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Our little Royal Family was not happy in Parismina and we left as soon as humanly possible. The day after our forced march, we were so exhausted that doing a patrol that night was out of the question. And this first day, our only full day there, we were stolen from left and right. Very discouraging.
But the straw that broke the camel’s back and drove us from Parismina was the heat.
I’m a Straw-That-Broke-The-Camel’s-Back kind of gal. There may be loads of reasons to do or not do something, but there is always that One Determining Factor: . . . → Read More About Hot Like In Hell
Hal spent a year in Germany in his youth. During that year, he traveled all over Europe. He said in every country but France, you could hold out your hand with money in it to pay for something and get back the right change. They’d count it out so you’d know.
Do NOT do that in Costa Rica. At least not in heavily touristed areas, like along either coast. You will NOT get back correct change. For the first time in Costa Rica, we had money flat out stolen from us, starting with that cab driver. Over . . . → Read More About Stealing For Sport
The Parismina posts are a tad humiliating to write because the complete and utter depth of my APness is painfully obvious. AP is JAP without the Jewish. Being a materialistic pampered little thing is certainly not reserved for a people. I can tell any lawyer joke without batting an eye. But in the pre-PC-JAP-joke days, I always had a hard time laughing because I could empathize. What’s so funny about making reservations for dinner? I so understand Janice. We must be twins separated at birth. Who in their right mind would touch something icky? And . . . → Read More About A Good Walk Completely And Utterly Spoiled
The Fearless Four along with Hal the Driver are on the way to doing just this when our car breaks down. Two days before, Hal had picked it up from the shop where it’d been for a week. Driving these roads does a pretty thorough wear and tear job on your suspension… Since we’d had no major work done in over a year, we figured it was time. Well, apparently, they missed something.
We were an hour or so outside Cartago, two hours from home and twenty minutes from the rafting . . . → Read More About Conquering the Mighty Pacuare
It is Sunday afternoon and the boys are finally having their surfing lesson! We’ve been thwarted every single time: stranded the first time and unable to make our date, waves too big the next time, waves too small the next time, then we thought we were leaving and decided not to try again. Then we didn’t leave and, this morning, we ran into Topo at breakfast and everything fell into place for this afternoon 2:45. They just left.
Mo is gung-ho on surfing (he’s done it before), Jacob seems interested and a tad excited, having caught some . . . → Read More About A Few Stolen Moments
You’d think we’d have learned our lesson. You’d think we’d have put it together by now that freight trains in Costa Rica don’t sound like those cute train whistles or Thomas. Or even real freight trains. They sound unremarkably like 18 wheelers. EXACTLY like 18 wheelers. And such an unremarkable sound, you can’t find a .wav online… not like you can train horns!
Monday morning, Day One, and we’ve departed for whitewater rafting at 7am. Been driving 30 minutes, now in San Pedro in front of the University. We missed a sign and . . . → Read More About Freight Train № 2
That’s just about all that is happening. Wait. Lemme think… anything else? Nope. Sweating. That covers it.
If you are breathing in Puerto Viejo – or PV as the locals refer to it – you are sweating. Dripping from 7am till right about now: 6pm or so, after the sun has been over the yardarm for an hour. During the day, it’s too hot to do anything but sit as still as possible and sweat.
Or surf. As you can imagine, I’m big on . . . → Read More About Sweating My Butt Off In Puerto Viejo
There is a grass-roots campaign to save M-Bags! Hallelujah!!! Click here for the info in a .pdf
You can sign a petition online, takes a second and these do have an effect. Even if you never plan to send any books to me, please sign the petition because maybe someday somebody will if it’s cheap enough.
In the meantime, the Ladies of the Lake in Tilaran, a town on the north west corner of Lake Arenal, have started a kid’s lending library. Not only does their library depend on the kindness . . . → Read More About M-Bags and An Excuse
A friend told us about a local Costa Rica bank with ties to a Panama bank, making it simple to open a Panama bank account. Everybody knows if you want privacy in banking, you go to Panama.
What everybody doesn’t know is that, these days, not only does Panama put your life under a microscope, they even want to see your tax returns! That’s comforting. We’ve opened zillions of bank accounts in the states: no one has ever asked for a tax return. I guess this is Panama’s twist on privacy: show them your most private confidential information, let . . . → Read More About Panama: Privacy Lost
Jacob (15) and Robert (older) arrived on Sunday night. They are half of the family we spent last Christmas with. The other half, Randi (mom) and Willow (5), stayed home in NJ for girl time. The guys are spending the week based in a nearby Escazú B&B, taking day trips to Arenal, Poas, the rainforest… hanging out and seeing some of the myriad of sights within an hour or two’s drive.
You could spend a month in Costa Rica and never run out of stuff to see and do, even limited to stuff within a . . . → Read More About Camp Jungle-2-Jersey
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