Goodbye, Jaco

Jaco, Costa Rica

Our time in Jaco is winding down. On Tuesday, Kris will take a bus to Herradura and pick up a rental car. Then we will load up and drive north along the coast to Tamarindo where we will spend one more week on the coast before heading inland for our last two weeks in Costa Rica. Its too bad, because after a month here we finally found a store that sells Jif peanut butter. Our initial twenty four hours here were challenging, but most of the rest has been pure relaxation. Aside from our one national park trip we have just been walking on the beach, swimming at the pool, reading books, and getting some regular school hours in, which means finally starting on the promised writing practice we have felt strongly that all three need. We are ready to move on to new adventures, in fact we have spent a good chunk of time here planning the rest of our Costa Rica stay as well as our upcoming time in Europe, but we have also been in Jaco long enough that it feels comfortable and homey and we will truly miss it.

Some random observations and experiences from our time in Jaco:

We see and hear macaws and hawks and egrets and herons and pelicans and a whole host of other birds on a daily basis. Herons make a hilarious, frog-like call to one another and macaws always announce their presence with an obnoxious scream. Many nights we also see what we assume is some kind of large, gray or white bat flying above the condos in the dark. And yes I know that bats aren't birds, but maybe this one is an owl in which case he is. But I think he is a bat.

We have watched three men mow down at least an acre of thick, waist high, grass and weeds with nothing but machetes. Machetes are indeed a very legitimate gardening tool here.

On Valentine's Day we caved to the kids' pizza cravings and found them a little place that serves delicious rectangular pizza with a side of something close to a pesto or chimichurri. We couldn't confirm which it was closest to as our server told us it was a secret sauce. It tasted basil-ly but with no pine nuts.

We have twice watched a 'jesus lizard' run right across the surface of the pool, something we had previously witnessed only on nature shows, but it happened right in front of us. (A jesus lizard is apparently really called a common basilisk but that sounds so... common, particularly for an animal that runs on water!).

When I walk out of the air conditioned condo in the morning, my glasses immediately fog up from the blast of humidity waiting outside our door.

Drivers here are not shy about using their horns. They honk because they are passing, because they are turning, to let other drivers know they are there and to greet one another.

Iguanas are everywhere, including a little one that makes it a regular habit to perch in the razor wire surrounding a local home/restaurant, another that frequently suns itself on the rooftop of a beach club, and several that gather in a field behind the Avenida Pastor Diaz every evening.

We have witnessed toddlers perched on handle bars, cross bars, baskets and book racks as their fathers, and occasionally mothers, peddle bicycles to day care centers and then work in the morning.

When the tide is high, the waves tend to crash violently and relentlessly and the beach is very rocky in patches, particularly on either side of the multiple creeks that flow out to the ocean, but when the tide is low, the sand is creamy and soft and the waves tend towards slow and gentle. Either way, my boys especially love to swim under, over, through and parallel to those waves.

Our condominium complex is next door to the community center and every afternoon we are treated to the sounds of several succesive bands practicing.

Wishing we could see the new Black Panther movie, we decided to investigate the local theater and found out that they have showings in English with Spanish subtitles.  This works well when the characters on screen are speaking English, but when the dialogue shifts to whatever African language they chose for this particular movie, we were definitely at a disadvantage as the sub titles were still only in Spanish.

Some mornings we see some sort of ray leaping from the water just beyond the waves.

Just this last week, we discovered Pacchi's Pan, a fabulous bakery. They sell long loaves of bread topped with a mango filling for about a dollar a loaf and buns with a cheese and onion filling for half that much. We have eaten more bread in the past three days than we did in the previous five weeks living here.

Over the next couple of days we will wash and pack clothes, try to eat all the food in the kitchen so we don't need to move much with us and clean the condo. We will take our final walks along the beach and our final swims in our luxurious pool. I will try, most likely in vain, to get pictures of any of the amazing birds here. We will probably eat way more bakery breads than is good for us. And Tuesday evening we will move into our newest home in Tamarindo.