Where the streets have no lane

Cairo. It's like an alien city. We've been here relaxing and taking it easy for the last 3 days. The only touristy things we've done are see the night show at the Giza pyramids(tacky, but worth it) and get ripped off by local cabbies (who are crazy). The night show is worth seeing if you go to the Pizza Hut across the street and order some food, let the waiter know you'll give him a good tip and he'll dim all the lights, turn down the music and open the windows, which allows you to pretty much experience the same things as the guys that paid the 65 Egyptian pounds each and sat within the pyramid compound.

The pyramids are unreal and it's difficult to ascertain their true size at night. The whole view was surreal with all the donkeys on the street side by side with the cab cars and then these majestic pyramids mixed in with the smell o putrid and the tacky light show. We can't wait to see them in the day!

Food. Is good and cheappp with the best falafels I have ever had! And...they we're only $0.25 CDN each. YUM!

So the roads..wow..no lanes..everyone is weaving, pedestrians are forced to walk on roads due to the state of the sidewalks, even on highways. We got in at 11pm Cairo time and we were in traffic jams all the way. Rush Hour in Toronto is orderly and speedy comparatively.

We begin our Touristy Tour tomorrow and get a daytime view of Giza and the Sakkara Pyramids, then a night train to Aswan and then a 3day Nile cruise to Luxor and finally a one day flight to Abu Simbel and then another overnight train back to Cairo.

One more thing about Cairo. Pollution, it's dense, the air always smells like some mix of rotten and gasoline. Blow your nose and the resulting fluid is black. I feel like I've been smoking since I was 5 here. It is an alien world, you can't see those too often, really looking forward to Abu Simbel and the Valley of the Kings.

Peace.

Some more wedding pics

OK with 20 minutes to go till we have to leave for the airport, here's a link to more wedding pics from Vani, Jill, Julie, Damian and Adam.

Click Me!

(You can view the pics without signing into Kodak. Click the link below the Continue button labelled "View Photos without signing in")

They're in no particular order ! If anyone else has Costa Rica pics they would like to share, please post a link in the comments section. Thanks!!

Pepe all over the world

Hello Everybody,

Ok, we are in the final stages of prep to leave. Our flight leaves at 9pm tonight to Cairo via Heathrow. It hasn't hit us yet. The hustle and bussle of the last 3 days really hasn't let it sink in...It'll probably happen on the plane.

So packing...I really don't think we overpacked..but that damn climb up Kilimanjaro made us carry an extra carry on each. We will have to ship that stuff back after the climb.

Above is Pepe, a lovely goat that we all came across hanging out in the pool in Manuel Antonio. Pepe is coming with us, so look for him as we travel. He's much more photogenic and enjoys the limelight.

Anyway, Cheers and see you all soon

Driving in Costa Rica

Costa Rica Bridge
Originally uploaded by _s dot.

Let me start off by saying I love driving. I love it all the time: Rush Hour, DVP, Country Roads, 401 during construction (which has been all my life), and also driving in Costa Rica...but man, that may have been the most stressful driving of my life. Let me rewind a bit.

So Week 2 after all the family had left, some to head back home some to other parts of Costa Rica, Mel and I decided that we wanted the freedom to decide what we wanted to do on the fly, hence, we rented a car. Mel and I were pretty excited about drving, only to discover that Mel had left her license at home...I was secretly happy about this turn of events since I LOVE DRIVING (I secretly regreted secretly being happy about the license thing later on)..so anyway off we went! The plan was to drive to Volcan Poas on the outskirts of San Jose, stay the night, and then head to the Caribbean Coast.

Travel Fact:
Manuel Antonio to San Jose distance = 275km, Time to Travel 4hours in good weather on a Major Costa Rican Highway.

Anyway long story short we didn't see Poas that day or the morning after due to cloud cover (we did get to see the day we left though, it was beautiful, I think Mel might post that soon)..but due to some luck, the Park Ranger let us know Tropical Depression Ghandi was forming on the Caribbean Coast and wiping away all the roads..FUN! So we changed our plans to find the sun..we decided to drive to the Nicoya Coast to a wonderful little beach town that Lonely Planet couldn't stop raving about called Playa Del Coco.

Travel Fact:
Distance to Playa Del Coco from San Jose 305 km, Driving Time = 6.5 hours on the worst roads I have ever seen.

No pothole in Toronto can compare to any of the ones we saw on this trek. For your viewing pleasure we shot this video of a typical stretch of road, note, this is the Main Pan American Highway, the largest highway in Costa Rica.

Anyway, to spare you the details we now hate Lonely Planet too, Playa Coco was Kaka. Mel would want me to remind everyone that I was a wreck after this drive, cranky tired and moody..I blame the drive :) anyway, we soon realised that the sedan we had was nice but we'd need an SUV. We switched cars in Liberia(30km away) to take what the locals call the Monkey trail, the fastest way to get from Liberia to Playa Tamarindo a place we knew and liked :)

Here's a little taste of the Monkey Trail

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4

Yah..nuts

Anyway, here's some take aways

1)Get a Fricken SUV from the get go
2)Get a Standard Transmission, cause we needed it, not sure we could have pulled it off with an Automatic
3)If you want a very chill vacation, let someone else drive you
4)if you love driving, definatley do it...just break up your drives
5)Keep aware of the exchange rate: 1 Costa Rican km = 5 Canadian km
6)The fastest you are ever going to drive is 90km/h for maybe 1-2 minutes at a time
7)There is a cop around the next bend, we must have seen over 20 and pulled over 6 times. 5 for no apparent reason (I'm fairly certain it was to check Mel out) and once when we were speeding (HA!), but the cop was nice, after admiring the Hena / Mendhi on Mel's arm and coming to the conclusion that there was no way we could communicate with each other, he said something about being Canadian, had a laugh and let us go on our way..wonder what he would have done if we had American Passports?

OK back to packing. We leave tomorrow night! Cheers

More Wedding Pics

Ola everyone,

We are back, after a ridiculous flight with American Airlines. We now officially hate American (that story to follow). Anyway, I'm down with a cold and taking all home / Pharmaceutical remedies to make it go away...

Anyway Vani has some teaser photos up on her site. Check them out Here and Here.

Thanks Vani! If you're looking for a great wedding photographer check out her site!

Finally some pics

Here are some pics finally of:
- our peeps piled into the airport van,
- the crazy lizard in the pool at Casa Romano,
- a precarious bridge on the ride out of Manuel Antonio,
- crocodiles chilling out underneath another bridge,
- cows on the road to Volcano Poas

Hiding from Tropical Storm-to-be Ghandi errr Gamma

Sorry no pics this time cause this connection is way tooooo slow. We are stuck in Playa del Coco hiding from the rains brought on by the maybe tropical storm Gamma.

OK let me start over. After piling everyone into the van, we said a sad good-bye to all our family and friends on Saturday morning. It was a very memorable and fun week, and we hope that everyone had a great time. The rest of the day was very lazy and enjoyable. Two things worth mentioning: the huge flying iguana (a.k.a holy shit that's a crocodile in our pool!), and the poor monkey that Altaz spotted falling from atop the hydro wires. We only hope that the staff from a nearby place found the injured monkey in the bush (after it dragged itself from the road, out of harms way), and were able to take it to the vet in Allejuala.

The next day Sham and I rented a car and dropped Altaz off at Jaco beach. Pretty big place, lots of restaurants, bars and other nightlife. And most importantly, big surf. (Hope you're having fun now Altaz!) Then we were off, headed to Allejuala, and to Volcano Poas. Unfortunately, after staying a night at the bottom of the volcano, and getting up rather early (5*%!!:30am!) to get to the volcano before the clouds took over, the tropical depression had already started to affect the weather and we couldn't see a thing. It was a nice drive up however.. very windy crazy turns, overlooking luscious coffee plantations, and the occasional dog wandering into the road at the last possible moment.

So it was right at the entrance to Volcano Poas where we found out that the Caribbean coast was being drenched in rain and that there was a tropical storm developing. So we decided to seek refuge on the northern Pacific coast. As was recommended to us, this is the best place to be in such weather. So off we went, and after 6 hours of Sham dodging constant huge potholes (you'll see later what I mean), we are here at Lonely Planet's recommended Playa de Coca. I must say now, I STRONGLY dislike the Lonely Planet person who wrote up the piece about this place. It's really not what we expected. And so we will be off again tomorrow, probably headed to Tamarindo, maybe to Samara. Going to have a few drinks now. At least the bar life here is good.

We're Hitched

What a wonderful day :) But......

1)Semi-planned blackout for 6 hours during prime get ready time
2)No water during prime get ready time due to above
3)Makeup lady was late
4)Hair appointments delayed
5)Initial Beach Location road was suddenly blocked day before
6)Rained just before we started, ended up using a little restaurant by beach location 2
6)Huge traffic jam due to flipped over bus on a small hill. Bus was stuck and unable to get to Reception. We had to walk across accident to second waiting bus past the accident

But regardless, we had a great time and it all added to the adventure. All our guests were great too, and rolled with each of these hurdles. Anyway, the reception went great, the owners are a bunch of Torontonions that miss home and will be heading back in a year or 2. I'll post their link soon.

Most people are leaving tomorrow for home. We have another week in CR and are going to take 1 more day in Manuel Antonio to rest and plan the next week. We'll try to stay in touch!

Pool Partay

25 drunk party guests, 7 sober ones, 10 bottles of alcohol, 1 pissed off Sloth (shown in picture, hanging out right by the pool), 1 broken blender and loads of fun. Best story (I can tell) of the night was when an unsuspecting guest was walking by the pool with a fresh set of towels and was broadsided into the pool by Jenn..cause you know, that's what Jenn does! Also, gimmick for the night was to give everyone a glass with a nickname on it. Examples :
Ass
Cap'n Ass Wipe
Burn Victim
Smelly
Dominatrix
Blondie
Rum Mum
Lame Dame
etc.. We still refer to each by these names today..

Tomorrow is the big day, we're not nervous, but we just found out that they are shutting the power down in the entire city from 6am - 2pm..yah in the middle of a weekday..it'll be an interesting day!

Attack of the Killer Monkeys

So another Monkey story today. My Mom and Saro skipped todays boat cruise and decided to eat breakfast outdoors on the balcony. Well, turned out Monkey's like toast so out of nowhere a tree full of Monkey's was poised to attack the 2 fearfull breakfasters..so they ran into the house with the food. The picture above was taken later in the afternoon when the roving band of Monkey's were a few trees out.

Second pic is of the dolphins that swam by during the boat cruise. I'll post soon regarding Manuel Antonio in general from a tourist perspective, in case any of you are thinink about vacationing here. Obviosuly we're big fans! Ok, my 30mins on the computer are up!

l8s

MONKEYS!

Ola Ya'll,

Qucik one today, here's a shot of the spider monkeys we saw during the tour of the National Park with Everyone. Every one rolled in late last night (that story to follow) ;)

Anyway, these Monkies stole a bagel right out of Saro's hand, which for the price of a bagel gave us a great show of Monkey Mayhem...ok off we go..it's starting to rain :(

Sunshine at last!!!

Hola senioras y senioritas...

So we have a bit of catching up to do. As per Sham's previous note, we arrived safe and sound 3 (?!!) days ago. The flight from Miami was delayed 3 hours and smelled of sewage when we stepped on the plane, but we survived, and got to our hotel after 15 hours total of travel.

It was cloudy and a bit rainy our first day here, but yesterday and today are GORGEOUS so we hope the weather holds. But if not.. well we’ll just have to do more drinking (see pic 3)! Pic 1 is of a cool restaurant right on the beach. Feels like you’re in the middle of the rainforest, depending on where you’re sitting.

Yesterday we sat our butts down on Playa Espillada and sunbathed for a few hours and then went kayaking. Huge bloody waves, but we made it a few kms out and around some “little” land mass (see pic #2). It was cool riding a big wave in and we almost made it right to the end but the kayak turned over and dumped us both out.

Today we moved from Hotel Verde Mar to Casa Romano. See pic #2 for the view out of our bedroom window. We’re pretty proud of ourselves for booking it and we’re sure the family and friends staying there will like it.

OK that’s it for now. We’re off to do a bit of grocery shopping and some surfing before everyone else gets in!

Adios amigos.

We're here!

In cloudy Costa Rica!

 

No pictures yet as I left my USB cable at the Hotel (3kms down hill on a windy road).  We're up by Casa Romano cause we wanted to check it out.  For those of you coming up it's about 25mins Up Hill on windy road, Cabs are probably best for those of you at Hotel Verde Mar.  After the long travel day yesterday we're still a bit pooped so we're heading back down the hill and taking nap (Mel claims she's not taking a nap).  We did get time to hang out at the beach today, although not sunny, it wasn't raining during the day either, so we'll consider that a good sign.  Ok this one was short and sweet.  Hopefully we'll upload pictures soon.

We Outs

Another Phew!!! We're packed!! The trick is to use those large heavy duty ZipLock Freezer bags. I roll all my clothes (usually 4 t-shirts or 3 thin pants) into the ZipLock bag, Zip it up most of the way and then let all the air out...It's actually really therapeutic. Anyway, the black suitcase is the one that comes back with somebody since it is wedding related only.

So..our flight is at 9:45 in the morning and we won't get to CR until later in the afternoon, we took the cheapy stop over in Miami flight, so hopefully read some books and settle into Tiko time. We're in Costa Rica for 2.5 weeks and then return to the T-dot for 3 days to repack!

For those of you concerned, we still left half the electronics...It's going to be interesting when we repack for the Big Trip in a few weeks...Although, I'd sacrifice clothes for electronics any day :D

For those of you that are coming up, have a safe and enjoyable trip and we'll see you in Manuel Antonio! For those of you staying in the temperate climate of the North and have this as their homepage (Nat!):P, Mel and I will try to stop into a cafe (Don't worry Cancer Care Ontario folks, I will not be testing out the iPort security) sometime before the wedding, and hopefully a few times after. TTY guys soon!