Day 204 – Granada- Nicaragua at its sweetest

It is hard to deny that Granada is a cozy place. Even though people hyped it so much for me that it was hard to immediately feel impressed, but after walking around a bit and having a couple of beers with some nice guys from all over the world the atmosphere of the place became apparent also to me (no, not just because of the beer ).

As always though you have all the ills that come with a constant stream of tourists. Like beggars, the ever so annoying money changer and touts who hazzle you to a hostel to get a commission. But once you have dropped your luggage off in one of the really lovely hostels the relaxing atmosphere of the place starts to engulf you.

There is really nothing unusual about this place and yet, the little plazas and parks, old churches and colonial buildings, the cute cafés and restaurants and not least its situation right by lago Nicaragua all make you feel at home instantly. Too bad I am in quite a rush at the moment otherwise I would probably hang out a bit longer.

Besides that Nicaragua in general certainly is not as safe as some guidebooks want to make you believe. The LP states that Nicaragua were the safest of all Central American states. However, travelers report differently. Like the British couple I met yesterday who told of them being tricked into a collectivo (taxi) and being robbed and held hostage for three hours until they withdrew money and gave it to the robbers.

The crooks showed some sense of humor when they left them telling them to be cautious since Nicaragua were a dangerous place…

Day 202 – Heaven is a place on earth?

Ometepe is a fantastically special place. The world’s largest island on a lake consists of little more than the tops of two volcanoes in very close proximity to each other. Hence the island sticks out of the smooth surface of lake Nicaragua like two pimples from a teenager’s face. Just much, much more picturesque.

Ometepe, Santo Domingo beach

And much more relaxed than would be allowed anywhere else in the world. When they invented the saying that time runs different in a place, they thought of Ometepe. Every house seems to be obliged to have a hammock in the front and no one seems to be allowed to pursue any kind of labor between 12 midday and five in the afternoon. Not quite, but it sure feels like it.

The best thing is that here tourism fortunately has not taken hold of everything- yet. If word spreads about this place I can see the resorts growing. Hopefully not, so hush hush…

Today I rented a motorbike in order to cruise around the volcanoes and marvel at the beautiful landscape and beaches. Thanks to the fact that I have no license to even legally touch a vehicle like that the beginning was a bit shaky. But after some 30 minutes I was already racing the locals (idiotically considering the condition of the roads- did I call pothole infested dirty strip of land around the island a road?).

Very much fun, even though now I hardly feel my wrists due to the shaking, jumping and vibrating around all day. The place is indeed marvelous! With all its beautiful beaches, cute little cottages and the friendliest people I have met in awhile. I even met someone from Germany. It was an interesting conversation where we both informed each other to come from close to Cologne. Moved on to: “More precisely Euskirchen”. And eventually “Mechernich”.

Who would have thought I would meet someone from my tiny little hometown on a remote island in Nicaragua? I did not know her really but we knew the same people at home. A truly bizarre and surreal feeling in a place like this. An interesting conversation about leaving “home” for good (she lives here now), the downsides of Germany and the problems of adjusting to a different culture followed. And how heaven sometimes turns out to not quite being heaven…

Day 201 – The road less traveled by

The trip from Costa Rica to Nicaragua must have established a personal record. After using seven different vehicles and almost 12 hours after leaving at six in the morning I arrived on Ometepe Island with the last ferry of the day. Five minutes later the ferry would have been gone, and I did not even know about it. What a coincidental timing!

Ometepe immediately seems very pleasant. Even though the pair of parrots who live at my tremendously cozy hostel, which is situated in the midst of palm trees and blossoming flowers, greeted me by trying to bite my hand off. On the other hand (no pun intended) I immediately met a nice guy who is from Barcelona originally. He made a real effort to get me settled in.

I could have chosen to come here by tourist buses which would have cost me some 60 or even more Euros and some six hours less time. But using public transport, mostly the so called chicken-express (due to the likelihood of sharing space with some livestock) it cost me ten Euros for a couple of hundred kilometers. And that even includes that I had a taxi drive me to an ATM, wait for me to get cash and get me to the harbor to catch the ferry!

Transport really is tremendously cheap here. On the other hand I have been at some bus stops which I would not want to frequent during the darker hours of the day… Also the border crossing cost me some nerves. The amount of money changers, taxi touts and scam artist who try to make you believe you would have to buy certain forms off them (which are of course free, as anywhere in the world) and people who claim you would not be able to sort things out on your own, and then offer you their generous help (which would have cost the equivalent of today’s transport) is exhausting.

However, I always think in moments like this: thank you India! Nothing can touch me anymore! You made me un-shockable, un-impressable, un-scamable, you made me almost invincible!

The border thingy also became more bearable thanks to some Nicaraguan guy and his girlfriend who took the same bus as me and did not mind me tagging along. So nice with nice people. But despite the border experience- and borders in any developing country must suck in accordance to some UN directive, I believe- people were very helpful indeed. It seems so far that people are genuinely interested in furthering tourism in Central America by going out of their way to help. One can not help but feeling welcomed…

—-
The road less traveled by, Robert Frost- the story of our lifes’

Day 198 – Adventure tours in the Jungle

As mentioned in a previous entry, the Costa Rican tourist industry in Monteverde and Santa Elena offers everything you could think of in terms of activities. I decided to do a canopy tour which is however more of an adventure trip than a “ecotouristic” experience.

However, it was fun and beautiful up there in the top of the forest amidst the giants of this ever wet and green mountainous forest. But now I feel I am done with this place or rather the way its exploitation is carried out. I move on to the cheaper (hopefully) and more natural Nicaraguan natural wonders…

Talking to a British Lady today I realized that it was not just me feeling there is something wrong with that. Most tourists here are not backpackers though but instead many US American couples and families. Well…they feel comfortable because they also think Disneyland was a brilliant idea. Personally I wish that this forest would not be turned into something like it. On the other hand, by doing this the tourist are kept to some very restricted areas and if you decide to go walking deep into the forest your experience is going to a more natural and real one.

But then again, I have spend enough time here and am now keener on moving on. Today I had another shocking experience when one load of laundry cost me more than 6 Euros! Not even in Europe would I have to pay this much. As far as I am concerned it is clear that the Costa Ricans do not want me here…

The end of Aviation?

Recently I read that there is reason to think that flying is going to be difficult in the future. At the very least it is going to be incredibly expensive. So much, that few of us are going to be able to afford it. But also think of all the implications for transportation of goods and the like! What am I talking about? Peak oil is the key word.

When it comes to peak oil not much is being reported yet. And especially right now, with oil prices being very low due to the global financial and economic crisis not many talk of oil anymore. However, the fact has not changed that oil is a limited resource.

You, ladies and gentleman have the honor and pleasure to be amongst the chosen individuals who will see the beginning of the end of the oil era! I know, if you have not heard something about it before you surely think it is a hoax, some kind of conspiracy theory maybe. But then you just sit back, enjoy and listen to the media which will certainly report more about the topic within the next five years.

I am certain that within ten years from now every child will know what “peak oil” means. A seemingly bold prediction, but if you look at the geological facts not at all that bold. In fact the situation is so clear cut, that it is thanks to the oil industry itself that we are not hearing more about it right now.

As shown on a page that I found today [1] the “peak” is predicted to occur around 2015. Not in accordance to the oil industry of course, but in accordance to oil experts, I.e. geologists and even in accordance to economists.

Now, if it is so clear, what is it that is going to happen? Oil is going to be far more expensive, because we are not going to be able to produce enough for the whole planet. Now this may seem strange to you. How do we know oil is running out? Since 1964 the new found oilfields have steadily decreased in size. No large fields are found anymore today.

Maybe you have heard of huge fields being found recently? If you look at the facts you will find that they are realy small in comparison to our needs though. Since the late 80s we in fact find less oil each year than we are using! Logically if we have less than we need the market will regulate the price up. Now if oil really gets very expensive, the current crisis might in hindsight look like a fun party. In fact we might transition from the current crisis right into the oil price or peak oil crisis.

Why not just pump more oil so we cover our needs until we can come up with a smart solution to the problem? There are technical limits to the amount we can extract from the fields. These limits are well known to geologists and based on them they can predict what the maximum production capacity is going to be in 2015. And they have come up with the finding that this is probably the moment when we reach the maximum possible production volume of crude oil. In 2016 less than in 2015, in 2017 less than in 2016 and so on until we produce just fractions of what we would need.

Besides, if we find ways of increasing production we just run out extremely abruptly at some point. Probably that point in theory would be around or after 2050. Not so much time to come up with a real genius solution!

Troubling about all this this is the fact that you, honored reader, probably have not heard much about it yet, if anything. Many believe that we will find substitutes, but that would require that we start looking for them. And pronto! But we are not even yet addressing the issue. Politicians the world over are in a deeply ignorant state about peak oil it seems.

This is where the other article [2] I found comes in and makes matters even worse. Because when it comes to fuel for airplanes then there simply is no substitute even in sight, and we desperately need the aeronautics in order to maintain our economies. Read the article, it is very interesting. This is not in any way indicating though that this would be our biggest problem. Color, medication, fabrics, plastics and many more things are made from oil.

One word to you if you decide to be skeptical about what I just told you; go and check the information available. I know that we are bombarded by info each day that makes it hard to distinguish fact from fiction. This is why you have me.

As a skeptic myself but at the same time curious and furthermore as an individual highly trained in dissecting facts from fiction (one of the few very good things I can say about my scientific education) I have done the job for you. This is no fiction, and you do yourself and your family, friends, maybe kids a favor if you do not ignore it.

Start with something simple like www.oildecline.com [1] if you like, or watch a documentary to the topic which I recommended in previous posts [3-5].

1)http://www.oildecline.com/
2)http://www.airliners.net/aviation-articles/read.main?id=81
3)http://davidkramer.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/day-125-kings-for-a-day-fools-for-a-lifetime/
4)http://davidkramer.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/peak-oil-2/
5)http://davidkramer.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/peak-oil/ in German but with great links in English!

Day 196 – Head in the Cloud forest of Monteverde

Even though Costa Rica is so expensive compared to the other Central American countries and most South American countries that it feels like a rip-off, it is beautiful. It is pleasant for a change to find people who speak English. On the other hand comes with it the rip-off attitude of too many and overpricing.

The food is not all that expensive really if you stick to local places but when it comes to anything tourist it is merely insane. Prices are like in Europe or the US. They want some 45$ for a two hours canopy tour in Monteverde or more precisely in Santa Helena Cloud reserve. It better be good! Don’t get this wrong, were it in Europe it would be a normal price or even be cheap. But if you pay some 20 cents for a bus ride of half an hour and three Euro something for a complete local meal you start to wonder…

I take the trip tomorrow, meanwhile the clip below got me interested enough in order to come here in the first place.

The whole tourist-shabang is going on here: canopy tour, hiking tour, night tour, snake tour, humming bird tour, children’s eternal forest tour, waterfall tour, frog and butterfly pond, horseback riding, coffee tour, sugar cane tour, tarzan swings, orchid project… it is amazing! If you wanted, you could EASILY spend more than several hundred dollars per day on tours, who often cost up to 65$ a piece to just walk into a forest! Insane. Sure time to get to cheaper Nicaragua after this.

I was surprised that some people skipped Costa Rica altogether, but now I get it. Their reputation is worth too much on a tight backpacker’s budget. However, I am sure that the tour tomorrow is gonna be nice. And what value do you put on something like this? On a maybe once-in-a-lifetime experience? Exactly, who is to say…

Day 195 – Dangers of San José

San José was not the terribly ugly place everyone told me about, on the other hand the dangers everyone emphasized might not have been exaggerated. There is not that much to see in the city but the center is quite pleasant anyhow. Nevertheless, walking around late at night is not at all recommended. At least not in most areas and even where it is relatively safe you should not carry too many or unnecessary valuables.

I met a guy on the bus there who had been robbed at gun point and who, after by reflex resisting slightly when they took his wallet, was hit on the head. He had to have some stitches and was fine afterwards. However, he seemed determined never again to walk even just the 200 meters from the bus stop to a house, as he did, but always take a taxi in the future.

Interestingly if you hear about dangerous places in Latin America San José is seldomly mentioned, maybe because fewer people come here than to, let´s say Rio de Janeiro for instance. Lat year there were some six hundred robberies in San José alone. I guess if one can avoid San José that is not the worst idea. But as so often with big cities it makes for an excellent hub to get anywhere in Costa Rica. I stayed one night in some cheap place and moved on…

Generally Costa Rica seems to have plenty of scams ready for the unsuspecting tourist. A shame, but it seems to come with unregulated mass tourism that people in Latin language speaking Catholic countries go that road. Something to do with the religion itself? Or to do with the language?

Interesting factoid: the only really nasty and dangerous place in (South-East) Asia are the Philippines. The they speak Spanish and are catholic… a lethal mixture?

The law of Evolution

Calling the processes that led to life via evolution a “theory” causes tremendous confusion amongst non-scientists. As I pointed out previously; the theory of evolution should be called the “law of evolution” for all practical purposes when dealing with laymen.

Check: http://www.notjustatheory.com/

Evolutionary tree, with bacteria blue, archaea green, and eukaryotes red.

Two key sentences in that which I want to draw particular attention to: “When scientists use the word theory, it has a different meaning to normal everyday use.” and “In science, a theory is not a guess, not a hunch. It’s a well-substantiated, well-supported,
well-documented explanation for our observations.”

Theory in science doesn’t mean guess… that would be a hypothesis.

Theory is demonstrable and demonstrated. A Theory has undergone strenuous tests and proofs. And is as such considered as fact unless and until proven wrong.

Colloquial use of the word Theory causes never-ending grief for scientists when they try to
explain anything to the press or non-scientific public because people’s brains have been trained to think of theories as extremely uncertain, whereas they are
the opposite in science. (That being said there are also scientists who throw it around clumsily making the situation even worse)

Get over it, Evolution is a fact. Just as much as the theory of general relativity or the older Newtonian version, the theory of gravity are facts.

And similar to this example of the theory of gravity, changes of the law of evolution are going to be of relatively (no pun intended) minor extend. The general direction is set (because very well proven). The law of evolution has an astounding explanatory power, as any great “theory” of science should have.

Just accept it, evolution is not going to disappear or becoming wrong just because your ideological world view requires so.

If you are a creationist and struggle to accept this fact, I recommend reading several books written by Richard Dawkins about the topic. If you then still struggle study biology, preferably molecular biology and genetics for 18 or 19 terms, that helped me a lot…

Day 194 – Atomic Latina tits

Mannquin with big boobs

There is an interesting gradient in South America all the way up to Panama. The boobs are getting bigger. And not just on real women but also on the display dummies in cloth stores. On the dummies to an extend that looks preposterous. I won’t complain about the ones on real women though- that would be rude….

While the ones on the mannequins in the shops are 100% plastics many male experts still discuss which mammaries on “real” women are fake and which are not.

Most amazing from a sociological view point is that women seem not to mind the fact. Or do they? And also: how is the interaction of the two? What was first; plastic in real women or huge gazongas on the dummies? Do the dummies influence how women feel about their boobs and encourage them to get plastic themselves? So many questions…

At the same store I saw a girl who’s T-shirt made me smile (I am so sad I did not ask her if I could have her picture, especially since she smiled back- sorry folks- next time…). It read: “Who needs big boobs?” The owner of the shirt was a cute Latina without plastic as I assume. It seems to at least answer the question if women think about it. I guess so, otherwise there were no market for such t-shirts. To answer the question the t-shirt posed is somewhat harder: who indeed needs them boobies? Women themselves, men, kids, i.e. babies, the gay designers of the fashion industry or…?

SD card write protection problem

My Kingston Card reader/ memory stick, i.e. flash drive combination is a wonderful small invention perfect for traveling and it was cheap as well. Maybe too cheap? Recently one of my SD cards gives me a problem. When I stick it in my windows XP running Asus computer says “write protected”. “Turn write protection off or use another card”. Thank you. That means throw the shit, I thought.

I checked many blogs and found some that had to do with a malfunctioning memory stick/ flash drive/ reader. However, I had that problem before, but my memory stick on the reader worked just fine.

The solution is really simple: just tape some scotch or similar tape over the SD card’s write protection slot. The reader then “thinks” the SD card has no write protection funtionality and indeed does everything you want with it.

Check this blog, where I found it: http://www.sanbaldo.com/wordpress/bad-interface/sd-card-reader-disk-is-write-protected/

In case you have the former mentioned problem with the memory stick (flash) itself. This is a great example of things I hate about Microsoft. On their page you will find a passage that says something like: stay the hell away from the registry, since you may fuck things up, but then again, sometimes windows itself is so fucked up that you have no frickin’ choice than to mess around with the intestines of the crappy OS we have provided you with and pray to your gods for the best…

They express a bit differently, but mean just that [1].

So, in case the problem you have is that your USB flash drive says it were “writeprotected” even though you are sure you never messed with it, then try the following [2], while being cautious –> Backup is the miracle solution! [3]:

Open the command line editor of windows XP (in my case, and in that case hopefully your, if I am to help you). You find that under “Start”, the choose “Run”. There you enter “regedit”. This starts a little program that allows you to operate within the holiest of sites of windows, the registry. Here all kind of actions and behaviors of the system are set.

Go to the path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\
CurrentControlSet\Control \StorageDevicePolicies

This is simply a folder within a folder and so on… The final folder, the one you are looking for is called StorageDevicePolicies, and as the name suggests contains the settings for how the storage devices (USB flash) should behave.

Here you right click on: “WriteProtect” and select “modify”. Here you set the value that appears to “0″. Press enter and that’s it. (In other words: Default value: DWORD=0)

Possible values are:
0 – Disabled
1 – Enabled

Yours was set to “1″ I guess which protected it from being written on.

Now, things like this and a million other small things made me try Apple’s OS Leopard (back then actually tiger), or OS X (say: OS ten, but no one dies if you say as some, me included: OS “eks” ).

To put it simple: I won’t go back for the moment. It is not screw ups alone that make me say that. Screw ups happen with every human made system (less so with OSX, for real!), but really it is the handling. Small things that just make no sense, like for instance: if I have a long list of alphabetically ordered folders in windows xp explorer and I jump from, let’s say some folder under “K” to the subfolders. I then realize that I was wrong, and jump back. I arrive at the folders starting with the letter “A” and have to scroll down. WHY, windows???

Anyhow, maybe I am not getting it, but with OSX I am not asked to get anything. It will just jump back to where I came from, since that in 99% of the cases is where I wanted to go back to.

I know it is a minor example and probably it will not make sense to you why that is so important unless you have been using OSX for some months. But then it makes a hell lot of sense…

That is why I hate Apple. Why would they program a system that runs only on Apple machines? Now I am stuck again with this buggy WinXP that I thought to have left behind me, because I work on this Asus while I travel. Why APPLE, WHYYYYYY????

—————

[1] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256986

[2] http://www.wiredbox.net/Forum2/Thread62921_Find_ControlStorageDevicePolicies.aspx

[3] http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/regedit.html