Geoff, Author at Gainfully Unemployed

March 1, 2018March 1, 2018

The Costa Rica Lager Triple Header Taste Test

Costa Rican lager line up: Bohemia, Imperial, and Pilsen
Photo taken by Elani

The moment you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived – the moment when I pit the three big Costa Rican lagers against each other in a three way blind taste test. The contenders – Imperial, the official beer of Costa Rica; Bohemia, the cheapest beer in every supermarket and convenience store; and last and quite possibly least, the beer you’ll find in every store that sells more than three beers, Pilsen.

Okay, let’s get one thing straight. If you’ve ever had a mass produced lager, you know pretty much everything you need to know about these beers. If I handed you a red cup at a party and told you it was Corona or Pacifica and it was actually any of the above, I highly doubt you’d question it. They’re lagers, and not great ones, but they’ll get you drunk slowly while keeping you hydrated on a hot day.

I will say that when you line them all up and drink them back to back (with a sip of water to clean the palate of course, I’m not an animal), there are noticeable differences. Enough that (and this surprised me even more than it did Elani) I was able to correctly tell which one was which. More than that I, did have a pretty clear preference, so here goes:

3^rd place: Imperial. Well well well, look who thought they could just rest on their laurels. Turns out some unemployed bum who thinks he’s a beer snob and has a blog that a handful of people read has judged you. And he’s found you lacking! Does that hurt, yeah, I’ll bet it does. Anyways, Imperial hits all the notes you’d expect, it’s light, and fairly crisp, with a bit of a inoffensive yeast smell on the nose, like being downwind of the Wonderbread factory, and it’s basically like sex in a canoe . But there’s a bit of a bitter taste that settles in the middle and lingers. And then, on the finish, a slight metallic aftertaste. A beer like this isn’t complex or deep, it’s light, and should fade away into background leaving only a pleasant buzz like a nice sunset on a warm night. Not like a nice sunset on a warm night when you just cut your gums flossing.

2^nd place: Pilsen. True to form, Pilsen comes in the least noticeable place. Which is actually ironic, since it probably has the most going on: like the others, it hits the lager notes, but it has a bit more bitterness. In the Imperial, the bitter just kind of made you want to switch to a fruity cocktail, but the Pilsen’s has a more intentional taste that borders on the edge of richness. Then there’s a bit of a sour note that comes in the middle and makes you go “huh,” then fades away unobtrusively. But here’s the thing: I’m from craft beer country. When you’re in the Pacific Northwest and you do an interesting beer, it’s bold, it’s flavorful, there are hops and who knows what, and it’ll leave an impression. Pilsen is not that. It’s still just a lager, and a little something in the middle isn’t enough to take it to the next level, so it just clutters the experience of sitting around on a hot day and losing yourself in thought. Which brings us to the winner…

1^st Place: Bohemia. Yeah that’s right, little unpretentious Bohemia. It basically won this round by not screwing anything up. It’s light and crisp, very mellow, and just a hint of bitterness to remind you that you are in fact drinking a beer. If you’re sitting in a hammock watching the waves (as I must say I’ve been lucky enough to do on several evenings this trip) it’s not going to pull you out of the moment, and that’s okay, because hey, it’s a cheap lager: if its manages to get your undivided attention, it’s probably not for a good reason.

February 23, 2018

Playa del Coco: A Good Place to Do Nothing

My previous stop, Playa Copal, really had one purpose – kiteboarding. After two weeks of that, it’s odd to wind up in a place like Playa del Coco, that really, whole-heartedly embraces doing nothing. There are things to do there, like deep sea fishing, diving, and getting shuttled out to the host of adventure activities that folks expect from Costa Rican destinations. But people mostly just seemed to be hanging out on the beach or drinking. For the more adventurous, there was the option of both hanging out on the beach and drinking AT THE SAME TIME at a slew of beach front bars. That was some serious master-level shit though, so me and Elani usually stuck to one at a time.

Coco was definitely a tourist town. Walking down the main drag, I heard more English, French, and German spoken then Spanish. Lots of decent places to eat with a good variety cuisines represented and even a high end grocery store. At 33, I’m fairly certain I was well under the average age of the folks vacationing there. Mostly, the younger tourists either were families with young children who were looking for a easy time on the beach, or the occasional young couples that looked just slightly out of place, Elani and I fit neatly into the latter category. However, if you take a walk and get away from the main street and beach front bars and hotels, there are pretty sizable Tico (Costa Rican) neighborhoods. It was nice to see that foreigners haven’t complete overwhelmed this little beach town.

For us, it was a great place to chill out, give Elani that chance to catch up on some work with decent internet, and enjoy being able to walk to a variety of grocery stores, or restaurants if we didn’t feel like cooking. A nice change from Playa Copal where our food choices were, well, I guess the polite thing to say is limited. Another bonus was finding a free standing two story apartment on AirBnB for under $40 a night. There were a couple days we didn’t get very far out of the house – I have no regrets. Oh and did I mention it had a view of the bay? No, well, here’s a picture from the front steps:

Coco apartment and hills beyond Taken by Elani

The one downside of the place was that it was about a half hour walk to the beach, but since it was fairly flat, we usually just walked it instead of bothering to find a taxi. One particularly aimless day, we made the walk to beach and continued along north until we ran out of sand and continued along the rocks that were exposed by the low tide. The rocks had a number of tide pools containing a host of little fishes, crabs, urchins, sea slugs and other critters. Past those, the rocks curved around and gave a great view looking back at the town:

On our way back, we stopped and watched the sunset. It usually sets behind the hills in most places in Coco, but here we could mostly see it get to the horizon. The cruising sailboats all lined up on their way back to harbor to catch the sunset as well:

Sunset from Playa del Coco
Taken by Elani

Two of the more standout activities we actually went out and did were snorkeling and eating at a hilltop bar aptly named “The Lookout”. The snorkeling trip was honestly a bit of a letdown. The last time me and Elani went snorkeling was in Indonesia, and its crystal clear shallow waters and abundant marine life set a high standard. We went with a local dive company that took us (and a bunch of scuba divers) out to some of the rocky islands off of Playa del Coco. The waves were reasonably rough, so we couldn’t get too close to the rocks and that combined with cloudy waters made it a bit hard to see. It was by no means a terrible experience, there was a large school of sleek sliver fish that was neat to swim through, a barracuda swam by, and there were a couple other neat fish. Here are the closest shoots I was able to get with the GoPro:

Actually, the best wildlife we saw was from the boat. A herd of devil ray were breaching a couple hundred yard out. It was great to see them hurtle themselves full speed out of the water. Elani was very excited – it’s something she’s wanted to see for awhile.

The Lookout on the other hand, exceeded my expectations. Let’s just start with a picture:

The Lookout (no I’m not being paid for this…but maybe I should be?)
Taken by Elani

That gives you most of what you need to know. And, in case you were wondering, yes that’s craft beer (for Costa Rica none the less), which is a vast improvement from the canned loggers widely available in most of Costa Rica. But I digress, let’s have a little better look at that view:

Okay, but how was the food – good. Elani made a perfectly reasonable choice and got a poke bowl. I made a less reasonable chose and got something called “tuna poke nachos”. Why? Because it sounded ridiculous and people kept mentioning it, in a positive way, in google reviews. It was ridiculous, and it was delicious. It consisted of a giant plate full of deep fired wan tons covered in tuna poke, mango salsa, sliced jalapenos and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting. I just managed to get through it, with some help from Elani. I’m lucky our apartment was downhill from the restaurant.

All in all, Playa del Coco was a good place to chill for 5 days and enjoy some good food and beer and some beautiful views. It provided a nice relaxing contrast to the adventure coming at our next stop – Monteverde.

February 10, 2018

Wildlife Photos from Playa Copal

All in all, I’d say there are really three things to recommend a stay in the Salinas Bay area: the kiting, the views, and the wildlife. Which is by no means a criticism. Usually, Costa Rica is associated with lush tropical rain forests, but the northwest coast is actually quite dry, giving it a more deserty feel. There are plenty of cactuses interspersed with trees. I’m going to go through some of the critters my trusty photographer Elani and I saw on our stay there, focusing mostly on the one we have pictures of.

Birds were probably the most visible and stunning of the creatures we encountered. There was a host of marine birds. Magnificent frigate birds were quite common, though very hard to photograph, and it was quite common to see the pelicans diving for fish right off shore.

Of course, there were inland tropical birds as well. I went on in some length about the parrots in this post. So I’ll spare you any more other than to set the record straight and say that they are actually parakeets, not parrots. There were also a goodly number of magpie-jays flying around and making weird and varied noises to each other. One landed on the railing of our deck and is now getting his fifteen minutes of fame.

A species of small dove was quite common as well. This one had made a nest and was raising up an adorable little family in the cactus hedges that lined the road up to our room.

Speaking of nests, on a walk, Elani and I found a whole colony of what we’re pretty sure (after a bit of internet research) are montezuma oropendolas. Very beautiful crow sized birds with bright yellow tails that make hanging basket nests. Unfortunately, the birds don’t come through very well in the photo, but the nests were quite impressive.

Montezuma oropendola nests
Taken by Elani

The mammals were a little less prominent – or possibly more sneaky – than the birds. We saw some sort of possum one night, and heard the raccoons digging around in the trash on a number of occasions, though we only saw them once, in the trash of course. There was an interesting type of lanky squirrel that Elani was able to photograph.

Of the sea creatures I saw, the rays were most impressive. I only saw them while out kiteboarding, though, and didn’t get any pictures. In the time I was there, I saw five eagle rays, and four of what I’m pretty sure were cownose rays. Crabs, though not quite as impress as the rays, were a bit more cooperative photography models. Elani ran across a rather photogenic specimen at low tide. This is actually my favorite of the wildlife pics she got.

This hermit crab was a somewhat shier subject and it took a bit of patience to get him to come out of his shell – figuratively and literally.

The lizards made a good showing in Playa Copal as well. Of course there were tons of geckos, including at least two making their home in our room. They were fairly plain, light gray and around four inches long including their tails. And they were noisy! I’m not really sure how a lizard the size of my index finger can make so much noise. Anyways, they only come out at night, so getting a picture of a roughly wall colored lizard in low light was kind of a fool’s errand. There were two species of lizard that frequented the road down to the beach; a little red cheeked one, who you’ve see before in an earlier post , but I’ll include again, because, well. he was quite a looker.

And secondly, a little variety of skink. This one we found warming up for the day right by our front door.

Then there was the iguanas. Back home in the Pacific Northwest, it’s such a rare surprise to see even a tiny lizard that to see regularly see lizards measuring well over a foot scurrying around the walkways to my room kind of blew my mind. This one was particularly fond of sunning itself on the roof of the pool hut, which could be seen from our back porch.

Iguana on the roof of the pool hut
Taken by Elani

But really, you didn’t have to leave the room to see pretty interesting animals. Of course, there were the scorpions I found in the shower. They were some of the more exciting and less fun of the creatures that made their way to our room or back porch. There was also a tailless whip-scorpion, which I was actually pretty excited to see, but Elani was less enthusiastic about.

To give a sense of scale, his body was a bit over an inch long. She warmed up to him once I named him Heraldo Rodriguez (there no joke to that name, I just like it). Also, Heraldo was chilling on the ceiling about 10 feet off the ground, so there was not much to be done about him. Some other visitors included several large green grasshoppers, who could have passed for leaves if they didn’t insist on flying full speed into windows and deck chairs, this friendly praying mantis…

…and the largest insect we saw, by length but probably not by weight, this walking stick insect. We were sort of amazed that something so spindly didn’t just blow away in the constant gusts of wind there. But it looks like he managed. We agreed to both make stupid faces for the picture, but he coped out last minute. Moral of that story is don’t trust a stick bug.

Well, that pretty much covers our animal adventures for our two week stay in Playa Copal. Costa Rica is known for its wildlife so I’m sure there will be more from our next stops. Stay tuned.

February 10, 2018February 10, 2018

Just in case you were wondering if Costa Rica has scorpions. Yes, yes it most certainly does!

And they like to live in showers – evidently. I found the critter pictured above on the shower curtain while I was washing up after a kiteboarding session. I’m not usually too squeamish about sharing space with invertebrates, but I must say I wasn’t too keen on having this little fellow hanging out in the shower with me. So, after getting my wife to thoroughly document the occasion, I got a glass, caught it, and released it outside, well away from the door to the room. After all that excitement, it was finally time to get all the salt off me and enjoy a nice scorpion free shower. Well, no such luck! There was a second one hanging out behind the inline hot water heater in the shower. It didn’t come all the way out, and at that point I was pretty much ready to just finish up and get out, so I didn’t bother to do anything about it. It didn’t come out again. In case you want a better sense of scale, here’s Elani holding her hand up (sort of) close to the first one.

February 3, 2018February 3, 2018

Parrots!

I finally got a good view of the little parrots that fly around this part of Costa Rica. I’d caught glimpses before, but usually just as little green streaks beating their little wings furiously to try and head in some direction not immediately downwind. The parrots here are small, about the size of a pigeon, and green except for a little patch of yellow on their head. I’d seen them in groups of maybe half a dozen at a time far off, until Elani and I were walking back from where the bus dropped us off to our room. There was whole flock, several dozen birds, in the tree on the sides of the road. Elani snapped a picture of them (light was getting low, so the pictures aren’t the best).

ENHANCE!

Enlarged and brightened view of parrots
Taken by Elani

I always love seeing new animals on my travels, and I get a special thrill when they’re animals that I’m familiar with from zoos or nature documentaries (or pet stores in this case) but have never seen in the wild. So, to see a flock of these little guys while on a stroll back to our room was pretty exciting for me.

February 3, 2018February 3, 2018

La Cruz: a trip to the “big city”

Me stopping to enjoy the view in La Cruz, Costa Rica
Taken by Elani

From Playa Copal, the closest city (actually, I’m probably being a bit generous with that descriptor) is La Cruz. If we were going to stay here for two weeks, my wife and I figured we might as well see what La Cruz was all about. Besides, we were running low on fresh fruits and vegetables as the store within walking distance has a somewhat limited selection of perishables. So, it was time to catch the bus. There are no bus stops here, you just wave to the driver and he pulls over. We only had to stop once for live stock on the 30 minute-ish drive to town.

After spending a few hours wandering around, it was pretty apparent that most of the tourists in the area stay in the resorts closer to the beach. The town itself wasn’t exactly breathtaking. Houses were generally small, one story boxy little buildings with paint that looked pretty worn, presumably from the constant wind and tropical sun. There’s more garbage in the streets then you’d expect in a US city. A fair number of dogs wandered the street unescorted, but they all had shiny coats and went happily about their business. The locals (humans that is) seem fairly indifferent to tourists wandering around. A couple of the friendlier folks said “hola”, the more alert cabbies yelled “taxi” at us, and one child looked rather indignant at our presence. In a couple of hours, I’m pretty sure we saw almost all of the town. It had, by my best count, two banks, half a dozen supermarkets, and a department store, which from the street mainly looked like it had two departments: motorcycles and washing machines. There was of course an array of small shops and restaurants as well.

The most impressive sight was the view. La Cruz sits up on a hill overlooking the Bay of Salinas and the surrounding hills. It was pretty impressive, I must say. But see for yourself in the attached picture Elani snapped.

View of the Bay of Salinas seen from La Cruz, Costa Rica
Taken by Elani

We ate lunch at open air restaurant that was positioned to take full effect of the view. Normally I’d say the food was nothing to write home about, but I guess I’m doing just that, so that’s categorically not true. Anyways, I wasn’t wowed by the fried shrimp, but they were perfectly edible and reasonably priced, and it was a good excuse to sit in the shade and look out over the bay for an hour. A close second on the most impressive sights we saw in La Cruz was watching a man chase an iguana out from the middle of the road. My Spanish isn’t very good, but I was able to gather from body language and a couple words I was able pick up (spoken to the lizard) that he was concerned someone would run the little guy over, so he made sure to chase him well onto the vacant lot on the other side of the street.

All and all, I’d say don’t go out of your way to visit La Cruz, but if you happen to be passing through, make sure to stop and look at the view. And if you happen to be the one driving, look out for iguanas sunning themselves on the roads.

January 30, 2018January 30, 2018

Checked baggage fees: A good excuse to drop $1k on a new board?

The reason I worked to keep the size and weight of my gear down to normal checked baggage requirements (as I mentioned in my previous post: Kiteboarding Pack List ) is that the airlines I’ve booked with so far (Delta and Avianca) have specific fees for kiteboarding equipment. For Delta, a standard checked bag costs $25 (for the first bag, $40 for the second), whereas kiteboarding equipment costs $150. For Avianca, one checked bag is complementary, but there is a $100 fee for a kiteboarding bag. That means that so far, I’ve saved $225 by being able to pack into a normal checked bag. There was only one way to accomplish this – buy a splitboard. The price tag was a hefty $1,000, so we’ll see if it pays off in the long run. Not all airlines are charging for kiting equipment yet, but it’s starting to get on their radar. That means that more and more probably will, and I’ll have to book several more flights before I’m heading home. As for the performance costs of a riding a splitboard, so far they seem very minor, but I’ll write a thorough review once I’ve spent more time on it.

January 29, 2018January 30, 2018

Kiteboarding Pack List

Just in case any wayward kiteboarders happen upon this blog and are curious what kit I put together to travel with, here’s the list:

Kite – 2014 Blade Trigger – 9m

Kite – 2015 Blade Trigger – 12m

Bar – Blade Unibar 3^rd gen – 50cm

Board – Nobile NHL futurism splitboard – 138cm

Harness – Dakine C-1

Leashes – 1 full length and 1 short, both Blade

Kite bag – 1 Blade kite bag (I used one for both kites)

Patch kit – I just brought what came with both kites.

Pump – 1 pump and hose

Wetsuit – HyperFlex Cyclone 2 – 4/3mm – full length

Luggage – Penguin 32in rolling duffle

My goal was to get a complete kit in a standard checked bag – to avoid the kiteboard specific sports equipment fees that many airlines are starting to charge. So far so good, all told the final weight was 48 lbs. That’s two whole pounds to spare! The Nobile splitboard fits nicely in the bottom of the rolling duffle with very little room to spare. Obviously, this kit isn’t perfect for all conditions, but I’m not entirely sure where all I’ll end up before heading home, so I’m trying to give myself the biggest range possible and stay within the checked luggage requirements of 50 lbs. and 62 linear inches, which is the standard at the time I’m writing this. I’ll write more updates about how it works out and any adjustments I have to or would like to make. Stay tuned.

January 27, 2018October 2, 2018

The First Step: Playa Capal

This trip is starting out as so many do, sitting in an airport drinking an overpriced beer and eating overpriced food – the Black Raven IPA was a nice find, but the potstickers, if I’m being polite, were nothing special. The last couple of days have been a weird combination of tedious chores and saying my last few goodbyes. There’s a lot of good people I’m going to miss, but I’ve been restless being in one part of the world for so long and it was getting time – honestly, maybe even past due – to see somewhere new.

So where is somewhere new? Well, Playa Copal, Costa Rica to start with. It’s a beach on the southern side of Salinas Bay, which is in the northwest corner of Costa Rica, just south of the Nicaraguan border. My wife and I are staying at a kiteboarding resort just a few minutes’ walk from the beach. The view from our room is awesome, and it’s not like we sprung for the honeymoon suit or anything. Our room is in a row of little studios, all of which have a porch on the back (and a hammock, of course!) with a view of the bay. Here’s a picture my wife took from our room – the little blue, yellow and black blob is my kite.

A picture my wife took from our porch while I was kiteboarding

So, the first thing about this place is it’s windy like ALL. THE. DAMN. TIME! Being here for two days doesn’t make me an expert, but I’ve been talking with the staff and other guests, and it sounds like it doesn’t stop. And it’s not a gentle tropical breeze – my best guess for the last 2 days is 20 – 40+ kts (for the uninitiated, that’s 23 – 46 mph). It’s great for kiting, almost too great (more on that later), and considering I’m used to Pacific Northwest Winter temperatures, a stiff breeze makes temps in 80s a bit more pleasant.

On the beach my first day at Playa Capal

On our first day, we didn’t do too much. The flight in was an overnighter and we only managed to sleep for a couple of hours, so after a checking in to the resort, it was time for a much needed shower and nap. I didn’t have the gumption to go kiting even after my nap, and really the winds were too high for my smallest kite (I brought a 9m², and looked like 6s and 7s were the go to that day). Instead, my wife and I took a stroll around. There are a fair number of interesting birds and lizards: I’m including a picture of a lizard because they are much easier to photograph than the birds.

The next day (today actually), it was time to kite. Condition were gusty, to put it mildly. On a number of occasions, I went from underpowered to overpowered within a minute. But it was a great change of pace from back home to be able to go out kiting in a tee shirt and swimsuit instead of a full length wetsuit. And as an added bonus I saw an eagle ray as I was kiting – we definitely don’t get those back home either. After I got back to the room, I met up with my wife (who’d spent the afternoon working from the back porch – she is, I must say, quite a bit more diligent than I am). Next, we went swimming in the pool just below our room, then went out to get some groceries and dinner. It was dark by this point, and I was glad to have a little head-lamp with me to let motorist know we were there, turns out they’re not big on sidewalks in rural Costa Rica. Also, it turns out that spiders’ eyes glow brilliant white in the LED beam of my head-lamp, giving the effect of hundreds of tiny little jewels being strewn about in the grass by the road side. The restaurant we stopped at was quite good and the fried red snapper I had was quite satisfying, but I have to admit the high point was a parrot (presumably someone’s pet) flying over to the people at the table next to us and staring at one of them until he gave in and fed it a pizza crust.

I’ll write more before too much longer. We’re staying here for two weeks, so expect more stories of wildlife and kiting from Playa Capal.

January 11, 2018October 2, 2018

The plan (or lack thereof)

So what’s next for my wife and me? Well, roaming the globe of course. My wife is fortunate enough to have turned her love of language into a profession she can practice anywhere in the world -translation. I’m fortunate enough to have a wife willing to put up with me not working while we travel. I think I may be the luckier of the two of us, really.

First of all, we’re off to Costa Rica. We don’t have all of our locations planed out yet, and don’t plan on mapping everything out before we set off. We are going to be there from January 25^th to the 2^nd of April, and the first stop is Salinas Bay, just south of the Nicaraguan border. This is one of the primo spots for kiteboarding in Costa Rica. We’re still planning where to go after that. On the 2^nd of April , we’re going to fly to Malaga, Spain, and after a few days there, we’ll head to Tarifa, Spain for 5 weeks. Tarifa is one of the best places in the world for kiteboarding, and I’m still a little surprised how easy it was to get my wife to agree to such a long trip there – I suppose beautiful beaches, great food, and day trips to the African coast made it an easy sell. After that, we’re heading to Lisbon, Portugal. While we’re there, I’ll be taking off to an inn in the countryside for a classical fencing seminar. We have somewhat amorphous plans to spend a couple weeks in Germany next. At that point, we’ll be pretty close to our 90 visa-free traveler limit for Europe. Leaving Europe fairly soon after Germany is about as precise as our plans are right now. After spending so long in one place, I’m pretty excited to have no clue what country or even what continent I’ll be living in by July this year. I’ll write more as plans develop, but for now, that’s all I got.