Las Quebradas Biological Center

Today we had planned to go to Wilson Biological Center in San Vito but it was POURING this morning and we decided against it. When the day turned out to be beautiful we wound up at Las Quebradas Biological Center across the river from our house. The drive there is pretty, and the gardens are OK. It was only $2 to get in, $2.50 if you don't live in Costa Rica, and you sort of get what you pay for. If you live close it's worth a trip. It seemed like maybe in the tourist season there was more because there were several buildings and a souvenier shop that were all closed. There was a class from Canada volunteering to fix up the butterfly exhibit so that was closed too. The man at the gate said in the morning there are monkeys, but we didn't see any. So these are the cows on the road to the place. I never tire of the cows in the road lol.

The really cool thing about the ride up was that we got to see our house from afar. Being bright orange it really stands out!

OK Maybe you don't find our Diego as cute as we do, but this is new hobby... we call him Señor Busybody.

It's not easy being green ...

Yesterday a motorcycle screeched up our alley with the Minister of Health emblem on the side. The rider informed me that they would be fumigating the neighborhood today since there are reported cases of dengue. We have heard our next door neighbor has it. If you don't know what Dengue is here is the Wikipedia link: Dengue Fever. Anyway, he tells me that they will be by after 8:30 am and will fumigate the house and yard to kill any mosquitoes which carry the disease. Now I used to chase the mosquito trucks on my bike when I was younger and wondered what lasting affects this may have had on my health. For those of you youngins that never experienced mosquito trucks, they used to come through our development and fog the area with a pesticide that would kill off mosquitoes. The kids in the neighborhood would hop on bikes and ride in the smoke as the truck went through. It was tons of fun because it smelled cool and you couldn't see where you were going because of the thick smoke. This of course was back in the ignorance is bliss days when you were certain that the government would NEVER do anything harmful. As a side note, I went to a flower show in Philly as an adult and saw an exhibit on the natural ways they are controlling mosquitoes now. I asked the man at the booth if there were any long term affects for us bike riders from the pesticides the trucks were spraying. He looked at my son and told me not to worry about it since I had a healthy child. When I told him that my son was adopted he made a quick exit - hmmmm food for thought.

Back to Costa Rica ...

So I wake Mario up at the crack of dawn, ok the f-ing rooster woke us up before dawn, and I tell him we need to poison proof the house. We cleaned off all of the counters and put anything that food might touch into the cupboards. It was irking me that I had no say in this, it was going to happen no matter how I feel about indiscriminately killing every insect with poison, but at least I could reduce the amount of it that would enter my body. So everything away we waited for the fumigator. We heard the hum of an engine coming down the road, so I packed up my computers and put them in the desk. I went to the back of the house to use the bathroom and let Mario know they were coming. As I came out of the bathroom Mario was looking frantically for Diego. Apparently the men came down our alley and fumigated without telling anyone. The house was filled with choking smoke, they just pointed the apparatus into the front door and let it fill the house. Luckily Diego came running and we all got outside, but there was no escape since the air outside was also filled with the same smoke. I took a deep breath and went to the front of the house where I had Diego's leash. We got him on it and walked until we came to an area where the smoke was thinner. In about 5 minutes the air was clear outside. We hung around for about a half an hour and then went in and turned on all the fans to clear out the house. I really resent having this done, I understand the risk of dengue, but I also feel I should have some sort of a say in what I breathe.

A few hours later the motorcycle was back. He was checking each house for any standing water that could be a breeding ground for mosquitoes. I asked him what the fumigators used to kill the mosquitoes and he told me that it only affected mosquitoes. Oh and it might kill spiders and cockroaches too. I asked about the butterflies, since we saw one dying in the road and he said oh no, they are too tough, the poison doesn't affect them. Funny cause I thought cockroaches were pretty tough and it kills them. The woman across the street has lovebirds outside that survived the ordeal and we saw lots of other birds, including hummingbirds, and butterflies this afternoon so life goes on. He says that they will be back again to repeat the process. I have learned from this experience. I plan to completely close the house and take Diego on a day trip. I don't want to be around here when they come again.

We are tiled and I am coming back for a visit!!

The tiling is done and we finished painting, ok we still have the molding and a few doors, but we have the majority done!! So this is what we look like now!

See how cute Diego is without his rosey glow! We still want to paint the bars white to contrast with the blue.

This is the view from the front door.

The living room. I know the candles are REALLY orange. For some reason it is almost impossible to find decorative candles here. Most are the emergency white kind. These are manderine and didn't look sooo orange in the store.

The kitchen/dining room. Notice it is no longer yellow. After we picked the tile I realized the yellow doesn't really match it. Thank goodness we had only painted the primer coat and were able to put this beige over the top. We left our bedroom and the spare bedroom yellow (no pictures since they are still a work in progress). The daisys on the table are from the weekly market and cost me a whopping 2 bucks. I plan to have flowers in the house all the time!

This is my office. We got the drapes in Dominical from the cute gal Mary and I met last year on our trip. She remembered us! These are actually wraps to use over your bathing suit but I like them as drapes. Yes that is luggage behind the desk, storage is tight here. The desk is covered in glass. I looked all over for a desk pad since I was scratching the surface with the keyboard. We couldn't find any thing like a pad in our city. When I decided to use my trunk as the coffee table in the living room I wanted to get glass cut for the top. Mario though I meant the desk so he measured that instead. I told him to keep the measurements but that it would be way too expensive to get glass for the top. I had priced it for my desk in the states and it was over $150. So we went to the glass store, yeah they have a glass and mirror store, 2 in fact, and they charged $20 for both pieces of glass, amazing.

I am coming to Point Pleasant NJ July 9th through the 18th. I hope to make it around to see everyone. I am staying with my parents so give me a call if you want to get together!!

If you live in Costa Rica how do you know when you are on vacation?

We took a four day weekend since my work was slow and everyone in the states had off on Monday. What fun!! We rented a car and went up to San Jose. I had the I want to buy everything in sight frame of mind but was able to restrain myself! We are having the floors tiled in the house, all of them, so everything is topsy turvey once again and we were just in the way, a perfect excuse for a get-away. We took Diego with us just for the fun of it and because he has been looking so depressed since there are no dog parks here.

Mario had a problem getting to the rental place so they delivered the car here. We will be utilizing that service a lot I think! We decided to go to San Jose via the Costenera. They paved the whole thing since Mary and I were here in June! Funny enough they still ride horses there although it looks like a highway now. This is one of my favorite pics from the June trip:

This is a paved road now.

We decided to skip Dominical until the way back, and headed directly to Manuel Antonio. Mario hadn't been this way for many years and kept commenting on how much everything had changed. We stopped for a bit in Manuel Antonio and Diego got to take a dip in the ocean. He loves the beach here. He can run out really far because it doesn't get deep and lay down til the waves break over him. The he runs around in the surf like a nut. It was great to see him so happy. We ate in a restaurant on the beach and a guitar player came and played one of my favorite Spanish songs for us (Te Amo Demaciado by Koporacion). Diego decided it was a sing-along about half-way through and almost gave the guy a heart attack. I guess he didn't see D under the table lol. From there we went to San Jose. I really don't care for cities and I remembered why while we were there. I can't take the traffic! It really sets me on edge. We stayed at a hotel called Hemingways. Thanks Michael from Doin Costa Rica! He suggested it as a dog friendly spot and it was. The hotel is a block from a park where Diego could do his business, hard to find greenery in the city so that was a blessing. They have a cute cat there so D couldn't lounge around with us in the public places, but the room was HUGE so he was comfy. We ate right next door and the restaurant had a bar so we hung for a bit. It was an interesting night, we were talking with a guy from Belgium who had come to Costa Rica for a long weekend 5 years ago and was thinking it might be time to move on. There were also 2 young guys there, one from Spain that worked on a cruise ship and another from Sweden who had just arrived and was staying in a hostel. We all swapped "how do you say this in your languages" for a while and had a great time. Then 2 of the bartenders "friends" came by and sat with the young guys. After a while we figured out the "friends" were there to entertain the young guys. Interesting evening to say the least.

The next day we walked to the boulevard and shopped shopped shopped. I didn't get everything on my list, but I put a dent in it! We had paid an extra $10 to stay in the hotel past the noon checkout time, and by 10 am we were pooped and thinking about leaving San Jose. We went back to the room and Mario crashed so we wound up using the extra time for him and Diego to sleep.

After the death defying drive leaving San Jose we went to his sisters' houses. I think the Costa Rica maps I got from NavSat for my GPS were a great investment! We used it everywhere this weekend! Although it kind of spooked me that the closest landmark to his sister Zuly's house was the morgue and it was in the POIs. As with all of Mario's family, although we had eaten and asked only to have coffee, both sisters made us dinner. We had a great time and I got to speak a lot of English with Mario's niece's husband who is from North Carolina. We left way later than we should have and headed to San Ramon.

We had booked a cabin in San Ramon at a place called El Bosque Lodge. It was kind of strange because you had to pay for the room in 12 hour increments. Now if I had my US brain working I would have said hmmm hotel by the hour, wonder why that would be... But I didn't think about it until we were leaving. The cabin was really n ice and clean, but there was no phone, no restaurant nearby, nothing that would make a 2 night stay worth it. It was a nice place to sleep and that's what we used it for. It was relatively cheap also. It was REALLY hard to find and at the bottom of a mountain road, not a fun drive at 9:30 in the pitch black. Waking up was beautiful, no traffic sounds, no roosters, just tons of birds.

We went to visit Mario's other sister and her family. The views from their house were INCREDIBLE and of course I forgot to take pictures. They have a furniture business and we got to see where they make the furniture. Really cool and interesting. The wood here is beautiful! Oscar is going to make a table for our living room from the center of a tree, he had a slice of a tree there that looks like it will make a beautiful table but unfortunately it is sold, he is looking for one for me.

We went to some really beautiful places with them, first we went to Zarcero to see the topiaries.

Then they took us to see a spectacular waterfall.

It was a great day! The next day we took a spin through Sarchi on the way home. They are famous for the hand painted ox carts they produce. Here is Mario next to a wheel:

Exploring my new home is really a blast!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHANA!!

Buenos Aires Costa Rica

Today we went to Buenos Aires and I saw some of the most incredible mountain views. Mary I miss you and your camera because these pictures don't do it justice!

Every trip here involves crossing a rickety bridge. Here is today's:

Buenos Aires is where Mario's older kids grew up. Here is their elementary school:

We stopped to see Buenos Aires' balls, I know they need a better name, even the town is called Balls, but it is really interesting. Here is a snippet from Wikipedia about the balls:

The stone spheres (or stone balls) of Costa Rica are an assortment of over three hundred petrospheres in Costa Rica, located on the Diquis Delta and on Isla del Caño. Known locally as Las Bolas, they are also called The Diquis Spheres. These are the best-known stone sculptures of the Isthmo-Colombian area.

The stones are believed to have been carved between 200 BC and 1500 AD.

Numerous myths surround the stones, such as they came from Atlantis, or that they were made as such by nature. Some local legends state that the native inhabitants had access to a potion able to soften the rock. Another claims that at the center of each sphere is a single coffee bean.

It has been claimed that the spheres are perfect, or very near perfect in roundness, although some spheres are known to vary by 5 centimetres (2.0 in) in diameter. Also the stones have been damaged and eroded over the years, and so is impossible to know exactly their original shape

Also from http://web.ku.edu/~hoopes/balls/intro.htm :

The stone balls of Costa Rica have been the object of pseudoscientific speculations since the publication of Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods in 1971. More recently, they have gained renewed attention as the result of books such as Atlantis in America: Navigators of the Ancient World, by Ivar Zapp and George Erikson (Adventures Unlimited Press, 1998), and The Atlantis Blueprint: Unlocking the Ancient Mysteries of a Long-Lost Civilization, by Colin Wilson and Rand Flem-Ath (Delacorte Press, 2001). These authors have been featured on television, radio, magazines, and web pages, where they do an incredible disservice to the public by misrepresenting themselves and the state of actual knowledge about these objects.

Although some of these authors are often represented as having "discovered" these objects, the fact is that they have been known to scientists since they first came to light during agricultural activities by the United Fruit Company in 1940. Archaeological investigation of the stone balls began shortly thereafter, with the first scholarly publication about them appearing in 1943. They are hardly a new discovery, nor are they especially mysterious. In fact, archaeological excavations undertaken at sites with stone balls in the 1950s found them to be associated with pottery and other materials typical of the Pre-Columbian cultures of southern Costa Rica. Whatever "mystery" exists has more to do with loss of information due to the destruction of the balls and their archaeological contexts than lost continents, ancient astronauts, or transoceanic voyages.
Hundreds of stone balls have been documented in Costa Rica, ranging in size from a few centimeters to over two meters in diameter. Almost all of them are made of granodiorite, a hard, igneous stone. These objects are not natural in origin, unlike the stone balls in Jalisco, Mexico that were described in a 1965 National Geographic article. Rather, they are monolithic sculptures made by human hands.
The balls have been endangered since the moment of their discovery. Many have been destroyed, dynamited by treasure hunters or cracked and broken by agricultural activities. At the time of a major study undertaken in the 1950s, fifty balls were recorded as being in situ. Today, only a handful are known to be in their original locations

Whatever the official explanation is Mario tells me there were 3 of these balls at the school in Las Bolas but someone stole one (I have no idea how). They were moved here but he doesn't know from where. They are really impressive.

Mario is 6'2" tall. These are really big balls!

Rethinking the city life ...

When we decided to move to Costa Rica I came to see if I thought I could live here. I loved everything about Costa Rica except the area where Mario had his house. It is very close to the city of San Isidro del General and I prefer country living. I like the thought of a house perched on a mountain with spectacular views and no one around for miles. Of course I thought I may never be able to afford that since the prices here are skyrocketing since it is the new Florida and everyone seems to want to retire here, but still, it was my dream. Now that we have been here over a month I am rethinking this "dream". I am really starting to love our little shack, and Costa Rican city life isn't exactly New York. This is my view from the yard:

The fence we put up is barely visible, but the wooden thing in the center of the picture is the gate. The building is Mario's parents garage. To the left is the bird feeder that we made together from a plate and chain. The birds won't come near it so far, but Mario tells me it's because they are full since the woods in the back are filled with bananas. This doesn't feel too much like city life, except the neighbors are really close. The other night I needed to use the servicios (bathroom) in the middle of the night. Our bathroom is sort of outside since it is in the pila (sink) room which is open except for the grates on the walls. When I opened the door I saw a huge rat-like tail on the boards over the bathroom door. I started screaming for Mario (understand it was late at night and he was sleeping), I was yelling rata, rata, so of course he came running out in his underwear. I had slammed the door and was holding it shut with all my might since you know about the man-eating killer rats here in Costa Rica. (Well it IS a jungle so who knows what they are capable of). Mario goes into the pila room armed with the fly swatter, and starts to laugh. He says that is not a rat it is a zorro. A chicken eating zorro. So he proceeds to push it towards the back door with the fly swatter. Again I am peeking through an inch crack in the back door trying to see what a chicken eating zorro looks like, but I never actually saw anything but the tail. The zorro leaves, Mario patiently waits for me to pee since I am petrified that this chicken eating zorro may convert to human flesh and we go back to bed. As we lay down he says, you know they are kind of cool these zorros, they carry their babies in a pouch like a kangaroo. An opposum? that was an opposum??? Yup. Hardly the jungle monster I had thought, none-the-less not something I want to meet on my midnight bathroom run. So yeah, maybe I am not cut out for green acres, maybe the city is a better place for me. Do they have man-eating rats in the country???

Here's some more views of my city life:

 This is our patch of corn that Mario's mom planted on the only spot of soil in the yard with no stones. We didn't have the heart to pull it up so I planted coreopsis in between the stalks so at least we will have some flowers there too. I just put in a mamon chino plant that produces tasty big grape size balls of fruit. I thought it was a bush, but the neighbor's bush towers over our house. I am hoping if I keep topping it off it will stay a reasonable height.

Here is the coconut palm behind Mario's parent's garage. It makes a great rustling sound when the breeze blows.

We have a favorite restaurant here, thanks mom some things never will change, I still hate to cook. This is the view from our table, when the sun shines on the mountain you can almost see the people it is so clear!

This is the fruit of the cocoa tree in our yard. Yes cocoa, the chocolate tree. You crack open the fruit and there are white milky covered seeds inside that you can pop out and suck on. This one wasn't quite ripe so it tasted like sweet tarts, I liked it so much we may never have a ripe one! You can put the seeds out to dry and then grind them up to make cocoa powder which of course is the basis of chocolate. Mario made me put the seeds in the burn pile since he says if the touch the earth they will root and we will have more chocolate trees than we can handle. I don't think he has any idea how much chocolate I can handle, but I put the seeds in the burn pile anyway!

One last treat from Andy and Fran from Boomers Offshore:

http://www.vimeo.com/11954396

It's almost 7 am here (yes it's Sunday - damn roosters!) and I have to get ready because we are going to the country today. We are heading to Buenes Aires to see where Mario grew up and visit his family. Hope I don't run into any man-eating rats!!