He made it out.

New Costa Rica pt. 1 post is up: http://ushuaiaorbust.com/2018/06/20/...se-torteguero/

Also the forum will probably enjoy the fun 4x4 adventure I recently had down near the Darien Gap in Panama. As always it was stupid non-chalant parking, and then escalating dumb decisions. I wound up in the ditch at probably 40 degrees (ignore my commentary in the video, I was confused):

https://i.imgur.com/UGN71vN.jpg

It rains so much, that ground is like the softest mushiest sod. Basically at some point I got pissed and just decided to back up as fast as I could in the ditch. Which ended up clanging against the drain and getting me fully stuck. But on the plus side I did re-dredge their ditch for them. Luckily a propane delivery driver watched the whole thing and immediately pulled me out with the help of my come along strap.

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For the record - I was wrong about the right/left attitude. I was looking at forward/back roll. Looking at those pics the right/left was easily 30 degrees. Also as far as me being bitchy about Dan's interview technique - he'd been getting on me for being a dead interviewee. Which is true. Just saying there's history.

Some of you might know Dan Bartlett. He was a bartender at the Hurricane for a few years back in the early 90s. Here's their page: https://www.facebook.com/endofallroads/

We ended up drinking mucho cervezas with the guy who pulled me out, and staying at his hospedaje (cheap hotel) down the road, where be BBQed for us. And we saw the end of the Pan-Am highway in Yaviza - where it turns into a footbridge and then impenetrable jungle after that. Fun day.

https://i.imgur.com/K5Loqvo.jpg

Great read as always. How’s your Spanish doing? Is it getting any easier?

Thanks! A little bit at a time. I took another week of intensive classes (4 hours/day) in Boquete, Panama - but I was sick as a dog so I wasn't in top form and didn't do any of the optional activities.

My car is currently on a boat with the Wallenius Wilhelmsen shipping lines - until I can pick it up in Galveston July 2nd or 3rd. So I'm going back to Antigua for one more week of Spanish.

I am determined to have good Spanish before I do South America. Another reason I want to live in San Jose for a while.

Wait... you're not driving on to Patagonia?

Don’t feel bad bro. I’ve been in China since September and I can’t hold a conversation in Chinese for shit. Learning a different language is ****ing hard.

Yeah, this... you're not driving on to Patagonia?

Correct - read the last few paragraphs of my blog post. My foot is for shit right now and I don't want to do S. America if I can't go on multi-day hiking trips - that was the biggest highlight for me.

I had to put my car on a boat either way - it's just going to Galveston instead of Colombia. I'll be back when I can do it right with my foot, have better Spanish and have my condo better squared away.

Well the main thing is to be able to converse. Don’t waist time on vocabulary you’re never going to use.

Yeah but I like learning the weird conjugations - it's fun for me for some reason. So I retain better when it's fun I guess.

I feel like you’ve welshed on our deal. I subscribed to a Cali to Patagonia blog experience. :Poke:

You'll get it eventually. I don't want to do it now if I can't do it right.

Costa Rica pt. 2 is up: http://ushuaiaorbust.com/2018/06/21/...nd-roads-crew/

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I would imagine chinese would be very difficult to learn. What are you doing in China ?

I learned Mandarin Chinese back in NJ with a private tutor in 1994 after going to China/Hong Kong many times beginning in Feb of that year and feeling so completely helpless. At that time, there were very, very few English speaking Chinese except in places like hotels and that was about it. No lower level people spoke English. She taught me to speak, read and write.

You learn about tone and the Chinese radicals, which are symbols hidden in the letters and words to signify whether they are water symbols, fire symbols, earth symbols, animal symbols, human symbols, etc.

It is hard as **** to learn and it took me two weeks of practice with the teacher just to learn the phonetic alphabet. I needed a tape recorder to realize I was saying the tones wrong. You learn the "Pinyin" system of "Ma Ba Pa, Chr Zhr Shr, along with the four tones; flat, rising, dipthong, and drop tone.

You take a word like "Ba". It has 4 meanings based on your tone. The number 8, a target, a father, and a handle/plow like object.

I would NEVER take Cantonese as they have 8 tones and many are throat tones like the word NG, where you don't even open your mouth!

My breakthrough in learning the tones came as one night I imagined my voice traveling down a road looking ahead.
If the road was flat, my voice stayed even.
If the road was an incline, so did my voice.
If the road had a dip, I did the same speaking.
Lastly, if the road dropped down a hill quickly, so did my tone.

That was my AH HA moment. :D

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