OUR JOURNAL

29 December, 2002

Today was a pretty close repeat of yesterday (except for the crossing the border part and without nearly as much driving). We met more people, looked at more prospective places and finally made it into the water for the first time since we got here, but not until after sunset. The beach is much changed since summer. The tides have taken away a large part of the sand, leaving many more rocks which sometimes reach nearly all the way to the hotels. Beautiful, but we prefer the sand for running and especially swimming. We like to go out into the waves at night and with rocks willy nilly everywhere they didn't used to be, it's not quite as safe, or fun for that matter. But no worries, the sands will change again. There is probably some overused purportedly Chinese saying about sand and tides, or there should be, but either way: beaches change.

We met more people while we were out apartment hunting. A nice guy (turns out his name is Jeff) came in off the street to where we were having a beer with Willie to tell us our windows were down on our cruiser. We told him we had just emptied it out for the sole purpose of leaving it open so thieves wouldn't break our windows for naught. He smiled and said that was a good idea and that he'd been checking out our cruiser earlier today. Turns out he's got one too -- a 62, not a 60 and he invited us over for a drink sometime. Great! People are so nice!

Found this beat old motorhome by the roadside downtown, note electrical cord ascending into tree	Here is the where the electrical extension cord is "spliced" into another cord, directly over the road	And here is the motorhome's power source. All wiring done in typical total disregard for electrical safety.

We spent another quiet night at Roger and Monica's after securing a hotel room up the road out of town about three miles in a place called Villereal. The Casa Madera cabinas are owned by a Swiss couple who are friends with Roger and Monica. We'll be staying there tomorrow night and are happy and relieved to have a place to sleep. We don't know what we would have done without Roger and Monica's generosity and graciousness.

30 December, 2002

After an early email writing session and working on the the site a little bit, we headed out into town again. We got over to Willie and Janet at the Sharkbite cafe later than we meant to, to help him put some new signs up. They are the nice folks who run the yummy deli/sandwich shop who we met last summer- they same people who came up with the random electric bill we needed to open our bank account last September. Since it was closer to noon than 10 a.m., we decided to come back in the evening to help Willie with the signs. Midday is too hot and also the busiest time of day for the sandwich shop.

When we got back in the afternoon to help Willie, he had gone ahead and put the signs up without us (we pretended to be upset) so instead of working, the three of us headed over to grab a beer at the Pasatiempo. A nice guy (turns out his name is Jeff) came in off the street to where we were sitting to tell us our windows were down on our cruiser. We told him we had just emptied it out for the sole purpose of leaving it open so thieves wouldn't break our windows for naught. He smiled and said that was a good idea and that he'd been checking out our cruiser earlier today. Turns out he's got one too -- a 62, not a 60 and he invited us over for a drink sometime.

As we were getting into Sandy after our beers with Willie, another guy and his girl came up to the window and heartily said hello and good to see you. Steve and I didn't recognize him at first, but he mentioned something that tipped us both off; we had rung his bell our first day here, looking for a man named Bill with some cabinas for rent. Turns out we were one driveway off, but he was just pleasant as can be and didn't mind us bothering him at all. Well, he was now at our car window! His name is Frank and his wife, Frauke. They just bought their house (up on the hill out of town just a few minute's drive) and are new to town as well. They were off to dinner and Steve and Bb were headed back to our hotel where we got to cook our dinner for the first time in 23 days. But before we parted, he insisted we come up to his house in the next couple days and have a drink. Great! People are so nice!

One very interesting thing we've discovered here is a novel (to us) dust-control and road paving system. Molasses. Yup- that sticky brown stuff. It just so happens that there is a big surplus of molasses here as a byproduct of the cane industry and it works out that when you spray it on roads it mixes with the dirt and makes a hard dust-free shell. Of course it only lasts until the first solid rain, but then it won't likely rain here until sometime in April and once the rains come, dust isn't such a problem. Of course it is also much cheaper then paving the roads. Fringe benefit: the cows LOVE it and will walk around licking up the roadside puddles.

31 December (New Year's Eve)

Happy New Year!! Not a lot to report. More of the old meet and greet, then hangin' out back at the hotel doing a little reading. We tried to drop in on some friends to wish them an early happy new year, but one was down with a cold and the others weren't home.

We got some new neighbors at the Casa Madera- from London. We swapped some information about the area for some of their duty-free tequila. Good tequila is awful stuff. It goes down easily enough but once it gets there it does some serious damage to your decision making skills. So we ended up heading into town (we usually avoid the huge crowds associated with big holidays) where we met up with Chad (really nice local guy, owns big surf shop) and grabbed a drink. Shortly thereafter we ran into Amy and grabbed a drink... by midnight we had probably had more than we needed to drink. We had a fun time watching an anemic (especially after Antigua's Christmas!) fireworks display. We finally made it home and to sleep after some stupid argument that we both later regretted. One of the perks to being happily married to your best friend: even stupid arguments can be a source of laughter the next day.

We also saw the biggest darn grasshopper we've ever seen. This thing is easily six inches long! Really pretty colors on its thorax and wings also, but the lighting was difficult for the digital camera to capture any detail. According to our Costa Rican Natural History Guide, this is a Tropidacris cristata or Gian Red-Winged Grasshopper and is one of the largest known acridids. In laymen's terms: this is one big frikkin grasshopper.

1 January, 2003

Spent the whole day sitting by the pool at the hotel. Just like being on vacation. Lovely.
As the new year ramps up Steve finds himself reflecting on all of the good and bad things that have happened the last few years and realizing that if there is only one important lesson he has learned it is the following: From adversity springs opportunity. Or, to put it another way: The biggest pile of turd often sprouts the prettiest flower.

We've had another hard year in a number of ways. Many things didn't go our way. But we've spent more time with friends and family than some people get to spend in a decade and we've gotten to see beautiful parts of the world that some people only dream of seeing. We've made some money, lost some money... Lost track of some people we like, met some new people that we like too. We don't know what will happen tomorrow, but then... nobody does. And if it all ends, at least we know we can say that we were chasing a dream instead of dreaming of the chase.

4 January, 2003

Finally got to see Ted and Jess! They pulled into Tamarindo in the afternoon and called out to our place where we got the phone message. Steve jumped into Sandy and drove into town, then he, Ted, Jess and Betsy (Ted's mom) all had a beer out by the water and caught up on lost conversation. Eventually we dropped Betsy off for a nap and decided to grab Bb out of her work-mode and so drove out to the hotel. After a quick swim and sitting by the pool a bit to give Bb a chance to catch up we headed back to town to get some dinner, then ended up walking on the beach for a little while and enjoying the stars.

Steven and Bb headed home reluctantly but happy to have our pals in town and looking forward to seeing some more of them tomorrow.

Fun afternoon!

5-10 January, 2003

Enjoyed the pool at our little temporary digs and basically got used to being in one spot again -- didn't take much! Steve has started working at the Re/Max office in Tamarindo and Beebee is working on her jewelry www.jocelynbroyles.com. Our room is stuffed with everything from Sandy and we're loving driving her around empty. We even leave the doors unlocked with the windows down sometimes! There's nothing inside to steal and this way we don't get a broken window!

We spend most of our time hangin out by the pool or strolling around Tamarindo or cooking food in the kitchen but trying not to get the room too hot (not an easy task). Ted and Jess came by to camp in front of our room (sleeping in the van, using our bathroom and pool) and we cooked some fantastic fish on the grill. Grilling is good. Especially fresh fish when grilled over real charcoal and accompanied by great company, cold cerveza and fresh guacamole. Yum!! We would enjoy Ted's company even if he didn't cook so incredibly, but we sure do like it when he cooks for us.

Tamarindo is fabulous, we are chompin at the bit to move there and settle into our own digs.

11 January, 2003

Ted and Jess came back last night and helped us move today. With the four of us and their van, we managed to get everything out to Tamarindo in one trip. Yeah! We said our good-byes to Helga and Lorenzo, the owners of Casa Madera, but we'll see them again, as Helga makes wonderful German bread on Mondays and Fridays and we know we'll be out to get more. She also makes great cake and gave us a few slices here and there during our stay, now of course we are hooked and are going to have to come back for that too.

Once in Tamarindo, Ted helped us unpack, while Jess watched the car, not an unimportant job. If we hadn't had those two, we would have been one person carrying in boxes, while the other watched the car, or worse, we would have had to lock the whole car each trip up to the apartment. So super thanks to Ted and Jess. They left us alone to unpack for a while -- Beebee was in seventh heaven! Steve went off to the office for a bit and she had an entire afternoon to herself. We all reconvened for dinner and went to bed early and tired.

12-14 January, 2003

Ted and Jess are hanging out with us -- it's so great to be the hosts for once. A huge thank you to all who put us up and put up with us over the last few years. It is hard to be a guest for long periods of time, but also hard to be a host. So special thanks to Ky and Randy and Bonnie and Bill as they have borne the brunt of hosting us for the last couple of years.

Welcome to our new home	view out the front door into the garden	the onsite Yoga dojo (not, as steve had said, our eating area)	The path to town (note snazzy Arco Iris sign)	kitchen, with Soop, Ted and Jessica
the guestroom	note funky painted wall	the furthest points in the apartment, about ten paces	facing the bedroom	kitchen wall
Jessica on the computer at the kitchen table	gecko's eye view of the kitchen	food storage	ant's eye view of the front door	the back gate
view from the bed	what passes for a closet	front yard	the jungle out front (garden, that is)	another garden view
View from our deck		and of course, the bathroom		Another path, note dusty road down below

The apartment is small for four people, so we spend a lot of time outside, which is really better anyway, as the Papagallos (local, seasonal winds) aren't as strong as they usually are this year, making the inside of the house kinda warm during the day. Of course, one of the coolest things about our place is that there is a large outdoor kitchen area where we can cook without heating up the house. The outdoor area is also a great place to eat and enjoy the evening breezes as there are few mozzies out this time of year. The handful of hammocks hanging on our spacious porch also make it easy to relax and cool off. We'll have to take a bunch of pictures and post them, soon.

We left Ted and Jess in charge of the house on Wednesday and took off down the road for San Jose. Brian, aka Soop, comes in tomorrow -- yeah! with his cousin Molly. We have to do some business in San Jose and also pick up our things from storage at Dona Tere's house in Atenas. We've also got to pick up Bubba from her long stint as a parked car. It'll be a whirlwind trip, but it'll be great to have Soop with us.

15 January, 2003

A Guapinol tree w/ cool termite trails

Whew. Long drive, with lots of traffic, but at least we got Monteverde milkshakes on the way from their roadside stand (most of the wonderful dairy products from Monteverde with none of the discomfort of driving up the arduous road to get to Monteverde). We decided to go first to where Bubba was stored to see if the owners there would let us just stay in the roof top tent for the night (it was already on Bubba). They agreed and so we took off from there to Atenas to pick up our things. This went pretty smoothly and we were glad to have it done with. It was so cool up there in the mountains. Jeans and flannel shirt weather for Steve! We were a little sad that our close friends Vanessa and Simon weren't in their house next door to where we had stored stuff- they are off in Honduras touring, lucky dogs, but we were also glad that we had opted to pay to store our stuff instead of taking Vani and Simon up on their offer to store it for free. Who knows what we would be doing right now to scrounge up our belongings.

We got back to Alejuela and Bubba around 8:30 p.m., pretty tired, but hungry. One of the daughters there walked us over to a local Colombia restaurant for a late supper where we talked with her and the owner about Columbia and their respective fleeing-the-coutnry-with-the-entire-family stories. Both of which were incredibly sad and included death, torture and loss of all personal belongings including homes, land, cars and clothes.

We went to bed full of good food and the knowledge that we are lucky. Very lucky. The stories we heard tonight made us acutely aware of how lucky we are to have two cars and the need to gather up and cart around a full carload of stuff. We are fortunate in that we are often reminded of how lucky we are, even if the reminders are sometimes unpleasant to hear.

16 January, 2003

We sped around shopping, seeing lawyers and fixing a brake problem (one of Bubba's wheel cylinders had frozen completely) all in time to just make it to the airport as Soop and Molly walked out of customs. Whew. We were tired already and Steve and Beebee each had to drive the five to six hours back to Tamarindo (remember? two cars?). The drive was pretty uneventful -- with another stop for milkshakes of course, Brian had a cheeseburger at the Monteverde shop that was amazing. We also made a stop in Liberia for beer (much cheaper to buy by the case in Liberia than it is to buy cans in Tamarindo). We had hoped to stop at the bottling plant to get the best deal but it was closed by the time we got there.

The brake repair bears talking about- we pulled into a taller (shop) at about noon and asked the guy if it would be possible to inspect/fix our brakes in under an hour. Steve had just had a hair-raising swerve into the oncoming traffic lane when he stomped on the brakes and only one front wheel worked. Driving on four drums is scary enough on the road from San Jose to Tamarindo, driving on three drums is just stupid. So the mechanic put us up on the jack and pulled the wheels and almost laughed at what he saw. When a Costa Rican mechanic almost laughs at the state of your automobile, that is a VERY bad thing. I asked again if he could fix it in time for us to get to the airport (in an hour) and he said that we could either rebuild or replace the wheel cylinder. Only that a new one would take a few hours to get. With more than a little trepidation Steve asked about rebuilding it. The guys said it shouldn't be a problem and got to work with a hone. It just so happened to turn out that they had the seal in stock and on the shelf (try that in the States!!). To shorten the story a little- an hour and a half later we had two relined brake shoes (yes, they actually replaced the friction lining on the shoes while we waited) and rebuilt one cylinder and cleaned another. He also adjusted the brakes at all four corners after replacing all the brake fluid (there were bubbles). So for an hour and a half of labor, two pints of brake fluid, relining two shoes and all of that in a hurry the shop charged us a whopping..... $36. Yup. $36. Heavens how I love getting work done in this country (sometimes, well, not usually, but at least this time!).

We finally got to the apartment around 9 p.m. and pretty much fell into bed after giving Brian and Molly the 5 cent tour of the place. We weren't much for formal hospitality after 15 hours of solving problems and driving on less than great roads, but our guests seemed pretty happy just the same.

Brian checks out a non-US 80-series (more cruiser pics here)