The Who, What, Where & Why

I’m starting our blog a few weeks early because as always, our trips to Costa Rica start even before we leave. Planning each trip is half the fun. Our adventures start long before we go & continue long after we get home. Friends have joked that even our month long trips last almost a year. This particular trip involves much more advance preparation than usual. For starters, we are driving instead of flying. Of course flying is faster but depending on which carrier you fly with, it can take anywhere from 11 to 24 hours. Flight prices vary too (again, depending on the carrier, it ranges from $900.00 - $1,700.00 each). We are also taking our dog Osa which involves a lot more consideration & paperwork. She never likes to be more than a few feet away from Dale & I so it will much like travelling with a small child that can never be left alone. This may cramp our style a bit but we are willing to make the concessions to keep her happy & safe. We brought Osa in to our family a few months after our first trip & she was named after one of our favorite Costa Rican areas...the Osa Pennisula. Most of you know that Dale & I fell in love with Costa Rica on our 25th Anniversary trip in 2005. Not only did the beauty of Costa Rica take our breath away but the intense heat did too. It was a very special adventure that took well over a year of planning. It all started when I got my first computer & typed in the word “Costa Rica”. It wasn’t that this was to be our chosen destination, it was just curiosity & a desire to maybe see somewhere else other than Mexico. Day after day I scoured through dozens of internet sites until I had collected enough information in my “Favorites” to show Dale. I spent so much time pouring over the hundreds of websites, clicking each one's numerous links, cutting & pasting in to my word program information for future reference that my wrists were aching & my clickin' finger was numb! It definitely didn't help that I had Carpal Tunnel Syndrome at the time & in the end had to switch hands to peck at the keyboard. Still, every key punched meant we knew that much more about Costa Rica. Once Dale started looking at what I’d compiled, the decision was made….we were going to Costa Rica!! First stop was to the local B.C.A.A. Travel agent to help us plan our trip. Right away we knew she knew nothing about the country. She insisted we needed to book a room in downtown San Jose so we would be close to the airport. From my research I knew that the Jaun Santamaria International Airport was actually in Alajuela, about 25 minutes East of San Jose. We let our agent book our flight to & from Costa Rica & decided to look after the other details ourselves. To this day, I am glad "we did it our waaaay"...I'm humming along with Mr. Sinatra in my head as I type this! Words to live by for sure! We wanted to see everything but unfortunately to see "everything", it could take years. Short distances on maps can be very deceiving when planning travel from one destination to the next. Just because a map indicates a place is only 90 kms away, it does not mean you can expect to arrive to said destination within an hour. Case in point, from Arenal to Monteverde via jeep-boat-jeep, it took close to 5 hours & it was only about a 25 km trip! Fortunately, because of diligent research, we knew this & planned accordingly. How I planned such a perfect holiday with no snags what so ever I’ll never know! Everything was perfect from start to finish....transportation, accommodations, the people we met...everything! I booked all our rooms, ground, water & air transport…you name it, I did it. Our itinerary was jam packed & for most of the month long holiday we were constantly on the run & we loved every minute of it! Looking back now & hearing all the bad experiences others had endured, I guess we were pretty lucky it all went so well. To date the first trip was our most memorable & enjoyable holiday. We had so much fun, saw so many cool things & created enough memories to last a life time. Nine months later, in January 2006 we headed back to Costa Rica to check out property for sale. It was a fantastic 10 day whirlwind where we saw even more of the country. Nothing jumped out & said “buy me” so we went home without making a purchase. Still determined to buy a house, we spent months looking at Real Estate sites. We flew back to Costa Rica with Dale’s Mom June 10 months later & after seeing dozens & dozens of properties we thought we’d never find the right one. The day before we left we saw one more property on the Caribbean side near Cahuita & we knew it was what we were looking for. The lawyer met us at our hotel in San Jose & we signed the final papers a few hours before we flew home. Three months later we were back in Costa Rica enjoying every minute of our new casa. Thankfully for us, on our first trip in 2005 we ate in a Soda (small eatery) & became friends with the owner Miss Helena. She has been our rock & has helped us make our dream a reality. We wouldn’t be where we are today without her help & advise. Our property is our pride & joy. The house itself isn’t much (a shack up on stilts, bright purple on the outside & electric pink on the inside) but the lush tropical feel that envelopes us is heaven on earth. The land is just under an acre with a creek running through the front yard. There are fish, shrimp, a Caiman & a Snapping Turtle that call our little creek home. We’ve had two species of monkeys that regularly come in to our yard (Howlers & White-faced Capuchins) as well as Sloths, Agoutis & lizards galore. My favorite lizard is the Basilisk (AKA the Jesus Christ Lizard because it runs across water so fast it doesn’t sink). I’ve ticked off almost a hundred bird species that visit our many fruit trees & by far the Toucan (the Fruitloop bird) is the most exciting one to visit our yard. And the Butterflies & insects are, well, just wow!! Our yard is full of colourful exotic plants & trees that attract my all time favorites...hummingbirds. There are over 50 species of hummers in Costa Rica. Being a bird nerd I absolutely love it! The yard also has over 20 kinds of fruits & nuts. So far we have found Cashew Nuts, Starfruit, Bananas, Plantains, Mandarin Oranges, Sour Oranges, Key Limes, Sweet Limes, Pineapples, Water Apples, Mangos, Mamon chino (sort of like a Lychee) , Noni, Lemon Grass, Mint, Cilantro(our lawn is pretty much made up of this & Canary Grass), Achiote, Pejibaya, Cacao (CHOCOLATE!! About 70+ trees), Maniok (Yuca), Papaya, Avacado, some type of mmm good, yellow, sticky, sweet Plum, 3 types of coconuts (coconut water, coconut milk & coconut oil) & more. The birds help plant many of the fruit trees (from their poop) so we never know what we might find growing. One year before we left we noticed a small plant behind our house that was about 6 inches tall. When we got back 9 months later it was 15 feet tall & bearing huge Papayas. Of course it hasn’t always been a bed of roses; there have been ups & downs but mostly ups. We installed bars on our doors & windows last year after our good friends down the road were beaten & robbed. It doesn’t look fantastic but it is just another level of ensured safety. The Howler Monkeys that sleep in our hedge & wake us up with a HUGE roar in the wee hours still cause a silly perma-grin on my face. Even the Rooster that greets the day from under our house (actually, directly under our bed) doesn’t bother us...much. None of our neighbours have grass in their yards so our property is a meeting place for all the local chickens. We don’t mind one bit. They keep the snakes away & the bugs at bay. We are in completely Spanish speaking community & are the only white folk for miles around. All the locals know when we arrive. How can they not? We stick out like two snow white, blonde, blue-eyed thumbs. Most of our expat friends live 20 minutes away in the rockin’, beach side, tourist town of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca where pretty much everyone, including locals speaks English. We spend a lot of time there as it is a bustling happening place. Our closest town though is Cahuita which is a much smaller beach side town & is more laid back. The Reggae Bar in Black Beach is our favourite haunt in Cahuita. Petty crime abounds as it does anywhere. We have never been accosted or harassed by anyone but our house was robbed of everything in 2007 after we came back to Canada. Lesson learned, never leave things unattended. No matter what the pitfalls, we still love Costa Rica, warts & all

Prepping for the BIG trip

So, now we will start our longest, funnest, excitingist adventure yet. We have toyed with the idea of driving to Costa Rica for several years but never really thought we would ever get a chance to do it. It would take the right vehicle to even consider such a trip. We couldn’t afford a new vehicle & the idea was put on the back burner. That all changed this summer when Dale attended his Uncle Glen’s Memorial service. There it was, a 1988 Dodge, custom camperized van with less than 100,000 Km’s on it. Dale’s Aunty Olive offered it to us for the price of the new tires they had just bought. It even came fully stocked with everything needed for camping. Two weeks later Dale went over to get it & it was ours. It had been sitting for several years yet had no rust & very little wear & tear. It ran like a dream the two hours it took to get home. We’ve had it in to be serviced mechanically & to update the AC & propane (for the stove & oven). The headlights, running lights & wipers have all been replaced. I am working on replacing all the curtains & customizing silver coated insulation for all the windows. This was a handy tip from friends that have done the drive to & from Costa Rica with dogs & cats. It will help keep the van cooler when we start hitting the hot countries. Other handy tips were: buy a club (done), a locking gas cap (done), a fan that runs off the lighter (done) & tamper proof screws for the license plates (still to do). So far so good. We went to B.C.A.A. to see how they could help & left there with a very serious armload of books & maps as well as International Driver’s Licenses. The van is insured for the trip as are we. All that is left to do is get Osa to the Veterinarian for a Health Certificate & to pack. At the moment our house is in an uproar. There are piles & piles of things to take along. I’m pretty good at packing (a skill I learned while trying to stay under 25 lbs. each for all our other trips) so I’m up for the challenge. Every cupboard in the kitchen is filled with sticky notes reminding us to buy or do something before we go....so much to do!! We hope to leave by November 1st. The countdown is on! Stay tooned :)