"There's Going to be a Slight Delay"

2009-03-01T19:11:00.012-06:00

Photo: DeeLeisaOus Travels, The North Coast Road from Santa Cruz to Blanchisseuse

Ambushed. Fourteen days away buried us in the debris of electronic and paper mail. Dirty laundry, bulging bags, once forgotten projects that will no longer be shoved aside. Visions of ditching Blogger dance in our heads. The posts are written. Splicing with photos is yet to come. To be ordered or organized. We blogged faithfully offline while were were in Trinidad. And we will take you on our adventures through the jungles, to beachside towns and tease you with a taste of Carnival. Right now the Captain has requested that we all remain in our seats until further notice. We'll be back with further word as soon as possible. Promise. Meantime, you can follow the non-vacation life of one half of us at Leisa Hammett.com. Thank you for your patience.

Travel DeeLeisaOus Style

2009-02-18T12:07:00.005-06:00

Microsoft Stock Photo: Beautiful British Columbia. We've both been there, but separately. Someday I hope to return to one of the most beautiful places in the world to which I've ever ventured.

Plush compound. Disneyesque. Las Vegas razz-ma-tazz. Not Us. We're not exactly "adventure travelers." No zip lines marring the natural landscape. And we don't exactly rough it to the point of toting knapsacks over-stuffed with sleeping bags. So, I'd say somewhere in between Adventure and Rough. EcoTourists. Maybe.

We met nearly two years ago and it was lust turned love within two weeks of first sight. We've been to McMinnville, Shelbyville, quaint Bell Buckle, Columbia, Pulaski and other posts of rural Middle Tennessee ramblin' round surrounding sites that I'd never set eyes upon in my 15 years back here. We explored Northern Oregon , western North Carolina and a couple of sparsely remaining Florida state parks and fishing villages. And Christmas 2007, we spent 10 days in Costa Rica . And now, here we are bound to the top of South America to the island of Trinidad that was once connected to the continent 10,000 years ago.

A brief account, first, of Costa Rica to summarize what we/you are in for here. I traveled about this beautiful Central American country with Crocodile dunDEE. We adopted an unwanted stray black domestic short hair cat from our favorite lodging post, a quaint series of cabins in a river village. On Christmas night we dined on authentic Nicaraguan tamales (or "pastelles") with an international medley of Cubans, French, Swiss, Germans and Belgians. Unknown to me, Dee had asked the guard boy to alert him if he "found anything." I'm chatting it up with our Cuban friends when Dee yells for me to bring his gargantuan flashlight that I had lugged with along with us. Rapidly, curiously, I followed him out into the night where he instructed me to shine the light. I did, spotlighting a wicked looking, but sick four-and-a-half foot Iguana who hissed showing an array of ominous dagger-knifed teeth. Dee had him in his youth-finessed hold behind the neck and because he was old and ill, the mammoth lizard never put up a fight as Dee toted him to the edge of the cabana and shouted to the guests as he raised his find high in the air. They proceeded to get up and gawk, the shyest Cuban woman in the bunch eager to hold him and pose for a snapshot by her friend. The French were not impressed. (What else is new?)

Coming down the mountain from La Fortuna, the volcano that spit orange-red inflamed lava rocks on a capricious whim, dunDEE spotted what he thought was a dead and deadly poisonous Coral snake in the middle of the road. IT rode in the back of our rental SUV for about eight hours until we could locate a herpetologist to identify it. Disappointing for Dee, it was as an ordinary King snake. It looked quite similar and had it of been its exotic cousin, Crocodile was going to salt it, smuggle it back in his luggage and make a hat band from it. The afternoon with the herpetologist is another story, but not for this blog post.

Me, Dee and our adopted Costa Rican Kitty rode stomach-churning third world-style pock marked roads across the beautiful countryside to Monteverde where we left our "Gavi" (named for our riverside lodging, Gavilan,) with the owners of our rain forest lodge. I love flora. Dee loves the fauna. Especially birds. Back in the states, arriving at midnight New Year's Eve, the adventure continued. We drove back from Atlanta the next day, making not one but two stops along the interstate shoulder where Dee spotted downed Barred owls. Both times, he stopped, whipping out his glove-compartment stashed knife and swiftly cut off a treasured wing of feathers and an imposing claw foot to add to his little-boy-grown-big menagerie. The claw foot came in handy when we attended a friend's annual "hat party" in November. I wore a Santa cap. Dee sported a camouflaged straw hat. No exotic Costa Rican snake band adorned it yet. But, from the back dangled the claw foot of a Barred owl.