Tag Archives: beach

The El Sano Banano Hotel – Montezuma , Costa Rica

Img 4271So we’re staying at the The El Sano Banano and we keep adding days to our stay. It’s a great hotel in that it’s located right in the center of Montezuma and it’s got all the necessary requirements for a hotel. It’s got air conditioning which to me is a must and not that many hotels have it (and it’s brand new, so it works very well), private bathrooms/showers, the showers have heat and it’s only about $65 US a night. There’s no internet but I just found out that the Ylang Ylang (the sister hotel) has free WiFi but I just found that out so I haven’t tried it yet.

It’s cute but plain vanilla, just beds and a TV in the room, no chairs and no desk. It’s tiny, only 12 rooms, but many of the places are like that. Free breakfast in the morning, it’s delicious(!), I get Huevos Rancheos, which is eggs and salsa on a tortilla but no frijoles (beans). The dinning rooms shows free movies with dinner; I assume the legality of this is questionable, but I haven’t bothered to quiz them on the legalities of international copyright and are they paying the proper fees (my spanish stinks and no one’s English is that good). But pretty much you’re wandering the streets or beech or at a restaurant or people-watching or on the beach.

I’d definitely recommend this place for the price, location, A/C and the rest of what I’ve mentioned above. The A/C really helps the enjoyability of it, the water pressure could be better (sometimes it’s awesome, but sometimes it’s not working). No one we’ve talked to has air conditioning, but they’re staying at places for half the price but we really like the A/C…

The photo is the view out my window.

New Year’s Eve

Img 3956So it was crazy here on New Year’s Eve. People all over the beach: camping, parked on the sand, surfing, anything you can think of. Way more people than I’ve ever seen and it just got crazy as the night went on. There didn’t seem to be an organized fireworks, just everyone was launching there own from all over the place. It was all totally unsafe. The one (blurry) picture shows people, cars, music and fireworks all on the beach. It was crazy!

Img 3900A lot of the restaurants were closed, having private parties and the rest were full. Some of the bars were totally packed (generally the ones that were normally dead) and one was flowing out into the streets.

We just hung out with the beach madness and watched all the fireworks and (of course) people watched. I went back out later and road the scooter around to see what was going on, but other than a few hot spots, it had died down (a bit) by about one-thirty am. But I could still hear music and fireworks while I was in bed. A lot of people we still on the beach in the morning but it had all cleared out by noon. It looked like great surfing for the people that hung around today though…

I have two photos here and I’ll post more on my Flicker page.

Scooting to Quepos

Img 3533Img 3535So we got the Scooters, they pretty much just looked like mopeds. We got there a little late and then the guys weren’t even there! We had have the security give us the number to call from the store next door. We couldn’t tell him to call since for some reason he didn’t seem to understand we wanted the guys from the rental place. Duh?!? And then of course it’s like renting a car, so it takes forever. So we actually didn’t get going until 11…

On the way south we took a trip towards a beach and found a cool hotel right on the ocean. I’ll post more on that later. I’ll be staying there next time (or maybe later this trip).

Img 3537
But we kept heading south and eventually made it to Quepos, it was about 70 km south. It was pretty deserted, we had a Coca-Cola and wandered around a bit, popped into some stores (got nothing) and then we had lunch. It was really really deserted. I’ve been there twice before and and it just seemed to be kinda busy both times. At the same time they were clearing setting up for a New Year’s party in the streets (stage and all). I really wish I had gotten a good photo of some of the rickety bridges we had to drive on. One lane and some pretty big gaps on the driving surface, which was railroad tracks (rails) mounted perpendicular to the way you were driving (yes, I mean the metal railroad tracks/rails, not the big wooden ties.

Then we had the ride home, which was really great except it was getting dark and all we had were sunglasses for eye protection. So that was a little tricky. The bugs didn’t make it any easier. Sometimes they were so thick I wanted to laugh but I didn’t want to open my mouth.

But we made it back. We were very happy to see the city lights verses the darkness of the highway.

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Quadrameme (lot’s of 4s about me)

I was tagged by RW to do this meme :)

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:
Web Programmer
Computer Trainer
Cook
Camp Counselor

Four movies you could watch over and over:


The Flight of the Navigator
The American President

The Cutting Edge
A Christmas Story

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Audra part 2

So after Audra Kubat played last night, she was selling CDs and signing them and stuff. So I went and picked up an older one and got it signed. She’s very sweet and was chatty with people and I found out she plays locally at a place downtown somewhere a few times a month so I’ll be heading down there. I haven’t played the CD yet but I really enjoy the other one that I had. The TasteFest was a lot busier when we left, I bet it gets pretty crazy there over the weekend.

Plus, seeing her completes another one of my 101 in 1001 list items. You know, I just realized I never talked about her other than at the Aimme Mann concert, I put together some info and never posted it so here you go some info, reviews and probably enough mp3s to make your own little sampler CD:

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This was my view at lunch!




This was my view at lunch!

Originally uploaded by garylapointe.

So this is what I got to look at while I was sitting on the pier at the beach eating my lunch.

It was a really great view of the city.

It was a pretty good burger too :)

The Long Kiss Goodnight

So the other night I saw they were running The Long Kiss Goodnight so I TiVo’d it. This is an excellent action film with Geena Davis (yes, I said Geena Davis and action film in the same sentence). She’s the school teacher that “private eye” (use that term loosely) Samuel Jackson refers to as “amnesia chick”. Turns out they found her on the beach eight years ago with no memory. A car crash, some strange dreams and a little bit of info dug up by the private eye and we on our way.

It’s a good chase from there to figure out who’s bad and who’s good and who’s really bad. It’s definitely a different movie for Geena so check it out on the late night movies, NetFlix it or (gasp) physically leave the couch and go to the video store. The picture on the cover of the DVD does nothing to promote the film, maybe it’s supposed to look like Lethal Weapon or something. Continue reading

Happy Mother’s Day Mom!!!

Mom kidMom floridaAnd I just wanted to say Happy Mother’s Day to all you Moms and Mother’s to be! There seem to be a be quite a few of you blogging about it.

These photos are (obviously) of my Mom! The one she’s about 10 (I’d guess) and the other (well I won’t say how old she is, but the photo is three years old) is a photo of her in Florida (St. Pete Beach?).