http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Struthers Family/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Struthers Family en-us Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:43:24 UTC Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:43:24 UTC OK so I guess we will have one more blog post before we go. This is about my Steve's trip to Cerro Chirripo the tallest peak in Costa Rica. I and 2 of my friends here in Costa Rica Kilon from North Carolina and John from England decided to do the adventure together without wives and children.The trip began with a 4plus hour drive to the town of San Gerardo de Rivas. This included wait http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/Cartago/San-Gerardo-de-Rivas/blog-314068.html My sister Patti and her 2 children John age 7 and 10 months and Grace age 5 arrived first. Unfortunately my brotherinlaw 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 expat friends and their families. The next day they had Luis the v http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/San-Jose/Ciudad-Colon/blog-308784.html For those of you who have been enjoying our blog these past 11 months our apologies for being so delinquent in writing anything new recently. We are still here in Costa Rica in case you thought our lack of updates meant we had gone home early and hadn't told anyone. But we are now in our final month of our yearlong sabbatical. We will be returning to Minnesota the first week of September a http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/San-Jose/Ciudad-Colon/blog-308699.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/San-Jose/Ciudad-Colon/blog-272805.html The boys were so excited to learn that one of their best friends from home Peter and his parents were going to leave the cold weather in St Paul and come down for a weeklong visit during the first week of April. Unfortunately their trip coincided with the first trimester's midterms. So the boys buckled down and studied early so that they could play with Peter when he arrived This included http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/Puntarenas/Manuel-Antonio/blog-272804.html 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 2hour 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 watertaxi all over the place to drop people at their hotels. When we got to our stop we had to get a http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/Limon/Tortuguero-National-Park/blog-272803.html In Costa Rica there is no debate about when schools in Costa Rica take their spring break. Everyone is off for Semana Santa the week before Easter Sunday. So with the boys off school and some friends from Minnesota Dave Naomi Nicole Abby and Allison down for their kids' spring break we decided to do some traveling.Our first stop was Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui. This is located in the http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/Heredia/Puerto-Viejo-de-Sarapiqu-/blog-272802.html Ok almost 3 months after returning from a trip to Bri Bri I am finally getting this blogpost done. Apparently I have adapted well to ldquoTico Timerdquo. 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. http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/Limon/Bri-Bri/blog-272800.html 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 outoftown 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 distinc http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/San-Jose/Ciudad-Colon/blog-272796.html 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 4hour bus ride away. Well we survived that little ordeal just fine and have enjoyed an amazing adventure since then. We have experienc http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/San-Jose/Ciudad-Colon/blog-252508.html Our friends from California Todd and Nancy arrived last week for a 20day vacation We decided to join them for their first stop Arenal Volcano. It had been dormant for 300 years until it erupted unexpectedly in 1968 killing 85 people in the process. Since then it has been spewing lava gas ash and hot boulders off and on. It is apparently the largest or second largest active volcano http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/Alajuela/Arenal/blog-251373.html In Costa Rican political news.... Kyle came home on the second day of the new school year and casually announced that he had been elected class president. Apparently his responsibilities include sitting on the school wide student council and being in charge of the class when the teacher has to leave the room. He also claims that he has the authority to hand out boletas demerits if he sees http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/San-Jose/Ciudad-Colon/blog-251367.html Nancy Christian Dayan and a group of about a dozen medical students from Michigan State University are spending 2 days on the Caribbean coast working with an indigenous community called the BriBri. So one of my responsibilities while they are gone is to get some blog postings up I am sure Nancy will do one on her experience there some time soon. In addition to this one there are 2 others S http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/Limon/Puerto-Viejo-de-Talamanca/blog-251360.html Hola this is Sam. Since my brother Kyle got to do a blog entry I wanted to do one too. So I am writing about our trip to Manuel Antonio a few weeks ago. First we had to take a long car ride. This included driving over a really old bridge that swayed when we went over it. Even though Mom and her friend Robyn were a little scared I thought it was cool. Then we stopped at a river where th http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/Puntarenas/Manuel-Antonio/blog-247206.html Rather than try to create a wellcrafted eloquent blog post we thought we would just bring everyone uptodate with a bunch of bulleted snippets from the past month or so. Christmas was great. In addition to Steve's mom dad his brother Jeff and his girlfriend Marne joined us. It was so much fun. We paid a visit to the United Nation's University of Peace where they have a wonderful par http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/San-Jose/Ciudad-Colon/blog-245028.html Hello my name is Kyle and guess what Since my dad is taking so long to get these December blog posts written I get to write one for youThis segment of our blog is about the clinic giving out shoes to some of the kids in the communities the clinic serves. My Grandma Linda from California went around to all of her friends and family and collected money in order to buy the shoes http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/San-Jose/San-Jose/blog-236903.html Next stop on the December blog catchup is Dominical which is located on the Pacific coast in the middle of the country. Steve's dad arrived late Wednesday night the 12th of December and the next morning we all piled into a rented Toyota Prado 4x4 for the 4hour drive to the coast. The drive included climbing to the highest point 10000 feet on the InterAmerican Highway within Costa Rica http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/Puntarenas/Dominical/blog-236302.html The first installment in the blog catchup posts is our visit to Monteverde Cloud Forest. Steve's mom Linda arrived from California on Thursday the 6th and we drove up to Monteverde on the following Saturday morning. The 25mile road off the highway to Monteverde is notoriously bad but they recently paved the first 8 miles so it was not too awful. The vistas are amazing as you climb upward y http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/Puntarenas/Monteverde/blog-232124.html We have had an incredibly busy month since our last blog post. Here are the highlights Kyle and Sam successfully completed their final exams scoring in the 90s for almost all of their subjects. Most importantly Sam passed his Spanish exam thanks to many hours of studying. They are now on break for 2 months starting their new year of school in the first week of February. As a reward for a http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/San-Jose/Ciudad-Colon/blog-229544.html Many of our friends and family have sent us emails and called us to make sure we are ok because we haven't posted any new information for about a month. Well we are doing just fine busy with school work life at the clinic etc. Also we have not gone on any exciting side trips so we did not have any dramatic photos to show the world. Here are some the things we have been up to since we la http://www.travelblog.org//Central-America-Caribbean/Costa-Rica/San-Jose/Ciudad-Colon/blog-222694.html