Hola mis amigos!

I'm still decompressing after this fantastic voyage to Costa Rica for the Cheese, but I'll try to get this review out with some kind of clarity for all you that have been asking me about it.

First off, I can't say enough good things about this country and the ticos that reside there. The landscape, forests, animals, flowers, plants, birds and, most of all, the residents of the country were just plain fantastic. Everywhere we went the ticos were more than willing to help bridge the language barrier with smiles and laughter. In the places that are more tourist oriented (Quepos, San Jose) people were willing to help, but in the small towns and villages you were basically welcomed as one of their own for the most part.

A couple of facts about Costa Rica to set the scene... There is no military(!). The water distribution and purification is second to none of any other third world country. You can safely drink the tap water anywhere (and we all did daily) without any ill affects. A huge (relative to other countries... especially our own) part of the land is protected and the people are very into preserving their forests and other ecosystems throughout the country. Recycling is very predominate and many of the people we encountered were damn near violent about insisting that everything be recycled. It was impressive to say the least.

We started out by flying to Miami from Chicago and then over to San Jose (the capital of Costa Rica). We took a tico taxi from the airport downtown to the hotel we were staying at. Walking in the door we ran into our traveling companions from San Diego, Robin and Gregg. We waited out the afternoon rain in the sunroom of the hotel. When the rain stopped we stepped outside for a walk around the city. We were walking around seeing what kind of trouble we could get into and ended up on a street that was mostly hardware and building supply stores. Robin went in a store to talk to likely suspect and Dave and I strolled around outside. We were hanging outside the shop and turned around to notice, of all things, a String Cheese poster promoting the show in the Southern part of the country later that week! A few moments later this big guy walks up and in a loud, clear voice asks, "May I help you with something?". I know I freaked and figured we were in for some trouble, but he turned out to be very cool. His name was Roderick and he invited us in his store and ended up closing a little early so we could hang out in the office of the store. He had some tunes and we just sat around shooting the bull for a while. After a while we all hopped in his 4x4 and he took us about 1/2 hour out of San Jose to a great outdoor bar/restaurant. We tried all the local brews there and had dinner. We then went back into town and Roderick dropped us off at a hotel/casino where we proceeded to have fun and loose money gambling. We were very lucky to meet such a friendly person to give us a free guided nightlife tour of San Jose.

The next morning we struggled awake and drug ourselves, laden with all our gear, over to the San Jose bus station. We eventually figured out what bus we needed to take to La Fortuna. It cost us $5 each and the ride was about 5 hours over rough, dirt roads (for the most part). It was a trip. The scenery along the way was totally beautiful. There was a drunk tico on board and he focused on me. I talked to him a long time in Spanish and it was a good learning experience for me (and maybe him). It was entertaining to try to bridge the language barrier. At one point, when the back door flew open to admit passengers the guy just fell out on the street! What a riot.

Our bus finally delivered us to La Fortuna where Dave had made us a reservation in a bungalo at the base of Arenal Volcano. Here we immediately hooked up with a local tour guide by the name of Noel. He arranged several things for us to do right off the bat. We went to our hotel and changed into bathing gear for our trip to the hot springs. The hot springs were at the base of the volcano and the water, of course, was heated by the volcano itself. At this particular hot springs, there were three pools of water on three different levels. The bottom one was more of a pool with a swim up bar that was serving food and drinks. The 2nd level pool was kind of like a huge hot-tub and about that warm. People hanging out and chatting. The topmost pool was similar to the 2nd pool but was extremely warm. Almost too warm for comfort. Later in the evening, while we were eating our food at the bar, I looked up and saw red lava oozing down the side of the volcano. Perfect! It was really exciting! I talked to Noel quite a bit about business opportunities and he was excited with all we talked about. We're planning on expanding the web offerings in the area. I spoke to him at length about purchasing land and the legalities and costs surrounding such a venture.

Let me regress here a little and mention that the landscape everywhere was breathtaking. Dave kept mentioning that all of the plants were seeing he had only seen in greenhouses and botanical gardens. He was right! These amazingly beautiful plants were growing in the wild everywhere.

We went back to the hotel only to hear some familiar music pumping out of the bungalo next to our own. Wouldn't you know it? One of the 4x4's parked to a bungalo had a String Cheese sticker on it. Dave, Robin, and Gregg (along with two other kind people we met on the bus) went over to their hut to party for a while and I crashed. Our two new friends slept on our porch with Robin's mosquito net over them.

The next morning Dave and I woke early and went for a walk. A friendly, feathered friend dropped a huge load on Dave's shirt soon after we stepped outside. Whoops! We had a nice breakfast, overlooking the mist enshrouded volcano, in the hotel restaurant. After breakfast we went to find Robin & Gregg and then took off on the "car-boat-horse" trip as arranged by Noel. We all piled into two cabs (4x4 of course) and drove out to this beautiful lake surrounded by the most amazing mountains and plants. We met up with a handful of other people to top our group off at about 12 people or so and loaded our gear and ourselves into the two boats. We transversed the lake and unloaded ourselves on the far bank. We then met a couple of tico cowboys (vacaros) and hopped on steeds for our horse leg of the trip up the side of the mountain. What a ride! We saw wild horses, plants of all kinds, and amazing vistas at every turn. At one point Dave's horse got caught up in a little fender bender with another horse and the next thing I knew, Dave was getting up off the ground walking back toward the trail! Hehe. He wasn't hurt and we all had something to talk about after that! We stopped at one point after a particularly hard climb to rest the horses and ourselves. The cowboys cut up several fresh pineapples and we all gave them a taste. Wow, they were the sweetest pineapples I'd ever tasted!

We eventually made it into Santa Elena which was to quickly become our most favorite part of the trip and easily the most relaxed and inviting town we stayed in. We met and quickly befriended the proprietor of the Pension Santa Elena. His name was Jacques Bertrand and he is originally from Canada. Turns out Noel had not made us a reservation as planned, but Jacques hooked us up in an apartment of our own across the street from the hotel. He was the greatest and, in the days to follow, we all became good friends. Hanging out at the hostel was very cool. There were drinks right inside the door for next to nothing and great tunes playing inside and outside on the porch. (We had them play some live Coltrane one day we had with us... Coltrane in the jungle!!) Many chairs, benches and a big phat hammock made for some relaxing times on that porch. The rooms were $5 a night for normal rooms and $7 a night for deluxe rooms with private toilets. Santa Elena was great. There is a bank on the corner up the block from the hotel to exchange funds, a great bakery with homemade pastries, several decent restaurants with "tipical" (local) food and american dishes, several souvenir shops, and a couple markets.

The several days we spent in Santa Elena yielded a trip or two a day into the jungle, on foot, with local, tico guides (Greyben and Josephan(? someone help me here)) took us into the jungle/rain forest/cloud forest and exhibited their considerable knowledge of the animals, birds and plants that the jungle is comprised of. We saw sloths, monkeys, rare and beautiful birds, tarantulas, snakes, various rodents, and all sorts of plants and insects. Easily the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life.

Tuesday evening, Dave and I ended up in a small, hole-in-the-wall, local bar named "Bar Amigo". The locals took a few minutes to warm up to us, but we charmed them, bought a few rounds and got to talking to them. It was a good way to jump-start our Spanish and meet some genuinely friendly locals.

On Wednesday, Robin and Gregg took off for Quepos to see Keller Williams that night. Dave and I couldn't bring ourselves to leave just yet and stayed another night. We ended up doing the "zip-line" tour of the canopy at a place called Sky Trek. It was a blast. The outfit you with a repelling harness, a hard hat and a pulley. Then you get up really high and zip down cables while hanging on to the pulley. It's really fast and gets the blood pumping. All the while you get to see some incredible scenery from viewpoints one would normally never dream of. Dave and I had brought along a set of Motorola 2-way radios and noticed that the crew at the zip-line tour were using similar ones. We got their frequency and had fun talking to them about the trip as we took it. It surprised us both when we heard a "Dave... Dave..." on the radios from the tour guide back at the office. ;)

We finally managed to follow Gregg and Robin down to Quepos the following day, Thursday. We arranged to rent a van for the trip down with some other locals we convinced to go check out String Cheese. It was a great trip down. Lots of great scenery through several different ecosystems.

We arrived in Quepos after several hours of dirt roads and eventually a blacktop stretch. Our hotel was up the road about 7km from the town in a long strip of big luxury hotels. It was much more tourist oriented than any other previous spot. The prices near the hotels for food, lodging and drinks were more along the line with what one would expect in America. However, if you ventured back into Quepos, you could much better food for much less money.

We met up with my other friend Dave, Robin and Gregg at our room in El Byblos after a quick cab ride up the mountain through narrow, winding roads. The hotel was pretty intriguing. We had a private bungalo that overlooked a bit of natural courtyardish area between our place, the other bungalos and the offices/pool. In the wee hours of the morning, about 30 monkeys would come swinging through that area on their way to breakfast. It was totally crazy!

Dave had been down there a while already and was happy to see us. He had rented a dirt-bike to get around on and it seemed like an awesome idea, so I went to town with him and rented a quadrunner. Another cool cat from Cincy, John, had another quadrunner and we all jetted around all over the place on them. It was very fun. It wasn't anything unordinary for us to scoot around on the major roads with them. Traffic flowed as normal. Dirtbikes and less expensive modes of transportation were just expected on the roads everywhere. We ended up spending some very late nights/early mornings riding down to forgotten beaches and other cool places we normally would not have had the opportunity to see. After the 2nd show, on the way back to the hotel, the dirtbike that Davey and Dave were riding got a flat back tire and the fun with the off-road vehicles began. I had checked my fuel before leaving, and it looked full enough, but as I pulled into the hotel, it was sputtering and I knew I was damn near out of gas. The next morning John and I used a little goold-old-boy ingenuity to transfer some fuel from another vehicle via a bottle and a multi-tool... enough to get me back to town. Dave eventually got a pump for his back tire and got back to town. And then there is the story of the other bike that Davey wrecked in the woods, 40km out, and had to push back (fortunately assisted by a friendly tico about 20km in!). Whew!

Thursday night, Dave, Dave, John and I strapped the taping gear and packs to the quadrunners and blasted out to the Cheese show in Damas (12km on the opposite side of Quepos). Jerry Joseph opened and, in my opinion, was slightly lame. Cheese finally took the stage and blew us all away. What a time! There were tiki torches outlining the lawn area, palm trees on all sides and such beautiful skys that damn near made you cry with their unspoiled clarity. I've never seen so many stars. I caught myself looking up at them many times during the show. There are reviews of the shows everywhere, so I'll let those speak for themselves. Highlights for me, besides the normal great tunes, were "I wanna be like you" from the Junglebook and "Jungle Boogie". Both appropriate and very fun songs for being immersed in Cheese in the middle of the jungle. The ticos were in force and seemed to enjoy the music and revelry for the most part. The children really seemed to love the whole scene. They could probably pick up on the great vibes emanating from the Cheese family.

After the show we broke down the recording gear slowly and made our way to the bikes. We took a leisurely ride back to the hotels under such an expansive sky, filled with so many stars that it took my breath away. A mountain range was on our left hand side on the way back and a big old, bright, fat moon was hovering just over the mountains. It was almost surreal.

Arriving back at the hotel, we proceeded to enjoy ourselves until the wee hours of the morning and then turned around and repeated for the next night's show. The following morning, we all went our ways... mostly by bus back to San Jose to hop on planes to our respective destinations. The fun and family carousing of Cheese fans had ended... but the good times continued on in our memories and hearts... not soon to be forgotten.

I think Daev summed things up nicely with this thought: "Everywhere you went you saw people you knew and were greeted with hugs. Everywhere you went you met new people and were greeted with hugs. There was magic all around us and nobody could deny it." - Daev Brown

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