Merry Xmas!

Where are we? What the hell have we been up to?

As it turns out….alot! This is mostly a picture post.

Spent a month or so surfing and hanging out in Nicaragua. Mostly in San Juan del Sur.

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Yeah, these places actually exist. Our boat is furthest one to the left.

We spent a few days in a couple remote out of the anchorages too. And as we are known to do, we found a great bar to hangout in after some jungle hiking.

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After leaving San Juan del Sur, Nicaruagua. We headed into Costa Rica. Our first stop was Bahia Selena to do some kiteboarding. Correction…..try to do some kiteboarding. It’s tricky buisness, but we are slowly getting the hang of it.

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We also did some more jungle hiking. And as I”m sure you all would agree, one never swims in jungle pools without beer and a machete.

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Our buddy Danno was coming down to visit and we still had not clear into the country so we decided to bust a move down to Playa del Coco to get official and pick up Danno.

Before that though we made a few stops along the way. One was to catch up with some cruising friends that were anchored in an achorage on the way to Cocos. I wrote a blog post about it a few weeks ago.

We also stopped and did a little more exploring at an anchorage called Huevos.

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I love sea caves!

Danno got here the day before Thanksgiving. Eric and Ali, showed up 5 days later. So the boat was a little crowded, but not too bad. We had an absolute blast with Eric, Ali and Danno all here. Alot of just hanging out doing nothing. Some poor attempts at fishing. A little scuba diving and hiking to awesome waterfalls.

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Bad ass rent-a-cars
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Little known fact. Danno is a hobby botanist. He was able to, without any doubt, tell us that the plant he is eating in the picture below was….and I quote “Definitely NOT fucking sugar cane”.

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Why he thought a giant weed growing in a ditch would be sugar cane I cannot tell you. He’s the botanist, not I.

We also violated every single rule mentioned in the rental agreement. How we got that car up that 4wd rode to the top of the volcano is anyone’s guess.

After dan left and we had the car for one more day so we decided to make the most of it so we went and did some zip lining. FUN AS HELL!

I could not decide which zip lining pic to put up. They are all cool, but this one sums them all up.

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GO Tawn!!

Fancy dinner with Tawn and Ali after zip lining.
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And Eric.
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We spent Ali’s b-day in a little cove and had a beach bonfire for Ali, then headed to Tamarindo.

Rented some ATV and rode them a beach. That too was fun as hell.

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After Eric and Ali left me and Tawn hungout in Tamarindo for a few more days and did some surfing. Tawn bought a new (to her) surfboard.

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Now we each have one and don’t have to share!!

We’ve been bouncing down the coast stopping different places and hiking, surfing, chasing water falls….whatever.

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And on one occasion, there was no surf, so we took turns towing each other and friends behind the dinghy on my surfboard.

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I have no witty way to end this post……feels awkward.

Oh I know! How ’bout some sweet ATV beach action?

Posted in Adventures | 6 Comments

How we do.

This post is about a day/night a few night ago, we didn’t have internet access so I’m just getting around to posting it now. Lo siento, but no pictures on this one.

It was one of those almost perfect days. An absolutely perfect example of how we are currently living our life. No plan, just going with the flow.

The day started off with us anchored in a bay called Bahia Santa Elena in Northern Costa Rica. We woke up with the plan to go another anchorage about 16 miles away; Key Point.

As we were motoring out of the bay/bahia we made a last minute decision (for no real reason) to skip going to the Key Point anchorage and to continue on down the coast to one of the other anchorages a little closer to Playa Cocos. Which is where the first official immigration and customs office is for checking in to Costa Rica. We have unofficially, been in country for a week or more and should really think about checking in.

As we rounded Cabo Santa Elena, the weather was perfect. Sunny, 85 degrees. Not a cloud in the sky. We hear over the VHF radio two of our friend’s boats talking to each other on channel 16. We have not seen them since we left San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua a week of so ago. We hailed them on the radio and they tell us they are anchored off an island, near Key Point. Right were we decided just two hours ago, not to go.

We told them our plans and that we would meet up in a few days in Playa Coco. We were going to keep going and pass them by.

Barely ten minutes after the radio conversation, Tawn looks at the fishing line we have out and says “I think we have a fish on the line”.

YUP!

Fifteen minutes later, we are filleting a HUGE Dorado/Mahi-mahi on deck. More than we can possibly store in our small freezer and/or eat ourselves. What to do. We call our friends back and tell them to cook up some rice and beans for dinner and will see them in a bit with fresh fish to share.

An hour later we drop the anchor near our friends boats (Wiarua & SunRunner). I nap the shit out of the cockpit, and Tawn swims over to our friends boats to make dinner plans.

Dinner plans were; beach fire, cocktails, and grill up the Mahi on the fire! Hell yeah, we can do that.

Now picture this.

Five of us are sitting around a fire on the beach. Waves, hitting the shore behind us. It’s warm, but there is a nice breeze. The Sun has set, the moon is not up yet, so it is pitch dark. The sky is absolutely filled with stars. An insane amount of stars.

We were all just chilling. Talking. Drinking. Digesting an awesome dinner. With my flashlight I spotted two hermit crabs in an epic duel over a shell. We all watched that go down for a bit, enthralled.

I click off the flash light and walk around the log to where our cooler sat to make myself another rum drink. I click the flash light back on to avoid tripping over what I thought was a big rock. The rock moved….kept moving. I almost shit my swim trunks.

What I thought was a rock was in fact a huge sea turtle. HUGE. Three feet away from me, slowly crawling up the beach to lay her eggs. Whut!

I start spouting brilliantly insightful things like; Shit!, What the fuck!, Jesus, look at this fat bastard! Everyone jumps up and we spend the next hour or two watching this, and three other giant lady sea turtles laying their eggs on the beach. Unbelievable!!

After the turtle we all decided to head back to the boats. Me and Tawn had swam from the boat to the beach, so we had to swim 200 yards back out to the boat. Pitch black. Not a light anywhere, other than the stars. The water was warm, and looking down with our snorkel mask we could see the trails of bio-luminescence the fish were leaving as them swam around below us. Ridiculously cool. And insanely frighting all at the same time.

Sometimes people ask. How can you just quit your jobs and do this trip. Seriously, people ask that question. Stupid, I know. But they ask it.

The answer?

One day, thirty odd years from now, as i’m sitting in a pair of dirty depends adult diapers, eating from a can of cat food. This is what I will think back on. This is one of those days. One of those many memories that makes it all worth it.

Posted in Adventures, Palarran | 5 Comments

Volcano boarding.

After leaving El Salvador and a brief one week stop in Honduras. We checked in to Nicaragua. Our port of entry was a small industrial town of Corinto. We left the boat anchored in an Estuary near a place called Paso Caballo and took a bus to Leon, Nicaragua. Pretty cool little town. They totally have their fingers on the pulse of the tourist/backpacking hostel crowd there.

We found a hostel to stay for a day or two and then found a guide company to take us up to the top of the nearest volcano (Cerro Negro) to do a bit of hiking and then once at the top, “snowboarding” down. When I say snowboarding I what I mean is, the exact opposite, in every way.

Snow = Volcanic rocks
Fluffy = hard
White = Black
Cold = Hot as balls
Fast = Not fast
Soft fully snow = Black hot as balls volcanic rock.

The hike up was very cool, awesome views of the other surrounding volcanoes and the flat green planes stretching out for miles in every direction.

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Once at the top a small rain storm rolled through (of course). After about a 15 minute wait for that to clear up, we started down the mountain on our volcano boards.

But not before putting on our awesome volcano boarding suits.

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I took a few videos and edited them together. I’ll warn you now, if you are prone to epileptic fits, sea sickness or have any sort of aversion to shitty videos, do not watch this. It is shit.

Enjoy!

This is the view from the bottom where the truck picked us up. Look at the steam coming off the rocks….just look at it!

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Posted in Adventures | 2 Comments

Spooky, and it’s not even Halloween.

It was right around 10pm, Monday night, October 13th. Pitch black out, no stars. Tawn is in the aft cabin crashed out and I’m still up watching an episode of The Trailer Park Boys on the laptop. We were anchored in a small bay off El Tigre Island in Honduras. There is a small cluster of houses and beach palapas lining the shore about 100 yards away from where the boat is anchored.

As i’m sitting there watching the show, I feel this really odd…. really big vibration. At first, it felt like our engine was running. This was not possible. I then just figured it was another boat motoring past us. But damn, it was a very big boat by the feel of it.

As I was getting up to stick my head outside to make sure everything was OK, and to make sure we were not about to get hit by another boat; the sound and vibration stop.

About half a second later our boat starts,……not sure how to describe this. But our boat started “hopping”. It felt like something large, something very large was trying to pushing our boat straight up out of the water. We were bouncing about 6 inches or so. Up and down repeatedly for 15- 20 seconds.

Living on a boat you get used to the way it moves. Different wind, wave, and currents make the boat move in certain ways. We know what feels right and what does not.

This did not feel right.

I run up the companionway and out in to the cockpit, just as Tawn is waking up and saying “What the fuck is that??”.

Did not have a clue. But I was giving it 30/70 chance that I’d either see a boat bumping up against us or a large angry or possibly horny (I don’t really think it matters which) whale pushing us around.

As soon as I got outside, everything stopped. I had a flashlight, but could not see anything amiss. Nothing. We were just sitting there in the dark anchorage as if nothing had happened.

Tawn came up the companionway behind me and says, “Whoa!, all the lights on the island are off!”.

I turn around and look. She’s right, nothing. Not one light on anywhere.

My first thought was: “Oh shit! Fucking Zombie Apocalypse!”. That was immediately followed by the realization that, suddenly the zombie apocalypse did not seem like it would be as fun as I thought it would. Which surprised me. I’ve always sorta been hoping for one.

As I’m standing there dealing with a bit of an existential crisis, how could I not be stoked for a zombie apocalypse? Tawn got on the radio and called friends of ours on another boat anchored near us. Between the four of us, we figured out that we just experienced an earthquake.

A few minutes later as we were figuring out our “OH SHIT, TSUNAMI!” plan. A big ass thunderstorm rolls through. Crazy ass lightning, torrential down pour, honking wind, the works. We go through our batten down the hatches routine and give a hearty, “Hi ho fuck this time for bed”.

I think Tawn summed it up best as she was climbing back into the bunk: “That was TOO much nature for one night”.

Posted in Adventures, Big trips, Palarran | 5 Comments