Settled in at El Coco Playa…

Enjoying the weather with daily trips to the beach took some of the sting out of having had my credit card info stolen and multiple bogus charges applied…

I called my bank and asked point blank how much time I had to dispute the charges and the gal told me first, 30 days, then later in the convo walked back from that and said, oh, it’s 90 days. My recollection was that it was 30 days so I didn’t quite believe her. And my follow up question about that in subsequent contact with my bank never actually got a direct answer. So I searched online and found that the law is 30 days and then the bank can refuse to help. Doesn’t mean they would refuse, just that they can, I guess. In other words, they don’t or can’t walk back any bogus charges to your credit card after 30 days. But they don’t want consumers to know that.

But armed with that info I worked hard at getting this wrapped up by requesting what turned out to be 8 bogus charges to my CC reversed. What I had to do was find a legal authority (same as a notary public in the USA) to verify my signature on a form that the bank sent me via email in PDF format. My VRBO host has a printer and he printed the form out for me, I filled in all the charges I thought were bogus (the bank later contacted me about another one that I’d missed…which was nice of them) and took the form to a nearby lawyer I’d found during my daily bike ride. That lawyer had the official government stamp and he charged me $20 to verify my signature (he watched while I signed) and perused my passport, then he  stamped it and scanned it into his computer and emailed it to me. Then I used my tablet computer to email it to the bank. So this entire situation of the stolen CC info and bogus charges to my card took nearly 3 weeks to get straightened out. I am glad that I took care of it in Costa Rica rather then waiting to get home as I might have missed the 30 day deadline and have had to eat those charges. I only post this info as a warning and example that when traveling, keep a close watch on your bank charges as where and by who my CC info was stolen I only know was related to the numerous travel expenses I used my CC to pay for. ALL of them seemed legit. One of them obviously has criminals working inside the company. Twice now I’ve been hit by that one company that sells ‘shopping club’ memberships. They are criminals through and through. The first time was before another trip 6 or 7 years ago when their charges started showing up on my CC. That time though, I was savvy enough and angry enough that I got them to reverse the charges after several calls. This time I just didn’t want to bother being all tough on the phone and make multiple calls to them so I just had the bank reverse them. Fuk ’em.

Anyway, on one of my bike trips to town, I decided to ride the bike up the road straight to CocoNutz bar and as I was carefully negotiating coming off a steep hill down to a main, heavily traveled road in town I fell off the bike off a steep shoulder into a ditch. Yikes! That hurt. My foot and ankle immediately started to swell up. I limped over to CocoNutz to watch the Oregon Ducks football game and I watched it turn purple and swell. But…it didn’t hurt all that much. And I could easily put weight on it. Hmm.

North of my rental was a strip mall that I’d ride the bike to quite often. Has a mini market where I got most of my food before I found that nice big box store, and a coffee shop that had this delicious b-fast sandwich I craved. Yum. So good. Coffee was good too. What you see here is an $8.50 b-fast. They had a lending library too where I traded my finished bedtime book for “Shaman’s Crossing”. What a great story that is.

Later that day was when I rode my bike and fell off injuring my ankle, here I’m nursing it while checking out the upstairs area of CocoNutz. Usually I’d sit down in the lower area for better views of the many TVs, where I’d try to score a table with the best view of the game I wanted to watch. Different games on every TV. The NFL Sunday’s have like 8 games on at a time. I kept feeling my ankle to try to tell if it was broken but it didn’t seem to be. I could walk with a slight limp and it was swelling up pretty good and turning an ugly purple/black/yellow and my big toe was all purple too. but there was little pain when I walked on it, and I could climb stairs okay.

Went back downstairs and sat at the bar glanced back upstairs and there’s this huge lizard on the upstairs cover. Watched him scurrying around for a bit. Kinda cool.

The game came on and I had their $10 special of chicken nuggets with fries. Usually $19, wow, not worth that. But there was enough food that I took half of everything home for another dinner the next night.

Two days later, Esteban and I headed off for a site-seeing adventure. There are a lot of private drivers available in CR as that is both a formal industry with licensed guides and an informal friend of a friend who has a car sort of thing. In this case, I asked my rental host if he knew someone who could give me a tour of the surrounding countryside, maybe go somewhere interesting and he, Will, recommended the guy upstairs, Esteban, who is also a rental host…AirBnB I think…so he rented a car (I assumed he had a working deal with a local car rental outfit) and off we went into the country.

We passed this but made no attempt to stop…at this point I didn’t know what we were planning on doing out in the jungle.

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Here’s were we had some trouble. The car wouldn’t cross the creek in the area where we first tried to cross. Made several attempts. Esteban was too far to the right and the nose of the car would dive in too deep. And it was repeatedly stalling so he’d start it and carefully back up before trying again. I later had to teach him to use 2nd gear instead of 1st to accelerate on the flat which avoids stalling the car time after time. A grown man driving a stick should know that but Esteban didn’t.

So we waited for some other cars to pass us and watched where they crossed and then followed their route. The car was damaged on the undercarriage during our first couple attempts. Some of the plastic skid plate or air dam was torn. I didn’t crawl under there to look, not my problem.

But we eventually made it across…by the way, this is just your ordinary roadway to a large community near and on the coast! This is the kind of road maintenance you see here in CR. Poor. And obviously there’s no bridge there, just a ford across what can be a raging river during the wet season. Esteban tells me there’s another route that’s much longer.

After crossing, there were 200 mts or so of gravel road that eventually turned paved. So around 1/2 mile of roadway in very poor condition where we had to cross a large creek. Esteban, and my reading about CR tells me that this is typical here.

We passed though a good sized village with signs that many ex-pats lived there and onto the nearby beach. Took some shots of the bay.

Pretty nice beach, but unremarkable with not much to look at. But I see that this is where Esteban wanted to take me. I asked if this was one of his hangouts and sure enough, this is where he often came to pick up gurls. Used to live nearby so understandable.

So far this excursion has cost me $40 for the driver, $28 for lunch with beer. And another $10 for 2 more beers on the trip back home. The food was awful. Dunno why he likes the place; dusty, dingy, filthy restroom. Place seems to be many decades old, the sign outside said 1950. I think there was a prostitute or two in the back rooms too.

Anyway, we watched the soccer game for a while while eating lunch. Then we sort of drove a little up a dirt road to another bay and across the bay was our next destination. Those condos over on the other side.

Eventually we did get to a paved road, and past this village…again with an ex-pat vibe.

Esteban had tried repairing the damage he caused to the rental car back at that bar, and again when we stopped at a modern brewery we had passed on the way in. Huh. All American style setup. Beer wasn’t that good either so we only had one each. Big place with seating for at least 75 or so. Wasn’t very crowded at 3 pm but they were ready for big crowds for sure during NFL games based on all the signs…I only mention this to point out how populated this rural area is with ex-pats. I could tell by the signage that this brew pub was likely the pet project of some rich American ex-pat in the area. OR by some consortium of investors that hired an American builder. Whatever the case, we should have had lunch there instead.

There really are some nice looking scenic views in the area.

On the way back we took a slightly different route and went by some farms and villages I would consider more authentically Costa Rican but remember CR has been a tourist destination for a very long time, more than 100 years, and it’s pretty small, so much of that ‘authentic’ feel is pretty much gone now. And even here along the non-descript Pacific coast line there is a Margaritaville.

You can see from the pictures that the weather was changing but it was pleasant the entire trip. Never rained on us though it was mostly cloudy much of the day. Esteban was driving and I just let him take me were his fancy wandered so I don’t really know at this point where the fuk we were except I know we were south of El Coco on the Pacific. We drove up to visit those condos on the hill and he kept stalling the car by downshifting to 1st…this is where I mansplained to him that if he’d just try using 2nd gear instead he wouldn’t have to restart hundreds of times. He tired that, and sure enough, soon we weren’t stalling as much. Not at all actually. Many stick shift drivers don’t realize that 1st gear is to get your car out of holes or off a snow bank, not for everyday driving. Dummies.

And here’s that brew pub I mentioned earlier that we past on the way back to El Coco. Stopped in to check it out, and a late afternoon beer.

And we pass a nearby village, then into farming country…slightly different route then when we came south.

And another village. This one slightly larger. Esteban told me he grew up here.

We stopped at another bar he used to frequent at this last village, before he moved to El Coco and there was this horse across the street. Healthy looking. No fence though. Poor thing just tied to a tree. Can’t move much. Maybe the horse’s owner was just visiting.

Not much of a bar, but I guess it has meaning for him. Not a brew pub but does have an IPA.

Sadly, I didn’t get any pictures of some of the interesting farms we passed. Well, no biggie, I remember them. A couple of them were growing sugar cane. It had flowered and had these giant tufts of fluffy growths on top. Eight or nine feet tall. Huge fields of them.

Well, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading, come back next time. Still have a couple more weeks worth of tourist-ing in Costa Rica including a very cool catamaran trip up the coast. Ya don’t wanna miss that.