Back in Quepos taking chemo

Back in Costa Rica from Miami I went straight back home and tried to hook up my new internet. It did not work. I called the telephone company and they told me that they would have to send someone out to get it working. Remember it took me four years to get them to come out the last time so this time I just gave up. I ended up paying another guy to use his wireless network that he already had working. The signal was not real strong in my house but it worked as long as it wasn't raining real hard. Telecommunications in Costa Rica are controlled by the socialist government and it is terrible in every which way. They are always talking about how they are going to improve it but it is all talk all the time. Funny though, the telecommunications in the president's town are state of the art, go figure. Telecom employees also buy all the new phone lines up as soon as thy are available then they sell them at a premium.

I went back to my beach routine after I got my new house all set up. I will always love a nice tropical beach. There was only one problem. I started to take some meds for my cancer problems. The meds made me sensitive to the sun. At first I thought I could just use sunscreen and I would be fine. A few attempts quickly showed me that I was too sensitive even slathered in sunscreen. I tried going in street clothes but besides looking like a perve at the beach dressed like that, it was just too hot and humid to wear so many clothes. I stopped going to the beach. I started to read books instead.

I am a read-a-holic. I take reading a day at a time and one urge at a time. Once I start reading I have a hard time stopping. I will read for thirty or forty hours without stopping, novel after novel only stopping to eat and drink. I was borrowing books from some of my friends that were also readers. I found mostly books that were vacation reads like mysteries and action adventure or sifi type books. I found one friend from Berkeley California that had an outstanding diverse book collection and I borrowed heavily from him. My favorite books were Tim Dorsey books about a serial killer in Florida. They are mindless entertaining reads. You actually cheer the serial killer sometimes when he kills some of his victims that really deserved it. I also read all of Carl Hiaasen's books and several other Florida writers along the same vein. I could only rarely find any books that had any real merit other than fun reads.

I started to get weaker and sicker the longer I took my meds. I had a hard time just getting out to buy groceries. I had no energy at all, tired all the time. I zoned out in front of the TV if I didn't have a book to read. I had to quit drinking so going to the bars was not much fun. Hanging out with drunks when you are not drinking too just makes them look stupid. They were my friends I didn't want them to look stupid. What would that say about me? My tica friend came over pretty often. I tried to have her do my shopping when I was too tired but she was a terrible shopper. She came home with a bag full of candy and other totally unhealthy foods. She was like a kid sometimes. I still cooked almost all of my own food. I had a fairly healthy diet of oatmeal in the morning with fresh fruits and vegies for lunch and dinner with fresh fish and chicken for proteins. I made a lot of rice and bean dishes but I tended to make it Mexican American style not Central American style. I made a mean chili or two or three.

After a few months of this routine I called up my doctor and told him I didn't want to be treated anymore. He told me to just stop taking the meds and I would recover quickly. I quit taking them but it took me almost a month to get some energy back and to be able to go out in the sun without getting a rash and sunburn. My hair never fell out but I kept it shaved real short anyway so it would not have been a big deal if I had lost it.

I did one short trip down to Panama to renew my visa. We drove down to the border and took a taxi into David from the border. We ate and drank in the nice hotels and restaurants around David. They had a more diverse international range of restaurants than Quepos/Manuel Antonio had so we indulged in the treats we could find. I went to the casino to watch the people but I did not play the games.

On the way back to Quepos the police stopped us for speeding. My friend was driving and he was not real experienced in dealing with crooked cops and bribes. We let him handle the stop himself. One Passenger did have some joints rolled in his pocket and he negotiated his own on the spot fine with one of the cops while the driver dealt with his. We got back in the car when he was done and he showed us the ticket he got. Then he told us he paid an on the spot fine of $65.00. We laughed at him because the ticket only costs under ten dollars to pay at the bank. He also still had the ticket after paying the fine. He decided to go back and get his original ticket back from the cop. He jumped out and came back about fifteen minutes later. He had paid another thirty bucks for the original ticket. We laughed our asses off at him when he got back in the car. This time the cops saw us roaring at him and they joined in too at the humor of the situation. They made a fortune off of him for a ten dollar ticket. If you are going to be paying corrupt cops off at least learn the going rates. Five dollars or up to twenty dollars for a major crime would be enough to cover the "on the spot fines."

When I got home I was getting my energy back again and I wanted to do some more traveling. I went down to my friendly travel agent and ended up booking a trip to Peru and Ecuador. I was leaving in a month. I started to get excited. I was going back on the road again.