4 Billion Spiders and a Wedding

I know that I've been kind of torturing my poor friend Edee, who actually seems to get nauseated when she sees spiders, but seeing as how my own fascination with them seems to now border into some sort of horrifying obsession, it's hard not to talk about them. We're in Australia now and they have billions of spiders here of all shapes and sizes, many of which can apparently kill you simply by stepping into the same room with you.


Not even the spiders could keep us down!

We flew into Australia from Fiji and were still in a near comatose state of relaxation. So relaxed that when entering through customs I apparently thought the date was in 1975 until the customs agent informed me otherwise. At this point Laura insisted it was, in fact, 1975 by handing in her own card which also clearly stated that the current date was February 17, 1975. But hey, at least we weren't the girl on the plane next to us that thought her nationality as shown on her passport was Caucasian.

After debating what to do for the first four days before the wedding festivities commenced, we chose to head to the Blue Mountains near Sydney and the Hunter Valley, also near Sydney in the opposite direction. Our trip into the Blue Mountains ended up being a pretty relaxing and uneventful time where we were fortunate enough not to run into any arachnids. We did, however, run into a huge bank of fog that kept us from seeing farther than 20 feet when we took a hike along the canyon ridge to get a glimpse of the three sisters (a famous rock formation) and Australian's lush green version of the Grand Canyon. The wall of grey was interesting in its own right, but not exactly what we had in mind. We drove back down later in the day and the fog had lifted so that we had the view we were hoping for and as you can see below, it really is quite nice.



The rest of the time we hung out in the town of Katoomba and relaxed with some food at a crazy little cafe called Common Ground which is run by some commune folks that have communities all over the world. The main reason I mention it is because it had one of the most interesting interiors I've seen. It looked like hobbits should have hung out there or some such thing. While that may be a bit too dorky for some of you (but probably not most of you), I got a kick out of it and Laura and I are positive that both of our fathers, having an interest in wood working, would have enjoyed the place mightily. Too bad we didn't take pictures.

From the Blue Mountains we motored down to Hunter Valley which is a wine region in Australia that is famous for its Semillon and Shiraz, both of which we tasted in quantity. I think both of us would be happy if Semillon was produced more in the US. It was yummy in my tummy. I could tell you all about the different flavors and such but I really have no idea. My knowledge of wine is about as strong as my palette. The area is quite beautiful so if you're into nice things, you'd probably enjoy yourself.



The unfortunate truth of Hunter Valley is that it also houses some of it's own terrifying spiders. There's mostly the brown ones that like to make themselves look smaller than they are by curling up their legs and build webs across everything so you walk down the pathway, run into them with your face, and then do the "I might have a spider on my face" dance. Then there's the huge Hell Spiders (Hellicus Spiderus is the scientific classification I think) that create disgusting webs that make you have waking nightmares and vomit a little in your mouth every time you walk by.

On Thursday we booked it down to Sydney to check in at the Mercantile Hotel in the Rocks area of Sydney, which is a pretty great location right near downtown and also right near the wharf where you can take ferries all over the area. One of the cool things about many of the hotels is that they're attached to pubs. Apparently back in the day these places needed to have accommodations to be granted a liquor license so most of the older ones have plenty of rooms above pretty lively watering holes. Sydney is a beautiful city that is somewhat like a newer and cleaner version of San Francisco. Australia in general is so much like home in so many ways that it's almost like you don't even have to think about it.



We both went out that first night to the buck and hen parties (that's bachelor and bachelorette parties for those of you confused) and had a pretty great time meeting the friends of Andy and Josie. I didn't have a great time the next morning and most of the next day, but wanting to throw up the next day is a small sacrifice for knowing that you helped your friend relax a little bit before his wedding.





The next evening was the rehearsal dinner and all of the overseas guests were invited so we were happy to attend and had another great dinner and more conversation and more booze. Mary Ann Ross also brought our care package from home, which was awesome. We now have a million CDs, an iPod, and a Creative Zen to keep us company and we were happy with most of the music choices though some of you clearly need some psychological assistance. Even so, we'll listen to each of the CDs and think of all of you fondly. I do have to give one special shout out to Margot for the inclusion of Sandstorm, which is awesome enough to make a guy's brain hurt.



The following day we went hunting for clothes to wear to the wedding because we found out a couple of days earlier that suit rentals are just about as expensive as buying a suit, which makes little to no sense. So we bought some pants and a shirt so I could look presentable while Laura found a nice shirt she thought was a little nicer than anything she had along and she definitely looked beautiful in it, though I can't remember her not looking beautiful. That night we met up with Bennet Ring and Erica Bero, who the IGN US guys will likely recognize. We had a great dinner at this little pub that serves tasty grub. I finally ate my first kangaroo an it was delicious. It was hard not to look at them at the zoo without getting a little hungry the next day.



The zoo was pretty awesome. They had some great enclosures with what looked like pretty happy animals with million dollar views of Sydney harbor. The biggest treat was probably seeing the active lions moving around about a foot from our faces behind the window of the enclosure. They are some powerful beasties though I'm doubting that they taste quite as delicious as the kangaroos. Of course, the zoo also had spiders. We didn't need to go to an exhibit though because they had webs everywhere. Half of our time in the zoo was spent hoping that the thousands of spiders in the webs above our heads didn't decide our heads were tastier than the insects they were obviously quite successful in catching. There must be some poor soul that has to wake up every day and clear out and spiders that decided the opportunity to catch a human by placing a web across the path was too delicious to pass up.



Finally, yesterday we got to see my good friend Andy get married to a brilliant gal named Josie. I know it's corny, but weddings make me happy and while I know Andy doesn't like to be anywhere near the spotlight, he did alright and should do alright from here on. The location for the wedding was very pretty, the ceremony was nice, and the food was great. It's a warm and happy group of people that those two have surrounded themselves with and we were thrilled to be a part of it.





We'll be spending the rest of the day wandering Sydney before heading out to Hong Kong where I'm going to yell "pang dee la" at everyone that I see. We'll have another update for you after that I'm sure. Hopefully I'll learn to be less wordy in the mean time since this has turned into another epic.

Dan & Laura

Now With 100% More Pictures!

Having worked at IGN for so many years, I’m painfully aware of how excruciating it is for most lazy apes like you (and us) to stare at so many words without having pictures to break up the monotony. In this case, there are a lot of words, so we apologize for the strain on your eyeballs. Thankfully now that we’re out of Fiji, we’ve come across a computer that will allow us to download pictures off of our camera and upload them for you to see. We’ve even done this all the way back to the beginning. If you'd like to see all of our pictures (at least the ones that are good), go ahead and visit flickr page. Now, I know we promised the end of Costa Rica, so we’ll begin the text there, but first, a message from our sponsor in Fiji.



Now that that’s over with, we’d also like to thank everyone for contributing to our music relief fund. According to my folks, you guys did us right and we feel very loved. We’ll have more on that when we see what’s actually in the package though we apparently may only have to listen to each song once before we get back. Melissa Guyre and Darren Gladstone even decided they could risk the untimely capture or death of their old iPod and Creative Zen’s full of music and some TV shows apparently, which is obviously extremely generous. Thank you all so much! Your music will be the soundtrack of our journey so it’s a little like we’ll have you along for the ride. Mary Ann Ross, the soon to be married Andy Ross's mom, is also playing the part of packhorse to bring everything over to us in Australia and we’d like to thank her as well, though we’ll do so in person in a few days.

So, last time we added anything, we had survived the volcano in Arenal. While we’re on the subject of volcanoes, if you have the chance, check out the National Geographic about the volcanoes and the mysticism surrounding them in Indonesia, you really should. Anyway, we took the long winding path to Manuel Antonio and only got lost a couple of times, which isn’t so bad considering that Costa Rica hasn’t yet discovered the technology to name their streets (more on that in a bit). The interesting thing about the roads is that they aren’t nearly as awful as we had been led to believe. Yes, there were some potholes (and maybe even some sinkholes with signs sticking out of them in the middle of the road), but I’m not sure most of the roads we were on weren’t just as good as in San Francisco (which I suppose isn’t saying much) even though they’re narrow, have insane gutters (that cause plenty of accidents involving the trucking industry I think), and don’t have much in the way of painted lane lines. Along the way to MA, we also came across a pretty cool bridge, if sketchy and probably very hazardous, under which several crocodiles like to hang out. Apparently they’ll occasionally nab a cow or a farmer for lunch and judging by the size of some of them, it’s not too hard to imagine.



Once in the Manuel Antonio area, we found our lovely villa on the road between the park and Quepos called Pete’s Place. As you can guess, a guy named Pete owns it. Pretty ideal for the family and included a huge (and stunningly well maintained) pool and a gigantic dog named Moose that likes to wander the neighborhood begging for food. The road along the way to the park is made up almost entirely of hotels, bars, and restaurants some of which seem to be quite good. Laura appreciated the delicious flavor of Red Snapper Azteca (fish on tortilla chips… there was a surprising lack of tortillas in Costa Rica) at Barba Roja and I think most of us were please with most of our meals there. One of the most surprising and interesting bar/restaurants in the area was called El Avion which was built around a Fairchild C-123 that just happened to be the sister plane of the one shot down that started the web of lies surrounding the Iran-Contra Affair. Pretty cool place with a beautiful view where we watched the sunset the night before we took off.



The brunt of our stay was based around making trips into the Manuel Antonio park. Our first day there, we took a guide with us who ended up having the super-powered ability to spot wildlife high in the trees of the park at which point he would prop up his telescope and point it at the animal while explaining what we were looking at and even took some pictures through the scope for us (including the monkey and sloth on our flickr album). He was an awesome guide that helped us find things that we never would have spotted for ourselves. After a bit of touring, the kids got tired and my bro and his family headed to one of the beautiful beaches while Laura, myself, and my folks continued on and found a sloth that was actually moving. The beach was nice, warm, and protected enough that we decided to come back the next day and hang out for longer. This pleased Avery who was delighted to have two opportunities to shovel handfuls of sand into her mouth. Laura and I also took a hike up to a lookout which turned out to be equivalent to a trip to the sauna wearing a garbage bag. Thankfully the dark and light values of the lookout made for horrible pictures of us so you can’t see how disgusting we truly looked by the time we got to the top. The beach was a nice relief.

You basically know what happened after we left Manuel Antonio. It wasn’t our happiest moment and started an avalanche of calls to cancel our cards and start us trying to figure out how to take care of everything in Los Angeles in the day before we flew to Fiji. One of the craziest bits was our trip to the police station about half an hour away from our hotel in San Jose (yes, that’s either the only or the closest police station in San Jose) in a suburb called Heredia. Now, the directions we received went something like “Go out onto such and such road and take it straight to Heredia where you’ll find the station next to the central park.” The problem is “straight” in Costa Rica means “not straight at all, but in fact you’ll have to turn at 90 degree angles at several intersections to get there and we think it’s part of the adventure for you to guess where these turns are as you drive.” Somehow we made it, though I don’t think any of us (Laura was along for obvious reasons, Dad was driving, and Mike was along for translation) had any idea how we actually got there. The only way we found the police department in this thickly crowded and semi-nerve-wracking area of the city was by flagging down a cop (who was fortuitously flashing his lights and following our path by a few cars) and having him escort us. Once at the police station we had Mike translate our situation to get the police report (nobody at the station spoke English) in order to claim insurance. For those unaware, renters insurance apparently covers your personal property anywhere around the world.

Our whole family was very supportive through this and it was a huge help. Mom and dad even ended up staying with us in Los Angeles to take care of business when we got in. Anne and Brett Tittle were also generous enough to let us stay at their house and feed us (despite Laura's sleep-deprived madness turned Godzilla-like and managed to destroy a shelf and a baby gate in one fell swoop), which was conveniently located right next to nearly everything we had to hit up including the DMV, where it surprisingly only took us 10 minutes to get me a new temporary license. In any case we got everything taken care of and ended up in what might be the most relaxing place on Earth, Fiji.



The resort we chose (through a ridiculous stroke of good luck thanks to bad manners by another resort) turned out to be brilliant. We’re guessing that the pictures will probably speak for themselves as far as the beauty of the area around Nanuya Island Resort goes, but part of the magic was the people that ran the resort. They were amazingly nice, courteous, and relaxed. They were happy to hang out and chat in between their duties, which included making us a ton of spectacular meals, and it just made everything so wonderful we could weep. This was about the most perfect way to decompress. By the end of the week both of us were near comatose even with another unfortunate departure of our dear digital camera thanks to me dropping it in the ocean. Whoops. No worries though, the pictures survived and my folks went out and grabbed another on sale to send along with Mary Ann. In any case, we still had Laura’s Nikon to take some fabulous pictures.



It was also a grand stroke of luck to meet some spectacular people that we got to know while at the resort. Two of them, Gavin and Charlyn (sorry if I misspelled your name, I didn’t think to ask the correct way) were there all but one night which they spent in mortal terror of the dinner plate-sized spider they found in their room before fleeing back to our resort (that only had coaster-sized spiders). It ended up feeling a bit like we had just decided to go on a friends vacation together and helped make the week even that much more enjoyable. Andrew and Shannon were another pair that were incredibly nice and we hope to stay in touch with. Andrew even knew what IGN was and was able to hold a conversation about video games, which filled a little void I had secretly been missing (yes, I’m a sick bastard). They looked about as happy as could be which, as you might expect, helped make everyone else happy around them. While those were the folks we got to know best, we met plenty of other people that were like-minded in the pursuit of perfect relaxation.

To tell the truth, there’s not a ton to talk about as far as activities go. We rolled out of bed in the morning, had breakfast, sat on the beach, got burned, went snorkeling, got burned, ate an awesome lunch, sat in the outdoor lobby, sat on the beach, went swimming, had drinks, took showers, walked down to the restaurant, had an awesome dinner, had cava with the staff and listened to them play music, walked up the path to our bure looking out for nocturnal animals, covered our bed in the mosquito net, and went to sleep in order to repeat the process the next day. When we were adventurous, we walked around the island and found that our part of the island was superior to the others.

We also took some trips out to farther reefs to snorkel some more and even took a farther ride to the Sawa-I-Lau caves, which were brackish water trapped up and inside one of the islands farther north. The trip up was spectacular, our driver was awesome, and the caves, which we unfortunately don’t really have good pictures of, were pretty awesome. It was a set of two caves, the second of which you have to dive down and swim underwater to enter. In the first cave, our guide climbed up about 30-40 feet and jumped in and pretended to die by swimming and hiding in a corner of the cave that nobody was looking at. Unfortunately this is also where I decided to sacrifice the digital Elph to the Fijian gods but not even that could ruin things.



On our last half day before the boat came to get us (I think I forgot to mention the five hour boat ride to get to the island from the mainland) we went with Gavin and Charlyn to a tiny island with a single hut called Honeymoon Island. Only local honeymooners can get approval by the local chief to use the hut and killing of animals there is strictly forbidden but the beach is covered in shells and the water is gorgeous. We spent the time snorkeling, which was also fantastic and then packed and made ready to head back on the boat, which was very sad.



If there was anything uncomfortable about the stay, it was undoubtedly the insect/arachnid mafia. We were planning on keeping track of the bites we got as a bit of a contest throughout the trip until I realized just how many patrons the International House of Dancakes was going to attract. All I know is at one point I had about 23 bites on just my left knee, most likely from something living in the knee of my pants. Laura quickly caught up with a sickeningly large number of bites around her ankles and we gave up count. The coaster-sized spiders mentioned earlier were a little terrifying as well, especially once we found out that their blazingly fast and can jump.

Also, the sunsets were amazing.



And the Delicious Flavor of Fiji undoubtedly is Bonoffi pie. Ridiculous.

This was an amazing stop on what we’re sure will be an amazing string of stops. None are likely to be quite so relaxing, but that’s fine with us. We’re now sitting in Katoomba, Australia between the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney and plan on heading down the Hunter’s Valley for some wine tasting before heading back into Sydney for a few days of wedding festivities. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet up with the IGN Australia guys as well, though I suppose I actually have to write them and tell them about that before it can happen.

Remember, if you'd like to see all of our pictures, go ahead and visit flickr page.

Love to all!

Dan & Laura

For Richer or for Poorer – or – Grand Theft Backpack: Puntarenas

We might have written this newest blog entry on our last night in Costa Rica, but our ill-timed decision to donate so much to the Costa Rican Young Thieves Foundation (CRYTF) put us into a tizzy. And by tizzy I mean the skies turned black and the world was thrown into panic and dismay. As mentioned, the donation was a bit larger than we had ever thought to conceive leading us to need to cancel every account we’ve ever opened (and some that we haven’t as well) and do plenty of shopping for new things in our stop in Los Angeles instead of skipping gaily through Disneyland as planned. This also meant a sudden and severe lack of electronic entertainment that will force us to “read” and revive the ancient art of “conversation.” Anyone that knows me will realize Laura’s dire predicament. So, if you’d like to The Costa Rican Young Thieves Foundation Sucks Expletive Foundation (TCRYTFSEF), you can do so by sending a mixed CD (or just a copied CD) of your favorite music. We’ll be picking up a cheap portable CD player to replace our ipods since replacing them would be a fruitless exercise without access to our computers. Please refer to the email sent out for instructions if you’d like to but please don’t feel that it’s necessary. We know you guys are busy with stuff us unemployed people wouldn’t understand.

Onto the trip! We’re determined not to let the festering anger “ruin everything” and Costa Rica was great before everything went nutty. For those not in the know, this particular family vacation was launched thanks to 40 years of marriage! Congrats to my madre and padre for being strong enough to stick together through the years. Laura and I certainly hope to match that number in a paltry 38 more years. My brother Mike, sister-in-law Beth, 3-year-old nephew Evan, and 1-year-old niece Avery accompanied us on the trip.


The happy couple

Our first stop was Arenal, an area in northerish centralish Costa Rica. The attraction is the active volcano in the area. Even without torrents of lava causing locals to flee, it’s an impressive piece of earth that occasionally belched up huge rocks that merrily crashed down the mountain. The area was beautiful and filled with beautiful plants, waterfalls, birds, vistas, as well as a gazillion insects/arachnids making up the Costa Rican Young Insects/Arachnids That Need to Drink Your Blood Foundation (CRYIATNDYBF). Our hotel might have been the strangest bit of the trip. It was located in an awesome location with an amazing view. When we began fearing a large perfectly round boulder would come crashing down the road leading up to the place (which consisted of what’s likely millions of bricks), we weren’t sure what to think. It’s actually pretty charming at first glance.



There are some beautiful trees and a lovely main building complete with a bar and restaurant looking out at the volcano. The broken lights, ice-spitting air conditioning, faulty plumbing, bed spiders, skittering animals making nests in the ceiling, and appearance of the grounds being half-finished suggested the owners haven’t heard the terms “upkeep” or “follow-though.” Even so, we had a wonderful time in a crazily scenic location.



Even the random macaw attack that caused my brother to flee from the scene with poor Avery gave us a laugh when Avery in her sweet little voice said “birds”… pause … “squak” … pause … “tackle.” Laura was also quite pleased when the hammock I was sitting in while enjoying the view snapped and sent me crashing on my bum.



Along with enjoying the volcano sights, we managed to climb down and see a lovely waterfall (and somehow didn't die on the way back out) and stroll through a beautiful park filled with hanging bridges.

There’s a more to say about Costa Rica and the Manuel Antonio portion of our trip, but we’re actually just about ready to make our way to the airport to take off to Fiji as this is the first moment we’ve had to get in front of a computer and type something out. Besides, many of you have undoubtedly fallen asleep without the aid of accompanying pictures. When we get to Fiji, we’ll see about the availability of Internet and add some to both of these postings and any new one we have a moment to pound out.

Hope you’re all well, we are, even with the madness!

Dan & Laura