We started our Sunday by going up to the Poas Volcano and hiking around, since we couldn’t see the crater due to dense fog that had rolled in we hiked their trails. The hike was amazing; the paths take you through these amazing habitats where you feel like you are walking through fairy tale woods. After we left Poas, we went to meet one of our contractors who wanted to take us on a tour of a local coffee plantation. We have other plantation tours near our house, but they give you a somewhat glorified view of what coffee plantations can [View Full Entry]

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Opening a kosher hotel in a Costa Rica, a country where kosher food is not common has proved to be far more challenging than we could have ever imagined. It is not the luxury items that we miss, we can get some types of kosher cheese, and all of the ingredients Rachel likes to use to make her favorite blueberry muffins (a staple at any good bed and breakfast). We can even get our Morningstar Farms Grillers, and yesterday we found wasabi coated peas!!! We can eat wonderfully here if we don’t mind searching for imported food. The problems that we [View Full Entry]

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Rachel and her mother made it down on the 23rd, and for the next week there were three of us living in the house that will be the hotel as soon as we can get my renters out of our house! In many ways Costa Rica was not a surprise to my mother in law, she has been to Caribbean islands in the past and while not an island, Costa Rica has much the same feel as one. Things went relatively smoothly, from the pickup at the airport to accommodations in our house. The only problem that we had was explaining [View Full Entry]

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I am unsure if I have discussed Gus very much throughout the blog, but I will take a minute to talk about him now. Gus is our dog, he’s a Tibetan Mastiff, and has more personality than many people we know. He is just one of the greatest animals we have come across in our lives and adds so much to our lives. When Rachel and her mother first arrived, my mother in law wanted Gus to stay in her room for a feeling of security. Well Gus is not shy and if you call him into your room, you need [View Full Entry]

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Just when you’d thought we’d given up on the blog… (key suspenseful theme music, crash of thunder… but no ear-piercing shreiks, please.) First of all, Happy Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving is not celebrated here in Costa Rica, except by ex-pats and a handful of gringo-ized Ticos (Tico is the affectionate term for Costa Rican). We are going to have Thanksgiving dinner at a Tico friend's house -- the lady that Dara works with at the Inbioparque. She did her graduate school in the US and has kept the Thanksgiving tradition since. Although she was going to serve chicken [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday I finally got all of my stuff together and I was ready to head-out on my 1 way ticket to Costa Rica. Rachel and her mother are joining me in a week. This trip was reserved for the boys, just me and our big puppy Gus. I am not sure if I’ve discussed Gus before, but he’s our Tibetan Mastiff puppy. He’s about 85lbs at the time of typing this, and he’ll almost double that by the time he’s finished growing. He went under the plane, while I traveled in 1st class. I am pretty sure I got the better [View Full Entry]

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I leave the US to return to Costa Rica on Wednesday. I have tried to make the most out of the past month, and a huge part of that was my attempt to find where my future lies with regard to my progress toward my PhD (see my first post for the beginning of this crisis...). I am about the last student in my program studying wildlife conservation. The fact that I am the lone student is not a testment to a lack of interest... It's that my school has slowly lost all of its conservationist, and before I took my [View Full Entry]

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We have been going crazy trying to get our website live and debugged. I think we finally accomplished getting it almost 100% perfect!!! You can find it at http://www.theorchidlodge.com The HTML only site is still not finished, but you can feel free to enjoy the flash site! It's nicer looking anyway... Not to much else to report, we will be on our last vacation for a while going to Rhode Island tomorrow for a couple days, then I am heading back to Costa Rica next Wednesday. This time I am going with the dog! We had another House Hunters taping, and [View Full Entry]

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By the way, Shana Tova everyone. Although there are 2 synagogues in San Jose, we did not make it to services. Instead, we rang in the New Year by baking challah, eating apples with honey and having friends over for dinner. It was very nice and casual but we did miss everyone up north with whom we usually celebrate. Back to our lives here in Costa Rica - Way back in 1821, a Central American congress declared their independence from Spain, effective on September 15. Well, as you can imagine, here in Costa Rica - and as it is in the [View Full Entry]

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Well we've known this for a while, but we needed to wait out the first trimester to make the announcement. Rachel is expecting and is due in April. She just made it to her twelfth weeks, and is beginning to show, so there's no hiding it anymore! More to come so stay tuned! Matt Orchid Lodge's Website - http://www.theorchidlodge.com Click here to read our blog - http://blog.theorchidlodge.com [View Full Entry]

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