A memorable night

Little did we realize the memories we would make this night

This weekend marked the half way point for us here in Costa Rica.  Unbelievable!  We arrived 6 months ago and will return to the States 6 months from now for a brief time before heading to Chile.  We weren’t planning to celebrate the event, but we had an opportunity we couldn’t refuse.  There was a team here from the States who offered to watch the children for 3 hours, so that all the parents at our language school could have a night out.  What a blessing!  We found several other couples who were interested in going out to eat (one couple looking to celebrate their 10th anniversary), so we got a van and off we went.  We decided to head to the restaurant Dave and I had attempted to go to for his birthday (without success).  Thankfully, the driver knew where he was going and we did, indeed, get there. We were all enjoying the meal, when I attempted to swallow a piece of meat with grissle.  After several tries, I realized the meat was not going down.  I was trying not to make a scene, but at this point I knew I needed help.  Thankfully,  the friend seated beside me was a doctor.  I grabbed him, and he immediately realized I was choking.  After he did the Heimlich maneuver several times, the meat was dislodged from my throat.  Needless to say, that provided enough drama for the evening to be a memorable one!  We all went on to finish our meals without further excitement, but with plenty of thankfulness. Thanks to God that he had Tully sit beside me that night.  And thanks to Tully for saving my life!

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Flying kites and sledding, all in the same day

Going up!

Going down!

A beautiful day

Most of our friends in the States won’t start thinking about flying kites until March, but here in Costa Rica the weather in January and February is perfect for this activity. Recently, we discovered Parque La Paz, the place where everybody goes to fly kites. We got a kite for Ben, and he had a great time seeing how far up it would go. The wind was quite strong and it was work to get the kite back down, but worth the effort.

There’s also a terrific hill at this park where all the kids go “sledding”. All you need is a piece of cardboard and you’re set. It’s a little bumpy, and we saw plenty of “wipe outs”, but it’s an affordable thrill! Today, someone saw Ben using a tiny piece of cardboard he had picked up off the ground, and so he kindly lent us his sled made out of a piece of paneling. It was better than cardboard, but the numerous holes in the ground still slowed him down. At least we didn’t have to be concerned about frostbite!

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Coffee Beans and Clouds

Coffee beans

Making candy

Suspension bridge

Some awesome trees

In the cloud forest

One of many rainbows

Where the rainbow ends

Sunset in the rain

We’re always grateful for a 3 day weekend, especially when we have the opportunity to visit some of the sites here in Costa Rica. This past weekend we joined another family from school and traveled to Monteverde, a town in the mountains northwest of San Jose. It took about 4 hours to get there. Once we got settled into our cabin, we got a ride to El Trapiche. This is a small farm with plantations of sugar cane and coffee. We had a very interesting tour which explained and demonstrated the process of drying, grinding, peeling, and roasting coffee beans. They also demonstrated the process of making brown sugar from sugar cane, using oxen to help sqeeze the juice from the sugar cane. It was great fun making candy from the sugar.

Saturday we took a walk above the treetops in a cloud forest. There are 8 suspension bridges in Selvatura Park which provide a great view of the forest. The boys tried to make things more exciting by swinging the bridges, but those bridges were pretty sturdy. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any interesting animals or birds, but we sure saw lots of trees and ferns!

Apparently the area was experiencing a tropical storm, so there were strong winds and a heavy mist the entire weekend. But that resulted in some of the most beautiful rainbows I’ve ever seen. One rainbow looked so close to the ground, it seemed we could touch it. We even saw the end of one or two of the rainbows (no pot of gold there)! We saw double rainbows and today as we drove home, we were actually above a rainbow! Last night we saw a sunset in the rain. It was a weekend of unbelievable beauty!

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Three Crosses Slay Pride

Cross #1

Cross #2

Cross #3

The path is steep

We’re going to make it

Worth the view

If I’m going to be honest, I’d have to say that before this weekend I thought I was in pretty good shape for my age. With walking to and from school every day, I thought I was ready to tackle a trip up the mountain to see Los Tres Cruzes. Dave, Ben and I joined a group of the single students from our school to take the hike. We left the school around 8 a.m., taking a public bus downtown and then catching another bus to take us part of the way up the mountain. When we got off the bus and began the ascent, it didn’t take long for me to realize that this was not going to be a picnic! I don’t know who erected these crosses, but they are spaced along the path with the final one at the top of the mountain. If I am presented with a challenge, I am determined to meet it, so in my mind, there would be no turning back without having reached the goal. However, the path was steeper than I expected and it never leveled out. Plus, the last cross was at about 7,000 feet, so I was constantly stopping to get my breath. But after 3 hours of hiking, we finally made it to the top. We actually had to go down the other side of the mountain a short way to get the best view. We enjoyed the vista and a rest, then climbed back up to the top in order to go down the same way we came. Of course, the descent was much faster. That only took an hour and a half, but my knees were aching by the time I got to the bottom. The view was worth the effort, but I don’t think I’d do it again!

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If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know if you’ve gotten there?

I had planned to take Dave out on Sat. night for his birthday to a restaurant at a mall nearby, but what actually happened more or less evolved as the weekend arrived. On Thursday I was sitting in the student lounge trying to keep warm, when I overheard a couple say they haven’t had many opportunities to go out to eat since they’ve been in Costa Rica. The couple is new this trimester and happen to live up in our neighborhood. They also have a vehicle here which they drove from Honduras where they had been working. I told them that I wanted to take my husband out and if they were interested in going, we could go any night of the weekend that suited them. Friday night worked best for them, so that was settled. We talked about the restaurant at the mall, but I said I had also heard about a place up in the mountains that had very reasonable prices if they wanted to try to find it. They are the adventurous type, so we opted for the mountains. So Friday night we set out. We had no address and we didn’t even have the name of the restaurant. All we knew was that it was on the same road as the restaurant we had gone to for my birthday (when we had used a taxi), that they specialized in steaks, it didn’t have a view, and the building looked like an airport hanger. How could we miss it?! Well, we got through the first town with no problem. Both Dave and I remembered the big Home Depot type looking store at a Y in the road. Unfortunately, we didn’t remember which fork to take. We took the high road, but after 15 minutes of driving, realized it didn’t seem right. At least we remembered the town we needed to be headed toward and after asking a friendly Tico if we were headed that way, our suspicions were confirmed. Back down the mountain we went to take the low road. Back up the mountain on another one of those winding 2 lane roads with cars passing on the curves. We passed the restaurant we had gone to in December – a good sign! But we weren’t seeing much else in the way of civilization. We finally saw a big building on a hill. Did that look like an airport hanger? Not really. But the sign seemed to indicate that they specialized in meats and we had already been on the road an hour, so we were willing to give it a try. With only one other car in the parking lot, we weren’t sure it was open. The guys checked it out and motioned us to some in. We chose a table by the fireplace, as it was windy and chilly at the top of the mountain. The owner had a little trouble getting the fire started, so we didn’t really benefit from the heat. But we had a good meal and great fellowship. And although there was no view from the restaurant, we had some great sights traveling up and down the mountain. As it turns out, apparently we were not at the restaurant we were looking for, but we had a fun night out anyway.

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Birthday Fiesta

No, I did not plan this party for Dave’s birthday. It just happened that the party for the new students at our school coincided with Dave’s birthday. Some of our teachers demonstrated the traditional dances of Costa Rica, and this is what comes of sitting in the front row. Dave got pulled into the dance and ended up being the one left with the broom. (I’m not sure what that means, but it obviously is not desireable!) Dave was a good sport and it was a lot of fun.

That afternoon I baked our special cake for birthdays (The Cake that Everybody Loves made with all the ingredients I had brought back from Christmas vacation) to take along to our regular Friday night pizza fellowship night. The candles that I bought here were the skinniest candles I’ve ever seen. By the time we got all of them lit, carried the cake out to Dave and sang, they were totally burned down into the cake with wax running everywhere. The birthday surprise came, however, when I took my first bite. It was totally burnt on the bottom. As I was trying to figure out how I had done that without smelling the cake burn, our hostess came forward with a humble confession. In all the hubbub (there must have been 50-60 people at her house), she had turned on the burner of her stove to make more tea. Unfortunately, the cake was on the stove and she turned on the wrong burner. Oh, well. So much for the cake that everybody loves! It was still a happy birthday and one we will certainly remember!

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