Nathan Getting “Bugged”…

I can’t remember if Nathan was squeamish of bugs before he went to Costa Rica, but he’s not anymore…

A Window into Car Repairs…

When was the last time you had a good experience with car repairs? Yeah, I thought so.

Let me tell you about my experience over the last few days. Our good old 1993 Isuzu Trooper has had problems with the power windows ever since we got here, but one night last week the driver’s side window died completely and of course it was DOWN at the time, and yes, of course it rained that night. (A garbage bag and duct tape saved the day, however)

The next day I went to a guy who my good buddy Jay had introduced me to before. He works out of his house/driveway and he’s my new favourite Costa Rican.

First day: He is able to get the window put up and then sends me to the auto parts guy to see how much the parts are. I find that a new part is over $200 US, and that is if I risk life and limb by driving into San Jose and get it from a parts store there. It would be over $250 to have it delivered back here to Atenas. A second hand part will cost half of that, but there is no guarantee. If we put it in and it doesn’t work, I’m just out of luck… So, back to my guy the next day. (Remember also that he doesn’t know a word of English)

Second day: I tell him what’s up and he says, “Well, how about this. I can get a new Hyundai window controller for much cheaper and I can make an ‘adaption’ to make it work and install it as best I can”. So I’m thinking that it’s going to look like crap with an ill fitting part, but I decide the car’s an old pile of junk anyway, and say “OK, go for it”

Third day: He has the car for the whole day, (from 8:00 till 5:00), and when I come to pick it up, he has taken the old window controller, cut a hole in it to insert the new, smaller Hyundai controller so it fits into the slot perfectly (It looks great!). He cut off the mismatched Hyundai connector, and re-wired it to match the Trooper controls. He did this in such a way that if some future owner ever wants to put in an actual Trooper replacement part, it will be a simple disconnect and replacement operation. Totally slick!

But that’s not all, one of the individual controllers didn’t work either, so he did the same thing with it, such that now all of the windows work (one of them hadn’t worked at all, and of course it was Nathan’s, the one most likely to get car sick)

But that’s STILL not all. I had mentioned in passing that we were also having a problem with the interior light going on and off intermittently while we were driving, but I wasn’t even sure he understood me. He determined that most of the doors had been rattled loose on the bad roads here, (big surprise) and so he adjusted all the doors so they now close nice and tightly, and had to make another adaption to one of the door’s little closer button so now the light works just fine.

And the best part of all - how much do you think all of that cost me? The parts were 34000 colones, and his labour was 16000, for a total of 50000 colones. At today’s exchange rate that comes out to a grand total of $94.08 Canadian.

This guy was a joy to deal with, and seemed to take real pleasure in seeing how happy I was with the results. I can’t remember the last time I received that level of service and value in Canada. That’s a shame.

The only unfortunate thing I foresee is that having a 16-year old vehicle on these roads will likely give me many more opportunities to be amazed by the mechanics here.

Coffee Time…

I have been hopelessly addicted to coffee for a long time, and one of the more enduring memories I have of my father was that he was never far away from a cup (or thermos) of coffee. He liked his with that canned condensed milk and at least 3 spoons of sugar – I called it candy coffee.

However, since arriving in Costa Rica I realized how little I actually knew about how coffee is produced. You could have told me that it grew on a vine, or underground, or in a pod like peas and I couldn’t have argued otherwise. Today I learned just a little bit more how it’s picked at least. (BTW they grow on kind of a bushy little tree, perhaps 8-9 feet tall, with dark green pointy leaves).

We live on sort of a rural road with coffee plants growing in lots of different places, including right on the other side of our fence. They are so close in fact, I sometimes have to move a branch or 2 away from our clothesline while hanging clothes.

Anyway, the middle of November marks the beginning of coffee picking season, and our Nicaraguan maid Maria told me today that there are lots of transient workers in town from Nicaragua just to pick coffee.

I had no idea just how the picking was done (was it a machine? did they cut them down, or what?) so I was quite intrigued to see a guy just over the fence picking beans by hand! He had a sturdy wicker basket tied to his waist with a wide cloth belt, and he just pulled the branches down and stripped off the beans with efficiency. He somehow managed to leave the green beans on the branch, and only pick the red, ripe ones. I went up and said hello, found out his name is Martin, and that he has worked for the “finca” (or farm), for 10 years. The owner is a rich doctor from San Jose. He told me that the coffee is taken to the “beneficio” (which I think means something like a co-op) just down the road from us for production. Someone told us we might be able to get a tour around the place so I’m going to try to arrange that for when the in-laws are here visiting.

I tried to ask him if these particular plants were a particular brand or quality, but it was beyond my Spanish. He did say that the best quality beans are sent out of the country and the Costa Ricans are left to drink the lesser quality stuff. I couldn’t tell if he was bitter or not, but I’m sure it’s probably true, and that’s a little disappointing.

I found out that “Shade Grown Coffee” is more natural, more sustainable and better for the environment, and I realized with pleasure that that is how I see coffee plants most often around here (including next door). Growing under other types of larger trees.

Oh, what I can say about the quality of the coffee that we buy here (which IS grown and produced right here), is that it’s great! If we are getting the B-grade stuff, it’s just fine with me. Oh, and cheap also.

 

Shade grown coffee on a hill just down our street.

 

 

 

 

Martin hand-picking coffee right next door.

You never know who’ll drop in…

Just one day after we got back from Montezuma (and I ranted and raved about how much I loved the wildlife), Megan went out on the front porch for something and saw this guy sitting on the fence post. My handy-dandy Costa Rican field guide says it’s a “Common Opossum”.

Montezuma & Monkeys

Our latest adventure brought us to the southern end of the Nicoya Peninsula to a sleepy little beach town called Montezuma. We are getting used to Costa Rica’s tourist towns being less developed than we are used to, and Montezuma is no exception. The main part of town is really just a T-intersection.

But its lack of size is more than compensated by its funky character, and one of the more interesting central parks I’ve ever seen. This large green space has big trees and a play set, much like any other park, but these trees are awesome, huge old-growth jungle trees, with vines and twisted roots and dense foliage. The play set was a little different as well, in that right at exact center of the top of the slide was a big pile of monkey crap! Oh yeah, that was the best part of this central park. The resident pack of white-faced, capuchin monkeys (at least that what my handy-dandy Costa Rican field guide tells me they are)

This trip was a little different as well in that we went with our friends, the Gonzales family. And it was a good thing too (not to mention a lot of fun!), as shortly after we left we had car trouble and had to return to Atenas & leave the car at the mechanic. So now we are much later than we wanted to be, and worried that we would miss the ferry we needed to take from Puntarenas. Add to that it was raining most of the day, so that when we arrived we were all a bit stressed I guess, and didn’t really get a good first impression of things.

For example, maybe I’ve been spoiled by the other beaches we’ve been to lately, but this one was a bit rockier and steeper such that the waves sort of just formed and then crashed right away and you couldn’t really play in them much, but perhaps we just picked a bad day.

Anyway, the longer we stayed there the better we all seemed to enjoy it, and the kids didn’t have any complaints about the beach at all.

Our last morning there, I was awoken at 7-ish by what sounded like somebody jumping on the roof. I looked out the window and saw a pack of monkeys right outside scrambling through the trees (and probably jumping on my roof!). They looked like they were eating the leaves or fruit or something. What a great sight. We also saw an armadillo, an Agouti (so sayeth the field guide), a Coati, and one night Megan and I were walking into town and some big furry thing scurried down a tree just to the right of us on the path and scarred the crap out of us. No idea what it was, but give me some time and I’ll be sure it was a jaguar. We could hear (but no one saw) howler monkeys as well, and it was so cool to know that we were in a place that the development hadn’t pushed out the wildlife yet.

The accommodations we had were both quite good but not as cheap as we’ve been used to, so either low season is over, or Montezuma doesn’t play by those rules. And unfortunately, we got ripped off in an obvious tourist trap restaurant (“The Bakery Cafe”, not that I’m mentioning any names). It had “Queso Hamburgesa”, or cheeseburger in the menu for 2000 colones, and then some other stuff written in small print below. So, when we got the bill for 4000 colones for each burger we went back to menu and realized that the small print was if you want MEAT in your burger, it’ll cost more!!! Oh well.

The 2 families got along well enough for at least 2 new nicknames to emerge, with John becoming Macgyver for his extreme resourcefulness, and Megan becoming Black Mountain Woman during the poker game (long story). The hair-raising trip back from Montezuma to Paquero racing to catch the 11:00 ferry was crazy, but hilarious (and successful). If you could see some of the “huecos”, or potholes on that road, you’d know what I was talking about.

Click on the following pics to see a bit larger…

 

 

The Ferry dock in Puntarenas

 

 

 

 

 

Central Park

 

 

 

 

 

El Mono

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Coati, I think…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miscellaneous Wildlife…

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Playa I

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Playa II

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Playa III

 

 

 

 

 

 

Street Vendors

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ferry dock at Paquera. (The hills behind look so lush it looks like broccoli)

 

 

 

 

Patsy, Mygyver & Black Mountain Woman…

 

 

 

 

 

Homeward Bound…

Rainy Season

I don’t know if you will be able to get the full idea of how hard it can rain here in the video below, but hopefully you get the idea.

For the longest time people around here were complaining because we were not getting much for rain at all, however, the last couple of weeks have tried to make up for it. Apparently we are in an “El Nino” year (or is that “La Nina”?), which means it doesn’t rain as much. When that has happened in the past, it can affect the water supply later in year. If it’s really low, it can even affect the power as it’s mainly hydro here in Costa Rica. In the past there were rolling blackouts everyday for parts of the dry season because of it.

The 2 Cane Toads you see in the video are our resident buddies who live in the drain pipes. When it rains hard they always come up for a visit.

Festival De Danza

In Costa Rica, they don't celebrate Halloween (although we were invited to a small party of some local gringo families, which was lots of fun). So, instead, there was a large "Festival De Danza" last night at the church hall in town. There was something like 23 different entries with everything from cute little kids in face paint, to a troupe of senior ladies in traditional dress, and everything in between. It was quite interesting to see.

Rachel's grade 3 class participated by doing a traditional Costa Rican "Tampico" dance. (I'll try to set a link to the youtube video below). One of Rachel's classmates, Samantha is a Tica (born here) with a Tico father and a North American mother who runs the local dance studio. Because of that, there were lots of people we know in the various dances, and of course Samantha was in a few, and is quite talented. Rachel thought she was "awesome". Gabby and Trisha were also in a few of the dances, and they are also good and you can tell they both love to perform. Leah also was in one of the dances, but unfortunately it was at the later end of the night, and we snuck out early, so we missed it. Nathan's buddy Wyatt has a little sister Savanna, who is only 4 years old, and she was in 2 dances that were great. Trying to teach 4 year olds how to dance must be like herding cats, but they were a hit.

The church hall was absolutely jammed, with standing room only, and lots of people outside peering in through the bars. They were serving pop and typical Costa Rican food (rice and beans, tortillas, a sort of cheesy potatoe mixture, etc. etc.)

In the middle of Rachel's class performance, somebody in the crowd pulled out the plug and the music died, and they had to exit and start all over again... It was quite hilarious, but in typical Costa Rican style, nobody seemed to care, including the girls.

For any of you from the kids old school in Calgary, St. Benedicts, you will see a striking resemblance to one of Senora Moir's Spanish Fiesta Night dances. In fact, Rachel was only a last minute addition to the performance, and it was only because she had done similar dances with Senora Moir, was she able to get up to speed so quickly. Senior Moir, muchisimas gracias a usted!