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ryan & debbrial


84 Blog Entries
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Trips:

Us Discovering the Latin Americas
ryan & debbrial's Travel Blog

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http://blogabond.com/ryan_debb


We met through a mutual friend in college about 5 years ago. We were friends for about 4 years and dated for a year and half. We recently got married on Sunday, May 24, 2009.

Now for the fun part... We decided not to do the typical buy a house and settling down, instead it was sell everything we own and follow our desire to travel. We are on our journey through Central and South America (backpacking, couch surfing, hostels, camping, whatever) for the next 3-4 years. While in Central and South America we plan on working at a variety volunteer camps, meeting fellow travelers, teaching English local people, surfing, enjoying the beautiful sceneries and environment, visiting some tourist sites and really engaging the culture that surrounds us.


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Testing our Relationship and Sanity…

San Jose, Costa Rica


Testing our Relationship and Sanity… That is exactly what this last month has been all about. So let me think back for a moment about the reasons why we are in this foreign country with no friends or family and are working our butts off. Oh yeah!! Cause Ryan and I wanted to be together and experience great adventures, different cultures and live our lives to the fullest (while we are young). So now let me think again why we have been living separate lives for the last few months in a country we are totally over. YES, that’s it back to our reasons for being here: to earn money to keep traveling! Wow what a distressing circle of thought.

Anyways, I’ll stop being so negative (well I’ll try) and explain. Ryan has been at the beach hostel most of the month. I think he has been home in San Jose for like 5 days out of last 4 ½ weeks. Since it is slow season his boss is having him do maintenance repairs on the hostel such as sanding and re-varnishing the beds, benches, tables, etc. Let me tell you, one thing I have learned from my short marriage is that Ryan hates painting and anything like it. So even though he has been at the beach it has not been a bowl of peaches. Plus the reason it is slow season is cause it is also “Rainy” season, hence it rains everyday pretty much. Ryan says the surf is crap and there is debris from the jungle (logs, leaves, sticks, trash) all over the beach, which were brought down from the rains into the ocean and pushed back up on shore from the waves. But all in all I think he can’t complain too much he is at the beach after all while I have been stuck in San Jose city.

However, on another note Ryan is still likes his job overall and is doing a great job. His hard work is paying off / paying our bills and living cost in Costa Rica. His job has been very important to keep us going and to be able to save the money I have been earning teaching; which of course goes into our South America travel funds.

So that brings me to ME. I have been working my butt off teaching the last month. WOW if I only knew how much work this would be. I spend most of my days doing lesson plans (for those of you who have no clue what I mean…I look at the book, decide what grammar or vocabulary I am going to teach, research what it means since most of the time I don’t know, then plan ways to teach it such as readings, fill in the blanks, board games, matching, speaking discussions, etc.). Then after hours of doing lesson plans, I have to correct papers and finally go to class to teach. While I am getting a lot faster at doing lesson plans everyone I have talked to says that the first year of teaching is the worse because you don’t know anything and have to learn all the grammar. Well that’s good news and something to look forward to.

In order to keep my sanity from living in the city alone and being a workaholic I am still going to aerobics class. It is my way to release stress and as most of you know my enjoyment (exercise).

BUT now the good news… this Saturday I have a week vacation break and am going to meet up with Ryan at the beach hostel cause of course he is there. Even though he still has to work this weekend and next week we will be together. And while it will probably be raining maybe we will go for walks on the beach in the rain or just enjoy laying around together in the cabana.

Then next Wednesday we will head back to San Jose and on Friday we are going to a Chocolate Farm to help harvest the coco and learn how to make organic chocolate. A few days of the real tropical and cultural Costa Rican experience.

Hopefully my next blog will be all good news and some good adventures.


permalink written by  ryan & debbrial on June 23, 2010 from San Jose, Costa Rica
from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas
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Not the typical 1-year Anniversary

San Jose, Costa Rica


It’s our One-year Marriage Anniversary today. Since both Ryan and I had to work today we decided to celebrate our Anniversary yesterday. Unfortunately since we do have jobs we weren’t able to get out of town for a romantic or exciting holiday. But we made the best of it and of course the whole point is really just to spend quality time together. On Saturday night we hung out with some of our closes friends here in Costa Rica: Caroline, Andy and Courtney. So Sunday morning we slept in recovering from the fun night prior (lots of beers and pool). When we finally got up mid-morning I made a hearty typical Central American breakfast; Pinto Gallo, eggs, bread, OJ and coffee. After taking our time drinking coffee and enjoying breakfast we decided to put together a plan for the rest of the day; which ended up being Not Much of a Plan at All.

What we did decide was to get out of the city. Just as we were leaving the house it started raining like crazy, fat cats and dogs. It was pouring down so much all the gutters in the streets were overfilling. But that didn’t stop us. We took a bus downtown then hopped in a cab to the train station thinking it would be a nice relaxing way to travel. A few dollars later on the cab’s meter we got to the CLOSED train station and then a few more dollars later we were back downtown getting on another bus. We didn’t really have a specific destination for the day so we had the cab driver drop us off at one of the closes bus stations. We ended up going to Heredia, a mid-size, popular town outside San Jose. We decided when we got there we would get on another bus somewhere else.

The rain had let up by the time we got to Heredia so we walked around town and took some pictures with fake hedge stone figurines. I am chill’n with some monkeys while Ryan is hanging with a crocodile.


Next we had a very romantic lunch at McDonalds. Hahaha!!! There isn’t much in Heredia so we got on another bus hoping to get further from the city. The problem was though we had no idea which bus to take. We finally decided on a bus to Santa Domingo and just in time cause the rain was starting up again. Ryan and I rode around on the bus for the next hour or so never finding a place that looked interesting enough to get off plus it was raining like crazy again. But instead we had good quality time hanging out on the bus answering a couples “how well do you know each other” survey and talking about whatever. We laughed at the thought that we were celebrating our 1-year Anniversary riding around on public buses.

Anyways the bus made its loop and ended back in Heredia. At this point we were pretty tried, it was getting late and frankly we didn’t know exactly where to go next so we got on one more bus and headed back to San Jose. For the rest of the evening we decided to stick with something safe; a nice Steak dinner at the Del Mar Restaurant. Dinner was the most typical, traditional part of our celebration. We had a pleasantly long dinner with cocktails, red wine, soup appetizers (to cut the chill from all the rain) and shared a steak entrée. And most importantly again enjoyed each other’s company. After dinner it was one more last bus home to finish the day.

Our celebration was definitely not a typical 1-year Anniversary but what can I say we aren’t exactly living a typical life right now either. We are living and doing what we want though, TOGETHER!!!




permalink written by  ryan & debbrial on May 24, 2010 from San Jose, Costa Rica
from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas
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Debb got a job & Ryan got a motorcycle

San Jose, Costa Rica


First of all i want to say Sorry for not writing soon but in the last weeks I have been, Well....BUSY!!! I started teaching English at HICR Instituto Britanico two weeks ago. And well my first class didn't go as well as I expected. First, half of the students didn't show because (what I was told by the students who did show) was that most people think the first day is just syllabus and BS pretty much. After that I didn't feel so bad. But still I was super nervous and didn't quite know how to manage a 3 hour class. Especially since during my CELTA I had taught up to a 1 hour. But now two weeks into teaching...My classes are going 90% better. I still have lots to learn, by experience, yet each class I am getting better and better. I really like my lower level classes cause the grammar isn't as hard and the students are still super excited and motivated to learn. I love when they call me "Teacher" cause they can't pronounce my name. It's hard for Spanish speakers for some reason.

I also have a young learners class which = KIDS (10-12 years old). I like them. Their fun, charismatic and straight forward. I asked them how they like to learn, what they like to do in class and they said, "PLAY GAMES". Of course!!

When I'm not in class I am still just working, working, working on lesson plans, researching grammar and looking up English games. Sometimes in the middle of reading about past participles and verb tenses I think to myslef...Really I can't believe I went from Event Planner to Teacher. But it's all relative. But I must say I still made time to do some cooking. I made this pizza from scratch, dough and all (Thanks Kiersten for teaching me).


On another note, Ryan finally got his motorcycle. YEAH!! He is super excited about it and the smile on his face when he got it made me so happy. But what doesn't make me happy is that poor Chiquimula is still sitting broken down in front of our house. Soon he will finish fixing her up and sell her. Hopefully to someone who will have as great as adventures as we had with her. Oh the memories. :)

Anyways, Ryan took off a few days ago for his first adventure on the bike. OH I just thought of something...we need to name the bike. Umm we'll think of something and get back to you. But back to what I was saying. Ryan headed out to Nicaragua for a visa run on Tuesday. When he got to the border he had problems, of course--stupid borders. They were giving him troubles with his paperwork for the motorcycle. So in the end he ended up spending 5 hours at the border but got a stamp out and back into Costa Rica without having to spend 3 days in Nicaragua. Good news. Now the bad news. His boss told him to come to the beach hostel. So Ryan turned around and drove to the south of the Nicoya Peninsula which = a 16 hour day on the bike and 400 miles ride. No quite the joy ride he was planning on. But, really what can he complain about. A motorcycle ride through the country, wind blowing through his hair and a week at the beach.

SO anyways that is where we are at now. Ryan will be back in a day or so. We are both working a lot and trying to save the dollars for South American adventures. Oh I already can't wait and we still have a year.




permalink written by  ryan & debbrial on May 14, 2010 from San Jose, Costa Rica
from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas
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My vacation back to California

Santa Clarita, United States


This is going to be a long blog because I have to fill you in on the past two weeks.

So I had a really good vacation (as I like to say) back at home in the US. The two weeks I was back was surprisingly full of fun times with family and friends. Not to say that I expected it to be boring but I was very busy and all over the place. It started with Sushi lunch with my Mom and friend Drew and a girl’s night out Bunco game on Thursday with my Mom and her friends. They play Bunco every month on the second Thursday for the past…I don’t know like 10 years. Whenever I am in town around this time I always ask if they need substitute player. Lots of times they do and this time I got to play too. Usually I am pretty lucky at Bunco and win the “Most Loss” or “50/50”. I know it sounds funny to want to be the biggest loser but in Bunco you win money for losing. But this time all I won was a really BIG buzz from the wine and no money. Still fun!

So after that my weekend continued. On Friday night I went out with my friends Jen and John. We went out to dinner and caught up on the past 6 months. Saturday my parents planned an Italian Dinner party for their friends since they just got back from Italy. They wanted to share their Italian experience and put on a 5course meal like they frequently had in Italy. So my Mom planned the menu, did the grocery shopping and my sister and I cooked (everything from scratch) and served the food. Course 1: Focaccia bread and Caprese Salad (buffalo mozzarella, tomato, fresh basil and olive oil). Course 2: Margarita Pizza. Course 3: Pasta Caronara with Pancetta. Course 4: Veal Scaloppine and Rosemary Olive Oil baked Zucchini. Course 5: Molten Lava Cake with Fresh Strawberry sauce. Like I said we did it all from scratch including making the pizza dough and hand kneading it. We started at 10am and finished loading the last dish in the dishwasher at 9pm. It was a lot of work and everyone said the food tasted excellent and REALLY appreciated it. But the best part was spending the day with my sister and Mom bonding in the kitchen.



The next day, Sunday, was another good day. I went to the Lakers first Play-Off game for the season with my Dad and uncle. I am not usually into basketball but as everyone knows it’s always better to see a sport live. And surprisingly I actually watched the game more than I people watched. Probably cause it was a good game and the Lakers were winning the whole time.


Since it was an afternoon game afterward we went out for a few more beers. Sunday night I met up with my friends Drew and Ursula, whom live in Venice Beach. We and some more of their friends went out for Mexican food (OH how I missed the spicy salsa, SO good) then to a Jazz/ Blues with Cabaret dancers but TOTALLY Rock’n live band concert at a club in Santa Monica. We danced and drank all night and that was the end of my first weekend home.

Monday and Tuesday I recovered from the weekend. Wednesday I took a day trip to San Diego (down and back) to take care of some business. While I was there I met up with Chris, my brother-n-law, and we went out to Vietnamese Pho Soup for dinner. Another meal I totally miss in Central America. If you have read my previous blogs you know I tried to make Vietnamese vermicelli noodle bowl but definitely don’t know if I could swing the pho soup so it was a must to have it while I was in San Diego. Thursday night my brother and his girlfriend came over to dinner at my parent’s house. Another good family bonding time!

By this time even though I was having lots of fun I was also really starting to miss Ryan. We talked ever day on Skype and wrote sappy love notes to each other on Facebook. While I was having all this fun Ryan said he was just working, working, working and being mopey cause I was gone. Oh I felt bad BUT it was Friday and the weekend partying was starting all over again.

Friday night I went out to dinner with my parents and my friends Meghan and Matt. We went to Black Angus and I shared Prime Rib with my Mom. Once again another thing I miss a good piece of beef. After dinner Meghan, Matt and I met up with some of their other friends and YES of course LOTS of drinks. Saturday I went to a family party with my extended family: grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, etc. For this party I planned the menu, Central American food. Yes not as exciting as an Italian dinner but still good. It was nice to visit with all my family and fill them in on the stories I don’t talk about on blogabond. Sunday I layout at the pool with Jen and John, working on their first tans for the year and trying to keep my color before rainy season starts in Costa Rica.

So lets see…to sum up my last few days in California. Monday day I drove down to Los Angeles paid $52 to Secretary of State and $80 to Consulate of Costa Rica to certify documents for my work visa for Costa Rica. Monday night I went to an Angels baseball game with Meghan, Matt and some of their friends. A friend of a friend of theirs knows some big wig who works at the stadium so we got a box behind home plate with tons of free food (hot dogs, hamburger sliders, pizza and of course peanuts and Cracker Jacks) and beer.


Even though I was at the game live I wasn’t so into the baseball game as the Laker basketball game the weekend before. But it was still a real good time. Tuesday, the last day of my vacation, I spent quality time with my Mom during the day and at night went to dinner with my parents, brother and grandma. I ended my trip the same way it started with Sushi!!!! YUM.

Finally two weeks later, Wednesday morning 11am I got on a plane back to Costa Rica and the love of my life my husband. Yet it was a long day with two connections in Mexico (Guadalajara and Mexico City) and both planes were late. Yep back to the Latin slow life. I landed in CR at 1am and was greeted with a HUGE hug and kiss xoxoxo by Ryan. The first thing he said was “I hope you had fun but don’t ever leave me again. Haha”.


permalink written by  ryan & debbrial on April 28, 2010 from Santa Clarita, United States
from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas
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Busy worker bee vs. Filling up the day to waste time

San Jose, Costa Rica


Well Semana Santa is over and San Jose has come back alive. The streets are full of bumper to bumper traffic, the boardwalk in downtown is full of people walking with a purpose and all the storefront are open for business. Ryan has continued to be busy as ever working at learning the ropes and ‘how to’ run the hostel. Good news is that the boss said in a month’s time or so Ryan will know enough to completely be in charge of the San Jose location and entitled to a FAT raise. Ryan’s optimistic that this opportunity will soon turn into an unexpected cash bank for us. Which of course is advantageous for our future travels in South America.

I on the other hand am still moseying around the house waiting for my job at the British Institute to start in May. But in the meantime I am trying to keep myself busy. I am still going to the aerobics class with my roommate, whom has proven to be a motivated workout partner which from my experience is hard to find. Then I practice learning Spanish with Rosetta Stone and/or watch Spanish TV. I have also become a regular chef. Almost every day I cook up something new and creative. Recently I have made a Costa Rican beet salad, Argentinean chimichurri sauce, Vietnamese vermicelli noodle bowl and an Italian zesty potato salad. All with my own twist of course! I have even started writing my recipes down and are thinking of making a cookbook and/or save them for my café one day (Yeah lots of time on my hands).

But even more exciting, as a result of my currently boundless free time, my parents decided to buy me a plane ticket home to visit. And YES I mean visit!!! I have a round-trip ticket there to California and back to Costa Rica. At first I was very hesitant about the trip because I personally thought it would be cheating for me to go home when Ryan and I said we would be gone for 3-5 years. Like I am on the Amazing Race or Survivor or something. Haha. But after some reassurance from Ryan and reevaluating on my own behalf I decided I guess a small trip home and getting to hangout wit h my family would be better than sitting around here for the next two weeks till I start my job. SO I am flying back home next Wednesday, April 14th for two weeks. The sad part is that Ryan can’t come with. He has to stay here and continue working; though I don’t think he is very disappointed. Like I have said before he is loving “learning the ropes” and always comes home and tells me all about his day.

So for some of you who read my blog, See you soon!


permalink written by  ryan & debbrial on April 8, 2010 from San Jose, Costa Rica
from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas
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Semana Santa and CR International Art Festival

San Jose, Costa Rica


Semana Santa: Holy Week (Latin: Hebdomas Sancta or Hebdomas Maior, "Greater Week") in Christianity is the last week of Lent and the week before Easter. It includes the religious holidays of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday) and Good Friday, and lasts from Palm Sunday until but not including Easter Sunday, as Easter Sunday is the first day of the new season of The Great Fifty Days. It commemorates the last week of the earthly life of Jesus Christ before his crucifixion on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. Semana Santa is one of the most revered and popular religious holidays in Costa Rica. It is a time of both religious observation and processions and a time of festivities and parties. Most Costa Ricans flock to the beaches to enjoy a break from work, fun family time and sizzling barbecues.

Semana Santa: I thought it was going to be all fun and games with lots of street parades, live religious/art performances and bbq’s like I read. But no San Jose, Costa Rica is a ghost town. Starting today all the stores are closed including the grocery stores, the buses stopped running and ALCOHOL is Illegal. San Jose is on lock down from Good Friday till Easter Sunday. Luckily we had some clues to the prohibition of alcohol so I ran out and bought a 12 pack of beer, cheap box wine and a bottle of whiskey. This should last the weekend.


All kidding aside I really did think there would be a lot going on in San Jose for the Semana Santa. I don’t know kinda like Granada, Nicaragua for Christmas and New Years. Lots of street processions, neighborhood block parties and Oh yeah I can’t forget the fireworks!! I am sort of disappointed. I guess the Costa Rican’s don’t know how to party like the Nicas (if any Costa Rican heard me say that I would be in big trouble. There’s a rivalry between the two countries).

Anyways leading up to this week there was the huge and impressive two-week 12th annual International Art Festival in San Jose at Sabana Park. The festival featured more than 5,000 artists from 20 countries taking part in over 350 shows and activities. The program included cultural and artistic events—parades, music, dance, theater, opera, magic, clowns, puppet shows, and film in either Sabana Park or in/around downtown San Jose.

Since we didn’t really know about it until last minute we could not get tickets to any of the live theater performances, which I would have really liked, but we did go to the festival in Sabana Park both last Sunday and the one before.

We walked through the artesian booths which were set up and tented like a normal convention and sorted into sections such as traditional

Costa Rican art, more modern home décor, clothing, jewelry, paintings and other miscellaneous. There was so much really nice traditional and modern home décor that I wanted to buy (to add to my collection of Central American art which I will decorate our house with when we get home) but we decided on a vibrant, colorful painting instead. Though there were others that represented Costa Rica a bit better like images of frogs, birds or paddle boats we agreed on this one.

The rest of the time we walked around the park admiring all the families and friends together. We felt like locals appreciating the art and culture. We ate some (in my opinion) disgustingly, sweet bubble gum ice cream with fruit, petted the sad tied up colt horses and walked around the entire park looking at more art and crafts, clowns on stilts and people watching. Then we sat and watched kids practicing BMX free-style riding, skateboarders, urban running, and one goofy but determined roller skater try to do 360 tricks. By and large it was lots of fun.

Now if I can just find those festivals, parties and barbecues for Semana Santa before it’s over.


permalink written by  ryan & debbrial on April 1, 2010 from San Jose, Costa Rica
from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas
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An update of our lives....its going pretty good

San Jose, Costa Rica


Not much fun going on lately. Ryan’s been working his butt off since he got the manager / administrator position at the hostel. Which of course is a good thing but he has had so much to learn in a short time. The owner wants to start more construction at the Santa Teresa location and leave Ryan in charge of the San Jose location. In order to prove himself Ryan has had to be available almost 24/7 so he can be prepared and ready by the end of the month. On the other hand this means a pay raise. YES more than $2 an hour!!!

Ryan is loving it though. He likes not being stuck behind the desk all day long and the extra responsibilities. Now he is doing things like paying bills, managing the employees’ cash boxes and inventory, doing handy-man maintenance, and all the other odds and ends it takes to run a hostel. He says it’s a great experience for learning how to run his own business one day.

On the down side once he gets off work he hasn’t had much of a break because we are trying to sell Chiquimula and she needs lots of love before that day comes. He put her in the shop to get the rattling and shaking taken care of but now it seems there is an electrical problem. He says he can fix it himself it’s just trying to get the American part down here. I wish I could help but like I know anything about working on cars. Here's a picture of her current state.

Well what have I been up to? Ummm….working on sorting out documents needed for my work visa, which has NOT been easy since all the documents need to be certified copies from California including my finger prints for police record. Can’t I just tell them I’m a good girl and have never been arrested? No don’t think that will fly. Let’s see what else. I’ve been practicing my Spanish and started an aerobics class with one of my roommates. The aerobics class is at a park up the street from my house. It’s funny cause it’s a lot of older stay-at-home ladies and of course the class is all in Spanish. So most of the time I am one or two beats behind cause I have to watch everyone else to figure out what we are doing. Not that am completely coordinated when it comes to aerobic and dance moves anyways. But it’s a good workout and another way to practice my Spanish.

That’s pretty much it for now. We’ll check back soon.


permalink written by  ryan & debbrial on March 26, 2010 from San Jose, Costa Rica
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San Jose zip lining

San Jose, Costa Rica


The next day Ryan had to work so it was just Steve, Brandon and I. And at the guys request we went on a canopy zip line tour. Since we didn’t want to drive the 4 hour round trip to [[Costa-Rica/Monteverde]], where the good zip lining is, we were limited to the local San Jose zip-line companies.

I can’t remember what the company was called but it was out toward Tres Rios. The tour started with an awesome off road drive in their old Suburban truck. The drive was crazy but handled it. Then we had a tiring 25 minute hike up the hill to the start of the zip lines.

There were 12 zip lines and 2 rappels. Steve and Brandon totally dug the rappels. After the zip lining we had a typical Costa Rican casado lunch at the really nice restaurant; part of the tour. To my Surprise it ended up being a really good tour and fun day.

After the tour we came back to San Jose and I took the guys on a walking tour around San Jose. We went to the artisan row were the guys bought souvenirs for the family. Next I wanted to take them to the National Museum, which has a wonderful ornate neo-classical design on the inside, but it was late in the afternoon and the museum was closed for tours.


Instead we just walked around the city and enjoyed the various tropical central parks (one of my favorite things about San Jose) and the few worthy architectural building in San Jose; there’s not many compared to Los Angeles or Europe for that matter.

Anyways after all our sightseeing and tours we were all exhausted. We went for a delicious dinner at a Peruvian restaurant called Inka then meet up with Ryan for farewell drinks when he got off work. All in all I think Steve and Brandon got a good taste of “touristy” Costa Rica. And we all agreed we really really enjoyed the time spent together. It kinda made me miss home, family and friends BUT not enough to come home yet. Haha.


permalink written by  ryan & debbrial on March 17, 2010 from San Jose, Costa Rica
from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas
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Puff, Puff Costa Rican Cigar Factory Tour

San Jose, Costa Rica


What to do in San Jose? Hum?? Yeah we could do a walking tour around town and visit all the museums or go to the nearby volcanoes, Paos or Irazu, which usually have very little visibility because of the heavy clouds by mid morning. But what else, what would be interesting, unique and fun for three guys and me? First thing that comes to mind is zip lining, a coffee tour or hey what about a cigar factory tour. YEAH, that would be fun. So I searched around on the internet and found a cigar factory only 45 minutes drive from San Jose. Perfect.

On Tuesday morning Steve, Brandon, Ryan and I drove west from San Jose and up into the mountains to a small town called Santiago de Puriscal. The drive was beautiful. Lush green trees, rolling grass covered hills and mountains and one small traditional Costa Rican pueblo after another. Even though Chiquimula was wearing down from the steep incline we finally arrived at Vegas Santiago Cigar Factory

just as our tour was scheduled to start, 1pm. Our tour guide Antonio came out to greet us. The tour started with a display and explanation between the different types of tobacco leaves at the factory: Costa Rican, Honduras and Cuban. Then we entered the mid-size workshop where there were people sorting the tobacco leaves by size, color and thickness; de-veining the tobacco leaves; forming, cutting and pressing the tobacco leaves into cigars; and finally wrapping the cigars with carefully selected leaves cut to size and hand rolled into the final product. It was so interesting seeing the people move so fast and with perfection.

As part of the tour they let us try to roll our own cigars. I tried the forming, cutting and pressing stage but my cigar ended up looking like a giant messy medieval torch. Brandon on the other hand did the final stage of hand wrapping the cigar which turned out very well I might add.

After our debut as cigar rollers the tour guide led us into the cigar storage room. Woohoo! Boy does it smell strong in there. There were thousands of cigars big to small, thin to fat, strong to mild. It was so impressive and we were in awe but after about 6 minutes the sinking in our eyes and nostrils was about unbearable.

We left the store room for the last part of the tour: hand selected packaging. After the tour we sat down for a good cup of Costa Rican coffee and a Puff, Puff on our souvenir cigars.



permalink written by  ryan & debbrial on March 16, 2010 from San Jose, Costa Rica
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Surfing and Partying in Santa Teresa

Carmen, Costa Rica


After our little bit of site seeing San Jose last Monday we didn’t do much of anything else until Thursday. Ryan had to work and I just hung around the house. On Thursday morning we left for a mini-vacation back to Santa Teresa on the Nicoya Peninsula and stayed at Backpackers Tranquilo (the sister hostel of the one Ryan works at in San Jose). Our time in Santa Teresa consisted pretty much of the same old thing that always goes on there. Surf or lay out on the beach during the day and party at night.

Last time, over a month ago, when we were here I tried surfing but wasn’t very successful. I got tumbled by the waves since the sets in Santa Teresa are so close between. Plus I hate the salty water. But this time I decided to try again. Crazy me. So Friday morning we got up and hit the beach for some early morning surf when the wind is not so bad and the waves are a little calmer. Ryan found a long board for me to surf which as most everyone knows is easier and better for beginners. Anyways to make a long story short I caught like 6 or 7 waves (kinda white wash but hey), learned to turtle dive and practiced sitting on the board and turning it around. Overall a successful lesson. After I was done Ryan took the long board out and had some really fun.

At the hostel there is a private cabana specifically for the San Jose Tranquillo employees / administrator. On Thursday and Friday our friend / the administrator, Chafic, was staying in the cabana but on Saturday day he went back to San Jose so we got to move into the cabana for the next two nights. Even though it is a hike up the hill from the hostel, especially difficult at night with no lights, it was kinda romantic. The cabana reminds me of a tree house. It is open on three sides but surround by trees for privacy, has a small kitchen, bathroom with shower and a small dining table with two chairs. The best part is the four post queen size bed with mosquito netting. Just like the movies but on a hostel budget.

Since it was so hot and humid at the beach we spent a lot of time in the cabana relaxing in the cool breeze up on the hill. Saturday day we just chilled and read our books. Saturday night though we went out to an awesome house party with Lila, the Tranquillo Backpackers receptionist in Santa Teresa, and her friend. The party was at this huge beautiful house on the beach decorated in a Crate and Barrel style. They had an open bar and DJ. After the house party we went to D&N the local night club that everyone goes to. A couple hours there then we went back to the hostel.

Sunday was a RR day after all the partying the night before and Monday morning we head back to San Jose to met up with my uncle Steve and cousin Brandon. They were in Costa Rica for a business fishing trip and decided to stay a couple extra days to spend time with us. After 6 months this will be the first time we see family. Looking forward to it.


permalink written by  ryan & debbrial on March 14, 2010 from Carmen, Costa Rica
from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas
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