For the past week, I've been on vacation in Costa Rica with a somewhat random collection of family and friends. I had big dreams for this vacation, among them to go scuba diving and to play poker at the Casino Europa. Since the planner for the trip was not myself--rather it was my tree-hugging (heck, tree-fellating) sister--I found that accomplishing my initial goals would be difficult. Overall, though, the trip would still be lots of fun.
The main impediment to my poker-playing aspirations were simply that all the poker rooms in Costa Rica, as far as I knew, were in San Jose, the capital. We would be near San Jose for only two nights--we would be staying about 30 mins outside the city the first night and right in the city the last night.
Playing the first night would have been a possibility except that I didn't end up arriving in San Jose (defined as finally being able to leave the airport) until after 11pm. This was because while I had a 7AM flight out of Austin, one actually isn't allowed to fly to another country without a passport. Yes, upon showing up at the Austin airport at about 6:40AM, I had this amusing exchange with the airline personnel:
Her: "Where are you flying to, sir?"
Me: "Costa Rica."
Her: "Do you have a passport?"
Me: "..."
Her: "Sir, do you have a passport?"
Me: "Uh...er.........no."
Her: "No, you don't have a passport, or no you didn't bring it with you?"
Me, reality finally starting to sink in: "I, uh, didn't bring it with me."
Her, speaking to me slowly, like I was a child, after coming to the conclusion that I had the IQ of a jelly bean: "Sir, Costa Rica is a foreign country. You need a passport to travel to a foreign country."
Yes, I had come to the airport but left my passport on my dresser. Luckily, I was able to catch a 4PM flight, thus inconveniencing the other six people on the trip only slightly.
I, however, was inconvenienced a lot more despite my being able to go back to bed for a few hours. Little did I realize that my sister would be a gestapo-like trip commander, which meant we were getting up at 7AM the next day to leave for hiking on some distant volcano. So, having arrived after 11PM and then eating, I wasn't able to even consider going to the casino--over 30 minutes away, remember--until after midnight. And I was to be awake in under 7 hours. Hell, if the games were even a quarter-way decent, I'd be lucky if I were even considering leaving the casino in 7 hours. So I passed, figuring I'd get another chance the final night.
This being a poker blog, I won't bore everyone with the details of the trip, other than to say that I spent most of the next few days in remote sections of the interior of Costa Rica hiking up volcanos or through rainforests (ok, technically they're cloud forests) getting very muddy and very wet in the process, as a result of my sister's love for nature rather than sandy beaches, crystal waters and girls in bikinis (loves of mine, although not necessarily in that order). It was fun, though, especially since I did get to go on a "canopy tour" at one point which is going on zip lines through the forests. That was a lot of fun, as the lines were sometimes hundreds of feet long and up to 260 feet in the air (according to the advertisements, and I believe it).
One moment was a little distressing. On one of the longer and higher lines, I was traveling along at a nice rate when I broke out of the thick forest over a wide-open valley. I must have been about 200 feet in the air, as I saw the tops of a house or two, but mostly foliage and small trees below me. It was very rainy, surprisingly cold (probably mid-fifties) and very, very windy. So windy, in fact, that about three quarters of the way across the valley, the wind blew me to a dead stop. So there I was, hanging by a pulley and a strap from a thin metal line 200 feet up in the air in some crazy wind that was nearly blowing the helmet off my head and me horizontal. I had to hand-over-hand it to the next platform, and for a minute there, the whole experience was not fun. But otherwise, it was a blast.
I took a lot of pictures, the one above from fairly close to the coast during the return trip to San Jose (that is the Pacific way in the background) and the one below my sister, who actually has photographic talent, took one night of the sunset.
But to heck with the pretty scenery, I wanted some international poker action! Finally back in the capital the final night, it was 8PM and I had to get up before 5AM for another insanely early flight, but damnit, I was going to play some poker. Luckily, the Casino Europa was five minutes away and so soon enough, there I was, running down the stairs into...
The smallest "real" casino I've ever seen. There was a room with a bunch of slot machines, maybe a dozen casino game tables going and a bar. I've seen bigger casinos in the lobbies of Las Vegas hotels. But whatever, I don't play any of that crap anyways.
A quick left, through a couple doors and there was the poker room! Like the rest of the casino, it was fairly small--at most a dozen tables--but about half of them were full and I was primed and ready.
Except.
It was.
Tournament night.
There wasn't a cash game to be found. And when I asked the floor, I was told that "maybe" at 10PM a cash game would start, and that it would probably be 1/2 NL. I could play in the tournament if I wanted, though. Only $10 for T30 in chips, with unlimited rebuys of $150 for T690 in chips! WTF??? So basically it was a $160 tournament with rebuys. Ugh. Thinking back on it, I probably should have played anyways since I risk larger amounts than that playing 10/20 or 15/30, but at the time the whole principle of the thing turned me off big time. And, since I didn't feel like waiting two hours for just the possibility of no-limit, only 15 minutes after arriving I was back in another taxi returning to the hotel.
So in the end, I didn't get to scuba-dive, didn't get to play poker, and didn't get to ogle girls in bikinis, but I did get to enjoy a lot of things I was not expecting to do. And, despite my portrayal of her (ahem, you know, tree-fellating and gestapo-like), I really do love my sister; she planned an excellent trip. So, despite going longer between poker hands than I ever have before (nine days), I had a lot of fun.
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