Mar del Plata beach

There is no real beach in Buenos Aires. The Rio del Plata washes across the waterfront with quite a bit of brackish current. The coastline there is mostly rocky. There are lots of big parks and people hang out and sun in the grass of the parks. The only problem is all the dogs and the fact that almost nobody ever cleans up after their dogs. The sidewalks frequently are covered in crap and the grass at the parks stinks at best from all the dogs. Most of the dogs in Argentina are very well treated compared to other Central and South American countries. So I wanted to go to a real beach. I asked around and everybody praised Mar del Plata which is about 250 miles south of Buenos Aires. I looked into how to get there and there was a train, buses and tours going there. I just wanted to go see the place and if I liked it I might stay so I took a cheap tour to get there. It was an all inclusive tour.

I found the bus at the hotel down from my apartment and climbed onboard. There were almost all locals on the bus and they were mostly families. The bus ride took almost eight hours of screaming kids and crying babies. Next time I will find a better way to get there like renting a car or something. I talked to the people around me in Spanish and we joked a lot about my poor use of the language and my funny Costa Rican accent I still spoke with.

We finally got to the hotel and we all checked in. The hotel was just across a wide road that ran along the beach. The weather was kind of cool and windy with just a little bit of cold misty rain falling around sunset. Not exactly the nice hot tropical beaches I am so familiar with from Central America. My hotel room was ok and our service was also ok. Nothing special just nothing to really complain about either. I took a shower and cleaned up. Our all inclusive dinner did not start until 10pm so I had some time to kill. I was tired from the long ride and I was having some pain issues so I just hung out in the hotel and talked to some of the guests. I did walk across the street to look at the beach. The wind was whipping now and it was dark so I could only see the beach from the city street lights. The beach curved along and was totally built up along the beach right up to the beach itself. In the dark the beach looked kind of rocky but maybe that was just the poor light.

I ate with some young Argentinians that were at the beach to party hardy and gamble. They were pouring down the wine all through the meal of meat, meat and meat with wine. I think there were a couple of green beans and some salad was circulating but I think everybody just rubs the vegetable and salad bowls for good luck and takes another serving of beef. I did not see anybody eating the green stuff. The wine was popular however. They did not understand that I could not get drunk because I was taking medications for pain. They all just said they thought the wine would help me to forget about the pain. I laughed along with them.

The next morning after my buffet breakfast I went over to the beach with my towel and my swim suit on under my long pants. I ended up going back to get a sweatshirt before I even crossed the road. On the beach side of the road there was a wide sidewalk with miles of green chairs lined up. There were already people claiming their spots for them and their friends. The booze was already flowing too. The skyline of highrise buildings built along the curving beach in the large town reminded me of a New Jersey boardwalk. The beach was wide and my first impression from the night before was correct. The beach was not nice sand but instead was course sand and rocks. The waves down at the water's edge were breaking loud and high. Nobody was in the freezing cold water or even close to it because the wind was blowing the cold spray up over the beach. The entire crowd was up on the boardwalk sitting in chairs eating and drinking in a big spring break kind of mood. So much for my beach time. I needed more than my sweater just to keep from shivering. I walked a short way along the beach and then gave up because it was just too cold. I walked back along the rows of chairs and bars and restaurants until I found one that looked friendly and warm. I went in and had some coffee and pastries. I thought about flying back to my condo in Buenos Aires but thought I should try to make it through the three days of my tour. At least the food was good for my all inclusive hotel. I enjoyed myself for the next couple of days talking to various people. I weakly tried to pick up a girl to help me pass the time but I was not very enthusiastic so I just went to bed early every night by myself. The ride back to Buenos Aires was better because I made sure there were no babies nearby me. The bus ride was kind of boring with not much scenery to look at. I made it back to my condo in one piece still longing for a tropical beach.

Dating in Buenos Aires

After visiting Iguazu falls I just hung out around Recoleta and downtown Buenos Aires doing whatever I felt like. There were lots of bars and clubs within a few blocks of my apartment. I started out most nights at Shoeless Joe's and then went to other clubs from there. Some of my favorite clubs were the jazz clubs. The people in Buenos Aires seem to have a soft spot for jazz. There is one giant club called Thelonious that I went to once in a while. It drew a good mixed crowd which I always like. There was dancing and live jazz bands and blues bands playing. Some of them were local and some of them were internationally know bands. I had to take a taxi there or I would have gone there several times a week. More often though I went to a small jazz club only two blocks from my apartment. There were usually some girls closer to my age for me to talk to there. I sometimes get tired of all the twenty year olds in most of the places. I made some good friends in this club and we could walk back to my place without a problem.

I never had any trouble finding girlfriends in Argentina. There were prostitutes all over the place since it was legal but I have never been very attracted to the working girls. I preferred to meet and get to know my girlfriends on an ongoing basis. Lots of my friends were using the internet to find dates. I had never done that before and some of my friends were giving me a hard time for being so old fashioned in how I found my girlfriends. So just to shut them up, I promised them that I would try internet dating.

I spent a long time thinking about what I would post. Several times I started to post and ended up not doing it. Finally one day I had plenty of time and I had an idea I wanted to try out. I put up an ad on Craigslist that basically stated this, "Men seem to be able to have anonymous sex without problems but lots of women find that difficult to do. Are there any women out there that are interested in simple straightforward anonymous sex?" After I posted it I wrote some emails to my friends back in the states and did some other online things like reading my fishing club news and things like that. Just before I got up to leave the internet cafe I was using, I decided to check my ad online. I found it without a problem and then checked the email address I used. To my surprise there were already fourteen responses and it had only been an hour so far. I started reading through them. Some of them were just hookers that respond to every ad posted and some of them looked like legit responses from women with their pictures and things. There was one ad that stood out from the rest because the pictures she sent was a gorgeous, hot looking, young Argentinian woman of 22 that I just could not believe. I started to think about it and decided that she was using some movie star's photo or something instead of her own and I got a bit pissed off at her for the deception. So I sent her an email back telling her to come over and meet me that afternoon and I gave her the name of the cafe below my apartment to meet at. I then printed out her picture and started to think about what I was going to tell her when she showed up and her picture did not match.

I went home and took a shower and made sure I had some drinks available in my apartment. I cleaned up just a bit and put clean sheets on my bed. Then I rested up until my 12:30 in the afternoon date. I went down to the cafe around twenty minutes early so I could have a table where I could see the door. She showed up about fifteen minutes later as I was drinking a cup of coffee. I was caught off guard by her. She looked even better in real life than she did in her picture!!!! I got a bit nervous because I expected to just tell her to go stick it for using somebody else in her response to my ad. I asked her if she wanted to sit down and have a cup of coffee first and she told me no that she would rather just go straight upstairs. So I left the money for my coffee on the table and we went up to my apartment.

We didn't talk all that much as we went up and into my place. She started to undress right away. So I did too. She was extremely fit like a professional athlete with a rippling abdomen and muscles that were just barely defined. She had a beautiful olive colored skin with a tan from a tiny bikini cupping her perky breasts. I could not believe what was happening to me. I think I was kind of in shock at first. We embraced and rolled onto the bed as we finished disrobing. She went straight for the action so I obliged her and we went at it like minks in heat. I was a little too excited and I popped fairly quickly which pissed me off. I had to laugh about it. I suggested we go take a shower together while we wait for a few minutes. I was sure I would be ready again soon because I was shaking with anticipation. We jumped in the shower and I soaped her up and rinsed her off and she did the same to me. I already was up for another go. We started in the shower and after a while we moved back to the bedroom. For the rest of the afternoon until almost seven pm we went at it. She could orgasm over and over. She was the horniest, most aggressive girl I had met since my French girlfriend in Amsterdam. She knew what she wanted and she made sure she got it. If this was an adult blog I would love to fill in the details of our afternoon but I have to keep this blog pg rated. Finally she told me she had to leave. We said our goodbyes and I told her I had a great time and I hoped that she had too. She smiled a devilish smile and assured me she had. I told her if she was interested she could just send me another email in the future since she had the address now. She said she might.

After she left I just filled up the bath tub and rested with a beer. I did not know the girl's name and she did not know mine. She was clearly a little rich girl out for some no good. She had tan lines on all of her fingers from rings that she was not wearing. Her hair was perfectly cut and styled. Her nails and everything including her pubes were professionally groomed. Her clothes were very expensive, high fashion, designer clothes. The whole package was just perfect. It is my one and only internet dating experience. I knew she would never get back to me and I am glad she did not. There was no way we could improve on the day's experience that we already had. It was perfect anonymous sex, just like my ad requested. Thanks Craig.

More Iguazu Falls, Argentina

I woke up early and had a good breakfast at the hotel. My friend showed up right on time and we left to go walk around the falls for the day. The hotel had a shuttle to a train that gave us a ride to the top of the falls. We walked along the trails at the top of the falls looking at the river above the falls and the lagoon formed in the flats before the Devils Throat part of the falls. There was an elevated walkway right up to the edge of the falls. We stood and watched fish swimming in the calm waters just a few feet before the falls. I wondered what happens to the fish when they go over the 210 to 275 foot plunge. So they survive? How does a fish learn to stay out of the current and not get sucked over the edge? There is only one lesson and it is a pass fail test.

There was a huge cloud of vapor drifting up from the falls as we approached it. The sound was growing louder and louder until by the time we arrived close enough to look over the edge it was so loud we could not hear each other talking and had to use sign language. There were lots of swallows flying around in the mist and rainbows feeding on what I don't know. Maybe there were a lot of insects attracted to the water vapor and mist. The sight of the Devils Throat was truly magnificent. We hung out taking pics and watching the water scream over the edge for a couple of hours before starting our hike around the trails to try to see the entire falls. There is no one place to stand and see all the falls at once. It is between a mile and a half and a mile and three fourths from one side of the falls to the other. It is immense. The tropical jungles surrounding the falls only make it look all that much better. I am sure glad there was no development build around the falls like so many other beautiful sights have been ruined by.

We saw lots of toucans flying around in the area around the falls. I was trying to get a picture of one but I was having a hard time getting close enough to take a good one. I chased each one I saw but they all flew away before I got good pics. It was frustrating. My girlfriend had a long telephoto lens and she was not able to get a good closeup either. We found lots of great places to view the various falls from. We ate some lunch at the falls after a long morning of walking up and down all the trails. I am pretty disabled for walking but the great vistas kept me going despite the pain and other problems I knew all this walking would cause me later. What the hell, you only live once. I had five days available to me to explore the falls so I did not have to do it all in one day.

We did not take a guided tour and it turns out that we would not have been needed our own guide because at almost every place we stopped to look at the falls there was a guide from a group yelling out their guide information about the history and all. We took lots of pics of other people with their cameras, especially of couples. This seemed to be a newly wed destination just like Niagra Falls is. Lots of tropical birds were in the trees along the hike. Many of them were the first time I had seen that type of bird. I was able to identify most of the species we saw but not all of them. We also saw more monkeys and some lizards and things. The entire first day we spent on the Argentina side of the falls.

After our long day hiking we took a shower and went down for dinner and a few drinks in the hotel. As we were sitting there a toucan flew up and landed in a tree about two feet away from me. I had been trying all day to get close to one and here one flew up to me and of course my camera was up in my room. I decided to race up to my room and get the camera in the hope that the toucan stayed close enough to get a shot of it. Luckily for me the bird stayed in the tree eating the berries until I returned. I quickly shot a few frames and then I tried to get a better pic but the big bird decided it was full of the berries and flew away before I could get a really spectacular pic of it. O well.

The next day we took a tour over to the Brazilian side of the falls. We had to take the tour in order to get across the border since we did not have a visa for Brazil. We rode in a taxi van with another couple from the hotel. The view from the Brazilian side is just as good as from the Argentina side but it does not allow as close up of a view of the falls. It was just as loud though. Our tour was a quick slam bam thank you ma'am stop look take a pic and get back to the hotel kind of tour. That was alright after all the walking the day before. My pain was pretty high from all of that walking and I had to take a lot of morphine to get up and out of bed that morning. We had lunch at the hotel and spent the afternoon by the pool.

The next morning we took a river boat tour at the bottom of the falls. I enjoyed that part of the trip. Our boat was a jet boat and the captain had fun scaring some of the passengers as we approached the falls. In fact he did such a good job of scaring one couple that they refused to allow the boat to go into the mist of the falls like we were intending. These two threw such a big fit that the passengers all agreed not to go so close. I was a bit disappointed not to get the closeup but I already did the Maid of the Mist in Niagra Falls so I wasn't missing out on that much.

I told my girlfriend goodbye and boarded my flight. I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to the falls and as our plane lifted off and headed back to Buenos Aires, I craned my neck to get some last glimpses of the falls from the air. If you ever get the chance to go to Iguazu Falls, do it.

Iguazu Falls

I did a trip up north to Iguazu Falls. Iguazu Falls is at the border of Argentina and Brazil near the border of Paraguay. It is 275 waterfalls about a mile and three quarters long that drop between 210 and 275 feet. During times of flood it is basically a single waterfall. Iguazu Falls is in the running to be listed as one of the wonders of the world. It is an awesome place. The waterfalls are surrounded by tropical jungles full of birds like toucans and parrots with monkeys in the trees. From the air flying into the area the falls are visible from a long way off as a big cloud. Then as you get closer the details start to emerge and the clouds become sprays of water coming up from the roaring falls. There are rainbows in the mist. The river leading to it winds in a serpentine fashion and then spreads out into a wide shallow lake like lagoon before plunging over the horseshoe shaped edge for more than a mile and a half.

I spent my first day there only looking at it from a distance off my hotel balcony because I arrived in the late afternoon, too late to make the hike to the falls and back in the dark. I checked into my room and went downstairs to the outdoor bar/ restaurant to relax after my hard day of traveling to get there from Buenos Aires. It should have been a simple short flight to get to the falls but the airline was on strike and the workers were intentionally making travel slow. It seems like from what people told me that the airlines are on perpetual strike in Argentina. Such is life. I still made it it just took a long time.

While I was sitting at the patio drinking my beer and munching on some food the people around me started to look behind me and then they all got up and were taking pictures of some monkeys climbing on the balconies of the hotel. Everybody thought that they were real cute and they took lots of pictures. I had seen a lot of monkeys and they had destroyed my condo in Costa Rica three times by breaking in and throwing a wild party inside with food fights and pissing and shitting all over inside. So I did not think they were quite as cute as some of the people watching them. I talked to a girl from Norway that I met at the table next to me. She was traveling alone and we agreed to hook up later to do some hiking and to have a drink in the bar later on that night. I wanted to take a shower and rest a bit before I started to go out for the night. So I went back to my room to clean up.

I unpacked some of my clothes and straightened up the room in case I had any visitors later and then jumped in the shower. I took a nice long hot shower and shaved, brushed my teeth and the whole shebang. I thought I heard someone in my room and I rushed out of the bathroom naked to find three large monkeys sitting on my bed eating my oreo cookies I bought for the plane ride. I yelled at them thinking that it would make then run away but they just sat there eating my cookies totally unafraid of me. I went back into the bathroom and got a big glass of water and a towel and I raced back out into the room making as much noise as I could while swinging the towel over my head and whooping. Then I threw the glass of water at them. They stood up on the bed and bared their teeth at me and the largest one got up on all fours and growled at me. I called the hotel and asked them what to do and they told me there is nothing I could do and I would have to go out in the hall and wait until the hotel staff told me the room was safe again. I told them I would wait in the bathroom but they insisted that I leave the room. So I stood out in the hallway wrapped in my towel.

I think a couple of bus loads of tourists had just arrived because while I stood out there a hundred people must have walked by thinking I was some kind of perverted flasher. The staff showed up and they opened the door and watched until the monkeys decided to leave. They kept giving me grief about leaving the door open. I had closed and latched the balcony door but I had not locked it. The monkeys knew how to open the door if it wasn't locked with the key the hotel staff told me. In a few minutes the cookies were gone and after a quick sniff around to see if there was any more food they just went back out the balcony door. The hotel went in and cleaned up my room for me with a stern warning to lock the door with the key in the future every time I went in or out of the door. Ok I had learned my lesson.

Spanish School in Buenos Aires

I signed up for Spanish classes for a few hours a day in Buenos Aires. I was having trouble with my Spanish because every country I have been in that speaks Spanish speaks it differently. In Argentina they have rewritten how the language is spoken and written. They have eliminated all but three exceptions for verbs and they use vos instead of tu. They also add the word si about every five or six words. They sound like one of the Marx Brothers when they talk. I think si that the sun is out si and tomorrow si I think it will si be out again si. I had to laugh at them at first. But I took the class to learn how they speak.

I went to my classes in the morning and in the afternoons I usually hung out with the other students in a bar or something. My teacher was a young woman from Buenos Aires. The people of Buenos Aires call themselves portenos, or people of the port. She was a very forceful young woman with a loud voice. We had a lot of fun in class. I was still having major pain problems and I was taking lots of morphine almost everyday so I was having troubles remembering things for class. I also had difficulty sitting down and being still because that made my pain go up. My teacher relentlessly teased me about my lack of memory and my fidgeting. I did not mind her teasing me or I would have made her stop. It was fun. One day in class we were having lessons when all of a sudden she ran over to the windows which were to our backs as students and pointed out some naked tourists in the hotel across the street from our classroom. She had us all watching them walk around their hotel room naked. She was laughing her head off at it and insisted we all continue to watch them as she worked on our conversation Spanish about naked people in hotel rooms. It went on for about 25 minutes before class ended.

After class that day most of the students went for a walk along Florida Street which is a pedestrian street popular with tourists for shopping. There are entertaining street shows like musicians or tango dancers and things along the street and lots of shops selling high fashion clothes and leather work. We watched a couple of dancers doing the tango for a while then we headed to a bar for a few beers and some empanadas. Empanadas were commonly sold on the street. They are a pastry folded over with a filling of meat or fish or something. We had found a sidewalk stall along Florida Street that had some good beef ones. We went back several times a week for them.

We partied in an Irish pub for a few hours and then it was getting dark so we headed over to Shoeless Joe's for some free beer. There were basketball playoffs on TV that night and we wanted to watch them. When we got to Shoeless Joe's there was already a big crowd of mostly twenty something American kids. There was one gorgeous tall girl from San Antonio Texas that couldn't find anyone to root for her team with her. I volunteered to join her in her hour of need. We rooted for San Antonio together while most of the rest of the bar was rooting for their opponent. She was 23 with long big hair and brown eyes. We drank a lot of free beer along with everyone else in the place. My friend was really loud and loyal to her team. San Antonio was behind for most of the game but they rallied at the end to win in an exciting finish. Her and I rubbed it in relentlessly to the losing fans for a while. Then we decided to walk over to a dance club. On the way to the dance club my friend decided that she had drank too much and asked if we could just go to my place for the night. Sure, we can skip the nightclub and go directly home. Who was I to argue. Now just for the record, I do not take advantage of young drunken girls. I am only interested in relationships with willing adult partners. We went up to my place which was only about a block away, and I made some food and some coffee. Then after we ate she asked if we could take a bath together. That kind of caught me off guard, but we jumped in my nice big tub together and talked for a while. She was sobered up by now and I decided that she was doing things of her own free will so we started to play around kissing and fondling each other. The next morning I thought she would wake up with a hangover but she instead woke up still horny. She took a shower and brushed her teeth and climbed back in bed with me for a few hours. We skipped going to school that day. We went to different Spanish schools so she was not in my classes or anything. We hung out together for the rest of the playoffs. When we were in public we just acted like friends not lovers and she would flirt with all the young men chasing her all night and then I would "walk her home." I had to go online and teach myself about the team so I could follow her constant basketball chatter but it was a small price to pay for all the fun we had together.

I still have no pics for this time period. I will try to find and post some generic pics later.

Passing the time in B.A.

I got settled into my new apartment and had no problems with landladies any more. I liked my new place. I started to hang out in a brew pub nearby called Bullers Pub and Brewery. I enjoyed the beer even though I had to pay for it here instead of getting it free like at Shoeless Joe's place a few blocks away. I started to talk to one of the waitresses there and before long we were getting along fairly well. I met a lot of Americans there. The American Embassy was not too far away and this is where the staff from the Embassy hung out so I got to know quite a few of them too. We would get a table outside on the sidewalk and just sit there talking and watching all the people walk by. The food was good there too so I frequently ate there. The pizza around Buenos Aires was almost all margarita pizza. They were good but for me they were a bit bland.

I like my pizza with pepperoni or Italian sausage and it was not available in Argentina. I decided to make some of my own. I looked up the recipe online and bought all the ingredients fairly easy. I mixed some up and let it dry in my refer for a week or so and then I sliced it up thin and brought it in to have them add it to my pizzas. I thought it tasted pretty good for my first attempt at making it. I bought some sausages and squeezed the filling out of the casing tossed it with the spices and restuffed the same casings. It wasn't too difficult to do and any casings I ruined I just scrambled it into eggs for dinner. The cook at the restaurant asked me to start making it for them to put on their menu but I did not want to work that hard with my health so iffy. It would be a good business for somebody there though, I am sure you could get the whole country hooked on your products.

I dated the waitress a few times. She was a student and worked hard at her schoolwork and at her job so she did not have much time for playing. She wanted to be a therapist. Argentina has the highest amount of therapists in the world. There is one working therapist for every 24 people in the country. I don't know how they all stay in business. There are signs everywhere you look. I don't think you could take a picture of the streets in B.A. without seeing at least one therapist sign in the picture. In the restaurants and cafes people are always reading therapy books and talking about therapy. Either they are the most mentally healthy or they have the worst mental health of any country in the world. I am not sure how the high ratio of patients to therapists could tell which case it is.

I talked about going fishing one night in the brew pub and some of the guys that worked at the embassy told me they would take me out fishing. We arranged a day and a time to meet at the dock and I showed up early. A few minutes later a James Bond type of high powered jet boat pulled up to the dock with a few cases of beer stacked in the back and some fishing poles sticking up from rod holders. I jumped in and we raced off up the river. Our target species was golden dorado. A golden dorado had a body shape like a large bass except they have some serious teeth. The fish tends to hang out along the shore of rivers where there is brush overhanging the water especially near rapids or waterfalls. They get large to around fifty pounds. Here is a good link with pictures:
http://www.yerich.com/LaZona.htm
We motored up the river at high speed in this specialized boat that I think must have belonged to the CIA. After a long haul we arrived at a big bend in the river that had some white water and lots of brush along the banks. We started to throw poppers as close to the shore as we could and then crank them back fast. The golden dorado would hit the topwater lures really hard with vicious head shakes as soon as they realized there was a hook. Most of them broke off right away either because the line touched their teeth or they just snapped the line with their head shakes. The lures took a beating and we lost lots of them. We did manage to catch a few and we took just one smaller one back to cook for dinner and released the rest of them. It was hard fishing. One guy had to try to keep the boat in position in the swirling fast water while only one or two of us could cast at a time because of the difficulty of placing the poppers close to shore from an unstable platform. We were kind of hammered on all the beer by this point anyway. It was a lot of fun and after fishing for a few hours we had to head back to the barn because it was a long ride. Going down river in this high speed jet boat was a bit scary. Our captain was insane if you ask me. I laughed almost all the way back to the city of Buenos Aires. It was like a two hour roller coaster ride sitting on a jet engine. My cheeks were sore from laughing and smiling so much. I lost all my pictures from this trip when my computer crashed before I had backed up the pictures. I wish I still had them to show you. When we got back to the dock they let me off and we made plans to meet later on to try the fish we brought back. I went back to my apartment and took a shower. I looked in the mirror after my shower and I was absolutely covered in bruises all over my hips, back, arms and legs. I crawled into my bed to rest before going down to meet up with my friends and I passed out until morning. I could barely get out of bed in the morning. I was totally crippled from bouncing in that frigging boat all day the day before. I loaded up on meds and went back to bed after eating a bit of food.

I made it up and to the pub that night and they had saved some of the dorado for me. I tried it and it tasted like crap. The fish was grilled on the same grill they cook all their meat on and the fish picked up all the rancid flavors from the meat. I could not eat it it was so bad. Do not order fish in a restaurant in Argentina. Stick to the meat. The pic is from Wikimedia Commons since I lost my pics.

Beef wars

Almost as soon as I felt better from my back pain I had to move out of my apartment because my crazy landlady just kept walking into my apartment whenever she felt like it. I just packed up my stuff and walked out. She caught me as I was leaving and tried to tell me I owed her thousands of dollars because we had an agreement but I just kept on walking away. I spent a night in a hotel nearby and went to work to find a new apartment. I lucked out and found an even nicer place and rented it right away for $400 a month. Again it was a fully furnished one bedroom up high with a nice view and everything included including local telephone. I moved right in.

I spent the next few days learning more about the city and country. I wandered around the zoo. They had condors at the zoo so I watched them for a couple of hours. They are slowly increasing in numbers and may survive as a species now. I also went to a horse race. My betting skills are normally very good but on this day I lost. I watched a polo game for a while but it did not interest me that much. There was a lot of parks around my area so I tried to check them all out but there were just too many of them.

Right around this time a big fight started to brew in Argentina. A lot of beef is produced and exported from Argentina and the locals eat a ton of beef. The problem was that the beef producers were exporting the best meat because they could get more money for it overseas than they could in their own country. The locals were pissed off that the quality of their cherished beef was going down and they started to complain. There were demonstrations against the growers and lots of newspaper articles and television shows were dedicated to getting better quality meat back on the store shelves in Argentina. The government ended up passing a law that the farmers had to sell a certain amount of quality beef locally at a low fixed price before they could export any to other countries. The farmers did not like that so they started to go on strike and have their own demonstrations on the street. Well the demonstrations turned violent and several people were killed on both sides of the argument. To enforce their law about selling meat locally the government shut down the ports where all the beef is exported and told the farmers that until they sold quality beef locally at the price the government had set there was not going to be any beef leaving the country. The farmers protested and riots ensued with even more people killed. I don't know the total death count but there were quite a few deaths in all. The farmers stopped selling all meat and "forced" the government to reopen the ports which the government did. The farmers felt they had won and loaded up thousands of semi trucks with beef and sent it to the now open port. When there were thousands of tons of beef in the trucks and in the port, the government again closed the port and all the beef rotted. The farmers were livid but realized with out the port they could not export their beef because by road Argentina is just to far away from their markets for beef. The farmers relented and sold quality beef locally at the set price and they were allowed to export again. The whole fight was fascinating to watch. I particularly liked the governments rope a dope stance when they gave in to the farmers just to set them up for the huge loss later. It was a serious war.

Argentinians love to argue about politics or just about anything for that matter. I loved sitting in the cafes and eavesdropping on their animated conversations about just about anything but mostly politics and relationships. I saw several physical fights develop among friends over heated arguments. The people of Argentina consider themselves European. It is a real insult to them if you call them South American. They will always correct you and say, "We are not South Americans, we are Europeans." I heard that many times and I always wanted to laugh at them because despite their attitude, Argentina is in South America not Europe. People can be crazy. Sometimes if I got angry at an Argentinian for some reason I would intentionally tell them they were South American just to tick them off.

One morning I woke up and there was some damage in my neighborhood from what looked like young drunks going on a rampage--garbage cans were tipped over, tree branches were broken, there was some broken glass and debris on the streets, things like that. As I sat at the cafe the people around me were all blaming the damage on drunk American students. There was no evidence of American students but they do have a reputation for doing stupid stuff around the world. My neighbors just assumed it was those terrible American students. They went on and on complaining about the behavior of American students and how senseless this was. I could only think about the riots during the beef wars and how the behavior of the rioters was so senseless and I thought about pots calling kettles black. Enjoy life because we are all crazy aren't we. Just in different ways sometimes.

Gone fishing today

I went fishing today so I did not blog but I just have to mention my fishing experience. I went rock fishing at the Farallone Islands about 26 miles west of San Francisco. The fishing was great and I limited out early. Then as I was resting between fish a thirty ton whale rammed our boat. It lifted our forty ton boat a few feet up into the air and caused a lot of damage to the screws and rudder and knocked one engine out of operation because it was vibrating so badly. We were able to limp back into port but it took us six hours to do it on just one engine. What a weird day is all I can say. I am tired from a very long day but I just fried up some sea trout for dinner and it was delicious. Enjoy life while you can.

Buenos Aires crippled by my back

A few days after I moved into my new apartment I started to have some more serious health issues. I had been having a sore back since the flight down here from San Francisco. Suddenly it got much worse. I couldn't get out of bed one morning. I had no one around to call to come and help me but my land lady showed up and let herself in. She thought I was out when I didn't go to the door when she knocked. She was basically snooping around my house and when she came into the bedroom and saw me in the bed she acted startled. She quickly made an excuse for being in my apartment when she thought I was gone. I could not deal with the intrusion because I was in serious pain and could not get out of the bed. So I overlooked it thinking that she had learned her lesson by getting caught.

Without me asking for it, she made me some tea so I then asked her to get my meds. I drank the tea and took my pain meds and asked her to leave because I was going to be alright and did not want any help. A couple of hours later I managed to get up out of the bed and get to the bathroom. After managing to shit, shower and shave I felt a lot better but I knew that it was temporary so I set up everything I needed near my bed. I had my meds, lots of water, my computer, some snack foods and some extra towels as well as a big plastic container in case I could not get out of bed but had to piss or something. I felt pretty sure that I would be alright. There was a phone next to the bed in case of emergency. I was already tired from all the shuffling around I had done to assemble my items near my bed so I crawled back in and took more meds then basically just passed out. When I woke up it was dark out and I was in agony. I re upped my meds right away, drank some water, used my plastic bucket and with a lot of effort managed to roll over in bed. I went back to sleep.

When I woke up again it was morning. I took meds for the pain and waited for them to kick in so that I could try to get up and go to the bathroom. About an hour and a half later I struggled up and holding on to the walls I made it to the bathroom. As I was sitting there on the toilet I noticed some feet sticking out from the rug in my living room. It was my landlady sleeping. I was a bit pissed off when I saw her. I finished my business and as I was struggling to get back on my feet to pull up my underwear which is all I was wearing she walked into the bathroom like she was my wife or something. I asked her to leave and she got all indignant with me. She could see that there was nothing I could do if she did not leave so she took her sweet time leaving. I repeatedly told her I did not need or want any help from her and asked her to respect my privacy.

After she left I found some food and made some coffee to drink. I felt better but my mobility was almost nil. I had to hold on to the wall to stand up and walk, rather shuffle my feet forward. I decided to take a risk and walk down to the internet cafe to email my family and friends back home. It was a short walk to the elevator then a walk of about fifty yards to the internet cafe. I was about halfway to the cafe when a decrepit looking, severely crippled, dirty, stinky, sick looking old man who was walking a wiener dog that looked like it had died three years earlier and looked just as bad as the old man did started to shuffle past me on the sidewalk with the help of his cane. He looked like he was going to die from a heart attack any second from all the effort he was putting in to passing me. He started to laugh at me as he was whizzing by at about three shuffles a minute. I was in agonizing pain and only able to manage about two and a half shuffles a minute. I was on a couple hundred milligrams of morphine. I was tired and angry about my situation. I was also not in any mood to be made fun of. The old man started to laugh louder and louder as he passed me with his faster shuffle than mine. I was probably the first person he had been able to walk past in forty years by the look of him and the excited sound of his laughter. He started to point at me with his free hand and call me names, very bad names. I got pissed off and in a strange, for me, mean spirited split second decision I reached out like I was going to trip him, of course I really would never have tripped an old crippled man. In my super slow state he saw my obviously telegraphed move to try to trip him and he raised his cane and struck me in the face with it. At the same time his mangy shit and scab covered dog suddenly came to life and started to bark and bite at my heals. I fell backwards against the wall and just stopped to get a grip on myself. I could not even kick at the stupid little dog trying to bite me with his toothless old mouth. He did try to gum me to death though and left a wet sticky slobbery mess of saliva mixed with pus on my feet and ankles. The old man continued to walk away from me screaming at me about how he had kicked my ass and strutting along like a rooster at a much faster pace of maybe four shuffles a minute. I waited until he was a long ways off, I think it was about twenty five feet or so, before I continued my shuffle to the internet cafe. I could still hear him ranting as I entered the cafe. I was exhausted and almost crying at this point. My pain was extremely high.

I got a terminal and sat down to send off some emails. They were very short and full of spelling errors because I was so out of it from all of my pain killers. Then I tried to get back up on my feet and I needed to ask a young man to help me get up. He generously walked me over to the cash register to pay for my computer time and I thanked him again as I shuffled out the door in the direction of my apartment. Before leaving the cafe I carefully checked in each direction to make sure the old man wasn't in sight because I didn't want him to come back and beat me up some more in his cocky mood. I felt really, really, lousy as I shuffled along to go home with my black eye and lump on my head.

I think it took me about an hour to make it the fifty yards to my elevator and then back into my apartment. I went straight to the bathroom then re-upped my meds and with a big effort I rolled back into bed before I totally lost it. I just cried myself to sleep I think. When I woke up the wacky landlady was in my apartment again. I wanted to call the police but I could barely speak English so trying to talk to the police in Spanish was going to be too difficult for me so I just asked her to leave. She gave me more grief before she left me alone. I took more meds, drank some water and stayed in bed for a couple of more days before I felt good enough to go to the hospital to try to get some relief. I took a taxi to the German hospital just a short ways from my apartment.

The doctors were very good and the service at the hospital was top notch. They did some exams and tests then told me that yes my back was out but that I had a kidney infection that was making it much worse. They gave me antibiotics and sent me home. Within two days I was much better and able to walk almost normally again. I guess the kidney infection is what made me so much worse than my back had ever been before. It sure felt good to get my mobility back. Now if I could just find that old man again to even the score. Of course if you knew me, you would know that I would never retaliate against someone like that but I might think about it. I will think twice in the future before I try to trip up an old man. I had learned my lesson.

Buenos Aires Argentina

I am sorry but I have no pics from this part of my trip. I lost them when my computer crashed before I had backed them up. It was a good lesson to me.

I decided to see if I liked living in Argentina so I flew down to check it out. I had heard that there was some awesome trout fishing there for gigantic trout. I arrived after a 23 hour trip from San Francisco, California. I was exhausted from the long flight and the delays in the trip. Travel days involving international airports always hurt me because I have mobility issues walking and trouble sitting for long periods of time. They both cause my chronic pain to increase dramatically. After a long trip like this one I am sometimes unable to get around for several days. So in anticipation I had already arranged a week in a nice hotel with transportation from the airport prebooked.

I arrived at my hotel in Recoleta after a nice ride from the airport. I went straight to my room, took some meds and crashed for a couple of days. I was barely able to get up to get food. After a couple of days I felt better and took a short walk around the neighborhood of my hotel. The first thing I noticed were all the young men and women that were obviously hookers along the streets. Prostitution is legal in Argentina and it is clearly popular judging by the amount of workers on the streets. The second thing I noticed is how cheap everything was, especially meals in nice looking restaurants. For five to ten bucks I saw great looking fixed price meals. The fixed price seemed to be a popular option in the restaurants. There were a lot of places specializing in grilled meats, in fact most of them did. Beef is king in Argentina. Huge steaks with sides included were the favorite choices in the restaurants. I picked a place that had a sign for six bucks and went in to eat. I sat down and told them I wanted the fixed price steak dinner. It was around 9:30 at night and I was the only person in the place. The waiter asked me if I was eating this early or was I going to have a few drinks first. I chose to eat then so he told me it would take about a half hour to serve me because they weren't quite ready to serve dinner yet. Argentinians eat their dinner at around 11:30 to 12:30 at night so I was a couple of hours early. The meal included a huge steak, potates, salad, mixed vegies, two tall glasses of wine, bread, coffee and dessert for six bucks. I could not eat it all. I took my time and watched all the nice girls walking by my outdoor table, and there were lots of them. I thought right away that if I don't get some self control started right now I am going to gain a ton of weight eating like this every day unless some of these hotties walking by were going to help me work off some calories on a nightly basis.

After I ate I had to walk around to feel better. I headed for the famous graveyard in downtown Recoleta. It was too late for me to want to walk around inside but it clearly was not too late for the local people because the streets were packed with people. It was around 11pm and the sidewalks were crowded with well dressed people. I half expected them all to be fat with the cheap food but almost all were very fit looking. They were not real friendly. I did not see many people greeting each other or acknowledging it when I said hello to them. They all seemed kind of cold. But if they were greeting one of their friends then they were effusively friendly but in kind of a mechanical way. I did not see much warmth.

I continued walking and saw lots of theaters with various plays and different types of music in them. The theaters were very popular and even the small ones had long lines of people for the shows. The cafes were all crowded with people drinking coffee or wine and beer. Most of the tables were crowded with groups of four or more people all talking together and drinking. It was fairly reserved for the number of people and the amount of booze being consumed. I found out later at around 2 in the morning that the booze does indeed do its thing as the crowds were loud and very animated by then. I went up to my room at that point because I was still tired from my trip here. Three or four am is the peak of the night for entertainment in Argentina. Most of the clubs don't even open until at least midnight or 1am and then they party hardy until dawn when everybody spills out into the cafes again for some coffee to wake them up before going either home or frequently straight to work. I don't know how they do it staying up all night and going straight to work. They have to still be drunk when they get there no matter how much coffee they drink. But they do.

I looked around for an apartment to rent the next day and I found a very nice one bedroom apartment fully furnished with all utilities included for six hundred dollars a month. It was right in the heart of Recoleta which is the heart of Buenos Aries. I moved in a couple of days later. I was on the ninth floor so I had nice views out my windows and from my balcony. The store down the street where I went to stock up my new apartment with food and drinks was a very modern American style supermarket. The food prices were kind of high except for the staples which were cheap. I stocked up on all the usual foods I like to eat. Anything imported was very expensive. So if you wanted to eat American foods from the States you were going to pay dearly for that. I don't eat much prepared foods so to me it was no big deal that imported goods were expensive. The ice cream was my weakness and they had Hagen Das if you were willing to fork over the cash for it and I did.

In my neighborhood there was a bar called Shoeless Joe's that gave away free local draft beer. No bull just free beer. The place was packed. There were a lot of American students hanging out in this bar which was run by a couple of Americans. They had sports on like baseball, football or basketball. They took the signals from the internet so the pictures was kind of bad a lot of times but when the playoffs were on the picture was good enough to follow the game as you pounded down free beer. The had a restaurant with typical American bar foods and comfort foods. They made their money on the food and the hard alcohol that people drank.

The place was a lot of fun for me. I picked up lots of the young American college aged students and some tourists from this bar. There were also the usual hookers working the bar. I got to know all the ones in this bar after a couple of weeks. Not from going out with them but just from talking to them in the bar. I helped them write their online profiles in English. The internet was a popular way to find the prostitutes for tourists that came to Argentina for the sex trade. There were a lot of sex tourists. Some of them were American but there were planes full of Europeans that came on packaged sex tours from Spain and Germany. It was a crazy place.

I also hung out at an Irish pub a couple of blocks from my apartment. There was dancing there and a lot of girls were available any night of the week. I just wish the places started earlier. The American bar and this Irish one were the two earliest starting places I found and they were just a couple of minutes walk from my place. I met most of my friends in these two places.

There was a lot of other things in the area including a zoo, polo field, soccer fields, pools, lots of parks, a yacht club, a fishing club, horse racing track, malls, movie theaters, clubs of all sorts, good medical care and just about anything I could think of or want.

Guatemala Side trip

I took a solo side trip to Guatemala from Costa Rica on an all inclusive package deal. I flew from San Jose to Managua Nicaragua and had to change planes to fly to Guatemala City. The flight was perfect with good weather and no problems. I had a good time with the flight attendants. The Central American women seem to like slightly gray haired men I found. We joked around all the way to Guatemala City. I went through customs and immigration without a hitch and was promptly met by my sign carrying driver that took me to my hotel.

I asked him to take the long way to get to the hotel so that I could see some of the city. He was very reluctant to go off the shortest route and I asked him why. He started to explain that many parts of the City are not "good" areas. In other words it was not safe and he was not allowed to do it. He did make a few circles around the part of town near my hotel so that I could have some idea of the neighborhood I was in. We had to go through a guarded gate on the road to get into this secure area of town for tourists. There was a fence around the area as far as I could see. Instead of putting the criminals in prison here in Guatemala it appears to me that they put the tourists in one.

The hotel was very nice and the people working it it were friendly and helpful. I got a couple of free welcoming drink coupons to use at the bar. I went up to my room and got cleaned up then went down to the bar for a before dinner drink or two. There were about a dozen tourists at the bar when I arrived. I stood next to a small mixed group of young Americans and ordered my drink. It turns out the group were all American Coast Guard personnel on leave or something. I told them I had seen their cutters and air support many times while I was out fishing in Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico. They told me they like to keep a low profile so they don't like to hear that I had seen them working. I am sure that they had seen and heard much more of me than I had of them. They pretty much have surveillance that listens and watches everything that moves on the water including fishing boats. Mostly they use the information to find drug smugglers and then they tell the local coast guards where to go make the stop and arrests. The American Coast Guard even pays the local governments for the fuel to go arrest the suspects. These kids looked to be around 19 or 20 years old. We had a good time talking about fishing in Central America but they would not talk about their work at all. They explained the secure area that we were in at the moment. Guatemala is controlled by various drug lords and different parts of the city are controlled by different drug lords. There are also a lot of criminals and gangs working in Guatemala City and country. The easiest way to protect tourists was to make this fenced in area around some hotels, bars, clubs and restaurants and guard it well. The rest of the city was more or less controlled by the drug lords and gangs. It was a very dangerous place outside of the security zone. The hotel staff warned me not to leave the area or I might be killed or kidnapped or just robbed.

There was a big shoot out on the streets of Guatemala City while I was there. Some foreign officials from El Salvador were murdered in an elaborate movie style ambush. It was basically a retaliatory drug turf war killing according to the news reports. Four of the shooters were caught however. They were arrested and taken to the maximum security prison. The shooters were high ranking police and they were murdered in prison when men armed with machine guns entered the prison and murdered them in another Hollywood style execution. The newspapers were eating up the stories with diagrams and arrows on pictures of the scenes and how the planning was done and who the suspects were. The televisions had re-enactments and lots of commentary about the state of the country and the drug wars. I was cracking up watching the locals watch these stories on the television and everything. Everybody was acting scared but apparently loving it at the same time. (for details see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6396051.stm)

The bartender told me a lot about the country and its problems and the young Coasties filled me in on some facts also. I was impressed by the amount of violence. Especially the violence against women. Thousands of young women just disappear, kidnapped off the streets and first gang raped then murdered, mostly by street gangs. They told me six thousand women a year go missing. I could not find accurate numbers anywhere about this. In fact I could find very little information about it but all the locals I talked to verified that thousands of girls disappear every year. The day I was there the first twelve pages of the newspaper were just the listing of the murders from the night before. All the stores and even little tiny shops have armed guards with sawed off shotguns at the ready. All the delivery trucks are also heavily armed and guarded. Quatemala is like a war zone.

Yet life goes on. Ironically to me, all the people I met were some of the nicest people I had met anywhere. They were sweet, friendly, and helpful. I like them a lot. So why all the violence? Some of the people told me it is because the military trains all the young men with compulsory service and then releases them a couple of years later as trained killers with no jobs so they go out and form gangs to make a living or work for the drug lord armies.

The next morning I was picked up by a small van to take me to Antigua. The van had an armed guard of course and the driver was trained in avoidance he told us. We also had a very specific route we were to take with out any stops that were not authorized. The highway bandits frequently act like police or military before they shoot and rob you I was told.

The roads were good concrete roads but maybe a bit too narrow for my taste. We made it safely to Antigua and went straight to the four seasons hotel to check in. The hotel was very nice. I asked about security and they told me that I would be safe as long as I did not get drunk or stoned or do stupid things. Antigua is a big tourist mecca and the police crack down hard on crime here they said.

I walked around town and made some friends in a street cafe drinking a few beers. I also did my prepaid tour around town. All the tours seem the same to me after doing so many of them. We did the cathedral and the town square and the big shopping mall and the little shopping complex owned by the tour operator of course. Then some lunch at another restaurant owned by an uncle of the bus driver. Then a drive around town to see the views of the volcanoes and we went to a nearby town to see a crafts fair and a jade mask factory. Pretty typical. Sorry about my lack of enthusiasm for these tours. I would never actually pay for one but when it is included in my tour I do it to get a feel for the area. I don't buy souvenirs but I enjoy talking to the people that make them.

After the tour I had dinner back at the hotel and went back out on the town with the friends I had met earlier. I ended up not even using my fancy hotel room that night. I met a girl from Texas that I hooked up with for the night instead. She was taking Spanish classes in Antigua. The Spanish schools all seem to be the same all over Central and South America--they are basically just party central with about a three or four to one ratio of girls to boys in the classes. Single guys should be signing up for classes just for the good odds.

My three days in Antigua went fast. The cobblestone streets and friendly people made it into a nice quaint little city. There was lots of good food and drink around but not much to do unless you like looking at cathedrals built around the sixteenth century. There are lots of old indian ruins around the country and I checked some out on my tours. Then I took my armed escort back to my hotel in Guatemala City for a night and then flew back to San Jose.

San Andres Island, Columbia

I took a side trip to San Andres island Columbia. I did a tour trip that was all inclusive. One of my girlfriends from Costa Rica came with me. We had to fly out of San Jose to Panama City and then transfer planes and fly to San Andres. It was her first flight ever and she had some serious white knuckles on the takeoff and landing. We picked a poor time to go because there was a hurricane swirling out in the gulf. Our flight from Panama City was delayed for hours while the storm passed over near to the island. I tried to get our trip changed to a later date but since we were already into it they refused to cancel or change anything. We finally took off and made it to the airport at San Andres about two hours after the storm went by. It was still pouring tropical rain. We transferred to our hotel and took showers and rested a bit before going down to eat our all inclusive dinner. It sucked. I guess I just don't like Columbian style food. They seem to bread and deep fry everything. There is about a half inch thick coating of greasy breading over everything and for bread they eat deep fried balls of dough with some cheese thrown in just to make sure the fat and cholesterol content are sufficient to clog up even the healthiest hearts. I could not eat food like this. So we went out to find some healthier food.

There were some broken windows in some of the shops and almost no people on the streets since a hurricane had passed only a few hours earlier. All the trees were stripped of their leaves and there was debris all over the streets from the big blow. We went to every open restaurant we could find and they all had the same deep fried food. I finally found a restaurant that claimed to have fresh vegetables and European style food and we went in to eat. I explained to the waiter that I was happy to finally find a restaurant that did not serve just Columbian food and he told me they have authentic French, German and Italian style dishes. I ordered some french style beans, a salad and some spaghetti with meatballs. We drank a couple of glasses of aguardiente which is a popular drink while we waited. They tasted like licorice and were very potent. When the first plate of food came out of the kitchen it was the French beans dish. It looked like a half dozen corn dogs on a plate. Each green bean was coated in the same thick breading as all the food at the hotel and deep fried. I wanted to scream. I just pushed the plate back in the hands of the waiter and asked for the bill. They insisted on bringing out the rest of the food first and they did. The meat balls came out next and they were breaded just like the beans were and then had some spaghetti sauce over the top of them. I half expected the spaghetti noodles to come out coated in breading too but they just came out in a gelatinous pile of over cooked starch. I paid my bill and we left without eating any of the food. Instead we found some fresh fruit on the street that we bought and we ate bananas and mangos for our dinner.

We took a public bus back to the area of our hotel. We got on the bus that was crowded with well dressed business workers commuting home after working downtown. I was talking to my girlfriend in Costa Rican Spanish and the people around us heard my girlfriend talking with her Costa Rican accent. All the other passengers on the now standing room only bus immediately started to talk in very threatening and intimidating ways about Costa Ricans. My girlfriend heard them threatening her directly and talking very badly about Costa Ricans in general. She started to shake from fear and then to cry and that just encouraged the entire bus load of people to pick on her even more, directly threatening her life. I was kind of shocked at the behavior of these people that looked so professional in their dress talking such trash to an innocent woman. I grabbed her hand and we went to the door. The people were pushing and shoving at her as we walked to the door. Some of them intentionally stepped on her feet. When we got to the door the driver stopped the bus and opened the door to let us out and even he made some foul mouthed curses at us as we stepped off the bus.

I could not believe the way the people treated her. I know Costa Ricans and also Argentinians are known through out Central and South America for their attitude of treating the people from other countries like dirt because the Costa Ricans and Argentinians feel like they are superior to all the other countries. I had never before seen the other countries do it back to them like they did to my Costa Rican girlfriend. She could not stop crying and kept saying that she wanted to go back home to Costa Rica to get away from these animals. We walked all the way back to the hotel and went up to the room to call it a night.

The next morning I convinced her that everything would be alright because nobody would know she was from Costa Rica unless she spoke to them. I told her to practice her English in public from then on or to just say nothing. She agreed to stay and we went out to the beach. She was still scared and refused to talk. I didn't mind so much that she wasn't talking. We went on a semi submersible boat tour to look at the colorful fish and corals around the island. That too was pretty much a bust. Everything was covered in sand from the big storm the day before. There were schools of colorful tropical fish but not much else to look at. My girlfriend never made a peep the entire ride. She just clung to my side and looked at the fish in silence. We also took a boat ride out to Johny Cay to see the beach and have some lunch. We stuck to eating fruit instead of more fried foods.

In the afternoon we went on a fishing trip. It was meant to be a fishing trip outside the reef but when we got to the opening in the reef, the waves were too big to make it safely through in our little panga so we just trolled around along the inside of the reef and caught a few triggerfish and other fish that I don't know the names of. We just released them all. My girlfriend loves to fish and she was actually enjoying herself for the first time since we left Costa Rica. I let her bring in all the fish that we hooked.

At night we went to a club that had a floor show. Our hotel had a floor show too that we went to earlier but it was just such a pathetic show that it was almost funny to watch. At least this other club had a better show. I drank beer instead of their famous aguardiente drink because I did not want a hangover from the cheap rum in it. I enjoyed the second show. At least it had some good looking Columbian girls in it wearing skimpy clothes. There were a lot of Columbian prostitutes working all over the streets and in the bars and clubs. Some of them were just beautiful girls.

The next day we did a tour around the island. We went to the pirate cave first. It had about six or seven separate museum rooms with authentic pirate junk on display. I think they bought it all at a dollar store. Each room had a guide in it that told you the same things as in all the other rooms but each guide held their hands out for a tip as you left the room. At the end of the tour of the "museum" we got to the pirate cave which was the highlight of the tour. They walked us up to a garbage strewn cave that was full of water and told us that we would have to wade through the filthy chest deep water to get in the cave. Not one person was willing to step into the garbage pit. We got back into our private taxi tour with our driver guide and went to the next site on the tour. The second stop was a blow hole along the beach. We got out and fed the nice colorful fish some bread that they sold us to feed the fish and watched as two kids rented the available snorkles and masks to swim in the school of fish. We asked where the blow hole was and our guide pointed to a drainage pipe and told us the tide was too low for the blow hole to function. He took us over to where the blow hole blows and we looked at the hole in the ground and put our ears down near it to listen to the roar of the missing blow hole. I told the driver that we could go now but that I wanted to stop by again when this attraction was blowing water not just hot air. So went and ate our lunch at a nearby restaurant up on a high hill overlooking the ocean. We had Cuban sandwiches which I really enjoyed. It was the only meal I had in San Andres that I enjoyed. After lunch and a few beers we went back to the blowhole to see if there was any water blowing. This time there was a small puff of water that came out of the pipe and sprayed water up into the air. We oooooood and aaaaaaaawed in jest and left quickly.

We ended the tour there even though there were several other exciting stops we were going to miss. I asked the driver if he would just drive us around and show us interesting thing that he liked instead of these tourist thing. So he agreed.

The first thing he showed us were a bunch of mansions. Some of them were occupied and some of them were empty but they were all drug lord homes. He told us stories about some of the empty ones and how the drug lords were killed by rival cartels or arrested by the government. I found that way more interesting than the tour. Then he showed us the night clubs that the locals go to. They were dance clubs painted black with armed guards standing out in front. Apparently they were open 24/7. He told us that they were very dangerous and had a lot of shoot outs in them. No tourists go to them because they are too dangerous. There is a lot of cocaine and other things going on he told us. Then he took us to show us how the common people live. We went to his uncles farm and he walked us around their house and farm. The entire farm was about five thousand square feet including the ramshackle house. I was kind of surprised the storm did not blow this building down. I enjoyed his personal family tour. He took us to the local swimming beach where no tourists go just locals and we hung out and got some sun while we drank some beer and ate some fried plantain. I tipped him for the tour and told him he should start his own tour company and do the tour he did for us because the other tour was just a rip off.

We spent the rest of out time hanging out at the deserted beach or at our hotel pool. My girlfriend was more relaxed now but she still refused to speak around any other people. We flew back to Panama City and then San Jose Costa Rica and spent one night in San Jose before we drove back to Manuel Antonio again.

Belize side trip

I was back in the states for a visit with my family when I decided to go down to Belize for a short trip to visit one of my son's best friends. He and I have fished together in the bay area and I wanted to fish in Belize for some of the tarpon and things they have so when he invited me I jumped at the chance.

I flew down to Cancun Mexico on one of the cheap package price tours and spent a night at a hotel. I went out on the town that night by myself and had a blast. I can't get into the entertainment in this blog since this is a G rated blog but I had a fantastic time. The next morning I caught a bus from Cancun down to Belize. The bus cost about twenty five bucks and it was a five hour ride each way. It was one of those fancy first class buses with a girl serving drinks and sandwiches along the way. I thought the ride might have some nice scenery but except for a couple of spots where the road was slightly elevated all I saw were rows of trees all the way down along the flat coastline.

I ended up sitting next to a girl from Belize and we started to talk on the ride. We had fun talking. She was very open and told me way too much information about herself but I didn't mind because it made the long ride go faster. When we got to Chetumal Mexico at the border with Belize, she asked me if she could stay the night with me at my friend's house. I told her I would see but would help her find a place for the night either way. My friend met us at the border and he was surprised to see me with a nice young lady. He took it in stride and told me she could spent the night with us. We drove over to his place right on the beach in a town called Consejo. We met his family and then he took me to my room. It was a two bedroom, fully furnished house. My girlfriend and I took a shower and got cleaned up then we went over and had some dinner with my friend at a local bar restaurant. It was pretty quiet around Consejo since it was just a tranquil little village.

The next morning we gave my girlfriend a ride to the bus stop and got her off on her way then we toured the area. The wind was howling off the water so we gave up fishing there and we went into the mangroves. The water in the mangroves didn't look the right color but we threw lures for a little while until his little brother that we brought got too bored and we left to drive around town some more looking at all the sights. Back at the house we checked out his boat and his new pet snake that he had found in the water a few days earlier. He did not intend on keeping the snake but he wanted to make sure it was healthy before he released it again. The next morning the wind was still blowing too hard to get out on the water. The water there is very shallow flats and the wind makes big waves which cause the boats to bottom out when they end up in a trough between waves. Since we didn't want to damage the boat we didn't want to risk it.

Instead we decided to go on a road trip around Belize because the weather report was for continued high winds. So much for my tarpon fishing. We drove down to Belize City checking out the sights along the way. My buddy told me about how he was driving on this road one day when some men with machine guns stopped the cars. A Columbian drug plane landed right on the road and it was refueled with a truck while the cars were held back. Men with machine guns guarded the plane. Then the plane just took off again and they let the cars go. We met up with some of his friends and checked into the casino hotel right on the beach. We fished off the docks at the hotel and caught some weird looking catfish but not much else. It was still fun. The next day we drove out to ride through a cave down a river on inner tubes. The four of us went together. We stopped off at a zoo on the way to see some beautiful black jaguars and lots of birds and other local tropical animals.

We rented our inner tubes and hiked down to the cave opening along the river. We were with a guide as required in a small group of other tourists, mostly young couples from the States. The water was cold at first which surprised me but after a few minutes adjusting to it we had a lot of fun drifting though the big cave while floating on our inner tubes. There were rock formations and openings here and there with sunlight streaming in that looked nice. It only took us a couple of hours to do the entire float trip. It was fun and interesting but I wrecked my camera in the water. I had it sealed up in a ziplock bag but the bag leaked and the camera died when it got wet. If you ever go, take a waterproof camera with you.

We drove back to Consejo and the next day we went out to Ambergris Cay and got a hotel at San Pedro. San Pedro was a nice little resort town full of nice little bars and restaurants. There was a live concert on the beach that attracted a large crowd that night. We sat on the beach and listened to the music drinking some beers and smoking some of the local. The locals were all Rasta stoners. Everywhere we went the smell of weed was pervasive all over Belize. My friend waded out to hip deep water and did some casting for bonefish or whatever he could catch. I just watched him fish from the beach as I watched the girls walk by along the beach.

We booked a fishing trip with an outfitter our hotel set up for us. We were late getting started and the fishing was inside the reef for triggerfish and stuff. We talked him into going outside the reef to troll for some larger fish and he reluctantly took us. We caught almost nothing and nothing of any size. It was just a nice boat ride. That night a Cuban refugee boat made it to the shore. It was a pathetic looking piecemeal boat that used inner tubes to help keep it afloat. About twenty people men women and children were on the little boat. I had a hard time believing that this rickety boat made the journey from Cuba with that heavy of a load in it but it did. We took some pics horsing around in the boat.

I found the local people in Belize to be very difficult to work with. They are so laid back that they don't even bother answering questions and make no attempt to help you get what you want like in this case we wanted to go on a serious fishing trip. They have office hours when they feel like it and go fishing if they feel like it and so forth and mostly they feel like smoking their weed more than anything else. It was frustrating for us since we only had so much time available. We considered going diving at the blue hole which is a world famous diving site right near where we went fishing. We rode in our fishing boat near it and could see the color change in the water that gave it the name blue hole. There is basically just a big deep hole that is lined with coral and sponges and lots of colorful tropical fish. You can snorkle near the surface or dive as deep as you are qualified to dive. It was a crowded spot with lots of tour boats anchored around it.

We partied for a couple more nights around San Pedro and then flew back to Consejo on a puddle jumper flight. My fishing trip to Belize was a bust fishing wise but I sure had fun anyway and my son's friend was a perfect host for the trip. My friend gave me a ride to the border and I took the bus back to Cancun. I didn't have a hot girl next to me on this ride, you can't have everything all the time. I had a night to go out in Cancun though before my flight back to the States. I had a fantastic meal for dinner at a little restaurant that caters to the local Mexican workers. That big meal pretty much took the get up and go right out of my system. I tried to go out and have some fun but I was just too tired and full of good food. I sat around and watched a show at one club and talked to some girls I met there but I ended up going back to my room alone and got some sleep in before I flew home to San Francisco the next morning.

Violence and Safety

I have been getting feedback where people ask me, "Why do you travel? It is so dangerous, I could never do that." or "Don't you feel afraid in all those foreign countries because they are so dangerous?" I talked about street safety in my Mexico posts already but people seem to need to hear some of it again.

Well the truth is that the neighborhood in the United States that I lived in just before I left on my trip to Central America had 36 murders in it the year I left. There were also hundreds of assaults, robberies, armed robberies, car thefts, hijacks, auto and home break ins and all the other typical violent crimes found throughout the world in larger cities. So the fact of the matter is that I was actually safer in most of the places I traveled than I would have been back home in the States. People have a strong tendency to feel that crime only happens to others. Crime happens to everybody on a pretty much equal footing no matter who you are or where you are. I could step outside right now and get murdered here in the U.S. just as easily as in Mexico or some other Central American country. So could anybody else. Crime happens.

One trick to remaining as safe as possible is to learn and use street smarts. Avoid stumbling around drunk in dark areas for instance. That is true no matter where you are. Criminals are always looking for the easy mark and a drunk is an easy mark. Drugs or alcohol that get you loaded are equally dangerous. Travel in larger groups for safety also. Five people are harder to rob than one lone person is. Know the are you are in. Now that is not always possible when you are traveling in a new to you area. In a new area ask about safety for the area you want to go to. The locals are usually very knowledgeable about safety issues and are willing to share their experiences. Listen to them. Now I have traveled through a few war zones like in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Uganda, Nigeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Spanish Sahara, Somalia, Malaysia, and Zaire. I don't think the average traveler should travel in war zones. I may have been a little stupid doing that and I admit it. Sometimes wars spontaneously start while you are already there like it did to me in Uganda.

In a War zone combatants sometimes shoot first and don't bother with asking questions later. In Nigeria where I was convicted of being a spy and sentenced to be executed, the war was officially over but the lingering resentments and war mentality were still strong and it almost cost me my life. I Central African Republic and In Uganda the wars started while I was there so I had no warnings. Life happens like that sometimes. But Once I found out about the problems I did my best to stay safe. In the Central African Republic I just high tailed it out of the country as fast as I could. In Uganda I remained in hiding for a week and then left the country fully prepared to run for my life with soldiers shooting real bullets at me if they did not accept the bribe they were offered. Luckily for me they accepted the bribe and we drove quietly into Kenya.

In Cambodia the war came down on us quickly and we fled as soon as we heard and saw what was happening with the killing fields. I felt bad for the other fleeing refugees that we passed that we were unable to help. I hope they made it. I know not all of them did. In Laos I was intentionally in a known war zone even though officially speaking it was a neutral zone. I knew there was war activity going on. I was only able to talk my way out of that situation because I was lucky that my captor was a reasonable person. I appealed to his sense of goodness and lucky for me he had a good heart or I would have been tied to a tree, skinned alive and left for the fire ants eat me in a slow agonizing death.

I have been robbed several times in the States. I got beat up once out in the deserts of Southern California. In each case of the robberies I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I knew it. I paid a price for my overlooking of commonsense. I got a few bruises out in the desert because there were three of them and only one of me but I didn't just take a beating. I fought back and they didn't want to get hurt so after they overwhelmed me they quickly gave up and left the scene. They could easily have killed me but they did not. Again I was just lucky there.

I try to be careful every single place I go even if it is just up the block where I live to go to the store. I immediately look around for threats and any unknown people. I decide how much caution each situation needs and I go with my instincts. I am perfectly at ease turning around and going back into my house if the situation looks threatening to me. I try to avoid any confrontation. I will cross the street to avoid a confrontation or I will run away if I feel that is the best choice. There is no cowardice in fleeing the scene of your potential death before it occurs. I have no pride in a dangerous situation. I will do anything to improve my odds. There are no rules of engagement for when somebody attacks me. I will use any method available to me to defend myself. Screaming is not above my pride either and sometimes shocks an assailant so much to see a grown man scream that they turn and run away saving me the trouble. I will kick in the crotch or face. I will throw dirt or sand in eyes. I will grab the nearest weapon. I will throw rocks or set off alarms in a business by breaking windows to get attention. Whatever it takes.

Guatemala City might be one of the few places I went that was more dangerous than my home neighborhood in the States. Somalia is probably the only other place I was that I would consider more dangerous than my own neighborhood. Both of those places are run by independent entities. In Guatemala it is the drug lords that rule and in Somalia it is war lords that control fiefdoms of various sizes. Guatemala city has one of the highest crime and murder rates in the world. The last day I was there the morning newspaper had twelve pages of murders listed just from the day before. Women disappear at an alarming rate in Guatemala also. Gangs of men pick them up off the streets or right out of their homes to rape and murder them. The world ignores this violence for some reason. Zaire too near Goma is a very dangerous place to be a female of any age because the rape rate is so high and the females are being mutilated also not just raped. This violence against females is being used as a weapon of terror in the war going on there. It works.

So in answer to all the feedback about my safety, I try to be as safe as I can possibly be but I do put myself out there and experience the world first hand. I live my life to its fullest. The option of hiding out in a fortified house in the United States and watching the world through the eyes of television scares me more than getting killed on the streets of Santiago Chile or Kampala Uganda. We all have our pigeon holed places in this world and mine seems to be to wander aimlessly around the world. I relish it and hope that my luck holds out.