To our northern friends, Happy Boxing day! The first I had ever heard of Boxing Day was on the T.V. Show M.A.S.H. a long while back. 

Feel free to share our blog with your friends and family, we could use the followers, especially if they get the app!! 

We slowly ramped up our activities after a couple of days just relaxing. This morning we snorkeled the north end of Playa Brasalito. The travel books don’t say that there is good snorkeling from shore, I think they are looking for something different than Emily and I. We found that the beach here was actually pretty nice for snorkeling. I do think it’s limited but good. We seen a lot of things, eel, sea snake, crabs, sea slugs, star fish, a lot of different fish and some corals and interesting rock formations. There are a lot of puffer fish here and they are fairly good sized. I tried to get some good photos of them but they really blend in with the rock. We spent a fair amount of time in the water looking at everything. 

For lunch we had pizza, the day cook is better at pizza than the night cook. I need to get some pictures of the kitchen here to add to the blog. It’s pretty small. 
The food is good but they do not operate like they do in the United States, they run on Tico Time. Tico is a Costa Rican. They are not fast about anything, they’re super relaxed and things take a while including your food. I believe the hotel restaurant is more Tico Time than some of the other places we’ve been. 

This afternoon we took the boogie boards out but there wasn’t much waves and the tide was out. Tides come and go twice a day with about four to six hours in between. It really is noticeable on the beach. Since there wasn’t much for waves we went to Playa Cochal to add some shells to our swim suits. It is a very busy beach on the north end. There are a lot of vendors that will offer you drinks or a shady spot on the beach with some chairs for ten dollars. There’s music usually from the vendors area, today there was steel drums being played. When they first started up is sounded like a marching band was warming up. 
There is also a fair number of people congregated on the north end, once you move south it thins out. 
We didn’t find the water to be much better at a lower tide than the other day, I did have less shells in my shorts though. I don’t know that all the hype is really worth it unless you want to be around a lot of people and buy drinks and trinkets. They also do massages over there, for a moment I thought I was at work, there was a full moon just laying there on the massage table. Stuff you don’t want to see at the beach or on any ambulance call! 

We went down to a American restaurant which really means United States type food as from north to south this is all the Americas. I think mostly they’re about burgers and fries with Black Angus beef. Which the beef there was better than at the hotel, I had some of Emily’s burger, I actually had some ribs that weren’t bad. Probably the closest to pork from the States as I’ve had in a foreign country. 

It’s going to be an early night for me, I need to rest up for scuba (hopefully) in the morning, the dive center is picking us up at 7:30 so everything should go as planned. There’s no middle men in this operation. I believe Emily said that Hilda, the owner here uses them when she dives. 

I finished my latest audio book today and I need a new one. I’ve spent the last hour and a half or so looking for books that might be good with not much luck. I’d like to have a book that is engaging but not depressing. If anyone has read any good books lately, let me know. I have a new one from one of my favorite authors in one of my favorite series, but I’m saving it for the trip home.

We went snorkeling today. Bill is working on pictures and we have some pretty interesting underwater ones. We walked down the beach a ways and swam out to a little island inhabited by birds, mostly pelicans. The water was relatively clean and we saw quite a few interesting sea creatures. Bill saw a sea snake and has a picture. I missed the snake but we also saw an green eel, several different kinds of starfish, a bunch of puffer fish, what might have been schools of tuna and a variety of other fish and invertebrates. There were literally bazillions of tiny jellyfish swimming everywhere. They were the stinging variety too, although fortunately, they were too small to do much damage. It took me a while to realize that the mild stinging sensation I kept feeling was the little jellies. It was a good snorkel day. I don’t know what I got into, but my swimsuit smells like fish and I can’t get it washed out. I rinsed it in the shower and that seemed to make it smell worse. It’s drying outside.

We tried taking our boards out after lunch but there were no waves at all. We went over to Playa Conchal to see if it might be better, but it wasn’t. On the way back to the hotel, we found what looks like wild cotton growing on the beach. I took pictures. For supper we went to a restaurant run by an American guy who used to cook on commercial fishing ships in Alaska. Bill got ribs and I got a hamburger. My burger was fine but bland. It didn’t have much seasoning or lettuce, tomato, pickles, catchup or mustard. It was a hamburger on a bun with some sautéed onions and that’s it. I’m not sure why he doesn’t at least season them.

It wasn’t a super eventful day but I’m really tired. We have a scuba/snorkeling trip scheduled for in the morning. Bill is posting pictures with his post.

I hope you all had a good Christmas! This will be a short post since Bill already wrote about our day. Tamales are traditional Christmas food and the restaurant had tamales for breakfast so we ate some. I like tamales so I thought they were pretty good. Bill had never had them and said he wouldn’t be asking for them at home. I have a picture below. They were even wrapped in banana leaves.

We did decide to walk to Portrero this morning. It’s a 5 minute taxi ride and the internet said it was about a 37 minute walk. It took us about an hour and a half. I had expected a relatively short walk in the shade so I only put sunscreen on my face and tattoo. I have a very weird sunburn now. I have a picture of my tattoo below because you can see exactly where the sunscreen was. 70 Neutrogena does a good job. I should have put it on the rest of me too.

Like Bill said, Portrero was disappointing. We had expected a bunch of little shops and maybe there are some but we only found restaurants and hotels. Fortunately we got a taxi on the way back and stopped by the bakery for some delicious brownies.

I developed a pretty bad migraine this afternoon. My prescription medicine didn’t work so I took Excedrin migraine. That worked but I had a very upset stomach. Francie brought me a bowl of cereal for supper because I didn’t feel like I could eat anything else. By the time I finished my cereal, I felt better. When the medicine works, I feel like I’ve been brought back from the dead.

There is a really nice recreation center with nice cabins, a pool and a fancy playground area right behind our hotel. It says recreation center on the fence so I assumed it was for the community. Francie told us tonight that the government used taxpayer money to build it and it’s only available to the families of government officials. So Francie’s taxes went to build the center but her kid can’t play there.

The hotel had live music tonight. It was pretty loud. A family arrived with two little girls earlier today. They were probably exhausted from travel and I’m sure they put their little girls to bed with music blasting right over their room. Bill and I watched Downton Abbey the movie. It was pretty good and we put in earbuds to drown out the music from the restaurant. I’m glad we had a movie. I feel significantly better but I’m not sure I’m up for a few hours of listening to a muffled band playing loud music. It’s quieter now.

We’ll probably try to snorkel tomorrow with liberally applied sunscreen!

Today we have taken it easy, it can be rough to keep going on adventures and swimming in the ocean! We took a little down time from all that. It’s been a very nice day here. We haven’t kept any schedule it’s just been whatever, with the exception of lunch. For lunch we wanted to try a little cafe/deli down the road. 

After breakfast we took a walk up to, even though it’s south it’s mostly uphill from the hotel, the a.t.m. for some cash. We just got more dollars since they have been easy to spend here. Emily had gotten some colonies earlier in the week, we figured there wasn’t much point in it. 
On the way back down we decided to follow one of the only sidewalks we’ve seen. It is all up hill and ends in a parking lot with a guard shack and shower house. I believe that it is for the Marriott hotel that is over that way through some trees. It was a nice morning though for a walk. After that, we hung out, Emily finished a book and I went through the pictures and commented on them. I’m not sure if everyone can see them or not. You have to click on the individual pictures and “open” them. I don’t know that everyone’s getting the same views following links and getting emails. I went back as far as I could. It stoped letting me comment on one of the early posts from this trip. 
If you have any good links to the posts you can access more posts from it at the bottom. It usually shows the one before and the one after. You’d have to scroll and keep clicking on the last one but. You can go back as far as you want I believe. 

The cafe we had lunch at was very small but it had some baked goods that we haven’t seen elsewhere. Sort of a mini Starbucks. Only a handful of sandwiches two of which were ham and cheese one was a panni they didn’t actually press and one on a croissant. The other two were a pulled pork that I had and a roasted vegetable. Emily had the ham and cheese panini. Afterwards we had a piece of their special cake. It was layered with a crispy layer that tasted sort of like pie crust and the other was a caramely layer that was probably sweetened condensed milk that was cooked down and the whole thing was covered in a marshmallowy meringue. We got a cinnamon roll to go. While we were there we had a conversation with Bing. He said that was his name anyway. He is an ex-pat from Texas who has an ex wife he used to do a lot with. He mentioned her several times. He said he only used his social security income for his residency here. He’s having a small house built in the area, he seems to like it a lot here, he’s been coming for 27 years. His Spanish is bad according to Emily. She’s very good. But I also didn’t think he was very smooth with it as well. 
He said he came here with three pounds of marijuana gummy’s and a bunch of vape cartridges. He brought them in with his sinks and faucets. Once you pay off your house and car he said you have it made here. 
From what I was told by our driver yesterday a new car here will not only be expensive to buy but you have to pay about $2000 a year for the registration/tax. It’s cheaper with older cars. 

We stopped at a souvenir shop that was owned by a French couple. She was on the phone the whole time we were there and they didn’t have much, mostly homemade signs with sayings. Nothing interesting. 

The afternoon we just relaxed and spent time in the pool. The pool here is not very warm for being in a warm climate with a lot of sun. I’m not sure how they keep it so cold. 

Currently we are without power. It’s time to go up for dinner. They are doing a special dinner tonight as they celebrate more so tonight than tomorrow. They are doing something special for the guests tomorrow night as well though with live music. I’m not going to be surprised if the lady we think may he the owner sings while her man plays a tune. They play the exact same music everyday on repeat from one singer. I’m thinking it’s her. Emily said they switched to Christmas music last night but same singer. 

We made it part way through dinner and the power came back on. The power company came fairly quickly for Christmas Eve. Francie said it happens because too much power draw to one box and occasionally it will explode. It looked like our hotel was the only one without power. They busted out the old fashioned double dipped and hung over a pole candle sticks that we used as nunchucks as kids. They only cut the wick once so they were really long and would burn into the candle and at the top. The hotel needs a generator if this is a common occurrence. It’s not full here but there are several rooms occupied and if the power was to go for an extended time I don’t think people would want to stay here. 

Dinner was good, it did remind me that I wanted to mention that the salads here are basically about 20 stems of something resembling parsley that have a single leaf on the end that is smaller than a penny piled up sometimes mixed with some julienned carrot and some other bland vegetable. They sometimes put a vinaigrette on it. It comes with about everything here at the restaurant for lunch and dinner. It’s also part of the casado meal that is a normal meal in Costa Rica. It’s not bad but it’s not a salad. This restaurant also likes to present the food with a lot of garnishes, pickled beet on top of the rice or some radish slices in front of the meat and pineapple leaves stabbed into the small chocolate cake that they call a brownie. 

I’m debating on trying one of the Imperial Cervezas that seem to be popular here. I’m not much of a beer drinker since my more youthful days. I’m curious though. We’ll have to see, if so I will give it a review. 

Tomorrow is Christmas, we’re going to spend some time down at the beach and maybe do some snorkeling on the north end of Brasalito beach. There’s an island just out from shore like at Pirate’s beach we thought may have similar things to look at.

About rafting, for those who haven’t done it, when you go the guide sits at the back and steers while telling the people in the raft when to paddle and when to stop based on what he wants the raft to do. You have to pay attention and listen for the commands so it does take concentration. Our guide would call out “paddle” and we both would paddle, “right side paddle” and I would paddle, “left side paddle” was Emily. There is also “back paddle” and “paddle hard”. Some guides will call out the number of stokes they want as well, ours didn’t. I think it may be because I could move the raft pretty well when I paddled. I like to canoe and have my own that Emily and I take out, she uses her paddle board since she got it and I solo in a 12-13 foot three person canoe. I like canoes better than kayaks. Mostly because I’m better at the canoe and it’s more comfortable for me. I think most of what we rafted I could have done in my canoe. I’m not sure how the canoe would do dropping off the big one. I know some of those can be, I don’t know what the limits are though. I wouldn’t mind finding out to some extent. 

I’m sure as soon as this gets posted I will remember some more things you may be interested in knowing. If you have something feel free to ask us. We can get some answer for you!  

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!

Welcome to today’s installment of the blog! Makes it seem like it will be exciting. 

Hopefully you all are doing well. Christmas is almost upon us. I’m guessing it will be a slow relaxing day here. We have to see if things are going to be open or not. The restaurant we had the snapper at is, the waiters mentioned they have a lot of reservations. We have plenty of PB&J with bread we won’t starve and plenty of cookies just because they are good. 

Seems like there is a lot I think about posting and then I get sidetracked. There’s been a lot going on. Tonight really all I’m thinking about is that we went whitewater rafting. It was a good time. The water wasn’t as exciting as the Arkansas River in Colorado that I did 8-10 years ago, but it was still a lot of fun. We never got dumped out of the boat so that was good. There maybe photo evidence of Emily getting tossed around a bit. We didn’t take our cameras out, there are a lot that get lost. The pictures are from the adventure company. 

We met a surgical nurse from Waukon Iowa and her kids. Her daughter was wearing a t-shirt with the a Minnesota Scheel’s logo on it and I guessed even if they weren’t from Minnesota they were close. We talked with her some about traveling and Iowa. 

For those that worry about the food choices we make and show pictures of, the food is very good and there are a lot of options when you are traveling. Some of the foods taste as they do back home, some don’t. A hamburger in the restaurant here at the hotel and other places out of the United States usually doesn’t. The one here tasted more like an Italian sausage or patty melt. The texture is a little off as it probably has fillers in it like a meatloaf. I don’t know if they’re spicing it up or stretching the amount of meat they put in it. You can always stick to chicken and fish, they don’t usually have too much problem with texture changes, that would just be the spice palette and most places we’ve been it’s actually very tame. Rice, potatoes and beans are also not changed much from back home. Most of the time if something is weird it’s the sauce. 

For those who are not as daring but still would like to travel, if you pick larger cities to stay in you can find things that are more familiar. Today we went through Liberia and there was KFC, Subway, McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell. You can stay at a Best Western, rent a car from Hertz or Alamo that’s a Kia, Isuzu, Toyota, Hyundai or Nissan. Most vehicles are smaller in size, it helps most roads are narrow and very bumpy, they are heavily crowned so the rain runs off in the downpours.
It would take something away from being in a foreign country, but maybe it would ease the transition. 

I would like to see inside one of these houses that are typical for Costa Rica. They look to be about 500 square feet or so. From what I can see through open doors is that on the left is a big open space and the right has three doors. I’m guessing two very small bedrooms and bath on the right and the living room kitchen share the left. It would be interesting to see it though from inside, it would seem cramped compared to home. It’s rare to see bigger houses in most areas. 
The driver said there wasn’t much crime here, the news when it’s taking about crime is mostly about the drug trade so it seems like there is a lot but it’s not. I think that people have a lot of fences and bars. 

We spent so much time on the road today that we didn’t do much else. We had pepperoni pizza here at the hotel. 

Hello All: Last night I wasn’t feeling all that well so I went to bed at 8:30 and left the blog to Bill. I felt much better today so I think the early night was good for me. I’m not planning to be up late tonight either. We’ve had a lot of activity and I’ve taken a lot of dramamine, and some migraine medicine. I’ve also had a lot of different food. It all caught up with me yesterday.

Yesterday, we went jet skiing. That was super fun! The jet skis were pretty big machines and you need big ones for the waves. On our trip out into the ocean, I stayed behind our guide and had a very smooth ride as he cut a path through the waves. On the way back, I let Bill go ahead of me and he’s horrible to ride behind on jet skis. He fish tails and splashes water all over the place. I almost bounced myself off the jet ski several times hitting waves. Initially I thought I’d just ride with him on his ski rather than getting my own. I was very glad I didn’t do that, partly because having my own jet ski was fun and partly because I would have been swimming back after he bounced me off the back and kept going. Our guide was a 20 year old kid who seemed really happy to have someone on his tour who wanted to ride jet skis like he did. I probably reminded him of his mom trailing behind and trying not to bounce myself into the ocean like a rubber ball.

Today, we went rafting. I began the rafting tour by smacking our guide in the head with my paddle. He kept checking to see if it was bleeding. I got better as we floated downstream, but our guide was much more impressed with Bill’s rafting skills than mine. Rafting was really fun but a lot of travel time. When we booked the trip, the tour shop told us that it would be an hour drive to the river, 2-3 hours of rafting and an hour drive home. We were supposed to be home for lunch. Instead, it took over 2 hours to get to the river, we rafted for maybe an hour and a half, and had more than 2 hours of driving back to the hotel. We left at 7am and didn’t get back until 4pm. We did get lunch thrown in, which was nice. The rafting was a lot of fun but if we had know how much travel time was involved, we might have saved that for a different vacation. On the plus side, I found some super cute frog socks at a tourist shop were we stopped to pick up more rafters. Those made the long travel time more worthwhile. There’s a picture below. I had planned to go to hot springs on Tuesday when Bill dives, but I think I’m going to skip that trip because it will be another day of driving. There’s a bakery down the road a ways that might be a good activity instead. I’ve also located a potential snorkeling spot that I want to try.

The restaurant is packed tonight and Francie is the only managing the restaurant and the desk. She still hasn’t been able to get me a bill. It’s busier than I’ve ever seen it. I’m glad Bill and I ate earlier. Francie only gets one free day a week. She made tamales on Wednesday. She says they are traditional Christmas food here. She offered to bring me one to try. I’m going to try to get a picture with her before I leave.

I have pictures of our supper from last night and my socks below. I had some delicious grilled salmon with grilled vegetables and mashed potatoes. They brought it to me still on the grill. Bill had seafood pasta. I’ll add rafting pictures with Bill’s post.

Pictures are below.

Hi all!!! Fair war I didn’t proofread this, I’m posting tonight on the site directly. Normally Emily does this part, I just type and send it to her along with some pictures.
We had a blast on the water this morning! We got some jet skis (here the spell it Sky) and a guide and had a lot of fun. Emily I guess has some complaint about it but I’m not sure what, I had a blast zigzaging, wake crossing and jumping waves!
The tour part I could have passed on and just zipped around and then went snorkeling. The jet ski people don’t provide snorkeling gear and the guide said there was none but since we brought our own gear we were able to during the part when they make the tour last the full time offered without you riding the jet ski the full time. 
I highly recommend jet skiing on the ocean. 

We took boogie boards out after lunch and a short nap, all this adventure wears me out sometimes. It’s good though since there isn’t a gym here to get a lift in. 
The water was fairly calm today. I took my fins down to see if I could get more speed in front of the waves but they didn’t seem to help and at one point I lost one because the straps don’t stay tight. I do not recommend these and it’s disappointing as the goggles are great. I was able to find it, the yellow was a good choice and the water was fairly clear today since it was calmer. They do not float either. I will be able to use them for snorkeling but that’s it. I will probably get them where I like them then add a zip tie or some waterproof tape of some sort so the can’t loosen up. They will get a bad review from me on Amazon when I get back. Emily is improving at catching waves. there wasn’t a lot though.

Some context to the pictures from the last couple of days, the ones with house are all on dirt roads with the rougher ones being close to the main drag and the nicer ones farther out from town. There was an area where they were building a neighborhood with bigger, higher end house that was probably not close enough to town to walk it. 
The souvenir shops, mini super and liquor store are next to a couple of sodas/ small restaurants across from the park just off the beach.