First trip to the beach -Playa Esterillos Geography and getting there: (Bill’s portion of the blog) On our trip to the beach at Esterillos we proceeded down highway 1 or the autopista toward Puntarenas. WE cut off the autopista a town named Esparza and headed toward the coast to the port of Caldera. This port has taken the place of Puntarenas where most of the big cruise ships come into the country and much of the exports are shipped out of the country via the Pacific coast. Not much more to this port than it’s a deep seaport for receiving the [View Full Entry]

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We’ve been asked about where we get our food here. There are several grocery stores in town of varying sizes. We have favorite stores for different things. There is also the central Mercado where we like to shop for meats once a week. The locals shop daily but it just isn’t for me. We buy enough meats, usually Mondays for the entire week. We buy our fruits and vegetables on Friday afternoons at the feria. Ah, the feria…what a place as you can see from the pictures. We LOVE the feria, with its fresh fruits and vegetables, flowers, fish, cheese, fresh [View Full Entry]

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We are looking forward to meeting with our attorney on Tuesday to finalize the details on our property purchase. The conditions for our option on the property have been met and we are ready to proceed. What that means is the road to our property has been completed to Bill’s satisfaction. It was a very difficult road to travel when we were here in the rainy season and made the repair of the road a condition for our purchase. Bill is happy now. He was on the property to observe the backhoe and rock laying last week. He was very excited [View Full Entry]

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My favorite bird in Costa Rica to date is the Blue Crowned MotMot. My first exposure to him was just days after we moved into the rental house. He captivated me with his vibrant turquoise head and black band thru his eyes. There is a legend here that the motmot did not want to help in creating the world. He hid in a hole in the ground leaving his tail exposed. The other birds were justifiably angry and pecked away his tail feathers leaving a bare area and single feather at the end. Being the bad guy he is said to [View Full Entry]

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Where to begin…The goal tonight is to get several blogs typed up and ready to post tomorrow at the internet café. I worked on saving pictures to the jump drive for 2 hours this morning. I hope you enjoy them all. I know many of you are wondering why I’m not posting more often. Our landlord, Edgar sent his wife to ICE, (not ice, pronounced ee-say) the phone/internet monopoly, on Friday to make arrangements. It will be 128k dial-up but at this point I’ll take anything I can get. I like to write at night or in the early hours of [View Full Entry]

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This is a little late in getting published as we haven´t been to the internet cafe lately. Sorry for the delay. ICE, the internet company was out yesterday to see about having it installed in the house. They have to fix a wire underground then... possibly next week we´ll have internet. Keep your fingers crossed! Jen Grecia is about 30 kilometers southeast of San Ramon. We headed out on our mission to find the World of Snakes for Callista. Mundo de los Serpientes has been on her mind since we passed the sign weeks ago while furniture shopping in the town [View Full Entry]

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Having purchased the Izuzu Rodeo earlier in the week Bill decided we needed give it a test on the mountain roads. Wow, what a maiden voyage it turned out to be. It was nice to take a trip in our “own” car for a change. Callista quickly turned the back cargo area into her personal playground. Bear enjoyed having the back seat all to himself although he really prefers to be in the front seat with daddy. We headed directly north out of San Ramon on the main street thru town. The road takes you through the Los Angeles cloud forest [View Full Entry]

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Hola Everyone and Thanks for reading the blog and posting comments and questions. I save the info on a jump drive and take it home from the internet cafe to share with Bill and Callista. We really enjoy the comments! First of all an explanation as to the delay in updating the blog. We haven´t been to the internet cafe in a about a week. Our attempts in the evenings have been thwarted as the students come in to do their homework. No computer access means no blog updating. We are going to talk with our landlord about getting access at [View Full Entry]

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We awoke on Sunday morning and decided that since we still had the rental car we’d better make good use of it and not sit home. We started off driving the opposite direction from San Ramon and ended up in the town of Piadades Sur. It is a quaint little town with a great turn out for Sunday soccer matches. It seems the women go to church while the men play or watch ‘futbol’. We cruised the town for awhile then Bill decided to take us elsewhere. Callista & I had no idea where we were headed but were willing participants. [View Full Entry]

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Buenos Dias! Where to begin.... guess it´s best where I left off..... Callista had a rough day at school and needed to take the rest of the day off. It can be overwhelming at times. We worked on ways to handle things when there is too much to handle and she has done fine ever since. She likes the school and was thrilled to find that two days a week science is in english. The instructor had to ask her how to pronounce words in the text. He realized she could read the chapter better than he could so he´s made [View Full Entry]

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