meinen Reisen MY TRAVELS mijn reizen mes voyages meus cursos mis viajes minhas viagens mo taisteal mine rejser mina resor i miei viaggi

I went to Typhoon Lagoon and to Disney Quest. After eating at Earl of Sandwich, I was planning on going to see the eggs at the Grand Floridian. I found out there was an Easter parade at Magic Kingdom. After seeing that, I went to the Contemporary and the Grand Floridian to see the eggs to bakers create. Some were the same from last year, so I wonder if they have the same molds. I liked the Toy Story egg, the peacock egg, and the Beauty and the Beast egg.

There are 106 pictures from the Mayor’s office posted on Facebook. Once I decide to rip off the band-aid and look at them, I will post them on here.

I will write more about the celebration later. I will write more about the Spurs being in town later too. I am ready for bed.

I have event tomorrow morning concerning Incoterms, Freight Forwarders, and Customs Brokers.

On Wednesday night, CFITO celebrates 1-year with the Mayor of Orange County, city commissioners, etc.

Here are a few of the best pictures from the last week in Costa Rica. It was great. We packed a lot into a few days and it was really, really fun. We are going to the coast tomorrow, so I probably will not have time to add a few videos until Sunday night.

I met Mireya from the MBA program downtown for breakfast to talk about my trip to Costa Rica. The first picture is of Lake Eola in downtown Orlando.

On Friday night, I was contemplating going to the Magic Game as it was Asian-American night and Shaq was being honored. I was also thinking of playing tennis. Well, it rained and I feel asleep, so my Friday was done. I am still tired. I looked forward to Costa Rica for so long, it is hard to come back to Orlando. I love exploring places and being in places different than me, so it was hard to come back.

Yesterday, I saw Cinderella. Afterwards, I went shopping at Dillards. The Dillards by my apartment is a clearance store, so everything is 65% off everyday. I still don’t go there much, but yesterday, the store had 50% off the 65% off. It took forever trying on clothes. There was a sign that said there was a limit of 6 items in the dressing room. I would take 6 items in and come out and look around and then stand in line with 6 more, etc. Some people took 6 in the room came out, grabbed 6 more in a pile they had, and continued. So they could have 18 items and just take 6 in and come out, grab 6 more, etc. without having to stand in line again. I finally spoke to the manager as I was probably there for 2 or more hours!

Last night, I saw Phillip Phillips at Universal. He is the American Idol winner. I think I am just annoyed these days. Universal crowds annoy me much more than Disney crowds. There is a difference in the crowds for a variety of reasons (mostly age). Phillip Phillips came on stage at 8:30 p.m. and first played a song I knew at 9:15 p.m.! The best concert at either Disney or Universal has been Smash Mouth, because they have enough recognizable songs to last the entire set. Phillip Phillips just jammed around not even really singing until his two big hits came at the end. (The computer I am using doesn’t have Movie Maker, so below are his two hits via Youtube). (Universal does have some nice places to eat including Southwest Moe’s and Menchies). Before the concert, I went on Transformers 3D and saw the Shrek 3D show/ride.

At 4 p.m. today, I went to the Easter Egg Hunt at Epcot. I bought a map and I had to go find an egg in each country. Some of the eggs were really easy, but I struggled with like 4 eggs. You were given stickers of the characters. When I found the Pluto sticker in Canada, I put Pluto on my map in Canada. The prize at the end was a plastic Easter egg with a character on it. I chose Thumper. In continuing my annoyance, someone left a big bag of McDonalds in the parking lot at Epcot while I was walking out – like they opened their door and set it out outside in the lot and left. I looked into the bag and saw the toy of the child’s meal in the plastic wrap. I looked around to see if anyone would see and I grabbed it. Ha. I now have a Thumper egg next to baby Ronald McDonald riding a tricycle.

I have two big events this week, so hopefully I can get back into the swing of things. The next month I am traveling to Tallahassee, St. Louis, Home, and Miami.

We said a sad good-bye to Costa Rica last Friday. The hotel took us to the airport a mere 7 miles away. The airport was quite small. I don’t think it is much larger than Moline’s airport. The driver didn’t even ask what airline we were flying. I guess that could be for many reasons. One is that each departing tourist has to pay a $29 tax to leave the country, so he dropped us at that entrance, so we could pay the fee. Orlando has toll roads from both airports, so I can’t complain.

We arrived in Orlando around 3:30 p.m. or so. I can’t really remember. We went through an automated customs machine where a computer asks you questions and takes your picture. It was funny as it had to adjust its camera for Andrea’s height. It was only for Americans. The line for non-Americans was really long. I felt sorry for the people in that line as after the automated machine, we were ushered in front of the other line. Our customs agent talked to us for a long time about his experiences zip lining, flying Jet Blue, not being Hispanic and winning the prize, etc.

Afterwards, we returned to our normal life. We went to Downtown Disney and ate at Earl of Sandwich. We went to Trader Joe’s where we ran into my boss and his family and showed them pictures. During the rest of the weekend, we also went to New Smyrna Beach, ate in Titusville, ate at the Boardwalk, and rode bikes at Fort Wilderness. I took Andrea to the airport at 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.

My next trip is to the exotic locale of Tallahassee, Florida in less than 2 weeks for International Days.

BAD NEWS: My computer does not seem to be turning on….. will try to work on it more tonight. I will take a computer home from work too. Well, my computer is turning on, but the screen is black. I put a screensaver on it last night while the youtube video was loading. I put it in “Sleep” mode and it didn’t awake today.

It was really easy to wake up early in San Jose. We really went to bed around 8 p.m. and woke up around 6 a.m. We were able to get basic U.S. channels live from Miami. I was impressed that the same shows are on there as home and they aren’t behind any seasons. Since it is from Miami, the shows were on 2 hours ahead of Florida time as we were 2 hours behind the Eastern time zone. Prime time TV is over by 9 p.m. instead of 11 p.m. which helps.

Day 2 – We had a small breakfast at the hotel and then, the tour stopped for breakfast on Day 2 also. At the breakfast stop, we also were surprised with viewing crocodiles along a river.

Most tours stop at tourist shops and this tour was no different. We stopped at a store before the beach. I bought a beach towel with the Costa Rican money on it. We made it to Manuel Antonio National Park. It is the smallest of the national parks in Costa Rica. It is also the most visited. I think it is visited due to the beaches and the monkeys! If you don’t like monkeys, you don’t need to take the time to watch the video as there are too many pictures of monkeys.

Costa Rica has .1% of the world’s land, but it has 5 to 6% of the world’s biodiversity. I am not 100% sure, but I think around 25% of Costa Rica is protected land.

We had about 3 hours at the park to explore. Andrea and I walked to a few viewpoints. There were so many lizards — large lizards — probably iguanas actually… — 1000 times the size of the little Florida lizard. They were always well camouflaged. I walked near at least two without seeing them. We saw a little marmot, but we mostly just saw iguanas and monkeys. We heard a monkey in distress as we were leaving the park. Someone mentioned the monkey became lost and was trying to signal for his pack. The tour guide said that we had just missed a sloth.

We walked to a hotel for dinner. The tours were really nice. We had breakfast, a packed lunch, and dinner. As we were eating dessert, a toucan was spotted. We rushed out to take pictures. I think there were two toucans actually. I used my new camera a lot. I also took a point and shoot camera. An American on the tour was using his I-phone to take pictures of the toucan and was really impressed at my pictures.

We arrived home and went to the grocery store. The store sold coconuts with straws. It was nice having the coconut water from real coconuts. I had a lot of black cherry pop and arroz con leche. The rice with milk has cinnamon and spices in it and is much like what I ate growing up. We also tried other fruit including a papaya and a passion fruit. We had a lot of different fruit juices like guava.

We met various people on the tours and saw them at the tourist sites and other tours throughout the week. I guess maybe a decade ago Costa Rica had about 25,000 tourists. Today, nearly 2.5 million tourists go to Costa Rica per year. Everyone was really nice to us. From the pickup to the airport, to the hotel, to the tours, we felt really safe. We didn’t do anything really by ourselves, but we did walk alone on paths in the national park which could be dangerous. We met a couple who had rented a car. I think that could have potential for scams and danger. I think on Day 2 we were re-routed as there was a fatal car accident and it would take 5 hours to clear the accident. Drivers were more reckless than in the United States when in came to passing, etc.

I took a computer home from work to work on the videos. Something in my computer has died. I really only need a real computer to upload pictures from my SD Card.

Anyways, Day 3 – Costa Rica

Wednesday’s tour was call 3-in-1 =  Water, Land, and Air

We ate breakfast at our hotel. Then, the tour took us to a river for a boat ride. We saw many animals. The boat driver knew where to look. We saw a sloth, a caiman, bats, birds, monkeys, and other animals. It was really fun to look for animals. On the way back, the boat went really fast.

For the land portion, we toured a “selva” which is a dense tropical rainforest. We saw Atta cephalotes which is a leaf-cutting, fungus-growing ant, with one of the most fascinating and complex social systems known to science. Colonies of this leaf-cutter ant species contain millions of individuals, making it possibly the most dominant invertebrate in Central and South America. A colony is made up of different classes of ant, known as castes, including the queen, workers, and at certain times, males and females (queens) that are capable of reproduction. Each individual within the colony carries out a specific job depending on its size and caste, in a behavior known as ‘task partitioning’. As in all ant species, individuals in the worker caste of the leaf-cutter ant are wingless, sterile females of different sizes, depending on the role played within the colony. ‘Soldiers’ act to protect the colony and are the largest in the worker caste. A nest of the leaf-cutter ant will also contain tiny ‘minima’ workers, which work inside the colony and in the fungus garden, and ‘media’ and ‘maxima’ workers, larger ants with powerful jaws, which cut and transport leaf fragments back to the nest. 

We also saw blue jean frogs which have red bodies and blue legs. It was fun searching for them. I found the first one on the tour. We also saw a black and green spotted frog.

We were also looking for snakes. There are 162 species of snakes in Costa Rica. 22 of them are poisonous. The United States has 4 species that are poisonous. A tip: Larger snakes only deliver enough poison to get you away from their territory. The young, little snakes still have not developed their glands and will strike with everything they have.

For the air portion, we took a tour of the rainforest in a gondola. We didn’t see many animals, but it was neat going from the bottom of the floor to the top of the rainforest.

On Thursday, for our last tour, we went to a volcano and two small towns.

The volcano was covered by clouds, but we waited for a few minutes and it slightly appeared. We had more luck at a lake which was also covered by clouds, but it really opened up.

We also went to two towns: Grecia and Sarchi. Below is a description of each:

The picturesque little town of Grecia is noteworthy for its unusual metal church, which is painted a deep red with white gingerbread trim, and is just off the town’s central park.

Sarchí is Costa Rica’s main artisan town. The colorfully painted miniature oxcartsthat you see all over the country are made here. Oxcarts such as these were once used to haul coffee beans to market. Today, although you might occasionally see oxcarts in use, most are purely decorative. However, they remain a well-known symbol of Costa Rica. In addition to miniature oxcarts, many carved wooden souvenirs are made here with rare hardwoods from the nation’s forests.

We arrived at the airport around 9:00 a.m. in the morning. The airport was very nice. Immigration was really nice. Everyone had a twinkle in their eye. They encouraged you to try Spanish, but they didn’t force you to use it. They wanted you to learn if you wanted to.

Outside, our tour guide was not around and was not holding a sign as he said he would be. Immediately, it felt it wasn’t a country where you can go up to someone and ask them to borrow their phone without a fee. (I arrived in China and immediately met a Chinese guy my age and asked to borrow his phone at the Starbucks in the airport.) Anyways, after unsuccessfully trying to find internet access at a restaurante, we found a pay phone and called the tour company. The phone worked and they sent the pickup person.

There was another guy in the van. I thought he was a co-tour guide, but it turned out he was from Australia. We figured that out about 20 minutes into the car ride. We drove to the zip-lining resort which was about 1.5 hours away.

Zip-lining was great. We did the 8 or 9 lines with the canopy tour. The superman line took some courage just to climb the tower. It took even more courage to jump head-first off the tower, but it was great after the jump. I even went through a little opening in the forest at the end. We went back to the resort. Andrea had a “comida typical” which was her best meal of the week. I had “arroz chino” which was Chinese fried rice. I wish I had the typical food.

The sunrise was around 5:40 a.m. and sunset was around 5:40 p.m. We did find a great grocery store next to our hotel, so we shopped there at night. It was slightly expensive, but it was great just for the week. There was a Hard Rock Cafe and a McDonalds probably 3/4ths of a mile from our hotel, but it was too dark to take any risks walking there when we returned every night. We stayed at a Country Inn and Suites which was perfect as all the hotels nearby were on the tour stop. Thank you Jonathan for giving us the points for the stay. It was really nice and very safe. It was really neat to eat at places without any walls, windows, doors, and screens.