Whose Idea Was This Anyway

10 October 2011
07 October 2011 | Marina Papagayo, Guancaste, CR
06 October 2011 | Marina Papagayo
04 October 2011 | Marina Papagayo
28 August 2011 | Marina Papagayo, Guancaste, CR
27 August 2011 | Marina Papagayo, Guancaste, CR
22 August 2011 | Bahia Papagayo, CR
16 August 2011 | Puntarenas, CR
14 August 2011 | Puntarenas, CR
13 January 2011 | Cracker Boy Boat Yard
01 January 2011 | Annapolis, MD

Clearing out - Day Three

10 October 2011
Gayle/Windy, hot and surgy
Ok, this is it, our VISA for Costa Rica is up and we have to be out of the country today. But the weather north of here is just not cooperating. There are two hurricanes and a Tropical Storm in Mexico and a big low depression south of here. So between the three weather systems, we are not going anywhere until they go away. It sounds way ugly out there. Big winds, big seas and lots of rain and lightning. It is even windy and white cappy in the bay outside the marina; that never happens in this very calm bay. Well the bay is calm except for the surge, which is really surging today. We are getting more dock lines on the boat and have a few spares in case the ones that have been on the boat for a month and a half break. It has happened to a few boats. The catamaran next to us broke a deck cleat off.
Anyway, we are going to go ahead and finish clearing out so we appear to be law abiding visitors. This was easy enough; a stop at the Immigrations office and a trip to the port captain’s office and we are done. Adrian, our favorite waiter from the bar met us at the Immigrations Office to translate, so that went fairly well. And the Port Captain was is a good mood and gave us the Zarpe even though the Customs guy put the wrong date on the boat papers and the Immigrations kid kept a form that was supposed to go to the Port Captain. On any given day these two screw ups could have caused us big problems like a trip back to these offices but I guess first thing Monday morning is a good time to clear out; the Port Captain is still in a good mood from the weekend. Phew, glad we are done with Costa Rican government officials.
Now all we have to do is hide out at the marina till the weather clears. We will try to keep a low profile – we are now Illegal Aliens.

Clearing Out - Day Two

07 October 2011 | Marina Papagayo, Guancaste, CR
Gayle/Hot, hot, hot T&L and a little rain
After studying the list of items the Port Capitan gave us, (there are seven documents we need and we have to go to five different places to get them), it looks like we can get a few more done before we really checkout on Monday. Don sets off in search of the Customs office to clear the boat out of CR. Customs is 40 miles away in Liberia and it is not exactly where the directions on the list says it is. Don finally finds it a half kilometer beyond the stated distance in an unmarked building off of the main street. Good find honey; we are getting good at spotting government offices in Latin America.

Next stop, back to Playas del Coco to the Post Office to purchase two tax stamps. One is going to cost us a whopping 100 colones (.20) and another for 5 colones (.04). That is $0.24 cents; it cost us more to drive to the PO than that. The bureaucracy in Costa Rica is just plain ridiculous. But we have the list cut down to size now and will be able at finish it up Monday.

In the meantime, the weather report has changed and what looked like a good window for the 650 mile trip to Huatulco, Mexico now has one tropical storm watch, two hurricane watches further north and a big, red warning circle right on the Gulf of Tehuantepec. So we may not be able to leave on Monday after all and that means we will have to hide out in the marina until later in the week when the hurricanes go away. We will see.

Dinner tonight at the Dive Bar. The Friday happy hour special is Steak with sautéed veggies and French fries $8.50. Very good and of course a $3.00 margarita. We will miss the Dive Bar.

Clearing out of Costa Rica-Day One

06 October 2011 | Marina Papagayo
Hot, hot, hot, close to 100 with afternoon lightning in the distance
We decided to start clearing out of CR today even though we aren't leaving till Monday. We started our quest in Liberia at the vets office (at least I think she was a vet, she was grooming a poodle when we were there) for new, updated health certificates for the dogs. The exam consisted of asking if the dogs were in good health, asking if they were taking worm meds and if they were microchipped. Yes to all 3 questions, $50.00 and we are almost good to go. All we need now is a stop at an office supply store to buy tax stamps for the certificates (2000.00 colones-$4.00) and a trip to the airport to the Departmento de Agriculture for official ink stamps. At the ag office we are instructed to go next door to the bank and pay Departure Fees. Off we go and pay $62.00 after we are asked for our passports and then back to the ag guy. No he says we were supposed to pay for the perros departure fees; they were only 9999.00 colones ($20.00). I don't think we need to pay the $62.00 departure fees for Don & I since we are not flying out but we didn't think we could get a refund with the language barrier thing going on. But the dogs are ready to go and shouldn't have any problems checking into Mexico. So far we are $132.00 (66,000.00 colones) into leaving Costa Rica.

On to the Pureto Capitian's office about 20 miles away in Playas del Coco. We actually knew where that office was located. Should be a piece of cake, huh huh. Yeah right. First we can't clear out more than 12 hours before our actual departure. So that means we have to come back on Monday before we leave, a forty mile drive from the marina. Annnnnnnd he gave us a list of six other documents and fees and tax stamps we need to get to complete checkout. At least the list included directions to the next 4 offices and banks we needed to go to and what documents we need to get from them. The capitian sorta of spoke English and we determined we could get a few of the items we needed ahead of the 12 hour deadline. So off to the BancoNational to pay a $20.00 customs fee for the boat. Since the Immgracion office was close, we decided to try getting the docs from them early too. Well the kids that worked at Immagracion didn't speak English (and we don't speak Spanish), so we got no where with them. We will try Immigrations office out at the airport tomorrow when we head out for Day 2 of Adventures in Clearing Out.

Oh, one more interesting thing that happened today; when at Immagracions I presented our passports. While the kid was looking at them, I notice one of them looks a little odd, lots of pages and stamps. A closer look revealed that we had Don's passport and Lawrence Anderson's passport (Larry, our dock neighbor on Lisa Kay). For the last three weeks we had rented a car with them and the paperwork involved everyones passports for filling out the rental. When the rental agent gave back our passports things got a little confused. Larry got my passport and I got his. It was pretty funny because Larry thought he was being so law abiding and had been carrying around my passport for 3 weeks. So maybe clearing out is a good thing because Larry's passport would not have done me any good to get into Mexico and losing your passport is really no fun.

OK, manana the fun will continue. Wish us luck.

Dinner tonight- Stir-fry with baby green beans, celery, onions and the leftover BBQ pork from the dock party last night. It was very good.

Matia Finds Monkeys

04 October 2011 | Marina Papagayo
Hot
On our walk this morning we headed up the hill on the road. Ever since we saw the monkeys a few weeks ago, Matia has been on the lookout for them. Usually we can find them because they are howling but she found some this morning just hanging out in the trees. Once we spotted one monkey and watched for a while, we could see monkeys moving through the trees all over up in the trees. It was a fairly large family. Of course, no camera but it would be very hard to get a picture of these brown monkeys up in the brown trees, hidden in the leaves. Kind of like a “Where’s Waldo” book.

Speaking of wildlife around here, we keep hearing of puma sightings on the road at the top of the hill above the marina (maybe a half mile from the marina). This makes going out for the last walk of the night kind of spooky. The puma combined with about 30 different varieties of snakes really takes the fun out of going out at night and into the woods even in the daylight. The other night some poor creature on the other side of the parking lot was really screeching; it sounded like something had caught it and was hurting it. I am like come on you guys, do your business and let’s get back to the boat.

Rainy Sunday

28 August 2011 | Marina Papagayo, Guancaste, CR
Rainy, a little cooler. Maybe a storm offshore causing all of this surge.
Whooo Hooo, we are really going for a ride today (but staying right here in our slip). The surge is really getting with it today. First the boat goes forward then hits the end of the dockline and jerks backwards. Then it kind of goes sideways; we are going in circles all day and up and down too. Don hasn't felt good the last few days and except for the headache he has, we would have thought he was seasick at the dock. I don't get seasick but if I watch the dock go up and down and watch the other boats surging in their slips, I could get a little woozey too.

Dan, the marina manager says he doesn't understand where all of this surge and swell is coming from. Usually they may have one or two days in the winter season but nothing like this. The weather sites he has been watching don't indicate any reason for this much surge activity. Also, there is some kind of jelly fish hatching; lots of hatching, the marina is full of them. Hopefully they will flush our of here in the next day or two.

Well, I better go and clean something.

Monkeys, Lots of Monkeys

27 August 2011 | Marina Papagayo, Guancaste, CR
Cloudy & hot, rain, T&L early today
On the morning walk today, we could hear howler monkey noise on the road up the hill from us. So as we got close we started to look in the trees, sure enough there were 2 little, black monkeys with white faces looking at us from in the branches. Now the howler monkey call is a very deep, throaty hooting, so I am looking for bigger monkeys but the biggest of these guys probably only weighes 15 lbs and the babies maybe 5 lbs. I don't know how that small of a monkey can make that monkey call. They also kind of bark; they sounded like the dock neighbors Yorkie terrier. The dogs & I watched them for a long time and kept seeing more and more of the family, at least a dozen or so. One of the bigger monkeys moved forward to a tree closer to the road to get a better look at us. We must have been making him nervous, he got a little aggressive, breaking dead beanches off the tree and throwing them our way. We decided the family had had enough of us watching, so we continued our walk up the hill.

One the way back down we stopped again and this time a momma and a baby clinging to her back climbed through the trees to the one closest to the road. We got a good look at her and she at us. Then I noticed the rest of the family further back in the trees working their way around both sides of us. OK, now visions of that poor woman who got her face ripped off by a chimp came to mind and I decided it was time to leave the howler monkey family to whatever it is they do. We can come back tomorrow and bring Don. Lopez and Matia really wanted to play with the monkeys. I'll bring the camera too (I looked at it when I left but didn't want to carry it).

The rest of the day was spent removing and cleaning the Sunshades on the salon windows. They really got dirty in the 4 months they have been on the boat. Maybe even a little of the ever present mold on them too. They may even have to soak overnight.

Don is off to town in search of more and longer docklines. He is still trying to hold the boat a little stiller in the surge. The catamaran next to us broke it's midship cleat yesterday; the bolts holding the cleat to the boat sheered off. The fiberglass around the cleat held up though. Also, we need more vinegar for cleaning too.

Dinner tonight - Pasta salad with raspberry vineagrette, french bread with pesto I made yesterday and rocky road brownies for dinner. meuy bien (very good).

Vessel Name: Permanently Temporary
Vessel Make/Model: Lagoon 410
Hailing Port: Anacortes, Washington
Crew: Don, Gayle, Lopez & Matia
About: We retired in 2009 and have been traveling ever since. First we toured Florida and the East Coast in a small RV. We were looking for our dream boat. Once we found it, we spent six months fixing it and are now on our way up the Pacific Coast heading for home eventually.
Extra: Go now. Just do it. Tomorrow may be too late. Don't go to Latin American in August, it is way too hot.
Permanently Temporary's Photos - Main
Pedro Miguel Locks and Lake Gatun
20 Photos
Created 28 August 2011