Weekend in review

My buddies filmed a backcountry snowmobile segment for Musicplus this past weekend, I can't wait to see those yahoos rip it up on the telly. On a scary note, big Al crashed really hard on Sat. nite and totaled his sled but literally escaped death by hurtling between two massive trees head first. A few feet or inches over and he'd be dead or seriously borked. I actually got a shitload of stuff done this weekend, replaced my well pump and dishwasher, got hosed with Chuck and even got to do some snowboarding on Sunday. We'll be going every weekend and one weeknite, I'm pretty stoked about that.

And finally congratulations to the Iraqi people who turned out in large numbers to essentially vote the Americans out of Iraq. I hope that they can keep the peace themselves and not end up in a civil war. Unfortunately, I don't see how a civil war is going to be avoided because the Americans will be kicked out or will leave soon and nobody else will want to step up to keep the peace even if the Iraqi populace would have it (which they won't). Such is life.

The Streets

Yo, listen to this:

fit and you know it
could well be in

(edited for those with old media players and/or goat dna)

Back to the coast

I was pissed off enough today to cash in some airmiles for a couple of tickets to Costa Rica. Woo hooo, back to the beach. Did that ever make my day or what. So if you want to find me in late May, forget about it - I'll be screaming at the monkeys.



I saw a local down there with this saying written on his surfboard that seemed to sum it up: "To some it's salt water, to us it's holy water"

Made my day

I can't believe that Bud held this ad back because of FCC intimidation:




BTW: Press play or you will be watching a very long video of the inside of a closet.

Bad week

Man am I ever having a bad week, my car was mysteriously dented while in my girlfriends possession, everybody is pissed at me, the weather sucks, I'm having 'labor relations' problems, my country place water pump broke ($600), I have $12,000 in outstanding bills for stuff that wasn't even fun, I am expecting a $5K tax bill, I am coming down with the flu and finally, I have to pay a staggering six figure fee to buyout my business associates, most of it in the next 45 days that I don't actually know where its coming from. I think I'm going to start drinking heavily. Does anybody know what's open at 8AM? Fuck it, I'm going surfing.

VOIP is hot

As I keep saying VOIP is coming on in a big way:

- Videotron is now offering residential phone lines her in Montreal over VOIP

- Rumour is that Google is getting in the game to keep everybody honest

- And of course MS Messenger will have built in VOIP coming soon to a PC near you.

Read this about VOIP wifi:

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1079129190.html

7 Billion dollar man

Do you know who the rich guy is who has donated 7.5 Billion dollars to charities, mostly african based? Hint, it isn't Trump or Forbes or Ellison. That's right, it's everybody's favorite villain Billy Gates.

He's done it again with a $750 million dollar donation to an international childrens immunization program run by a a combination of the UN and NGOs, mostly in Africa.

What a prick, looting the first world like that.

Annoy your neighbors award

This award goes to the midi bagpipes, you gotta love technology!

Must haves

Here's my cool gadgets list right now:



Sandisk SD memory with a pop out USB interface - how cool is that? Half a gig and up!



Keyspan remote - now that your computer is connected to your stereo, skip songs, change the webradio channel remotely with this USB gadget.



If you don't want to get stuck with Apple only AAC/iTunes, you can get a 1G Sandisk flash MP3 player with a display instead of an iPod shuffle for a couple of bucks less.



Building or buying a new house? Try wiring up your house with CAT 5 cable for your multizone audio/video to use with an in wall Sony CDP-NW10 media controller. Mucho coolio.



How about 802.11g wireless MPEG4 cameras to monitor your estate in D1 video resolution for a few hundred bucks?



And of course the omnifi USB hard drive car (and boat!) stereo with wifi sync to your PC media library.

Very handy

I know quite a few people who could use some of these.

Technology rants

VOIP: I am pretty excited about Voice Over IP (VOIP) and here's why:

• it is free from VOIP to VOIP SIP phone so pretty much anybody in the world with an internet connection can have free long distance calls to others with VOIP phones.
• you can plug in a VOIP adapter that makes a regular phone use the Internet instead of cables
• you can get long distance rates like 1/10th of what the semi-monopoly phone companies charge
• you can get a phone number with an area code almost anywhere in north america and a few places in europe
• VOIP phones are under a hundred bucks
• Software based VOIP PBXs for business are coming soon really cheap with voice mail, location tracking, call logging etc
• WiFi wireless VOIP phones are coming fast for cheap international urban com

Triple play networks: Mark my words, every phone, cable, sattelite and internet company is desperately trying to come up with a video, voice and internet triple play package to sell you using a single transport like DSL or WiMax wireless. Third world countries without a good wireline infrastructure like India will probably leapfrog all of us first world peeps with triple play WiMax. I WOULD BET THE FARM ON THIS PREDICTION.

WIFI Security: Scares the shit out of me, crazy insecure and it doesn't take a genius to break into an off the shelf secure wifi hotspot. Also, wifi evil twin hotspots are just too easy for hackers. They find a hotspot like Starbucks and jam the original and put in an evil twin while caching all of the client web traffic - BAD BAD NEWS MAN - don't ever do any banking or confidential stuff on a Wifi connection.

Apple: Why is it that none of the other hardware guys can make gadgets as well as Steve? Maybe he's a psycho and just rides his serfs harder. Maybe Steve had everybody at FrogDesign killed. Anyways, I still don't have a portable MP3 player. I'm holding out for a waterproof one with a gig of flash.

Media players: Dlink has a cool WiFi one (DSM 520) coming out in summer that plays windows media high def videos as well as DivX, MPG, MP3s etc. I might actually finally go wifi when I get one of those gadgets. I already have one of these wireless synch'ing media players for my car and boat (this gadget disappeared from Futureshop for some reason).

This explains everything

I finally figured out why I am still alive.

New year, new everything

Jumbo squid are washing up in California and the Maritimes, armageddon is impending.

Nasty end to a fun year: Whoah, what a rude end to last year. It was just like a cheezy Kevin Bacon movie with lots of action and then a cheque got signed and it all went away. The mess is gone now and after all, it's only money :)

Anyways, this year is starting off really fantastic so far. Business is good and I am still sunburnt and chilled out. My productivity is through the roof and I don't know what word is the opposite of procrastination but that's where my head is at. I'm in an urgent rush to finish as much as I can as quick as I can so I can go surfing again.

Talk about a productivity boost. I guess that's the carrot part and the other messy thing was the stick.

Highly recommended reading: I read a lot of books about mental attitude and stuff like that. Some of them are cheeze (Robbins) some of them are sleepers (Chopra). The best book out of the whole lot so far has been a book called "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman. This is probably the first book anybody should read before setting out to motivate themselves to do great things. This guy is actually a behavioural scientist and the book isn't a motivational book - it's about learned helplessness and behavioral modification therapy. This book is especially relevant if you have kids or employees and you need to leverage their self esteem into success. This isn't a one time fat guy who drives a helicopter telling you about how great you can be if you visualize stuff in black and white - it's a review of animal and human behavioral experiments over the past few decades by some of the worlds leading behavioural scientists..

The bottom line is that for kids, success in a small area of their lives like hockey gives them the attitude to handle major challenges. For adults, success and control in small areas and a sense of control give you confidence to conquer much larger unrelated challenges. Small successes breed a sense of control which leverages your overall ability to control large successes.

Fun in the snow: On a different note, I am starting to snowboard again this year so drop me a line if you want to come up for a weekend and ride. We will be doing a bunch of skidoo excursions in Feb if anybody wants in as well - rentals are cheap around my place.

Oh yeah - this is my favorite news piece of the week.

One more thing - If you didn't cough up even a little bit of money to those who need it DO IT NOW. You would have to be the most selfish asshat to enjoy a house and food and deny somebody else the same luxury when you could have done something.

If you haven't or don't do something to help local or international charities this year, you should be ashamed of yourself - I don't care how broke you are.

A firsthand account from Thailand

Paul Landgraver


At first I thought that this email was a hoax because it was a friend of a friend kind of story, much like all of the hoaxes that suck in newbies but I did some due diligence on this dude and it turns out that he most likely is a real guy named Paul Landgraver and he really seems to have wrote this. If it is a hoax, it is a pretty good one.

Read it and draw your own conclusions:

---

The latest from Pearl (and his plastic Jesus) over in Thailand:

Sitting around, day after Christmas, just staring at the TV - some movie we've seen before. Mid-morning, post-breakfast stupor controlling Karin and me. The power flickers and we moan. We'll have to get up and do something? Then we hear some yelling outside.

I look out the front door, still puffed up with pride about our new house, just 400 feet back from the beach. People are running up our street yelling. It looks like a fire at the large two story resort that effectively blocks our view of the beach. Smoke and dust coming up and all these people.

Then a small line of really brown water comes rolling towards us. That's weird. But I reckon it must be some strange full moon h igh tide. So we go upstairs so we don't get wet.

I look out the window and try and take some pictures. There is a quiet rumble to it, like those white noise generators that are supposed to help you sleep. The water is getting higher and higher and then it destroys our friends cement bungalow! Then our front door caves in, and then water is coming up the stairs! HOLY SHIT. This was the last point my brain worked for
a long time.

We try and throw a mattress out the window to float on, but the water is rising too fast, and out the window we climb. It's all going so fast. It's faster than conscious thought and by the time we are on our second story roof, the water is coming out the window. We jump.

Karin doesn't jump at the same time or did I jump too early? We're separated. I scream her name, but the crashing roiling water mutes me. I can't hear her. I scream and scream until I get hit by something and pulled under. I can't s wim to the top, I pull myself through trash and
wood to the surface and off I go.

Ahead are trees wrapped in flotsam and as I look a Thai guy is struggling to get free of it, as I pass by at 30 MPH I realize he is impaled on a piece of wood and can't even scream.

My brain shut down when Karin disappeared, and now all I can do is survive. Something triggers and I swim. I swim to avoid the trees which will trap me, possibly kill me. It seems that I am atop the crest of the tsunami, which is less like a wave than a flood.

From on high I can see the water hit buildings, then rise, then watch the buildings collapse into piles of concrete and rebar. I swim to avoid these. Left and right I paddle, looking ahead the whole time trying to figure the hazards. None of this is conscious, this isn't me thinking it out, it's some recessed part of the brain coming out and taking control.

I was busy seeing the weird things, like massive diesel trucks being rolled end over end. Or the car launched through the 2nd storey wall of a former luggage shop. Or the person high up in a standing tree in a lurid orange thong. Or the older foreigner that got stuck in the wood and steel wrapped around a tree, and then his body torn off while his head remained. I couldn't scream.

I was pulled under, my pants caught on something, I decided that this was neither the place nor time for me to die, and ripped my pants off. I surfaced into a hunk of wood which cut my forehead.

A 5 gallon water bottle sped by, and I wrapped myself around it like a horny German Shepard on a Chihuahua. I was passing people with bleeding faces and caked in refuse. Some people reached out to me, and I back, but the water was too fast and erratic. Some people screamed for help and I told them to swim. Some people just stared with empty eyes, watching what happened, but seeing nothing. Some were just floating bodies.

At some point, I passed a guy, cut on his cheek, holding onto big piece of foam. We just made eye contact and shrugged apathetically at each other. Then I turned ahead to watch fate. When I looked back he was gone.

Trees were pulled down, and their flotsam added to the flow. I was hit by a refrigerator and pushed towards a building that was collapsing. I swam and swam and swam and swam and still was pushed right towards a huge clump of jagged sticks and metal. I was pulled under, kicked towards the mass, cut my feet and kicked again. I popped up on the other side, spun around and pulled under again.

Down there, I knew it was not the time, and I pulled my way up through the floating rubbish of my former town. I pulled and pulled and my lungs ached for air. I flashed on Star Wars, the trash compactor scene, and had some big grin in the back of head as I popped up. Sucking shitty water and air deep in my lungs.

*This went on for weeks. Time simply left the area alone. I grabbed the edge of a mattress and floated. Breathing, just breathing. Awareness brought back by the sound and look of a water fall. Trying to push up onto the mattress more and more, and it took my weight less and less. Tumbling over the edge, sucked under again, and out I shot, swirled into a coconut grove, where the water seemed to have stopped. There was even a dyke like wall around the grove.

The water spun and churned, but went no where, and got no higher. It wasn't swimming, or climbing, but something in between. I made my way to the land. Every step had to be careful with broken glass everywhere, and sheet metal poking out. It was a long slow struggle.

The low rumble had stopped, and now is the occasional creak of wood on wood and metal scraping. Moans came across the new brown lake. A small boy was in a tree crying, asking for his parents in Norwegian.

I climb ed up onto the dyke and looked around. I screamed out for Karin, only getting responses in Thai. I stood there, panting, trying to find a thought, anything. As I came back to earth I needed to pee. The first thing I did after surviving the tsunami was piss! Along limps an older Thai guy, finds me, naked atop a dyke amid the destruction, covered in mud and filth -
pissing. He didn't even smile...nor did I.

I spent the next minutes running from high point to high point screaming out for Karin. If I made it, she could too. There was no response from her. I found plenty of other people, and helped who I could, but always looking across this vast area of new lakes for her head.

Through the trees was a PT boat, a large steel police cruiser. The boat and I had been brought more than a kilometer (2/3 mile) inland.

I was standing near a tree, hoping for a clue, anything to say she was out there somewhere. A small boy in a tree whimpered, a nd I pulled him down. We went inland. There were houses, still standing, a whole neighborhood atop a rise that was untouched. Just feet away were cars wrapped around trees. I handed them the boy.

I had finished my medic training exactly one month before, so I went to work. Pulling people out of mud, from under houses. One car, upright against the trunk of a tree still had the driver. He was dead. It went on. Before this I had only seen a dead body once or twice. That was remedied very quickly. I pulled people out of the water, only to have them choke and die right there. I would take someone's pulse, scream for help, then find that they had died before we could do anything. It was beyond any nightmare or fear I have ever had.

An older Thai woman came up to me with a pair of shorts and averted eyes. She was ashamed that I was totally naked. I smirked and slipped them on. She smiled and scurried away. Was it the bright white ass or the fear shriveled cock that had embarrassed her?

Roaming the former streets looking for foreigners to send to the higher ground, a place where we could all meet and tend to wounds. After an hour the Thais came screaming out of the mud saying there was another wave coming , and flying into the hills. We were left alone. Those that could walk did, the rest were carried. We made a new base, higher and safer. And the same
thing happened again. And again.

Eventually we ended up in the jungle at a park, where there was water and high ground. It was messy. Eventually there were about 300 foreigners, about 120 of whom were injured pretty severely with broken limbs and ribs, near-drownings, everyone had gashes of some kind, severed fingers or toes and shock everywhere.

There was no medicine, no tools, no scissors, no bandages. Nothing but well water (of questionable cleanliness) and some sticks and clothes. I tried to find anyone medic ally trained. It was only the diving instructors who all had basic first aid. So we cleaned with the water, we broke sticks and set bones and talked people into a relatively calm place. If someone was
severely cut, we used their own clothing to mend the wounds. It was a horror story. The floor was covered in blood, people were moaning, or vomiting or asking us to help them. And more arrived with every new wave of cars and trucks fleeing the "next wave".

After hours of this, we got news of helicopters evacuating the injured. So everyone rushed towards the trucks. I had to scream and push and pull people out of the way. The ones who needed the evac the most were the ones who couldn't get to the trucks. After twenty minutes of sorting through the priorities, and feeling like we had a handle on it, someone brought me to a
girl who was bleeding severely out of her thigh and was in shock. No one had brought her to our little clinic area, they had left her in the back of truck.

Finally, after a few helicopters had pulled out the worst, I headed back down.

Through rubber tree plantations, and coconut groves we drove. It seemed quiet and relaxed. At the last corner it was devastation. The road was clear and dry up to a certain point and then it was a horizon of rubble. I shuddered.

Someone on a scooter came up and asked for a doctor. Everyone looked at me! I jumped on and they took me up roads I never knew existed, and over bridges that were barely standing until I was brought to five foreigners in the middle of nowhere. One of them was a good friend and diving instructor. It was the first person I had seen that I knew. It was a total joy. He was
banged up pretty bad, but he got out and sent off to the hospital. Then the Thais came roaring up the hill, saying there was another wave. We had to carry four more people with broken bones (including a broken hip) up a hill.

There was no wave. There never was.

I stumbled back down, wandering through the town looking for people to help. I found only bodies. I found one with a tattoo like Karin's on a scooter under some rubble. I pulled her out, and it was a Thai woman. Still griping her scooter, mouth agape.

Eventually I made my way back to the dive shop I worked at. We had always whinged about how it was too far off the main road, but it survived. It was a center for the survivors. I walked up to find friends alive and things clean and organized.

I had been able to keep on, doing what I could to help people, to close out my mind to what was around me and look only at what I was doing, to not see the dead people, to not worry about where Karin was. I had held together so well.

When I found out Karin was alive it all fell apart. I could smell the destruction, the horror I had just walked through, just lived through, that she had lived through. My body shouted out all the bruises and cuts I had ignored. It all struck me and threw me to the ground. It was too much - I
could no longer accept this.

We hugged and ate and slept. My feet were cut up, I had small cuts all over my body, and a sinus infection from all the bad water.

Karin had gotten hold of a coconut tree, wrapped herself around it and never let go. She had a few bruises and small cuts and a black eye. I was ecstatic to see her like that. First time I've been happy to see a woman with a black eye.

Most of the rest of our friends had come through. They had set up first aid stations and help stations, organized food and created a center for people to meet. The diving community came together and became our support, our medical care, our food - they did everything they could to help and then some.

I can't help but give massive appreciation and even a bit of awe to several people. Whether you know them or not, these are the true heroes. Keith - he was tireless - for days, running around, getting medicine, doing first aid, cooking food, getting clothes, talking to the forlorn, coordinating doing everything he could. His energy was endless and bright.

Jim and Andrea opened the doors of their shop, and clothed and housed everyone they could. Joakim ran about grabbing people, helping wherever he could, evacuating people to the next town, the whole while wondering about the safety of his own family. And the two DMT's that helped me out - two guys who had just taken a first aid class and then had to deal with massive
trauma, death and chaos. And all the others - this was not the work of just one or two people.

Of course the diving community at large shined like a beacon over the madness. When there was no one else, they all stepped forward. I can't help but swell with pride to count myself among them.

The next day I went back to where my h ouse had been and surveyed the damage.
One bungalow nearby had been lifted up and dropped on top of another. The whole beach was visible, meaning all of the two or three story hotels that had lined it were gone. There was a jet ski just near our house.

The bottom floor of our house was gone, the upper floor was missing a couple of walls. The only thing left, was a plastic Jesus doll I had bought as a joke. So I was left with nothing in the world except my own plastic Jesus.

The level of destruction is virtually impossible to describe. On our beach we had approx. 2500 hotel rooms. It looked to me, that maybe 50 could still be called hotel rooms. The week between Christmas and New Year's is the busiest of the week. Without warning, without an evacuation plan the survival rates were minimal. The wave at our house was about 7 meters high (20 feet) and in some places it was 10 meters (30 feet) high. It wiped out the third floor of most resorts . The number of dead is astronomical, several thousand on my beach alone. By the second day you could smell it, and in the short walk to my former house, we passed about 10 bodies just strewn about.

Our final glance of the town was a cattle truck stacked full of wrapped up corpses. We wanted to go home.

In Bangkok most people got help pretty quick. The Swedes, Germans and English had charted flights for their citizens to get home. The Thai government gave free hotel rooms to survivors and there were lists of places to get food.

EXCEPT the Americans. I went in to find out what help I could get - I was able to get a replacement passport, a toothbrush and a paperback book. They said it was not their policy to arrange flights home. I was cut up, still covered in a pretty good layer of mud, I had no home, no money, no clothing (except some borrowed off Keith) nothing at all, and they could do nothing
to help.

They did offer t o let me borrow money, but they would have to find three people in America who would vouch for me, and that process should take less than a week. In the mean time I was fucked. I was destitute and rejected by the embassy. Karin was with me (she's Swedish) and said that I could still try and emigrate to Sweden. I was VERY tempted.

In these last days, watching politicians go on about helping and giving aide, but they won't even take care of their own citizens? I am very, very angry. All the other nations of the world were taking care of their own citizens! Eventually I got a flight home with JAL - that would be JAPAN airlines - not even an American company, but a JAPANESE company helped me get home.

I am still listed as neither found nor alive. Before I left I had spoken to the embassy twice on the phone, giving my name so I would be listed as alive so my family would not worry. I went to the embassy twice, once to get a passport to replace the one lost in the tsunami, and they never listed me as alive or found. I flew out of the country using said passport and am still not found. I went to the hospital three times, and, as of yesterday I am now listed as injured (having been in the states three days already). My family is now waiting to see how long it will take before they are notified about my status. So am I.

It does raise a good question - if I am missing or dead, do I have to pay taxes?

While spiteful about the embassy, I am grateful to be alive, and that those I care about are still alive. I still look around and am in awe at what just happened. I really feel like someone has slipped me some roofies and I woke up in America.

No real moral to this story...yet.


I would recommend going to www.diveaid.co.uk. These are divers helping divers. Most of our community, while surviving, lost everything. This is a great site with some news of the area and those affected.

My story is just one, there and 100,000's more far worse off - I had somewhere to fly to. Donations should be sent to good charities, ones that truly help.

Doctors Without Borders http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org
(Sanj comment: DWB says they have too much money already, check first before donating)
and the Thailand Red Cross http://www.redcross.or.th/english/home/index.php4 were both there fast and helping out immensely. I can't speak, or even dream of what it must be like in Sri Lanka and Indonesia.


Breathe...

Looks like my grade 5 French teacher. 

Pool lizard 

Art photo 1 

Art photo 2 

Looking charred. 

Mimi and a pelican waiting for a set. 

That would be me. 

The balcony monkey, my personal favorite. 

And another by the tennis court. 

Here's another howler monkey that hung out outside our balcony. 

Monkey Balls & Pura Vida - Costa rica

I just got back yesterday from a week in Costa Rica with Mimi and I have to say that I am not entirely sure why I came back! I was staying near Tamarindo which is about 3.5 hrs away from the capital San Jose. Costa Rica is a pretty small mountainous island with good surf on both the Pacific and Caribbean facing oceans. Prices for food and gas was not too different than North America in urban areas. We were on the Pacific coast.

Here's the rundown:

Weather: 85-90 degrees every day, 80 degree water, sunny every day.

Animals: CR is absolutely dazzling, we stayed right next to an estuary and there were like 20+ different kinds of birds around. Black and Green Iguanas were around all day around the pool, they didn't seem to care too much about people. Little lizards are everywhere at night as are huge grasshoppers. Not too many bugs except a few mosquitoes at night. We each saw what seemed like huge Manta Rays in the water. Lots of Red Snappers churning the water and a few flying fishes were around. TONS of pelicans were hanging around in the air and water, vultures too on the road - they look like really ugly turkeys. We saw howler monkeys a few times during the week, the size of large house cats they sound like lions. They scared the crap out of Mimi.



The thing about these little howler monkeys is that besides howling a lot, the males also have HUGE white balls. You look up and there's these hairy little black beasts screaming at you with huge bald white balls - really quite a site to see!

People: The people in our hotel were mostly fat corn fed white yuppies and suburbanites, not very friendly. We got stuck at an all inclusive hotel which was really nice but mind numbing boring. In Tamarindo, people were super friendly and the locals were really nice. Every home and business is fenced up like a prison and in San Jose, the gas stations have guards with shotguns. I am guessing that crime is crazy high there. I have read that there is a big problem with illegal immigrants from Nicaragua. The biggest industry is computer semiconductor manufacturing and Intel, Microsoft, etc. all have big complexes there. That would explain a Ferrari dealership in a tiny country with horrible roads.

Surf: There are endless places to surf, beach breaks, point breaks etc. Lots of funky stuff though like thieves, crocodiles, polluted rivers etc. We mostly rode a beach left right off the Playa Langosta break, a river mouth break on volcanic rock. The beach break in Tamarindo was a lot easier but at least twice the ENTIRE lineup got cleaned up with a big (7+ ft) close out set on the outside. You can rent a board from almost any place in town for about $15/day. On the way back, we checked out the Boca Barranca break but didn't have time to find the break but did check out the area - very sketchy, you've really got to know where to go and be sorted out or you might find yourself in trouble. I suck, I was in such terrible shape that I didn't get to stay out long enough to really ride as much as I wanted to. Better than nothing though and I did really learn a lot. My summer long wake surfing will only help me when I can catch more and better waves. That's going to be a big breakthrough for me.

FYI: I am now officially in training for a spring trip, call me if you want to join me, maybe CR or Cabo.

Internet: There are tons of Internet café’s there and there is a big fiber trunk running into Tamarindo so bandwidth is plentiful. No Internet in our hotel though and not much sign of Wifi. VOIP is big at the café’s. Internet access is about a buck every 10 minutes. VOIP long distance is about 60 cents a minute. If you bring your own laptop and VOIP phone, you can actually get a 9 cent a minute rate with Viper networks, free from VOIP to VOIP phone.

Food: The all inclusive place we stayed at was ok on the first two days but then drove me crazy with the same boring "americanized" tasteless food. The best place in Tamarindo that we ate at was the "el aracife" near the main roundabout which was cheap and had AWESOME jumbo shrimp, the rice was un-freaking-believable, the second place was the Copacabana on the beach which was really good but a little pricier, much better than the classier place right next door.

All in all, I had an awesome time and I will be going back as soon as I can.

Here's a perfect Costa Rican sunset, this was the first time we saw clouds all week. 

Here's Mimi in a crazy beautiful Costa Rican sunset at the Playa Langosta break on Sunday night. This is also where the leatherback turtles nest this time of year. 

Here's the Langosta river mouth break, it's a bit rocky but was cranking 6' daily at high tide. You've got to be pretty good to be in the main lineup here, we surfed mostly the mushy left shoulder but it was fun. This break was literally thirty seconds away from our hotel. 

The lefts are peeling in here, a couple of 6-7' sets came in during the week but mostly 2-3'. 

Tamarindo Beach Break 

Locals 

Barcelo Blue Whale 

Black Iguana 

Snow Heron