La Georgina and the Hummingbirds at 10,000 feet in Costa Rica

Villa Mills. Blink and you'll miss it. 

It is not much more than a broad spot in the road. Harder to miss, just beyond the blue sign, is a crisp-looking red and white restaurant, which may have several cars and a bus parked in front depending on the time of day. That's La Georgina, founded in 1947, just a year before the 44-day Costa Rican civil war that sparked the abolition of their army and instigated several social reforms that carry on today. Must've been interesting times for this spot, since a lot of the fighting occurred up here on Cerro de La Muerte.

 I have doubts whether this place was ever in any danger of being obliterated by that war, but in any case we're certainly glad that it's still in operation. It's a spacious place and has restrooms built for no-waiting. The food is the usual Tico buffet, not bad, but not terribly creative either. The main attraction for us is in the back.

Thrilling Flight on Sansa and Pleasant Experience Using Uber

Ever since one of the local airlines, Sansa, announced last December that they were instituting flights between our area's biggest town, San Isidro de El General, and San Jose International, I've been itching to try it out. Not only had I not been on a plane since around ought-9 but I was anxious to get a lay of the land in our part of Costa Rica that can only be seen from an aircraft. It is a satisfying feeling to finally have air service to our part of the country, which seems considered an unwanted step-child to the rest of the country at times.

Our terminal companion

An excuse to try the new flight arose when I  glanced at my passport a few weeks ago and found that it was already expired, which requires a trip to the U.S. Embassy in San José to rectify. So, I booked tickets online for Tamara and me for yesterday, the 11th.

They fly between SIG and SJO three times a week, with two flights each of those days. Tickets are not exactly cheap, being $70 each, one-way for residents however. Turistas pay $100.

San Isidro Runway: lengthened, repaved a few years ago thanks to a grant from Germany

Arriving at San Isidro Airport

No parking at the San Isidro airport is available unless you want to leave your car on the road outside the fence. So, we dropped Sean at school, left the car at a downtown public parking lot and hailed a taxi to take us to the airport. Judging by the driver's perplexed look, it was clear there are not many requests to be taken out there. About 15 minutes later, through what passes for rush hour in San Isidro, we pulled up to the short cyclone fence surrounding the runway.

The 7 Harbingers of Summer in the Southern Costa Rica Mountains

Whenever I mention that "summer" is coming to Costa Rica to non-expat friends, they often look puzzled. They are thinking that we share the same summer season with North America since we are above the equator, and technically they are right. However, the tropical Trade Winds pick up this time of year and they are what divide our seasons into wet and dry.

Our summer in this part of Costa Rica runs from mid-December until the middle of April when the trades begin to weaken again. Northern Pacific provinces have longer summers and the Caribbean's seasonal changes are less distinct, but roughly reversed from ours.

Right now, it's a densely overcast, drizzly day with intermittent showers, so you'd never guess that summer is just around the corner (we hope). But, there are plenty of other signs that say, yes, the arrival of La Zona Sur's summer is imminent.

Coffee Season

Coffee cherries ready to pick

Coffee up here in the mountains is harvested later than in the lowlands and right now we are in the thick of the harvest. That means that around the corner of any country road you are liable to have delays due to farmers' trucks loading or unloading their bursting sacks of red coffee cherries. The crop this year is a bumper and the price is high too, so most of them are smiling big.

Our neighbor unloading at the recibidora

 We love coffee season, not only because it signifies summer's arrival, but because the neighborhood comes alive with the activities of the harvest and there are new arrivals, the pickers, who add a bit more color to our already colorful world. Since the neighbors are out and about more, it's also a great time to stop and chat.

When Rainy Season Arrives, We Head to the Beach!

How to Beat the Heat at the Beach

As you have probably surmised, we are not mega-fans of tropical heat when it hits the 90s. That's why we chose to build our home in Costa Rica at 4,000 ft. elevation where temps range between the mid-60s to mid-70s most of the year. When we feel the need to "visit the Tropics", it's only an hour's drive to some of our favorite beaches. 

Trash collection run on a favorite Costa Rica beach

One in particular, which we discovered recently, was the subject of our visit last weekend. It's close, small, uncrowded and has a classic tropical island look with leaning palms and reaching almond trees with plenty of sand framed by broken rocks. The nearby restaurant is high, wide and open. It's tourist prices there, but the food is not the usual gallo pinto based plate and it comes with a trio of small (non-begging) dogs that have the run of the place. One of them escorted us on the beach, happily showing us the way.

Hike to The Top of Our Finca in Costa Rica to See The El Santo Statue

 

The San Isidro de El General statue is no more as of June 2, 2015 after taking a direct lightning strike

The blog post below is from 2011 when we took a hike up the back of our property to gaze at the famous San Isidro de El General statue known locally as "El Santo." It was not, as many gringos believe, a statue of Jesus, though one could easily make that association when first seeing it. 

Yesterday, we had an averagely intense lightning storm and unfortunately, El Santo took a direct hit. Obviously, the frame was made of steel, which made the perfect lightning rod for that strike. Given how high and exposed the statue base is, it is something of a wonder that this never happened before in the 36 years it was standing. The outer shell was fiberglass, so naturally that disintegrated instantly.

Tal luego El Santo! We will miss you and we hope this emminent landmark will soon be replaced. If they get around to it within the next 10 years, that would be "soon" in Costa Rica time.

====
 2011:
I'm a Type A, to-do list kind of guy. I endlessly make lists, often on some tiny scrap of paper. They get tucked away in the wallet or left on a counter. I'm lucky if I get to half the stuff on any particular list. Then, there are all the background mental lists of things to do "someday" that are talked about in a wistful tone of voice, but usually don't make the quasi-realism stage of pen on paper.  

One of those  latter items was to trek up through the forest above our property to the ridge crest to see what I could see. That short trek, however always took a back seat to the farm chores, writing and other projects. 

Top of our local world. The El Santo statue to stage left.

I was pretty sure what I'd find. We once slogged up to a nearby ridge on a neighbor’s property for the view. Also, we'd been to the top of Las Piedras (The Rocks) during our 2009 New Year's hike up the crack between the big rocks on our northern side. Still, I wanted to know if the imagined trail up to the ridge really was a shortcut or not. And could we see Pérez Zeledón's famous El Santo statue from there.

As luck would have it, a couple of weeks ago our neighbor on the other side of the big rocks, Kim, cut a crude path with the help of a couple of workers exactly on that line I'd wanted to pass over to the ridge top. Their property has a corner that touches ours up there, and she was checking some existing survey markers and adding a couple new ones.



 A couple of weeks after that, we took full advantage of their efforts to finally make that hike up the steep slope. Machete in hand, I led the way, widening the path as we went.

Want to Buy a Lovely Costa Rica Finca? or Selling, but Not Selling Out

View from the balcony of our house. Cerro de La Muerte just beyond the clouds

Our rationale is simple: a little less field work and a little more money in the bank acount. That's essentially why we've decided to offer up a couple of lots out of our nearly 3 hectare finca here in southern Costa Rica. If you will not be satisfied unless you can have it all, we'll consider that too.

The price of the entire property is $279,000. We are open to financing with about 20% down over 10 or so years.

Here's a rough summary (more details can be found at the "Our Finca Sale" page, which you can access just under the blog header photo above):

• Located at 4,000 ft. elevation just north of San Isidro de El General. The air is always fresh and cool and the views are outstanding
• Walking distance to Matasanos village and the larger towns of San Ramón Sur and San Ramón Norte.
• Fresh, cold, clean water comes from a spring flowing right out of the Las Piedras granite batholith, part of which crosses the property

A Late Birthday Gift or the Start of a Great Birthday Month?

Among my siblings, we have a tradition that we don't just celebrate each others' birth-days, but rather the birthday month. It's not so much a gesture of generosity as much as it is a nod to our shared tendency to procrastinate. Even we seem to be able to remember to send a card or gift if we have that extra 30 days to do it! Thus, I consider what happened this morning as an extension of my own birthday even though the actual date was yesterday, the 23rd.

Chocolate cake with vanilla icing.

If you read our Facebook page, then you know it was a remarkable 60th birthday for me. It started off with a scrumptious pancake and fresh fruit breakfast, time spent on a couple of personal projects, the planting of birthday trees and a wonderful social gathering of nearby friends and neighbors. In the midst of all that was a full double rainbow and an intensely luminous sunset.

Sunset par excellence

This morning was business as usual, a quick coffee and getting Sean off to school and planning to take our car to the mechanic. From the downstairs patio, I heard some shuffling in the living room and saw that Tamara was trying to herd not one but two hummingbirds who had mistakenly flown through the open front door.

Our Second Trip to Costa Rica's Caribbean Coast - Part 3 - Cahuita National Park

Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here

It's about time I wrapped this up, eh? Been busy with paid writing gigs, what can I tell you? The final highlight of our trip was visiting Cahuita National Park, which we completely bypassed on our first trip to the Caribbean coast (also a three-parter).

Barry, Tamara, Kim on the park's beach trail

Again, our tour guides were 10DegreesAbove's photographer and blogger, Barry and Kim, respectively. They showed us the "secret" 2nd entrance to the park, which is in the town of Cahuita itself. The first entrance charges a fixed fee, whereas the one the locals use only asks for a donation; whatever you want to give. I paid 10 mil ($20) for the five of us.

Near the entrance is the restroom and outdoor showers. There's a small beach there that looks like a great place to hang without going into the park itself. The weather was very warm, but there was a pleasant breeze off the sea and ample shade on the generously wide path. The several kilometer-long trail traces the shoreline. Further up the trail, a worker was using a blower to clear the leaves on the ground so it was all sand beneath our feet.

Sean at the far end of the trail

It wasn't long before we heard Howler monkeys (congos) and then spotted a few Capuchin monkeys in some nearby trees. Halfway into the walk we passed over several elevated walkways constructed entirely of recycled plastic boards. They're meant to keep your feet dry during the wetter months, but there had been little rain for weeks.

Near the walkways, we spotted a couple of Morpho butterflies quite unlike the ones we have around our mountain home on the Pacific side. These had only a thin line of black on their wing edges. The blue color was so brightly luminescent that photos just show a washed out grey glow.

Our Second Trip to Costa Rica's Caribbean Coast - Part 2 - 4-Blogger Dinner

The Sunday following our arrival at 10 Degrees Above, we were set to all go together to see a children's parade in Limón, which was part of the city's two weeks of Gran Carnaval every October. Well, we ended up with a lovely tour of Limón with our guides Kim and Barry, but no parade. We asked several citizens where the parade was to be, received various answers as you'd expect in Costa Rica, but none of the directions put us in the path of any parade, let alone one of children. Oh well.

We did, however, stumble across a baseball game at the downtown stadium. One of our few regrets when moving here is that baseball does not garner the enthusiasm in Costa Rica that it does in, say, Nicaragua. I had heard that there exists a small league in Costa Rica with a short season but had never been to a game. 

I boosted myself over the concrete wall by pulling myself up on the cyclone fencing and, indeed, two teams in uniforms were playing. We headed to the entrance where we paid 1 mil ($2) each for admission and watched a couple of innings. 

Pitch coming in, Siquirres batting. Can you see the ball? Click to enlarge.

 The final innnings, as it turned out, of the first game of a double header. The visiting team from nearby Siquirres scored three runs to come from behind and win the game. Although the Siquirres team had matching uniforms, the local team had uniforms from perhaps half a dozen different teams, so I'm not sure if this was an official game or not, but the play, pitching and hitting were very much AA-quality at least.

Our Second Trip to Costa Rica's Caribbean Coast - Part 1 - Frogs, Toy Trains and BBQ

For living in a country that has so many natural wonders to visit, we sure do not get out much. We almost have to force ourselves to drop the chores and projects to get away from the finca for just a weekend. Which is what we did a couple of weeks ago when Sean had a 4-day school break. We could have chosen a dozen new spots in Costa Rica to visit, but we wanted a reprise of our first visit to the Caribbean side of the country.

Sloth residing in the Cecropia tree next to our cabina

Of course, it's always nice to visit with someone you know on any trip. I recalled that 10 Degrees Above blog author Kim Beck Hovland and her husband Barry offered a B&B, so we arranged to stay there. They are about 35 minutes outside of Limón, not near the beach, but their finca is a micro-paradise all its own.

After having exchanged many tweets over the months, I felt sure Kim was my kind of people. As to Barry, the quiet, creative one in the family, I hadn't a clue. Turns out, he is even more my kind of people given that we both are contented introverts who are into birds, bugs, frogs, technology and so on.

A Few Costa Rican Fauna in All Their Weird Glory

Looking back over the last several posts here, I see that I'm getting way too serious. So, it's time for a post about nothing. For your consideration, a few photos of some of the many odd creatures running about Costa Rica.

Found this little fellow on the carport the other day

This cutie is barely an inch long. It would be easy to overlook him (or her) if the contrast wasn't so stark against our carport concrete. He was not camera shy at all. I was able to use macro focus and stick the lens right in his snout.

Post Carving Costa Rican Tropicale Style

Campana carving

For years, we had intended to have the four eucalyptus posts on our outdoor patios carved in tropical style. More than one person told us about a local carver who is just a stone's throw away from us, but we always managed to put off tracking him down. Finally, we got his name one more time, nickname actually, and went to look him up. His nickname is Campana or more playfully, Campanita, which can be translated as "Tinker Bell". He wasn't at home, but later in the day he called us and came up on his little Yamaha motorcycle to check out the post.

Detail of the post

He has been carving on his own for a long time and has a large collection of walking sticks, Tico coffee makers and other goodies that he sells now and then. He does custom carving such as ours by the hour, 1500 Colones = $3.

I cleaned all the bark off the post and Tamara made the initial drawing including an odd looking moth that was camped on our back patio door as if posing.

The whole post with new base

Campana started work one Tuesday at 7 AM and quit that day at 5 PM. He filled in the drawing with a lot of other bugs, flowers and hummingbirds as he went along.

By 5 PM the next day, he was finished. It was then up to us to do the sanding, a surface burn, crack filling, sealing, staining and a final top coat of polyurethane.

I had to cut off the bottom 9 inches or so of the post as it had begun to rot. I also treated the bottom two inches by letting it soak in a mixture of diesel and penta. Afterward, I created a concrete base that is keyed into the patio floor. Tamara then decorated it with broken tile pieces.

We're absolutely delighted with the finished look. Even though I've been going over and over it as we finished it off, I feel like I see a new detail each time I look at it. Lizards, frog, hummers, vines, flowers, bugs fit right in with our tropical surroundings.

We're going to try and complete the other three posts one post per month.

Dawn Breaking over the San Ramon River Valley in Southern Costa Rica

Recently, I acquired a new toy: a palm-size 1080p video recorder made by Veho. It's their Muvi HD model. It has a configurable, continuous still shot setting that I used to make the time lapse video below from our northern balcony. The entire set of images was shot over an hour interval from 6 to 7 AM today.

Naturally, Youtube compressed the original such that the resolution is degraded, but you get the idea. You have to look closely, just to the right of center, to see Cerro de La Muerte, whose peak is over 11,000 feet in elevation. As is typical most mornings in the Emerald Season, clouds pour over the peak from the Caribbean side. I don't really know what that indicates about the weather on that side of the country though.

I hope to capture a good sunset in the same manner. We are approaching the Canicula, a two to few week warmer weather pattern in the middle of the rainy season that usually brings drier, summer-like weather. Thus, spectacular sunsets may be in the cards shortly.

One of the non-technical features of this camera is the array of mounts that come with it. You can head mount it, put it on the car dash, strap it to a tree, etc. Perhaps just posting a vid of the daily commute, dodging goats and cars stopped in the middle of the road would make a good sequence.

First Trip to Panama - Part III - Volcán, then Home to Costa Rica

Her friend the King - Barriles Pre-Colombian site

On the map, it looks like Volcán should be a short drive from Boquete, since they are only about 20 kilometers apart as the Sarjento flies. However, there is no drivable road between them, though one has been "in the works" for several years. So, from Boquete, it's back to Davíd, drive a little west on the Interamericana, then take a right to reach Volcán. It's probably a drive of about 90 minutes, but we didn't keep track, since we took the opportunity stop and do some more shopping in Davíd before heading back to the cooler mountains.

Restaurante Il Forno, Volcán, Panama

Don't take my word for it, since we were in Volcán less than 24 hours, but it didn't seem like there was much to it, and I'm sure the locals like it that way. To our delight, there was a very decent restaurant there, dubbed Il Forno, which specializes in Italian food, but has a more general menu. Prices and service were just right, as was the food. If they have a lunch rush, we missed it, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

First Trip to Panama - Part II - Boquete

Boquete View (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As we meandered through the detours along the new 4-lane stretch of highway on our way from Davíd to Boquete, we remarked on how dry the valley was. The sparseness of the stubby plants hinted that perhaps this area didn't enjoy much rain even in the wet season. On both sides of the highway, spaced by miles and far from Davíd were clustered houses that looked like mini-versions of suburbs in New Mexico or Arizona. Small lots, faux adobe, all painted in desert pastels.

Until nearly in Boquete, the road climbs gradually, but noticeably. Though I'd heard many times of this Panamanian gringo oasis, I don't think I'd ever seen a photo of it. My first view of the town was plainly not congruent with my brain's contrived image. Somehow, I'd pictured it larger and spread out across a mountain top. In reality, it's laid out lengthwise in a narrow, rising valley, steep peaks on all three sides. My first thought was of a "theme town", such as Park City, Utah, or Ashland, Oregon, though I'd be surprised if the founders planned it that way. There's a queer uniqueness and hazy similarity between each building and block along the two main thoroughfares that merge into one further up the valley.

Rev Up For a Costa Rica Motorcycle Tour

Welcome Guest Writer Evelyn Robinson and her post about options for touring Costa Rica by motorcycle!

The blue color of Río Celeste in Tenorio National Park

Tourism has become one of the fastest growing sectors of the Costa Rican economy. Currently around 2.2 million people visit the nation annually with its national parks and protected areas being the main attractions. This includes the magnificent Cocos Islands, which are a World Heritage Site and its numerous volcanoes. It is also, like Madagascar, one of the most biodiverse nations on this planet. Now many people take tours to see these sites or to hike or to go bird watching, but with Costa Rica being one of the safest countries in the region, it is the prime Central American country for motorcycle touring.

Sunset at the Beach in Manuel Antonio National Park

Now, a motorcycle tour will not take you to the Cocos Island because it is around 500 miles off the coast of the country and is about halfway to the Galapagos Islands, but there are a huge number of parks for such a small country. These include top parks like Manuel Antonio, Tortugero, Paos, Arenal and Cahuita. There are volcanoes like Irazu, Arenal, Turialba and Tenorio, plus world famous beaches such as the one in Manuel Antonio National Park, also Tramarindo beach in Guanacaste and Jaco Beach in Puntarenas. Six of the Seven Natural Wonders of Costa Rica are accessible by motorbike and these are Arenal Volcano, Chirripo Mountain, the Celeste River, the Tortuguero Canals, Poas Volcano and the Monteverde Reserve.

Northerly Sunset

Especially during the rainy season in Costa Rica you never know when you're going to get a great sunset, but you can almost always count on them being unique, even if they are not as spectacular as the one in the panorama below.

Go ahead and open it up for the full-size shot. It was brilliant and fiercely colorful. I captured this one on "film" because of how far north it stretched, which is unusual. It ran all the up and past Cerro de La Muerte. Where the foreground cliff is on the right side of the photo, where the cliff intersects the mountains behind it, that's due north. 

Because I still had the camera's memory card with this sunset's image plugged into the laptop upstairs, I didn't capture last night's sunset, which was also unique. In the foreground of that display was a rain shower. The streaks of rain as they fell were painted reddish-orange. In the opposite direction a double rainbow encircled the eastern sky. I'm always torn between running around putting the camera back together, but not wanting to miss a second of the display, because it can pass so quickly.  Next time ... I promise.

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Top 10 List of What I Like Best About Living in Costa Rica

I was driving my son Sean into Pedregoso today so he could play video games with some of his friends. On the way he asked me what I missed the most from our former life in Oregon. I recalled having thought of something just a few days ago along those lines but couldn't bring it up at that moment (his was Dr Pepper). Maybe it's because there is so much to enjoy here in Costa Rica that I don't fret over comparisons to the "old life" that much. Be here now, right? 

So, I thought I'd make up a quick list of those things I enjoy about retiring here in Costa Rica. The order is not important. It's tough to say which features are better than others. It's not so much their presence individually, but the synergy of them taken together that makes me smile, relax, and want to share the goodness that we've found living here.

Living Free and Easy in Costa Rica Near Mt. Chirripó

Not too long after we landed here in Costa Rica and the little village of Matasanos, we met some new neighbors, Magaly and Salvador and their two kids. I introduced them in the middle of this old post about our neighbors. Salvador is an Argentinian-born Greek, and his wife is Venezuelan. A year or so ago they visited family in Greece for an extended stay and when they returned they settled up towards Mt. Chirripó near San Gerardo de Rivas. Since then we don't see them as often, but we recently visited them a couple of times in their new riverside house, which is still under construction.

Open-air living in Costa Rica, you have to love it. Whenever we visit I tell Tamara that the next house (if there is one) we'll build like this, open, organic, with tree trunk posts and beams. It's so refreshing, especially with the sound of the river nearby and a small waterfall on the other side. The house has been built right into the rock, which is incorporated into the rooms downstairs.

 Of course, the house isn't finished by a long shot, so over time it won't be nearly so open, but I can't imagine it will be completely closed and screened either. I just hope they're able to stay long enough to complete it. 

As always, we have a great time there catching up on things, drinking coffee, and if we're lucky getting to taste some of Magaly's great cooking. On our second visit to this house she whipped up a big pan of moussaka, a Greek eggplant dish that sticks to your ribs.

Another Visit to San Gerardo de Dota

Long-time readers of this blog may recall a trip to San Gerardo de Dota that I wrote about over a year ago. Sean's best chums live there with their parents, Ryan and Tammy, in a perfectly picturesque cabin on the headwaters of the Savegre River. We've visited many times and have become good friends with Tammy and Ryan. They are most gracious hosts and I'm always keenly interested in the many projects they have going on, such as their greenhouse, hydroponic veggies, raising trout, and the numerous ornamental garden spots on their property. It's a beautiful location overlooking the river and the are fortunate to have Resplendent Quetzals visiting their trees.