Back in Biarritz and Online!

After a month of a combination of slooowww dial-up internet connection at my house in the countryside and very nice summer weather, which made it hard for me to want to get on the computer; we are now back in Biarritz for the world championship of longboarding under rainy weather and with great internet! so i'm back online! :)

so here's what happened in the last month...
On our first trip to Biarritz, we had great weather during the entire weekend but unfortunately, the ocean was virtually flat during the entire time we were there. A few people still went out in the water, but we didn’t; with water at 12°C (53°F) and a nippy north wind, it just wasn’t worth it!

Bayonne

We enjoyed other things though: walk along the 4-mile beach in Anglet, the salted ham fair and the old town of Bayonne (umm, Bayonne is famous for its deli meats and particularly the salted ham...), a rather amusing surf contest in Biarritz (it can be fun to watch a surf contest when there is hardly a wave, a lot of tactic comes into play… and the drama was complete with a sore looser kid who was throwing his board around and then throwing himself too and rolling on the ground in despair… anyway, I guess loosing can be just as painful even on a flat day! ☺).

Biarritz

It was also very amusing (after the fact) how the host at our b&b told us that we would get lost driving places in town and, unfailingly, we did, almost each time! The streets in the Biarritz-Anglet-Bayonne city conglomerate are never straight so you loose your direction quickly, and the signs half in Basque and half in French are little help!
In the end we had a good time during our little excursion and left our boards at the bed & breakfast for our return in May.

Sea anemones at Biarritz Aquarium

Since our weekend in Biarritz, the weather has been getting warmer each day, and the spring has come in full bloom, along with what seemed like summer for the last two weeks of April! We were in shorts and slippers every day, the trees grew leaves in days, the grass grew, flowers bloomed... very nice!

Buttercups

cherry blossoms

With the mild winter and the early warm spring temperatures, the pests also bloomed: we spotted snakes 5 times already (a first... I must have spotted snakes a total of 10 times in the 10 years that I lived in the countryside year-round before!); caterpillars have wrecked havoc in one kind of tree, making web-like nests and eating all the leaves; and wasps and bees are also in big numbers... so with the good comes some bad too, but still, temperatures hovering around 25°C (77°F) in April is amazing and we can't complain!


So we've been hard at work in the yard planting flowers, doing cuttings, pulling weeds, and growing watermelon... hehehe, we'll see about bearing any fruits though...

We've also been going fishing in the river nearby... no trout yet, but a perch!... it is no Mahi-Mahi but it is something to catch your own fish... well, really, the harder part of fishing is getting the fish off the hook and killing it... and I had no part in that!


Other than that, we're hiking and biking and visiting places and events of interest when they come about...

Horse show... *sob*

Wolf at an animal park in the area

winning the pompous look contest...

Countryside

Rocamadour - religious sanctuary.

Stone roof in Rocamadour

I think the one most important factor in directing your life when you do not have a steady full-time job is the weather. Last week, the weather here was sunny and warm as if it was May already. It was perfect for gardening – I am a much better gardener when I don’t have a job! I manage to keep a variety of flowers alive and growing! – and for photography. We went to visit Beynac, a medieval castle overlooking the Dordogne; St Cirq Lapopie, a really pretty medieval village; and went to watch a motocross competition in the rocky hills near here.

Beynac Castle


Beynac from across the river

And we also got some gear to go fishing for trouts at the nearby river; I know nothing of fishing though, so I’m thinking I will bring a nice book and watch Paul try to fetch us dinner!

Montfort Castle

Anyway, we’re definitely not fishing or photographing this week because after May last week, we went right back into December this week… temperatures dropped and the weather switched to stormy and angry, culminating in an ice thunderstorm a few days ago.

The house before the ice storm...

The storm begins

Better not be caught outside!

It looks like it snowed!

Since then, it has remained cold, wet and windy; so we have remained indoors!
We are keeping fairly busy though; art projects are abounding…

Amongst the latest interesting experiences of the French countryside… the most shocking and painful: helping to kill chickens… as many of you know, I have small chickens at my house, and it was time to get rid of a couple of males that were just causing more trouble… so I held the chickens legs and wings while she was bleeding them (ummm, I must here explain the method: it consists of making a cut in the head of the chicken just at the corner of the eye and sticking the knife blade into the skull to reach the carotid artery…)… ugh, that was very unpleasant… well, I was lucky, she was very nice and took care of the feathers and getting rid of the gutts for me…
Seriously though, if I had to do that each time I wanted to eat meat; there is no question that I’d be vegetarian…

Birding in the backyard

Paul in bird-photo action

On the less painful end of things, I am refamiliarizing myself with manual driving since most cars in France are still manual… it’s not making me enjoy driving here though… smaller roads, more turns, smaller streets in town and the added clutch trouble just isn’t all that fun!!
Paul’s experiences are more pleasant I think… he’s been getting used to French cheeses and French wine… it’s not like anything we normally see in Hawaii… on the one hand, the cheese takes some getting used to: it’s smelly, it is also unsanitary by American standards (many are not pasteurized for better taste and more creamy texture)… ah, but so good!! Paul must have tried at least 15 or 20 different kinds of cheese by now and while he looked very suspicious at first, it looks like he’s getting a taste for it! ☺ As for the wine, well, it didn’t take very long for him to get a taste for it… the good thing here is that an average wine bottle is about 5 euros so you do not feel like you’re splurging as much!


For his birthday, we are going to the ocean at Biarritz, for the first time since we arrived in France. It should be still rather chilly since the water is supposed to be about 14°C (57°F) and I may watch from the beach, but we never know, if the weather is really nice, the two wetsuits might do the trick!

Belette, my sister's dog.

From the city to the country

No news, good news… since we arrived in Paris a month ago, we’ve been quite busy taking photos, visiting family, and getting back to the countryside ways… We stayed about a week at my sister’s in Paris and spent our days trekking through the city in search of stock photography, which is easy to find… We walked four to five hours each day and covered the big tourist attractions: Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Place des Vosges, and a few more… but there are still plenty of shots left for our next visits!

do we look cold???

Even though I lived there for 5 years before, it was nice to be like a tourist in Paris: I hadn’t been back at the Eiffel Tower since I was six, and I had never been to the Sacre Coeur!



Anyway, Paris doesn’t change much: busy, impressive, cool stores everywhere, fairly dirty, and expensive… in fact, with the exception of the architecture, it is much like New York! Well, and I think Parisians smoke a lot more too… hehe, old habits die hard! ☺

Dark but impressive, Notre Dame interior

My sister's daughter

Anyway after a week, we moved on again towards the countryside this time. We stopped for a quick hello at my brother’s place between Paris and the south, and then down we went, to the middle of nowhere in southwestern France, somewhere between Bordeaux and Toulouse, close to wine country, in the heart of foie gras country, and definitely also in the heart of medieval castle country. The region was at the border between the British and French kingdoms during the Middle Ages, hot spot of wars between the countries, and so, almost every village is built on a hill, and every village has its own castle!

Gargoyle @ the Sacre Coeur

My house is in a tiny village of about 200 inhabitants (with its own castle ☺; well, the remains of it anyway: there wasn’t much left already, and the main building burned down over the past summer, leaving only the walls!). It is nice to be back where I grew up; many good memories for me there and plenty of gardening and artwork for us to work on.

photo from an old sanctuary not far from my house

There’s also plenty of photo opportunities as well so I think Paul’s handling the lack of ocean fairly well…

The Longest Day

Traveling from San Jose, Costa Rica to Paris was a long and rough trip... probably the worst trip I've ever had...
It began well enough on Monday in Costa Rica; the plane was in time and the board bag was taken care of quickly and efficiently... a first!
Things got really ugly in Miami though... the plane taxied for over a half an hour waiting for a gate... so we only had 45 minutes to get to our connecting flight. (no problem...)
eeek... Miami being the worst international airport out there, we had to go through immigration (a big no-no for me since I really did not want a new US stamp in my passport...), get our bags, re-check the bags, and go through the gates all over again... in 45 minutes... well, that wasn't going to happen.
We got our bags and then went to wait in line for another hour to get another flight. In the meantime, there was no help from anyone either from the airport or from American Airlines to try and actually get us on our actual flight or get where we were supposed to be... so I was fairly angry...
Anyway, we finally got to a rather efficient lady who got us on the very next flight to London, connecting to Paris... So we were back on and running to our next flight, which we caught....
During the flight from Miami to London, I ate something that didn't agree with me... at first i thought it was just the nasty airplane coffee, but it stayed.... I was nocious the rest of the flight to London, while waiting in line for more security checks in London, then threw up in London, and again during the flight from London to Paris, and again and again in Paris.... lovely!
Oh yeah, of course, as expected with all these connections and changes, one of our bags didn't follow; but that seemed minor after the rest! (It arrived a few hours later at my sister's apartment.)
It is the kind of trip that makes you dread taking the plane again but at least, we got to Paris in one piece and with all our luggage!

The Costa Rican portion of our trip is coming to an end quicker than we originally expected… We originally had plane tickets on Air Madrid to return to France on the 20^th of February, which we had to purchase before returning into Costa Rica from Panama, to show that we were indeed leaving the country at some point. Unfortunately, out of the thousands of airlines out there, this is the one that had to file for bankruptcy and cancel all flights two weeks later…

Luckily enough, a headline on a Costa Rican newspaper caught my eye soon after that, which related the bad luck of the thousands of passengers stranded in airports right before Christmas… But we basically didn’t have a return ticket anymore…

Of course, the airline was unavailable to answer calls and it was not taking responsibility for anything… so after many unsuccessful attempts, we resorted to getting brand new tickets… that worked out OK, but now, instead of leaving around the 20^th of February, we’re leaving the 12^th, which was definitely cheaper… but… that’s less than a week away!

So we’re now getting psychologically ready for cold weather and enjoying our last few days of warmth and beach. For me, it’s a mixture of excitement at going home again and at the same time a bit of dread at the thought of the lovely Paris February weather (wet and cold), for which we’re definitely not prepared!

In the meantime though, let’s not waste time and take advantage of the last Costa Rican days for a little lesson in surfing technique, with Mr. Topp…

And here, the proper technique in doing a cut back…

And this is what the same technique should result in if applied to bigger waves (Playa Cocles).

And here, a great demonstration of the Nose-Ride.

And finally, last but not least, the tricky Walk-on-Water technique.

Tada! and if you can master these, you're on your way to good surfing...

OK, so this is what we will be doing (well, really, what Paul will be doing, and I will just do what I can… surfing well is definitely harder than it seems!) during our last few days in Puerto Viejo. We are due back in San Jose on Saturday for the last minute Mercado Central shopping and then on the plane on Monday.

Cahuita National Park

The weather having improved quite a bit in the last few days, we went to visit the Cahuita National Park, a half an hour away by bus. The Park is along the coast and protects both near shore habitats and the coral reef that is just offshore. It is always great to expect little and get more! The Lonely Planet wasn’t very talkative about the park other than about the coral it was protecting and it did not seem very popular.

The trail followed the coastline in the rainforest and wildlife was not very shy… 2 minutes in and we already had spotted a yellow viper on the side of the trail. It was very still and had ants around its mouth, so it might have been dead, but then again, its eyes were very open and looking really mean…

Five minutes later, we were in the middle of a group of howler monkeys. They were up in the trees and kept their distance (sort of) but apparently did not care at all about our presence.

As we walked along, there was plenty more wildlife to see, including blue morpho butterflies, nasty-looking spiders, sloths, and more monkeys.

In addition to the howlers, there were also a lot of white-face monkeys (“Marcel” for the Friends buffs); now these were definitely not shy, they were actually interested in people! Well, actually they were not so much interested in people as in their potential as food source…

They had figured out that cameras and camera bags had no food so they didn’t pay too much attention to us, but a lady that walked by with a small pack of crackers in her hand got it stolen quickly! (There were signs telling people not to feed the monkeys, but obviously that did not do much good because the monkeys knew very well what looked like food and how to open plastic wraps.) That made for an entertaining hike though!

Along the way we met a French couple; the guy must have been some sort of field biologist because he’s ability to find wildlife was phenomenal… Every other step he found something: from the sloths perfectly camouflaged in the trees to the pink viper hidden under a bush… very helpful!

Find the sloths (2)...

After four hours of hiking, we were worn out, but the day was far from over… after a good typical Costa Rican casado lunch, we set out to wait for the bus…. Two and a half hours later, it finally came! Apparently, there was a broken bridge somewhere, which delayed three buses… So we finally got home that night around 9:30 pm!