Post Crossings

Wow!! This is pretty awesome! I just read that Postcrossings has just registered its 10,000,000th post card.  What an accomplishment! What a happy thought... 10,000,000 post cards hand addressed, stamped, and mailed all over the world; bringing to each recipient a smile and a memory to cherish. Congratulations Postcrossings!

Life Keeps Happening....

  I have been waiting to write an entry until I had my act together at home... Well, "life" keeps happening so I don't think I am going to get my act together. Most recently my husband and I had the pleasure of ripping the floor out of the main bathroom. The gasket under the toilet had been secretly leaking and the sub floor abruptly began to sag. Sigh...

  The yucky part of the task is now behind us, a new sub-floor is in place and we will set the porcelain throne once we acquire the hardware to bolt it to the floor. My husband and I are no strangers to construction projects. We built our house back after Hurricane Hugo threw the majority of the house into the woods. Since those days we have had the opportunity to do many other construction projects under our roof...

New tile next to tub

This one was particularly repugnant due to the fact we had to tear up a perfectly good tile floor to make the repair. One good thing to come out of it is that I now am going to fulfill a long time desire to have a black and white mosaic floor in the bathroom. I have always wanted to have that kind of tile in there because we have this wonderful 1920's porcelain over cast iron corner tub in that bath and I think the tile will really set it off. So looking on the bright side, Yipee! I am going to get my mosaic floor!
  For the present I am going to have to live with the plywood sub-floor. Construction projects have a tendency to get what my computer programer sons would call "scope creep".  The john leaks so we have to rip out the floor, then h-m-m... this would be a good time to take out the 20 year old sink cabinet and replace it with one of those really nice shallow profile sink bases with the porcelain , round fronted sink top. So while we are at it we should open the wall behind the sink and re-plumb the sink plumbing, since it is old and could leak and ruin our new tile floor... and gee.. a pressed tin ceiling would really give this room an authentic period look, (another detail I have always wanted but could not afford when we were rebuilding the house). Of course we will want to give the walls and wainscoting a new coat of paint before we lay down the floor. So, once again my house will be a construction zone and God only knows how long this will take, since my husband will be very busy supporting electronic poll book implementation in preparation for the May primary... it is after all a presidential election year. At least I won't be trying to do construction with little kids under foot, like we did when we were building the house back after Hugo. At that time we had a 7 year old and a six moth old to keep up with as well as put our house back together. Actually, the thought of not having them around to "help" is kind of depressing... Enough of that. My goal for 2012 is to get over my "empty-nest" syndrome and enjoy the new life stage I am in. This is a lofty goal since I was drowning in "emptiness" before we went to Costa Rica.
  I am sorry. I am babbling. I am still working on the transition to Stateside life, I feel fragmented and scattered, but it is time for me to pull it all together. The seeds just arrived for my spring garden, so I need to get them in flats and under lights. The plans need to be laid out for a bathroom renovation and I have still got a pile of letters to answer and delinquent blog entries to write. So... I think I will grab a stack of letters, make a Cafe con Leche with smooth Costa Rican coffee, and give some of my pen friends something in their mailboxes! See you in the mail!

Getting back to Life American-Style

Hi all!
  I know that it has been awhile since I posted... Wow... life comes at you fast here in the States! I am struggling to reset my inner clock from "Tico Time" to "Rat Race", my head is spinning. It almost seems like I am going in slow motion and the rest of the world is a whirling blur around me. I know in time that the sensation will subside and that I will recalibrate, but it seems such a shame to lose the beautiful calm that came over me while we were gone.

 One real consolation is that now I am able to send and receive letters again! When I returned to the states and checked my P.O. Box, (not the very first thing I did, but it was one of the top 3), I found that it was stuffed full of mail goodness from my pen family...Sigh! It feels so good to be thought about... it made tears well up in my eyes. I have missed you guys! I am afraid that I have not had a chance yet to sit down and write any letters. I have been working on a set of postcards to mail out to everyone, so soon I will have something out to all the people on my mailing list. Then I will begin to work my way through the stack of lovely mail I have received. I want each of you to know how much you mean to me and how appreciative I am of your friendship. You are the best! Very soon I will see you in the mail!
 

We are Home!

Hi everyone! After six lovely weeks of travel, hiking, & visiting, we are finally home. We were delivered safely to our door by our son a few minutes ago and now I am going to go to bed...I am beat. I will post again soon with some final stories from Costa Rica and then I will be trying to get mail out to my pen friends in a day or two. It is good to be home! See you in the mail very soon!!

I will be posting about our time at Casitas Tenorio when we return home... We have done some video and have to wait until we can get to our video editing software before I can post. I will say though, that we had a great time. Pip and Donald the owners and hosts of Casitas Tenorio, are delightful people. They made our time in the area very special and I can happily say we have made some new friends. I also am going to wait to post about our return trip to Rio Celeste until we get back to the States so I can include some video. I will say that my knee was well enough to go down the stone stairs this time... unfortunately for me the rains washed away a large section of the path down to the waterfall so... I got to go down a different way... but I'll tell all about that when I post my pics and video. See you soon!

Spending New Years at Casitas Tenorio

A Mot-Mot came for an early morning visit.

   As I post this I am sitting on the front porch of our cabina at Centro Turistic outside of Tilaran Costa Rica. The wind is blowing so hard it is forming white caps on my coffee... I love the wind! Today is beautiful with the sun shining, birds singing and a Mot-Mot coming to visit me in front of the cabina... Perfect!
  We are leaving this morning for Casitas Tenorio, which is in the rain forest on the side of Volcan Tenorio. I am really looking forward to our time there. Of course as usual, something happens to make you think you aren't going to get to go... this morning it was the door on the van falling off... my husband was packing our things for the trip and went to open the sliding door on the side of the van when it fell off the hinges...Yikes! Fortunately our friend Rachin, a mechanic extrordinare and owner of the van we are renting, was able to help my husband get the van road worthy again. So we are off as soon as I pack up the computer and take one last spin around the grounds here at Centro Turistico...it is so beautiful here.
  In case you want to learn more about Casitas Tenorio I will leave you a link you can follow and of course in a day or two there will be a post about what we have been doing while perching on the side of a volcano! http://www.casitastenorio.com/blog/  Until next time... Pura Vida!!

A Few Days at the Beach

  As much as I love the rain in Costa Rica, after seven days it was still raining and I was beginning to hear my vacation clock ticking. We have had an inordinate amount of rain for this time of year. The kind of rain that even a stalwart rain lover like myself would blanch at the thought of going out in. It looked like it was here for the duration, so my husband and I decided to get off the mountain and go to the beach on the Pacific side for a few days.
  We packed up the 1983 VW van that we have rented from friends with a cooler full of groceries and my camera equipment and down the mountain we went! We broke through the thick layer of clouds that was drenching the mountaintop, about half way down the mountain. It was kind of like descending below the clouds in an airplane. In the blink of an eye we went from pouring rain and howling wind, to sunshine and dry roads...amazing! We pulled onto the Pan American Highway and pointed the van west.
  It is possible to get your feet wet in the Pacific Ocean a little less than 2 hours after leaving Tilaran, if you go to Playa Hermosa or Playa Panama, but on this trip we are going to some of the more remote beaches south of there to Parque National Marino de Baulas, 3 or so hours from Tilaran. We had reservations at Sol Y Luna Cabinas in Playa Grande, and planned to use it as our base of operations. We would do day trips to some of the other beaches along the reserve.
  The area around Playa Grande is a known nesting ground for the Leather Back Turtle, so development has been limited to reduce ecological impact on the turtle's nesting area. The few hotels in this area are set back from the beach behind a screen of trees, and there is very little outside lighting, so the turtles won't be discouraged from coming ashore to lay their eggs.

  We chose to stay in a cabina, rather than a hotel room, so that we could cook our own meals and have greater interaction with our surroundings. The cabina was clean and cozy, with doors that open to a varnished wooden deck equipped with two hammocks.There is a lovely pool tucked amongst the cabinas,with a swim up bar where they will serve you tasty tropical concoctions.  The beach is a few minute walk through the jungle from the cabina, but you can still hear the ocean. The path through the jungle offers an opportunity to see some beautiful butterflies and wild water fowl as they go about their business. It was a perfect place to escape from the rains for a few days!



The cabina living area with a view of the hammock deck

The pool with swim up bar



  We arrived about four p.m. and rushed to get unpacked so that we could watch the sunset. The sun sets quickly this close to the equator, so if you dawdle you will miss it! We arrived just in time to catch the sun floating momentarily on the sea, before dropping like a rock, leaving us with just the slightest hint that the sun ever existed on the western horizon. Sigh! I would have to get my sunset shots another day!
The 10 minute walk back through the jungle to the cabina seemed to take forever in the dark. We had a flashlight but the thick dark of the jungle swallowed most of the light and all we could see was the ground right at our feet. It was nice to finally see the jungle open up and the light from the cabinas show us the rest of the way home.
    At first light we took a nice long walk down the beach and then set off to find Playa Negra, a beach where you can find black sand. It was slow going since the roads are dirt and full of rocks and potholes, but eventually we made it. Playa Negre, is a surfer beach, the waves are good but the shore is treacherous in places.The name of the beach comes from the fact that the majority of the beach is large expanse of  black lava rock. I wouldn't want to wipe out on a surf board and end up taking a tumble over the sharp lava rock bed just beneath the surface of the water, but it didn't seem to deter the surfers... they have had one too many whacks to the back of the head with a surf board if you ask me...

Playa Negra

The beach is more lava rock than sand at Playa Negra

  Anyway, the beach was beautiful, as many treacherous thing are. We enjoyed a delicious vegetarian lunch at the Hotel Playa Negra, collected some black sand for my sand collection and began our long bumpy journey home. We arrived just in time for me to get some photos of the sunset!
  The next day we spent hanging around Playa Grande, playing in the water, exploring the many tidal pools, and taking photos. The sun is quite strong at this latitude, so we retreated to the cover of the jungle when we started getting toasty. We found a local haunt for Storks, Herons, Egrets and Spoonbills, while walking around under the tree cover. It was a real treat to get to watch them feed and preen, apparently unaware that we were nearby. There was too much cover for me to get many good photos of them while they were feeding, but I guess there are some things are better experienced without the camera...

We found the Storks secret hangout



A large rock outcropping on the beach at Playa Grande

  Our final sunset on the Pacific Coast was seen at a beach named Bahia de la Piratas, or Bay of Pirates. Probably so named for the tall "islands" that sit just off the shore, making a perfect place for pirates to lay in wait for passing ships. On this day though it is a perfect place to sit in the arms of my love and watch the sun plummet into the sea....

Sunset at Bahia de la Piratas