Nicaragua!

So we took a run to the Nicaraguan border last weekend.  I was pretty nervous about the border crossing, because I've heard some crazy stories.  When we arrived at the border, we first had to find a spot to park our car because it is really difficult to take a car into Nicaragua.  You need many photocopies and many stamps and they fumigate your car too.  A friend of mine told me it took her 6 hours to cross the border with a car, plus a $50 bribe.  So, instead we parked and walked across the border.  The border is kind of a crazy disorganized place that would be really hard to navigate without lots of prior research and an understanding of at least intermediate Spanish.  There are multiple pieces of paper you need and places to show your passport.  Plus you walk about 400 meters through "no mans land" between the two countries.  However, if you have done your research, know some Spanish, and are kind and patient, the crossing (for us anyway) can be fairly smooth (although long).  After a couple of hours at the border, we grabbed a taxi and headed up to Granada.  Granada is an awesome colonial city on the shore of Lake Nicaragua.  We LOVED it.  We walked around the city the first night, and ate a super tasty dinner near the town square.

The kids loved being in a city.  They spent a lot of time in the hotel pool, and at a playground playing with the local kids.  Graham walked up to people at the park and asked if he could play soccer with them, so he didn't want to ever leave.  We also took a tour of a local volcano, and spent a lot of time just wandering around the colonial streets.

When the kids got tired of walking, we took a horse carriage ride, which was fun for the kids.  They were able to see more of Granada, and we learned about the history of the city.  Later that evening, however, they noticed that the horses were STILL working and walking people around the city.  They felt really bad for the horses then, and also noticed that some of them were really skinny.  They also noticed a lot of homeless people, which made them ask a lot of questions about why these people are homeless, and Graham wanted to give them all money.  Geoff helped him hand out oranges instead - it was a good life experience for the kids to help them understand how lucky they are and how much people can suffer.

Overall though, our experience in Granada was great and the kids decided that they like cities where there are streetlights to walk at night, lots of restaurants to chose from and parks with lots of other kids to play with.  It was also cooler than Nosara, which at this time of year was really nice.  Nicaragua was such a fun trip it had us wondering if we have chosen wisely!  It is MUCH MUCH cheaper than Costa Rica and the roads are better too!

On the shore of Lake Nicaragua

My happy daughter

Yummy pizza and greek food!!  Pizzaiol!

Rio Celeste

Rio Celeste

So, Costa Rica has a river named after me, or so my children think!  Rio Celeste is located in Tenorio Volcano National Park, up in the mountains where it is blessedly cool and refreshing after sweating at the beach for almost 2 months.  The day we arrived the weather was cloudy and misty - we had to wear long sleeves and pants!!!!  It was awesome!  We stopped in Liberia on the way, to pick up Geoff from the airport, as he had been gone for an entire month back in the USA.  We stayed at a cute hotel in Liberia called Hotel Javy, which is run by a sweet Tica lady who speaks no English.  It was awesome practice for me! She cooks great food too, if you are in Liberia alone with two kids and its getting dark and you don't want to leave for dinner.

The next morning we left for Bijagua, which is at the foot of the Tenorio Volcano.  We checked in at the very cute Hotel Cacao where there was an abundance of colorful hummingbirds, butterflies and feral cats.  Amara ran around trying to catch a kitten to bring home but was luckily unsuccessful. One new pet a month is probably enough!  The owner of the hotel informed me that he only gets about 10 Americans per year, because most stay in the resort hotels.  I would highly recommend travelling like a European and staying in this place if you want a more relaxed and authentic experience.  Muy tranquilo!!!  Just down the street you can walk a half a block to a great little restaurant too, and order a casada - a Costa Rican dish with fish (or meat or veggies), salad, beans, rice, and a fried plantain.  Very healthy and tasty too!

The first afternoon we spent in Bijagua we went to Finca Verde, where we took a guided tour and saw sloths, sleeping bats (they are really cute!!), butterflies, frogs, snakes, and birds. Geoff also ate some termites.  He says that they taste "woody".  No one else felt it necessary to verify this information...

The next morning we got up early and headed up a really really slow, steep, rocky dirt road.  It took us about 45 minutes to drive 11 km, but Tenorio National Park is worth it.  Because of the road, there aren't a lot of tourists here, except a crazy German lady that felt obligated to bring her 3 inch heels with her to change into for a photo shoot - she was hilarious to watch!  The photographer kept missing the mid-air jump so she spent a long time jumping into the air in 3 inch heels onto a slippery wet wooden deck.  Entertaining indeed!

The hike through the jungle to the Rio Celeste waterfall was what I had pictured when I thought of Costa Rica before we arrived here.  Dense jungle, shin deep mud, misty fresh cool air. We all loved it!!!  The color of the water is the beautiful blue that reminds me of glacial-fed waters like Lake Blanca in Washington.  The color here is not glacier fed, but rather a chemical mixture from underwater hot springs bubbling up from the volcano.  Another "brilliant" tourist decided it would be "interesting" to stick her hand in the boiling water.  You can imagine what her reaction might have been at discovering that it was indeed boiling hot water.

When the guides at the entrance to the park tell you to rent boots if you didn't bring them with you, definitely listen.  They aren't joking around about the mud.  :)

It was such a great mini-vacation, getting away from the heat and dusty roads of Guanacaste in the dry season.  I could have spent more time sitting at the hotel just watching the hummingbirds and butterflies and wearing long sleeves!!

Graham holding the famous Red-Eye Tree Frog

Rio Celeste Waterfall

3-Fingered Sloth

The Mixing-Pool - where the beautiful blue color is made.

Hotel Cacao - a great place to stay in Bijagua

Cacao seed

Amara and the Frog

and, on a different topic, Happy Birthday to my awesome daughter! 

Stranded!

I decided that it was time to drive further than 2 miles from our home base here in Nosara, so the kiddos and I loaded up the Honda with our snorkel gear and headed to San Juanillo, about 18 km north of here - about 11 miles.  Not far.  At home, it would take about 11 minutes to go 11 miles.  Here, however, it took about 40 minutes of driving on some crazy dirt roads with hills so steep that my tires started slipping and I had to shift into a low gear.  I also drove through 2 rivers, a first for me and my SUV!  I was really nervous about this, and was second guessing my "brave" idea to go on this little adventure.  However, as I was sitting and pondering how many crocodiles were in this insanely deep river, I saw a tiny little 2 door sedan drive through the river with no hesitation.  The car was probably 4 inches off the ground.  I think the driver smirked at me, thinking I must be a tourist.  I decided that I was being a wimp, after all I was driving a Honda Pilot which has 4WD and is MUCH higher off the ground.  Off we go!  Into the river and through the woods!

San Juanillo is worth the crazy drive to get there.  The beaches are beautiful!!  The beaches are protected from the waves so lots of local people were out snorkeling and swimming.   It has been really windy here, so the water was pretty murky but we did see tons of cute blue fish and 2 freaky looking eels.  Rumor has it that there are two tasty restaurants in town that serve greek food, and we were really excited to try the vegetarian one - testing it out for Nana!  It closes at 4:00 though, and we just missed it.  Super sad kids, they were hungry!!  So we'll have to go back, and eat lunch there next time.

On the way home, we drove back through the two rivers.  Just past the second river, which I zipped right through this time, there was a photo I just had to stop and take of the farmland and sunset beside the road.  I had to take the keys out in order to do this, because the camera was safely stored in my rocket box on top of my car.  I took some pictures, including this one here:

Which was fine, although not an awesome picture and definitely not worth what came next...I got back in the car, and turned the key.  NOTHING.  Dead.  WHAT??  I've been here for 2 weeks, Geoff is out of town, I'm the furthest away I've been from "home" and my car dies???  On the side of the road, and its going to get dark any minute.  Seriously??  I try calling my husband and I CAN"T because I'm in Central America on the side of the road with no wifi!!   Poor kids started crying and were so scared!!  I called one of the 4 phone numbers that I have programmed into my phone of local people.  People I barely know.  Elizabeth answered, first try!!  She said she'd be right there.  She had to drive probably 20-30 minutes out of her way (each way) to rescue someone she just met a few days ago.  She didn't hesitate at all, and we are so grateful to her.  So we repaid her by then having dinner at her house that same night.  :)  I guess she figured I was too traumatized to cook for my kids or myself.

So what is wrong with my Honda, that has never caused me any grief?  At first I thought it was the river I drove through.  I must've gotten something important wet.  But that didn't make sense, the water wasn't deep enough.  It jump started just fine.  Then I turned it off and tried to start it again, and nothing.  Dead. ???  All the lights had just been on, working fine!!  What is wrong?  Then we went to jump it again, and the cable connecting the battery to the car was actually NOT connected at all.  It wasn't screwed on.  So, in conclusion, we figured out that the battery had rattled itself loose on these bumpy nasty roads, and had probably not been screwed on at the port here in Costa Rica when we shipped it.  Nice.  At least it was simple.  This time.  On the plus side, at least my car didn't start on fire in the parking lot at school (which did happen to someone!!).

Well, as they say here: Pura Vida!  

Agua...

Today wasn't my favorite day in Costa Rica.  We had a pipe burst wide open under our sink last night,  causing a flood in our kitchen.  Ironically, in an unrelated water-incident, we had NO water at all today.  Flood to famine in less than 24 hours.  Apparently the main water pump for our town broke, which means that for an undetermined amount of time we will have no water after 6:00pm or before 8:00am.  Every day.  I really can't complain too much though, because I have a friend in Nicaragua (hi Annette!) and she never knows when her water will be on or for how long.  At least we are being warned??

As a nice end to the day I was stung by a scorpion.  Lucky for me, he was little and trying to sting me through my skort so it turned out that it was no worse than a bee sting, but actually SEEING a scorpion trying to sting you is unnerving.  They are creepy and prehistoric.  I must admit that I wasn't exactly practicing the best no-sting protocol at the time.  I was hacking a branch off a palm tree with a machete.  Yes, you read that right.  The palm frond whacks the window in the kids' room every night and wakes them up.  It sounds like someone trying to crawl into their room, so I thought I would try to fix this scary nightmare-inducing little problem...  So, as you may not know, scorpions like to LIVE in palm trees.  I've seen them there before (on more than one occasion) so I really should've known better.  I'm not totally innocent in the scorpion-sting-incident.  On a positive note, I did actually remove the palm frond.

"cute" little guy:

On a more serene and beautiful note, I did have a wonderful weekend full of family, new friends, and new adventures.   I ran on the beach with my new friend - getting up before 5:00am so we didn't turn into puddles of sweat.  I NEVER woke up this early at home, ask any of my friends who begged me to get up at 5:00 and meet them for a run.  Of course, at home it was usually dark and freezing which makes it much less motivating to walk out your door.   We also went on a hike to a "hidden" waterfall nearby (only hidden from you if you aren't from around here).  The water was surprisingly cold and refreshing, as it is apparently coming down from the mountains.  We want to return here and wander up the river and see how far we can go.

 Two of our friendly backyard neighbors

Sunset from our deck on Saturday, one of the best yet!!

Midnight plane to Houston

On our first travel day to Costa Rica, my dad (affectionately known as "Rah Rah") was charged by an alligator.  A REALLY BIG alligator.  Lucky for him it was behind very thick glass.  We  had finally made a visit to The Reptile Zoo to see all the fun deadly creatures that we will be encountering down here in Costa Rica.  The kids had a great time holding snakes, and we all escaped unharmed - except for a possible sore snout suffered by the alligator hitting the glass wall.  It was a great way to spend the last few hours in Washington State,  and I would highly recommend the Reptile Zoo in Monroe, WA.

From the Zoo we headed for Thai food, because I doubt we'll have many opportunities for Thai in the coming months.  Then we all piled into Rah Rah and Nana's hotel room to await our redeye flight to Houston.  Graham fell asleep and had to be awoken at 10:00pm, poor kiddo.   The flight was tiring and uneventful, which is always the best kind of flight to have.

Flying out of Houston we were a little late - but we landed safely in Liberia, Costa Rica where a nice man in Customs saw me standing there flustered and sweaty, traveling alone with two kids and 9 bags and he let us in the "residentes" line where we promptly received our 90 day visa.  After being frightened by many horror stories about customs, I was confused and felt sure that we had somehow missed something.  I kept waiting for security to come nab us!  No one came chasing after us, and the customs agents, at least for today, were nice.

We finally arrived at our hotel for the night, the Lagarta Lodge in Nosara, Costa Rica.  The owners are wonderful and the view is spectacular.  We slept well that night, and awoke in the morning to blue skies and a delicious brunch from a balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  Things could definitely be worse.

Welcome to Costa Rica!