My "D" key doesn't work :(

So my "D" was a little crooked on my MacBook the other day so I pressed it down and it snapped back into place and has been fine. Today when I opened the lid the key just feel off and I can't get it to snap back on.

I can type on the missing part. It's just annoying and I'm afraid I'll lose the key before I can get it back on.

While I love my white plastic MacBook it just hasn't held up as well as my old plastic iBook. I used to beat that old iBook up and never had any problems. In addition to the "D" key I've got a few cracks around the seam that I have no idea when/where they came from.

Technorati Tags: broken key, broken keyboard

Tuesday Morning in Montezuma

It was raining so hard this morning it woke me up but I think part of that was due to the noisy roof of where I'm at. It's beautiful outside now and the early rain will help keep all the dust down. I want to go for a ride and it's so much nicer with the windows down but the dust really ruins the ride.

I just had breakfast in an open air restaurant down by the water. It's a nice place but they're really slow on the service at this place but that let me monopolize their table a little more :)

I'm going to head over to Cabano (a central town in the lower part of the peninsula) and run some errands and then over to a restaurant on the beach in Manzanillo for dinner and catch the sunset.

m

Opening a Bank Account in Costa Rica

So I tried to open a bank account today. Why? Because bank access in the southern Nicoya peninsula is very limited and the one bank they do have never lets me use my ATM so I thought an account might be useful. I was just thinking a few hundred dollars for emergencies and then it would be established already or if I needed money wired here a bank account would be handy (I could wire it to myself from the US while I was here, I checked with my Michigan bank on this already). I had e-mailed the Costa Rican bank (Banco Nacional) a week or two ago about this, but never got a response.

So I waited and waited and then finally I got to to wait some more. Then I asked at a different desk, because if I don't have what I need, I don't need to be waiting and got a very helpful guy whose english was good enough for us to figure it out. Turns out I need

Sunset in Mal País, Costa Rica

One of the bad things about Montezuma is it's on the east side of the peninsula so you don't get any sunsets. So last night I dashed over to Mal Pais to catch the sunset; remember when I say "dashed" it might mean 5 miles an hours over some of the treacherous roads. But I was in a hurry because I couldn't get them to bring me my "la quinta" (the check) where I had a late lunch (going faster didn't help settle my meal).

Here's a dozen photos of the Mal Pais Sunset.

The below map should show you where Mal Pais is. It's near the bottom of the peninsula; you can click the "-" to zoom out an see where that fits in to the rest of the country (world). You can see Montezuma to the right and above it a little.

View Larger Map

Technorati Tags: Mal Pais, Mal País, Malpais, Moctezuma, Montezuma, Costa Rica, Play Mal País, Playa Mal Pais, Sunset

Penne Pasta with Tomato Sauce

So Chico's Bar and Resturant has the best Penne Pasta with Tomato Sauce and it come with a small bowl of parmesan cheese. They were too busy saturday night and the restaurant wasn't open when I came by yesterday so I wanted to get a chance to eat this again.

Again? Yes, I had this last trip and loved it. We actually saw the waiter eating it at a different restaurant and it looked so good and he looked like he was really enjoying it so much Mark & I both tried to order it so he had to confess it was from down the street. So we came here a few days later to try it out ourselves. That's not how I usually get my restaurant recommendations but it worked.

I guess it's like the old barbershop brain-teaser: "There are two barbers in town, one has a great haircut and one has a bas one. Who do you go to get your hair cut at?" And you need to say "the one with the bad haircut, because he's the one who cut the other barber's hair (the one with the good cut)".

I just wished they had Fresca in a glass bottle instead of the can; I really like drinking out of a cold bottle...

Technorati Tags: Chico's Bar, Moctezuma, Montezuma, Costa Rica

Rain, Rain, go away...

So this rain is making me a little crazy today. It's been pouring on and off all day. I'd use it as a day to stay inside and catch up on the internet but it's satellite and the rain goofs up the signal. So needless to say I'm a little bored today.

It's to be expected as it is the "green" season but I was just hoping for a little less. Talking with a few German women in my hotel they said this is only one of three really rainy days that they've had and they've been here six months.

Although, it's coming down insane right now and I'm in this restaurant with no walls and it's really nice with all the rain noise and seeing the rain pouring over the edges of the roof. It's not bright enough in most of the restaurants to read while you wait but the laptop lights itself so while it's geeky it's practical. Although a zip-lock bag would be more practical than the vinyl backpack I brought it here in...

I did get a chance to use faster Internet in Cabano today but it was so warm inside I didn't stay too long or else I could have hung out there longer. I did use the internet to make a few phone calls and Mom was on-line so I got to video conference with her; for some reason it's way more exciting to video-conference from Costa Rica than from 30 miles away.

With the rain it was too cloudy to go catch the sunset in Manzanillo, maybe tomorrow (I'll probably go there and eat even if it's raining).

Technorati Tags: rain, vacation