Here is Austin there is a movement of locals who appreciate and support "Keeping Austin Wierd" where they love this unique identity. Our second day in Austin was a good experience of that as went about our planned activities but went off the beaten path....literally....and saw some really interesting and hilarious things. We started out the day by heading to the Sunset Valley Farmers Market. Over on the western side of Austin close to the Hill Country you see more of the industrial/rural side of Austin. After a few missed turns we found a giant football stadium apparenlty for high school sports - obviously football is a serious sport here - and in the parking lot was about thirty pop up tents. As we approached we noted just how unusual yet refreshing it was to see ... read more

If you can look over all the entries we just were able to upload a lot more photos, when we get back we are going to do a big upload to one ofthe photo sites but this gives youan idea of what we are seeing, two more days to go. love to everyone, lara... read more

Thanks to the monkey visit on Tuesday which started at 5.30am and lasted till about 7am, Tuesday was a looong day. We checked out of the hotel at 8.30 since the power had been shut off at 8am so there was no point in hanging around and we drove to a local spice farm called Villa Vanilla. With not knowing what to expect, combined with getting a personal tour from the owner of the farm we had an amazing time. Henry was originally from Chicago, who had come to CR 30 years ago with the Peace Corp and stayed. About 21 years ago he bought a dying vanilla farm and has turned it into one of the few organic” bio-metric” self sustaining vanilla, cinnamon, all spice, peppercorn, cocoa bean farms in the region. Henry was a ... read more

Well unfortuantely we never got to Zip line today - we got to the site, paid and THEN they brought up a concern wiht the harnesses and Jay and would they fit him properly, so we pretty much wasted a day to find out they did not have the right harness for him and it would of been a risk for him to be in a suspension harness with not a lot of room for slipping.....we were pretty pissed since I had contacted the company "Canopy Titi" asked about any restrictions and was told since the cables are designed to hold 2000lbs we had no problem, what they failed to mention was if you are a size 38 waist or larger you shouldn't try go on the tour, so in the end what really was disapointing ... read more

A monkey was on our balcony today……and WE WERE NOT HERE! How do I know? Because I left a banana on the ledge and for the two hours that we went out for lunch we came back and found a banana peel on the floor - how do you like that, eat and leave trash behind! Oh well I am hopeful that the new banana I put out will secure me an up close encounter with a monkey. We did go to Manuel Antonio Park today, we hired a tour guide who without we would never of spotted three different varieties of bats, two and three toed sloths, crazy neon colored bugs but I was the one who spotted the white faced monkey! The best part was once we saw one, we then saw about 5 ... read more