Ketchup and Mishmosh Illustrated

So this is my first attempt at a video. I took this on Sep 15th in the center of PZ while the families paraded by with thier faroles. It was really beautiful. All of the kids (with help it looked like) made these beautiful boxes, some in the shape of houses, some animals, some abstract, but all with a light inside. For Sep 15th, Independence Day here, they have a big parade and everyone walks around the town square with their faroles. We had a flat tire before we went to town and stopped at a gas station to get it patched. The greasy mechanics were all huddled around this small table making a Spongebob farole. Too funny, they were all discussing what to use and how to do it, it really looked great, but we left before they finished it. The other odd thing is that the faroles are lit with a candle. It was so strange to see really little children proudly holding their paper and cardboard faroles with a lit candle inside and yet there were no burns that I saw. Something you wouldn't see in the states.

After the parade the children from the various towns don traditional costumes and dance on a stage they had set up. I had no idea there were so many people in this area! The dances were spectacular you could tell the kids worked really hard to learn them.

On the homefront, Mario talked to our landlord about the mud problem. I think it was after we got the waterbill lol. It was only about $20 but he feels it is high since he is washing the car like twice a day. So she agreed to go halves on a load of stone. He got it all spread out how he wanted it so now the car comes in relatively clean unless it is pouring. Which it does everyday at 2 and in fact is doing as I type *sigh*. I am patiently waiting for the summer they promise me will be hot and dry. I am so cold lately, whoda thunk it in the tropics! So here is the driveway now:

Note the tire tracks on the right side. After they got done laying the stone Mario felt that it should be compacted and used a half a tank of gas riding back and forth over it. Well I may be exaggerating a tad, but it seemed like he went back and forth for ever.

Here is the bottom part of the drive. We have some stone left up top and Mario tells me he will be leveling the hump and filling them in. They left some extra in case the mud sucked up what they had laid, but it seems like it will be fine so he wants the bottom to look good too. Plus the road is really steep coming in on this side so it is hard to hit the 2 tracks when we come in this way. You can see the portulaca we planted down the center in this pic, it should be beautiful once it fills in. We just got 10 more plants to help it fill in faster! Also Mario divided the purple plants and now they are filling in to be a straight line on both sides of the drive.

Guadelupe asked me to post some pictures of the yard for her brother in the states so here they are (Mario has been VERY busy!):

 This is my attempt at keeping the mountain at bay. We have 2 of these vines and then 3 other kinds that are planted at intervals next to the house. I also put in morning glory seeds. I am hoping all of these flowering vines will grab hold of the dirt and keep it from falling, plus it will look spectacular when they are blooming!

 These are plain old marigolds, but they really match the house. They grow bigger everyday. Mario loaded them up with compost. We also got fertilizer with Guadelupe's help, she is the landlady, and he has fertilized all the palms, purple plants, and the flowering bushes that were here. They look better already!

This is another shot of the big area we planted. We doubled the plants in the hopes it will fill in faster. Mario liked the marigolds so much we filled in the lantana with yellow ones. They really pop on sunny days.

This is another shot of the mountain in the front of the house. The blueish gray palm is a bismark palm and you can see the bougainvillea we planted with the same hope of it climbing up and covering the dirt.

This is the back yard, we put the mesh fence up to keep Diego in. There is no traffic, but I am afraid he would walk in front of the few cars that pass. Also being in front of the coffee farm there is a danger of snakes if he wanders. There are also poisonous toads, but they are almost as big as he is and he is afraid of them.

This is the area up top where the new part of the driveway is. Mario made me this cute garden. He used stones that were scattered all over the place. We put coreopsis seeds that a woman had given me when I was admiring her beautiful garden. The people here are so nice. They are starting to come up so I hope one day when we build our own home I can start more plants from these.

That's all the pics. I am heading home on Friday for my 3 month treck. When you come to Costa Rica you get a 3 month Visa and have to leave the country for 72 hours once it is up. I am going to visit my parents for 11 days in New Jersey. It's with mixed feelings as I will miss my home and life here, and my mom is going into assisted living. I hope to help with the transition for both her and my dad. It's one of the hard things about being here, not being able to help at the drop of a hat; but, I am a phone call away and talk to my dad almost everyday.

My mom's situation has  also caused me to worry what will happen when I get older. In my experience here I see that families care for the older folks. Usually the families are very big so there are many people who can help out. Either someone comes to stay with the elderly person or they move them in to their home. I have no family here and Mario is the same age as me. I have been thinking a lot about what will happen as we age. He has no children here either so he is in the same boat. Luckily we are both healthy and as I found out when I made this move nothing needs to be permanent. We are starting to look at land and we are keeping ease of travel and public transportation in mind as we do. This house is wonderful and we really love it, but it is a far way down from the main road and pretty steep. We don't think we would want to build a house in a similar terrain because it would be hard to make it out if we couldn't drive. 

On a lighter note - my son turned 23 today! Happy Birthday Jake!!!

Whale Watching and Why I just LOVE Costa Rica!

Today we drove down to Playa Bellena to go whale watching. It was a great day. We arrived and thank goodness had the GPS on or would have missed the dinky sign pointing to the dirt road to the beach. We drove until we hit the parking lot where they had an old guy tugging on a plastic ribbon which blocked the cars from passing through. If you passed the lot he lowered the ribbon. Apparently they blocked it just long enough for the attendant to convince you that this is where you want to park. If you decided not to it was OK you could pass. But most people thought since the road was blocked you had to park here. The guy persuaded Mario that for 1500 colones ($3.00) it was best to have the car safely parked. We purchased the tickets to the boat for $15,000 colones each ($30.00). You would have had to paid an additional $6.00 to enter the park, but after much discussion they decided that I do indeed live in Costa Rica and we got in free. Funny enough the park entrance, like so many things, was in dollars.

The tickets were for the 9 AM boat so we decided to have a bite to eat before we left and stopped in a cute little place along the road to the boat. They had 1 entree to choose from, pinto (beans and rice with cilantro), sauced meat, and hot dog. Interesting combination but filling. The resident little dog waited patiently for his scraps. As we were eating we saw the boat guy pass with the people that we were supposed to go with. As usual I panicked and said we had to go and Mario assured me we could catch another boat. Sure enough when we left somebody stopped us and had us follow them to the next boat. I really have to learn the Pura Vida way!

We went out about 20 minutes and then hung around waiting for whales. All of the advertisements I had seen said there were high tec GPS systems to locate the whales. Well our captain and mate had cell phones and they kept calling and were called getting the latest positions on the whales. We saw several spouts as they surfaced, very cool as I have never seen that except on TV. The mate (I am using the term loosely as you can see how big the boat was in the picture) told us that they are not allowed to be less than 200 meters from the whales and there is a 15 minute time limit for each boat. They also had to go very slowly as not to scare them. Just as we were giving up we saw what we at first thought was a huge dolphin, but no! it was a baby albino whale! We only could see it's back as it swam bit the baby and mother surfaced a few times and it was soooo coool!

 Here is a picture of the mom. I tried to get the baby but I have really slow reflexes and have a ton of pictures of the ocean now. That dark spec in the ocean is her. The group we were with were so friendly! and we had a wonderful time.

As you can see the boat is pretty small. on the ride back I noticed the "captain" kept lifting this blue container on the floor. Then I noticed the container had a hose that went into the motor. You guessed it, it was gas! I was thinking hmmm this would never fly in the states. But pura vida we had enough gas to make the trip.

All in all it was a an experience and I just love the laid back atmosphere here. It is like a vacation all the time.

Pics n stuff

I have had a few requests for a pic of the front of the house so here ya go! The doors on the bottom go into the living room and the one on the top goes into the bedroom. Poor planning for the upstairs door because although it is so great having the light stream in and the balcony right there, everyone walking by can look right into the bedroom! Ok so like maybe everyone walking by is like 1 or 2 people a day, but still it's a little creepy. I wanted to buy tension rods and put up a curtain since we can't put holes in the door for a regular rod, but apparently no one in Costa Rica uses tension rods or my spanish sucks because they all look at me like I have 2 heads when I ask for it in the stores. They get the idea of what I want, but keep coming out with shower curtain rods. Same concept, wrong scale. Oh well, I go to the states again in Oct so I know what's on the list.

We ordered a bunch of furniture from Mario's brother-in-law and it is really great! These are the loungers and table that he made us. Eventually we will get cushions for them, but I am really enjoying laying on the balcony reading. Diego loves it too, he has become a lap dog!

This is a crappy picture of the garden that Mario put in for me. It's nice that he is planting everything while I work. I have tall orchids with mexican petunias in front. In front of that we put lantana. The butterflies love lantana. There is also a tree that gets really pretty pink flowers but I doubt we will be here to enjoy it when it is tree size. I like the flowers so I will enjoy them while it is still small. There is also a fig tree and mamon chino that I plan to keep at bush size. Easier to pick the fruits and they tell me the fruit is better too. The center of the driveway has portulaca which is beautiful on sunny days. We hope it will fill in the dirt strip with a burst of color. The redish mounds were here when we moved in. Mario thinned out some that were close to the house and filled in the holes. It should look like a strip soon. He did the other side of the drive today, hopefully they grow fast. It is challenging here because unlike the soil in Los Angeles this is awful orange clay. We have been buying sacks of organic fertilizer, abono here, but still things seem to yellow quickly. It's a shame because there are palm trees and other flowering bushes around the perimeter of the property and they are dying. We are doing our best to save them so maybe with some TLC they will make it.

I was trying for a pic of the planter here, but I love how the sky looks. Sitting on the balcony just makes me glad to be alive, it's incredible how beautiful it is here. We are starting to look at properties. Mario wants to sell or trade his house in Los Angeles for a property in this area so we can stay.

Well that's it for now. There is a whale festival in Playa Ballena tomorrow and we are going to go out on a boat to see the dolphins and whales. I can't wait! I will put up pics as soon as I can.