It seems like we are going through a strange period where weird things are happening.
First on the list is out rental car(s), we are renting from a local company and we got a good monthly rate. This is the third time we have used this company and each time we have had to call them and remind them that they are supposed to bring us a car on that day. So after the normal wake up call they bring us a Hyundai Elantra. It seems to be a pretty good car so we do the paper work and yeah we have wheels again! So we soon discover an issue, the rear passenger side door won't open from the inside...should be no problem, it is just the child lock that was probably on! NOT... we deal with it for a couple more days then it won't open from the outside either, so after we have had enough of this nonsense we take the car to the rental place and they have a look see and say they will come and get the car later in the day, and it should only take an hour to fix. They return about three hours later with a different Elantra that has all of the doors working. So the next day we leave for the mountains with the new rental, everything goes fine, we navigate some dreadful roads and scrape the bottom of the car a few times but it seems to do the job. Well the day comes to take our friend Gloria to the airport and I noticed that the right front tire looks a little low on air, not a problem since we were going to stop at the gas station on the way and fill up and we would just have them check all of the tires. All goes well until we are about 1/4 of a mile from the house when the car seems to be handling oddly (of course on Costa Rican dirt roads your car will always handle roughly), so we stop and sure enough the right front tire is flat. We limp home and I pull out the spare and it is as bald as an eagle... well I change the tire (not a lot of options there) and take the car into the rental office and tell them I want two new tires (oh did I mention that the rims were also bent on the flat and the spare)! I also told them that the car made a clunk sound in the rear end and it was rather worrisome...I hinted that they could always upgrade my vehicle but they just laughed. They took my bad tire and told me that they would bring a new one later that afternoon...of course that did not happen. So I called and they said that they were getting a new tire from Liberia but there was a delay and they wouldn't have it until the next day. So I call at 1pm the next day they tell me that they are bringing me a new vehicle. So now we have a Toyota Yaris ... so far so good. Now every time you get a rental car in Costa Rica you have to go over all of the chips, dents, and scratches that are currently on the vehicle. The agent works from an exterior schematic that resembles a neighborhood scavenger hunt map with numerous tic marks and x's...but don't worry about the wheel covers because they look like someone has used them as sleds on a concrete driveway!
So, now number two.... I printed a page on my cannon printer the other day and nothing printed after the paper came out. But wait what was that wiggling thing on the paper that looked like a worm. Well, upon closer inspection we surmised that it was the tail of a baby gecko! Well, if we had the tail then that mean that the rest of the gecko is still in the printer somewhere. I reset the printer error and tried reprinting the page that I wanted ..... other than a little smudge on the leading edge everything seemed to work ok. I used the page for a few minutes and then happened to turn the paper over to write on the back side and there was the baby gecko ... sorry folks, the printer rollers were just too much for the little guy so he ended up in the trash but my printer is working fine now!! (I am sure that most of you do not have such problems with your printers at home, do you?!?!)
Number three deals with the bug of the week. The last couple of days we have been inundated with some creepy crawly things that are either caterpillars or millipedes. They crawl along the floor and they all seemed to know where they were going, just like they have been here before! Well a little bug spray on the patio seems to have abated the bug crusades for now. I asked a local Gringo if he knew what kind of bugs they were and his response was, "Oh, you must be talking about the bug of the week?!?".
The day after our sunset sailing cruise with Gloria we signed up to go and see the sea turtles coming up on the beach. Now there is one problem with this, you have to go at night. For us it was not too bad because we had a near full moon on a clear evening. And of course pictures are difficult because you cannot use flash, and you cannot turn on the screen on the back of your camera, and as a result you can't take any good pictures. The only thing that the guides use are red lights which are not supposed to bother the turtles. There were three turtles that had come up on the beach that night and all three had aborted missions. The third one we did get to watch her dig her hole for the eggs but when she ran into some tree roots, she decided that she did not have the right spot and she too aborted her mission in favor of another evening. The turtles that we were watching in the dark were the Green Sea Turtles.
This is such an assume picture of a sea turtle crawling back to the water in the dark!! Or is it the face on Mars in the Sedona area?
Fun Factoid Dos: Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards!
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