All ready to go; bags packed, snacks ready, and movies downloaded (ok, not really...that was a bust, Zootopia failed to download overnight so we had to do without). We traveled to LAX from Carlsbad midday on 6/26/16, getting checked in and through security was relatively easy. We boarded pretty close to scheduled time, but then had the luxury of sitting on the tarmac for 1 more hour. The kids were great, even sitting next to each other the whole trip!!
Arrived in Liberia around 10:30 pm, go through immigration and customs no problem. After a LONG wait at the shuttle (that everyone on our flight needed to take as well) we made it to our hotel for the night. We made it!!
Nothing like a ride home from school on the back of big brother's moto,
while he is carrying a spare tire home to dad.
PLAYA GARZA
This is what happens when you plant a palm tree seed in your tire planter box.
Day 1
Leo picked us up in a shuttle bus to make the journey to our house for the next 6-7 weeks. He was super friendly and I was able to practice my Spanish right away. The first part of the trip was smooth, roads clear and comfortable. We made it to Nicoya in about an hour. Stopped at the PaliMaxi for groceries for the next several weeks. Had to get used to the Costa Rican colon pretty fast, lots of math during this trip. I was relying on my math master, JJ Wallace, to help me figure out if his $8,890 soccer ball was a good deal or not. He assured me it was...
The second part of the trip was "so epic" according to Gracie. After Nicoya, the paved roads stopped and the dirt began. Dirt roads we can handle, but these dirt roads were more like dirt swiss cheese. The recent rains have caused gigantic potholes (canyons) in the roads, making it a super fun and bumpy ride. It was much slower, but gave us time to see the scenery and small towns as we drove by. There was no talking to each other for this part of the trip, as all of our bottles, bags and cans were rattling around with our luggage. (The Squirt bottle almost exploded on my when we got the house.)
We finally made it to our turn off- Leo pointed out our house up high on a hill. We still had a ways to go, up this very steep, dirt road. Isolated, deep in the jungle and away from all tourists and basically any other humans is where we will be staying for the next 7 weeks, it is perfect.
We settled in, unpacked and jumped in the pool. Around 4:00 we started to hear the howler monkeys. There is the enormous fig (I think) tree just up from our place that we think maybe 20 monkeys were hiding. We could hear them. We decided to walk down our driveway a bit to see if we could find more. Right away we saw one chowing down on some yummy fig leaves, just 30 feet above us. We spent 30 minutes watching him eat his dinner. We went back an hour later and the rest of his gang joined him, along with at least 3 tiny, baby howlers clinging to their momma's backs. It was the highlight of the night...well almost. Right before dinner, the insects decided to show their faces. First, it was the centipedes (so many of them from every direction), then the moths, beetles and geckos (which we actually like), but the one that sent us all flying out of our seats was the cockroach the size of a small poodle...ok, maybe not that big, but the biggest bug we have ever seen in the wild. You know those hissing cockroaches they bring to school assemblies- that is what we saw. It was super interesting from the other side of the screened in door. One other cool discovery- lightening bugs! I haven't seen these bugs since I lived in Kansas. It was pretty cool to share this with my kids, as this was something we did every summer growing up. Later this week we will go out and collect some in a jar for them to see up close.
Day 2
After a rough night (one fell out of bed and bruised her knee and the other couldn't sleep without his sister in the room), we all went for a morning swim. Having a pool right here is going to be awesome. The kids spend most of the day swimming, either in the pool or the beach.
We decided to go check out Playa Guiones and Playa Garza for lunch. It was pretty easy to get to Playa Guiones, found the beach right away. The water was so WARM!! Way warmer than I expected, the kids literally ran straight in and started swimming right away. We had a lovely day at playing at both beaches, found lots of cool shells and made some fun forts out of driftwood.
We stopped at a local pescaderia for some fresh fish and made a typical costa rican rice and bean dish for dinner.
The kids practiced their snorkeling in the pool tonight. They cannot wait to go out in the ocean. Gracie also NEEDS to go ziplining ("like today" she says). She got all excited when she saw a cable outside her bedroom window... she thought we had our own private zipline. My little adventurous girl...
Tonight's insect fun was when an entire hive of red ants decided to relocate to a better home and their travel plan included marching right through our house. There wasn't much we could do (although we tried), we gave up and decided to just watch where they were headed. They moved through the patio, BBQ, kitchen, back outside, then back in and up the wall to the second story bedroom. No one is up stairs tonight (my parents coming later), so we let them be and hoping they continue moving along.
As I am tying I am watch a thunderstorm out the window, no rain today, it only rained about 5 minutes yesterday. Costa Rica has been in a drought worse than the one in CA, so the more it rains, the better for the locals. Bring it on, I love the smell of freshly fallen rain.
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