Christmas Eve in Costa Rica

We learned today that most Costa Ricans celebrate Christmas Eve more than Christmas day. There have been some fireworks and Francie, our server, opened presents with her son who is 7 around noon today. He got a pirate Lego set, some transformers and some clothes. She said he was excited. He’s a big fan of Legos and transformers.

Bill and I had a candle-light dinner tonight because the electricity was out at our hotel. Apparently the entire hotel is run on one power box and occasionally it pulls too much power and explodes. The power company fixed it relatively quickly and we had power again half way through dinner. The hotel owner said that when she came 15 years ago, they could be without power or phone service for a month before the power or phone companies got around to fixing things. They had to hire a lawyer to get the phones fixed after a month of no service. She said things have really changed for the better and Costa Rica is developing quickly. All of the infrastructure is being upgraded.

Bill and I had no activities today, which was really nice. The activities have been fun, but it was nice to have a more restful day. I finished an Audible book, we swam in the pool and we also tried out a small but very good cafe down the road. It’s a tiny place shaped as an octagon, but it had good sandwiches and pastries. Bill got a caramel cake of some variety and we brought back a cinnamon roll for after supper. We met an American guy named ”Bing” at the cafe. He’s been coming to Costa Rica for 27 years and retired here 8 months ago but his Spanish is dreadful. He seemed like a colorful guy. He’s currently living in a hotel for $40 a night. It has a pool so he lets the girls who work at the cafe bring their kids to swim. I heard him ask both of them if they had new bikinis. He told us that’s he’s single, has plenty of money and is on the market for a new woman. He also told us that he brought 3 lbs of marijuana gummies plus vaping pens and marijuana vaping liquid through customs here with no trouble. Costa Rican customs officers apparently looked at it all, stamped it as CBD products and let him come through. 3 lbs of gummies is a lot of gummies worth a lot of money! He spends his days playing golf, pickle ball, boogie boarding and other fun activities. He’s lost 40 lbs in 8 months so Bill thinks he’s not eating so many gummies at a time that he wants snacks. He’s been trying to build a house for 2 years but it’s still not done, which is why he’s living in a hotel. He didn’t seem worried about it. He thinks retiring to Costa Rica is fantastic.

Tomorrow is Christmas so Bill and I don’t have any plans for tomorrow either. I want to try out a new snorkel spot so we might do that. We also want to learn how to use the bus and spend part of a day in Flamingo which is close by but not really close enough to walk, especially with no sidewalks. Apparently, it’s about a 40 minute walk, which could be okay if there were sidewalks. The bus will be quicker and safer if we take the right one. Flamingo is larger than Brasilito so it has more shops and restaurants. That will be a good activity in a day or so.

We really don’t have pictures from today but I’ll post Bill’s cake. It was made of layers of flaky, pie-crust like material, caramel, probably almond slivers and topped with a creamy frosting. It was rich!