Costa Rica

Hang on to your hats, folks, ‘cuz we’re going on a WiLd! ride to Costa Rica- land of the unpaved road, monkeys, exotic birds, beautiful jungle, and dogs. . . everywhere dogs.

We left early on Saturday, July 2^nd, just one day after I got home from Columbus. It was a crazy day between: doing laundry and repacking to head out again.

Costa Rica is in the Mountain time zone, so we thought by arriving at 7:30pm we’d have some daylight before the black of night started. But, no, it was black dark when we arrived, already exhausted from a long day’s travel. We got out of the plane onto the tarmac. It was hot and very humid. We waited in long, inefficient lines at immigration, baggage claim and customs, all housed in a hot, humid airplane hangar. We then waited a long time for the rental car shuttle, only to wait a REALLY long time to get the rental car. Nothing in Costa Rica is done efficiently or by USA standards. It was 10:00pm before we started the long journey to our resort on the coast.As soon as we got on the “highway” we knew we were in for a long trip as the road was terrible.But believe me, that was the good road. The last hour of our journey was basically an off- roading adventure, though we were on a dirt road- I use the term “road”loosely- oh, so loosely. If you know me, you know I have always hated anything "off-roady". When my family would go in the jeep when I was a kid, I would BEG to walk, and sometimes my dad would let me. It’s just not my thing. So, traveling through a dark jungle on a bumpy road was not my idea of fun. I begged to walk, but Ken wouldn’t let me. Adventure, I know, adventure! I found that the only way to survive the jolting was to plant both feet on the floor boards, grasp the shoulder harness on the seat belt with both hands (practically pulling it out at the root) and press my back into the seat . . . and pray. Oh, and count. That’s my defense mechanism for surviving difficult things- I count. I don’t know why, but it works for me. Like when my babies wouldn’t go back to sleep at night after I fed them, I’d rock, and count. I’d say to myself,” I’ll count to 50.” And I would and then if they still weren’t asleep, I’d do it again. So I was counting, baby, I was counting. I got to 200 when Ken announced he thought we were about ¼ of the way there. Okay, I can do that. And he was pretty close to right on.He had studied and studied the map, and did a great job navigating in the black of night. 600 counts later we saw the sign to the resort. Ah, relief. The condo was very nice. I’m sure I was asleep before my head hit the pillow after midnight.

The sun rises at 5:00am in Costa Rica, so we were up early. The resort was beautiful, carved out of the jungle right on the coast. It was called “The Sanctuary.” Here are some pictures we took of the resort:

Yes, those are iguanas!

Our first day was Sunday, but there was no way we were going back on the road an hour and a half to attend church by 9:00am, so we made our own little church, studying “Jesus, the Christ” together. We enjoyed visiting with the restaurant staff and other guests, though there were few of those. We enjoyed dinner that evening with a couple and their college-graduate son from Sacramento, California. I forgot to take a picture of them, but they were very fun people.

On Monday, Independence Day, we ventured down that road a piece to a village- again, I use the term loosely- where there was a small market. We purchased fruit, yogurt (why is it that every country has better yogurt than we do? Man, this stuff was yummy! Here we are, out on the remote edge of the earth and they have this delicious yogurt!), bread, etc. to make breakfasts in the condo.

Every little village is centered around a soccer field. That is their main source of entertainment, I guess. Their homes are open, cement or dirt floor structures. They spend their time out in front of their homes, gathered around a cooking fire or where a fire could be. It was interesting to see the life style and to reflect again on how blessed we are to be born in the United States.Happy Fourth of July to us! It really was moving to be away and to see how many ways we are blessed to live in the United States- on that important holiday.

The week was restful and relaxing. We swam in the pools, read, ate at the five star restaurant at the resort and just enjoyed being together. Ken started each day with a four hour or so birding adventure. He hiked around the jungle and saw about 50 new species of birds- added to his life list. He was in bird heaven.

Our camera doesn't have a scope, so he doesn't photograph birds (his brother, Don does that), but we did stop along the road and snap this picture of a Mott Mott. He says this is one of his favorites from the trip:

On Wednesday, we braved that old road again and went back an hour and a half to the town of Santa Cruz. I made Ken snap this picture of one of the ruts to document that I'm not exagerating: This road was bad!

There is no gasoline station out where we were. You have to go back 1 1/2 hours to get gas. We bought a few groceries, got gas, and had an adventurous lunch. We had been told that you can always find someone who speaks English, but we never found them. We had read in a magazine about a café in Santa Cruz that made delicious Costa Rican food and tortillas. We tried to find someone who could give us directions, but had no luck. My mouth, by then, was watering for fresh tortillas with rice and beans. So we just stopped at a café that looked alright. Oh man. It was, well, less than clean. I tried to communicate to the man (I think he was the owner) that I wanted rice and beans and chicken. I got a bowl of rice, a bowl of beans, a bowl of squash, a platter of tortillas, and huge platter of chicken, salad, and this yummy saucy vegetable sauce. We laughed at how much food it was. It actually tasted really good, but we were just praying we wouldn’t get sick. Ken’s meal was also very tasty, other than the rubber band he found in his salad and the chicken bone he found in his mixed rice.

We ate out two other times at restaurants away from our wonderful resort. All three were adventures. There were dogs in every one. Yes, dogs; just roaming around, begging your food. At one, there were two huge German shepherds.Another dog ventured in and they had a huge dog fight under the table, knocking over all of the food. It was scary.

At another one, we walked in to find the biggest screen television we have ever seen in a private residence.The place looked pretty clean, but as we ate, a cockroach ran across the table and hid under Ken’s plate, a dog begged food under the table and a bat flew back and forth across the big screen television. I was so glad to get out of there. After that, we decided to just eat at our resort. We felt so blessed that we didn’t get sick from our eating adventures. Here's a picture of that huge tv with a very dramatic soap opera-ish show on. We drove out to a little village, Guaitil. The drive out there was absolutely gorgeous. Ken commented that this was the land of the Book of Mormon. The pictures are beautiful, but don't completely show how beautiful it was.

Guaitil is famous for their native pottery making Many of the homes had little pottery stands set up. We stopped at one and bought a piece of the pottery with a monkey on it to remind us of my favorite part of the adventure- the monkeys!

This was their home (this is the only picture I took of a home, and believe me, this is one of the nicest we saw.)

The process for making this pottery has been passed down from generation to generation. This young mother is now running the shop.

Now to those monkeys! All around our resort was jungle. Howler monkeys lived in that jungle. We hiked up to see a troop of them sleeping one day.

Then on the last evening, a troop of them was in the trees right by our hotel. They howl. It sounds like a guttural dog bark, kind of like “Ho! Ho! Ho!” They were right above us. In fact, if Ken had been over a step or two, as he was taking pictures of them in the tree above him, he would have been pooped on. We watched them climb around, howl, copulate, poop, and carry their babies on their back. We were closer than if we had been at a zoo. The sunset that night was gorgeous and the lightning bugs abundant. We had such a gorgeous view from our back porch of the ocean, jungle, and resort. We loved sitting on our back porch: soaking in the view, reading, and listening to the waves crash below. We were there during their rainy season. Wednesday evening, returning from our trip to Santa Cruz and Guaitil, we arrived back at the resort just as THE MOST AMAZING rainstorm I have ever seen, hit. Man, oh man . .. sheets of rain were falling from the sky. We were under the metal parking covering, hoping it would let up a bit so we could make it to the condo. But the lightning and thunder were SO loud and virtually simultaneous. We decided we needed to just go for it or risk getting fried by a bolt of lightning. By then, a raging river, okay raging stream, had formed that we had to cross, before we could run for the safety of our condo. By the time we went the 30 or so yards, we were both soaked to the skin. Like I say, I have never seen anything like it. Once we were inside the condo, I really enjoyed watching it pour, though that thunder was scary. Another day, we spotted a little sign on the road that said, “”Wood Carving” in English. So we parked the car and ventured down the path into the jungle. Imagine our surprise when we found this: This man, who could speak no English, was carving native birds and animals into this tree. It was s intricate and gorgeous.

It was so fun to see his beautiful carvings. He had set up a little shop where you could purchase his carvings, and imagine my joy when I discovered they also sold jewelry that his wife makes. I bought an onyx ring. I have a nose for jewelry, I think. Even in the dense jungle, I can find a jewelry store!

All week I teased and begged Ken to go skinny dipping with me, well in my case, fatty dipping. Right below our condo was a beautiful little pool surrounded by much foliage. The resort was only sparsely occupied. I thought we could sneak out in the dark of night and cross something off my bucket list. Did we do it? I’ll never tell, but I will say that when they are showing the movie of my life, you might want to fast forward through the Costa Rica part!

I’m kidding, I’m only kidding. I’M JUST KIDDING! I did have fun teasing Ken about how easy it would be all week. Here's our secluded little swimming pool:

We were SO impressed with the employees at the resort where we stayed. They all did all they could to help us be comfortable and have a nice time. As we said, the restaurant was really, really good-the quality was better than and just as fancy as cruise food. We had some great meals. We really bonded with especially a couple of the employees there. Pedro was a twenty-three year old chef. He has been trained since he was ten years old and really has a gift for cooking. He was so eager to please us, often bringing special unordered dishes to the table. Waiting for lunch: One of the dinners- I don't remember the name, but it was stuffed chicken breasts: Ken LOVES crème brulee. He loves it. It is his favorite treat. He tried ordering it a couple of nights, but they would say, “We don’t have it. The dessert tonight is the Costa Rican brownie.” So we finally ordered the Costa Rican brownie. Oh my, that was good.It was more like a dense frosted chocolate cake with some sort of brittly nut glaze over it. Again, I should have taken a picture, but it was gone before I even thought of it. But Pedro caught wind of Ken’s love for brulee, so the last night, he especially made three lemon brulee’s for us. It was so cute. We also bonded with our frequent waitress, Tatianna. We found out she had three children, and was a single mom. On the last day, she brought her two oldest daughters to work with her and we got to meet them. The little one cuddled up right next to me and fingered and admired my jewelry, chatting in Spanish the whole time. Oh, she was cute. I think of them often and pray for them.

I was so impressed to find out in a little village some beautiful American young adults. They were there building a community building for the people. They were with a group called “Students for Humanity” They said they stayed with families. They all had beds, but most got wet when it rained, some of them slept outside. I can only imagine their living conditions, yet here they were, miles and miles from civilization, in the humid heat, bug infested jungle, serving others. They all had a beautiful light in their eyes and faces. I group hugged them and thanked them for their work.

Saturday, we left for the airport. Getting out of Costa Rica was even more of an adventure than getting in. The “airport” was really just a big hangar with chairs. They had no idea how to do security. The metal detector screamed at my artificial knees. “No problem!” they said and waved me through. But then, in that miserable heat, they confiscated our water bottles! Water we bought AFTER going through security. They had ten or so uniformed policemen digging through everyone’s bags, taking their water bottles. They had huge garbage baskets full of water bottles. We think they probably filled them back up and sold them to the next group of unsuspecting tourists. I was SO glad to get on that plane and get out of there. It was good to be on U.S. soil again. We arrived home at 2:30am on Sunday morning. Ken had to be at a 6:00am high council meeting.

So there you have it, our Costa Rican adventure. Would I go back? No. Would Ken? Yes. Maybe he should have written the story. I guarantee it wouldn’t have had the “fatty dipping” part in it- if he had written it, I mean. And it would probably have had more birds in it. So until our next adventure (this time in the United States) Adios!