The Jones Visit!

Melissa, Ethan and Adam Jones joined us for a too short visit in April. On their list of things to do were beach, rainforest, monkeys, ziplining, and hotsprings. In 6 fast days, we did it all. Natasha decided to skip school for two days, so the five of us headed off to Esterillos, our favorite beach.
Julie, of course, told Melissa that they needed to try pipa fria, which is cold coconut juice. It is Julie's favorite drink. We all love it too.


We stopped here at this fruit stand, and this woman gave us the coconuts, which she opened with a machete. Just so much fun to watch and to drink.

Then Ethan brought them over to another guy, who cut the inside out and we ate fresh coconut all the way to the beach.

On the way, we stopped to peer, carefully over this bridge. Carefully, because below it, live a lot of very large cocodriles, crocodiles , see below! Huge.


We arrived at the beach in time for sunset. The first time for any of the Jones at the Pacific Ocean, and sand dollars all around. Melissa has loved them for so long and found her first one here! Awesome.
Unfortunately for us, it was mating season for the manta rays and it wasn't recommended at all for us to go in the water in Esterillos Este. Fortunately this gave us the opportunity to go to a couple of spots that we hadn't been to before. Below is a pic of a statue of a mermaid out in this rocky area in Esterillos Oeste that we had heard about. We swam around and Ethan and Adam swam out to the statue. It was super hot there, like 97 % humidity, and 100 degrees or something. Anyway, it felt great to be in the water.

Then we decided to see if we could see monkeys, and headed to Manuel Antonio Nat'l Park, where Julie and I had had some luck with monkeys, and none of the others had been there. We stopped at this yummy typical restaurant. Ethan and Natasha are standing behind a photo op of traditional Costa Rican clothing.

As you know, coffee is a huge part of life here in Costa Rica. The waiter at this restaurant was pouring it the traditional way, at our table, through this hanging filter. They say that it maintains its flavor when you do it this way. Adam was our coffee drinker, and he loved it.

We got to Manuel Antonio at 4, and the park closed at 4, so we couldn't go in, but we did get to swim in some amazing waves. I wish I had a movie of the Jones guys in them. They were huge. We all had a blast swimming in them!


I love this apre wave shot, even Adam is smiling!!!!


Melissa and Adam looking for and finding more sand dollars.



There are a lot of different kinds of these guys who live in Esterillos. I think the people from there see them as we see squirrels, but for us, they are always cool.





Leaving Esterillos. I love this place. I love the colors. We had a very long drive that day, so we headed off. We drove to La Fortuna, where the Arenal Volcano are, and Tabacon Hot Springs, which we never tire of!

We ate lunch on the way, and the restaurant had an old coffee cart that Natash was posing with. They used to load these carts up with coffee and bring them into town, usually drawn by oxen or cows. You can still see them sometimes, but not very often.


Every town in Costa Rica has a central square, with a church, a park and a school. We drove through this town on the way to La Fortuna. I can't remember the name, but someone had decided to take over the pruning of these trees and it was incredible. We stopped to take some photos and chat with the people in the park.


A sweet shot of Arenal. We were lucky enough to see it. You can definitely be in La Fortuna and not see it.
We met Joe and Alexander at the hotel, soaked in the springs for a bit and then went to dinner.It was really nice to have everyone together. Here, Natash had 4 people trying to help her with her math homework. ( I really wasn't helping.)


Saturday was a blast. We soaked in the am, and then we split up. Melissa went on a very cool hanging bridges tour and really saw the rain forest. Natash and Joe soaked, and Ethan, Adam, Alexander and I went to the crazy zipline that we love there. It was fantastic. Unfortunately, I am not yet brave enough to bring my camera on the zipline, so no photos. It was a blast.

Melissa found this lovely butterfly garden at the hotel. The colors of the plants here are unreal.


Melissa enjoying the springs. It was a great trip, too short for me. So glad they came.

Clinica Cedcas

Last week, Alexander began complaining of a headache. He wasn't sure if it was a wisdom tooth coming in or what, but each day around noon, his head would really start hurting. He isn't a complainer, so on day three, I said, do you want me to call a dentist and he said yes. Hmmmm. How do you find a dentist? in a foreign country?I'm usually pretty picky about finding a good dentist. Well, I asked the people in the office of the kids school, and they gave us a number, of a clinic called CEDCAS. So, with a leap of faith, I called this clinic. They said that we could bring him in as soon as we could. Joe took Alexander to the clinic. They asked for ID, Alexander gave them his temporary drivers license, and they waited... for about 15 minutes. The Doctor came out, got Alexander, looked in his mouth, and told him that he had a big cavity. He drilled and filled it with a temporary filling and told them to return in 22 days for the permanent one. (Why twenty two days?) Then they gave Joe the bill, 7,000 colones. For those of you who only speak american dollars, this may seem like a lot, but it is about $12.00. Can you believe it? We are thrilled.

Today, I had to go. Three days ago, I noticed that I had about 6 raised, red spots on my leg. Yesterday, I found about 100, all over my body, on my face, in my mouth, on my eyelids, legs, arms, torso, palms of my hands... weird. And they were so itchy. I went to the pharmacy, which is the place you usually go here for medicine. Usually you show your symptoms or tell them, and they give you the medicine you want. Most of the time, they ask you how much you want. Amazing. You are like, what do you mean? My medical care in my own hands? Wow. Anyway, they had no idea what it was, so they gave me something, we decided for 5 days. Then today I woke up with maybe 200. So off we went to Clinica Cedcas, since it is the only place we know. They said they could see me in a half an hour, called me in early. I was weighed, my blood pressure checked, etc. The Dr. came , looked at the spots, talked to us. Super nice and unhurried. Then she said she was going to give me a steriod shot, take my blood and have the lab evaluate it and give me a prescription. The whole thing took about 45 minutes. And it cost 21,000 colones, about 40 bucks, including the blood and the lab work.

It is just interesting.

We are living in a LEDC, which I have learned from Alexander's World Geography class, is a less economically developed country. It is doing well for a country that isn't super developed, for sure, and there are tons of things here that economically and physically are absent. And at the same time, we are finding that medical care is not only professional, relaxed and easily available, it is not only cheap, it's worth it. It feels so appropriate on every level.

There are so many times that we have heard that people here think that the USA way is the ideal to hold up and aim for. And in many ways, you can see why. I think it would be amazing for our US Government to cast an eye this way when they are trying to provide good health care for all.

The McWilliams and friend visit

Spring break came and we had big plans!
Our friends Doug and Janie and Canyon and Darryl came to visit. I planned a great trip to two new places for us, and one repeat! These photos are in Monteverde, which was originally a Quaker community. It is so beautiful and green. It is hard to get there, the only ways into Monteverde are on very bumpy, dirt roads. Long ones! But so pretty.

This is us, minus Darryl at the restaurant in Monteverde. We spent two days there, seeing all sorts of animals, going on hanging bridges and zip lining. It was a blast!

I put these two rainforest photos in cause they are so beautiful and because I always think that I am not that much shorter than Joe, but I guess I am!



Natasha looking through one of the hanging bridges. There were 11 of them I think. They are so cool, you get to walk through the rainforest, and over a lot of it. So awesome, and tranquil.

There was a very cool Butterfly Pavillion in Monteverde, this is one of the butterflies there, having snack. Beautiful.

Then we drove to La Fortuna and went to those amazing hotsprings at Tabacon again. This is when Doug, Canyon and Natasha were waiting to go eat!

After La Fortuna, we drove a pretty far way to a new beach for us, called Playa Samara, on the Nicoya Pennisula. We had heard that it was awesome and it was. Alexander was being carried by Darryl to the beach, cause the road was hot and he had left his shoes in the room.

This is me, with La Roca Bruja, (Witch Rock) behind me. Doesn't it just call you to swim out to it? We all either swam or boated out there, it is about 1.5 kms from where I was standing. Alexander and I swam it 4 times, once a day! Super salty and therefore boyant. It was the beginning of all of us swimming a lot now. We loved it.

Doug and Janie walked or ran on the beach every morning, and looked for birds. I don't know many birds, but Janie saw a lot that she hadn't ever seen before.

A guy who offered horse rides came to our beach in the morning, with two 20 day old foals! Natash wasn't there, so I took a bunch of photos of it. So cute.

Panama!

After the McWilliams' visit, we needed to leave the country. Every 90 days, foreigners need to leave Costa Rica. We decided to go to check out a bit of Panama. We drove to a town on the frontera( the border) called Sixaola ( about a 6 hour drive), where we had to park the car in a tiny, muddy parking area. Then we hiked up to a 103 year old bridge. On one side, there is an office with one person working in it, and that is the processing office for Costa Rica. You need to stand in a line, show your passport and they stamp it. Then you walk across this old bridge with all of your stuff, til you reach this office, above , where you get in another line, and they stamp your passport there.

You can see Joe and Natasha walking across. It is such a trip. Look at the cracks. A bridge like this would never be the border crossing in the US. It was so cool for some reason. Every once in a while a huge 18 wheeler would cross it. Amazing. Then we took a minibus with 10 other travelers from all over the world, speaking lots of languages, to a town called Almirante. It was a beautiful drive, through very banana-y looking fields and countryside. In Almirante, we took a water taxi to the hotel. The whole trip took about 9 hours.

We spent a lot of our three days in the water. This was a beautiful pool at the hotel. We had all gotten so excited about swimming in Samara ( see last post) that we continued with laps here. Even in the rain, it was a beautiful workout!
This is a photo of where the water taxi dropped us off on this island, called Isla Colon, (Columbus Island) Apparently on Christopher Columbus's (Christobal Colon in Spanish) 5th voyage, he came here, loved it and named two of the many islands here, after himself. One is Isla Colon, the other Isla Cristobal.

This is the hotel, it is called Playa Tortuga Hotel. It was lovely.

Joe and I went snorkling, while the kids just hung out. We had had a lot of company, which was wonderful, and we were psyched to just have hang out time! This is Joe getting ready to snorkle.

Joe and Natash, doing their thing!

This is what Isla Colon looks like from the water taxi. Very reminescent of Caye Calker in Belize. The water was so clear and pretty. No beaches to hang out on in the Island, but beautiful to look at from a boat or the shore.

I am always amazed at what is living under the water. Sea urchins (the black ones) are amazing. We saw a ton of coral and lots of fish. So beautiful.

This area is known for its red sea stars. This beautiful pic is the last one that my camera took, just before it got water logged and died. Luckily for us, my sis Melissa is due here in a couple of days and is bringing a replacement!

Visitors!!!

Welcome back. Not sure anyone is still reading, cause it has been so long. However you'll see why in the next few posts. We have had a lot of guests and it has been so much fun. First, Kathleen, my stepmom came in early Feb. She was here for 9 days and we had a blast. She was an amazing trooper, as she probably saw the nicest as well as perhaps the worst we have seen!
We have wanted to go to the Caribean side of Costa Rica for a long time and we had heard that Cahuita and Puerto Viejo in the Limon Provence were both nice. We waited for a long time, because we wanted to go when it wasn't rainy. We decided that whenever guests would come we would go to a new place, and we decided that when Kathleen was here, we would try Cahuita. She and Joe went to Arenal the first weekend that she was here and they had a blast. Then we found a great deal in Cahuita, a whole house for $50.00 a night. We thought we were finally found the deal of Costa Rica! It was this little room, with shutters, three bedrooms filled with mosquitoes and holes under the beds. To make matters worse, it rained the whole time, which was a bummer, cause the reason to go to Cahuita is to snorkel. We made the best of it, though, we hung out, read, ate and relaxed, and the thing I remember most was that Kathleen never complained. She was amazing. Here are some pics from that crazy place!
This dog, Osito, who has won over our hearts, is the other reason that you haven't heard much from me. He is so great, loves to run and walk and chase squirrels and to be around us. And he takes up a lot of our time. This is a pic of Natasha and Osito in the finca (farm) behind our house, where we walk a lot.

Kathleen and Dona Ana and I went to San Jose to see the National Theater. We had a great time, and the theater is absolutely beautiful. I hope we can see a performance there before we head home.
Kathleen and I also went on a Coffee tour, and during part of the presentation, they asked for volunteers and Kathleen jumped up and learned how to determine which coffee beans were ready and which weren't. It is an awful photo, but I wanted to put it in cause it was so much fun. The tour was at Cafe Britt, which is owned by the owners of our school, too. They have wonderful coffee, and the tour is quite funny and informative. You can find out more, and order excellent coffee at CafeBritt.com

These two photos are back in Cahuita. You can see the entirety of the room above. Kathleen did get a great nap in this hammock, until this tiny dog decided to play underneath. One of the great things about this trip to Cahuita was that we all got to get a dose of appreciation for all that we have. Always worth the struggle to get that lesson.

We did go on this beautiful walk in the rainforest in Cahuita, which we both enjoyed a lot.
It is funny, because the next weekend, we had another visitor, our friend Theresa. She and Joe went back to Cahuita and to Puerto Viejo and had a wonderful time. Better weather, hotel and really cool tours. Theresa stayed for a couple of weeks, for a much needed break from winter and stress. She had a bunch of time in the central valley with us, and we went back to the beach for her last weekend. I think we sent her back happier and healthier!