If you haven't seen our tropical Christmas tree yet, we made this from driftwood & shells we found at the beach & colorful bird feathers we have found.

Friday 12/9- It’s that time of year, Christmas Party season, including, of course, the dreaded office holiday party. Don’t deny it, you all know what I’m talking about! Since Covid, many people have been getting used to virtual office parties, and when you have a team that is located across the globe from each other, you take advantage of some of those things that Covid kind of invented. This afternoon was the holiday party for one of my side-gig’s, and while I wasn’t dreading it (I like these guys), I just wasn’t sure how a virtual holiday party was going to go. I was told beforehand that the significant others were invited to participate in the festivities, so of course I made Ramie participate with me. We were told that we had to be festive, there was a prize for the best Christmas background, and there would be virtual games to play. 

We don't have ugly Christmas sweaters here, I mean would you want to wear a sweater when it's in the mid 80’s and humid? What we do have is our Christmas Star Wars T-shirts (they are the only Christmas attire that we have down here). Ramie spent some time rearranging the living room to get our Costa Rican Christmas tree near the TV. When it came time for the meeting to start we put the Yule log on the TV and turned on the tropical Christmas tree lights. When it was time for the party I logged into the Zoom call, and joined in on the “mandatory fun”. As it turns out, this “dreaded virtual office holiday party” turned out to be really fun!

We learned that there are games specially designed to play in virtual environments like this and we played a couple of them that ended up being super fun. I’d say that if I’m given the opportunity to participate in an event like this again, I would totally be on-board, and Ramie says the same. After the party was done we put everything back to normal and just enjoyed the rest of the evening.

Monday 12/12- Since our return from Cancun and the illness we both came down with. Ramie didn't have the energy to do work at Alturas, and certainly didn't want to pass it onto anyone that he worked with. Actually they asked him to stay away until he was better. Today Ramie is going back to his regular deep clean Monday job at the sanctuary. This will be a test to see how his knee does. It still is very sensitive to any pressure being put on it and just bumping it makes him flinch. Ramie did manage to make it through the entire process but he did say he was much slower and had to find creative ways to get into certain positions to access corners and underneath things. He did not kneel at all and kept his leg as straight as possible. Jo (one of the other full-time local volunteers) kept checking in on him and telling him to take it easy so at least he had someone other than me to say “don't do that, dummy”!

Thursday 12/15 thru 12/19- It’s been quite a while since we’ve been to our secret beach, first because of the knee issue, then because of our vacation to Mexico, and now that we are past those things and I have a day off, we are heading back to the beach again. We asked Karen & Dennis if they wanted to come check out one of our favorite beaches with us, and they accepted the invitation. They agreed to get up early like we do and meet at our house to head out to go for a long walk in the sun.

After going for our typical walk to the “turn-around” point at the river and back, we pulled out the lawn chairs and found a shady spot to sit around and talk. We also searched around for cool driftwood in the area that we typically find it, and came across a huge surprise. Wouldn’t you know it, we found the Spanish half of our “On The Beach” sign! “En La Playa”! It was definitely beat up, much worse than the original sign, but if both pieces fell down from their original sign at about the same time, this Spanish one has been floating around for quite a long time. (Just how long you might be wondering, or at least I was wondering! I went back through old photos to find out when we found the first one, and it was last Christmas. It has been almost exactly a year since we found the English sign. No wonder this one looks so beat up!!) 

Karen & Dennis had also mentioned that they would like to go see the Alturas Sanctuary that Ramie volunteers at while they were here, so on our way back from the beach, we stopped in there as well. Ramie is allowed to bring people up to the sanctuary for a tour as long as he lets the full-time staff know that he’s there. I hadn’t been there since last March when we went for the first time with Taylor & Dylan, so I was excited to go see all of the animals too. We spent about an hour walking around while Ramie told us about the animals and his experiences while volunteering here. After we had our fill of checking out the animals, we were finished with our outings for the day and headed back home. 

We also had some work start on our gate entrance Hola todos (hello everyone), it's Ramie and I figured I would give you an update on this project. With all of the rain we got this past season it has washed a lot of our gravel down and into the main road and left quite a large gap under our gate. So, in order to prevent this, I reached out to a contractor that did some work for us earlier this year. This project will entail a concrete apron on either side of the gate as well as a drain with a metal grate directly under the gate. Hopefully having this done will help hold back the gravel while allowing all of the water to still drain away to our ditch outside the fence. It's a small project, but hopefully will be an improvement. They started digging in the footings for the concrete aprons today and they expect it will take 3 or 4 days to finish it.

Yes Breeze did manage to walk in the concrete, but this is not the final so it will be covered.

Finished project

Friday 12/23- It’s Friday! The last day of work for what is going to turn out to be a nice long holiday weekend for me. I had put in most of my hours earlier in the week and was able to log off around a little after lunch time. What did we have planned for the afternoon? Why, we were going to have our Christmas video chat with my family. Their group is small enough with 4 adults, 2 kiddos, and 2 doggos that everyone could be on camera together and we could have conversations just like we would if we were all sitting together in the same room. While it just isn’t the same as actually being together, we spent a couple of hours chatting, catching up, and enjoying each other’s company.

Then Ramie started a another project that hes been wanting to do before dry season really kicks in. We had a old junky garden hose that he wanted to run from the hose bib to the garden. The hose was going be turned into a homemade soaker hose. He first started by trenching and routing the garden hose. Once he had that done he ran it around the perimeter of the garden bed and drilled tiny holes in it. It works, but not as well as we were both hoping it would.

Working hard in the hot sun

Saturday 12/24- It’s Christmas Eve! What does that mean for today? Well, it’s Ramie’s family’s turn to have their Christmas video chat with us. Their group is big enough that instead of trying to talk to everyone at once, interactively, Ramie and I got passed around the room to talk with everyone individually or in small groups. We spent a while getting to talk to everyone and catching up just as we had with my family. They were having a Bloody Mary breakfast bar, so we made some Chiliguaro (our Costa Rican version of a Bloody Mary) for ourselves and joined in their celebration.

After we had been passed around the room and had a chance to talk to everyone, we were finished with our video calls and spent the afternoon playing Rummikub and relaxing.

Sunday 12/25- Merry Christmas!

Christmas GIFfrom Christmas GIFs

I guess we were on Santa’s naughty list this year because we didn’t wake up to any fun surprises underneath our Christmas tree. Our anticipated Christmas present, the UTV that we had ordered months ago and we thought was supposed to arrive in November, still hasn’t shown up. This really bummed us out because we were hoping to go for a Christmas Day adventure, exploring the mountain roads around Uvita. I guess that will have to wait for some future date once Yamaha Costa Rica gets their act together and delivers our new machine.

Instead of an ATV adventure, we decided we’d make this our 2nd annual Casa Costa Breeze Christmas at The Beach. We asked Geoff & Tracy earlier this week if they would be interested in celebrating the day with us and they must not have had any other special plans because they were in! Right away in the morning we packed some snacks and a cooler of drinks, the boogie boards, Ramie’s new-used surfboard that he picked up shortly after he injured his knee & hadn’t been able to try out yet, and Breeze, and headed to the beach to spend the day.

We got there before Geoff & Tracy did, so we took the opportunity to walk down the beach a little way. We didn’t go nearly as far as we usually do because we figured that they probably weren’t too far behind us, so we did some exploring nearby and then headed back toward the part of the beach nearest to where we park. We had just started unpacking all of our stuff, setting up the chairs & umbrella at about the time that they showed up. We finished getting our area set up and then started the morning with some Christmas shots of a liqueur similar to Baileys. 

Shots for everyone!

We spent the rest of the morning and early part of the afternoon chatting, exploring, playing in the water, trying out the boogie board & surfboard, and, thanks to Tracy’s creative ideas, we played a couple of rounds of “bags” using some flat rocks we found on the beach & drawing the goal boxes in the sand. It wasn’t quite the same as playing in the traditional way, but it was still fun and competitive. (PS, it was a close game but the girls won 😊 ). 

Breeze always doing what she does best, keeping an eye on dad and giving kisses!

Breeze wanting a go at it

We’ve also been thinking about planting a couple more coconut trees on and around our property, so we found a few small, sprouted coconut trees that we could bring home and plant as well. I doubt we’ll ever have a traditional Christmas tree down here, but maybe we can make a coconut tree Christmas tree?

https://www.godsavethepoints.com/holiday-tip-dont-put-christmas-lights-palm-trees/

 All in all, it was another non-typical Christmas for us, but it was a fun day spent with good friends. Of course we miss spending it with our families, but if we can’t spend it with them, this was a great way to spend it!

Monday 12/26- Since Christmas fell on a weekend, that means today is the holiday from work. It’s fantastic that this happens to fall on a Monday since that’s Ramie’s morning to work up at the animal sanctuary. Several months ago he learned that he could bring me along with on his day and I could help too. Because of the holiday, several of the regular Monday volunteers had already called in that they wouldn’t be unable to make it, so instead of the regular deep-clean that the Monday team does, today’s workload was cut down and they would take care of the deep clean on another day this week. That made my morning of volunteering much easier than it is on one of Ramie’s normal days. When we got there, we waited for the “morning check in meeting” with the rest of the volunteers and staff, went through that routine quickly, and then Ramie set out to show me how they took care of the animals.

We started with the Macaw enclosure. These are such big, beautiful birds, but I’ve heard stories from Ramie about how some of the birds can get kind of aggressive and how volunteers will sometimes get attacked or tested by the birds, so I was a bit nervous to go into the enclosure. The rule is just to always know where they are at, keep an eye on them, and never turn your back to them. Fortunately, both of the Macaws stayed close together and didn’t move at all during the time that we were cleaning their space. We finished up without any problems, and moved on to the next one. 

Hello!

In some of the enclosures there are sections where the animal will be in a separate part from you and you won’t have any close contact with them except for when you are cleaning right up near the fence. In other enclosures, you are right in there with the animal and they can get very close to you. We cleaned a handful of both types of enclosures before we switched gears to start feeding the animals. Of course, this is the fun part! The animals know when you have food and are very interested. In the enclosures that you aren’t in with the animals, you just place it around in different places, you can even hide it a little bit to make a fun game of hide-and-seek for the animals. In the enclosures where you are right in with the animals, though, things can get interesting. Ramie had me feed the parakeets, which is a pretty small enclosure. When I had that bowl of food, I felt like a parakeet tree. They were all flying around me. I wasn’t afraid that these guys were going to hurt me or anything like I was nervous of the Macaws, so it was fun to be surrounded by the birds. Raul the Toucan loves to play and flew past us several times, so close that you could feel his wings flutter past your face, and Mocha the Sloth holds her hand out and wants you to hand the food directly to her (even though you aren’t supposed to do that). These are all wild animals after all, so you definitely have to be careful around them, but they have all been cared for here at the sanctuary for so long that they know the routine. I had a great time helping out this morning, but kept reminding myself that a typical day up here for Ramie is a whole lot more work. Maybe I’ll go back again one day if I have another free Monday off work. 

Julieta (to the right of Dana's hand) waiting for her to finish so she can eat.

Dana feeding the Parakeets. You can just make one out on the food tray just above her hand

Pura Vida!

We needed to pick up a few groceries in town, so we did that too. There was nothing else on our agenda for the day. We did some online black-Friday shopping for some Christmas gifts and items that we’ll pick up the next time we are back in the US, and otherwise, it was just a pretty laid back day.

Friday 11/25- This morning Ramie woke up sick- yes, he has the man flu!

Body aches, fatigue, coughing, difficulty breathing, everything that looks like the typical flu. I guess that means that we won’t be doing anything but taking it easy for a while, so that’s exactly what we did. We are fairly sure that he picked up a bug in the airport or on the airplane due to the timing of it. We’re just very glad that it happened on the way HOME from vacation, and not on the way TO vacation!

Saturday 11/26- Today we were supposed to have Thanksgiving with Loren, Nancy, and a small group of other friends. Nancy really likes to do the whole traditional Thanksgiving spread, but on a somewhat small scale with a small group, and we were so honored that they would include us in this group. We were super bummed that we wouldn’t be able to attend and celebrate with them, but with Ramie being sick and the health issues that Loren has been having, we definitely didn’t want to risk getting them sick. They understood but were bummed that we wouldn’t be able to come to the get-together. We promised that once we were healthy again, we would get together!

Sunday 11/27- It’s inevitable, if one of us gets sick, usually the other one does too. I woke up this morning feeling like garbage! The cough and difficulty breathing were the worst parts for me. With all of the lung issues that I deal with anyway, this just adds to it! The fatigue was no joke either, I would have been content not getting out of bed at all, but that simply wasn’t an option.

I worked my hours today, I made a big batch of soup and some dishes that were easy to warm up as leftovers, and I rested as much as I could.

For the next week we were both still wiped out. We didn’t do anything at all that we didn’t have to do. I worked all of my hours but other than that, we both rested as much as possible. We had originally planned to go to the big feria this week so I could finally stock up on my veggies again, but we weren’t feeling well enough to do that. We had also been planning to get together with Geoff & Tracy and catch up after our trip to Mexico, but haven’t been well enough to do that either. Not only were we really not feeling up to doing anything at all, but since we were feeling so miserable, we really didn’t want to pass this crap along to anyone else!!

The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of November rainfall total was 32.4 inches

Saturday 12/3- It has been a whole week since this sickness started in our house and we still weren’t feeling 100% better, so we are taking it easy once again. Ramie decided to take a nap and I spent a big chunk of the day working on the blog. Another low-key day in the effort to feel better soon.

Sunday 12/4 through Wednesday 12/7- After resting up as much as I could this weekend, I was in for a very busy week! I worked my full hours for my main job, just as I always do, but it was time to buckle down on a project on one of my side-hustles. Side hustle? One of them? What am I talking about?

Almost a year ago I reconnected with an old colleague from my pre-Costa Rica job and he informed me that he was leaving government service as well and starting his own law firm. He asked if I would like to come aboard as the first member of his team, on an as-needed basis. Of course, this was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up, and since then he has brought me on for a few projects. We were down to crunch-time on a big project, so every afternoon after I was finished with the main job, I made dinner, switched computers and started working on the other one. It was a busy week, but I made it through without too much damage to my mental health 😉

This week Ramie also got in touch with the Yamaha dealer that we ordered our UTV from to see if we could get a status update. It turns out that our machine has made its way into Costa Rica, but it’s currently stuck in customs. Since this is the very first one of this model year that is coming through, there is a whole lot of extra paperwork that must be done on this one. He told us that he’d keep us updated as he knew more, and fingers were crossed by everyone that we’d have our machine by Christmas.

Wednesday 12/7- Today we were excited to see some friends who we haven’t seen in several months. Karen & Dennis, the owners of the house we rented for the first 9 months we lived in Costa Rica, were back in town. We were excited to spend some quality time with them. We had only met them in person a few times during their visit to Costa Rica last August, but we knew them from phone conversations both before and since that visit. We looked forward to spending some time with them over the next couple of weeks while they were here. Ramie met up with them at their house this afternoon to do a little bit of work that needed to be done now that the last renter had left, and since it was their first night in town and they hadn’t made it to the grocery store yet, they invited us out to dinner to catch up.

Sorry about the shadowing, the sun was so bright!

Thursday 12/8- Since they have only ever vacationed down here for a fairly short time, Karen and Dennis haven’t spent much time in San Isidro, and certainly didn’t go there for groceries like we do. We just so happened to have a trip to the Farmers Market planned and had to run our regular errands today and they asked if they could tag along. Of course, we planned to spend time with them while they were here, and we were headed there anyway, so we rode together so we could show them around. Just like always, our first stop was the big feria. I think they were surprised by how big this farmers market actually was. We went our separate ways, stocked up on the fruits and veggies that we wanted, and then met up at the end. We then made our way around to many of the stores that we typically go to, showing them some of our favorite stops and helping them look for some of the items that they wanted or needed at their house. Our last stop, like always, was Walmart to stock up on the rest of the groceries that we came for. We once again split up, loaded up our cartload of goods, and met at the cash registers. We also happened to run into our friend Red today as well so we stopped to chat with her for a bit. Coincidentally, it was almost exactly 1 year ago when we ran into Red at Walmart the first time. These may be the only 2 times we’ve ever met up with her in person, but we have been friends on Facebook since before we moved to Costa Rica. She helped answer many of our questions about moving here early in our journey. One of these days we’ll get together outside of Walmart to socialize!

With Walmart being the last stop of the day, we loaded up our car, which was quite the carload full of stuff, and made our way back to Uvita. Today turned out to be a very nice day hanging out with friends we don’t get to see very often and even being productive in the process.

Pura Vida!

Ok, so many of you would probably say that our first few months here before I started working were a vacation, but I would strongly disagree. Even though we weren’t working, we weren’t doing “vacation-y” things either. We were looking for land, building a house, and living a regular day to day life minus the full-time job. We were NOT sipping drinks, sitting by the pool or beach, and lounging around in relaxation. This week we decided to actually take some time and enjoy one of our border runs. We are heading to Cancun to do exactly that- sit by the beach with a cold beverage!

Friday 11/18- Our flight today wasn’t until early evening, so we didn’t have to wake up early to head to the airport. We did a few things around the house this morning and once we had done everything that we wanted to do we were tired of “waiting” to leave, and ended up leaving the house about an hour earlier than we had planned. This time, instead of parking at the airport, we were planning to park at the nearby mall (parking was only about $8 per day at the mall as opposed to $37 per day at the airport) so we figured if we had time to spare, we could just walk around the mall for a while.

Well, it turns out that it was a VERY good thing we decided to leave that hour early!! 

The highway here is kind of confusing to navigate, at some points there are 3 lanes across all going the same direction, eventually lanes will just disappear and at some point you’ll be down to 1 lane, then you’ll go back up to 2 or 3 lanes again. We knew this, so we tended to stay in the left lane as much as we could so we wouldn’t inadvertently get forced to exit. As we were getting closer to our exit and were still in the farthest left of 3 lanes, realizing we may have to make it to the right lane; we couldn’t remember if those lanes “fell away” before our exit. Getting across 3 lanes of traffic could be difficult in this stop-and-go gridlock, so if we had to move over, we would have to start trying early. Google maps truly isn’t any help when it comes to this, so, since many people drive with their windows rolled down, I just yelled out to a lady driving a car next to us, and in my best broken Spanish, asked which lane we should be in to get to the mall. She told us in fast Spanish that I could only understand bits and pieces of, that we should stay in the left lane where we were, and if we let her in front of us, she would drive us right to the mall, and we could just follow her. I don’t know if she originally intended to go that direction or if she decided to go that way to help us out, but this made us feel way more comfortable about getting there without any unexpected wrong-turns that would just make us even later.

She got us to the mall, pointed out of her window where we should turn, and with a couple of waves and friendly honks of the horn, we each went our own ways. Ticos are very helpful & friendly people, and for that (and this particular woman) I am very thankful.

Ok, now that we are at the parking ramp, where the heck do we go? Ramie had received some instructions from a friend that had parked here before, and had a little bit of an idea what we were looking for, but this was a really big parking ramp. We tried to ask the attendant who was near the gate when we pulled into the parking ramp and he told us that we could just park anywhere, and then we could pay at the bank inside of the mall or at one of the kiosk ATM like machines. He had us park, and then brought us to where he said we should pay. This did not jive at all with what Ramie understood from the instructions that we received, so after wasting what seemed like an eternity when we were already running late, and probably actually amounted to 15 minutes, we went back to the car and found someone else to ask. Eventually we were pointed in the right direction and found the place where we actually had to park, check in, and pay. This took probably another 15 minutes, and then we were finally ready to head to the airport. Originally, had we had plenty of time, it was within walking distance and we would have just walked. Being in the hurry that we were, (we are now about 1 hour before our flight). We walked outside the front of the mall and found the first taxi that we could find. We hopped in, he brought us to the airport, it only took about 7 minutes, and cost about $5.

Thankfully, once we got into the airport things went as smoothly and as quickly as you could hope going through security could go. Once we were inside security, we could relax a little bit. We had originally planned to grab some food before we came to the airport, but with the traffic delays and everything we had just been through, clearly we didn’t have time for that. We grabbed some stupidly expensive airport hamburgers, made our way to our gate, and got ready to get this vacation started.

Well, wouldn’t you know it- our plane was running late.

By the time we landed in Cancun, it was about 40 minutes later than our expected arrival time, which wasn’t so terrible. What ended up being much worse was the length of time it took to get through immigration. They were super slow here, and we ended up being near the very end of the line. While we were in line we tried to get in contact with the shuttle company and despite our efforts, we weren’t able to. We then got a hold of the hotel directly, they told us that the shuttle was a 3rd party hired service, and not actually through the hotel, and that we were probably SOL on the shuttle and we should just find a taxi to get to the hotel. It took over an hour to get through immigration and we didn’t have high hopes to find our shuttle driver outside of the airport, but figured we’d take a quick look around before we went looking for a taxi to get us to the hotel. Wouldn’t you know it, there was a guy standing there with a sign with our hotel name on it.

Hallelujah!! Something went right for us today!!

We hopped into the shuttle van, it was just the 2 of us, and our driver got on his way. Boy, this guy was in a hurry!! I was sitting in the seat behind the driver, and over his shoulder I could see that the speedometer was showing about 90 KPH (about 55 MPH), but it felt MUCH faster on these residential and in-town (non-highway) roads. The speed limit signs showed 40 KPH (about 25 MPH). He made good time for a while, and he even blew through a Police check point!

Suddenly we are at a crawl again. It was 11 pm, what could possibly be going on that would cause traffic to be backed up like this?

Well, it didn’t take long and we found out- we were driving through the “Hotel District”… the party center of Cancun. I soon saw why this is such a Spring Break destination! There were strippers on stages right on the sidewalk, all of the big name restaurants like Senor Frogs & Hard Rock Café were here, and every-other-building was a dance club or some sort of bar. Each bar had their own music blasting trying to outdo the one next to it. It looked like a lot of fun……if we were in our 20’s. This type of stuff doesn't appeal to me or Ramie anymore. Once we were through this stretch, we were once again flying down the road at 90 KPH for another 10 minutes or so before we got to our hotel.

We finally got to the hotel, got checked in, and got to our room sometime after midnight. We were exhausted after our high-stress afternoon & evening and were ready for a good night’s sleep.

Oh, and BTW—it’s raining. We were hoping to get out of the rain by coming here! Fingers crossed it stops during the days when we want to enjoy the sun, sand, & calm Caribbean Ocean waters.

Saturday 11/19- I’m usually an “up before dawn” type of person, but since we were up late last night, I was able to sleep in a little bit (probably got up at about 7am). Our plans for the day were to check out the hotel, sit by the beach, and that’s about it. I expected the beach lounge chairs to get full early like we were used to from our years of cruises, but there were only a couple of other people out there this early.

Take your pick!

These waves are so small!

After spending some time checking out what else was in and around the hotel, we went and changed into our swimwear and then to go find a couple of chairs and an umbrella to call our home-base for the day. There still weren’t very many people out there, so we were able to take our pick. We found a spot and spent all day there. We ordered some cold beverages from the pool bar, some food from the grill, and enjoyed a relaxing day on a resort beach. Aaahhh Vacation Mode on!!!

Where is everyone?

We miss the calm and clear Caribbean waters!

Of course it wouldn't be Mexico if you didn't have the military patrolling the beach. These poor guys and girls had to be dying of heat all geared up like that.

Oh, and it was a beautiful day. Only a couple of short rain showers came through, but it worked out fabulously because it cleared out many people (afraid of the rain?? Not us- we’re from Costa Rica where rain means almost nothing changes), and it cooled us down a little bit from sitting in the heat.

Late afternoon we decided that we were going to go walk around outside the hotel grounds and to see what we could find nearby. We wanted to see if we could find a convenience store to pick up some drinks and snacks (that would undoubtedly be cheaper than the pool bar), and then find somewhere for dinner (we didn’t find anything on the hotel restaurant menu that looked super appealing). Well, about the time we were going to head out, it started to rain. Even though we are used to doing things in the rain in Costa Rica, I didn’t particularly want to go walking for the next hour or 2 in the rain, and then find a place for dinner. Instead, we grabbed some snacks and a couple of drinks from the hotel convenience store (which was less expensive than the pool bar, but likely more expensive than a non-hotel convenience store) and went back to our room for a little while. When the rain mostly slowed down, we went to walk down the street to find a place for dinner, and wouldn’t you know it, just on the other side of the next hotel was an outdoor restaurant with a view of the ocean and the docks where some of the big catamarans and boats come in. This place looks as good as any, there were quite a few people already there, so it must be good, so we stopped. I think we got the last open table in the place, ordered some dinner, and had a couple of drinks while we watched the boat tours come in from their day-excursions, and then some other ones leave again for their evening dinner cruises.

One of the evening shows was a Pirate ship dinner cruise. This is the boat heading out.

Sunday 11/20- Today was almost an exact replay of yesterday. We didn’t have to explore the hotel in the morning, so we started out the morning by going straight to our beach chairs, got our same spot as yesterday, and did the same thing all over again. We even went to the same little restaurant for dinner, but this time we had the place nearly to ourselves. The waiter at the restaurant recognized us from yesterday and we got a couple of free drinks out of it. There was also a super cute resident puppy here, so Ramie did everything he could to play with this little guy, only the pup was a little too skittish and Ramie couldn’t quite get close enough to play.

Monday 11/21- Since we’re on a “vacation” border run, and not just one of our overnight stays outside of Costa Rica, we decided to actually go do some sight-seeing. We’ve always liked doing excursions and tours when we have gone on past vacations, but we knew that there was a ferry that left from a dock nearby and went to Isla Mujeres, an island just off the coast of Cancun that is supposed to be a nice sight-seeing place, and we decided to just catch that ferry and spend the day on the island.

As we were walking to the ferry terminal we just happened to walk past one of those booths set up along the street selling tour and excursion packages. I didnt want to stop since we had less than 10 minutes to make the first ferry ride. Ramie decided to stop just to see what was being offered, and ended up learning that there was a sailing catamaran tour leaving in about a half hour that offered snorkeling, time at Isla Mujeres, drinks & and dinner, all for a price that was only slightly higher than what we would have expected to pay for the round trip ferry ride & dinner. We figured that wasn’t such a bad deal, so we signed up for it and then had to run back to the hotel to get our swim suits on and snorkeling stuff (we didn’t plan to do any swimming so were completely unprepared for that part of the tour), then made it to the dock with time to spare before the catamaran left.

It was a pretty big catamaran and there were about 150 people on this tour. By the time we boarded most of the regular seats had been filled and the only room left was sitting at the bow on the edge of the trampoline, but we were completely OK with that!! Once we were underway with the breeze on our faces and hearing the sounds of the waves, it felt like the excursions we used to go on when we went on Caribbean cruises. 

Lets get this party boat going!

Our first stop was snorkeling. This is an activity that Ramie & I both love, and unfortunately there isn’t really anywhere easy to snorkel near us in Costa Rica (due to the very wavy water here our coasts are more suited to surfing than swimming & snorkeling) Once we were able to jump in it brought back all of those fun memories of past vacations. It really made me realize how much I miss being out in the middle of the calm ocean, in the water with the nearest land being the bottom of the sea. This snorkeling area had some underwater sculptures to look at and we saw some fish and coral. 

We were only in the water for maybe 30 minutes, which for us definitely wasn’t long enough, but to be fair, we don’t particularly like snorkeling in these tour groups very much either because most people don’t know what they’re doing. After our brief soak in the ocean, everyone was back aboard to finish the sail (well, motor, they didn’t actually put up any sails 😞 ) to the island. The bar opened up, everyone had the chance to get a drink or 2 before we landed (and boy were there some people on the boat that were ready to get their party on!), and then we were on our own for a couple of hours to explore the island. 

We’re the type of people that like to go the opposite direction of where everyone else on a tour goes. If the group is going to the right, we’ll go left, and that’s precisely what we did! Isla Mujeres is a very small island, you could rent a golf cart or get a taxi ride to go sightseeing, but we decided to just walk around. Within less than 10 minutes we made it from the side of the island that we docked at to the opposite side of the island. It is a very narrow island, but long. 

Already made it across?!?! That was quick, time to go home!

By golf cart you can make it from one end to the other in about 15 minutes. The waves were stronger on the opposite side of the island, and instead of nice sandy beaches the coast was a rocky shore. 

As we adventured around we stopped at some shops, bought some cold cervezas to go, and found a few souvenirs to buy (Ramie got a crocodile tooth necklace, and I bought a sundress that the woman custom made for me after I picked out the fabric & the style). 

We had to laugh seeing the Vikings and Packers masks.

We discovered that this was a very cute Island and if we ever again want to vacation in a place that has calm, Caribbean swimming waters, that we might look into spending a few days here. We walked almost every street on the North end of the island, of course stopping at a couple more little convenience stores for more cold adult beverages. 

The town square was getting ready for what looked like a Christmas celebration.

There were workers decorating the church, setting up a Nativity and hanging decorations on all the surrounding buildings.

When the explore time was up, we headed back to the catamaran for a short sail to where we’d be having dinner. It turns out it was at the same place where people who bought the add-on “swim with dolphins” package did that part of the tour.

As we ate and had a few more cold beverages from the open bar we had this funny feeling of being watched. This curious iguana  came right up to the table and wanted some of our food. 

Then we grabbed some more drinks from the bar and went down the the dolphin area to watch some of the trainers work with the dolphins. 

After a full day of sunshine, walking, drinking and eating, we were exhausted and ready to get back to the hotel. It was time to get back on the catamaran and head back to Cancun. There were a lot fewer people on the catamaran on the way back because there was a second catamaran that offered to take people who did the swim with dolphins and who just had enough fun for the day back earlier, so we had a little bit more space to spread out. Since there were fewer people, I ended up actually getting a spot on the trampoline and got to relax on my favorite place on one of these catamarans (we really do miss being out on the ocean in a boat, I think we could have enjoyed living on a sailboat)! 

It just wouldn't be Mexico if  the boat crew didn't turn on the party-mode! The crew came around with tequila shots & more free drinks. They cranked up the stereo and played the party type music.

The last time we were on a catamaran in Mexico it ended up turning into a booze cruise as well! Once the party atmosphere was turned up, though, we quickly noticed that all of those people who were so eager to “get their drink on” at the beginning, were now all curled up napping and weren’t in such a party mood anymore (I guess they shouldn’t have drank so many expensive drinks at Senor Frogs on Isla Mujeres!) We had a low-key party all the way back to Cancun, then headed back to the hotel for the evening.

Tuesday 11/22- After our enjoyable tour day yesterday, what did we decide to do today? You guessed it, a repeat of Saturday & Sunday. Sitting by the beach all day, eating and drinking at our lounge chairs, and dinner at the same little outdoor restaurant with the little resident puppy. We kept going back to this restaurant because the food was very good, price was right, and it was walking distance to the hotel, plus the cute puppy!

Waiting for delicious wings!

Wednesday 11/23- Travel day! Today we traveled back home to Costa Rica. Travel days are always the worst. We didn’t have any particularly bad experiences on the flight home, no major delays or anything like that, but it’s always a long exhausting day (especially when you start to add in things like being at the airport 2 hours before your flight & our 3.5+ hour drive from the airport back to our house). The drive back from San Jose to Uvita took longer than usual today because it was raining for the majority of the trip. (Oh, by the way, other than a handful of brief showers when we were in Mexico, we actually did have very nice weather, I’m ready for the green season of Costa Rica to be over!) We ended up getting home around 8:30pm and being as exhausted as we were, went straight to bed. We’ll go pick up Breeze in the morning.

Overall it was a nice relaxing 5 days in Cancun. Oh, and this was our first ever time flying on the day before Thanksgiving which they claim is the busiest travel day of the year. We didn’t notice that the airports were any busier than normal!

(Yes, I’m being sarcastic, of course I know that this day would only be busy in the US…..)

Pura Vida

Friday 10/28- This past Wednesday Tracy and I had plans to go do another painting class, this time we’d be painting sugar skulls. Anyone who knows me knows I love Halloween, so this was right up my alley. Unfortunately, between the unexpected hospital stay and the crazy amount of rain that we received on Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, we ended up not going to the class.

As a side-note, we have had so much rain lately that the ground is completely saturated. We ended up with another heavy rainstorm overnight Tuesday that ended up being the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. This rainstorm caused all sorts of landslides that covered the highways in places, causing more flooding than we had before, and the authorities even issued travel advisories saying that if you don’t have to drive anywhere, don’t. Honestly, while Costa Rica is used to getting lots of rain this time of year, we have been getting quite a bit more than usual, and I guess it’s just gotten to be too much!

So, anyway, instead of going to this painting class, being the artsy friend that she is, Tracy invited us up to their house to do a painting class of our own. She already had paint & brushes from the other projects that she does, so she stopped at the art store to pick up some more supplies and canvases, and we decided to make an evening out of it. I worked in the morning, and we headed up to their house in the afternoon when I was finished.

We started just sitting around together chatting, and after a little while Tracy started bringing out the art materials. She had enough for all 4 of us to paint, but of course, the guys didn’t want to participate. Tracy printed out some stencils so we could get the general outline, and then we started getting creative! We used many of the same techniques that we had learned from the sloth class that we did before, plus some other techniques that we had learned from other places, and just enjoyed being creative for a couple of hours. The 4 of us hung out, talked, and painted in between. We ate some dinner, and ended up heading home around midnight. Of course, neither Tracy nor I had finished painting our sugar skulls, but since she had extra supplies, she sent a few things home with me so I could finish it up myself. Now that she’s getting me into this painting stuff, I think I’ll pick up some supplies of my own and maybe make a few more holiday paintings.

I finished it at home over the next couple of days and this was the final result.

Monday 10/31- Happy Halloween!!

For those of you who have been following along from the beginning (or nearly the beginning) we mentioned last year that Halloween isn’t a big thing here like it is back in the US. It’s picking up in popularity a little bit, especially in places where expats congregate and bars where the 20-30 somethings will party. This is unfortunate for me since I am a big fan of Halloween but not of Halloween bar parties, but I think I’ll survive.

What did we do today instead of celebrate Halloween? Why, we had Ramie’s follow-up doctor appointment in San Isidro! (2 weeks in a row in San Isidro on the wrong day of the week, I really do miss my fresh veggies from the farmer’s market!!) Getting to the appointment today was much easier than last time since we knew exactly where we needed to go. We were the 2nd patients on the agenda today (appointment at 3pm after Dr. Hernandez came to this hospital after finishing his shift at the other hospital). The appointment went very quickly, he looked it over and did another ultrasound to see if the infection has returned or any other signs of injury.  Fortunately, the doctor was very happy with what he saw. After only a week it was starting to heal and the infection was almost gone. There would be no need for any more follow up visits unless something starts to feel very wrong with it again. He made sure to stress that Ramie has to continue to take it easy and absolutely NO kneeling on it for the minimum of a month, but after that he should be able to get back to most of his normal activities without any trouble. The trouble will be, Ramie has a hard time sitting still, and he’s already been sitting around for more than 2 weeks! 

The swelling is significantly down but still not back to normal and the wound is still healing

The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of October rainfall total was 45.9 inches 

Tuesday 11/1- Happy 8 year wedding anniversary to us!

What do you do for your 8 year anniversary? Well, if you’re un-romantic like us, you don’t plan anything. What happens instead, is that when (about a month ago) you were told that you were approved for residency, and your residency attorney tells you that the next open date for your CAJA (national healthcare coverage) registration appointment is on that day, you agree to that date! At least we’ll be spending the day together 😉

The appointment today was the next step in the process of becoming temporary legal residents of Costa Rica (a very long and somewhat painful process). We had to drive about an hour South to the government offices where we would file the initial paperwork to be accepted into the CAJA system. CAJA basically amounts to the Costa Rican national healthcare system and Social Security system (yes, we now have to pay into both Costa Rican and US social security but likely never be able to draw on the CR one.) We had to visit two different offices today. One specifically for Ramie since he is the primary and then to another office to file the dependent (me) coverage. We made it to the first office where a staff member from our attorney’s office met us to help us get through this process. She had all of the paperwork ready for us ahead of time. She did all the talking and all we had to do was sign and pay for our first month fee. After we were done at this office, we had to drive across the river to the next town and do a little bit more paperwork and get me added as a “dependent spouse” to Ramie’s paperwork. I sure am glad that we had the woman from our attorney’s office here to help, as the government employees that we were working with didn’t speak much English and this would have been a very difficult process on our own, but people do it! This took about half of the day, but it felt good to have one more step out of the way on our way towards residency.

Saturday 11/5- It hasn’t even been 2 weeks yet since Ramie’s unexpected minor knee surgery, and he has been under strict orders to take it easy while everything heals itself back together, so we weren’t about to go to the beach or for any excursions like that. That doesn’t mean, however, that we have to sit around and be bored. So, what do you do when you’re stuck at home, can’t do work around the house, and want to enjoy yourself?  We ended up deciding to play some games. While Ramie does like his video games (during the winter months or rain season here), that’s really no fun for me, so we took out some old-fashioned board & card games. A few years ago when we were planning to end up on a sailboat we started collecting some board & dice games that you’d be able to play on a boat (where internet might be scarce and electricity at a premium, where we’d likely be in the wind, and where there was a possibility of getting wet, so regular card games were kind of out of the question). A handful of these games ended up coming to Costa Rica with us. We spent the afternoon playing Rummikub, Farkle, and waterproof Uno, and maybe having an adult beverage or 2 along with it. 

It kind of reminded us of when we used to go camping and played cards all afternoon.

You know, it really is a good thing we like each other so much & get along so well. Since moving down here we are almost never apart anymore and we don’t really have anywhere to run away and hide at home. The house is fairly small and there is no garage or basement to go work or hide in like we had back in MN, and I don’t drive here so unless I go for a walk I’m not going to “leave”. 😂

Tuesday 11/8- After a few more days of being laid up at home, Ramie was feeling antsy to get out and do something, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ready to get away from the house for a little while as well. Today the turtle rescue Facebook group sent out a message that a batch of baby turtles had hatched and they needed some volunteers to go release them this evening. Even though Ramie wasn’t able to go with on the nest walks any more, he still wanted to stay involved and figured he would be able to handle a release without hurting his knee at all, so we volunteered to be a part of this release. It wasn’t a “public” release, which meant that they wouldn’t announce it to the public, but there would still be people on the beach where we’d be releasing the turtles, so a few extra volunteers could be helpful for crowd control and to help the babies safely into the waves.

There was a group of guests staying next door, so Ramie invited them to tag along if they wanted to. They did want to and they were super excited to see the baby turtles. A couple of volunteers who we had met on our first beach walk picked up the baby turtles from the reserve and brought them to the beach that we’d be releasing them at. We and the guests from next door met them there and the 4 of us volunteers proceeded to release the baby turtles as a crowd of onlookers grew, watching these baby turtles on their journey to the ocean. It took about 2 hours for about 100 baby turtles to make their way from the sand where we released them to the ocean. The reason it took so long is that due to all of the waves coming in, sometimes just as they reached the edge of the water a big wave would sweep them a few meters back up onto the sand. Then they would have to start again on their journey back down to the water. When releasing these babies, we don’t just dump them at the edge of the water, instead we sort of mimic a natural hatching where they would have to crawl along the beach before making it to the water. We do, however, release them much closer to the water’s edge than a natural nest would have been laid, so the babies have a much shorter distance to travel. After the babies are swept back up onto the beach once or twice, we do help them by bringing them to the water’s edge and setting them in the water as a wave is going out. This allows them to get a little bit of momentum and make their way out to the ocean.

Ramie flipping the babies right side up

Away we go!

The guest's from next door enjoying an up close experience

After all of the babies had disappeared into the waves we walked back toward the parking lot together. It turns out that both the guests from next door and the other volunteers had thought ahead enough to bring some beverages and planned to hang out to watch the sunset. Why didn’t we think of this!? They had extras and were gracious enough to share, so we all hung out on the beach for a while getting to know each other a little bit better and enjoying a beverage and a sunset.

It turns out that this turtle release was all we had for excitement this week. We still didn’t really have anything going on, we stayed home on my days off (we probably played some more board games), and Ramie continued to have a hard time being unproductive and just resting.

Monday 11/14- Ramie just couldn't take it anymore so he reached out to Alturas to ask if there was any sort of work he could help volunteer with that wouldn't require him to kneel or bend his knee. They were nice enough to allow him to help in the kitchen and he is going to tell you about it. 

Hey all, its Ramie! As mentioned I was now the animal food cook. Its not as exciting as working in the enclosures with the animals, but I'm still helping out and it gets me out of the house. Each animal has a specific diet, Alturas has cheat sheets made up with how much and what type of fruit, vegetable or meat they get. Some of the food we have to boil to soften or cook in the case of eggs. We then took each type of food and weighed it to a specific portion, put in in a food tray put a tag in the tray for what animal(s) its for and set it out on the waiting area. Once the volunteers are done cleaning they come and take these trays to feed the animals. I was surprised it took almost as long to prep all the food as it did to clean the enclosures. However, we finished early enough that I was able to help feed. Mocha the sloth came out for her favorite food, carrots. I got to feed Raul the toucan and then onto the medium parrots. As soon as I walked in the enclosure I was dive bombed by my least favorite bird in this enclosure (the blue headed medium parrot). 

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Typically I can quickly walk around that enclosure by bending at the waist and keeping my head below the concrete wall where there is no where for them to land, however today as I was walking this little sh*t decided to land on my back, ran up it and proceeded to bite the back of my neck numerous times. Now, I'm trying not to drop the remaining food, and also trying to get it off my back and neck. I reach back to swat it away and the bird bit my fingers and drew blood. Enough of that!! I set the food down and took a stick and swiped across my back. It flew off but continued to follow me. That was by far the worst experience I've had to date with an animal. I got home and showed Dana the war wounds from the day.. Oh the joys of working with animals!

Tuesday 11/15- A week had gone by since we helped with the turtle release, and wouldn’t you know it, another batch of babies hatched today and was ready to be released. Ramie got the message at about 3:00 that they were looking for volunteers to release the babies at about 4:30. This would be another private release, not announced to the public, so the short notice was typical. After waiting about 10-15 minutes to see if anyone else would volunteer, and no one did, we decided that we’d go help these babies on their journey back to the ocean. After seeing how this whole process went last week and not having received confirmations from any of the other volunteers, we knew that it could be difficult with just the 2 of us. Geoff and Tracy were with us on our very first (public) turtle release that we watched, and they enjoyed it and have been interested in the turtle stuff ever since, so we gave them a call to see if they were available to help out. Luckily they were available, and they were very excited to come along with us and help the babies. Since we were the only experienced volunteers, we had to pick up the babies from the nursery and drive them to the beach. This time we ended up with 2 buckets of baby turtles, one batch with 75 babies and the other with 83. That’s a lot of little turtles!!

Geoff and Tracy met us at the beach parking lot shortly after we got there and we walked together to find a good spot on the beach. It didn’t take but a few minutes for a crowd to start once again and people wanted to see and watch what was going on. It’s a good thing that we recruited some extra helpers, because with the amount of little turtles and the amount of people watching, we needed the help! Tonight it seemed to go much quicker than last week, it only took about 1-1.5 hours for all of the babies to swim away. Of course, we didn’t bring any beverages or anything with us so we didn’t hang out for the sunset. One of these days we’ll remember! 

Dana safely holding them for the car ride to the beach

Thursday 11/17- Happy Birthday Ramie!

A couple of weeks ago Geoff and Tracy mentioned that they felt like playing pool, and the cute little Los Gatos tree house restaurant that Tracy and I painted our sloths right around my birthday time frame had a pool table that they just refinished. We made plans to go do that today. It was completely unintentional that it happened to fall on Ramie’s birthday, it’s just that it happened to fall on a Thursday (my day off) and right before we were headed on our next border run. We met around lunchtime, had a couple of drinks played a couple of rounds of pool, and had some lunch (I think the best nachos I’ve had in Costa Rica thus far, and I’m becoming a nachos connoisseur!) 

Let the game begin

Such concentration

Geoff and Tracy had to head out for something else later in the afternoon, but my mom wanted some pictures for her Christmas cards so we might as well have our friends snap some before they left. This is the only one that I'm sharing...

Ramie & I hung around and played a couple more rounds of pool afterwards. We had most of the place to ourselves and spent some time chatting with the owners (Americans who have been down here for a few years) for a while. Before too long we headed home to finish packing. Packing for what? You’ll just have to join us next week to find out!

Pura Vida!

Tuesday 10/18- With the green season rains come all sorts of challenges. One of those challenges is mold, mildew & algae that grows in places were you don’t want it to. In a much earlier post we told you about the dusty white mold that grows on surfaces in the house. We struggled with this constantly at our old rental house and constantly had to wipe down cabinets, drawers, walls, you name it. It’s also very common for your fabrics, clothes, towels, etc. to smell musty unless you stay on top of laundry or have a dry-room or similar space. The problem today is the slimy green algae that grows outside on the concrete surfaces (such as the wall Ramie just pressure washed and also in the cuneta's, or concrete drainage ditches that surround our yard. They work as open topped culverts that drain all of the rain runoff from our yard down to the creek and we have them along the entire back and one side of our property. 

Our covered garden greenhouse is right inside the corner where the 2 sections of cuneta come together.

The cuneta is the half pipe you can see running along the left side of this picture.

Today while I was working, Ramie was working out in the garden picking some veggies and taking care of things, when he came into the house and said something like “well, that’s going to hurt for a while”. I turned around and saw that his knee was bleeding. It didn’t look too bad at first, but when we really got close and looked, you could tell it was a very deep gash, and there was a piece of "something" that came out from the inside of the hole. Well, that doesn’t look good. 

I asked Ramie what happened and he said that he was walking around the back of the garden along the green fence to pick some veggies when he stepped into the slimy, wet, algae covered cuneta and his foot slid out from under him at lightening speed because of the cheap flip flops he was wearing. He landed his left knee right on the jagged concrete edge of the cuneta. Ramie said he stood up right away but was afraid to look but realized he should and only saw a little bit of blood, but he said it felt like he broke his knee cap. After "being a man" and walking it off he went on with the rest of what he was doing.

He picked the rest of the veggies, went and planted some things on the lower lot and then realized he should probably come in and wash his knee and have me look at it. Upon even closer inspection we discovered that the piece of "something" went in and out of the hole when he bent his knee and moved around. Well, I suppose he better have a doctor take a look at it. It was right around lunch time when he drove himself into town, and wouldn’t you know it, the doctor’s office was closed for lunch. He then decided to try the other doctor, and sure enough he was closed for lunch too! (That sure is some poor planning by the local urgent-care doctor offices!) So, without seeing a doctor he came back home and tried calling to see when they opened back up. The one closest to our house (not the “antique” doctor office that I went to when I sliced my finger) opened first, so once he was back, Ramie went up there to have him check out the injury.This was a brand new, very modern looking doctor office and the doctor here spoke pretty good English. He took a look at Ramie’s knee, cleaned it up a little bit, and said that this wasn’t a big problem, it was just a cut. Ramie pointed out the piece of tissue that was coming out of the hole and the doctor didn’t seem at all concerned, it was probably just some skin that got stuck in there. He offered to cut it off, but Ramie just didn’t think that seemed like a good idea. The doctor just bandaged it up and told Ramie to take it easy and clean for the next few days and no charge, just be more careful.

Thursday 10/20- Today Geoff & Tracy invited us to go with them to a cute little town with a nice beach and a good restaurant nearby that they like. Even though Ramie was trying to take it easy, we decided to go sit at the beach with them for a little while. Ramie & Geoff walked around on the beach a little bit to look for cool pieces of drift wood, but not nearly as much as Tracy & I. We brought chairs with us and just hung out listening to the waves and chatting. When we were done hanging out at the beach we ate some lunch at the restaurant that they like and headed home.

Ramie mentioned that even though he was taking it easy today, he noticed that his knee was getting stiffer and getting more and more sore. We thought that it might be a good idea to get a second opinion, and had heard some very good things about a different doctor in the area, Dr. Monica, from Tracy as well as other reviews on the local pages. Ramie got her phone number and sent her a text, (it was about 6pm at the time) asking if she could help. She asked him to send a couple of photos and videos of his knee to see what she was dealing with and she spent the next 45 minutes or so messaging back and forth with Ramie about what was going on (we will save you and wont post those pictures or video but Ramie does still have them). She told us that she was not the type of doctor that could help with an issue like this, and that he needed to make an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon at the hospital in San Isidro right away. Well, this certainly didn’t sound good!! She gave us the name and phone number of the doctor that he should see, and advised us to take care of this sooner rather than later. Of course, by now it was late in the evening and too late to call, so we’d just have to wait until morning to schedule an appointment.

Friday 10/21- As early in the day as he expected the doctor’s office to be open, Ramie called to make an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. We had been told by Dr. Monica that the doctor spoke English well, but his assistant (who happened to be his mother) didn’t, so Ramie was prepared with as much as he could in Spanish to explain what he needed. He called and was pleasantly surprised that the man who answered the phone spoke good English. He explained what had happened, and told him that he needed an appointment as soon as possible, as it had already been a few days since the injury happened. Unfortunately, the doctor wasn’t working today, and the earliest appointment that they could offer was Monday at 4:00pm. Well, I guess we’d take that one, there isn’t really a whole lot we can do about it! For the time being, Ramie will just have to continue to take it easy and keep it covered. The wound was still weeping and we knew it was deep, but it was only a couple more days so we’d just do what we could to make sure he didn’t make it worse.

Of course, when you’re sick or injured and haven’t seen a doctor yet, what do you do? Go to google to see what your diagnosis might be. Since he couldn’t do much but sit around, he got on google to see what might be wrong with his knee. His prognosis was that this might be a tendon or ligament issue, and that piece of “skin” that the local urgent care doctor wanted to cut off was probably a little bit more important than just that. Good thing he didn’t cut it off!!

Saturday 10/22 and Sunday 10/23- With Ramie’s knee issue, we expected to keep quite a low-profile around the house this weekend. We spent the days relaxing, working on the computers, and all things that didn’t take a lot of movement. Unfortunately, despite taking it easy as much as possible, it seems like his knee continued to get worse. It’s getting more sore & more stiff, and he’s having a hard time sleeping, getting dressed or just getting around, and he can barely bend his knee at all now. It’s also getting swollen, and doesn’t look quite right any more. It’s a good thing we have this doctor appointment on Monday, I think the urgent care doctor really failed us and led Ramie in the wrong direction!

Ya, that left knee just doesn't look good at all!

Monday 10/24- Since today’s doctor’s appointment in San Isidro was in the afternoon, I started the day working for a few hours, as I would on a normal Monday. I did take off a little bit earlier than I usually would so we could do a little bit of shopping before the appointment was scheduled. We had originally planned to go to San Isidro this Thursday for our regular provisioning run, but since we’d be driving there today, we wouldn’t be going back again this week. To make this trip a little bit more productive we planned as much of our regular shopping (minus the farmers market) as we could. I’d just have to make do with the more expensive and less quality veggies that I could find in town for a few more weeks. 

Ramie's exact words were, "well I might as well make my knee more noticeable for the doctor". After doing some shopping & kind of wearing out Ramie’s sore, stiff knee, we headed toward the downtown area where the hospital was located. There isn’t much parking nearby, so we parked at a pay-lot that was nearby and would walk the block to the hospital. When we got to the hospital, things were very confusing and we weren’t exactly sure where to go or what to do, and we couldn’t find anyone that spoke English well enough to really be able to explain it to us. We got to a check-in line where a couple of Ticos told us we had to wait. When we got to the window we explained that we had an appointment with Dr. Hernandez at 4:00. The person behind the window told us that we were in the wrong area and had to go somewhere else. We went to the other place, and spoke to someone at the window there we explained again that we had an appointment at 4:00 with Dr. Hernandez, and this person told us that she couldn’t help us and that we had to wait until the shift change at 4:00 before we could check in. Well, that’s weird, our appointment is AT 4:00! Ok, whatever, so we sat and waited until a different guy came to the window. This one spoke enough English that we could figure out what was going on. We explained for the 3rd time that we had an appointment with Dr. Hernandez at 4:00, and he looked at us kind of confused. He asked if it was the tall Dr. Hernandez or the short Dr. Hernandez, we told him we had no idea as it was our first time meeting him, but we told him that it was for a knee injury.

At this point, this guy finally seemed to figure out what was going on. It turns out that our Dr. Hernandez works at this public hospital during the day, but at 4:00 moves to a different private hospital a few blocks away, and that we are at the WRONG hospital!! He brought us to the front doors of this hospital, pointed down the road and told us to go 2 or 3 blocks that way, we’d find a different hospital, and inside we would find a receptionist to check in with. We thanked him a bunch and headed toward the direction he pointed. At this point we realized that we had forgotten the insurance paperwork in the car, which was a couple of blocks in the opposite direction, so Ramie started on his hobble to the correct hospital while I quickly headed back to the car, got the paperwork, and then tried to catch up with Ramie on his way to the hospital. He had made it to the check-in counter about the time that I caught up, and had just begun to fill out the paperwork. At this point we were only about 10 minutes late for our appointment, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. While they did have appointment times, it was sort of first-come, first-served, so 1 or 2 patients may have gotten in front of us, but that wasn’t such a big deal. At least we were finally in the right place!!

It only took a few minutes before the doctor called us in and we got this appointment started (Yes, WE. It would probably be a good idea for me to be involved in these appointments since the language barrier can be difficult sometimes, and between the 2 of us we seem to be able to pick up on, understand, and be able to communicate in slightly different ways that make talking to Ticos a team effort). We first started at his desk, the doctor took a VERY brief background- allergies to medications, if he was taking anything currently, and just very, very basic information. Then he asked what happened. Ramie explained the fall, that it had happened nearly a week ago, and that it’s been progressively getting more painful. We were also sure to tell him that he DID have a doctor look at this, but apparently that doctor was not very good, because he told us not to worry and this was just a scrape that would heal up.

At this point, Dr. Hernandez brought us to the back of his office and his exam room. This looked more or less like a doctor office that you’d expect- an exam table, one of those lamps with the goose neck, a sink and a couple of drawers with medical supplies in it. He told Ramie to get up on the exam table & I stood back near the doorway to observe. He unwrapped the knee, asked Ramie to explain again what happened, and then told him to lay back on the table. Ramie insisted he was fine sitting up, the doctor did some more checks and said to Ramie to lay down. Ramie said it was ok, and the doctor really told him, he should just lay down. Ramie reluctantly laid down.

[All of you squeamish people should skip this next section, no pictures but gory details]



At this point the doctor put his hand on Ramie's knee and immediately looked at us and said he has a serious infection. He then squeezed his knee and the wound and I could tell that Ramie was doing everything he could not to scream in pain. The look he had on his face and how tense his entire body got told me that the doctor squeezed hard and it hurt! The doctor must have seen what he wanted to see, then walked over to his drawer of supplies. He grabbed out a syringe and was looking around for something else that he couldn’t find. At that point, he left the room, presumably to go look for whatever he couldn’t find in the drawer.

A few minutes later he came back into the room with a few vials of liquid, and another doctor. He introduced him as Dr. Alex, and then this doctor began to talk to Ramie, asked about what had happened, and got Ramie talking a little bit and to also keep him distracted (Dr. Alex spoke fantastic English too, which is always a good sign). Dr. Alex again confirmed that Ramie had a serious infection in his knee, while this was happening I watched as Dr. Hernandez took a vial of a liquid into a syringe, a surgical cloth, iodine, more tools and a few other things. Dr Hernandez then went over to Ramie, while he was still distracted talking to Dr. Alex, gave him a shot of local anesthetic, and began covering the area with one of those surgical cloths. Ramie was in the process of showing Dr. Alex a picture of what the wound had looked like originally when Dr. Hernandez grabbed the tissue of "something" that came out of the wound, pulled it out further with the clamps, and snipped it off. Ramie immediately dropped his phone and it fell right into Dr. Alex’s hand, which he then handed to me. Dr. Alex tried to continued to try to keep Ramie distracted but whatever he was saying to Ramie fell on deaf ears. Ramie was clutching the table and trying not to move his leg. Dr. Hernandez proceeded to dig deep into his knee to scrape around and try to get out whatever infected tissue was in and around the wound, out. The Dr. also made sure the tendon was pushed back into his knee in the general location it should be. He then got the ultra sound machine out and took a look at the rest of Ramie's knee for anything else that may be obviously wrong. After he was done with that he cleaned Ramie up, (no stitches) bandaged his knee and then talked to Dr. Alex in Spanish about the next steps.


[OK all of you squeamish people, it’s safe to start reading again]

After Dr. Hernandez was done doing this minor surgery right there in the exam room, Dr. Alex, who spoke English better than Dr. Hernandez, explained that the joint (not the wound, but the joint itself) was very infected. Ramie would be required to stay over night for IV antibiotics to get this infection under control, otherwise it could become very dangerous. Oral antibiotics would be too slow to get it under control, and it was better to do this fast. At first we thought he was joking, but it quickly became clear that he was not. Ramie gently got down from the exam table and Dr. Hernandez followed us out of the office. We had to stop first where he proceeded to talk to him mom (his assistant) about what it cost and then he left. We paid her for the office visit, then Dr. Alex took over and brought us to a different check in desk and waiting area. He told the staff that we needed a room and we waited in the waiting area for about a half hour before they brought us to one.

During this time we got to thinking about things that needed to be taken care of. First and foremost, Breeze was at home by herself. Geoff & Tracy to the rescue!! I quickly called Tracy and explained what was going on and that we would have to stay at the hospital overnight (potentially longer depending on how the antibiotics took care of the situation.). Could they “break into our house” and take care of Breeze for us? We explained what we thought the best way to break in would be, and where to find the extra keys, and they quickly got to it to take care of our doggy (it’s a very good thing that Breeze really likes them!!).

The next thing that needed to be taken care of was the car. It was parked 5 or 6 blocks away in this crazy busy city (with confusing roads and lots of one-ways) in a parking lot that closes at 7pm. We asked Dr Alex what we could do with the car overnight and he said that we should move it to some street parking near the hospital, and once a space in the hospital parking lot (consisting of about 12 parking spaces) clears out, we would move it to one of those spaces. At this point, it’s getting dark, I don’t know the area or the route, and I have only drove once since being in Costa Rica. This was going to be a bit of a dilemma. Ramie said that he would just walk down there and move the car, but we didn’t know how long it would take to get the room and he probably shouldn’t be walking that far anyway, so we decided to just wait until we got to the room. When we were finally brought to a room, we figured it wouldn't be too long before the doctor came in, so we didn’t do it then either. 

Waiting for the doctor

Gotta stay positive, right!?!

It took nearly another hour after we were brought to the room before Dr. Alex came back. It turns out that he was the ER doctor on duty tonight and he would be the one in charge of Ramie’s care. He got the nurses to come in & hooked Ramie up to his first 2 bags of different antibiotic IV's, and then he was stuck to the bed & I was stuck figuring out what to do with the car. Once Ramie was settled, I left the room to go ask one of the staff members if there was someone that could come with me to at least give me driving directions from the parking lot to the hospital. The parking lot would be closing soon and as I was leaving the room, Dr. Alex was coming out of another room nearby. I had asked him if he knew of anyone that could help me, and he said that he was just finishing up with his shift and his wife was here to pick him up, but before he left, he would walk with me to the car and bring it up to the hospital for me. 

Wait, WHAT?!?! The ER doc just offered to help me move the car?! That would NEVER happen anywhere else.

We left the hospital and sure enough his wife was waiting outside in their car, he told her we’d just be a few minutes and he’d be back. We had about a 10-minute walk to the car, he told me a little bit about his background and where he had lived in CR before he ended up as a doctor in San Isidro. When we got to the car, he was surprised that our “car” was actually a SUV. He confessed that he has only really driven small cars before but would happily drive it up to the hospital for us. I offered that if he was uncomfortable driving, that I would, if he could just give me directions, but he assured me that it was fine and he could drive. I’m pretty sure that he could tell I was nervous! It turns out he was really glad to get to drive the big vehicle because he could “show off” to his wife that he could drive a big car too. He easily handled the big car through the winding one-way streets and tons of pedestrians. When we got up to the hospital parking lot there was an open space, he pulled the car in, and I was in the clear for having to drive tonight! Valet Parking by the ER doc at no extra charge 😉

I thanked him profusely before he jumped in his wife’s car and told me he’d see us again tomorrow morning. I then went back up to the room and told Ramie all about what happened. Ok, now that the dog & the car situations had been sorted out, it was time to try to get us settled in for the night. There were a few stores nearby and I was on a mission to find us some toothbrushes, toothpaste, and maybe a clean t-shirt to change into, since we both felt disgusting after being in our same clothes all day. (At least Ramie got to change into a gown). By the time I made it back out to the street all of the little shops nearby were closed and there was nothing but a grocery store open. (Seriously, 2 hours earlier it was a hustling bustling place full of shopping, tourist shops where I could have found an I Love CR shirt, and all of that stuff). Oh well, I was able to get the toothbrushes & toothpaste so at least my mouth would feel clean!

Shortly after I got back with our supplies, The nurse came in to take Ramie's order for dinner, (he asked if I could get dinner too, but I opted not to) we waited about 45 minutes and that finally arrived and he quickly snarfed it down. We were both wore out from the long day and decided that we’d try to settle in and get some sleep for the night (yes, I had an uncomfortable little couch that I could sleep on, at least it wasn’t a chair!!!) As I laid down, I saw a sticker on Ramie’s bed that said “Maternity” and realized that maybe this is a room typically set up for a new mom & dad, and that’s why it has a place for a non-patient to sleep. I don’t think most hospital rooms here are set up to have an overnight guest! Just as I was dozing off, the nurse shift change came in waking us up to check Ramie's vitals, now I couldn’t fall back asleep again. I think part of the reason I couldn’t sleep is because the room was soooo cold!! When we got to the room the AC was set at 17* C (62* F). I tried to turn it up to 22* which is about 72* but the warmest it would go was 19* (66* F). MAN, this is a LOT colder than anything we’re used to anymore! Especially only being in shorts and a T-shirt. I’m glad I had the blanket that they gave me, but it sure was chilly in here!!

By the time morning came, I was exhausted and sore. After we had been awake for a while, the morning nurses finally came in to check on Ramie. They took his breakfast order and then left again. Dr Alex came in sometime after that and ordered 2 more bags of IV antibiotics. He said that things were starting to look better but he wanted us to wait around for a while longer to see how it continued to go.

Ramie ordered the typical Costa Rican Breakfast

The next 2 bags of antibiotics seemed to go in quicker than the first 2 did last night, and after those were gone the nurse came back in to tell Ramie he could shower if he wanted to, then she would change the bandage. When the bandage came off we could tell that it did look better today than it did yesterday, so the signs were pointing in a positive direction.

The swelling is starting to go down! Also yes that red dot on his knee is where the injury was. Not a large wound but enough to cause a major problem

After the bandage was changed they gave him one more bag of IV antibiotics and the nurse told us that once this one was done Dr. Alex would come in one more time and we’d be released. What a relief! 

It took a while before Dr. Alex came back, and when he did, he apologized for taking so long. Apparently he had to fix up someone that came in this morning after a run-in with a table saw. After hearing about that, we were glad that our situation wasn’t nearly so bad! He gave us a prescription for 10 days of oral antibiotics, told him to ice and elevate his knee and take it easy. He also told us to schedule a follow-up with Dr. Hernandez in a week. That’s it, it was about noon on Tuesday and we were finally ready to go home.

On the way home we stopped to pick Breeze up from Geoff & Tracy and promised to get them a set of keys made so they don’t have to break in again if we ever need their help. We are so thankful for great friends like them that we know we can count on! Then, on home for Ramie to put his feet up for the week and hopefully not go stir crazy! 

Someone was playing in the rain and also kinda mad we left her

So, one of the wort parts of this whole story was this: On Sunday I had a thought that we should pack an overnight bag just in case something like this would happen. I talked myself out of it and told myself that I was worrying too much and just needed to calm down. Morals of the story- if I have a gut feeling about something I should probably go with it AND always have a go-bag ready when going to the doctor an hour away, just in case something unexpected was to happen. I’m just glad that we had a phone charger in the truck and a USB outlet in the hospital room, because over the course of our stay we both spent a lot of time on our phones. They did have a TV but it would have been all in Spanish.

Oh, and you’re probably all wondering how much this unexpected overnight stay cost us. Well, I would say that you will be shocked by the answer. The total cost of the initial office exam, the overnight in the hospital, the prescriptions, the supplies, and everything else cost $742. Yeah, that’s it… $742 cash (or credit card). We had to pay for the initial doctor appointment first, as soon as we were finished. Then we had to pay for the first night hospital stay before they even put us into a room. And then we had to pay the remainder of the bill for the antibiotics and supplies, etc. when we checked out.

While we do have private insurance down here, it works much differently. You have to pay for everything up front and then you submit the receipts and documentation that the doctor has to fill out to get reimbursed. So now we get to work through the next part of the system- getting the reimbursement. Fingers crossed that this process goes smoothly!

Pura Vida

Saturday 10/8- While we don’t watch news in the traditional sense (morning or evening TV news) we get a lot of our local news via Facebook. I know, that’s dangerous right, but it makes the most sense here. We have our Costa Rican expat groups that are all full of gossip, travel tips, and moving advice, but they are also good about sharing what is going on in the country. I also follow some local news sources (online newspapers, etc) and the page for the Costa Rica Meteorological Institute so I have my bases covered for the items that would be most relevant to us. In the last couple of days we have seen many posts about a tropical storm/hurricane brewing in the Caribbean that is making its way towards Costa Rica. While the high winds aren’t experienced here, Costa Rica was expected to receive very heavy rain and a large storm surge (much higher than normal ocean & tide levels) over the next several days. They were warning against travel, advised everyone to stay home, away from the beaches and to stock up on at least several days worth of essentials. This storm was anticipated to arrive sometime Friday afternoon.

Most of the day Friday was good weather, we even had some good sun for a few hours. There was no sign of the bad weather yet, but just like we were used to back in MN, weather can change in an instant here. It wasn’t until overnight Friday and into Saturday morning that it started to rain. It wasn’t torrential downpours, just some standard Costa Rican green season rain, about 2.2 inches overnight. It even stopped raining for a while on Saturday! Because we know that power outages are common with bad weather, we decided to stock up on some groceries that didn’t have to be refrigerated and that could be cooked on the gas stove top, grill, or even eaten raw. When the power goes out and you don’t know how long it might be out for, the rule is do NOT open the refrigerator or freezer. As long as you leave the doors closed, you’ll have a better chance of your food not spoiling if the power is out for a while. This is why non-refrigerated food is essential. I can still cook, but I won’t open that fridge! So, Saturday morning we made a quick trip to the grocery store for those types of things, we made sure that we had a few gallons of drinking water ready, and charged up all of our devices, just in case! 

Friday

We are the blue dot

Even though it didn’t keep raining all day, it was a good day to stay home and relax, and work on getting caught up on blog writing (It seems as though I’m always a month behind on writing these, not to mention uploading them to the website & adding pictures! Good thing I keep good notes!)

We were beginning to think that all of this talk of heavy and potentially dangerous rain was wrong, or at least wasn’t happening in our area, but weather is tricky like that. Especially hurricanes- you know how unpredictable those can be! I kept an eye on my weather app to see what was going on, but was definitely paying more attention to what I was seeing on Facebook from reports across the country. (As a note, weather apps are mostly useless down here as there are thousands of micro-climates that change within just a few miles. The weather apps will show a high chance of rain all day, every day during the green season. That is not the reality of the weather here!! The only time I pay attention to these apps are when there is a big storm like this that can be tracked from space and you can get a general overview of where it is heading.) 

Saturday

The predicted path has changed and its moving more north across Nicaragua

Sunday

Now the warnings are of high winds wrapping back towards Costa Rica

Back out in the Pacific Ocean

Later we found out that this storm was Hurricane Julia and ended up staying North of Costa Rica, crossing straight over Nicaragua and El Salvador. They received the majority of the destruction that you would expect from a hurricane. We didnt get the high winds or severe rains but better to play it safe than be sorry.

Thursday 10/13- It's been pretty dreary around here lately, but this morning when I woke up, I felt the need for the beach. Even though Ramie has been walking on the beach the last few days doing the night time turtle walks, he was a trooper and agreed that since it is my day off work, that walking on the beach some more wasn’t a problem! It wasn’t a clear, beautiful morning, but it didn’t need to be for our type of beach day; we aren’t the type of people to lay out and bask in the sun and the sand! We jumped in the car and started heading toward our secret beach. We weren’t even 5 minutes down the highway when we started noticing raindrops on the windshield. It didn’t take long after that and it was full-on raining, not raining hard, but raining steady. We discussed turning around and going home but decided to continue on to the beach despite the rain. Plus, a lot can change with the weather in a 20 minute drive, it might not even be raining at the beach (remember that friend 15 miles from us received twice as much rain as we did earlier this week)! Besides, even if it is raining, who cares?! At least we won’t have to worry about getting sun burned or getting too hot!!

It was still raining lightly when we got there, but it didn’t bother us at all. As we drove in we guessed that it must have been raining quite a bit overnight, as the road that is usually visible (with huge mud puddles, but still a road) was now a shallow river. The water coming down the road was even flowing like a small creek. We had never seen this here before, it was kind of neat! Still, we didn’t let it stop us and just drove right on through. We’ve been coming here long enough that we know this road and that the ground is firm enough and not going to wash away beneath our tires. 

Completely flooded and flowing water down the road. It was up to the bottom of our doors at one point.

We got to where we park and did like we always do, left everything in the car and started walking. This was our first beach day in the rain, and you know what, it wasn’t so bad! Yeah, we were soaked from head to toe, but who cares!? We had our swimsuits on and those are meant to get wet. We walked along the high tide line looking for beach treasures, turtle nests, and anything else that caught our eye. Now that we both know what to look for, it will probably become a habit to look for turtle nests, even though there would be nothing we could do with it if we found one. Unfortunately, along our walk we did find several of what appeared to be nests that had already been poached as well as the remains of a dead sea turtle. The turtle looked as if it had been there for a week or longer since all that remained were the shell, a skull, and a few other pieces of bone scattered around.

By the time we made it to our normal turn-around point, which turned out to be much quicker than normal (probably because we didn’t take our leisurely time as much as we usually do) the rain had stopped and the clouds were burning off. We took our time on our walk back and by the time we made it back to where we were parked it had turned out to be a beautiful morning.  We were even pretty much dry! We walked around a little more in this area to look for treasures and then decided it was time to head home. 

Back at home for the rest of the day we both got to work on our computers: Me working on the blog, and Ramie working on the Airbnb page and guest “information book” for the house next door. If anyone is looking for a place to stay, it’s a modern 3 bedroom house with the best neighbors ever! If your interested in coming to visit check it out. Casa Blanca

For the most part we are trying to live a simple relaxing life, and I sure do like simple relaxing days off like today 😊

Sunday 10/16- October is typically the rainiest month of the green season. We knew that from our research before moving down here and from our experience here last year, but this year it seems like we have been getting even more rain than a typical rainy season. The ground is saturated and there have been many reports of landslides and flooding, even more so than usual. When we walk through the yard we can feel the ground squish beneath our shoes, and the soil never has a chance to dry out. We have been seeing a lot of information via our “favorite” local news source- Facebook- of the many problems that have been happening in the area stemming from all of the rain. (Please note, while we do believe that FB is mostly evil and would love to quit it, it truly is the easiest way to communicate with all of you friends AND to get accurate current news in our area, so we will continue to put up with the shenanigans only because it makes our lives a bit easier).

Today we also learned through our FB groups that Jaco, a busy tourist beach town about halfway between here and San Jose, was completely flooded. There were pictures of the streets and businesses underwater because there has been so much rain and nowhere for all of the water to run away to quickly enough. Last week a town about an hour South of us was completely flooded as well. There is a bridge that we have driven over on our way to Panama which is typically about 50-60 feet above the river, we saw videos of this river now flowing less than 10’ below it. The amount of rain water running through this country currently is incredible. Thankfully the waters have receded and many of the affected areas are trying to get back to normal. We also keep hearing reports that in many places along the highway between here and San Jose there have been terrible landslides along the highways and roads were closed for miles. We were glad that we didn’t have anywhere that we had to be any time soon, as there aren’t a lot of available detours. As always, we will continue to keep an eye on the situation in the areas surrounding us. Hopefully this rainy season will slow down and come to an end soon! 

It continued to rain for a few more days following this, and we continued to hear reports of additional flooding in areas around us. The weather reports show that we are in another “tropical wave”.  It is strange that we get more rain and flooding with these tropical waves than we did last week when the hurricane was going across Nicaragua.  If we’ve learned anything about the weather here, it is that it is even more unpredictable than the weather in MN seemed. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that green season lets up soon, because I think the country has seen enough heavy rainfall for a while!

Pura Vida

Monday 10/10- Hey everyone it's Ramie. Monday is here so that means I have my volunteer job at the animal sanctuary. I wish I had some exciting news to report about that but it's been rather uneventful there lately. I will say though that the animals are really starting to get to know me and enjoy teasing me. Raul the toucan likes to sit on my bucket as I walk around his enclosure and when he gets tired of that he will fly by my head and hit me with his wing. The spider monkeys like to blow kisses at me, the macaws enjoy a game where I push a stick through a drain hole while they tear it apart and make laughing noises. Mocha the sloth likes it when I hand feed her a piece of food. It's all entertaining to me and I'm sure to them. I also found out that on a day Dana doesn't have to work she can come with me and help out. She may be up for some up close animal encounters.. We’ll report back after that happens to give you all the fun details.

I get to go on my first night walk to search for nesting turtles for my other volunteer job with the turtle sanctuary tonight at 11pm. Even if we don't see anything I figured it would still be pretty cool to walk the beach at night and maybe see other wildlife. Tonight I would meet up with one of the other full time volunteers and 3 tourists who were joining us for the experience. We started our moonlit walk along the beach somewhat explaining to the tourists what it is we are looking for, once that explanation was done we didn't talk at all because the turtles are skittish of noise and light, and may not crawl out of the water if they hear or spot us. We walked and walked and walked some more. It was a pretty uneventful 2-½ mile walk to the end of the beach where we barely spotted some tracks. We followed the part of the track that we could see and spread out to search some more, and finally found the body pit (the indentation left in the sand after the turtle covers the nest with sand). We used our sticks and started poking in the sand looking for the nest. It took us quite a while to find the egg cavity since this momma hid it so well. We gathered the necessary information from the site, loaded the eggs into a bucket, and started our way back toward the parking lot since it just happened to be right at the turn-around point.

Just about half way back we spotted some more tracks.  It looks like a momma turtle had made her way up onto the beach after we had passed by the first time. I would say it had been close to an hour since we walked past this point. We were unsure if momma was still there, so carefully & quietly we followed the tracks that led right under a mangrove tree. Oh my! She was still in the process of laying her eggs!  How cool is this!?! My second time out and I actually get to work with a live momma turtle.

Me and Cycy (the other volunteer) started by taking measurements of her track. Once that was done, Cycy tried to dig a hole in the sand under her and into the nest. Her hope was to be able to collect the eggs as they dropped. Just as she reached the nest, momma was done. We let momma lay her eggs undisturbed before we started to bother her to do what we need to. Once momma starts to fill in the nest and get it mostly buried and packed is when we start our process of measuring and tagging or recording tag numbers if the turtle already has been tagged. Cycy looked on her front flippers for any tags and there were none, so she gathered the tagging supplies and asked me to get the measurements. This was more of a challenge than I expected. You take two measurements of the turtle’s shell. The first is from the base of the neck to the base of the tail, the second is the widest part of the shell which is just behind her front flippers.

Momma turtle was still in the process of burying her nest so she was flipping sand into the body pit and then would raise her body and drop onto the sand to pack it. Since she was under a mangrove tree (which grow very bushy & low to the ground), I had branches to deal with and a turtle that was not holding still. Oh and all of this only using a red head lamp, so visibility was a bit difficult. Turtles are very sensitive to white light, which is why we only use the red. At one point I was laying on top of her, kind of like a turtle rodeo.

Sea Turtles are extremely strong, she was lifting me up and down and proceeding to turn around at the same time. I eventually got both measurements and I didn't get my fingers squished under her in the process. Once I had the measurements, Cycy showed me how and where to tag them. They use two tags with the same number, one on each front flipper in a specific location. She tagged this one, but I'm sure I’ll get to do the actual tagging next time. Once that was done we GPS located the nest and proceeded to dig out all 123 eggs. While Cycy was gathering the eggs, I was able to snap some pics. Sorry they are so dark but it was for the turtles safety. 

Slowly filling in her nest

Done! Time for me to get outta here

On her way back to the Ocean

Wednesday 10/12- It's been a couple days since my last beach walk and today I'm heading out for an early morning walk. It's 4am and I have to meet the group on the beach at 4:30am. We had the choice to go out at 1am just after low tide, but the majority of the group wanted to sleep in and chose to walk just a few hours before high tide. It was a hellish walk! The recent storms have caused a lot of debris to be washed down the rivers and into the ocean, littering the beach with entire trees, sticks, coconuts and so much other stuff. My ankles and shins took a beating from all of the floating stuff that would smash into them, and you couldn't see it coming because of the murky water. Any signs of tracks would have been washed away from the waves, so we had to look for the body pit or what remained of it. 

As a quick reminder, the body pit is the location that the momma turtle had dug up and laid her eggs and then covered-over again with sand. It can be quite large and very different depending on the type of turtle. We made it all the way to the end, where the majority of the nests had been found this mating season and had not spotted anything. A few of us were fast walkers and we had to wait for the rest to catch up. We took a break, talked about how difficult today's walk was and that maybe it would have been better to go at 1am. Once we were all rested we started our walk back and I spotted what appeared to be a body pit.

The rest of the group had walked right past it. I called out to a couple of the others and they came and looked and were very surprised that I spotted it. It had been mostly washed out from the waves. They told me to go ahead and check it, so I grabbed a stick and within a few pokes I found the egg pit/nest. I started digging and lo and behold, there was a temperature difference in the sand. A couple more handfuls of sand and I found the eggs. The group was impressed that I spotted the nest. A few of the seasoned volunteers even mentioned they totally missed it. I'm 3 for 3, on my walks, but I know that will not last. We had a new volunteer with us today so I taught him what had to be done with the nest and he was super excited like I was to dig out his first nest, he lost count, but thankfully I was counting for him at the time (I don't recall the exact number but it was over 100). The rest of the walk was wet and we were starting to get better at dodging debris. 

I did three walks in a short time, and I realized that I may need to reevaluate when I'm going out. My sleep pattern is all messed up, but I really enjoy the late night walks. I’ve got some other things to do, so I’ll wait to go out again until next week.

Pura Vida!

 🌊🌊🐢 🌊🌊

Saturday 10/1- While it was my Saturday off, we stuck around the house, made some cookies in the AM, drank a Chiliguaro (Costa Rican Bloody Mary), worked on the blog (I am over a month behind on writing them, eek!!), listened to music, relaxed… I don’t always need a beach day on my day off! 😊 It was kind of rainy and drizzly all day anyway, so it was a good day to just stay in.

Tuesday 10/4- We have been hearing about baby turtle releases fairly often lately but never knew how to find out about them before they actually happened, usually for things like this we don’t find out about them until after we’ve already missed the event. One of our neighbors posted a video on her Facebook page of a release that she went to yesterday, so Ramie reached out to her to ask how she heard about it. She told us that she has a lifeguard friend and he notifies her but they only find out about a half hour before the release. So Ramie, being the researcher, found the Facebook page of the turtle research center in Ojochal, so now we can see beforehand when the releases will be. The unfortunate part is that these usually happen in the mid-morning and you only have about a 30 minute warning when they happen. I was bummed because unless it fell on a Thursday or Saturday, I probably wouldn’t be able to go because of work and planned meetings.

Today they put a notice out to the public at about 1:00, that there would be one this afternoon at 3. I made a quick decision that I’d finish working a little bit early today and said yes, we are doing it! Ramie got a hold of Geoff & Tracy to see if they wanted to go with too, and of course they were up for it. The release was just a little bit further down the road from our Sand Dollar beach that we’ve been going to. We found out that the turtle research center is also located close to the beach they would be releasing them at. We arrived at the beach about a half hour early, and as we waited for it to begin I was surprised by the amount of people that were there. I guess since there was a lot of notice this time and it was in the afternoon (most we’ve seen were mid mornings) that a lot of people were able to make it to this one.

Even though we were standing and waiting on a beach right outside of the research center, I guess they couldn't release the turtles right at this very place because it was too close to the river that flows into the ocean and not the actual ocean beach. The whole group of people would have to walk across the river, thankfully it was low tide and the water was only about knee deep, and a long hike down the beach to get past the outlet of the river. We finally made it after about a 10 minute walk. The staff drew a semicircle in the sand which we had to stay outside of for the protection of the babies. If the baby turtles happened to crawl to you, or washed up around your feet due to a wave, we were told to stand still and not move, to just let them crawl across your feet. You just didn't want to step on them since they are only slightly bigger than a silver dollar and blend in with the sand pretty well. We also were not allowed to touch them, because the bacteria on our hands could infect them. 

A volunteer holding one of the babies so you could get pictures

They were releasing Olive Ridley turtles and they only hatched less than 30 minutes before. There were about 60 that were being released today. We found out that these particular turtles can lay over 100 eggs in a single nest. Since there were so few in this batch, it likely meant that the momma turtle that laid these may have been quite old or a first time momma. Once all of the guests were safely lined up outside of the circle, the volunteers from the research center poured them out of the bucket and the babies began making their way toward the ocean.

The Race is on!

We had little baby turtles all around us at one point, it was really something awesome to see and be a part of! They would get washed back up ashore by a wave and have to start their journey back, sometimes farther away from the ocean than they started. The volunteers would sometimes help them along by picking them up and placing them nearer the water if they were having a real hard time crawling along. After a majority of the babies had swam away many of the onlookers left. We stayed until the very last one swam away.

Last one in is a rotten egg!

Ramie getting up close and personal for his pictures

Here are those pics

Ramie was very interested in this and asked one of the staff members about volunteer opportunities for people who live locally. The staff actually didn't know much about it since they were short time interns, but one of the local volunteers overheard Ramie’s conversation and told him that yes they need help to walk the beaches and look for turtle nesting sites at night. The majority of the time the walks are after dark or very early morning- the time of night depends on the tides. They look for sea turtles that have crawled up on the beach and are laying their eggs, they measure, tag, and release the mom turtle, gather the eggs, and bring the eggs back to the nursery to develop and hatch. The reason for this is because of poaching. It's illegal to do now but eating turtle eggs was traditional before it was banned. Ramie and the volunteer exchanged contact info and also she also gave him the Supervisors contact info to reach out to and introduce himself. The volunteer also said she will get a hold of him later in the day, with information on the next few times that they are walking the beach. That evening Ramie heard back and had been oked to help volunteer. He was sent a guide on do’s and don’ts and what happens when you find a turtle or a nest.

Thursday 10/6- Guess what?! It's time to go look for turtles and nests! Since I am off work today, we were both able to go. These walk’s generally happen in the middle of the night or the early morning depending on the tides, today’s began at 5am, so at least we could sleep most of the night! I am usually awake early, so it was just another day for me. I was already awake when the alarm went off at 4am.

We got to the beach early (like we always do) and waited around for some of the other volunteers to arrive. When the first other volunteers got there, they told us that the rest of the group was running a little bit late, but we would start the walk on the “short” side of the beach, and when the rest arrived, we’d all go together to do the long side. They explained to us what we were watching for, what to do if you did find signs of a turtle that crawled up on the beach, or if the tracks were gone, what to look for where they may have nested, and what to do if you actually do find a nest. There is also the possibility that you will find the turtle while she is still laying her eggs, but since we were out there today in the daylight, that was unlikely. Typically you only find the turtle when you do these at night, since the turtle feels the safest in the dark. As we were walking, we got to chatting and learned a little bit about each other, we all shared stories about how and why we ended up here in Costa Rica, and shared a little bit about each other's backgrounds. This short end of the beach wasn’t very far so it didn’t take us real long to get to the end, once there, we turned around and went back to the starting point.

By now, the rest of the group had arrived (8 of us total) so we started on our trek down the long side of the beach, which we found out is 4.2km, 2-½ miles one direction. We always wanted to walk this beach and now I guess we get to, and even with a purpose. We kind of split off into groups- not intentionally, but just by the pace that people walked, and chatted about all kinds of things as we went. During the night time walks there isn’t a lot of opportunity to chat because they don’t want to scare any turtles that might be on the beach, but again, since it is light out, the chances of a turtle coming onto the beach now were low. We made it most of the way down the beach before we saw any signs of turtles, and then all of a sudden one of our fellow volunteers saw what looked like a turtle track coming up the sand. The small group of us that were at the front of the herd investigated the area and waited until the biologist who was with us caught up. After investigating what appeared to be the nesting area, they determined that this nest had already been poached. This is one of the biggest problems with the turtle nesting here, the poachers find and steal the eggs before the turtles ever even have a chance to hatch.

Once we determined that there wouldn’t be any eggs here to dig up, the nest was GPS marked and made notes that it was poached, and we continued walking down the beach. We got to an area again where it looked like there might be another nest, but the signs were fading. It may have rained a little bit overnight and some of the signs in the sand had washed away, so we were going to investigate further.

The Biologist showed us how to use a stick to find where the egg-cavity of the nest is by pressing holes in the ground and feeling for the soft hollow spot. The stick will just sink when you find the right spot.

Here the Biologist, Graciela, is showing us how to located the actual nest.

Once she found the location, she dug a little bit in the sand until she could tell that she was in the right place, and then let Ramie take over. She first explained to Ramie that there would be a temperature difference between the egg cavity and the surrounding sand. She had him dig a hole outside the nesting area and then dig to find the eggs in the nest. The sand was considerably warmer, he says. All of the other volunteers had done this before, so they let us do it for the first time. 

Ramie got down on his hands and knees and started gently digging in the sand until he uncovered the eggs. They are about the size of a ping pong ball and he was then instructed to take out some of the sand from the nest and place it in the bucket. 

Uncovering the first of the eggs

The sand from the nest has enzymes from the momma turtle to help prevent bad bacteria. The next step was to start carefully moving the eggs from the nest into the bucket. After he had a few out, the Biologist informed us that this actually wasn’t a completely fresh nest, it looks like these eggs had been laid a few days ago, so it is very lucky that we found them before poachers or predators did! She knew this by the way the eggs looked. Fresh eggs are more clear and these were almost completely white.  She showed us evidence that that the embryo had already attached to the shell which meant that we had to be extra careful handling them.

A few of the other volunteers continued down the beach while we worked on this nest, and wouldn’t you know it, they found another one just a little way farther. What a lucky morning, 2 turtle nests on our first walk!! And they were almost all the way at the end of the beach at the turn-around point.

Ramie continued to take out more and more eggs, and completely filled the bucket he was putting them into and had to start on bucket number 2.  The other volunteers were already done with the other nest and back watching Ramie again before he finished with this nest. 

Ramie making a turtle cake as they call it because its a layer of sand, then eggs, then sand and repeat until the bucket is full.

The nest they found only had 43 eggs. At some point Ramie lost count of how many eggs he had collected, but we’d have a chance to count them later when we relocated them to the nursery. There were only 2 broken eggs in the nest (which you can see sitting next to the bucket in the picture above). No one ever mentioned if they usually find broken ones or how many, but for as many as there were here, I think only 2 broken ones wasn't too bad. We also measured the tracks, GPS marked the nest, filled in the empty nest and marked it with a stick. 

Here another volunteer is measuring the width of the turtle track

Once all of the eggs were safely packed into their buckets, and the buckets then placed into backpacks so they were easier to carry, we all headed back to the parking lot. At this point I remembered to look at my watch and it was about 6:40am. 

Once again the groups split up a little bit as we made the walk back to the cars, still continuing to look for signs, because it is possible a turtle could come up on the beach after we passed the first time. We made it back to the original starting point about an hour later (keeping in mind, we were all walking at a pretty good pace, no leisurely beach stroll this morning!!) Ramie was a proud turtle mom now and carried his eggs all the way back to the car. 

Ramie carrying one of the buckets in his backpack and looking a little exhausted.  Be careful you don't jostle them around!!

Once we regrouped at the cars, they asked if we wanted to be part of the group to go back and relocate the eggs to the nursery. Of course we would! We don’t have anything else planned for today and since we’re here and have eggs, we might as well get to see the whole process! We all loaded up into our vehicles and headed to the reserve where they have a facility set up to hatch the eggs.

At the reserve they showed us to a small area where they “plant” the turtle eggs (I only say plant because you dig a hole, put them in, and cover it up, just like seeds!) The nursery is close to where we went to the baby turtle release and it's a fenced and monitored area. The nursery is basically a giant sand box that is all gridded and is currently completely full of eggs. They had a few open spots and showed Ramie to his plot and told him to start digging again. He dug a hole that was about elbow deep and the same size as the one that he had dug these eggs out of. He had to, one by one, place them all gently back into the hole, put the sand from the original nest on top of them and then finish covering them up. This time we were sure to count them, and there were 98 eggs that Ramie planted back at the nursery. If you include the 2 that were broken in the nest, that was a perfect 100 eggs for this turtle. Way to go momma!

Each round wire cage is above a nest that has been relocated to the nursery. That is a lot of eggs!

Ramie is digging a hole at the nursery to "plant" the eggs back into.

All done and filled in, now just to wait for them to hatch

We found out it takes about 50-60 days for them to hatch and about another 5 days for them to emerge from the sand once they've been freed of their shells. It all depends on the temperature of the sand, and how much it rains, since rain cools the sand, they may take longer to hatch. Here at the nursery they monitor the eggs and know roughly when they will hatch and help them emerge. Once they are all hatched, the babies are then brought back to the beach they were found at, not to the actual nest location but just the same beach. We also found out that one turtle can return to the beach 3-4 times during mating season and lay eggs. That is just amazing! Please check out the reserve if this interests you.

Reserva Playa Tortuga 

Before we end this week's blog, we have some other exciting news. Today we also found out that our residency was approved!! After only a few more steps (that will still take a few months to complete) we will have temporary residency in Costa Rica. What does this mean for us?

-We will be part of the national health care system and will be covered at their public health clinics & hospitals in case we may ever need it.

-We will no longer have to do border runs every 90 days (The best part of having residency)

-We will get to use the nationals line at immigration and bypass the long line for tourists and visitors (the 2nd best part of having residency)

-We will get a Costa Rican ID card and be able to get a Costa Rican Driver License

So to celebrate this we went to Loren and Nancy's to give them the good news over a drink and a game of dice to end our pretty exciting day.

Pura Vida

Sunday 9/18- Whether it is work-work or home-work, the work just never seems to end, and some days that means staring at a computer screen for more hours than I’d really like to think about. I started my Sunday with coffee and working on the blog. I fear that I have been falling behind, so I had to spend some time catching up both writing the posts and getting them online so that they are ready to post when the time comes. Before long it was time for me to sign on to my work-work for the day. Sundays are good days for catching up on things that are too hard to do when you have meetings and get calls interrupting your focus time. I actually feel like they are quite productive work days for me, and that I can get more done in fewer hours when I actually have the opportunity to just focus. Plus, today was a rainy day, so at least I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything fun while I stared at a computer all day!

Monday 9/19 - Wednesday 9/21- As I’ve mentioned plenty of times before, Ramie does what he can to keep himself busy. He isn’t the type of person that can sit still for a long period of time not doing anything (unless he’s playing video games). With all of the work that is being done on our neighbor’s house before they start renting it out as a vacation rental, Ramie has been busy with the contractors there. There is a lot going on between fixes to their septic system, removal of a wall and installing a sliding door, some concrete being poured, and other maintenance going on, so he has to coordinate with the contractors doing the work. He should feel right at home doing this kind of thing, as when he used to be a maintenance supervisor he spent lots of time coordinating with outside contractors! While he doesn’t actually do the work, he spends a decent amount of time making sure things are happening as they should and on time. 

In between coordinating with contractors at Katie & Adam’s house, Ramie coordinated some work on our side of the fence as well, literally. One of the contractors that was working at their house did concrete work, so Ramie also hired him to finish smoothing out the concrete wall on our side. Once the wall was smoothed out and properly finished, Ramie was able to finish painting it. Boy does that whole area look better now that it is finished!
(Unfortunately, we have looked through all of our photos and are unable to find a picture of our blue wall-- sorry!)

Thursday 9/22- It’s been about a month again and it was time to go back to San Isidro to stock up on essentials. While there isn’t much interesting to tell you about during this trip, we do want to tell you about a store that we discovered that Ramie loves for one particular reason.

For any of you who know Ramie well, he LOVES candy!!

And as anyone who has traveled to other countries knows, candy differs depending on where you are, and while you can get imported candy from the US, you will pay quite the premium for it. He’s tried a few different types of candy that we found down here and hadn’t been particularly impressed so he’s been living off of the candy that friends and family have brought down from the US at his request, and chocolate chips. Yes, plain old chocolate chips from the baking aisle are the best chocolate for the best price that he can find, and he is content eating these like M&Ms.

So- back to the store- this place is what I call a big “junk” store that sells mostly the cheap Chinese stuff. It’s kind of like a dollar store where they have all of the weird random stuff, but the things aren’t all just a dollar. They have everything from toiletries and clothing to kitchenware and outdoor items. The section Ramie likes the most, though, is the pinata candy section! This is the only place we have ever found a section where they have the bulk candy bins with all sorts of little pieces of individually wrapped candies. He’s stocked up on this candy a few times now, and has mostly figured out what he likes and what he doesn’t like. The inventory changes slightly every time we go, so he’s constantly getting something different, but there is always a selection of gum, hard candies, fruity gummies, tootsie roll/taffy types, and caramels and suckers. It kind or reminds me of the candy they used to throw at small town parades back in MN. He’ll stock up on several pounds of candy (usually enough to last him close to when we go back again and then he saves his chocolate chips for when the rest of the “good stuff” is gone.

Just some of the Pinata selection

Ramie in his happy place

Saturday 9/24- Although we never felt a strong desire to go to the beach during the summer in MN, even if we were camping somewhere that had a nice beach, down here when the weather is nice and I don’t have to work going to the beach is one of my favorite ways to relax. Maybe it’s because I just feel the need to get up and move after sitting behind a desk all week, maybe it’s being in nature, maybe it’s because it’s so relaxing, or maybe it’s because the beaches that we go to are somewhere other than home where there are rarely any people other than us. No matter what the reason for our change in opinion about going to the beach, it is somewhere that we are finding ourselves more and more often. After we finished our coffee this morning, we headed to our secret beach for a few hours today.

Prior to making the move to Costa Rica, during all of our research about picking a place to live, we read that many people, after the honeymoon phase is over, dislike living close to the beach and end up moving away. We are just the opposite, we find ourselves going to the beach more and more!  I guess it's our way to relax and enjoy where we are. I understand wanting to move away to a cooler, less humid climate further inland, but we are very very happy living just a short distance from all of the fabulous beaches around us.

We didn’t have plans for the rest of the day so we were able to spend a few hours just relaxing. We did do one fun, easy project today, however. Yesterday at the “junk store” I picked up a couple of decorative jars because I had an idea. I needed to do something with all of those cool seashells that we collected at sand dollar beach, so a seashell jar it would be! Ramie & I spent the next hour carefully placing all of our shells into the jar in a way that you could see the cool ones from the outside. Some of the more plain ones and those that had a lot of the same style were in the middle just to take up space. It turned out that we were able to fit all of our shells in the jar with just enough room at the top to place a couple of our sand dollars. It’s like it was just meant to be! I have 1 more jar like this, I guess I’ll have to start collecting more cool shells the next time we’re back at the beach. 

Not all shells are white, in fact I often look for fun colored shells, but it's also fun to see all of the different shapes

Thursday 9/29- Another work week has gone by with nothing interesting to talk about. I guess that’s just the way things go. I’m not complaining, but it just means there isn’t a whole lot to write about here for your entertainment, not that there is usually that much that is really entertaining to write about on a day off either. Lol 

Part of today’s day off work was spent at Geoff & Tracy’s house digging up some of their plants to transplant into our yard again. We are so thankful for the great friends that they have become (and for the large yard with mature plants that they are willing to share 😉). I’m glad that they like to share instead of just digging them up and tossing them into the jungle to decompose. It's amazing just how fast plants grow and spread, you really have to keep chopping them back or the next thing you know the jungle starts moving in and taking over your space. Have you noticed how much we love plants? Our goal is to have a large variety of fruiting & flowering plants all around our yard. A mix of things that we can eat and things that draw in birds and fun wildlife (but don’t attract or provide places to hide for the undesirable wildlife). Some of the edible plants that we have growing on our property so far include pineapple, coconut, cacao, mamones (those spiky red fruits that taste kind of like grapes), lime, cinnamon, banana, and of course all of our garden plants. Unfortunately most of our plants aren't mature enough to produce yet. 

Pina (Pineapple)

Canna Lilly

Plantinillo

Morning Glory

Hibiscus this flower is about 6" in diameter

Hong Kong Orchid

Orchid

Another Hibiscus we have planted

There are so many more-- but I think this is enough for now.

The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of September rainfall total was 32.15 inches

Pura Vida! 

Our Haul from the liquor store. We might be pirates, 1 bottle of wine, 1 bottle of tequilla, and the rest is RUM.  I wonder who drinks rum at our house??

There is a limit on how much alcohol you can bring back from Panama duty-free, so it’s not like we can buy cases and cases of liquor, beer, and wine, but we do bring back as much as we are allowed in order to make the trip worth-while, and it lasts us several months until we have to go down again to restock. Since we are down there, we would be silly to not stop at the store that is like an extra-large 2 story version of Walmart- a conglomeration of everything and anything.

Last week Loren and Nancy mentioned that they would be heading down to the border for their stock-up trip and asked us if we’d like to ride along. Sure! If they were willing to go on my day off work, we would definitely ride along, this way we can make this trip both a social day and a productive day. Since we don’t get to see them as much as we used to when I wasn’t working, it’s nice to spend time catching up on what’s happening. They are early-birds like we are so we all agreed to get on the road by 7am. We had a nice drive together getting to catch up for a few hours. Once we got to the border we made our regular series of stops- the gas station first to fill up with slightly less expensive fuel (Panama is still expensive, but not quite as expensive as Costa Rica), then fill up on our share of cheap liquor, and finally to the general shopping mall type store. Once we got here, we split up to each do our own shopping. Loren & Nancy always do a lot more shopping here than we do because they don’t go to San Isidro monthly like we do, yet it always just so happens that we are both done shopping at the same time (since we aren’t on a mission, we often find ourselves just browsing around) and find each other at the check-out registers. This time was no different. After all of our finds were loaded up in the car, we grabbed some lunch at McDonalds. You may be thinking why there? Mostly just because it happens to be that there is one located in this shopping mall and it's quick and convenient, plus I think Loren & Nancy really enjoy the taste of the US. Once finished eating we then got back on the road North to Uvita and were home by mid-afternoon. It was another productive day- similar to going to San Isidro plus we got to hang out with our friends. I’d call it a good day!

Saturday 9/10- When we’re feeling a little bit antsy and need to move, when we don’t have anything else going on, or for no reason at all- it’s a good day to go to the beach! Since we enjoyed our new Sand Dollar beach so much the last time we were there, we decided to go again. This time we even decided to bring Breeze with us! While she loves days at the beach, running and playing in the sand, she isn’t a big fan of swimming in the waves. That’s ok, if you remember our post about the last time we were at this beach we told you about all of the neat tide pools- maybe Breeze would be brave enough to swim in one of these!

You might also remember that this is the beach where we found all kinds of shells and sand dollars (the reason why we gave this beach the name Sand Dollar beach, of course)! Since we had gathered so many last time, we decided that this time we would be more selective and only take the coolest shells that we found instead of loading up on lots of shells. I mean, really, what are we going to do with all of these anyway?! 

Ramie taking Breeze for a quick cool off in the River

We spent a few hours at the beach again like we typically do, walking, exploring, splashing in the water a little bit- both in the waves and in the natural pools. Breeze even seemed to enjoy exploring the beach pools. Unfortunately for her, a beach day means a bath when we get home, and she definitely doesn’t like those very much!

When we arrived home from our little adventure, Breeze of course was hesitant to even get out of the car. Once we got her out of the car she ran straight to the door and laid down, refusing to move an inch. She knows the drill and she isn't happy about it. So, what do we do? Ramie had to pick her up and carry her to the back yard while I grabbed the doggy shampoo. At least she doesn't put up a fight, but instead just stands there with her tail between her legs looking at us like we are the worst parents ever. Hahaha (Since a doggy bath is a 2 human job, unfortunately there are no photos)

Monday 9/11- Wednesday 9/14- As you have heard many times over the last few months, week days are work days for me, and no one wants to hear me write a blog about that! Ramie keeps himself busy during the days while I am working by doing lots of things around our house and yard. He’s not the type of person to sit still very much, so even if there aren’t actual projects that necessarily need to be done, he’ll find something to tinker with. This week he is playing with paint. There were a few places that needed some touch-up work, so he started with that. He then decided that he was going to tackle the concrete fence wall between our back yard & the neighbors. When this wall was built, their side was finished, but our side was just left as raw concrete. Since it is literally on the property line, we are in charge of painting and taking care of our side of the fence wall, and with the wet weather this time of year, the wall was getting pretty ugly with mold and mildew build up. Ramie decided that he was going to take care of this, so last week he power washed the wall to get all of the crud off of it, and this week he decided that he would paint the wall. 

Before power washing

After power washing

Since it was raw concrete, we expected that it would probably suck up a lot of paint, so instead of buying a few gallons, he decided to start with some of the leftover primer from when the house was built. When Geiner bought the primer for the house he had it tinted to a similar color that the walls would be, so this primer that we had several gallons of was a light blue color. Since we figured we might be painting the wall the same color gray as the exterior of the house, this blue as an under-color would be fine and the gray would go right over it with no issues. By the time I was done working for the day, Ramie was done painting the wall. When I saw it, I was actually a little bit shocked by the color, but kind of liked it! Should we leave it blue? Ramie did send a picture of the wall to Taylor and she was excited because she wants to paint a mural on it when she visits next time. It’ll stay like this for a little while, we’ll see how it grows on us (or how the mold continues to grow on it)!

Another project that Ramie has been itching to work on is an add-on to the gutters on the back of the house. As we mentioned in a previous post, we’ve had a few issues when leaves fall on the roof and clog up the gutter down-spout, the gutters end up overflowing onto our patio and all of that water runs toward our patio door. This is not ideal in the best of times but could be much much worse if it were to happen while we were gone for a few days or longer. We haven’t found anything like gutter leaf guards here, so Ramie’s idea for the next best option was to put a downspout on the opposite end of the gutter as well. While it is slightly pitched to run to the side that it currently runs off, having a downspout on the opposite end would give the water somewhere to go other than up and over the side (and then onto our patio) in case the main downspout is clogged and the gutter gets full.

This was another project that he decided to work on this week. Again, while I was working, he went to the various hardware stores in town to gather up all of the parts and pieces that he would need to add a downspout and direct the roof runoff into the concrete cuneta (drainage ditch) that runs down the side of our property. Of course, as with many projects that we do, we can’t get all of the parts from one place, so the search was on for everything he would need. Once he gathered up all of the parts, he did as much work as he could, dug in the under-ground part of the downspout, connected it to the cuneta in the yard, and assembled the part that would go from the ground up to the roof-line. He would need my help for the last of it, so he didn’t want to cut the hole in the gutter yet. We are still in the rainy season, so a rain shower could spring up on us at any time- we didn’t want to have a hole in the gutter without the downspout, so he held off until I was available to help with the last bits. Once I was finished working, it didn’t take us long to finish up this project. And now we have another thing checked off of our “to-do” list. 

Step 1: Paint the downspout

Step 2: Dig the trench

Step 3: Admire your completed work

What did we end up doing today with it being my day off? We invited Geoff & Tracy, who just got back to Costa Rica after being in Canada for a month, for a day of much needed relaxation time and to come with us to Sand Dollar beach. They saw the pictures that we posted on Facebook with all of the shells and sand dollars that we found and they wanted to gather some up for themselves. We coordinated a time that would work with the tides, and set out mid-morning to go explore together. We started by showing them the caves on the near side of the beach.

We also discovered that there was a lot of debris in the water today- more so than normal. It was almost like mulch everywhere you walked, from the top of the beach and all the way down into the water. We can only assume the recent rains and the large river that ran into the ocean close by, brought a lot of this debris. It didn’t make for good swimming, or even good walking in the waves. After we got farther down the beach this mulchy stuff cleared up and we were able to start hunting for shells and sand dollars. We walked until we made it to the river, then turned around and walked back. When we made it back to the car we took out our umbrella, chairs, and snacks and decided to hang out for a while. Ramie and Geoff even went swimming in the mulchy water for about a half hour.

Before too long it started to cloud over and the wind picked up. It didn’t take too much longer after that, that it started raining. We tried to hold out to see if it would stop, but it just didn’t appear that it would. We packed up our stuff and started to head back. We decided that we weren’t quite done hanging out yet, so ended up stopping for lunch at a little place on the way back home that Tracy swears has the best burgers around. We all ordered burgers, and I do admit that they were pretty tasty! After a long Costa Rican lunch break, we eventually headed back home to try to be a little bit productive this afternoon.

Saturday 9/17- It’s Saturday, that means another day off! 😊 What else does that mean? Well, not only does it mean that I get a whole day to relax, but it also means I have to try to be productive. It has been a while since I’ve had a chance to play Suzie homemaker, so I figured today would be a good day to do some of those types of things again. I started out the day chopping up veggies to make homemade salsa. Back in MN when our tomato plants went crazy with ripe tomatoes, salsa was the first thing on the list to use them. While we haven’t had any luck with our tomato plants here (the plants grew a little bit from when we bought them, but never got any blossoms, and when we went to transplant them, discovered that they barely even had any roots) the grocery stores and farmers markets always have fresh tomatoes. I picked up a few recently, just enough to make a batch of salsa that would last a few days instead of making huge batches to freeze like I used to. As for the rest of the ingredients, I always have them on hand, so no troubles there. I spent an hour or so chopping everything so that I could put it all together this morning and it might be ready to sample by this evening. (For those of you who are curious, I make a pico de gallo fresh salsa, none of the cooked or canned salsa for me!). 

Once the veggies were taken care of, I decided to pull out the sewing machine again. It has been a long time since I worked on sewing projects, Ramie wanted some more tool pouches and we had a few things that needed repairs. I spent the next few hours working on some sewing projects and enjoying the time away from a computer screen and the chance to work on something different from what I usually spend my time doing.

Of course, if the weather is at least halfway cooperative, I always try to spend a little bit of time relaxing in the pool on my days off as well.

One last thing……..Happy Birthday to my sister Nicole! 

💜 May 15, 2012 - Jan 19, 2023💜

I may be a crazy dog mom and take way too many photos, but it's moments like these that I'm glad I did. 

🌴Pura Vida Breezy Girl 🐕

Mon 8/22 - Friday 8/26- Here in Costa Rica we don’t start to feel the chill in the air in the evenings, we don’t get hoodie weather, we don't get bonfire weather, and we certainly aren’t thinking about how long we have until it will get too cold for the plants in our garden to keep producing. We do, however, start to get lots of leaves falling from the trees on and bordering our property and it kind of makes me think of fall back in MN.

Well, if it isn’t the changing of the season to a colder one that we worry about, what could we possibly be worried about when it comes to these falling leaves? Well, in addition to having to clean them off of our yard and out of the pool, we are also experiencing clogging of the rain gutters on our roof. As you’ve seen in prior posts, often the rain comes down very hard this time of year so clogged gutters can be quite problematic. Problematic to the point that our 8” gutters overflow – a lot- and all of that rain from the roof floods onto our deck and drains straight toward the sliding glass patio door to our bedroom. We were fortunate that it didn’t rain hard like this while we were up in San Jose & doing our border run last week. It would have been terrible to come back to the mess of something like that sitting for 5 days! We will be implementing a fix for this problem at some point in the near future, but for now I guess Ramie just has to make sure to clear out the gutters every couple of days so we don’t run into this problem quite so often.

Not only does Ramie’s chore list contain cleaning out the gutters, but he will also spend a decent amount of time raking both the upper & lower yard, mowing the yard (well we don’t have a mower we actually use a weed whacker), and taking care of all of the rest of the plants that are growing like crazy during this rainy season. Our garden is growing pretty well so he spends time taking care of our veggies and herbs, he does a fair amount of housekeeping around our house, and he is still coordinating contractors for the projects happening next door at Adam & Katie’s house too. For the most part he keeps himself occupied for a lot of the same time that I am working.

Friday 8/26- It seems like it has been ages since we visited with Loren & Nancy, so today after I was finished working we got together with them for a few hours at their house up the mountain. It is always nice to catch up with friends you haven’t seen in a while, so we enjoyed the time chatting and playing a new dice game that they taught us.

We may need a bigger grill........someday!

Saturday 8/27- Often on Friday afternoons or evenings, one of us will ask the other “what do you want to do tomorrow?” since it is usually a completely free day that we can do whatever we want and not be worried about working. Sometimes instead of what do you want to do, the question will be “do you want to go to the beach tomorrow?” I will tell you, it’s pretty rare for either one of us to say no to that!

Just some of the stuff we find at the beach

I’m not exactly sure which question was asked yesterday, but the answer ended up being that we were going to the beach today! Our favorite secret beach is about a ½ hour drive from our house and we always like to get going fairly early before it gets too hot out. Since we very rarely sleep in, it’s not hard for us to get up, enjoy our coffee, and then leave for the beach by 7:30. We usually get there no later than 8 and then spend the next about 3 hours exploring and relaxing. While our routine is always mostly similar, what we see and what we find are always new, different and exciting!  While the weather wasn’t hot and sunny today like you think of on a typical “beach day”, we actually kind of prefer it when it’s a little bit cloudy because it isn’t as hot and it doesn’t feel like the sun is trying to kill you. You can also get some pretty neat looking scenery photos, reflections in the water, and dark and stormy skies off in the distance.

Crab Fireworks in the sand

The ImPASSable Bridge

Reflections for miles. Where does the water end & sky begin?

Monday 8/29- This morning after Ramie finished with his work at the animal sanctuary he came home and was working on his computer taking care of things. Lately we have been talking about when our next visit back to MN to see friends and family would be, so he has gotten in the habit of checking flights and prices between San Jose & Minnesota. With all of the recent change in fuel prices, the issues that airlines are having, and the crazy effects of everything going on in the world is having on travel, ticket prices have been much higher than we have seen in the past few years. While we know we want to visit, we have to be mindful of how much it will cost to get there. This morning when Ramie checked the ticket prices he noticed that they had dropped. Well, do we pull the trigger, pick our dates, and book our flights?

We did it.

We will be back in MN in late May 2023!

WHAT?! That’s nearly 9 months away!!

Yes- it is quite a way off, BUT in all of our travel experience, we have found that booking airline tickets a long way off is usually the way to get the best prices. For planners (like us) it is the benefit of booking far in advance. So- the moral of the story is, if you want to come visit us and get better prices, don’t try to do it last minute!

So- lets start planning YOUR trip to Costa Rica! Get a hold of Ramie, he’s the travel agent for our family 😊

The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of August rainfall total was 35.8 inches

Thursday 9/1- If you haven’t been able to tell by the posts covering the last few weeks, we’ve been in a cycle of trying to go to the beach at least a couple of times per month on one of my days off work. After being glued to a computer a few days in a row, when it’s time for a day off I want to get out into nature, move around, walk, feel the sun, sand, and salt on my skin, and relax. If we knew of any good areas to go hiking, we would probably do that too, but there isn’t anywhere that we are aware of nearby that is good for a nature hike (any of our local friends who read this and are aware of a hiking spot, please let us know!!)

Today was going to be a beach day again, but we decided that instead of going to our regular secret beach, we’d try going to a different deserted beach that we knew of and call “low tide beach”. The reason for this odd name is that this beach is only accessible when the tide is on the low end of the spectrum. There is a water crossing that you have to drive across that raises and lowers with the tides, so when the tide is high you can’t make it through.

Right now, the tide is dropping in the early morning, and we figure that it should be low enough to cross by our usual 8am beach time. (As a side note, the beaches that we go to do have official names, but in an effort to keep them as deserted as we like them, we don’t want to advertise to the world where these amazing beaches are. We will share their locations with friends if they ask, and bring visitors to these beaches, but we just aren’t going to post the info out there for the whole world to see 😉 )

I have been at this beach once before when Taylor and Dylan were visiting and at the time thought it was kind of weird and had an eerie feeling to it. Ramie has been to it a few more times with Taylor & Dylan as well as when Taryn, Steven & Will visited, and he thought it was a good beach. We have never gone for a long walk on this one like we do at our secret beach, so today we were going to go check this one out again and see if I feel differently about it now than I did on my first impression.

I think the reason I thought this beach felt strange is because it is very flat and doesn’t have trees along the edge like so many other beaches we have been to. The water is very shallow for a very long way, then it leads into a wide area of sand, then tall grasses for as far as you can see. There is no shade and no comfy place to sit around & hang out, have a picnic or just sit to listen to the waves. None of this is bad- just different from what I enjoy at the other beaches I’ve been to.

The turn off of the highway is nearly hidden and the drive from the highway to the beach is a little bit adventurous (although not as much as the adventure to the secret beach).

I had forgotten that there were 2 shacks set up back here.  Squatters are a thing down here, and you'll find shelters set up like this in some of the most random places. The last time I was here there were people living in one of these shacks, essentially a very crude shelter made out of fallen trees and tarps, this time the area was deserted. The other shack was closer to the beach, in a better state, but again, completely empty of people or things.

Great elevated view of the beach from the deck of this house.

When we made it through the adventurous drive and to the beach, I didn’t get that eerie feeling like I did the last time I was here. That was a very good start! We parked the car and headed to the caves at the end of the beach first. 

This was the area that Ramie and our guests have explored while here. There are natural caves in the mountainside of varying sizes. Some almost big enough to drive a car into, others with entrances that you’d have to crawl on your knees, and a few others that are somewhere in between. We didn’t go exploring inside of the caves today, but instead just looked around outside of them. There are also very neat rock windows to the ocean that you can see the waves crashing through. I could sit and watch this for a long time- but I wasn’t in the mood to sit right now. We decided to start our long walk in the opposite direction and see what we could find farther down on the other end of the beach.

I love that there are no other people around, just like the secret beach. This beach was slightly closer to our house, in the opposite direction, but I did notice that without the nearby shady areas, and much less of an ocean breeze, this beach does feel hotter. We didn’t let this stop us from planning our long walk, though! After only walking for a short while, we discovered that there were TONS of shells and sand dollars here. We didn’t bring any bags or anything with us to carry our finds (because we didn’t expect so much) and soon found our hands getting very full. We would have to be selective of what we kept and what we didn’t, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to carry it all! Once we got farther down the beach we found very neat tide-pools all over. These are big puddles left in the sand and filled with ocean water. Some are only ankle deep, but some that were so deep that you couldn’t see the bottom. There were some that I walked into up to my knees and knew I wasn’t even close to the bottom, but didn’t dare go any deeper because what if a big ocean fish was stuck in there and came up to bite me!?

I took the risk and decided to enjoy the warmth of the small tidal pools

I do have to say, I really liked these little pools and puddles because they were very warm, they were completely calm, and I could wade or sit in them just like my own little saltwater pool. After playing in the tide pools, we kept walking farther down the beach and eventually came to a river going out into the ocean. We explored the river bank for a while, but it appeared that this was a pretty deep and fast-moving river, or at least it was right now (maybe there was a lot of rain in the mountains above here recently that is draining fast now, and it’s not always like this. Who knows!?) Just like at the secret beach, this river was our queue to turn around and walk back to where we started from.

Better turn around I spot a pair of Crocs sunning themselves on this river bank!

We continued collecting as many shells and sand dollars as we could carry, and when we got back to the car unloaded them so we could look around for some new driftwood art to add to our house as well. We didn’t find anything today that really called out to us, but there is always next time to find some new treasures! Today we were happy with our score of shells and I realized that I actually really do like this beach. I think we’ll definitely be coming back here again in the future!

We also decided that “low-tide beach” is too boring a name for such a cool beach, so now we are naming this “sand dollar beach” 

So happy!

Our haul of shells

Saturday 9/3- Through the multiple groups that we are a part of on Facebook we often find out about things that are going on around the area. Sometimes we even find out about them with enough time to attend the events! 😉 (I say this half jokingly because there have been many times that we find out about something we would have liked to see or do after the event is already over). This week we saw a few posts on our local group talking about the annual Whale & Dolphin festival that happens every September in Uvita/Bahia Ballena. While the original and main intent is for local environmental groups to have talks about saving the beaches and wildlife, volunteer opportunities, and boat tours to see the dolphins and momma whales that just had their calves, many of the local businesses get in on the event by having something special at their establishment. We weren’t too interested in any of the actual festival events, but some of the food and beverage events sounded like something that we would enjoy (and even something similar to the types of events that we would have gone to back in MN!) One of them happened to be a wine tasting event! Other than a few bottles brought down to us by our Californian neighbors, we haven’t had any really good wine since we have been down here, and we haven’t been to a wine tasting since we left MN. Those of you who know us well know how much Ramie and I both enjoy a good glass of wine and the atmosphere that goes along with a tasting session at a winery or vineyard.

The event was scheduled to start at 11, and even though I didn’t want to go until closer to noon, Ramie insisted that we go right away when it opened.

The table was a little bit wavy-- Select your location for your wine glass carefully, so you don't end up with it in your lap.

Tasty morsels to sample

A little while later, the wife came back out to talk to us some more. She apologized for being disorganized this morning, but they had a few things go wrong and got set back a little bit more than they were expecting. She then hung out with us for quite a while where we heard about their story of moving from Italy to Costa Rica, learned about their business here, and got to know each other a little bit. It turns out that they have 5 rooms/cabinas here on the property, a deli where they sell homemade Italian meats, cheeses, and a variety of other Italian items that they make here on site, and an “on-demand” restaurant. For many of the dishes that they serve at the restaurant you have to make your reservation and your order a day in advance so they can get the freshest ingredients, marinade them, and in some cases slow-cook them before your dinner the following day.

Ramie and I continued to enjoy a couple more rounds of delicious wine and canapes and the owner would come out on and off and chat with us some more. We stayed until a little bit after 3pm, and there were no other customers the entire time that we were there. I felt bad that their event was a bust so far, but they expected that now in the afternoon/evening it might pick up a little bit.

On our way home we decided that since we were already dressed up and out-and-about we would stop at a favorite place of ours- the Beer Garden. We saw that they had some live music and events going on this afternoon as well, so why not check it out?

When we got there, there was only 1 other couple in the place- I guess it’s our day to have these events to ourselves? We ordered some drinks and appetizers, and eventually the DJ started and some more people showed up. We hung around here for a while, and Ramie was really enjoying his craft beer. At this point he may or may not have had one too many, and when it was time to go, he was definitely in no shape to drive. Since I just don’t drink that much, I did not have the same problem, so for the first time in over 15 months and for the first time ever in Costa Rica, I got in the driver’s seat of our vehicle. I am very fortunate that there are no narrow bridges or steep hills between the Beer Garden and our house, but the parking lot was crowded, narrow, and a little bit tricky, this was my first time ever driving this vehicle, it was dark out and it had just started raining (I hate driving in dark in general, and the sprinkles on the windshield just make it that much harder to see with all of the headlight glare). There is a side-road of probably a little over a mile that leads from the Beer Garden to the main highway in town, and this road is narrow, always has a ton of traffic, and there are pedestrians everywhere, so while it isn’t the most terrible drive in Costa Rica, it also wasn’t the easiest.

Need we say more?

Pura Vida!!!

Saturday 8/20- Today is our border run day and the reason we would typically have to drive up to San Jose (to go to the airport). Even though we are in process to get residency and we “technically” don't have to leave the country to be here legally, we do still have to leave every 90 days because we choose to drive. It really doesn’t make any sense but it's the country's policy. Basically, our driver’s license is only valid for the amount of days they give us on our Visa Stamp in our Passport (even though it's still good in the US), which is a maximum of 90 days (and hopefully they give you the full 90). The reason I say hopefully is because at the end of the day, it's up to the Immigration official on how many days they give you. Another thing to know is that when you travel to Costa Rica, you must show proof of leaving the country within the next 90 days (for normal tourists, this would be your return flight home) and the Immigration official will typically give you the number of days until your flight is scheduled to leave. We always show a flight for 90 days out and keep our fingers crossed that they give us the full 90, otherwise we would have to do a border run sooner. If you get a grumpy immigration official, they can technically give you whatever they want and there’s nothing you can do about it. (We’ve heard stories on our Facebook groups about people not getting the full 90). So anyway, back to the driving- -if we get caught driving with an expired Visa they could give us a ticket or even pull our plates from our vehicle, and then we would have a whole other issue to deal with to get them back. It's not worth the headaches and we are also guests in their country so we want to do things the right way.

Although, today was slightly different from a regular border run day since we were already here in the city and didn’t have to get up this morning and get on the road. (If you didn't read last week's blog, it tells you why we had to drive up to San Jose early, so stop reading this and go back and check it out). It’s too bad, though, that we didn’t know we’d already be in the city when we booked this border run flight. Since we thought we would be driving up today, our flight isn’t until after 3 this afternoon. We had checked out all of the places that we wanted to check out yesterday, so we once again were boring and just hung out at the hotel this morning. I spent some time working on my computer, catching up on some things that had been neglected the last few weeks due to just being too busy to take care of them, and of course, putting in some time on the blog. I also used this opportunity to just read a book for a while, since I haven’t been able to do that much lately either. It was a little bit more forced relaxation time since there wasn’t a whole lot else that we wanted to do (and Ramie didn’t particularly feel like driving any more than we had to due to yesterday’s stressful driving). 

We had to check out of the hotel at noon and the plan was to go straight to the airport without making any extra stops, but this drive to the airport would be an adventurous one again. We had two routes we could drive from our hotel to the airport. The first was on the main highway which had tolls and we had to drive quite a bit out of the way to get to the entrance to the toll road.

Or the second, which was more direct but through the small narrow streets and neighborhoods that twisted and turned through the city, where you just don’t know what you’re going to encounter.

Ramie and I both had some anxiety about the drive today since it was another new area and could be slightly chaotic, but we decided to take the more direct route through the neighborhoods. I don’t really know if this turned out good or bad, but it definitely brought us through some narrow roads, and tight spaces. We got stuck in some stopped traffic for a while and didn’t have a clue what was going on up ahead, but we had plenty of time before we had to be at the airport so we weren’t stressed about that. On a more positive note, driving this route was really pretty cool. Getting to see the local neighborhoods and how the typical Costa Rican lives is rather fascinating compared to what is “normal” to us. We eventually made it to the airport at about 12:30 and our flight wasn’t leaving until 3:45, so I took this opportunity to work on writing some more blog posts! I mean, why not?! What else can I do on a computer without any internet access? Yes, it is somewhat of a pain in the butt to fly with a computer since you have to take it out to go through security, but sitting around at the gate is usually some really good focus time for me since there is nothing to do in the San Jose airport (pretty small, only about 20 gates and not even very far to go for a walk if you want to move around) for nearly 3 hours! 

The flight to Guatemala City was short, and we didn’t have any delays or hiccups. I guess our traveling luck might be improving (did I just jinx us by saying that?!) As we were landing, the pilot was telling us the local time and weather like they usually do, and he mentioned that it was 72* here. Compared to what we’re used to, that was cool for late-afternoon, but we are about 800 miles (driving) North of San Jose, so I guess it was to be expected. 

My Spanish is not that good but I'm pretty sure this says "I love gloves" I think they really mean for it to say I love Guatemala (Guate for short) Hahaha

We had previously lined up a shuttle through the hotel that was supposed to pick us up from the airport, but after waiting around for nearly a half hour (and not having any way to get a hold of the hotel) we decided to just grab a taxi instead. There were plenty of them here waiting, and there were a couple of guys that appeared to be in charge of sending customers to the next taxi driver, so Ramie went and talked to the guy, agreed on the price (and it was actually less expensive than the hotel shuttle that we had previously arranged but didn’t pay for yet) and then we were on our way to the hotel for the evening.

The hotel was close to the airport, so it was only a short drive through Guatemala City. It was a night and day difference, compared to San Jose. The infrastructure was in place and made sense, the roads were well marked, seemed to make sense, and even had signage. Oh, and there were no potholes! The buildings were modern looking, and there were a lot of familiar businesses like KFC, Hardees, & Taco Bell, (maybe we were just hungry and only noticed these businesses) but many others as well I'm sure. Oh and please don't let my description of San Jose city scare you away from ever visiting. It's very safe and friendly, they are just behind the times and do things differently. 

We were dropped off at the hotel and the driver pointed towards a parking garage. As we walked that way, we noticed a small desk set up but no one was there. This was literally a parking garage. Where or how do we get into the hotel? Ohh look, there are some elevators, I guess we will take that and see where it goes, let’s just press the L button that we hoped was for the lobby! We exited the elevator to a very large lobby and restaurant area. As we made our way to the check in we noticed that there were a lot of very well dressed people in the area, (tuxes and evening gowns) and we definitely felt under-dressed in our tourist travel attire! We soon discovered that it was a Quinceañera party. We’re getting good at crashing these on our border runs, I guess, since there was one at the hotel we were staying at our first time in El Salvador too. For those new readers that may not have followed us from the beginning and are not sure what a Quinceañera party is I’ll quickly explain. It's a traditional Latino party for a girl that is turning 15 years old and is generally quite a fancy affair. It turns out that the party was spilling out of the banquet room and into the lobby and the restaurant. I guess they would have to put up with us being under dressed because we were ready for dinner! 

The Birthday Girl

We headed up to the room to drop our stuff and check out the view from the 10th floor. From here we got some beautiful views of Guatemala City and the surrounding mountains. What we did notice was that the city was more of a typical city we are used to with high-rise hotels and other tall buildings (I would say not more than 20 floors though), but also old original buildings that they built these modern buildings around. It was nice to see they didn't knock down the old traditional buildings just to make way for the modern. 

That's enough sightseeing from the moment, we’re hungry & it was time to go eat. We went back down to the restaurant, tucked ourselves into a corner booth, and spent the rest of the evening watching the teenagers and family members celebrate. Of course Ramie had to try the local beer.

As we watched the teenagers interact, we had to laugh because it reminded us of junior high school dances. All the boys gather in one area and looking at the girls and vice versa, neither of them wanting to ask each other to dance. Oh, to be young again! We enjoyed watching the party for the next couple hours, but we had an early flight back to Costa Rica in the morning so back to the room we went.  Unfortunately we wouldn't be staying in Guatemala to see anything but the hotel.

Sunday 8/21- Even though we just got here yesterday afternoon, we had an early flight back to Costa Rica this morning. We were up by 4 to be on our 7am flight, and as we were leaving the hotel to grab our ride to the airport we noticed that it was even chillier this morning than it was yesterday afternoon. It actually felt on the cold side to us- - it truly is amazing how much we have gotten used to the heat on the Southern coast of Costa Rica. I’m beginning to think that I wouldn’t survive a MN winter anymore!! 

The rest of the day was easy- no problems with the flight, an easy drive home from San Jose, headed over to the pet sitter’s to pick up our very excited doggy that missed us so much.

Breeze waiting with her friends for Dad to pick her up.

We walked in our front door around 2pm. We’re very glad to be back home for the next 3 months until we get to do this all again!

Pura Vida.

Wednesday 8/17- If you’ve been reading along for a while, you know that we rarely drive up to the San Jose area (the city/the capital) unless we absolutely have to. Usually these “absolutely have to” occasions are when we need to go to the airport, but today we had to head up to the city for a different reason. Also, as many of you know, I am a US Army Veteran and have some lingering medical issues from a deployment in 2007. These are issues that have been getting thrown around by lots of different parts of the system for many years, and all of a sudden a couple of weeks ago I got a call saying I HAD to have 2 particular appointments within the next 3 weeks. If I didn’t make and attend these appointments, they would reject my claim. One of these 2 appointments was with a specific Doctor in the city, but they gave me the option of finding a doctor locally for the other appointment, which was for a very specific test that needs specialty medical equipment to complete. Well, not only did I not have a clue where I could find a doctor nearby who could perform these tests for me, getting an appointment within the next 3 weeks would be impossible (some people wait months and months for necessary surgeries- medical things down here just don’t happen fast!) After a lot of coordinating with several different representatives from the VA (one of whom was not pleasant at all and really should be fired from her job for giving bad information and not being very friendly about it) I was able to get both appointments scheduled fairly close together in San Jose both on the same day. One was right away in the morning and the other was in the afternoon, so we’d have to drive up there a day early and stay a day later, but at least they weren’t several days apart. Plus, I was able to coordinate these appointments right before we would have had to go up to the airport for our next border run, anyway, so we ended up with just a few extra days away from home, and not having to make the 7+ hour round trip drive twice. While this whole situation was a pain in the butt, it really could have been worse.

So, here we are on Wednesday. I worked in the morning and we drove up to the city in the afternoon. This may have been the first time that we drove up to San Jose in the afternoon, and it was an easy drive, as it always is (it seems like driving into the city there is always less traffic than coming back home from the city). We made it to the hotel before dark, which was good since we didn’t really know where we were going.

Once at the hotel we relaxed for the rest of the evening. One thing that we noticed during our drive today was that you can really notice the change in the weather. It was still pretty warm and you can feel the sun’s power on your skin, but the air is definitely drier and it feels less tropical and muggy. We always knew that Uvita and the coast are more humid than the Central Valley, but we could really notice the change during today’s drive.

 We anticipated rush hour traffic would be pretty bad, so we planned plenty of extra time. Wouldn’t you know it, traffic was bad, but we got to the appointment plenty early anyway. We waited around in the office waiting area for over 20 minutes and we didn’t see any other patients come through. I eventually had my appointment and Ramie continued to wait (3 people came in while I was in my apt. he said). 

Ramie had the waiting room to himself most the time and at least it had A/C

My appointment lasted about an hour and the doctor spoke excellent English. It turns out that he has been working with US Veterans who live in Costa Rica for about 20 years now. That was quite a surprise to me since up until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t have a clue that the VA had any connections outside of the US. Too bad he wasn’t a regular doctor that I could go see if I needed to, he only worked with particular types of claim appointments. When I was done, we got an Uber back to the hotel. Well, that wasn’t so bad. We had a couple of hours to just hang out at the hotel until it was time to go to the next appointment, so that’s exactly what we did.

The afternoon appointment was less than a mile away, so we decided to walk there (that was one of the reasons we decided to book this hotel).

Coming On My Way GIFfrom Coming GIFs

Again, we left early enough that if we got lost, I would still be able to make it to the appointment on time. Fortunately, it was an easy walk and we made it there, once again, with time to spare. This was a fairly large hospital (large for down here, I’d say it would be on the small side for a US hospital) and it took a little while to figure out where exactly I had to go for this appointment. Eventually we made it there, waited in a waiting room full of people this time, and eventually I got called for my turn. The nurse that I was working with during this appointment spoke hardly any English, so that made it somewhat of a challenge. Fortunately this was a breathing test that I had performed many times back in MN so I knew for the most part what to do and could just follow along with her prompting on when to breathe in and when to breathe out. This process didn’t take long at all, and I think I surprised Ramie when I was back in the waiting room and ready to go less than 15 minutes after I was called in.

I haven’t it mentioned yet, but I have to- Ramie was an integral part of getting all of the logistics for this trip set up. Between several very busy weeks of work and all of the round and round coordination with the VA reps in actually getting the appointments set up, I just didn’t have time to coordinate the rest of this. I sent the appointment information to Ramie and he researched where these appointments were actually taking place, figured out the best hotel to stay at, scheduled the Uber, and all of the other logistics involved in the trip. All I had to do was show up and follow him. I am so grateful to have this kind of support from him while I am trying to keep all of my juggling balls in the air. 

Oh, one other funny thing from today. Ramie got a text message from Paola, the dog sitter, saying that Breeze was really moping around and not eating her food. She was wondering if there is anything she could do to make Breeze feel better. We told her that unfortunately this is just how Breeze is- a daddy’s girl- and she would eventually eat when she got hungry enough. We got another message back later saying that she was able to coax Breeze into eating her food using some goat’s milk cheese that she was making at the time. Of course, Breeze loves her people food!

This is a normal thing for Breeze to lay by the door every time Ramie leaves, she just waits at the door for him to come back

Friday 8/19- Today we had a free day to explore the city. In all of our trips to Costa Rica and now living here for over a year, we have never taken a day to just explore the city. There are so many places to see and things to do if you know where to go and are comfortable driving there (or get an Uber- that helps with being nervous about driving). Well, I’m sorry to report that we didn’t go do or see any of those cool things. What did we do instead? We went shopping. Yeah yeah, I know- how lame, right? While there may have been much more interesting things to do, we have been talking for months about checking out more of the home and furniture stores in the city, checking out Price Smart (which is like their version of Costco), and doing some price comparison on some items that are on our wish list that either we haven’t been able to find or have been too expensive where we have found them. We spent a good majority of the day driving around the city checking out some stores on our list, and what I will tell you is this: Driving in San Jose is stressful! Of course, Ramie does all of the driving, but I’m the navigator with Google Maps up on the phone, trying to compare the map on the screen to the roads we are driving on, looking for and comparing landmarks because roads aren’t marked, and trying to figure out which roads are one-way, and which are just so narrow that they look like they should be one-way, but aren’t. The other thing that makes driving difficult is that the roads are like spaghetti, all twisting and turning, circling back to where you were and then ending up somewhere else. With all of this going on, there is also the main toll-road highway running through the middle of it making it impossible to get from one side of the highway to the other without a detour. Are we having fun yet?! After going up and down this toll highway a few times, we got sick of paying to just get off at the next exit, so we switched the settings on google to “avoid tolls” and bring us through the neighborhoods. This wasn’t really any less stressful and may have taken a little bit longer overall, but we got to drive through and see some of the non-tourist neighborhoods that are in the area. It was definitely different from driving through the commercial areas and very different from driving through the neighborhoods in and around Uvita. All part of the adventure, you know!

So, at the end of the day, was our shopping day worth it? I’d say so! We picked up a few items that we wanted or needed, we satisfied our curiosity about some of the stores that we always wanted to check out, and we felt that it was a productive use of a “free” day in San Jose.

Of all the driving around the city we did today we only had 3 incidents.

#1 I messed up and sent Ramie the wrong way down a one-way once, which he noticed almost immediately and got turned around before any other traffic was in sight.

#2 We didn't realize that to exit the parking at the mall you had to pay inside the mall at a kiosk. We assumed you pay at the gate when you leave. There we are, holding up a line of cars at the exit and no way to get out or back up. Ramie pushed the help button and of course they only spoke Spanish so Ramie tried to tell them we messed up and we didn't know. The next thing we know the gate opened and we just decided to say F-it and drove away. Criminals, no. Dumb gringos, maybe!! LOL

#3 While we trying to make a left turn in a confusing series of parking lots and the little roads that connect them in between, some guy who was driving way to fast swerved around a car in the street that was also trying to make a turn, and ended up coming straight at us. While both Ramie & the guy in the other car slammed on their brakes and stopped with enough room between us, the guy (who apparently was in quite a hurry) made not so friendly use of his horn, and followed it up with some also probably not so friendly language and a shaking fist. In turn, Ramie also made use of the horn, but just smiled nicely and waved at the guy. Seriously dude, just slow down, we’re not driving in a Nascar race!

Watch Where Youre Going You Jerk Jen Harding GIFfrom Watch Where Youre Going You Jerk GIFs

Thankfully, no accidents and we made it back to the hotel to decompress and enjoyed a drink (at the fun color changing bar top) from all the stressful driving. 

Also, neither one of us have ever cared for driving in the big city even back home, so this really does raise our stress levels anyway (it's not just here!). We gravitate toward small towns for a reason!  Unfortunately- no pictures of the drive either, there was just way too much going on to try to take pictures at the same time!

That’s enough adventure for one day, tomorrow we fly to Guatemala, stay tuned!

Pura Vida 

Saturday 8/13- Today being one of my scheduled days off work I decided that I wanted to get out and do something. (I now take Thursdays & Saturdays as my regular weekend days, unless I can’t work on Sunday, then I work Thursday instead. I love that they are flexible like this for me!) Well, I guess it wasn’t so much that I wanted to DO something, I just wanted to get out of the house and go for a walk. Since we don’t have a nice area to walk here at our house like we did up at the rental house, I feel like I don’t have a chance to move around enough (and get bored of just walking circles around the pool) and I didn’t really feel like going to the beach to go for a long walk, so we decided to go walk around Bahia. What is Bahia? Technically we live in Bahia Ballena. Wait, you thought we lived in Uvita, right? Well, Uvita is the more well-known name of the area, but is actually just a very small “town” on the mountain side of the Costanera (highway). Bahia is the part of the town that is on the coastal side of the Costanera. There are many small “towns” in this same area but really we are all part of the same general area which we (and many people) just call Uvita. Bahia stretches for a few miles and is also part of the area where Geiner’s house is (where I would go to work in his office before we had internet) and is a neat area with houses, restaurants, shops, tour companies, and at the end of the road is the Marino Ballena (Whales Tail) National Park beach entrance. We’ve driven through here a few times before when we went to Whale’s Tail and I walked the edge of the area during my breaks when I was working at Geiner’s office, but we’ve never really walked around to see what was all around here. 

An overview of our town

The route of our walk through town

That’s what we would do today! We put Breeze on her leash (which she almost never has to do any more) and walked around for a couple of hours looking at what there was to see. One of the reasons for Breeze on a leash is because of stray dogs; there are many of them here and we wanted to be able to keep her close to us when those strays would wander by. You just never know if they are friendly to other dogs! Also, she tends to slowly wander away from us and not pay attention, she could end up where she shouldn’t be and get herself in trouble. This area has narrow streets and no sidewalks so we were walking on the side of the street and people sometimes drive fast. There are a handful of restaurants in this area that we might want to check out one day, and lots of tour companies offering whale watching and boat tours. We didn’t stop to check them out today, but at least now we know what is there for when we are ready for that sort of thing. I felt better after my walk and Breeze was exhausted because she isn’t used to walking in the heat for so long, so we headed home for a relaxing rest of our afternoon.

Breeze was thirsty so we stopped and let her play and drink from small creek

Sunday 8/14- Rainy (Green) season is in full swing here in Costa Rica, and boy did Mother Nature want to prove that this evening! It started out with a pretty nice day- mostly sunny with some spotty clouds, getting a little bit dreary in the afternoon, but that’s a typical day this time of year. What seemed like completely out of the blue, it just started POURING down rain! Yes, sometimes it rains hard here and we have gotten used to that, but this rain was something different. It didn’t take long for us to notice the water level in the creek was rising and the flow was getting faster. The water wasn’t draining off of the bottom part of our property quickly enough and before long the majority of the bottom portion of our lot was one big puddle. The gutters on the house were overflowing (and we have 8” wide gutters with a 4” downspout) and the water on the patio was getting closer and closer to our sliding glass door leading into our bedroom. 

The level of the pool had risen over the overflow hole and was almost to the level of the deck surrounding it, (although, luckily for us, the overflow for the pool was dumping water fast enough the pool was not going to overflow). Oh My Gosh!!! Ramie quickly got to work squeegeeing the water away from the door so we didn’t end up with water in the house and I kept an eye on everything else. The level of the creek kept rising and rising from the water flowing off the mountain and trying to escape to the ocean. This was as high as we had ever seen the creek before, it actually reached the top of the banks and start flowing through our yard. Fortunately our house is situated about 8 feet above the lower part of our yard, so there was no danger of flooding the house, only our yard/plants down on the lower portion. 

When the water on the patio was under control and Ramie could step away from that, he went to check the rain gauge. 1.2” in a HALF HOUR. Can you imagine?! We could tell the rain was getting slightly slower, only because the pool level was slowly dropping and the water on the patio wasn’t creeping toward the door anymore. We continued to watch the creek which wasn’t showing any signs of dropping or slowing down since we were still getting all of the runoff from the mountain. It would probably take quite a long time to see a drop in the creek. We continued on with our evening without any emergencies, but before we went to bed Ramie checked the rain gauge again. We got about 5 inches of rain in 2.5 hours and it was still raining. I woke up around midnight and could hear that it had either slowed down to just a drizzle or completely stopped, so that was a good sign. The next morning when Ramie went to check the rain gauge one last time and added it all up, we had received a total of 7.2 inches in probably about 7 hours. Fortunately the water runs off fast in our area. The creek was still flowing like mad, but the level had dropped from the night before and most of our lower yard that was flooded last night was now back above water (thoroughly saturated, but no longer puddles). We heard that there was significant flooding in areas near us that caused some damage and some roads to be closed, but I think we are in a good area where we hopefully won’t ever have to worry about flooding.

When we get rain that falls that heavily for that length of time, there are places that do end up with landslides and flooding. We saw multiple areas suffer from this on our local Facebook groups. Some of the more impacted areas are so flat that water has a hard time running off when it rains hard. We are fortunate to live on a high piece of land in our neighborhood, so we shouldn’t have to worry about our house flooding. Our house and main part of our yard is on a flat piece of land, we have a fairly steep hill (you wouldn’t want to try to walk down it) that goes about 8 feet down to the lower portion of our property. We have a large flat space here that goes out to the edge of a creek, banks of the creek are about 8 feet high and the water that runs in it is usually only a few inches deep. Just recently Ramie worked down in the creek to clear some of the brush and debris that could cause backups and possible problems. This particular rain actually caused the creek with 8’ banks to overflow up onto our flat plantel on the lower part of our yard. Our best guess is that the creek rose over 10’ during this rain event.

Monday 8/15- Hello everyone it's Ramie. Monday morning means I have to go to work at the animal sanctuary. This morning I received a message to take my time getting to work because of a landslide and trees down blocking the road, up to the sanctuary. I had nothing else to do this early in the morning so I left anyway. Once I arrived at the turn-off I immediately saw numerous cars parked on the road. It turned out that these were the other volunteers and helpers trying to get up the mountain. Well it doesn't look like we are going anywhere any time soon, as we could hear heavy equipment and chainsaws going but had no idea what to expect on the other side. One of the other volunteers had made some cookies and decided now was a good time to pass them around and chatted about our lives (I sure wished I had some coffee to go with them). We waited for about 45 minutes before we got the all-clear, and then one by one we made our way up the mountain. The drive was slow going, there was a large section of a hillside that slid over the road and they only cleared a path barely big enough for a vehicle to pass. We also had to dodge the downed power lines and fiber optic internet lines that were draped from the poles and trees. We zig zagged back and forth up the road, sometimes having to get close enough to the edge that you hooked brush on the mirrors of the truck. 

 Once at work we started business as usual. Part way through my day, one of the staff members, Rigo, asked for my help moving trees instead of continuing my work in the enclosures. His plan was to use these fallen trees as new enrichment items for some of the animals.

He had 3 trees he wanted to carry from a back section of the Sanctuary to the Spider Monkey enclosure. The two of us were able to move two of the trees (about 20’ long and 4-5” diameter) ourselves, we had to go about distance of a football field. The third tree was the same length but about 8” diameter. There was no way were we going to carry that one ourselves. I was already exhausted after carrying the other 2 trees up rugged terrain (of course it was uphill!) We asked David, one of the other local volunteers, to help us. The 3 of us struggled and I do mean struggled to carry that tree. We all needed a long break after that! Once I was rested, I returned to my duties, only to be stopped again when Rigo asked me if I would help him move them into the enclosure and stand them up. Once again Rigo & I took the two smaller trees and moved them in, just barely able to fit them through the doorways. The third one we would need David to help with again. The 3 of us got the tree in but now we had to stand it up. We discovered that this could be a problem because of metal bracing and other obstructions that would get in the way. It took some very creative rigging, some close calls with the Spider Monkeys grabbing us, a lot of sweat, some swearing, and some digging but we finally got the tree stood up. Rigo decided that was enough for now, and that he will work on the other two trees during the week. By the time we were done with this, all the regular animal chores were done for the day and most everyone else had already left. I guess that means I can go home now! On the way back down the mountain, it was the same situation as the way up, I had to sit and wait since the crew with the heavy equipment was there cutting up the downed trees and trying to move some of the power lines. Eventually I made it through and when I got home I immediately took some Advil and did absolutely nothing the rest of the day, my body was already feeling it!

Pura Vida!

Saturday 7/30- Today our part-time neighbor Adam and his father-in-law Dennis arrived. These are the neighbors who are right next door, literally on the other side of our chain link fence. This was the house that was being built at the same time as ours, the one that may have been part of a little competition between 2 building crews that made our house get finished so quickly. The original Tico owner of the house built and sold it, and Adam & Katie, a couple from California, bought it. We met Adam and Katie back in April when they visited the first time and have been keeping in touch with them ever since. Their intent is to use this house as a part time vacation home as well as a vacation rental or a longer-term rental, however it’s not quite ready for that yet. They originally had a property manager here in town, but that property manager did not do a very good job for them and ended up quitting. Now Adam and Katie had a lot of work to do and things to figure out on their own, so Ramie stepped in to help for the last few weeks before Adam and Dennis got here. Now that they arrived, Ramie would be stepping in to help even more.

Over the next week, Ramie helped Adam & Dennis with projects around the house and yard including putting a privacy screen up on the fence between our yards so that both us and their future renters would have a little bit more privacy than we currently had, some electrical work that needed to be done, and various other things that Ramie is good with. 

They also had many conversations about projects that they would like Ramie to coordinate including some construction projects that needed to have done before they could start renting and coordinating with the prior owner & builder of the house for some warranty work that had to be done. One thing that we have learned here is that brand new houses have to be warrantied by the original owner/builder for one year, so if any major issues arise, they can be called in to fix it. There were a few of these items that had to be handled so Ramie will help with this by giving the workers access to the house, over seeing that the work is being done, and just over-all being Adam & Katie’s eyes and ears and relaying the progress back to them. This type of thing is part of Ramie’s background so it comes easy to him, not to mention he just generally likes to help.

The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of July rainfall total was 25.3 inches

Wednesday 8/3- Back in MN once a year (should have been more- but such is life) I would get together with my 2 Army Battle Buddies, Katie & Jamie, for a girls weekend.

Somehow, these girls' weekends usually ended up revolving around something arts & crafts related and we always had a great time together. When I recently saw an ad on one of our Costa Rica Facebook groups about a “paint and sip” event at a bar/restaurant nearby, it reminded me of my girls' weekends and I really wanted to participate. I asked Ramie if he would come paint with me, and while he wasn’t interested in painting, he did say that he would come hang out, watch me paint, and have a beverage with me. Well, that didn’t sound like fun, so I sent a message to Tracy, one of our friends here in Uvita, and asked if she’d like to come paint a sloth with me. She was in (and now I didn’t have to paint by myself)! I had to work on Wednesday morning, but I took the afternoon off and the 4 of us (Geoff, Tracy’s husband being the 4th), headed to a restaurant a few miles south of Uvita in Ojochal (pronounced O-Ho-Chal) that none of us had been to yet.

The painting setup

The restaurant itself was really neat, it was set up like a tree-house, a bar, a pool table, and life-size Jenga were on the ground level, and there was a bar/restaurant and an event space built up in the trees. Ramie & Geoff decided to hang out in the bar while Tracy & I ordered our drinks and headed to the event space to meet our painting instructor Angeline. It turned out that there were 7 of us who signed up for our sloth painting class today. Once everyone was ready, we got to painting. 

Tracy (on the left) concentrating hard

I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. I am terrible at drawing, painting, and most things that require you to be artistic and creative, but with a good instructor I can usually put something down that isn’t super embarrassing. As the instructor walked us through how to begin, we got to chatting with everyone, learned a little bit about each other, helped each other with paint color and mixing ideas, techniques to get a certain look, and just some idle chit chat, and after a couple of hours, we all had a sloth to take home. Some were much better artists than others, but I think we all had a good time. I would probably attend another one of these events if Tracy or another friend would paint along with me!

This is my sloth

This is Tracy's sloth

After we finished painting, Tracy and I headed out to the restaurant where Geoff & Ramie were hanging out and we ordered some dinner. After some laughs and stories exchanged, it was time to head home for the evening. I’d say, after what had been one of my more stressful weeks of work, this was a great break from it all. Hopefully I’ll be a little bit refreshed for the rest of the week. Oh, and Ramie decided to hang my smiling sloth above the toilet in our bathroom (and this isn’t the first time he has hung my artwork above a toilet. I’m not sure why this is his theme?!) 

Friday 8/5- By the end of the day on Thursday I was ready for a mental health day and had most of my hours for the week in any way, so I decided to take Friday off. We called up Geoff & Tracy again and asked if they wanted to come check out our secret beach with us. Tracy is sort of like me that she’s content not swimming, instead just walking along the shore, looking for cool rocks or shells and anything else that might jump out at us, so they thought that this beach might be a good fit for them as well (since it really isn’t much of a swimming beach, but always seems to have something interesting to look at). We met at about 8 and brought them on the adventurous drive back to our secret, jungle-y beach. I think they were surprised by the rough path that passes as a road to the spot where we like to start, but they're all about going on the adventure with us, as long as we do the driving in places like this.

Nice drive down a tropical road

When we got there the tide was higher than we had ever seen it before, and the shaded area where we sometimes sit was almost completely under water. That was very neat to see and surprised us. It didn’t cause any issues, though, as there was still plenty of dry sand to walk on. We then did what Ramie & I normally do- kicked off our sandals, left our stuff in the car, and started walking.

We made it down to our regular turn-around point and found that even down on this end the river was much deeper, wider, and flowing faster than we had ever seen it before. We have only crossed the river once before at low tide, at its deepest it was only about thigh deep. This time there was no way any of us was going to try to walk across, it was much wider and appeared that you would probably be swept away in the rushing water. That didn’t stop us from exploring the area on our side of the river a little bit before turning around and heading back the way we came. We found a few treasures- some more driftwood for signs, some rocks and shells, and brought them all back to the starting point.

This was a piece Ramie had found on a prior beach trip, he saw something in it right away

After letting it dry and finishing it, he hung it up

We do live in Bahia Ballena technically which translates to Whale Bay. This is Ramie's Whale and he hung it in our entrance. I can see the whole whale can you?

Look at those two studs!

Saturday 8/6- Why were we getting together with Geoff and Tracy again today (and for the 3rd time this week)? Well, Loren and Nancy were throwing an “Oldies Party'' at their mini-golf course.

When Loren first opened OMG just a year ago he asked Ramie to create a fun playlist for his guests, which Ramie gladly did. Now, knowing that Ramie had a lot of music available, Loren once again went to Ramie and asked for an “Oldies” playlist from the 50’s-70’s. Of course Ramie is always happy to help. This party was for their regular group of friends, many of whom we had met before either at the New Years party or other various times over the last year, and we thought that Geoff & Tracy might enjoy getting to know some new faces as well. We had checked with Loren to make sure he didn’t mind, and of course his attitude is always that the more, the merrier, so Geoff & Tracy were going to get pulled into the mix as well.

The mini-golf parking lot isn’t really big, so we figured it would be best if we drove together, so Geoff and Tracy came to our house, dropped off their truck, and Ramie drove the 4 of us to the party. It was a pot-luck event, and bring your own beverage, so we all had our dishes and drinks and made our way in. There were already a few people there, some faces that we recognized and some that were new, so we just started mingling. Ramie & I typically aren’t very outgoing social people, but we are trying to come out of our shell more and more often. This time was a little bit easier because we had another couple that we knew just in case we felt shy (plus, now we weren’t the newest newbies anymore!) We introduced Geoff & Tracy to the people we knew, we found it easier to strike up conversations with people we didn’t know since we were now a group of 4 instead of just a couple, and we ended up having a great time. Throughout the evening we found ourselves talking to many people we don’t see very often and introducing our friends to some new friends. I would chalk this night a success, even though we aren’t the most comfortable in situations like these. Sadly, though, it was raining all evening so no one was able to play a full round of minigolf. 

Tuesday 8/9- Today was for some different friends & different introductions! On their recent vacations here, when they wanted to go to the beach Adam & Katie would go to the “private beach of the woman who was their former property manager ” (all beaches are technically public here but she owned the property that was easily accessible to this beach, otherwise you would have to park far away and walk down the beach to reach “her” section). Since that relationship didn’t end so well, they asked Ramie if he would show them a good local beach to bring their 2 young daughters to. We knew of a few in the area, so after a little bit of conversation to learn where they had been before and what they liked, Ramie decided to introduce their family to Playa Ventanas. This is one of the more tourist-centered beaches that often has quite a few visitors and has some vendors set up. Ramie got to hang out with the 6 of them for a good portion of the day, really get to know them all, and introduce them to a fun new hang-out place.

Friday 8/12- One of the perks that Ramie gets for volunteering at the animal sanctuary is that he can bring guests up there and give them a personal tour (like he did when we had visitors). When Ramie does this, there is no tour fee (although the fee helps keep the sanctuary going since it is a non-profit. Since you don’t have to pay to get in, donating, buying a shirt or a souvenir is encouraged). So- if you ever visit and want to see the sanctuary (and Ramie is still volunteering there) he can definitely make that happen! Today Ramie brought Adam, Katie & their crew up to see the animals. Since the family has vacationed here in Costa Rica for a few years, some of the animals were not new to them, but being up close to the animals was new to them. They spent about an hour or so walking around to the different enclosures and talking about the animals. Today, though, a lot of the animals were not particularly active and some even stayed hidden. That didn't matter to them though, they still thought that this experience was pretty cool and liked to hear Ramie’s stories about going inside the enclosures and working so closely with the animals.

In the afternoon we had dentist appointments at the clinic right across the highway from our house (seriously, we can see the building from our backyard). This building is brand new within the last couple of years and has an urgent care office on the main floor, complete with ambulance and helipad if you need to be evacuated for a medical emergency. Upstairs is the brand-new dentist office. Ramie checked with them about a week ago to see how long of a wait it would be to get an appointment and how much an exam and cleaning would cost. Keep in mind- our private medical insurance here does not cover dental, so everything is out of pocket and we didn’t know what to expect. We were pleased to find out that you could get in for an appointment in about a week, and for x-rays and cleaning it would only cost us $100 each. WHAT?! Back in MN we had to book our next exam 6 months out if you wanted to get in for your cleaning every 6 months, and I know for a fact x-rays by themselves would cost more than $100! (We were fortunate to have good dental insurance back in MN and much of this was covered, but I know that dental care is expensive). Ramie had scheduled appointments for us at that time, and today was the day. (Have I mentioned how much I appreciate having my own personal assistant? 😉 )

The office was very modern, the receptionist spoke very good English (as did the Dentist and all of the staff that we ended up interacting with), and this was very much like dentist offices that we were used to back in the US (the opposite of our Doctor experience when we first moved down here). The x-rays were the big pano-style instead of the bite-wing that we are used to (Our insurance in the US only covered one pano every 4 years or something like that and if you needed it more often it was ridiculously expensive.) and they took several rounds at different angles to make sure they could see everything they were looking for. Ramie and I each have a couple of crowns that they paid particular attention to so they could ensure nothing was wrong there, and after they were satisfied with seeing everything they wanted to see on the x-rays, they brought me in for my cleaning with the Dentist. Yep, that’s right, from what I gather, the person that does the cleaning is actually the dentist and not a hygienist or assistant. As you all know, that is quite different from the US where you get to see the actual dentist for about 5 minutes during a routine exam.
As far as I could tell it was all the same tools and procedures that I was used to back in the US (and I’ve been going to the dentist for cleanings and exams every 6 months for the last 12 years or more and at least yearly ever since I was a kid). Everything looked good with my teeth and then the dentist traded me out for Ramie, and it was his turn to go.

His appointment went much the same and they didn’t find any major issues with his teeth either. I must say- Dental treatment is one of the things that they do right down here- it’s not hugely expensive, the techniques and equipment are modern, and you can actually get an appointment in a reasonable time. Kudos to CR on this!  (And sorry, I didn't even think of taking any photos while we were here).

Pura Vida! 

Saturday 7/23- I don’t know why we waited so long, and until we felt like creaky “old” people, to go see Benny the Chiropractor, but after about 7 months we went back to see him again. If you have been following along with our blog for a while, you might remember back in January we learned that one of the friends that we met through Loren was a chiropractor in the US before moving to Costa Rica, and now sets up a table in the back of an ATV tour shop and gives adjustments on Saturday mornings. After talking about this for the last few weeks, we finally remembered to go see him! For only $20 each we got full adjustments that were more thorough than any that I have ever received in the US (and I used to go to the chiropractor regularly) and we both left feeling less creaky and overall, just felt better. 

Perfect setting for an adjustment! Well Ramie sure does approve!

Since we were literally right at the Yamaha dealership/ATV tour office already, we decided to go in and see what they have for sale. Well, unfortunately they typically don’t have anything on the lot for sale, although they did have two this time. As is our luck, they were not anything that we were interested in. If you want to purchase an ATV here, you typically have to order one and wait a few months for it to arrive. Side-by-side ATVs are kind of a commodity and for sure a luxury item here in Costa Rica. When you want to buy one you have to put your name on the list and then you get it in the order that the machines actually make their way into the country. We were told that if we were to order one in July/August of 2022, we would be able to order the 2023 model and receive it as early as November 2022. Fortunately, the tours had not left yet for the morning, and all of the machines that the tour company owns were here so we could look at the different models and compare the differences between them. Of course, they didn’t have the 2023 models, but the 2022 models shouldn’t be terribly different from the new ones that would be coming out. Ramie had been doing research on these machines already so he knew some of the differences between them. He spoke to the guy at the shop to find out a little bit more and ask about pricing and how to get our “name on the list”. We had been talking about getting a side-by-side ever since we moved down here, so a little bit more research was always good. Having plenty of information before making any decisions is something that we are pros at so, armed with a little bit more information, we told them that we’d think about it and left to get on with the rest of our day.

Well, as it turns out, we didn’t really have any plans for the rest of our day anyway. We had recently heard from some friends that the large grocery store in Palmar Norte (about 45 minutes south of us) was much nicer than the one here in town and that it was worth the drive to go check it out. Since we do most of our grocery shopping when we go to San Isidro, and only do supplemental shopping here in town we were never too motivated to go check out this other store, but since our favorite butcher shop in Uvita closed a few weeks ago, our frozen meat inventory was running low. We figured now might be the time to go check out this grocery store and see if they had a decent selection of chicken, pork, or beef. It was a nice day for a drive and there typically isn’t a lot of traffic when driving south from Uvita, so we sat back, enjoyed the scenery, and had a nice little drive. Was it a little bit reminiscent of back-road drives in the Scamp (our classic muscle car we had back in MN)? Maybe, but not quite, since there is no loud vroom vroom!

Ramie's baby, We both sure do miss this car.

I will admit, the grocery store here was laid out much better than the one we go to in Uvita, but most of the selection was about the same. Their meat counter did seem nicer than the store we typically go to, so we stocked up on some chicken and pork that would get us through a few weeks, and then were back on the road to go home. Of course, as we were heading back home, we’d be driving right past our favorite pescaderia, so of course we had to stop for some fresh fish! With a few pounds of mahi mahi & tuna to add to the chicken and pork we just bought, our freezer would be full, and we’d have plenty of choices for dinners for the next few weeks. The chores for today were now done and we could relax by the pool for the rest of the afternoon or as soon as Ramie is done playing with his new friends. 

A tree frog

A different type of tree frog.

After that record breaking rain that we had last week the landscape of the river that runs to the ocean at this beach has changed. There was a dam of piled up fallen trees near the river mouth which caused the flow in the area behind it to slow down drastically, backing it up into a much larger pond than it was before, but in addition to that, the area where the river ran to the beach was over 2 feet lower than it had been before. The reason we were able to tell that there was a big difference is due to this neat palm tree with a bent trunk.

This was taken Sept. of 2021

Big difference!

In the past there were times that the trunk of this tree was only a few inches above the sand, as you can see now, it is about chest-high on Ramie! This area of the beach is constantly changing and it’s always so interesting to see what has changed, washed up or been exposed since the last time we were there. 

Ramie checking out to see if there are any good treasures to be had in the debris

Today’s beach adventures included seeing the beach cows again, washed up jellyfish, and a search for the perfect pieces of driftwood to add to our collection of decorative items at home. Driftwood can come in all sorts of cool shapes and designs, and we have taken a liking to some of the more decorative pieces and are using them to decorate our house. Eventually I would like to have a few signs painted, so we’re constantly looking for the perfect pieces. Today we found what almost looked like a weathered old railroad tie that mother nature had been working on for some time. This would make a perfect piece to paint and place in our yard! It was unfortunate that we found this near the far end of the beach and it weighed a TON! Ramie decided that he liked it enough that he would lug this beast all the way back to the car so we could bring it home. We found several other interesting pieces of driftwood along the way as well and I was able to carry them back while Ramie carried the big one. After several stops to rest along the way, we finally made it back to the car where we could load it up to bring it home. 

Getting a workout carrying this beast

These cows sure have a good life!

Jellyfish we found

Ramie made a little friend

About the time we made it back to the car (parked at the impassable bridge like we always do) 3 guys on motorcycles had shown up. They asked us (in Spanish) if we’d be able to move our truck so that they could cross the bridge. What? Cross the bridge? Have you seen this thing!? There isn’t even a deck, all that is left of this bridge are the stringers and a few pieces of broken rusted steel bars! Ramie moved the truck forward and then we stuck around to see what was going to happen. Sure enough, one by one, these guys on motorcycles nervously, and carefully passed over what we once knew as the impassable bridge. I guess it isn’t so impassable after all! 

Tuesday 7/26- In the more rural, mountainous, and small-town areas of Costa Rica, ATVs are a big hit. They are easier to navigate on narrow and steep mountain roads, they are more nimble on rocky terrain, and they can get you into more adventurous places than a regular 4x4 vehicle can. As long as they have a horn and blinkers they can be licensed to travel on highways just like regular cars are, so there is no limit to where you can drive them. They are versatile and fun to have, and lots of people gringos here have them. We have been talking about getting one since we came down, but there have always been higher priorities (like getting our house furnished just the way we want it). Ramie has been doing research on the different brands and styles, he watches for used ones (both in Costa Rica and in the US), has been doing research on buying them in the US and having them shipped down versus buying one here, and overall has way more knowledge on side-by-side UTVs than he ever would have known had we not left MN. After talking to the guys at the ATV shop last weekend we’ve been thinking about it and talking it over, trying to figure out whether we want to do this now, want to wait, or want to skip it completely. 

After getting a couple different quotes to have one shipped into the country, we determined that it was not advantageous to do that.  The amount of VAT (13% sales tax) that Costa Rica added onto the cost of the machine and the cost of shipping made it so that it wasn't worth the hassle. If we were to ship one here we'd have to take the following steps:

-We would have to fly back to the US, find the machine and buy it, of course paying tax on it. 

-Get it to the shipping port, and then line up all of the shipping. 

-Wait for it to arrive in a month or two. 

-Wait for it to clear customs, make its way through the national registry, licensing, inspection and all that fun stuff to make it road legal.

-Line up shipping to Uvita.

So we decided to just purchase it locally.  But, if we want one soon, we’ll have to pull the trigger and put a deposit down now so that we can have one (hopefully) delivered by the end of this year. We made the decision that today Ramie would go talk to the owner of the ATV shop (the owner wasn’t there on Saturday when we stopped, we just talked to one of his employees). The owner of the ATV shop is a gringo who has lived in Costa Rica for many years. Ramie had a good conversation with him, learned as much more as he could about the newest Yamahas that would be coming out (some details of which haven’t even been released yet on the Yamaha website) and we made the decision that we would be putting a deposit down to save our “spot in line” for the next available machine. We are actually in the #1 position so we will receive the next one that comes into the country. If we decide between now and the delivery date that we want to change our mind, we can get the deposit refunded, but if we are fairly sure that we want one (like we are), it’s best to get our position held.

Well, there it is- our next planned big purchase, after the car, then the land, then the building of our house will be a side-by-side Yamaha UTV.

Yes, it will be a 4 seater. Just like everything else, we are planning in advance to make things comfortable for our guests so we would have to buy a machine that would accommodate more than just Ramie & I. Besides, when it is only Ramie & I, we’ll need that extra room for Breeze!  This is the UTV that we are expecting.

photo courtesy of https://www.yamahamotorsports.com

Friday 7/29- If you remember a couple of blog posts ago, I told you about our pantry moth infestation. Over the last few weeks, we have been on an extermination journey, had to clear out our kitchen cabinets, disinfect all of our cabinets, containers, and packages with vinegar, throw away any infested food, and watch for and kill any signs of these damn moths and their larva. During this time, we couldn’t put our pantry goods back in the cabinets because the life cycle of these moths can be several weeks. The last thing that we wanted was to put everything back away, have some eggs that we didn’t find hatch, and have a re-infestation, so all of our food has been sitting out on the countertop and table for the last several weeks. Every time we saw a sign of these things, including a moth flying around the kitchen, the silk they leave behind that looks like spider webs, or eggs that look like sawdust, we quickly destroy it. The first week there were far more of these signs, but it has been getting better and better, and we haven’t seen any of this at all for at least 10 days. It was finally time for me to put everything back in the cupboards. This was quite a relief! Let me tell you, I’m sick of having my groceries laying around and not put where they belong. I will definitely be taking new precautions every time we bring new groceries home, I do NOT want to have to go through all of this again!


Pura Vida!

Thursday 7/14- I am so thankful for my flexible schedule Thursdays. This morning I was feeling the urge to get out and move.  What does that mean to me? Well, I wanted to the beach of course, to get some steps in. I was even feeling generous enough to share my beach day with Breeze, so we started the day with some quick coffee and then headed to our favorite secret beach. The 3 of us walked and walked for a while until Breeze started to look tired and thirsty, and then we turned around and brought her back to the freshwater stream and the bottle of water that was in the car for her. We rested for a little while, and then walked some more before being finished at the beach for the day. 

Vultures enjoying the beach

Dana's Instagram Pose! HAHA, Just kidding.  We laugh because we see so many tourist's taking photos for Insta so we had to mimic them.

Since we would be driving past Dominical on the way home, we had a couple of errands that we had to stop for, and when we were finished with those we stopped at One Love Café, where Ramie, Taryn, Steven & Will stopped during their day in Dominical.

Enjoying a good cup of coffee while people watching

This was a very cute little café, open air like all of the restaurants that we go to here in CR, and pet friendly. We each ordered a coffee and Ramie got a cinnamon roll the size of your head, both of which were absolutely delicious. As we sat and enjoyed our breakfast, Breeze was very well behaved, laid down between us, and watched the 4 little dogs sitting at the table next to us behaved absolutely obnoxiously! 

Breeze (lower left and blending in) is waiting for a bite of cinnamon roll

We glanced at the menu even though we didn’t have any intention of eating here today, but decided that we would likely come back for breakfast or lunch one day soon because their food sounds good and the prices are some of the best that we’ve seen in the area. After finishing our delicious coffee, we decided that since we were right on the strip along the beach where all of the vendors sell their souvenirs, that we would go see what was here today. What would you know, this time we found a guy selling paintings. We have never seen this guy here before. Typically its always just the mass produced generic stuff that you would find at any gift shop around Costa Rica and just a few who sell their handmade jewelry, soaps, and things like that. The guy's name was Michi and he had so many to choose from, but only a few that were framed. A lot of them that we liked were just the painted canvas and we couldn't figure out a good way to display them, so we stuck to the already stretched/framed paintings to make our choice from. We have some big walls that need to be decorated and we thought that one of these beautiful paintings would work fabulously in our house, not to mention that his prices were very reasonable, so we decided to buy one.

We have a 50" TV to give you some size comparison

This brings me to a question for you. What’s the most random place you’ve ever bought something weird? 

Here, buying things along the side of the road is actually kind of a normal occurrence. I'm not talking about someone who is just selling their old stuff they don't want anymore. Many of these are legit vendors and businesses that set up a stand or park a truck on the side of the road to sell their items. There are some who are here for a few days, then move down to the next town for a few days and so on, and once a month or so they’ll be back and do it all again. There are others that are set up regularly at the same place. We have bought beautifully painted ceramic flower pots, a fire extinguisher, and small trees from the traveling salespeople. We have bought tapestries, fruit, and carne asada (delicious grilled kabobs) from the ones that are set up at the same places regularly. The reason I think they do this is because vehicles are expensive to buy and own here and many Ticos do not own a vehicle, which makes it difficult for them to travel to go shopping. These businesses that set up on the side of the highway are mobile and will come to the people! So now, in addition to buying a dress on the side of the road, kebobs from a grill set up in a parking lot, and ceramic flower pots from a semi parked on a vacant piece of land along a busy stretch of highway (among other things in random places) we have bought a painting from a guy who was selling them at the beach. I’m not going to lie, all of this just adds more to our adventure!! 

We've stopped and bought the carne asada many times. Its a delicious snack when your out and about

This family sells t-shirts, tapestries & other trinkets to tourists. We've bought a few things from them.

This guy sells beautiful hand painted ceramic pots, we own 3 of them.

The flower pot guy travels around the country in his truck selling ceramic pots

Saturday 7/16- After a long week of work (yes, I’m still trying to get used to working all of these hours, I really don’t know how I used to do it!!) I made sure to have a day with nothing planned. Today we didn’t even leave the house. We hung out at home, did a few chores in the morning, but had a relaxing afternoon by the pool. It’s kind of nice to have days like this once in a while but makes for very little to write about when it comes to blog time! 😉

Sunday 7/17– Friday 7/22- This was another super busy week for me, and yes, I even worked for a few hours on Sunday. In addition to volunteering at the animal sanctuary, Ramie is now spending some of his time helping our part-time neighbors Adam & Katie with their property. Adam & Katie are the couple that owns the house right next to ours that was finished shortly after our house was finished. We learned from them that the property manager that they had originally hired quit, and that they would need some help. They would be down in a few weeks for a “working vacation”, but in the meantime Ramie was helping them find some people to do some work on their house, cleaners, landscapers, and pool guys (luckily we have some connections with people who offer these services). Ramie has learned a lot after coordinating so many of our own things, so he was able to easily step in and help Adam and Katie figure out who to call for the work that they needed done as well.

While work is a big part of my life once again, we definitely try to make the most of our non-work hours. On a typical day, after I’m done with work and Ramie has finished up with his chores and tasks for the day, we usually try to relax for a little while before it gets dark (remember, it gets dark here by 6pm all year round and even earlier if it’s raining). Currently we’re in the green season (rainy season) so many afternoons and evenings we get a fair amount of rain. This means that other than dinner, there isn’t a whole lot to do. What DO we do? If it’s not raining, we might hang out in the pool for a while before dinner. After dinner, we both practice our Spanish using the Duolingo app, and once it’s dark out, now that we have the internet, we spend our evenings watching YouTube & Netflix or Ramie plays video games & I read a book. This really doesn’t sound so different from how we spent our time when we were back in MN. One thing that I do miss, though, is how late it stays light out in the summer in the North. 

Thursday 7/21 afternoon & overnight – 

Yes, it's the green season, that means we get more rain now than we get during the Costa Rican summer (which actually happens to fall during North America’s winter. Confusing, I know!) It doesn’t usually mean, however, that the days are wash-outs. Yes, some days are gloomy and rainy all day, but more often than not, it’s beautiful in the morning and up until early afternoon. I’d say about 50% of the time in the afternoon or evening it will start raining, and then rain most of the night. It isn’t uncommon to get a few inches of rain per week. Today didn’t start out so differently from this, but ended with abnormal results. We experienced some record-breaking rainfall for this area. It started to rain Thursday afternoon around 2pm, which is kind of normal, and rained until about 1am Friday (11 hours), which again is kind of normal, but during these 11 hours we received 9.6 inches of rain at Casa Costa Breeze. Ramie and I follow the Costa Rica Meteorological Institute Facebook page, and they reported that the official highest rainfall for the area was in Dominical, about 13 miles north of us, and they received 10.6 inches during that same span of time.

We have tried planting some squash and cantaloupe in the lower part of our property since it would have lots of space to vine and we had little bitty plants starting to grow, but it sure didn’t last long due to how wet it stays in that area. Maybe I’ll try it again during the dry season. Fortunately, it typically only takes a couple hours for the water to drain away and flow to the ocean after the rain stops, both here at our property and in most places in the Uvita area, although the soil in our yard always seems to be wet and squishy. We get to look forward this kind of pattern from now until sometime in November. I guess that’s just a price we will pay for living in this beautiful area.


Pura Vida!

Friday 7/8- Have you ever heard of pantry moths? If you haven’t, count yourself VERY lucky! If you have heard of them, I sure hope that it wasn’t because you had to deal with them, because we’re here to tell you THEY SUCK!!

Pantry moths are something completely different from the moths that you see outside at night and are attracted to the light, or even the ones that can eat your clothes. Pantry moths are attracted to your food instead, namely grains like flour, pasta, and things like that. BUT we also learned that once they have taken up residence in your cupboard, they aren’t picky and will get into anything that they can. We also learned that these nasty things can get into things that you wouldn’t think they should be able to. Let’s go back to the beginning for a second, though.

Way back in March when we first moved in and Taylor & Dylan were here visiting, we noticed these little moths all over in our kitchen. There would always be a couple flying around and they tended to come out of the cupboards when you opened the doors. We noticed them, but weren’t overly concerned with them, I mean, they are just moths right? How bad could they be!? We figured that they came in the wood that the cabinets were made out of and that they would probably eventually go away on their own. Fast forward to July, they still hadn’t gone away, but we still weren’t too concerned- until I found an unopened bag of something (I don’t even remember what it was at this point) that had what looked like little white worms in it. WTF IS THIS?!?! Upon further investigation we found more of these little worms and stuff that looked cross between thick spider webs and that fuzzy stuff that caterpillars spin into cocoons on various things in the cabinets. We snapped some pictures and put them up on the local Facebook groups asking what was going on in our kitchen. 

Our bag of unopened popcorn had what looked like sawdust in it.

This was a bag of flour  in a sealed container that had all the webbing in it. The webbing is actually their poo. BLAH!!!

Within minutes several people had responded that this looks like evidence of pantry moths, a couple of people gave us tips on how to deal with them or sent us internet articles on what to do, and everyone who knew what was going on apologized profusely for our misfortune, as these things are the work of the devil. Welp, I guess all of those seemingly innocent moths we’ve been dealing with for so long are anything BUT innocent!

After reading some articles online, Ramie learned a lot about pantry moths, how to fix an infestation, and how to prevent them from occurring again. The most important things that we learned were:

1) There was a pretty good chance that we got them from something that we bought that had already been contaminated at the factory, warehouse or at the store that we bought it from. Thinking back on it now, we never had issues with anything like this back at our rental house, but when Taylor & Dylan were here we shopped at a couple of new places that may have had the problem.

2) That these things can chew through sealed plastic bags that things like pasta, rice, and beans come in from the grocery store as well as Ziploc style bags, so even storing food in a sealed bag isn’t a defense.

3) The best way to prevent this from happening is to store all of your dry goods in the fridge or freezer. If you can’t store them in a fridge/freezer permanently, then at least put them in the freezer for 2 days immediately upon bringing them home from the store to kill any eggs that might be in the package.

4) If you do get an infestation- look at everything in your cabinets VERY carefully. Look for eggs in your packages of your grains, rice, pasta, dry beans, etc. (it looks like sawdust) and throw away anything that is contaminated. Freeze everything that doesn’t appear contaminated. Wash all other packages and containers in your cabinets with vinegar water and look VERY CAREFULLY for that fuzzy stuff that looks like thick spiderwebs in all corners, crevices, and threads of screw on lids and be sure to get it all.

5) After you freeze or clean all of your stuff in vinegar water, clean every surface inside of your cabinets with vinegar water paying special attention to cracks and the spaces in between where things could be hiding.

6) DO NOT RESTOCK YOUR CABINETS FOR AT LEAST 2-3 WEEKS- leave the doors open, put things like bay leaves to keep the bugs out, peppermint oil is also supposed to help.

7) Watch closely for the next several weeks for any signs of these things still being present. They say that the life cycle for one of these moths is about a month, and that you have to watch for any eggs to hatch into larvae and potentially then into the actual moth, so give it time to happen so you don’t just re-contaminate yourself.

Oh- and one other thing. These aren’t only in Costa Rica, these can happen anywhere. Your food in the US can be contaminated with this too, and some friends of ours from southern states have heard of or experienced these. 

This is not our picture but this is how bad it can get. Pic courtesy of https://wibx950.com

Now, and for the next several weeks we’ll be living with all of the contents of our cabinets sitting out on our countertop and a folding table. 

At least it will be easy to spot any moths that still may be alive.

Of course, I finally just got my pantry installed so I could put all of my groceries away, and now I have to take everything out of my cabinets and leave it out again. I can just never win, huh? For the next week or so we were constantly on the lookout for moths in the kitchen. Every time we spotted one we were on a chase- it had to be killed, even if I had to chase it around half of the house in order to catch it. These things are NOT allowed to lay any more damn eggs in my food or in my house!! 

Pura Vida!

As North America starts their summer season, here in Costa Rica we are in the winter or Green Season. What does this mean? It means that the temperatures are cooler compared to what they were during our summer, the humidity will increase and we will start to get rain again. In June we should just start to have a few rainy afternoons, enough to wake up many of the plants that slowed down while it was so hot and dry. This year our June was quite a bit wetter than typical Junes of the past (according to what we hear from locals). There is a guy on one of our Facebook groups who lives within 15 miles or so of Uvita who keeps track of how much rain he gets at his house, and then every month he will post a screenshot of the spreadsheet that compares each month for all of the years that he has been keeping track. Loren also keeps track of how much rain he gets at his house up the mountain from us. Ramie finally got our rain gauge put out in May, so now we are able to keep track of our daily and monthly rainfall totals. If you want to make a guess of how much rain we got in June, now’s your chance!

The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of June rainfall total was 50.13 inches

No, that’s not a typo, that was over 4 feet of rain this month! But remember- September and October tend to be rainier than this, so we can expect to see even more in the coming months. Be sure to keep checking back for monthly rain totals to see what the green season is like in Uvita!

Friday 7/1- Due to our love of the Caribbean and our previous plan to live on a sailboat and spend a lot of time there, we are well aware that in addition to it being green season in Costa Rica, that June through November are also hurricane season. One of the great things about Costa Rica is that hurricanes don’t really hit here. During June some of the rainiest days that we had were during what they call a “Tropical Wave” which, according to Google, is an area of low pressure in the atmosphere that, in the right circumstances and conditions, could develop into a Tropical Depression, then a Tropical Storm, and then finally a Hurricane.

You’re probably wondering why I have chosen today to give you a tropical weather lesson. Well, here it is- today there was a Hurricane/Tropical Storm that was forecast to hit Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Yep, that’s right, the Instituto Meterologico Nacional (or National Meteorological Institute) here in CR issued warnings to the entire country for some severe weather, particularly in the Northern and Eastern parts of the country, but with a possibility for bad weather throughout the country. Some schools and businesses closed early as a precaution and so they could send their people home, there was a lot of chatter on the Facebook groups about what could happen, and we of course kept our eyes and ears open for any information and just planned to stay home and hunker down if needed. The expected landfall kept getting pushed later and later in the day, and honestly, we didn’t even notice any bad weather at all. It didn’t even rain a lot or get high winds like we were expecting, overall, it was just pretty gloomy.

I was watching the weather radar, and the Tropical Storm (it never did make it to Hurricane strength) made landfall in Northern Costa Rica and Southern Nicaragua at about 4:00 Friday afternoon, and there was no indication of bad weather before we went to bed.

When I remembered to check again around 5:30 Saturday afternoon the storm was off the coast but looking like it had intensified again since I looked this morning. We are very glad that this storm warning didn’t turn out to cause any problems here for us in the Southern part of the country.

Monday 7/4- Happy 4th of July

People always ask us how we spend our holidays here, so of course we once again got the question “What did you do for the holiday weekend?” Well, to be honest, we didn’t do anything special at all. I actually don’t even think we left the house this weekend! I officially had the day off work (working for a US company and all), but Ramie had to work up at the animal sanctuary, so I put in a couple of hours of work anyway. I guess we’re just pretty boring like that (not that there would be anything special going on here for 4th of July anyway!)

Tuesday 7/5- It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen them, but our MN-CR Connection friends, Marc & Jill were back in Costa Rica and called us to see if we wanted to get together for dinner while they were here. You might remember that back in October we learned from Loren and Mike, 2 of our friends from up on “the hill” that a couple from MN bought a house up by them and we met them and hung out a couple of times while they were here right after they bought their house. Today, we got to invite them for a tour of our house and then went to dinner at the little restaurant with the fantastic view of the ocean. After so many months, it was nice to see them again. We got to hear some of their stories of back home in MN, and they got to hear our stories of what’s been going on here in Uvita. It was another great evening with friends. 

Wednesday 7/6- If you remember, a couple of weeks ago Ramie & I built a raised and covered garden from scratch. We knew that we would need quite a bit of soil to fill the planters that we built, so we explored our options on how we could get that much dirt delivered, since we knew we wouldn’t be able to haul it ourselves. Instead of having Geiner’s guys deliver a partial dump truck load in our driveway where we would have to shovel it from the ground, into the wheelbarrow, push it back to the back yard, then shovel it into the planters, we found a company that delivers compost soil in 80lb bags. He would bring as much as we ordered and drop it off in our driveway, but then instead of shoveling it into and out of the wheelbarrow, we could just load up a couple of the bags, wheel it to the garden, and lift it up and dump it in. That sounded like slightly less work, even though it would still be quite the job to finish. We originally estimated that we’d need about 25 bags to fill the planters, plus we had a few other flowerpots to fill, and we wanted to have a little bit extra on hand in case we needed it anywhere else, so we ordered 35 bags. Well, this morning when the guy dropped it off, he brought extra. We ended up buying 45 bags of soil, nearly double what we figured we would need to fill the garden.

While I was working on work, Ramie got to work on moving these bags and filling the garden.  And work his butt off, he did! By the time I was finished working for the day, he had moved over 20 of these 80lb bags on his own and filled the garden planters. The only problem now was that there were about 25 more of these bags in the middle of our driveway, and there was no way that we would need that many more! When I was finished working, we brainstormed what we’d do with all of this extra and decided that for now we would stack it up on the side of the house where it would be mostly out of the sun and rain, and then maybe sell some of it on the local Facebook group. With a little bit of teamwork, Ramie & I filled the empty flowerpots and then moved the remainder of the extra bags, but man that was a lot of work! I’m not quite sure how he did those first 20 all by himself! Now, I got to go play in the dirt a little bit before it was time to go make dinner. We had started a few pepper plants from seeds and had them growing in some temporary flowerpots, so we were excited to plant our first few veggies in our new vegetable garden!

This is the half that was left to move after he had filled the garden

Full and ready for plants!

Thursday 7/7- It was about “that time” again to go do some shopping in San Isidro, and the timing was absolutely perfect. I knew that there were at least a couple of stands at the farmers market that sold starter plants, so instead of trying to grow everything from scratch, I could buy some baby plants to get things jump started. I already had a plan in mind for what I wanted to plant. This was about to turn into my salsa & salad garden! I already have my peppers (jalapeños, what we think may be habanero's, and a sweet pepper), but I knew I wanted tomatoes, cilantro, lettuce (maybe a couple different types of lettuce), chives, oregano, spearmint, and lemongrass. Depending on how much room we had left after I had my necessities planted, we’d decide if there was anything else that we’d want to add. I was thrilled that we were able to find everything but the lemongrass at the farmers market this morning! Of course, we got all of our veggies and fruit that we’d need for the next few weeks as well, and then did the rest of our shopping. Along the way, Ramie decided that we were going to try carrots in our garden as well, so he picked up a packet of seeds to see if we could get them to grow.

On the way out of town we saw a vivero (plant store/nursery) that we hadn’t checked out yet. We still needed to find some flowers for our fancy Mexican flower pots, so we stopped to see what we could find. We did end up finding some flowers that we liked and thought would work. When I go to these viveros to look at plants, I am still in awe that so many of the “yard plants” that they sell here are sold as house plants back in MN. I’m not even kidding when I say that I have had (and ended up killing) many of these same plants back in MN at some point in the last 20 years or so! I hope that now since they are in their native climate, I won’t have such a black thumb with these beauties!

Pura Vida!