Quepos, Costa Rica

I am on vacation with a bunch of "alpha males", many from Beaufort, SC, but all of them friends or relatives of our family.  Accompanying me a day early (to meet our customer in Costa Rica) was Ameru's General Manager Cesar Rodriguez.  We had a delightful meeting with Guillermo and now have the opportunties to explore some business niches...  But we were here on serious business: sportfishing!

The day before we (14) started fishing we took a bus from San Jose to Quepos.  I will leave out the copious amounts of alcohol consumed to protect the guilty, "what happens in Costa Rica, stays in Costa Rica".  Other than the beautiful scenery of the country (of which there are many, many pictures better than I can take), there was really only one stop worthy of note, the Rio Tarcoles that is famous for crocodiles visible from the bridge (as always, *click* on any image for a better view):

That was a hit!  The next picture is towards the mountains (from the same bridge, we had just entered the Pacific lowlands).

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The next day we headed out, there were five on our boat, L - R Cesar Rodriguez, Robert Mix, Alex Stapleton, Robert S., Steve Mix, and crew members Walter and "Memo" (Captain Jesus took this photo):

Now one of the world's most famous dorados ("dolphin fish", "mahi-mahi") that Robert S. is reeling in, first fish of the day...:

Dinner!  The fish weighed about 40 lbs, which yielded about 20 lbs of filet, mmm...  That fish fed all 14 of us last night (Sunday), there is still some left over (second picture shows Memo filleting the fish):

Alex here with his first ever sailfish, typically when someone catches their first one, the crew hauls it aboard briefly for a photo.  Costa Rica is a "Catch & Release" place, so they just throw the sailfish back into the ocean.  Their experience would be roughly akin to NFL players getting "shaken up" (get smacked) on a play, the fish suffer no damage.  Alex's fish weighed about 80 lbs, a pretty typical weight for a sailfish.

That day our boat brought in an impressive 17 fish, the first one was the dorado, then 16 sails...  Here is Cesar, with one of the three he brought in:

Cesar's next fish was a jumper and big (approx. 100 lbs).  From the photo you can deduce how strong these fish are...  You can also imagine the expletives heard when we saw that!

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After we got back to our hotel (The Mono Azul -- Blue Monkey), here is what we saw crossing the power lines over the road, look closely about dead-center of the photo:

Not a bad start, more days to go...