The glass is indeed half full

Steve:

Five months of our ten-month adventure have come and gone.  How the heck did that happen so quickly?  Where has all the time gone?  Who swiped all of my time?

We are now on the final leg of our Costa Rican journey, basking in the Caribbean sun.  But I am ahead of myself.  I need first to catch everyone up with their vicarious living. When I last tickled my keyboard we were excising ourselves from a ditch and living with Wonder Woman along an unnamed hillside south of most anywhere.  That adventure complete, we said "adios" to the horses and met up with my mom and her husband Joe, affectionately referred to as Nana and Papa.  The rendezvous was back on the Pacific coast and we hung out at the beach for a couple of non-eventful but enjoyable days in Punta Leona.  It wasn’t quite Samara, but it did at least give Nana and Papa a feel for our life during the first half of our Costa Rican stay.  We then made our way inland through a town called Sarchi that is famous for being the craft center of the country.  Oxcart design hasn’t changed much in the last couple of hundred years, but the woodworking skills are quite impressive nonetheless!

Beach fun in Punta Leona

One of the traditional oxcarts, complete with a couple of real oxen. These two were named Hercules and Sampson. 

Absolutely everything in Sarchi is an art project including this bench on a random street corner. 

Even the ground itself is all about the art.  Scotty, energize!

Josh wanted this little dude as a souvenir, but we decided we'd make our own when we got home. 

With souvenir shopping out of the way we then parked at a super-comfy inn near the top of the Poas volcano.  The intention was to go into the national park and stare into the mouth of the beast.  But the weather would not cooperate and after three days of living inside heavy clouds that made crater viewing impossible, we finally had to give up that quest in favor of a new one.  Our new quest?  Gain as much weight in three days as humanly possible by gorging ourselves with fine cuisine.  We attempted to eat everything on the menu in the “restaurant” at the inn.  I use quotes because it felt more like we were staying at a storybook grandmother’s house in the woods and she was waiting on us and cooking for us like only a grandmother can do.  Only in this case, grandmother was a couple of thirty-something guys from South Africa who had better taste in music than grandma would.  The food was tremendous, and as we were nearly the only guests at the inn we got to sit on the cozy couch by the fire and play games while we waited for our food orders to be processed.  Only when the food came would we sit at the table and devour the latest creation.  It was actually quite cold up at that elevation (about 7000 ft) and poor Papa Joe was battling a cold the whole trip. So I’m not sure how much fun he had, but the rest of us thoroughly enjoyed pampering ourselves at the inn and didn’t much miss the unrealized sight-seeing. 

Daytime view out our hotel room window.

Nighttime view wasn't too shabby either.

Waiting for lunch by the fire.

First king size bed in five months and with an actual comforter! Luxury! Can you tell I really liked this inn? 

We did have one superbly sublime day that involved exploring a place called the “La Paz Waterfall Gardens”. In this Tico-style amusement park we basically got a whirlwind adventure tour of everything Costa Rican in one afternoon. There was some jungle hiking to view multiple stunning waterfalls, a must, of course. There was a bird sanctuary where toucans perched on our forearms. There were the requisite butterfly gardens where I actually got to watch a butterfly as it broke out of its chrysalis. I had to help the poor guy as he lost his grip during the wing drying process and fell to the concrete. Without my assistance he would have been doomed to a premature passing, I am told. There were monkeys who desperately needed to continuously hold hands with each of us, though they also wanted to pull Chloe’s hair out. That wasn’t too much fun for her. There pumas, and ocelots, and tree frogs and snakes (and lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!). It was all there in one spot. Why did we even bother with the last five months when we could have been so much more efficient by just coming here in the first place? Obviously, I’m just kidding, but it was cool to be able to show all of that to Nana and Papa so that they felt they got the Costa Rican experience in their short time here. So no volcano, but Poas was anything but a bust.

Yes, he is, like a dozen others at the sanctuary, quite real and remarkably friendly. 

The ones with the rainbow-colored-beaks were incredibly noisy. I guess they thought they needed to entertain us. 

Kapuchin monkeys have five toes (including an opposible thumb toe) but only four fingers (no thumb). They all wanted to hold hands through the cage. 

The cool part of the frog sanctuary here was that nothing was behind glass. If we didn't mind a little poison, we could just reach out and touch them.  This one is called the army frog for obvious reasons.

And of course, the requisite waterfall shot.

And one for good measure with the old fogies out the way. (Yes, mom, I'm including myself in that group, so don't freak out.)  Looks like the camera lens got a little wet on that one.  Sorry.

We said goodbye to the grandparents (both the actual and the metaphorical South African ones) and drove back to San Jose to deal with a dental emergency.  I’ve been instructed that this particular part of the adventure is not to be recorded for posterity. But I do need to say it: Got to love socialized medicine!  That issue sufficiently taken care of, we ditched the rental car and boarded a bus bound once again for a piece of paradise. 

The Caribbean coast feels more like Jamaica than Nueva Vallarta, Mexico (which is the town I equate most with our beloved Samara).  Most of the people who live on this side are of Jamaican decent, and the Rastafarian vibe is alive and well.  We are spending much time at the beach watching the surfers and smokin’ the ganja (well, OK, that last part is only true in the second-hand passive sort of way, I swear) and trying hard to soak in the last few days of Central American bliss before we fly away forever (sniffle).  I am diggin’ the fact that we are ending our time in this beautiful country just as we began it.  It is a sort of bookend-feel to the whole experience.  We are again in a small town atmosphere, with only our rented gearless basket-laden bikes to get around.  We are once again a hop and a skip from the beach, no jump required.  We are again in a large rental home with a good kitchen and a yard and stray dogs at our door.  Even the name of the house is similar; Casa Amarilla (yellow house) being not unlike Villa Blanca (white villa), the name of the house that we lived in last fall. 

The road to Casa Amarilla, our home for a week.

Casa Amarilla itself

The neighbors keep hanging around. They just won't take a hint. Hey, isn't SLOTH a deadly sin?

We have exchanged mosquitos on the Pacific side for fire ants on the Atlantic side.  We hear more monkey howling but less (though not an insignificant amount of) iguana chirping.  There is also some strange bird whose call sounds exactly like a human adult male running around the jungle yelling “Paul!  Paul!” each and every night.  I so badly want to find Paul for her (I of course am assuming it is a her that sounds like a him, though I can’t and I suppose I shouldn’t rule out same-sex avianitude), but the poor thing is probably really just on a wild goose chase, quite literally in fact.  So Paul is probably nowhere to be found.

Dozens of these guys lived in holes right outside our hotel room front door.

A cool mosaic in Puerto Viejo.

Where was I?  Oh yes, bookends.  The sun sets on the left end of the beach instead of the right.  Otherwise, things are pretty much the same here as when it all began, only the feeling is quite different.  Rather than apprehension about the adventure ahead, we are experiencing a few lingering regrets about the things that weren’t meant to be.  We never did learn much Spanish (simply too many darned Gringos).  The kids still don’t have the perspective of veteran Peace Corps volunteers, much less that of the wise-old monks that everyone predicted they would become as we described our intentions to spend so much time amongst the natives.  And I still haven’t found my path to enlightenment (just what do I want to be when I grow up?).

But regrets are by no means the end-all to our mindsets.  As the title of this post suggests, we are definitely basking in the glow of our own good fortune.  We still have twenty-two wonderful weeks worth of world to witness.  And all four of us will undoubtedly be able to look fondly on these last five months for the foreseeable future.  Alliteration aside (almost?), we truly understand deep down that we are incredibly lucky to have been able to take this trip.  Having the financial means, the time and the circumstances necessary to do so can be likened to the lining up of all the planets.  We get that.  And so even though we are sad that half of our adventure is already at an end, our cups still runneth over.  We have, all four of us, grown.  And I’m not just talking about Josh’s front teeth and my waist size. 

So what’s up next?  First, we take an arduous bus ride back to San Jose, and then board a couple of planes on route to L.A.  Next is a rental car powered whirlwind errand-run with a quick high-five to each of my brothers as we slow down a smidge on the freeway.  Then we are back on a plane and in Tokyo before you can say “kon’nichiwa”.  I wonder how many folks before us have been in Punta Uva, Costa Rica and Tokyo, Japan in the same week?  There certainly aren’t many Japanese tourists smokin’ the proverbial reefer with us down here…

If you want to know what comes after Japan, you are just going to have to stay tuned to this bat-channel.  I’m not giving the fun away early.  So until next you peruse the blogosphere, may I leave you with a final “Pura vida, amigo”.  Thanks for reading.