2-3 September, 2002

Because we had heard about a hotel for sale down in Nosara (on the Nicoya, south of Tamarindo, north of Samara, for those of you following along on a map at home) we decided to do the drive down to check things out. Our impression of Nosara was that it is a sleepier version of Tamarindo that hasn't exploded with the high-priced real estate nor quite the huge levels of tourists, yet.

After driving for a few hours and nearly hitting a truck head-on (new rule- on one lane bridges we are now slowing down to second gear, even if we are supposed to have the right of way) we made it to Nosara in the afternoon. We headed directly for the hotel and were seriously disappointed. We had built it up in our heads to be a little slice of perfection: it wasn't. After chatting with the guys renting the place and also chatting with the owner a little bit, Bb got Steve out of there and we had a long talk about what we want in a place and what we don't want and how to go about finding/buying/building/renting/leasing/working it all out. It was the fiftieth time we had the talk about this stuff, but like the previous 49, it was enlightening for both of us.

After looking around the north end of Nosara a bit more we decided to head south and see what was there. Boy what a difference a bay makes! On the south end of Nosara is Playa Guiones and from what we can tell, it is our idea of a perfect beach. Seven kilometers of clean sand with a 200 meter no-build zone and a national park/conservation area splattered about. From the beach you really can't see much that is manmade except for a few thatch palapas and some homes up on the hills in the distance. Since it was getting late and raining and we were exhausted, we hurried back to find the first decent hotel we could and were happy to encounter Joe at the Gilded Iguana who rented us a room and gave us some advice about hotels for sale and properties as well.

In the morning we got up to a beautiful sunny day and headed out to look around. First stop was Guiones again (love that beach!) where we collected some shells, watched some swimmable and some surfable waves, and got ready to poke around town and talk to the locals. It was a long day (again) but we are feeling like we are getting a pretty decent read of the pulse of the area and are looking forward to finding out more!

Playa Guiones, Nosara	Bb and Bicho, on Guiones	Playa Pelada, Nosara	Road or River? Not uncommon around here

4-8 September, 2002

After seeing some great places for sale in Nosara (and some real clunkers) and after chatting it up with the locals quite a bit, we decided to head back to Flamingo to cool off, get some distance, and think a little bit about the various possibilities.

We also wanted to cruise through Liberia to do an update and buy some parts for Buttercup at the Toyota dealership. Nothing serious, but the front left motor mount is wonky and we still wanted to install a thermostat (it is common down here to pull out the thermostat in order to "help" the car keep cool). Unfortunately the Toyota dealer had neither part in stock, so we headed on down to Flamingo feeling like we had wasted an hour or two of driving. Oh well.

We also wanted to get back into touch with Kelly at the real estate office in Tamarindo as we had spoken with her a little bit about properties and also about the potential to work with them a little. Of course we were also interested in picking her brain just a little bit more about property buying in general.

While waiting for Cocktoaston to get out of school for the weekend, Steve dove into some other minor repairs on Buttercup- fixing the seriously screwed up rear lighting problem and trouble-shooting some other minor hiccups. Safe at the Flamingo house, the sweet girl decided that her clutch slave-cylinder was done. With almost no warning at all Steve was disappointed to find that we no longer had a clutch (this was literally while backing into the driveway). "Hmm." He thought, and popped the hood to take a look. First idea was that the fluid simply needed topping off, but before he even added fluid he noticed a growing stain on the driveway and realized that the seals on the slave are thrashed. Bummer. Not so much for the repair, it isn't a hard one, but because it meant that Cocktoaston would have to drive his Hoopty ride down instead of us all going in Buttercup, and thus we would have to take the mostly-paved route instead of the more-adventurous multiple river-crossing way.

And so we drove down Saturday afternoon to take another look at Nosara. We got there late and drove around a little bit to get acquainted. Cocktoaston caught a glimpse of the Hotel Playa Nosara and simply had to drive up to look around the crazy place, despite Bb's quickly darkening mood (she was starving). The hotel is crazy, no doubt. We even almost stayed the night there to explore more but decided that food was more important. We ended up at Blew Dog's beautiful bar where we enjoyed big portions of gringo-style bar food (excellent nachos) and chatted until late with the bartender. We finally decided to just grab a room there, proximity and all, but promised Cocktoaston that we would accompany him to check out the hotel on Sunday.

Sunday we spent looking around again and daydreaming about the potential at various places. As promised, we drove back up to the Hotel Playa Nosara with Cocktoaston and had a looksie. Crazy place. Maybe we can get Cocktoaston to write up a little info on it as he finally hunted down someone there who knew something about it. In brief: it looks like a huge, sprawling haunted house built in a Greek-Indian fusion style (with some Rivera-esque murals on several walls). It just so happens to be perched on some of the best real estate in the area, overlooking both Playa Guiones and Playa Pelada. Despite being a working hotel, it has the aspect of being either half-built or half-demolished, or both. Crazy.

Finally and with little enthusiasm, we headed back to Flamingo on Sunday night as Cocktoaston had class on Monday.

Playa Guiones, from Hotel Playa Nosara	Cows, yes they are tied together. Maybe for easier hitching?	Cocktoaston, his Hoopty ride, and Hotel Playa Nosara	Sunset from the Party House in Flamingo

For those of you who want some pics of Buttercup (Buba for short!) We've also started a page just for her, it is a work in progress, but has some info. You can check it here.

Jump seats		Nice headliner and knobs . . .	Fan: ahhhhhhh

9-12 September, 2002

We headed back to Atenas to gather up our stuff and get it out from under Vane's feet. She and Simon have been amazing to let us store junk all over their spare room for 15 months but it is time to get it out of there for everyone's sake. Fortunately the sweet little landlord lady who owns the house has a little extra storage room nearby, so we simply packed stuff up and loaded it into Buttercup (the process took a mere day and a half) then dropped it off at the new storage spot- all nicely itemized and safely wrapped up.

Since we had volunteered to pick up Cocktoaston's friend Virginie (pronounced Visiony) at the airport on Thursday the 12th, we headed over to Alajuela on Wednesday to take care of some car-related paperwork and to visit old friends at the Hotel Pacande.

We roll into Alajuela with about an hour and a half of daylight left. As we near the airport, just for kicks, we decide to find out how much the corporate hotels charge. At the Hotel Aeropuerto, Bb hopped out and asked the overly made up girl at the desk who was busy brushing her hair, how much for a room for two people. This is how the conversation went:

"¿Cuanto sale un cuarto?" (How much for a room?)

With a straight face hairbrush girl says, "Sesenta y cinco." (65)

Eyebrows raised, not sure about 65 of what they were talking about (65 hundred colones perhaps, cause it can't be dollars!), Bb repeats, "¿Sesenta y cinco?"

Hairbrush girl: "Si." Helpfully: "Desayuno incluido." (Yes. 65. Breakfast is included.)

Bb laughing: "¿Dolares??" (Dollars??)

Hairbrush girl, completely serious: "Si."

Bb leaves without laughing, but she and Steve loose it in the car and make up all the different possibilities of 65 there could have been in that interaction, because neither one of them believes that $65 American dollars is really what she meant…

A little perspective here: The hotels surrounding the airport sit just off the highway on a muddy dirt road near, well, the airport and a bunch of used car dealerships. $65 a night in paradise beach resort places buys you a room with a view of the ocean, a pool, AC, fan, most likely breakfast and oh, wait, AN OCEAN VIEW!!! with the intimation that you can walk out your room and use the ocean! For free! And a complete lack of planes landing overhead!! Also free!

All right, call us jaded, but we still laugh about the Hotel Aeropuerto exchange…

This leaves us searching for a hotel, though, so we drive into downtown Alajuela to check in on the Pacande. We arrive to find the owners not there, but on the phone and inviting us up to their new house. Alrighty, off we go. To They fed us dinner, put us up in their home for the night AND fed us breakfast in the morning! That made us feel pretty cool. And it was really nice to chat with them for a couple hours both in the evening and the morning. They are super-nice people who we had the pleasure of meeting over a year ago when they had just opened their hotel. It was gratifying to learn that they are enjoying some success- we certainly enjoy staying with them and look forward to working with them in the future.

Hey! For those of you traveling in Costa Rica- when you come into the airport or go back to depart, call the Hotel Pacande at 506/ 443 84 81 or drop them an email at joslozano@uole.com to reserve a room. Tell 'em Sandcruiser sent you and they'll give you a discount. If you catch a cab at the bus station or airport, be sure to tell the cabbie you have a reservation, and be sure to tell the gatekeeper at the hotel that you heard about them on Sandcruiser (and not that the cabbie told you)- it'll save you at least $10.

We reluctantly left the house/hotel to take care of stuff. Well- the car paperwork turned out to be waste of time as the salesman didn't show up after half and hour of waiting (we were told "he's on his way"). We coulda shoulda woulda waited around longer, but we were much more interested in taking care of other stuff than sitting in the rain waiting.

The other stuff consisted of another lesson in patience and banking. A few weeks ago we went in to Banco Costa Rica (BCR) to get ourselves a savings account with ATM. Mostly just so we could keep some cash handy in Costa Rica, but also to give ourselves access to an ATM card should anything get screwy or stolen with our regular account. At that time the kind folks at BCR took our pictures to make our ATM cards and told us to come back in a few days. We took the liberal measure of a "few days" and came back in a month. Of course, we had to wait a good twenty minutes or so (that's a short wait, bye the way) and then it took the bank guy ten more minutes to figure out how to look up Steven James Broyles. Bb has halfway decided to change her name to Maria Esperanza Elena Gonzalez Ramirez. She feels certain this will be easier than Jocelyn Broyles (or Broyln as it still appears on her ATM card, even though she told the girl twice it was wrong…) So we finally have ATM cards in hand and Steve figures he'll try it out on the ATM inside the bank, so just in case anything goes wrong, we're already in the bank! Brilliant!

Except the ATM that is inside the bank where we just picked up our ATM cards that is only ten feet from the guy at the desk we just dealt with: isn't really an ATM. Or something like that. It's an ATM but it doesn't really give money. It gives checks. Or something like that. But there is an ATM that we can use outside the bank. Uh. Huh. So we leave, shaking our heads. Starting to try and talk about the ATM that isn't really an ATM but not really sure what to say about this and then we find ourselves in front of the outside-of-the-bank-real-ATM! It's out of order.

Lunch. Lunch is what we need.

We ate. We called Cocktoaston. We picked up Virginie in the rain. And she is just the sweetest thing we've ever met! We talked all the way back to Flamingo where John was waiting for us with a cold bottle of wine and the most gorgeous hunk of fresh tuna that he bought for 1,200 colones -- about $4 US-- that he then seared for us and served by candlelight with rice and salad and papaya salsa. What a great thanks for a ride from the airport!

13 September, 2002

Our FIFTH (can you believe it!?!?) wedding anniversary. Wow! Five whole years we've been playing together. Three of them on this little adventure of ours. Steve can't imagine a better way to have spent the last five, nor a better person with whom to have spent them.

To celebrate our day we ran off and reserved our very own hotel room at the Guanacaste Lodge (cheap, but clean, dry and cool) then took off to explore points south of Tamarindo as we have decided that we are more interested in this area than the Nosara area (for now). Our exploration mostly consisted of finding a really rutted out trail that seems to split two properties and has a creek or two that meander across it. It was Buttercup's first sustained offroad driving and we were very happy with how she (and we) did. Driving a short wheelbase vehicle off-road sure is different than a long wheelbase like Sandy. Not nearly as comfy on dirt roads, but much more maneuverable in the tight trails.

After playing on the trail for two hours or so, we rolled back towards Flamingo to meet up with Cocktoaston and Virginie and the four of us headed out to a nice dinner to celebrate our anniversary. All in all, a great day.

Easy start to the "trail", just a little water	Bb moves a big 'ol stump out of the way	Steve checks to see how deep the muck is before we drive into it	Buttercup just walked right through

14 September, 2002

Don't really reckon that we did much as neither of us remembers it being a particularly interesting day. Towards evening we did enjoy a neat little procession of children carrying candlelight lamps. We aren't sure of the exact significance of the lamp but it is related to the 181st anniversary of Central American independence from Spain. Must have been a lamp involved somewhere.... We hope to find out more about what it all means, but that will probably wait until next year.

15 September, 2002

Steve was feeling restless so we invited Cocktoaston and Vee to play with us the next day on an offroad trip down the coast to Playa Negra. The happily agreed and we planned to meet at 9a.m. at The Party House, figuring that would get us out the door by 10 a.m.

We were right! After quietly making some coffee at TPH (we didn't arrive 'till 9:30) we reluctantly -- okay Steve begged Beebee to do it-- decided to wake the kids up. Turns out they were out until 4 a.m. at the Tamarindo bonfire. (As I'm writing this, Steve just pointed out to Beebee that since we got woken up by the local population at about 6:30 this morning that, "Perhaps it's time to get off of our Cocktoaston sleeping schedule!) But we managed to get out the door fairly quickly and head out to a great tipico breakfast, Virginie's first taste of Gallo Pinto (she likes it... mostly).

After breakfast we headed on down to Playa Negra where we all took a dip, Cocktoaston hit the water to surf, then Steve and Bb headed off southward to explore a little. About three km down the road we found a huge tree limb blocking the way- there are some things that just aren't passable, even in a Landcruiser, and this one wasn't worth the work to clear.... we'll come back some other day.

So we relaxed at the beach some more, then loaded up and headed home, stopping to take a quick picture before racing back to Tamarindo Beach to catch a beautiful sunset. Since everyone was pooped we headed back to TPH and made some popcorn and watched Fletch.

C and V gather shells	Steve, Virginie, Cocktoaston, Bb	The beach near Playa Negra

16 September, 2002

After sleepily crawling into our own hotel bed and a good night's sleep, we woke up and decided to spend the day taking care of some things. Of course, we made our first stop at The Party House to drop off Cocktoaston's board, say good-bye to Vee and find out what Cocktoaston's plans are after she leaves. We of course spent about two hours there, chatting, pointing out Howler monkeys to Vee (she hadn't seen any yet!) and talking about the various merits of them visiting Monteverde and Volcan Arenal or staying beachside. They were fairly undecided as we left and we are keeping our eyes open for them, but not expecting to see them. Takes a lot of motivation to leave Guanacaste!

Next stop was Oscar, who each time we see him, is busier (great for him, not so great for us!) who kindly told us that returning first thing in the morning would prove much more fruitful for us. Okay. Off to Tamarindo then to talk with Kelley, maybe do some email and return some books. Willie wasn't around, so we didn't even bother to ask his sandwich monkey about hooking up the laptop, but Kelly at Remax was. Yeah. The first thing on our long list of projects to actually happen!

We chatted for a while about property in Playa Negra, unfortunately, she only had info on the big development down there -- $82/m eeek!, but we found out about a dentist, talked more about the benefits of homemade sushi and reminded her that we are definitely interested in working for her as well as hiring them to help us with our eventual purchase. But most importantly, we asked about the price on a local hotel, set back from the beach about 50 meters, with eight rooms, a wading pool, manager's quarters and owner's quarters, laundry and a kitchen. The price is probably within our reach, so we headed off to talk with the owner, Jim (who is also a Realtor with Remax and also is the Realtor working on the deal.) No conflict of interest here!

After picking Jim's brain for a couple of hours and getting a pretty thorough tour of the place, we left feeling kinda excited about learning more. The hitch? We will find out in a couple of days if it is actually for sale!

So with that new possibility firmly tucked absolutely… nowhere, we decided to drive up to Monteverde and get our rooftop tent. That's productive. Isn't it?

For all you cruiser fans: A "Pig" we kept seeing in Tamarindo. Note the non-USA ambulance doors.

17 September, 2002

We got up, packed, didn't even have our usual free hotel coffee, and scooted on down to Oscar's. He was eating breakfast when we arrived, so we crossed the street to the Panaderia (bakery) and had ourselves some yummies (specifically a huge slice of chocolate cake for Bb and a mixed-berry pastry for Steve), some coffee and some OJ. Back to Oscar's, where he was actually fairly speedy and left us with a new thermostat and new slave cylinder. Great. Now off to Monteverde (and it's only noon!)

Road from Huacas to Liberia	Oscar's shop- like doing repairs at a friend's house but you stay clean (mostly)

Liberia came pretty quickly and we stopped to do a quick email session, which turned into an hour online. Hmmm. Just as the rain started coming down in buckets, we finished up, grabbed ourselves some fried chicken for the road and headed out. Nothing like driving in torrential rain, with foggy windows on a two lane highway while eating chicken (sorry moms!). Really all that meant was instead of driving 90kph, we had to do 40.

The drive to MV isn't an easy one (but it sure is pretty), and taking an extra hour on the pavement isn't a great way to start out. By the time we got to the dirt road, still about an hour outside of MV, we were ready to be in a hotel room. Bb was having an eight-ibuprofen-and-counting-cause-they-weren't-doing-a-dang-thing-bad-bad-bad-cramp day, and the terribly long and bumpy dirt road wasn't helping her mood any. Eventually, after making a wrong turn (even more maddening when you know where you are!) we got ourselves out to Frank's house. Just after dark we ran into him pulling into his driveway as we were trying to decide which fork in the road belonged to his house. What luck! We chatted with him for a while and decided on meeting him back at his house in the morning around 8 for coffee. Wow! We were super excited at the prospect of sitting down with him for a few minutes and catching up.

We left him to go have dinner with his family and went in search of a place to sleep, then eat. We stopped at a couple of nicer places, thinking that this is the off season -- HA!-- not as far as prices go! The least expensive was $45 a night. Not to say this is a bad price, but when you're used to an ocean view, pool and free coffee for $20, you cringe at much above that for less perks! So we settled on a small pension for $20 -- at least it's not MORE than we've been paying. It was clean and there was hot water and a table lamp (quite a luxury in these parts) and Bb was tired of looking.

Then off to get some food. We chose Johnny's pizzeria, where last year we had a great group meal with Steve's cousin Travis and the students. Bb hardly recognized the place. Without 20 or so kids (21 year olds) crowded together in the middle of the dining room, the place is quite nice and romantic -- she felt a little underdressed in jeans and sneakers! But she got over that soon enough and we enjoyed a mozzarella, basil and tomato salad (and to Steve's mom who is thinking Bb must have just loved that, she did!) followed by two very well prepared pasta dishes and a nice bottle of Chilean wine, all by candlelight. A great little impromptu date.