Too much time has passed by! Car wheels, surf, turtles and farms

Arribada in Ostional

We arrived back in Costa Rica in September after going home for a little over a month.  Re-entry was rough.  The first week we were back both the computer and the car stopped working.  Our Macbook was apparently fried by frequent power surges (yes, we have a surge protector) and the wheel of the Honda fell off after we had a "mechanic" "fix" the car for us.  It turns out that not only did he not fix it, but made it much much worse.  Instead of just a loud clunking noise coming from my rear wheel, the rear wheel just fell off.  The "mechanic" forgot to put one of the bolts back on.  Geoff also noticed that one of the parts that we paid him for was cracked and old and obviously had NOT been replaced.  So the first few weeks were a bit challenging, but then we also have been able to have some really great experiences too.  

We were able to see our first arribada - this is when thousands of Olive Ridley turtles return from the ocean to lay their eggs on Ostional beach.  It is absolutely amazing.  There were so many turtles on the beach that we had a hard time staying out of their way as they made their way up to the high tide line in the sand.  The kids loved it - and they spent much of the time being kind citizens of the world by chasing the vultures away from the newly laid eggs.  The turtles are fascinating.  Our guide told us that the temperature of the sand determines the sex of the turtle, and that the female turtles return every few months to lay more eggs.  The female turtles also have a reservoir in their bodies to hold sperm for up to two years just in case they don't find any appropriate suitors!    

G watching a turtle drop her eggs.  

Olive Ridley turtles arribada

Returning to the sea.  She gets sand in her eyes which makes her cry.

Geoff was able to come down here for a full 6 weeks this time around, and spent most of the mornings doing this:

Surfing Playa Guiones

yikes

Horse girl

 Amara has spent a lot of her free time recently learning how to ride horses.  She LOVES it.  All girls seem to love horses.  I didn't realize when I was little how lucky I was that I had two best friends who owned horses.

So many beautiful sunsets here

Turquoise Mot Mot

Happy on the beach

"Nana" Jay - my mom loved this bird so we named it after her.

Chow time

Fun on the Alfaro farm!
We were invited to spend the weekend on a local farm near Nicoya recently with our dear neighbor Maria to celebrate her daughters birthday.  We had the best time!  Her parents are wonderful, kind & generous people.  They treated us like family and fed us wonderful food and let us stay on their beautiful farm - so tranquil.  The kids had so much fun they didn't want to leave.  They played in the pool and ran around and rode horses all afternoon.  I stayed up late (10:00pm is late for me in Costa Rica!) trying to understand complicated conversations in Spanish - it was awesome.

Beautiful Maria & her wonderful mama and papa Luis & Ana Alfaro

Happy birthday Alana!

Alfaro farmland

storm over the farm

I will try to write more often - but life happens and months pass!  We were home for 6 weeks and had an awesome time in Washington.  Maybe I'll get around to posting about that too, at least in photos.