The home of Ahren Osterbrink. My photos and thoughts.
// March 31st, 2005 // 2 Comments » // Costa Rica, San Jose
and i’m off to the airport… casey, if you could have a nice cold six pack of Goose Island Hex Nut waiting for me, i would be eternally grateful….
man i’m tired (it’s 430 here)
// March 29th, 2005 // 3 Comments » // Costa Rica, San Jose
well my trip is all but over… it’s just a matter of dotting the t’s and crossing the eyes… i chose alcohol to help me cross the eye’s last night, now to figure out how to dot the t’s… suggestions?
In any case… I’m sitting in san jose wasting my last couple days… i didnt want to worry about a bus breaking down or anything like that… i have to do a bit of shopping and the likes… I leave the day after tomorrow. My feelings on it are mixed… Of course i would love to stay longer… though i’m a bit worn out. Livnig out of a backpack get’s kind of old… though so does working everyday… I’ve been wearing the same two shirts, same two shorts (no not all at the same time) for a long time… It will be nice to have more choice (though, even in the states i seemed to wear the same thing day after day)… i can’t wait to get back into some pajama’s!
I’ve also intentionally brought myself to a state of mind to want to be returning… Besides the 30 mile death march, i’ve spent the last two and a half weeks on a beach… doing nothing else but waking up at 10 or so and spending the entire day until sunset at the beach… I know it sounds nice but it does get old. Had I spent the time traveling, i would definately not want to leave… Plus, I’ve done/seen pretty much everything i wanted in costa rica, so it’s time to leave for that reason as well… I did save a couple things for the next time i return, though i doubt i’ll be back for a while…
My plans for when i return… short term… Casey, I’ve emailed you my flight info… I arrive around 1030pm or so on the 31st… meet me in the baggage claim if you can… park in short term parking. My mom will have some shoes for you if you don’t mind stopping by to pick them up… Also, i am going to try to twist her arm to send along some cheese… Thanks much for picking me up! We’re staying at Sam’s house that night and grilling some brats i assume? then heading back to wazooooo the next day…
longer term:
When i planned this trip the main goal was to figure out life. Though i would say that hasn’t exactly happened, A path has appeared to me… I will be returning to Eugne until i run out of money (great path eh?) Serious though, I am going to put another effort (and this time i feel it will work!) into being self employed in webdesign. I have enough money left from my trip to be able to live without any income for approximately two months (Ramen noodles, baked potatoes, potpies here i come (again!)). I will be spending as much time as possible (ask Jade, it’s a lot!!!) Perfecting and learning my skills… I have been given a (hopefully) great opprotunity to mentor under a programmer and learn how to program databases and custom web applications. The guy is very nice and very very good at what he does. I get to learn for free and they make it sound like they have enough work to employ me at least somewhat… This hopefully will lead to being able to travel and work (and make some damn fine money)… Ideally i will be able to travel indefinately and still earn a decent income. though that may be a bit away.
Programming is literally like learnign a new language… it’s a different way of thinking… solving a problem in a different way… it’s hard to explain, i learned a bit at college in wisco, one language i had no problems with, another i couldn’t grasp for the life of me… So it could be tough going…
So thats the path that has presented itself… Origianlly i had planned to move to Maine with Tim and Candyce, well that’s on a backburner… I have barely heard anything from them which made trying to organize the move difficult… It’s still a big possibility if Oregon doesn’t pan out… even if it does i don’t want to stay in eugene for the winter. Plus living close to Jade again will be nice.
Ideally by winter i will be self sufficient and able to live anywhere… Personally i have a weird feeling to live where there’s snow… Not sure why, i think it may be from being in summer for quite a while… and i want to ski and perhaps get into cross country skiing…
Well I lost my train of thoguht, i’ll be online a lot the next couple days (not much to do in san jose without spending a lot of money) so i’m sure i’ll post some more…
Hope you all are going well… and i’ll be keeping this site up and going even after the trip is done if you care to keep track of me!
// March 16th, 2005 // 7 Comments » // Costa Rica, San Jose
Sorry for the delay… the last thing i wanted was for my diehard fans to get roudy!… it seems some spam bot found my site as well… i thought i had it protected… but it seems not… it just posted gibberish four times on one of my posts, but it’s enough to piss me off… anyways…
the reason i haven’t posted is because we hvaen’t been doing anything… we had planned to go take a boat up the northeast (carribean) coast of costa rica to this village/town… well we were going to do it from san jose but we ended up getitng going to late, thinking there was more than one bus, there wasn’t… So instead we headed out to the carribean coast, in the south east though… spent a couple days in Puerto Viejo and four or five in cahuita… these are the cities i started my trip off in…. they are nice… a lot of good reggae…
the last four days in cahuita we did nothing more than getting going at around 11am… and then going to the beach and sitting there for around 4 or five hours… until 530 or so… then heading into town for some supper… it’s been nice… very relaxing.
Tomorrow we are leaving for Corcovado Park… i have no idea what we’re doing, and of course Paul doesn’t either… He hasn’t had an idea all trip… he just does whatever i do… it’s kind of like having a dog following me… well a dog that talks politics and about women all the time. Better than being alone? I’m just giving paul shit in case he’s reading this … I’m not really serious?
So we’re heading down there… it’s 8 hours on a bus… it better be worth it… we plan to hike around the park a lot…. camp, hopefully on the beach… then slowly work our way up the pacific coast… i hope to see good sunsets everynight until i come back to san jose…..
It’s sad… i’m starting to realize i’m doing some “lasts” down here… like yesterday, leaving the carribean ocean, it’s the last time i’ll see / swim the carribean for quite possibly a long time… I don’t plan on returning to central america for a while… unless it’s something to do with my land… i love it here, but theres so much more of a world to see… I plan to go to south east asia / thailand next… though it could easily change to South America (Carnaval anyone?!?!?) or australia / new zealand… you only get to get a 1 year work visa for australia one time in your life before you’re 30… my days are running out… One good “last” thogh, i hopefully have withdrawn money down here for the last time… I have about $230 in my pocket, i hope to make it last two weeks, though it’s going to be tight!
I sure am looking forward to grilling some brats when i reach the twin cities… and some good dark beer… Goose Island HexNut… then when i hit oregon, it’s all Black Butte Porter baby… oh mom, could you see about acquiring some maple syrup… a couple pints or a gallon…. i’ll pay for it for sure… i want to attempt brewing that beer with maple syrup again…
i don’t have much room (or money!!) for souveniers… if anyone wants anything specific let me know and i’ll do my best…
I don’t know how internet access will be for the next week or so… or if i’ll be in a city, camping on a beach, in a forrest… i have no clue… So don’t be sad if you don’t hear back from me for a bit… if it’s more than two weeks, send lawyers, guns and money!
// February 25th, 2005 // 2 Comments » // San Jose
well i finally made it back to costa rica…instantly realizing how much i love this fucking country… not to take anything away from honduras or guatemala. (though everythign can be taken away from Nicaragua and El Salvador) but this country just has a feeling for me… The women here are simply drop dead gorgeus and they give ME cat calls… it’s interesting… they are almost as beautiful as Jade. The food here is almost good too…. fresh breads as opposed to week old shit in the other countries… and the fruit.. oh man, the pineapple here is to die for…mango’s for $.20 mmm…. anyways, my mommy comes down in a matter of hours now. I’m scared. I have to go pick up the rental car in the middle of the city… and then find the f’ing airport… the people here drive like maniacs. passing uphill around blind corners… it’s going to be a trip.
i guess thats all i have to say! i thought i was going to be able to write more but i’m at a blank… we’ll be heading up to see a volcano tonight unless they are tired from traveling… i don’t have the tripped planned out very well so it’s going to just be play by ear… i probably won’t come on as much, as i’ll have to play host…
// January 19th, 2005 // 6 Comments » // Costa Rica, San Jose
Well we got some plans made for the next couple days… We got a bus to honduras… it sucks that it leaves tonight at 3am though! we go to Managua (sp?) nicauragua (whoa thats hard to spell) tonight, getting there at around noon tomorrow… spend the day & night there then heda to some city in honduras… from there its a bus to the North Bay islands where i will take scuba lessons… supposedly its the cheapest place in the world to learn.. i hope so. i spent a bunch of money today with that ticket… $40 on that $12 on a book, $5 for more contact solution, $10 for a room, shit adds up quick! definately broke my budget of $20 a day!
We will spend a week or so in the bay islands then head up to guatamala for however long we have until the 24th… i have to be back for the 25th as my mommy comes! I´m excited! so i´m not sure when i´ll be online again… i think the bay islands internet will be expensive or slow, or perhaps both… guatamala will have internet that´s affordable though so for sure there… i will try to get here to keep my readers happy though!
later
// January 10th, 2005 // No Comments » // Costa Rica, San Jose
first, i’ll write basically from my diary for the last few days… i haven’t had internet access (by choice mostly) so here goes
Ok, i haven’t written much lately… i’ve been sick. On 1/7/05 i got a real bad sore throat… one of the worst i’ve ever had… it hurts to talk even. The night befroe i will talk about first though… we were all just sitting around (me, michael the german, and lance the canadian whom we were sharing a room with so it would be cheaper) and i suggested we go have some beer… michael and lance had already finished nearly a half bottle of rum so i took a shot and michael finished up the bottle… he was pretty tipsy already.
so we all walked downton and found a bar… it was kind of a neat bar… not a lot of people our age but the bar itself was like a glass dispay case and was full of neat stuff… one section had bills from all over the worls, others had nicknaks from different places… there was something or other from Door County… nifty.
so we drank there for a bit and met some cool girls from chicago… they invited us to a party later at 12:00 though we didnt end up going for reasons to be explained soon. We also met a kid from MN and a guy from GA.
I guess we wanted to go find a bar with more people our age. ( i don’t really remember, A) i was drinking and B) I didn’t write about it for nearly three days.) so we left and headed to another bar… there were more people… Michael was wasted and within 5 minutes had met a girl and was going to go home with her… i asked him how much she costs and he said she wasn’t like that… so he took off and we were going to stay at the bar and wait for him… he showed up at around midnight (which was about 45 mins later) and told us she did turn out to be a hooker… he kicked her out of the room then… she wanted $27,000 colones which is about $60 more or less) But by him leaving, we missed the time when we were supposed to meet the girls for the party… oh well.
Then for some reason we decided to leave this bar to go to the popular dance club… joy. it was a good long walk there.. i think the kid from MN showed us it as he was living in quepos for spanish school…. i think anyways… there was a $2 cover so we didnt go in and went to the dead bar next door… it was well dead so we had a beer and left… ended up going to the discoteque anyways… it was loud and shitty music… i danced a little so i could put up with the music that way at least… Michael talked to a few more girls, they all ended up being hookers… crazy… quepos is a very touristicy city which is why i guess…. it’s sick.
I got sick of him trying to pick up girls so i left to go home. i definately had no idea where home was… it took me at least an hour to make the walk… at some point, i stubbed my toe and split my toenail open causing blood to gush out of it… my feet are in shitty shape.. blisters from climbing the volcano, and now my toenail is fubared. geesh. i finally made it home, had to climb the fence to get in and then passed out.
thats about it for that night… the next morning i woke up a bit hungover and with a horrible bad throat. i spend the whole day in bed except for three hours at the beach, which i spent sleeping in the shade as well…. thats it for that day, about 18 hours of sleep.
Then it came time to leave quepos… we dicked around getting food and checking email and whatnot… ended up missnig the last bus to the little secluded beach city we knew nothing about. so we hired a cab… it was $20ish… about an hour drive… i didnt want to but michael did and he leaves in a few days so i went along… all the hotels once we got there were at least $50 or more…. so we said fuck it and went to the beach… michael would have paid it but they didnt take credit cards…. we decided to sleep on the beach… good idea at the time…
we walked along the beach, which was almost empty and totally beautiful… watched the sun set, got some over priced water from a hotel and then setup camp in the almost dark… we both were goign to sleep under his mosquito net. we then walked and got some normal priced water, and some snacks… went back to “camp” and sat around… there was some heat lightning in the distance and a few very very minor sprinkles… i wrapped my gear up in my rain fly for my tent and went to bed… well we got rained on a couple times for a few seconds but then it started to rain harder in the middle of the night… we had to move down the coast to under neath some sort of lifeguard stand… or siomething like that…. i didnt sleep very well due to rain, sand flys, and no pillow… it was well worth it though… we woke up to a great sunrise and swam… i was completely covered in sand and needed to clean off… well i should go, theres a big line for the internet.
// December 7th, 2004 // 1 Comment » // Costa Rica, San Jose
ahh… what a day… well i started the day off at about 10 or 11am… i came on here and wrote, then went for a walk downtown with Michael… we got some food and came back… we got back and hung out for a bit, then michael taught me how to play the card game “shithead” it was fun… also, a guy from switzerland joined us (Martin i believe) we played for a little bit and shared stories… in the middle of the game, brendan showed up… we sat around a bit then headed back downtown… i needed to get a towel and he needed some stuff… we ran into a rasta that was selling a backpack he wanted so we watied for him to come back to us, but henever showed up… michael left us around this time to go back to change, as he was meeting melissa for a dinner date…
I went to an atm and waited for aobut 30 mins and ended up tkaing out 2x as much as i had wanted…. which is still ok… better to have more than not enough. we then walked back towards the hostel as we knew of a free concert going on…. we wanted to try to get back to the hostel before the concert but it was starting as we walked by… we stayed and enjoyed the music… it was similiar to bela fleck and the flecktones… a guitar, violin and drums… veyr good. some fat guy sang a couple lovey dovey soundy songs which weren’t so good! in any case, they were selling confetti ($.50) and everyone was buying it and throwing it everwhere and on everyone… in their faces, everywhere. it was crazy, it looked like snow! i had it thrown on me a lot as the little kids are fascinated by both my height and my dread locks. i get many looks…. kids stare, i laugh.
after the show, brendan wanted to take me to a bar for a beer… and by bar i mean whorehouse. before you jump to conclusions… this wasn’t a shady hole in the wall… it was very upscale (beers were more than double anywhere else) we just went for a beer… not to partake. it was kind of sad actually… a lot of old white guys looking for sex. the girls were gorgeous of course… after a beer we left… it was something to experience… prostitution is legal here by the way…
after the whore house, brendan wanted to go home as he has to work tomorrow… he walked me back to my house… so he left and i went to write in my journal. i ended up meeting back up with Martin and we drank a beer, then some whiskey… A guy from toronto joined us, followed by a guy from Bend, OR… along with a girl from Germany… we drank and talked for a while… and now i’m here. The guy from toronto reminds me a lot of my good buddy ben rau… same demanor, same kind of look, same great conversation, similar habits concerning things he does subconsciously with his hands… hard to explain… if you know ben, you know what i mean, if you don’t know ben, well you should.
Tomorrow i take a 4 hour bus ride at 10am to Bri Bri… from there i hope i am met by someone or something to take me wherever it is i ‘m going after that, i honestly don’t know what is going on…
I really wish i could get some pictures up, but it’s just not feasable right now. perhaps in a week when i take a break from the volunteering and will more than likely have burnt a cd of pictures… even then, it wil take close to an hour or maybe 30 mins to send one picture… we’ll see though… if only i had a laptop and could resize them…. i really wish i had a laptop instead of all these stupid individual electronic items i have…. what was i thinking? cd burner, mp3 player, pocket pc for gps…. oh well. i’m stuck like this and will make due just fine.
i guess that’s about it for tonight’s update… maybe one more in the morning, otherwise none until the 14th or so….
pura vida
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