Costa Rica

What an adventure we are having here in the Strickler School! We've been in Costa Rica for a week and have a week to go.

We arrived last Sunday morning at 5:45am after a red-eye flight from Los Angeles. My friend Anna and her kids drove with me from Prescott to LA as Anna's parents live in Santa Monica. She dropped us off at the airport and took Wally (my new car's name) and left him for me at her parents house, where I'll pick him up next Monday to drive home.

At the airport we picked up our friends Sandra and her son Nicolas Reyes.

Gotta stop and make a side note here. It's 5:20am IN THE MORNING and the neighbors, who are RIGHT NEXT DOOR are hammering at something. The noise! ACH the NOISE! More about that later.

So we met up with Sandra and Nickelstick (Nicolas' nickname from me) and went down to San Jose with them, which was awesome as it save a huge amount of stress on every one's part not having to find them in Costa Rica the next morning. When we arrived in Costa Rica and got through customs, we found a man outside with our name on a plaque. We followed him to the car rental place. We rented a little Toyota for the entire stay and boy am I glad we did. There was a bit of a miscommunication in regards to the cost, but it was the first opportunity to use our now favorite phrase: "for everything else…there's Visa". We discussed the directions for getting out of San Jose towards our destination of Tamarindo, got a map with a highlighted route and headed out the door.

The first destination wasn't so difficult to find. He said for a good breakfast head next door to the Denny's. We did and it was nice, clean and had familiar food. We needed it because we were had what turned out to be close to a 5 hour drive ahead of us.

Turning onto the main road we worked out a few problems with the clutch. :) The kids were doubtful that I knew how to drive, but after a couple of blocks we were riding smooth and on our way. Sandra and I got to chatting about this and that and the next thing we know we're driving through what does not look like a main road to anywhere. Without our handy GPS on the phone, we did what women have been doing for centuries: we pulled over and asked someone. Most of the men that we asked, when we said we're heading to Tamarindo, looked at us astonished. Two women, 3 kids with a map in our laps, asking to go to a place they had probably never been to. We found out through the last week that most people don't travel more than an hour outside of their hometown, which seems to be typical around the world. (I tried that by the way - staying within a certain radius of my house. I didn't like it very much)

So through San Jose we went - which is a very beautiful town/city. There were flowers all over the place, especially bougainvillea, which is one of my favorite warm climate plants. We found the road north and stayed on it for a very, very, very, long time. A note about Costa Rican drivers and might I just generalize here about most central/south American drivers: LOCO! All the roads are two lanes; one in a direction and one other lane in the other. Often there won't be a dividing line, which makes sense because no one uses it. People pass with the slimmest of margins and not only cars. There are motorcycles going slow, going fast. Moms walking their babies in strollers on the highway, bicyclists, people walking home/to work, all the while cars are zooming past at 50 miles an hour. It's a little unnerving as I really don't want to kill somebody, but you get the hang of it after a while.

We got to Tamarindo around 1 in the afternoon, which was right when I hoping to arrive. The kids did great in the car by the way, even though I denied them iPad time the whole way down. By the time we got to the restaurant, they were done being cramped up, hungry and hot. Unfortunately the restaurant we chose, by the beach, had horrible service that day (we tried again the following day and it had improved dramatically) and we waited for almost 2 hours to eat. Fortunately the kids were able to head down to the beach and put their feet in the surf, while Sandra and I nursed our beers and waited for the food.

At 3pm we met our host families at the Spanish School. Our family is great. The mom and dad are in their 30's with 3 kids ages 14, 7, 4. The littlest at 4 is Mylin and looks just like Dora. The family lives not in Tamarindo as only tourists actually live in Tamarindo, but in a town 10 minutes away called Santa Rosa. There they have a very large lot on which there are 5 little houses. In those houses live their entire maternal family; aunts and grandma and their families. From what I am told this is completely typical and it seems to be the way of most people in this town. Not only do they have their entire family on the property they have a list of animals that would classify them as a farm.

Pigs, monkeys, a green parrot, 50 chickens (who roost in a GIANT mango tree and they have to use a ladder to get up into it), dogs, cats and ROOSTERS! The animals tend to go quiet around 7 pm at night, but the people, including the very close neighbors with their own farms and family, don't tend to get quiet until 9-9:30. Then around 10pm the monkeys and dogs go at it, "Howl, howl, bark, bark". And by 2 am the roosters start - and I'm not exaggerating here - and they are still going at 5:50am as I write. By 5:30 you can hear Linda chatting incessantly (Linda is the green parrot) or wait, maybe it's the neighbor who sounds just like a parrot talking - I'm not kidding - and it's not a compliment. The next door neighbors also have about 15 piglets roaming around the property snorting and rooting and making piggy noises, which is so cute but not at 5:00 in the morning. Of course, the TV is also often on with it's volume blaring….

All that to say, the country is a very, very loud place. What makes me laugh is the people say the country life is very "tranquilo". Yeah, I'm thinking sleeping in a subway terminal would be quieter.

Other than the noise, the family is quite nice and very generous. I haven't had to cook or do laundry since I've been here, which in and of itself, is a vacation.

Last week, every morning we would have breakfast and be out on the road back towards school around 7:30. The first morning we missed the bus that would take us to school, so Sandra picked us up and took us in the car. That turned into a ritual as I have to admit I don't like having to be on a schedule that is not my own. School starts every morning at 8:00 and it lasts 4 hours with a break after two hours. The kids are in their own class, and now after Nicolas and Sandra are gone, it will just be Sam and Perrin. Their teachers are good for the most part, though Sam doesn't like one of his teachers and we're hoping they don't have them this week.

My class is just myself and Ralf, who is from Appenzell Switzerland. He's 37 and a engineer for designing solar panels. He's staying in Tamarindo for 4 weeks to learn Spanish. Everyday we go through grammar and use it in conversation, which for most of the time is great. Monday my brain was full as we were really tired and then by Friday I was ready to be done with Spanish for the weekend. Between not sleeping well, being out in the sun and speaking a foreign language, I'm tired.

After class we usually head out to the beach for a the next 5 hours for boogey boarding or surfing and playing in the water. I signed the kids up for a day of surf instruction with the Spanish school and they really enjoyed it. So for three days thereafter we rented surf boards and we all got lots of practice. Well, I haven't been able to practice much as the kids really need help, especially Perrin, getting their boards situated to take a wave while being reminded not to "grab the rails". This week I signed us all up for Surf School. I'm not exactly sure what it will entail, but I'm hoping we can get off the big styrafoam boards.