These were the highlights of our last trip to Isla Bastimentos, Panama...
This is Calypso Joe, a friendly musician who played some tunes for us while we were kicking back at the Red Rooster.
I'm trying to get some of the video that we've taken over the last year up. These are some random animal videos.
The Howler monkeys are from our trip to Manual Antonio, Costa Rica. These guys are stinky, very loud, and have GIGANTIC balls. But they are fun to see jumping around in the trees and making some noise. It's hard not to join them in their "howling".
Blue Suede Shoes - Mike Mudd with The Known... by Mike_Mudd
Playing with a Costa Rica blues-rock cover band is a lot of fun. Unfortunately I haven't found Costa Rica to have much of a music scene per-se, but there are some great musicians down here. The Known Associates are a bunch of bikers with a club-house/ venue in the back of a large biker bar. Classic rock and blues tunes- The Doors, ZZ-Top, The Rolling Stones, Elvis, etc... I even got a chance to throw a couple of my originals in there!
Today we went to the local feria (farmers market) as we do every Sunday. One of the coolest things about Costa Rica is that you can buy 90% of your food from local vendors. It's very easy to avoid big chain stores here.
Today was a happy day because there was an abundance of pejibaye. We even found some fresh mushrooms, which are normally hard to find. Yum.
On Saturday I had a gig at a bike show at Motorpsychos bar in SantaAna -a small town outside of the capital San Jose.
The Known Associates, rocked the house.
Slideshow of our Ometepe trip. Not including our night of debauchery with the help of Flor de Caña.
The last day we were on the island we took a tour to see some interesting things. We saw a tree full of cute little monkeys. Here is one of them.
We also saw several petroglyphs. I'm not sure how old they are but they are from the original inhabitants of the island.
We saw the volcano from a few different vantage points.
And some more farm animals...
Then we watched a beautiful sunset at the port...
The next day we headed home. It was another exhausting day of travel. Ferries, taxis, and buses for another 8 hours. Here is a shot of a guy on the ferry pumping water out of the engine room (and onto our feet).
At least the border wasn't as crowded on the way back. Here is a pic of the border town. They all look a lot like this in Central America.
Last weekend we took a trip to Nicaragua. We went to the beautiful island of Ometepe which is a small island with two big volcanoes (one active, one not) in the middle of Lago de Nicaragua (lake Nicaragua). The 8 hours of bus travel and the chaotic border crossing was NO fun but it was worth it. It was an amazing place!
We stayed at Hotel Playa Venecia which was right on the beach next to a nature preserve. It was very relaxing and beautiful. There are all kinds of farm animals running around the island. Here Sam is making friends with a local pig (probably to be someone's breakfast someday).
We went for a walk in the preserve, it was great! There is a big lagoon on the trail and we were checking it out when we noticed hundreds of little things hopping around. At first we thought they were bugs, yuck! But we looked closer and discovered that they were tiny little frogs. The smallest frogs we've ever seen...
There was an agricultural festival in Coronado this weekend. It was interesting. There were a lot of cows and animals along with the usual gigantic farmer's market that they typically have every weekend. There was a band called mascarada that had a bunch of people in costumes and masks. The music was good too.
I was invited to play a set at the festivities. The sound system wasn't perfect but the show went well.
We've moved! Sam got the job teaching Englsh in San Isidro de Coronado. She's teaching at a small English school that works with the a local agricultural co-op. It's a nice job and she really likes the students.
So, we found a nice little house outside of town, it's nice and it has a
big yard. There are lots of birds and our neighbors are really cool. The town that we live in is about a half hour out of San Jose in the mountains. It's dairy and farm country and is fairly laid back. Of course everyone tells us not to walk around at night, but it really doesn't seem any scarier than Portland was (probably less scary really).
There is a small farm on the side of our house and a small (at least in the dry season) river behind our house. Here are some pics of the side and back of our house.
There a bunches of these pretty birds, called bobo's by the locals. I believe they are actually mot-mots though. Either way, cute bird, cute name.
