San Jose

San Jose, Costa Rica

We are all packed up and ready to leave our San Jose home at 7 am tomorrow and head to London. We have been here for ten days and while we have mostly been relaxing, making use of the hot tub and grill that grace the roof top of our nearly empty condo building, we have also had some opportunities to see bits of the city.

Our first day here we got ourselves onto a city bus going exactly the opposite direction of the church we were trying to get to and when we couldn't make anyone understand that we wanted to get back on a bus going back the way we came, (or maybe they couldn't make us understand how to do that, it's hard to say for sure but definitely someone wasn't fully comprehending what the other was saying) we just did a new search on mormon.org and attended a different ward and decided to figure out the bus thing after church. And we did, figure out the bus route back that is, with a little bit of help from someone who decided to take pity on the lost white people who were way overdressed to be wandering downtown San Jose.

We braved the buses again to go see the National Theater and then again to go see the National Museum. By the following Sunday, we were practically pros at navigating the buses and managed to get to and from the correct ward without any incident whatsoever. Well, unless you count that the cord we needed to pull to announce we needed to get off didn't actually work, no matter how hard or how often we pulled it and so the driver blew right past our stop.

We also got a couple more chances to wander downtown San Jose where there are fancy shops and sketchy shops and people selling things right off blankets and tarps stretched out on the ground. These little blanket shops were particularly intriguing. There were people selling crafts, particularly jewelry, several were selling socks, and many were selling remotes. We saw one man selling Colgate toothpaste. It was all a little bizarre. We found John Lennon sitting on a park bench and bought a dinner of grilled chicken and vegetables right out of the front of a butcher shop and stood in the street eating. 

Kris and I walked daily though our neighborhood of walled up property. Most of Costa Rican homes seem to be behind walls and fences, La Fortuna was probably the biggest exception to that, but still many there too have all of their property behind a wall or fence. Here in San Jose, particularly this neighborhood, it is taken to extremes. Some of the walls here are 10 feet high. Many of them are solid and you can see nothing of the property or home. It is not uncommon for walls to be topped with spikes or razor wire or even electrical wire or any combination of the three. It doesn't seem like a particularly unsafe neighborhood, but maybe the walls and security guards at most corners help ensure that.

Costa Rica has been an adventure. We have loved their beaches and trees and flowers and birds (the birds!), but most of all, the people we have met here have, without exception, been super nice and have tried so hard to help us even when it meant pantomiming that we needed to get off the bus now because the bus was going to turn away from our destination. But we are ready to begin a new adventure tomorrow.

Bridges,Butterflies, and Volcanoes

La Fortuna, Costa Rica

Tuesday morning, we left Tamarindo and embarked on a beautiful drive inland to La Fortuna. La Fortuna is a little town at the foot of the Arenal Volcano, a volcano that was considered dormant until, in 1968, it suddenly erupted and wiped out three other nearby villages. Apparently there is a popular myth that La Fortuna was named for having the good fortune to be situated to the east of the volcano when all those neighboring villages on Arenal's  west side were, well, less furtunate. It isn't true, as the town was already named before the eruption occurred, but it is still a good story. The volcano is still active and until 2010 would regularly glow at night, but all we witnessed while we were there was a bit of steam rising from the top.

Our home in La Fortuna was tucked away behind a restaurant and the parking space was adjacent to the house manager's outdoor kitchen, where we frequently encountered her family as we came and went. Inside, the house was beautiful with the best equipped kitchen we have seen yet, but the only two bathrooms were attached to the two bedrooms and instead of doors they featured only sheer curtains, probably why Ronan opted to be on the living room couch again and let Fionn and Liam have the two beds in the extra room.

Our first adventure was Hanging Bridges Park, which was basically a hiking trail through the rain forest that involved a lot of bridges, many of them being suspension bridges. I am simultaneously fascinated by and scared out of my wits by bridges, particularly ones that swing in the wind, so of course I thought this would be a great place to go. It was a beautiful hike and the bridges really are pretty cool, even if some of them did seem to sway violently even when Ronan wasn't intentionally rocking them. Thanks to some hikers ahead of us who were all standing and staring up, we spotted a sloth way up in the tops of a tree.  Other wildlife sightings were pretty limited: lizards, small birds, a butterfly and leaf cutter ants. The ants were actually very cool and we watched them for a long time. A long line of ants coming and going up a huge tree, along the edge of the trail, and into and out of tunnels of leaves on the ground. They were very intent, when Kris tried to pick up a leaf piece that one was dutifully toting along, the ant refused to let go. The park was a tad expensive for what it was really, but still a nice way to spend an afternoon.

The next day we went to the Butterfly Conservatory. I loved this place. The owner bought a ranch, reforested it, and now raises butterflies there. They have four butterfly enclosures each representing a different biome of Costa Rica and each swarming with butterflies. Most impressive was probably the one full of the blue morpho butterflies because there were just so many of them and they were in constant flight, but I loved them all and the varieties of butterflies were amazing. In addition to the butterflies they also had a lizard and frog habitat, the care keeper there was very anxious to show us all his pets. He would explain that the frogs were very poisonous and then open the enclosures so we could get a better look! After we had our fill of butterflies, lizards, frogs, turtles, and the gorgeous botanical gardens, the way out was a hiking trail through the reforested land. It was beautiful, though I wish I had noticed when we left the house that Fionn had chosen flip flops for the day, not ideal hiking shoes. Now I can stop feeling badly that I never took my younger kids to the Butterfly Pavilion in Denver. Whew.

For our last day we went to the Arenal 1968 Trails, we chose it over the actual national park that is right next door mostly based on online reviews of the trails. Since we didn't do the national park also I can't really say if we made the right choice, only that we did really enjoy the trails here and not only because they provided hiking sticks at the beginning of the trail, though that was a perk. Our trail started out through a sort of demonstration area where they grew sugarcane and pineapples, its the first place the kids have actually got to see pineapples growing, so that was cool. Then we headed through a lot of rain forest and around the edge of a lake. All along there was plenty of large, boulder sized lava rocks and the further we got, the more they took over. Unlike the lava fields we were at in southern Utah this summer though, these lava fields have trees and grasses and all sorts of things growing through and over them. At one point the trail was steep enough and sandy enough that we used the guide rope installed along it to pull ourselves up the incline. We ate our lunch at the far end of the trail while staring at the volcano in the distance and eavesdropping on another group's paid tour guide.  While there, we met a charming little girl from England who is traveling the world for a year with her parents. Freya chatted with us a good part of our hike back, all about her favorite authors, the highs and lows of visiting India and what she likes best about traveling ("the beachy parts").

In between adventures, we explored La Fortuna's stores and bakeries and restaurants and park, did some school, killed more cockroaches, and enjoyed the considerably cooler weather in comparison to the coast. Then Saturday morning we packed up our car and headed to San Jose where we are now living on the fourth floor of a very modern condominium building, Liam and Fionn get the couch this time and Ronan is luxuriating in the second bedroom, pleased that his bathroom actually has a door!

Kayaking!!!

Tamarindo, Costa Rica

Yesterday we rented sea kayaks and had ourselves an adventure. We had scheduled the day before with Kenner and Reinaldo, two brothers who run a surf school and rent boards and kayaks right on the beach. At approximately the appointed time (we had to wait a bit for the winds to die down somewhat, except they didn't really), we were outfitted with life jackets, a large water proof bag for us to stuff with all our belongings, paddles and three kayaks which Reinaldo dragged out into the water for us, held steady while we climbed in and then shoved us off with instructions to paddle "left, right, left, right" while he definitely was demonstrating right, left, right, left. Liam and I shared one kayak, Kris and Fionn another and Ronan got a single. Fionnula was attempting this with some pretty serious reservations. We were to head out beyond where a dozen or so boats sat floating and then turn left towards a small offshore island where we could land, explore briefly and then return the same way we had gone. Liam and I were definitely a little rough on the way out and once had to use our paddles to shove off from a moored fishing boat so we wouldn't collide, but I thought we were getting the hang of it as we approached the island. Then we realized that what we thought was a pretty smooth shore was quite rocky and we would be better to try a landing closer to where Fionn and Kris were heading. This realization was too late though, and we decided that rather than fight the waves we would be better to just let them bring us in on the rocks and make it work. We basically achieved a soft crash landing.The island was amazing. One side all black volcanic rock and tide pools, the other piled high with over sized shells of mysterious, and long dead, sea creatures. Fionn stuffed her bag with shells. As it approached time to leave I wondered how we would pull this off without the help we had had leaving the mainland. Especially given the rocky shoreline, the wind, and persistent waves. I thought of how Reinaldo had told us that on the way back we would have to "paddle really, really fast," and thought that didn't seem so funny now.

Liam and I, turning around together, just after our successful, if not graceful, launch, to see if Kris and Fionn had got off the island,  capsized our own boat. We were not far off shore and could both still stand in the water so we got ourselves righted, climbed back in and started over. Ronan, who managed his kayak extremely capably from the beginning, threw himself into the water next to us in solidarity I guess. Then we followed instructions and paddled really, really fast to get away from the island's drag on us. We were making good progress when we realized that Fionn and Kris were both floating in the water beside an upside down kayak and Ronan was racing towards them. Liam's immediate response was "we have to go to them,"  but it turned out that we lost control of our own boat long enough that all we could do was keep an eye on their drama as we spun back and forth ourselves and headed most of the way back to the island we had just escaped. Liam and I got our boat under control in time to see Ronan lift Fionn back into her seat and then hold everything steady while Kris climbed on board too. We were amazed to see that Kris still wore his baseball cap and sunglasses. Even Fionn's flip flops had remained on her feet and the bag that held all our water bottles, Fionn's shells, and Kris's phone had floated on the water at least long enough to be thrown back on the kayak. Kris discovered later that it had also filled with water, but his phone stored inside layers of ziploc bags had survived the dunking just fine. We made the rest of our way back through the moored boats with no excitement other than a large flock of birds perched on an empty fishing boat that took flight over our heads. Ronan stayed behind us the rest of the way keeping watch on us all, I am sure, and tacking back and forth to get some extra mileage in for himself.

Back safely on shore, we sat and watched the sunset, and then some fire jugglers and then walked home to our beds.

First Impressions of Tamarindo

Tamarindo, Costa Rica

When we drove into Tamarindo for the first time, it seemed almost as if we had suddenly been transported to a generic southern California beach town. The main street was clogged with traffic, the store fronts modern, and the upscale restaurants featured a large variety of cuisine. But Weaving through the myriad tourists are numerous local street vendors selling hammocks, jewelry, woodcarvings and grass weavings. One woman had long beaded necklaces draping from either arm and a frisbee full of hand carved, bird shaped, whistles balanced on her head. Following google maps to our new home, we turned off the beachfront where the road turns quickly from well kept pavement to what may have once been paved but is now mostly dirt, loose rock and lots of holes. Clogged drainage ditches line either side of the roads and the corners are piled with garbage overflowing from its bins. This is the part of Tamarindo where we will be spending the week and it is less than a five minute walk from the glittering downtown.

Our new home is part of an older, gated, four story complex arranged roughly in a figure eight with small over-chlorinated swimming pools in the center of each circle. The condo consists of a main floor with a half bathroom, tiny laundry area and one room that serves as living room, dining room and kitchen. For our week here it will also serve as Liam and Ronan's bedroom with two twin air mattresses occupying most of the floor space at night and propped against the wall when not in use, though they find it convenient to throw them back on the floor to stretch out and study or read or watch tv. I am pretty amazed at the boys' resiliency regarding the living arrangements from one house to the next, one or both are often on a couch or a floor and they accept it without protest. Upstairs are two bedrooms and two full bathrooms for Kris, I, Fionn, and everyone's luggage.  There is a friendly cat wandering among the condos so we feel like we have a pet for the week. The small pool is right outside our front door and our internet reaches easily to the covered poolside patio allowing us a comfortable outside space for school.

The beach in Tamarindo is beautiful, the water seems relatively calm and there are seashells everywhere. During low tide the south end is full of tide pools and we can walk around the point there to a smaller beach on the other side. It is considerably cooler here than Jaco was, but quite windy, especially on the beach, which can be  nice when it is a gentle breeze, but less nice when it means sand blowing relentlessly in your face. There are many restaurants facing onto the beach and at night there are live bands and fire jugglers. The river that lets out into the ocean on the north side of the beach has crocodiles in it, which freaks me out a tad, but there are howler monkeys in the trees just a couple blocks from our home which is super cool. It is loud too, I can remember the one time we got the howler monkeys at the zoo to make a sound, in the wild they are not so shy. There are a lot of tourists here and most of them seem to be American, we haven't heard this much English in awhile. In addition to the souvenir knick knacks being sold along the main street and beach, we have openly been offered pot and Kris had someone try to sell him cocaine.

It should be an interesting week.

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.

The Farmers' Market! (and other Shopping Experiences Too)

Jaco, Costa Rica

We went on a little field trip this morning to the Jaco farmer's market and discovered why the produce selection at the grocery stores is slightly lacking. Because no one buys produce at the grocery store. We learned the whereabouts of the Friday market last week, but 24 hours too late to take advantage of it and have been looking forward to it all week. Kris and I decided to make it our morning walk, and we were so pleased with our initial haul and so sad that we had limited carrying capacity between the two of us that we came home, got the kids, and went back for round two. Thirteen bananas for 500 colones! PS... that's about 85 cents. A pineapple for 800. Watermelon, mangoes, mandarin oranges, cantaloupe, peppers, potatoes. tomatoes. And everything is so, so good. We bought our little mules some fresh orange juice at the market and then some coconut milkshakes on the way home, it was, after all, basically a 5K, hauling groceries half the way, in pretty direct equatorial sun. It was hot. But we have a fabulous selection of fruits and veggies for the week to supplement our usual diet of rice and beans.

Round 2

Shopping here has been its own learning experience. First there is the walking factor. When you have to carry all your groceries home, you don't buy extra. But there isn't a lot of extra to buy here either. Stores are small and do not feature nearly the variety of what we are used to at home. Where we are used to a huge selection of  different kinds of chips or cereal or bread, there are only a few options here. Where canned and bottled foods take up aisles and aisles at home, it seems rare here. You buy your beans dry. You buy your fruit fresh. Things that are packaged, are often in plastic pouches instead of bottles and jars and that goes not just for food, but also cleaning products. It makes for less waste, but a pouch of jam is hard to store neatly in the fridge.

There is no such thing as frozen fruit as far as I can tell. Meat is primarily fresh and purchased at a butchers counter not packed in styrofoam and plastic wrap and frozen. The butcher will pile what you want in a plastic bag, knot the top of the bag and send you walking home with a squishy and possibly drippy bag. But it tastes oh so good when you cook it. The brown eggs are cheaper than the white, they aren't refrigerated, and the yolks are so yellow they are nearly orange. And so is the butter, nearly orange that is, no idea what they are doing to it. If you want peanut butter, you have to go to the store the tourists shop and it's going to be expensive and its going to be Peter Pan. If you want dishwasher detergent you have to go to the next town. Seriously. So wash your dishes by hand and use the solid, chalky, paste dish soap that comes in a round tub.

What are we Eating in Costa Rica?

Jaco, Costa Rica

A whole lot of rice and beans. And usually chicken. Our current diet was inspired by the only offering at a local restaurant we went to and by the obvious local proclivity for rice and beans. A whole aisle at the relatively small grocery store is dedicated to bags of rice and a good sized section to beans too, even though neither item comes in many varieties. There is white rice and either red or black beans. I actually had never cooked dried beans before except to turn pintos into refried beans and it turns out that a simple pot of black beans is way easier and smells a whole lot better as it cooks, especially if you simmer them with a bunch of cilantro in the pot. Except don't expect to eat the cilantro when the beans are done, that bunch of cilantro is not a pretty sight at the end of a couple hours . I have also experimented with throwing an onion in there and garlic cloves and a pepper, and once all of the above, and each batch has turned out great. Next time I am putting in an orange. So yeah, we cook beans, rice, and chicken two or three times a week and eat the leftovers every day until we make more.  The chicken doesn't typically last through to the last meal of beans and rice. I have no stockpile of Costco sized spice containers here so seasoning is all salt, pepper and the local Lizano salsa. Which isn't 'salsa' at all in the sense that an English speaker means salsa. Here it just means 'sauce,' and this particular one is a sort of tangy, sweet and spicy chili salsa, but the bottle is sincerely labeled 'Salsa,' as if there were no other.  And we have made it through 3 containers so far. We have experimented with different sides, including potatoes roasted with the chicken, chopped cabbage, corn or flour tortillas and a pico that we just make ourselves and add chayote to now.  Chayote is a funny looking little squash that tastes a little like a cucumber. We roasted some once, but my favorite way to eat it is chopped up raw and added to our pico. We tend to consume our main meal around two in the afternoon, which leaves the evenings open for going to the beach or whatever without worry of preparing a lot of food  and then we can just have a snack in the evening. Last night we had fried tortillas and lechera (sweetened condensed milk). Erin taught us about that treat when she returned from Mexico, so I suppose it is a Mexican thing, but the ingredients are easily available here and I may have eaten 3 three last night before we sadly ran out of lechera. Everyone eats their own breakfast. Fruit always. Fionn likes cereal, but she has to make do with local brands that are not her standards. Liam is working his way through a pancake mix, which also is not a brand we know. Ronan frequently eats the rice and beans from the night before. Kris and I usually scramble eggs, because the eggs at the grocery store here are fresh-from-your-best-friends'-chickens quality and I can't get enough of them. And we have slowly been trying every variety of store bought cookie on the shelves, except for the Oreos cause we know what they taste like.