sloths slowly working their way to their next resting place or even a boa slithering across the maze looking for a juicy iguana for lunch. If you look closely at the photo to the right, it shows three carablancas (white-faced monkeys) chattering away at each other (can you see them?). The one in the center is pointing a finger at another one to the left in a very wifely manner: "Out swinging with the boys again last night, were you?".
Oh yeah, and do you really want to relax? How about a massage. There are several masseurs and masseuses who ply their trade right on the beach. This is particularly true around the Mar y Sombra and Balu restaurant area where there are always a few tents set up with massage tables waiting for you.
First let me issue a disclaimer or at least a cautionary. Caffeine still can be a problem to someone with high blood pressure; that fact hasn't changed. People with that condition need to avoid or minimize caffeine intake. That's why decaffeinated coffee was invented. GG has been fortunate in never having had a blood pressure problem so the issue of needing to drink decaffeinated coffee never arose.
Seems a certain neurological surgeon named Dr. Sergio Carnavero of Turin, Italy (pic left) claims we are apt to see a full body transplant, i.e., grafting the head of one person into another's body soon. He expects to do the operation himself, barring governmental interference and the overcoming of obvious ethical questions. He even has a volunteer, a 30 year old Russian named Valery Spiridonov who has Werdnig-Hoffman disease - a rare genetic muscle wasting condition, also referred to as Type 1 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Spiridonov's brain is very functional but his body is withered and he will not live much longer. To see Valery, go here: 
Personally, methinks that the good Dr. Truemeat is thinking too small. Certainly there will be people who would want a transplant not only for reasons of extending their lives but also for aesthetics. GG has already chosen his new body - shown at the left. I can see me now, walking down Manuel Antonio beach - eat your heart out Ticas.
This is a fairly new restaurant in an old location. It's quite small as the picture left, which captures virtually the entire restaurant, shows. The motif is simple but the blue color scheme reinforces the name of the restaurant and results in a pleasant dining atmosphere. The restaurant is located on the second floor and is open to the atmosphere but street noise was not significant. Three and a half sloths for atmosphere.
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