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Whale watching

A few weeks ago I had the chance to go whale watching on Drake Bay, here in Costa Rica.

All I can say is wow… it was an amazing trip. We had perfect weather, and were lucky enough to see several whales. On Saturday we saw a male whale for the longest time, and eventually heard him sing as well - it was amazing, we could hear the songs without any aid out side the water!!

On Sunday we had even more luck. We followed around 4-5 males and one female for about 2 hours. It was impressive to see those multi-ton animals ram and hit each other for the love of the girl…

Overall, it was a great trip, and I definitely recommend it. You can book similar tours through the OTS, a non-profit academic organization that has a Biocursos program to raise awareness about the environment.

Here are some pictures that I took:

Cool map of the countries you’ve visited

I found this map that shows you which countried in the world you’ve visited. I travel a lot because of work reasons, and, according to this site, I’ve been to 10% of the countries in the world:

Check it out: TravBuddy - Countries Visited Map
(via digg)

Tapanti National Park

I just uploaded some pictures I took in the Tapanti National Park earlier today. This park is located in Orosi, a beautiful region of Cartago, about 2hrs east of San Jose. The roads are in acceptable condition, but you’re definitely better of on an SUV. The park doesn’t have much in the way of infrastructure, but there are several well-delimited trails that take you straight into the rain forest, walking close to a river and with a beautiful waterfall in the background. Just be warned – it is very likely to rain while you’re there, so remember to bring along adequate equipment.

BTW, I finally managed to work around the issues with Picasa. I had to use a physical Windows box to generate the gallery!! #&$%$&!!

Pictures from Boston

I just uploaded some pictures from my trip to Boston. You can check them out here.

Most of them were taken from the Prudential Center observatory.Check out the picture of the floating dog house – you won’t see that anywhere else!!

Peabody, MA

This week I am in Massachusetts, in Peabody, north of Boston.

The town is quiet, and there’s not much nightlife around here. If you are ever in the area, though, check out Champion’s Pub – it has incredibly good Sirloin Tips. Also check out the Legal Sea Foods restaurants. They are all over MA, and have amazing food.

Pictures from Manila

I finally uploaded the remaining pictures from the trip to Manila. You can find them here.

Enjoy!

Intramuros

When I first set foot here in Manila I remembered Intramuros from Neal Stephenson’s novel Cryptonomicon, so, since we got some time off on Saturday, we went to take a look.

Intramuros is a walled city created during the Spanish colonial times, and has been occupied and  destroyed several times throughout its history, by the locals, the americans, the japanese, and the americans again and again. The main portion is Fort Santiago, which was originally surrounded by a moat. Large portions of the moat have now been converted to a golf course.

The history of Fort Santiago is a very sad one. Hundreds of people were tortured and killed during several occupations, including around 600 filipinos and americans during WWII. Due to the strategic position of the fort at the entrance of the Pasig River, it has been a very tempting target everytime the Philippines has been involved in an armed conflict.

Now Fort Santiago is a tourist attraction. It has lots of history and is a very interesting place, but the facilities could definitely be better. The part of Intramuros outside of Fort Santiago is not very well mantained, and the locals run to you asking for money and trying to sell you all kinds of things - especially religious simbols near the Manila Cathedral.

On the way back.. Hong Kong IA

On the way back we had a stopover at Hong Kong International Airport.

The airport is pretty big, really clean, and very organized. Hong Kong itself looks like a really interesting place. Everybody tells me that the British did an amazing job, that the city has an incredible mass transit system, and also some of the best restaurants around.

The Cathay Pacific lounges “The Wing” and “The Pier”, are simply amazing. It’ll be hard to top a Business Class lounge with its own Noodle Bar and a huge selection of beers from all over the world.

Manhattan Beach

My itinerary for this flight sucks. REALLY sucks. I had to spend 12 hours in LA going to Manila, and 13 hours on the way back.
When waiting for the flight to Hong Kong, we took a taxi over to Manhattan Beach. The beach is really nice, event though, as a Costa Rican, you kinda miss the vegetation all the way to the sand.

The beach has a ton of Beach Volleyball courts, a nice pier, and you can watch an awesome sunset from the Beaches Restaurant:

Give you a discount. Triple A quality. Good deal, good deal.

Both on Friday and Saturday we headed to the infamous Greenhills Shopping Center here in Manila. In this Shopping Center you can find ANYTHING you want - it is amazing how blatant (and good :-D) the “copies” of well-known brands are…
The place itself is fairly hot (no air-conditioning), crowded and the vendors throw themselves at you to make a sale. Bargaining with them is also fun - you can get things sometimes for as little as half the price they asked at the begining. Just be firm, drive them crazy with questions, and wait until they just want to get rid of you and you’ll get a fair(er) price.

For electronics, there is a complete floor that sells them really, REALLY cheap… these are not “copied” or “surplus” goods, but actuall chinese and korean brands. Got some good deals there as well.