Fortuna Waterfall and Canyoning Trip

The best part of Arenal was unquestionably the canyoning trip. We were supposed to go early in the morning, but the logistics got screwed up, so we went on the 1pm trip. We instead spent the morning at the Fortuna Waterfall, which was really good because it was sunny in the morning and a good time to swim and check out that area. It was a huge waterfall that you walk down all these steps to and then climb over some rocks to the basin where you can try to swim up to the falls. It's hard to get very far, the power of the water is really strong and you can't get within about 20 feet of them. We explored down the river and found a log you could jump off, and swam around there for a few hours. I had another great experience with my flip flops when I stood on a rock that was a bit slippery. I ate it and cut my arm up a bit, not a big deal but I decided the sandals were going to be used very sparingly the rest of the trip. This decision was cemented when we came back to the hostel and I tripped a bit and the strap blew out of the sole, so those shoes are done. RIP Toohey's flip flops. We had a good run, but all good things come to an end sadly. We hung around the hostel in the hammocks for an hour or so and then got picked up to go canyoning.

As soon as we left the hostel, it started thunderstorming, and the golf ball sized rain drops were coming down really hard. We thought they might cancel the trip, but this is pretty normal weather (it's usually really nice in the morning, and then storms insanely for a few hours in the afternoon before clearing up again), so we were set for the trip. We got our helmets and harnesses and set off into the rain forest, which was quite rainy at this point, and getting rainier. The first repel we did was down a small waterfall, it took me a bit to get used to how repelling works, but once I figured it out it was no problem. After you go down the sites where they clip you in, they unclip you and you hike down the stream to the next point. It was such an awesome trip, it was storming the whole time but that was no problem once you kept moving. You have to figure out where to step when climbing down rocks, and there was even a place where the guides showed us how you could jump from a rock into the stream below and completely disappear because there was a hole there. It was funny watching people jump into the hole and go underwater, it was like the earth had swallowed them up. There were two repels we did from really high up where you just jump off the platform and let yourself down as fast as you want to the bottom. We repelled down a couple other waterfalls too, everything was just so cool. I had never done a trip like that before, and the combination of the trail and the weather made it pretty epic. When we got back to the base, it was about 3 or 4 hours later and everyone was really hungry. They gave us an awesome meal, more comidas tipicas, but this one had some sort of vegetable-pork stew as well that was really good. There was a cool dog that lived at the base that everyone was playing with. It would bite your hands in a joking way, and everyone would laugh at it until it started going after your ankles and pants legs, and then people were less patient with it. It was funny to watch. They drove us back to the hostel and we chilled out and had some beers. The canyoning trip definitely gets two thumbs up.

Areanal Swimming and Volcano National Park

Arenal was a cool town, it is definitely a tourist area, but there was lots to do and the hostel we were at was a sweet place. They had a pool that we took advantage of, as well as hammocks and air conditioning in the room. The AC actually turned out to be more of a problem, as it was freezing all night the first day we were there, and the only way to change the temperature was to go to the front desk that was closed. The front desk guy hated us for some reason and had probably cranked the AC to torment us in one of his numerous acts of passive aggressiveness. We fixed it the next night though and everything was good. When we first arrived, it was crazy hot outside, so we went to this swimming hole that the front desk guy had recommended. It was this waterfall-pool area down the road that a bunch of local guys were hanging out at and swimming in the gorge. There was a rope swing that was really fun and after some effort, I made it to the other side of this small waterfall where there was an alcove you could hang out in. It was really a beautiful place, it reminded me of a few places in Australia like Mossman Gorge where you could just go and hang out and swim in water that was a good temperature in a really scenic area. Dave and Michael noticed that there was some shady stuff going on with the local guys and this girl that was hanging around, apparently she was giving hand jobs under the bridge. So apparently this swimming area comes with a local small time prostitute.

We came back to the hostel and I jogged around this park-trail area for a bit that was really pretty, and then we met up for dinner at a restaurante in town. More casados of course, it´s pretty much the only thing we ate the whole trip. We came back to the hostel and went swimming and cooled off before going to check out the Arenal Volcano. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see any lava that night, but we went back the next night and got to see it. It was pretty far away, but you could definitely make out the red lava flows that would occasionally come down the mountain. It was definitely cool, and I´m glad we got to see it on the clear night. Photos of that were pretty much impossible, but we found out that if you took a photo and zoomed to the highest setting, you could indeed see a tiny red dot of lava!

Volcan Poas and Extreme Landslide Area Driving

The next day, we got up early again and started the drive to Arenal. We wanted to stop on the way to visit Volcan Poas, which is a national park where there is a huge volcano crater. We drove up the mountain and on the way there, a dog ran out on the street and started attacking our car. It was ridiculous, this dog just had some vendetta against the Tarios and was legitimately going after our car. We checked the car after we got to the top of the mountain, and this dog had actually put teeth marks in our front fender and ripped it partially off the car. We popped it back in and remarked for the first of many times that it was a great idea that we had gotten the full coverage insurance. We hoped it included dog attacks. There are stray dogs everywhere, but it was pretty weird to see an angry one, and weirder still that it felt such hatred for our car.

The volcano crater was cool, the clouds came in just as we were hiking up to the lookout point, but we stuck around a bit and they cleared up for awhile and we saw a huge crater that had steam coming out of it. It was really massive, and definitely an impressive thing to see. We took a hike around one of the loop trails there and got to see another lagoon and a bunch of plants. Didn't see many animals other than bugs, but it was a cool walk.

The drive from Poas to Arenal was definitely one of the more crazy roads I have been on in my life, it turns out that route 126(?) was recently hit by an earthquake that caused massive landslides, and the road is not fully repaired yet. There were lots of construction work being done to get it fixed up, but the majority of it was washed out and full of mud. Three of us had to get out of the car on quite a few occasions to make it lighter so that we could drive through the mud without getting stuck. We came across another SUV that was bogged in the mud, and that was a bit disconcerting, but we got across all the mud holes and small streams that came along and thankfully made it all the way to Arenal without having to dig ourselves out of anything. It was definitely skillful driving by Christina that delivered us to the other side without being stranded on a remote mountain road where all the previous inhabitants had been evacuated. That would have been a bad situation, but I never doubted that stick shift off road master Christina would get us across the longest 15 kilometers ever safe and sound.

Pacuare River Rafting

On our first full day in Costa Rica, we went whitewater rafting on the Pacuare River. We got picked up around 6am and drove to a ranch where we had an awesome desayuna tipica with eggs, gallo pinto (rice and beans), potatoes, and of course, mass amounts of salsa lizano. Good stuff. We then went to the river and took off with our guide Walter and two safety kayakers paddling down the river with us. It is a really beautiful place, you are going through the rain forest and we got to see a lot of birds, including some toucans. The rapids were a lot of fun, and we got to jump out and go swimming a few times which was really cool. Everything was about the same temperature (the river, the air, your body temperature), so it felt good and even though it started storming pretty hard at the end, nothing was ever that cold. At one point, it was raining on us really hard, and then it stopped abruptly, but if you looked 100 meters down the river, it was coming down insanely hard at that spot! It was really strange, like something out of Lost or a cartoon where it only rains on one guy but nowhere else. It was a great trip, they gave us lunch at the end and took us back to San Jose.

We explored more of San Jose and walked down Avenida Central. There were lots of shops and people selling bootleg DVDs or produce on the street, it was a cool area. A lot of the buildings are stone and look haunted at times, and there are a lot of parks around. San Jose is a pretty busy city, dirty and congested at times, there is definitely a lot going on there. It was Dave's birthday also, so we got back to the hostel in time for happy hour cucaracha shots and other drinks at the bar. The shots were tequila with coffee liqueur that you light on fire and then drink with a straw. I'm not the biggest fan of tequila, but these shots were pretty good. It was a fun night, and a good way to end the day of extreme rafting.

Post Graduation Trip to Costa Rica

A few days after graduating from college, I took off to Costa Rica for 10 days with 3 friends to celebrate the end of school and have a generally awesome time. We had a red eye flight out of LAX and got into San Jose the next day about 2pm. We got our rental car, a Daihatsu Terios, which turned out to be a pretty sweet small SUV that saved us in many off road/unpaved road situations. After checking into our hostel downtown, we walked around for awhile and saw cool graffiti and went on an adventure trying to park the car around the corner. San Jose has some crazy road system that makes absolutely no sense. Most of the streets are one way and people are jaywalking everywhere and it´s just general chaos. It took us about 30 minutes to figure out how to get back around to the right street where the hostel parking lot was. Our car is stick shift, so it was interesting driving around this hilly area with everyone driving crazily around you on streets that do not have signs. We made it back alive to the hostel though, and had dinner there at their restaurante. We all had 'casados', which are plates that include rice, beans, salad, plantains, and the meat of your choice (fish-steak-chicken-pork). They serve these everywhere, and are one of the 'comidas tipicas' in Costa Rica. It costs around 3,000 colones, which adds up to about $5 for an awesome meal, it´s a sweet deal.

On the way to dinner, I decided to check out the water temperature of the pool, and had a graceful moment when I slipped on the first step and fell in almost the whole way. It was pretty awesome, but thankfully no cell phones or other things that would be damaged by water are with me on this trip, so it was more just straight up shameful, and the first moment where I realized my worn down Aussie flip flops would probably not work out very well on this trip. The water was warm by the way... We had 2 rooms at this place, Mike and Christina´s somehow ended up having a bathroom and two functioning lights, but they were way jealous because the one Dave and I were in had a blown out lamp and there was sand in the bedsheets. It was kindof a mystery to me as to how the sand got in the sheets, as San Jose is nowhere near the beach, and I would hope that the place would change the sheets every so often, maybe after people checked out or something like that, but we just decided it was some sort of free spa treatment for skin exfoliation that had gotten thrown in as an added bonus. It was a really cool hostel though, the pool was nice and they had a cheap bar that made great mojitos and there was even a woman that would juggle bowling pins that were on fire in the courtyard.

InvisaGrillz

OK so this is a post (the one and only!) from the other page, and I didn't know what to do with it when I get rid of that site so it's here now.

I went down to LA the other week to find housing and hang out with USC friends, and I really noticed that there are many cultural differences between Australia (where I have been living the past year) and South Central. One difference is that nobody in Australia I saw the whole time had a grill, while there are quite a few around the USC neighborhood that invest in this particular accessory. If you are not familiar with the concept, a grill is a mouthpiece that covers one's teeth that is made of some precious metal with diamonds or other such bling, according to how expensive it is.

I think that the grill should be combined with the modern orthodontic technology of Invisalign to create affordable teeth straightening options for the health conscious gangsta. Invisalign should hopefully decrease in cost over the coming years (I mean come on, its just a plastic mouthpiece), and the combination of the straigtening device with a sweet grill is a match made in heaven. People would totally wear it to boost their street cred, while getting straighter teeth that are easier to take care of and just better looking. And when the wearer gets older and decides that their kids don't need to grow up with a dad with a mouth full of platinum, they will have a great set of teeth.

While looking for images online, I also found this website:
http://www.toothtattoo.com/
After you get your InvisaGrill off, you can tattoo your teeth for further body art excitement. This could also be useful if you have fluoride stains or yellow teeth or anything that would make your teeth look weird, just tattoo over them and its all good!

Merging Blogs

Hey all,

So I had another blog for a minute, but really didn't really go anywhere with it. I have some more things to post now, and I have decided that everything will be on this site. This is mostly because of the address. I pretty much have everything I do with an address on the internet under 'ampoda' now (email, facebook, this blog, and twitter as of today... what is my life coming to?). It's just easier.

So now, this blog is branching out and will be about life in general and not just Austraila. Posts will probably be random thoughts I have, interesting things going on in my life, music I think is cool and want to share with the world, and funny or stupid things I find on the web. I hope you enjoy it!

First recommendation: I really have been enjoying the Idealism album by Digitalism, it's a few years old but I just stumbled across it. I've had the songs "The Pulse", "I Want I Want", and "Apollo-Gize" on constant rotation, they sound pretty different, but the composition of all of them is just elaborately beautiful. I recently took a MIDI sound class and learned the basics of Logic (sound editing/composition application), and it has definitely given me a newfound appreciation for electronic music. These songs use a lot of the tools I have learned about in the app, and I'm hoping to create something similarly awesome in the future.

Here's the links to the songs on youtube, not the best quality but what can you do:

The Pulse - lots of arpegiators

I Want I Want - more of a verse/chorus/verse song feel, driving rhythm

Apollo-Gize - beautiful chilled out song that's put together really well