Pictures

I uploaded our pictures to Flickr

Back home

That was one of the best vacations we've ever had. We got home this morning around 11:30 or so, and took a nice long nap to shake off some of the jet lag.

When I have a chance, I'll upload all my pictures and videos I took.

In the meantime, I uploaded my video of Donovan's penalty kick equalizer against Honduras last night.

Well, that's it folks

Great win tonight. So glad we came back from a 1-0 deficit to win it.

It's not going to be easy to go back to work on Monday. I better get to bed, because our flight tomorrow leaves Midway at 7:20 AM, which means we need to get to Midway by about 6:00 - 6:15.

Up early, and it's already almost 1:00 AM.

I'll try to fill in all the holes to our awesome vacation Sunday after we get home. Maybe. Have to see how that works out. :)

Game day

And I'm nervous. The US pretty much has to win.

In flight WiFi

We're on Delta flight 2076 from ATL to MDW. They offer in flight WiFi for the price of $9.95. Pretty cool.

I do not like ATL airport at all. What a mess.

I just checked the status of our flight while we're actually on the flight.

At the airport

We're checked in and waiting for our 8:00 AM departure for Chicago by way of Atlanta.

Robert and Amy have both been upgraded to first class, on both legs. Jan and I will be stuck in coach with a bunch of college kids who are currently annoying the heck out of me.

I never really did write a whole lot about our game day experience. Which was pretty amazing, in spite of the fact that the USA played like crap. The Ticos fans were fantastic, and gave us a bit of a hard time but in a joking fashion.

As for the game - I did expect us to lose. After all, we've never won in Saprissa. But I did not expect the team to play like crap and just crumble. Giving up a goal in the second minute certainly didn't help. They had to chase the game after that. Unfortunately, even down a goal the US didn't really attack, and had far too many back and square passes. I thought Beasley was pretty bad.

Tomorrow against Honduras is a must-win.

Yikes!

Well, that was a terribly played game by a woefully unprepared team.

The Costa Rican fans are pretty amazing though.

I'll fill in more details later. Off to get some breakfast and do a little sightseeing.

Our newest souvenir

So we all went over to the team hotel, and met up with Michael Kammarman, who is the team's press officer. We had lunch and were getting ready to leave when we saw him again in the lobby. He said "where are you going now?" and I said "we'll be heading back to our hotel. We don't want to bug the players before the game." He said "well, don't leave just yet, I need to run upstairs and grab something."

While we were waiting, Landon Donovan walked by and we said hello. He thanked us for coming. Then Frankie Hejduk came out of the elevator, and we said hello to him. Mentioned to him that we were celebrating our 20th anniversary, and he said "wow, that's great. Wait a second, let me go grab you a shirt."

In the meantime, Michael, a cameraman and a videographer came out of the elevator. I saw Michael give something to Frankie, who then came over to Jan and me and handed us a jersey that was folded up in a plastic bag. I saw number 20 on it, and thought, "wait, is that McBride's number? Who wears 20 now?"

Then I opened it up, turned it around and saw that "LASTORT" was on the back. The #20 was for the 20 years that we've been married. I got pretty choked up (yeah, I'm an emotional guy) and Michael interviewed us. I figure they'll probably have something up on the US Soccer web site later today or tomorrow.

That was pretty awesome.


Oh, and as an aside - a guy in the lobby was offering round trip transport from the hotel to the stadium - for FIFTY bucks each! Hell, you can take a taxi all the way from the airport to this hotel for $25.00 total for all four of us, and that includes all our luggage! So, yeah, don't think we're going for the $50 round trip deal.

Back in San Jose

We just checked into the Radisson Europa again for our San Jose part of the trip.

When we were in the taxi from the airport to the hotel, I noticed that I had a text message from US Soccer. We're supposed to head to the team hotel around 12:30 so they can wish us a happy 20th anniversary. Jan has no idea. She's taking a nap right now.

And I forgot to mention - when Jan and I were out to dinner last night to celebrate our anniversary, Robert popped the question and asked Amy to marry him. For some strange reason, she apparently said yes. :)

Game day! Oh, and our 20th wedding anniversary too!!! Our flight to SJO leaves in a couple of hours.

Our last day in Quepos

After yesterday, we just chilled at Tulemar and didn't do a whole lot. Beach and the pool. Oh, and Robert and I saw monkeys at the beach. Jan and Amy hung around the pool.

Tonight Jan and I are going out to celebrate our anniversary, which is actually tomorrow, but we figure tomorrow will be a little crazy with the game. We're going to check out a place named "Mar Luna," which we've been told has great seafood.

Tomorrow is a flight back to San Jose, very early in the AM, and then off to the game that evening. David, one of the waiters at the hotel restaurant, is going to try to meet us at bar Bugaloo.

Monday - Monkeys and Medusa

We woke up bright and early Monday morning to have breakfast before our journey into the jungle with Leo. I had a quick Spanish lesson from the waiter who taught me how to say “scrambled eggs” in the Costa Rican dialect – huevos patiatos, I think.

I told Jan, Robert and Amy about my nightmare from the night before, which involved us on the river in some sort of outrigger canoe carved from a tree trunk. In my dream, the canoe capsized and all of us were tossed into the water and we were chased by crocodiles. Fortunately, I woke up prior to getting chomped.

Leo showed up right on time – 7:30 AM. We got into the van and met the driver, Roger (pronounced “rrrroh-hair” (have to roll those R’s). They joked that he was Roger Moore, and I joked back that it would be fun to be driven around by double-o seven. Leo told us that when he and Roger and his other friends were younger that they all used to go out and party a lot, and that Roger was a very good DJ, and asked if it was ok to turn on the stereo. So I’m thinking, “cool, some good music coming up.” Roger cranked it up and we were treated to really bad CD mix that skipped quite a bit. Yikes!

After a quick stop in town to buy bananas, water, batteries, and some sort of ointment for blisters, we were on the road to the boat. We turned off the main drag onto a pothole-filled little dirt road which made me happy yet again that we didn’t rent a car.

We got to the dock, and a bunch of guys were just lounging around, taking it easy until customers arrived. It seemed like we were the first of the day. Another friend of Leo’s was “el capítan” and we headed off. Apparently, one of the captain’s greatest skill was the ability to find crocodiles, because after about 10 minutes he spotted a pretty good-sized one swimming off the port (is that left?) side. It was probably about 3-4 meters long, and from what I could tell, it looked hungry.

From there we turned around and went to a man-made canal that Leo told us would have quite a few monkeys. He hit the nail on the head with that one. There was a big tall mangrove tree full of at least 20-30 little capuchin monkeys, who at first seemed pretty timid, but after a lot of cajoling with whistles (and bananas) they came down the tree to the roof of the boat, and we all had a chance to feed at least one of them. I shot a lot of pictures and video of them scampering around. It was fantastic.

After that, we were on a quest to see anteaters, but none were spotted. However, we did see two more crocs in two different locations. Each of them was sunning itself on the river bank. We got really close to the second one, and I got some good shots and some video of it before we headed back to the dock to end the tour.

Got back into the van, listened to Roger’s mix tape again which was back to repeating the same songs, and then back to Queops, where we paid Leo and asked for some restaurant recommendations. We also told him that if he comes to DC that he should give us a call and we’d try to show him around. I hope he does – you could tell from just talking to him that he’s good people.

We did a little shopping in Quepos and had a nice lunch, then caught a cab back to Tulemar. Jan was pretty flaked out and decided to take a nap. Robert and I were going to grab a couple of Imperials and head to the beach and Amy was talking about hitting the pool and then taking a nap herself. However at the last minute she changed her mind and decided to head down to the beach with Robert and me.

Apart from the Tulemar guys who work there, the beach was completely deserted. We went into the water and I mentioned what I read in the eyewitness guide about Costa Rica’s snakes – of the 165 or so species, of which only 22 are poisonous, that there are also a couple of species who live in the sea. I joked “great, that’s all I need to know – there are sea snakes floating around in here with us.”

We kind of floated around for about 10-15 minutes, when all of a sudden Amy started screaming “something’s biting me, something’s biting me!!!!” I thought “oh no, shark, snake, something deadly!” and both Robert and swam over to her to help.

We more or less dragged her to the shore, and tried to figure out what was going on, and I saw a nasty red welt on the back of her calf. Robert helped her hobble over to a lounge chair and I ran up to the “lifeguards” and said “something bit my friend.” One of the guys said “a jelly fish” and brought down a spray bottle and some calamine lotion. He sprayed the bottle onto the red marks, and then coated it with the lotion, and said “it should be ok in about 15 minutes.”

It wasn’t. She was still in a lot of pain, so we told them to call the car back so we could go back up to the rooms. From there we called a cab and went town to see the local doctor, Carlos Zuniga.

Wow, what a trip. Doctor Zuniga was right out of a Fellini movie, complete with hospital scrubs that looked way too big (and he is not a small man) and flip flops instead of regular shoes. And it was hot as hell in his office. He kept asking Amy a lot of weird questions, like “Honestly, tell me, have you ever had a reaction to a bee sting, a skin infection, or a personal enjoyment of gladiator movies? On a scale of 1-100, how much pain are you in? If you were a tree, what kind would you be? If an east-bound train left Quepos at 6:00 PM and traveled at 34 MPH and a west-bound train left San Jose at 5:22 PM and traveled at 27 MPH, at what time would they meet each other at Puntareynas?" Weird stuff.

Then he decided to give her a shot of some sort of anti-biotic and/or pain reliever. Not sure which, maybe it was both. He decided to write a prescription, and I told her to keep all the paperwork in case she got questioned by US customs on our return back to the States, to which he mentioned that he could prescribe 90 days of any prescription, including morphine, and it would be no problem. In fact, it seemed like he wanted to prescribe morphine. Very strange dude.

Back to the pharmacy to fill the scrips, then back to Tulemar to just sort of chill and tell Jan of our awesome adventures.

A bit later we headed out to a fantastic restaurant named "Agua Azul" (blue water) which was the best meal we had in CR.

All-in-all, a very stressful but fun day.

Or was that fun but stressful? Whichever.