Struthers Family

My sister Patti and her 2 children (John, age 7 and 10 months, and Grace, age 5) arrived first. Unfortunately, my brother-in-law Scott was unable to break away from his law practice, so he missed out on this trip. After playtime with their cousins Kyle and Sam, we enjoyed a dinner in their honor with some of our new Tico and ex-pat friends and their families. The next day, they had Luis - the very friendly driver used by a B&B run by our friends Rita and Steve - take them down to Manuel Antonio, with of course a stop at the famous Tarcoles River bridge where you can look down and see huge, 15-foot long crocodiles basking in the sun. Fortunately, John did not feed his little sister to the crocs, so they proceeded on ... read more

Beyond our travels to the various parts of the country, lots of other stuff has been happening in our lives. School: The boys continue to enjoy Pinewoods. They did quite well on their first trimester midterms (yes, they have midterms and finals in 7 different subjects every trimester!!). Their finals are coming up next week, so there will be lots of studying at our house. The school put on skits and songs for the celebration of the Battle of Rivas, where Costa Rica turned back a mercenary army led by an American named William Walker back around 1850. The dramatic point in the battle involves a young boy (Juan Santamaria) setting fire to the fort where Walker and his buddies were but then being shot and killed as he ran off. He is such a beloved ... read more

Hi it's Kyle again.This time I get to tell you about our trip to Tortuguero. After driving a long way to a little place called La Pavona you have to catch a 2-hour boat ride to Tortuguero. It winds through the jungle on a narrow river; it was really cool. Once you get to Tortuguero you have to water-taxi all over the place to drop people at their hotels. When we got to our stop we had to get all of our bags off of the boat and haul it to our hotel 200 meters away. After we got checked-in to our room we explored Tortuguero Village. Guess what? There are no cars in Tortuguero Village - just little dirt paths and lots of bicycles. The night that we got there we went to a typical ... read more

Ok, almost 3 months after returning from a trip to Bri Bri, I am finally getting this blog-post done. Apparently, I have adapted well to “Tico Time”. At 4am on a Wednesday morning in late February, 13 sleepy medical students and a volunteer psychologist from Japan boarded a short bus with me, Dr. Christian, Dayan (our health education coordinator), Tatiana (our psychologist) and Dr. Rae Schnuth (a Med School Dean at Michigan State). We were off to Valle de Talamanca to host 2 mobile clinics for the indigenous Bri Bri tribes there. After an 8-hour drive with stops for breakfast in Siquirres and snacks in Limon, we arrived at the Rio Sixaola. (We were almost at the border to Panama, we could see Panama just down the river). We loaded all of our meds, equipment and ... read more

Wow, it has been 2 months since our last blog posts. Everything is fine here - in fact, we have been so busy with stuff at the clinic, school, out-of-town visitors, and family life in general that we haven't been able to sit down and reflect on our recent adventures. So, this weekend with no visitors and no big plans, we committed to getting things caught up. We have broken things up into distinct posts, which you can reach by clicking on the links below: Click for Nancy's account of her trip to the Bri Bri indigenous area on the Caribbean side of the country with Christian, Dayan, and med students from Michigan State University Click for a description of our Semana Santa (Easter Week) adventures Click to read Kyle's account of our trip to Tortuguero. ... read more

6 months ago today (September 3, 2007), our family woke early and boarded a plane for Costa Rica. Our adventure started on a bit of an ominous note - because of the crash of a small plane at the San Jose airport, we had to be diverted to the Liberia airport, a 4-hour bus ride away. Well, we survived that little ordeal just fine and have enjoyed an amazing adventure since then. We have experienced unbelievable natural beauty - from volcanoes to cloud forests to beaches, birds, lizards, dolphins, and amazing flowers and trees. We have met wonderful people and made so many new friends, Ticos and gringos alike. We have learned so much - not only about Costa Rica, but also about ourselves. We have battled bureaucracy, malfunctioning appliances, and the insanity of driving here ... read more