Costa Rica Dog Lover

We finally got to finish what we started many weeks ago and present the Messiah in the cathedral in Limon yesterday (Sunday).  I have to say it was worth the trip.  The original cathedral was destroyed many years ago in an earthquake and the new one was just finished and dedicated earlier this year.  It is somewhat of an anomaly in Limon as it is a very modern structure in a very old port town.  It is absolutely beautiful, from the stained glass windows to the vaulted wooden ceiling to the towering cement spires.  Outside, there were funny decorations that included a snowman, and penguins. 

The concert itself was just okay.  We had not practiced in the church so we started singing and discovered that we couldn’t hear anyone else – only our own voice.  So it took some getting used to and we actually started the first song over.  But eventually we got in the groove and it went okay.  Now I am ready to hang out and just enjoy other people singing for a while.

Some pictures from the day:

  Port of Limon – the main port of Costa Rica

Inside the cathedral

  The Choir

  Wonderful alto soloist – she was amazing!

  Shops in Limon – love the name Soxlandia

  Ice Cream Shop across from the church – they are all over in Costa Rica

The day began with a walk on the beach with the dogs and it was gorgeous!!!  The first really sunny beginning to the day in a while.    After the walk, I went to work at El Puente (The Bridge) so that Barry and Nanci, who are the founders of the organization, could go to the graduation of the first two indigenous children who they have helped through their educational organization.  While Nanci and Barry were thrilled for the two children, I was thrilled for them.  Imagine coming to a country six years ago and taking up a cause to educate the indigenous children in the region and having two of them graduate today and move on to high school.  It is really an amazing thing and I admire the two of them so much for doing what they do. 

Another women and I and several of the Bri Bri women (and one terrific kid) helped serve soup, crackers and fruit to the families who come every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday for a meal and companionship.  It was great fun and an experience that I will repeat quite often.  It did make me strengthen my resolve to become more adept at the Spanish language – I have be lax in my learning the last couple of weeks………

Nancy has decorated their house for Christmas and one of the decorations I most love is the one here of the sloth looking in at the Christmas tree.  Only in Costa Rica!!

Yesterday I went with our new friends Sarah and Rene to Bri Bri, about 10 miles away and the seat of government for our district, to try to find them a couple of bicycles to buy.  That mission was a success but the trip had an unexpected surprise.  As we drove into the center of the tiny town we saw that there was a festival going on.  Evidently the entire town had come out for a pre-Christmas bash and it was such fun to watch.  While we were there there were several dancers performing in a variety of costumes.  It was clear they had practiced for this day for some time and they were good!!  What a day – great company and wonderful entertainment!!!  It just doesn’t get any better than this.

The stage – band was on break but notice the ever present picture of Bob Marley

Kids and balloons

The dancers – they were great!!!

Was terrific!!  I talked several weeks ago about the choir in Puerto Viejo ( of twelve people – including us) that we joined specifically to sing the Messiah in the Cathedral in Limon on December 19th.  That one concert grew to several and the first one was in Puerto Viejo last Sunday (the 12th).  The choir from Limon came down and the Banda Nacional from Limon came with them.  There were 25 singers and 15 in the band and I have to say that all together we had a great sound!!  It is amazing to me that it all came together so well.  After the songs from the Messiah were completed, we all sang a number of traditional Christmas carols.  The final song was Feliz Navidad and the entire audience joined in – both singing and dancing in the aisles.  If I wasn’t in the spirit before, I am now!  What a great time we all had

While we get rain all year long in Puerto Viejo, November and early December are normally the rainiest time.  This November we had very little rain (comparatively) but not so in December.  It has been quite rainy the last two or three weeks and most of us are glad to see it – although it is a bit of a pain sometimes when you have to get out in it.  Fortunately we don’t “have” to do anything since we are retired so I have spent a lot of the time reading and working on my photographs and otherwise just hanging out.  It has been great!! 

The Messiah concerts start tomorrow and we will be singing each Sunday through December 26th – the first one in PV and the others in Limon.  We have met some wonderful people and have had a great time and, for me, re-learning the music.  We did find out on Thursday that the Banda Nacional out of Limon is going to come to the first concert in Puerto Viejo and we are all thrilled about that.  They won’t play the entire Messiah but will play for the Hallelujah Chorus and the traditional christmas songs that we will sing after the Messiah.  It should be a wonderful time.  Nothing like this has happened in Puerto Viejo and so there is a lot of excitement in the community about the concert.  It is pretty neat.  However, I am glad that it is coming to an end.  I am ready to move on to a new adventure now. 

I am really enjoying my yoga classes.  On Mondays there are normally two of us in the class and on Thursday it is just me – at least lately.  So I get a lot of attention and it is wonderful.  I can really feel the benefits particularly in my balance and flexibility.  My teacher is about my age and started yoga when she was 50 so understands that I need to approach all of this pretty slowly   I have been walking back and forth to class and along the way I have been able to see some of the Christmas decorations that people are starting to display in and on their homes.  Christmas is a huge holiday in Costa Rica as it is a very religious nation so the Ticos go all out.

Today we are going to go to the farmers market, get the dogs more medication for fleas and parasites, and then have dinner with the people who are house-sitting for our neighbors.  Should be a great day!!

  Tree with Montezuma Oropendola nests

Kaya and pillow drying out in the brief period of sunshine

Clay colored Robin on pink bananas in our yard

Yesterday we drove to Limon with a couple of members of the Puerto Viejo choir who will be singing the Messiah with the Limon choir over the next couple of weeks.  It was a gorgeous day – bright and sunny but not too hot.  As we got into Limon we saw that there were Christmas trees being sold and one of the women with us asked if we thought we could load a tree on the top of the car when we were done with rehearsal.  She owns a hotel in Puerto Viejo and wanted a real tree to decorate.  She is from Germany and has lived in PV for twelve years and has decorations she brought with her.  We said sure so when we were done we headed back to the tree sales place and picked one out, loaded on top of the car and headed back home.  It was municipal elections day so there were people out all over and we got lots of smiles and waves due to the tree on the car

Heidi and tree salesman

Tom figuring out how to tie it down

Pictures from the road

Car decked out for favorite candidate

Some of the choir during a break

Main cemetery in Limon

Back home in PV – sailboats in the port

After three days of rain the sun came back today and is is beautiful!!!  It looks like we will have more rain off and on the next couple of weeks which is normal, but for now, the sun is wonderful.  I took the dogs to the beach this morning and the ocean is still quite rough.  The logs that have come in from the sea are enormous and there has been other really interesting stuff that has shown up as well.  Lots of shoes which is interesting, and tons of vegetation.  I picked up several seeds that came in but I don’t know what they are seeds for – I will have to do some research.

We gave Wiley a bath today since it was so nice and he was smelling a bit ripe.  He doesn’t like baths so he was a happy boy when it was all done and took refuge next to a chair in the living room in hopes that we would not bother him again. 

We are trying something new with Tom’s hands.  My yoga teacher told me about a man who does therapeutic massages who has a machine that might help.  The machine is used by the Mayo Clinic and uses some kind of frequencies to help heal a myriad of problems.  The masseuse emailed the Mayo Clinic to see if they had had any success using the machine on what Tom has and they said yes and emailed him back the specific frequencies that he needed to use.  Tom has had three sessions now with a couple of more to come and his hands are definitely better.  We will have to wait a few weeks though to be sure.  Hopefully the skin will start growing back once the cracking and itching stops.

Now it is back outside to enjoy the wonderful day!!  

Chill out!!  It has been raining the last few days and I have to admit it is nice.  It gives me the freedom to not have to leave the house too often and just hang out doing things I want to do.  For instance, I have been meaning to organize all of my photographs for months but other things just tend to take priority.  Yesterday I worked for several hours on culling my photos so that I can begin putting them in some semblance of order.  I also am spending a lot of time reading and have made it through a couple of books on my kindle this week. 

Wiley and Kaya are not enjoying the rain too much since we are not able to walk them.  But they seem to understand and spend most of their time sleeping or watching the squirrels run around in the trees.             

We have also seen a few new birds with this rain although I suspect that it is more the change in the fruiting trees than the rain.  But yesterday we saw three or four birds that we hadn’t seen before – here are a couple:

I did take Wiley to the vet yesterday to see what a bump on his nose was.  Wiley is having a bit more trouble with the change in climate than Kaya is and we take him to the vet about once every two weeks for one thing or another.  The bump turned out to be a minor infection so he got a shot and some pills and we were on our way.  It is nice that the vets charge so little here

Well – back to the outdoor living room to watch the rain and see if there are any new species of birds or other animal life visiting today.  At least we no longer have to shovel snow – that is worth the move itself!!!

I haven’t written in a while – it has been a busy week!  On Sunday we went to San Jose to complete what we needed to do to submit our application for residency.  We headed out on Sunday and ended up having to reverse direction and go another way because the highway we were on had a bad landslide.  We were only 50 kilometers from San Jose when we had to backtrack.  I have to say that I am glad we did – even though it took a couple of more hours.  The drive on highway 10 was gorgeous, even though it was raining like crazy the entire way.  We had only been on that highway once before right after we started visiting Costa Rica and we were traveling on it very early in the morning on our way to raft the Pacuare river.  So – I didn’t remember it at all.  The towns along the way were all so nice and we the roads were very good.  We went through many, many coffee plantations and we also drove by The Tropical Agricultural Research and higher Education Center (CATIE) just outside of Turrialba.  The University of Idaho (and most of the other land grant institutions) had many joint programs for research and graduate students with CATIE but I had not seen it before.  Next time we will stop.

We arrived in San Jose in the early evening, checked into a nice hotel and then went to dinner at a wonderful Chinese restaurant.  It turned out that one of our waiters was from Cahuita (just up the road for Puerto Viejo) and he thought it was neat that we were living in PV.  The food was very good but a bit odd in that sliced potatoes were served over rice in my chicken curry dish.  The next morning we headed out to the U.S. embassy to pick up a letter from the embassy that verified that Tom would be receiving a social security check beginning December 15th.  We needed that to prove that we had enough income (over $1,000 per month) to qualify for residency.  It all went very smoothly and we were in and out in thirty minutes.  I didn’t take the camera because we were told that we would not be able to take pictures but I should have – I could have taken some of the building and it was really nice.  After getting the letter we headed over to ARCR (Associated Residents of Costa Rica) who will be handling the residency application for us and we were taken to the National Police Station to have our fingerprints taken.  Even though we had prints taken in Idaho which were certified by both the state of Idaho and the Costa Rican embassy in Washington D.C., we still had to do it again to make sure we weren’t wanted in Costa Rica.  That process took about an hour and then we were done!!!  We headed back to ARCR and met with our attorney who finished up the application.  We should get our application number in about two weeks.

We headed back to Puerto Viejo on Tuesday morning in a deluge.  We came back on highway 10 since it was so bad and, even though there was not another landslide on highway 32, I’m glad we did.  It is just less stressful on that highway.  We got into PV around noon and have been hanging out.  The weather has been beautiful until today.  It started raining around 10:00 but we were able to go to the farmer’s market and pick up two huge bags of fruit and vegetables.  We are starting a five day juice fast and what better way to begin than with the fresh stuff   Several people have suggested that we do the fast to see if it will help Tom’s hands heal and I am thinking that it can only be good for me too.  I got a juicer at a store here and it was a pretty good deal for here – about $100.  Most electronics are substantially more than what we can get them for in the states. 

Thursday we had Thanksgiving dinner with our wonderful neighbors.  Since turkeys are so expensive here we went with blackened chicken on the grill and it was yummy.  I made a carrot and cucumber marinade for salad and we cooked up potatoes.  The neighbors brought excellent cheesecake, wine, and gravy for the potatoes.  It was GREAT!!!  They are heading back to Portland for a month or so on Tuesday and we will miss them.  I did get a photograph of the turkeys who live across the road but they are the closest we came to turkey for dinner…………    

Here are a few pictures from our trip to San Jose.

Church in downtown San Jose

Heading out of town

Cemetery – they are so beautiful

Church in Cartago

  It is Christmas time in San Jose!

Since we have been back from Colorado the weather has been amazing.  Relatively cool (considering it is the tropics), sunny, low humidity and rain at night.  Today I walked the dogs on the beach around 6:00 a.m. and there was a pelican diving for fish and men fishing from the shore.  There were several people walking the beach and we all said hi and noted the beauty of the day.  A short time after I got back the gardener and his helper showed up to do the monthly gardening.  Using a machete and a weed whacker, it takes them about three to four hours to cut back all the new growth and to spiff up the yard and it looks absolutely gorgeous.  Neither one speaks English so I cannot communicate too well yet – but I vow that I will within the year!!  They charge us $30 for the work and we are good for another four weeks. 

We are going to have dinner with our neighbors this evening and so this afternoon I went to the little store down on the beach to pick up some rum to make some surprise drinks to take over (mange/pineapple/papaya daiquiris).  At any rate, I noted that the beach was almost completely empty.  That is what is so wonderful about this area.  It is not yet “discovered” so there is always plenty of room on the beach.  Only twice since we have been here have I seen the beaches somewhat crowded and both of those days were special occasions.  On the way back I ran into our neighbors who were heading on down to the ocean for a swim.  It has been a really wonderful day

    Cacao fruit – someday I’ll make chocolate from this……..

Tree across the street – see the yellow leaves – it IS fall!!!