This is not my picture but this is the kind of ray that I saw. iPhones don’t take this quality of picture under water.

This morning Bill went diving so I was on my own. I decided to go snorkeling to the small island that is swimmable from the beach I’m on. My trip was free since I had no guide and I walked there. I didn’t have to follow any stupid snorkeling rules set by other people, and I had one of the best snorkel days I’ve ever had! The water was really clear for Costa Rica. It was also warmer than usual.

Almost as soon as I got into the water, a big eagle ray swam by. I’m still getting used to my new phone case so I almost missed seeing it while I tried to turn my phone on. I was really disappointed, but a few minutes later, three more big rays floated past me. It was so exciting! They were close enough to touch and seemed sort of curious about me. On my way back to the beach after I finished snorkeling, another one swam by. This one also seemed interested in me too and let me swim with it for several minutes. It kept going in wide circles around me rather than swimming away so I could swim with it. It was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever done. It was super exciting to be able to swim with them. They seem really friendly. I kind of want an eagle ray tattoo now. You can get really neat ones.

I also saw a small reef shark. They nap on the ocean floor in the daytime and hunt at night. They are non-aggressive sharks and are harmless for humans unless you grab one by the tail or something stupid. My little shark was napping peacefully in a a little cave in the rocks. It didn’t seem super excited that I kept coming over to take pictures, but it didn’t leave either. These were my first sharks and eagle rays. I was hoping to see a turtle, but no luck on that. We did see one a couple of days ago jet skiing.

There were also a whole variety of multi-colored fish, starfish and invertebrates. It was like being in a huge aquarium. I had some problems with jellyfish again, but I was mostly able to avoid them. The rocks that I was snorkeling around had waves crashing around them and the jellies seem to like calmer water. I didn’t smell as bad when I finished snorkeling today, probably because I stayed away from the jellies.

There were a lot of fishermen out today and they are super nice and helpful. I found some dead water snakes on the beach while I was walking to the snorkel site. I stopped to try to toss one of them back into the water and one of the fishermen came over the tell me that it was venomous. When I finished snorkeling, I was looking around for my stuff and another fisherman pointed it out to me and was super friendly. I met a guy with his granddaughter while I was snorkeling around the island and he stopped to give me some tips too. I think that if I got into any trouble while I was out alone, people would try to come help me. This is really one of the friendliest places I’ve been.

Some of you may remember us talking about the skunk that sprayed something outside our hotel a few nights ago. I just saw it run across the playground behind my room. I’m in the upstairs restaurant at a table overlooking the playground. The black and white strips were unmistakable. I hope that whatever it sprayed learned its lesson!

This afternoon, we took our boards out and floated in the water. Surfing was out of the question since the water was very calm with no waves. It was nice to just float. We both had a pretty active morning.

Tomorrow morning, we have to go get Covid tested. That will determine whether we get to come home. I’m not overwhelmingly excited about going back to cold weather in Iowa, but it will be some trouble to deal with a positive Covid test. I got good travel insurance. Maybe we can find a vacation rental?

I have video of the eagle rays. I don’t think I can post videos unless my new upgraded blog lets me. If anyone wants my ray video, let me know and I can text it to you. Pictures are below. Underwater iphone pictures don’t really convey what it’s like to snorkel and see things and my screen shot ray photos are dreadful, but that’s all I had.

There are some repeats and not all were edited completely. There were some technical difficulties.

Hello readers!! 

Everyone recovered from Christmas? 

Today I finally got to do some scuba diving and Emily did some snorkeling. 
The visibility was not real good and most of the reef is rock so it wasn’t great scuba, it was scuba though. When we went to the boat after signing waivers and paying the balance they took us to the marina to get on the boat. Rocket Frog was there, same place, I’m not sure why they couldn’t have brought out a waiver last week and had me do it there. 
Pacific Coast Diving had a pontoon boat that was maybe five and a half feet wide that was used to shuttle us out to the dive boat. The marina just has moorings on the bottom for the boats to park off shore, no docks. It was a little rough, well used. The green astroturf on the deck gave it a old jon boat vibe. I thought it was a cool way to shuttle people, it had some benches and the front end had to ladders for boarding from shore. They tied up to the dive boat sideways across the back to get on the boat. It definitely was purpose built. I don’t have a picture of it, I think Emily has some of me on it though, hopefully she will post one. 
The dive boat took us out a ways so we had a good boat ride there and back. 
I was worried about how I would do diving. When I was in Jamaica by the last day I was feeling pretty good about it. The discover scuba that Emily and I did in Columbia and Bonaire was just us so if the dive gets cut short it’s just us. On a dive with other divers it’s possible someone else may get their dive cut short. Here they took to guides per group so that if someone had to surface early the rest could stay. It does take a little getting used to and that will cause you to breathe faster, using your arms to swim makes you breathe faster and kicking with your knees instead of from the hips also makes you use more air and then it’s time to go back to the top. A tank is normally about thirty to forty five minutes worth of air. Breathe in for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds. Slower is better. 
I didn’t know anyone and we didn’t have a lot of time to get to know our guides who hopefully you can trust. The guide did come find me on the boat and gave the safety chat and what to expect. 
Once at the dive site I geared up and washed my goggles. I was in the first group, diver two. There were four to a group, diver one was part of a large group of people on the dive, he must’ve drawn the short straw. Divers three and four were a mother/ son from Texas. The son was doing his first ocean dive, he learned scuba in a dirty lake back home. 
Once I was in the water I knew it was low visibility, I take the big step off the back platform and it’s dark blue and I can’t see diver one and the guide until I surface. I look down and it’s just dark, I can’t see the bottom, it’s nothing like any of the other dives that I’ve done. In the Caribbean you can see the bottom even if it’s just shadows, at least so far I’ve been able to except on the night dive. 
We’re all in the water and it’s time to go down. There was a period that I thought I wasn’t going to see anything. But once we were down a ways I could see a little better. At the bottom the visibility was okay, maybe 25 feet. I could see the bottom and I knew the light was coming from the top so things were okay. 
Seen some fish, a lot of rocks, another sea snake like the one yesterday (I couldn’t find it in the video, I can’t find the next one either), a lobster and some rays (I found those). On the second dive I seen the head of an eel but it was too well camouflaged to film well. 
The dive lasted for thirty nine minutes for me and the son, diver one and the mom went for forty four. They must’ve let the son go a ways or he didn’t say he was at the dive limit, for this dive it was seventy bars or one thousand pounds per square inch. The son said by the time he surfaced he was at forty, I had fifty and I had told the guide when I hit seventy. 
After we were back on the surface, after a safety stop, there was a couple other groups up already so we swam to one that was close and waited for the boat. 
The dive boat had to go around and pick up dive groups scattered around the ocean, not very far apart but far enough that they can’t park the boat and have everyone swim to it. They drop everyone off in slightly different spots along a reef so some end up close to other groups but some are not. 
After all the divers were on, we went to get the snorkelers. There we did a surface interval. Depending on depth and time under divers have to spend time on the surface before the next dive. 
Dive two was more of the same as dive one, slightly deeper and we went along a small island. Dive one was sixty feet and dive two was sixty eight. 
The second dive I was a little more comfortable again, I was getting used to the equipment and being under the water. 
For some reason the second dive was shorter though, thirty five minutes and mom and son both went up same time as I did. 
I’m going again tomorrow. I debated it since it will be the same places as today. The Pacific is really different from the Caribbean. It’s interesting and still cool, not as pretty though. I’m hoping for better water clarity and more things to see! They talked up sharks on the boat but I didn’t hear that anyone seen any today. 
We didn’t get back from diving until after one so it was time for lunch. After that we just relaxed, Emily had tea, read and had a conversation. I took a nap and then went through videos to get some pictures from. It takes a surprising amount of time to get just a handful of pictures out of all the video. 
The camera still seems like it gets warm. I didn’t have any problems with it today on the dive, the battery lasted for both but was at three percent. When I am back home I am going to check the temperature of the camera and the batteries. The super suit seems to work as it should. The filter does improve the colors on today’s pictures. Things were not as bright. I may have needed the darker one, for bringing the least amount of stuff I went with the midrange filter. 
The handle works well but you do have to remember to check it before getting in the water, yesterday I had put some money in it and didn’t tighten it, it will fill with water and then it doesn’t float. The money dried, it dries fast. 

I don’t have much else for you today, join us tomorrow for another exciting post!

Thanks to none of you, I found a new book to listen to. It’s called After and was written by a physician who has spent his career studying near death experiences. It’s pretty interesting. I saw a reference to it a while back in Discover Magazine and I have a friend who read it and liked it so I finally got it as an audible book. I spent part of the afternoon camped out in a comfortable sitting area in the hotel restaurant listening to it and drinking tea. The restaurant is open air and it was pretty hot so a mango smoothy might have been a better option, but I am a big fan of tea.

I listened to my book for a while then a guy who has been here for a few days with his girlfriend came over to talk to me. He’s young and has started his own advertising business. He works remotely so he’s spent the last two months in Costa Rica and traveled around the US for 2 months before that. They were headed back to their home in New Orleans tomorrow. We had a very interesting conversation about books, CrossFit, and a variety of other things I’m interested in. One of my favorite parts of vacation is meeting interesting people who I would never meet otherwise.

This morning we went on a scuba/snorkeling trip. The boat ride was fun – I like being out on boats – the snorkeling was terrible. The water was cloudy and at the second snorkel site, we got dropped into a huge mass of baby jellyfish. There were billions of them floating in the water, in my hair, all over the place. The water was cloudy to begin with and the jellies made it impossible to see anything. Plus, they sting. They are tiny so it doesn’t hurt much but the constant stinging of tiny jellies isn’t comfortable. I didn’t stay in the water long because the guides wouldn’t let me swim off on my own to a non-jellyfish infested location. I think the jellies also make my swimsuit smell particularly bad. We swam into some yesterday too and both yesterday and today my swimsuit had an intense fishy smell that wouldn’t wash out. It’s pretty bad.

Tomorrow morning, Bill’s going diving again so I’m on my own. I think I’m going to go snorkeling from the beach. I’ll miss the boat ride but the snorkeling will be better since nobody will be there to make me follow rules. I have a new ProShot case for my phone so I can take it snorkeling with me and take pictures. I used it for the first time today and it works pretty well although I didn’t have much to take pictures of. At least my phone stayed dry and still works. I’m hoping I can get better pictures tomorrow. I got the case mostly for safety reasons. This way, I can take my phone with me when I go on excursions alone. If I had any problems, I’d be able to call for help. My snorkel spot tomorrow will be safe and easy, but it’s still good to have a phone with me. If I have time after I snorkel, I might go get a chocolate brownie or some banana bread from the bakery. It’s sounding like a promising day.

The picture below is me with Francie. Bill took a couple of pictures with the flash, but it made me look super weird so I chose the one where I’m less visible.

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!