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. 

For those of you who haven’t traveled to areas with limited infrastructure to include the sewage system and didn’t read the Peru chronicles, we are again somewhere that keeps a small lidded garbage can next to the toilets. They don’t want you to flush toilet paper or anything that isn’t naturally expelled from your person. This is normal here and most after experiencing it don’t think much about it. I did overhear the Baylor boys that are here doing some volunteer work and relaxation talking about it. I thought I should give a little reminder to our readers that this is something to expect in places like this. 

We had huge burritos for lunch at one of the sodas/ small restaurants down by the park. They were good. There seems to be a lot of international foods here, some on par with what you would get in the states, some better and some are odd. The ketchup at the soda was slightly pink and translucent. I tasted it, sweet but not tomato flavor to speak of. 
The chocolate (maybe chocolate maybe not) chip cookies we got at the New Super China tienda/store that tonight appears to be operated by three youthful Asian people I think are better than chips ahoy, no preservative aftertaste. 
I don’t think that it’s too hard to find something to eat here. Unless you are really picky about the variety of food. They have less beef options than the United States but plenty of chicken and seafood.
The standard food here is a meat with beans and rice. There’s usually a small salad too. They call it a casado, it’s always a good option. The breakfast option is egg for protein and a fried plantain instead of a salad. They also mix the beans in the rice to begin with. I haven’t tried it yet. 
So as long as you like chicken, fish, eggs, beans and rice you won’t starve. The seasoning here isn’t as bold as Mexican food in the United States.

We had a good afternoon snorkeling at Pirate’s beach. We took the ATV “tour” for $50 and just went straight to the beach and snorkeled while the guide hung out. It was a very economical way to do it since the tour is $50 for two hours for one ATV and two people can go on one. Sketchy Kevin was $50 per head. We got to be in the water long enough for it to make me a little queasy, too much burrito maybe. It is also fun to ride the ATV. Part off paved road and some on. Kind of helps make me think I could rent a car and drive around here. The traffic isn’t too bad. 

After settling my stomach and relaxing until we were out of the senior citizen’s dining hour we went down the road and ate at what was probably a fancy place at one time but needs some exterior maintenance. The food was what you would be offered at a fancy place in the United States. We both had the whole red snapper with a vegetable risotto and then a shrimp and fruit chutney/sauce. There was pineapple and mango I believe. It was very good and it was plated well. 

Side note about the bandage, my water shoes are capable of breaking the seal on one. It doesn’t come completely off but it gets the bottom off. Still excellent bandages for this environment. 

My new fins have some issues with the straps, one has a tendency to come off on one side and they slip down my heel. They were supposed to be big enough to wear my water shoes with but they aren’t. I’m not sure how well they would be for scuba but they may be adequate for snorkeling.  

We must have a skunk near by that is doing a lot of spraying. It has already added some scent to the air, we will probably smell like skunk when we come back and not notice, too bad for whoever is on our flights!! 

If anyone has requests, questions or comments feel free to let us know, we’d be happy to try and address them. 

Hello All: I’m once again sitting in the balcony restaurant with a cup of tea and come cookies. I finished working on my online class earlier today, so I don’t have work tonight, which is nice. It’s really lovely here.

Bill decided not to go diving today. Rocket Frog diving does not seem very reliable or responsive to problems, which is a bad sign with companies that take people diving. If they can’t give you the correct address, you also wonder how well they keep up equipment and maintain safety. Diving can be dangerous so you need a reliable company. It might be good that he didn’t get to go. He has two days scheduled next week with a different company and hopefully that will go better. I just talked to the owner of our hotel. She also dives and she usually goes with the company Bill picked for next week so that’s a good sign. She’s from Venezuela but grew up in New Jersey and somehow ended up in Costa Rica. I thought she was German or Austrian. Her accent doesn’t sound Spanish.

This morning, we camped out at the hotel. I’ve taken a beating lately in the waves so it was nice to have a slower morning to recover. We ate an early lunch at small local restaurant where we had a conversation with the server about her tattoo. Bill spent some time pointing out violations of electrical codes in the restaurant. It reminded me of the fuse box in the house where I grew up that my dad never got around to wiring correctly.

After lunch, we stopped by the tour shop and booked a 4-wheeler trip to Playa de los Pirates. We went there yesterday on 4-wheelers and our guide said it was a good place to snorkel so I wanted to try it out today. It was probably the best snorkeling that I’ve done in Costa Rica. There is a small rock of an island swimming distance from shore where we saw a fair number of colorful fish, tubular sea creatures that coat themselves in rocks, a really interesting star fish and some other various invertebrates. It’s probably a good spot for turtles but we didn’t see any today. We had a little over an hour there and it was definitely worth going. This beach also had huge stretches of sand and tidal pools and almost no people. It’s really awesome! We got the snorkel tour plus about 40 minutes of 4-wheeler riding for half what we paid Sketchy Kevin last week. The longer you stay in a place, the better you get at finding good deals and good companies. Tomorrow we are doing jet skis and snorkeling, which we are both looking forward to.

This evening, we ate at a good restaurant down the street a little ways. We both had whole pan fried red snapper, vegetable risotto and shrimp in a mango pineapple sauce. I’m generally skeptical about food that still looks like an animal once it’s on my plate, but the fish was good.

Bill and I think that if we come back to this area, we would like to get a vacation rental so we could cook some of our own meals. We are getting good food, but it’s 3 big meals a day and I don’t think either of us are going to come back thinner! We are pretty active, and swimming makes us hungry, but I probably don’t need the package of cookies I’m currently eating. We would also like to have our own transportation, either a car or a rented 4-Wheeler. A 4-wheeler would probably be better on dirt roads and you can ride them on the main paved roads here too.

Both the Costa Ricans and the other tourists are super friendly and easy to talk to. I tried talking to people in Jamaica but no one seemed very interested in conversation. When we went to lunch today, a guy we see on the beach surfing with his boys stopped to talk to us for a few minutes. I think he works at a local hotel restaurant. We met a young couple at breakfast and I just met a couple from Texas who also come to Costa Rica a lot. It’s a really friendly, welcoming environment. I’m used to Samara, so I missed the familiarity there at first, but Brasilito is definitely growing on me.

We know that some of you who read the blog are interested in traveling to Costa Rica. Bill has done a good job trying to describe what it’s like to be here. We are really enjoying this vacation but it’s probably not for everyone. Small towns in Costa Rica are not fancy and if you are imagining that Costa Rica will look like Hawaii, you’ll be disappointed. Vacations like this aren’t as easy as going to an all inclusive resort. It takes some time to settle in, find tour shops and good places to eat, but for me, it’s so much more interesting. I’ve met a lot of great people and we feel like we are more part of a community here where we support local business and talk to people about their lives. It’s true that geckos come in and out of cracks in the windows and doors and our room last night and part of today smelled strongly like a skunk, but you get good stories that way.

I’m thinking about swimming in the pool but I’m on the fence about my wet swimsuit. I need to make a decision quickly. The pool closes at 8:30 although I don’t know how well that’s policed.

Bill is working on pictures so I’ll post a few here and more with his post.

Disclaimer, it’s actually a lot.
You may wish to skip parts depending upon your interests. Some of the review stuff may not be interesting to some, I want to let you know though about things that work and don’t work. Things you may want to consider for your trips or maybe things you haven’t thought about. Some of the information may evolve as familiarity and experience changes. Hopefully I am not bashing or giving the impression that things are bad, overall things are good and everything will have pluses and minuses. If you adapt and make things work and not stress about things too much you will have a good experience traveling. 

A little more about the GoPro Hero 7 Black, it doesn’t like the Super Suit when not being used in water. It gets hot in the case and it locked up on me. The batteries also get warm when they get a lot of use. 
I didn’t bring another mount or case for the camera because my cheap one never had any issues like that. The other reason is that since you have to take the lens off to fit in the Super Suit, it was a pain to do to the point that I used a pair of pliers to get it done. The instructions say it’s tight the first time you do it. I had gotten it off before and was tight I didn’t think it should be worse the second time. I was wrong, I didn’t want to bring pliers so I just have the Super Suits lens. I don’t think that it has been overly hot here, nothing like Cartagena or an Iowa cornfield when it’s time to detassel. It’s actually been fairly nice most of the time, there has been a couple of times where it’s felt a little humid. Being this close to the ocean I would expect more breeze though. 
The camera does take good pictures and video. I’m hoping after I get back that I can get the lens issue figured out. There is an open back that can go on the Super Suit so I can access the touchscreen which I need for zooming in for photos, that wouldn’t solve the heat issue though. Future adventures will tell more as I get more used to the way it works and what can and cannot be done with it. So far the app for it works well for previewing the videos and I can get decent screenshots from them easily. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works in good snorkeling water and with the filters. 

The hotel, it is actually nice but there are some things you should consider when traveling to the areas that we have been. There is a lot of single pane glass, they don’t worry about the cold, and the locals don’t always use A/C. This also means no weather stripping around doors that are basically interior doors in the United States. Besides insulation against the weather there’s the added benefit of sound buffering. I will add smell buffering to that list as there was a skunk that was close and sprayed something during the night. It’s not a bad thing but you should be aware of it when you think about where you want to stay, the bigger more corporate places will be constructed a little different and with less charm. You do feel more a part of the community. It’s not quite as much here at the hotel as it was in our apartment in Cartagena where we shopped for and cooked a lot of our own food. It was more typical of the local construction. 

Before coming to this particular hotel we had very quick responses from Hilda the owner. She is around most days up in the restaurant/reception area on her laptop. Since we’ve been here Emily sent an email about the tours they set up and that response still hasn’t come though at this point we took it down the road and it’s a done deal. We asked this morning about laundry, which I recommend you should plan on doing while on your trips, you don’t have to bring as much stuff and if you use the right bag there’s no checking and waiting for luggage at the airports. I would say it’s a service worth paying for. If you have your laundry done before you leave you also don’t have a huge pile of dirty laundry to do upon your return home. She was also going to set up our Covid test so that we may return to the United States. This is a pain but a necessary evil of traveling abroad these days. I’m ready for that to end along with masks in airport and planes. It is inconvenient but you shouldn’t let that stop you from traveling. 

I do want to still say how great the Nextcare waterproof bandages are. As long as you can get your skin dry before applying them they will stay on for days. 

I forgot to add pictures of our new gear, so they should be with this post. 

We were just taking it easy this morning so a bonus post. We’re going to see about snorkeling after an early lunch. 

So we had some technical difficulties this morning with Rocket Frog Divers. They seem to have two websites with two different addresses that share a single office and cell number. We were up early and made it to our taxi and he took us to a spot that didn’t have any Rocket Frog signage but was at the beach. Seems some people get picked up at the beach. Our driver said it was an hour away to the correct spot but it’s only 13 miles from our hotel. I’m not sure he just didn’t want to go that far as he had other fares to get. He was willing to take us back to our hotel though. The lady Emily talked to on the phone this morning was willing to wait for us but I wasn’t getting a good vibe about the whole thing. Rocket Frog wasn’t as responsive as the Dive shop I’m scheduled with next week. Rocket Frog is out. They don’t seem to actually have an office in the next town over, they will occasionally just pick people up there. It is an hour to go to Playa del Coco because short way is currently closed and you have to go the long way, which takes an hour. So next time more research will have to be done and more clarifying emails.  

After we got back from not diving and snorkeling we went down to one of the tour companies and organized several things including a ATV trip that we took this morning. 

We are going to do a jet ski tour, whitewater rafting and a sunset catamaran tour with snorkeling. Emily also has a hot spring/ mud bath thing that she’s doing while I am doing Scuba next week when they didn’t have space for her to snorkel. 

ATVs in the dry season is a dusty affair. There was less beach riding and more level B/ field road riding but, a lot worse. I’ve cut across a harvested cornfield that was smoother than some of these roads. There is a dark red color to the soil where it’s freshly dug or wet. Because it’s so hilly there’s a lot of areas that have been eroded and then there are holes for no identifiable reason. People with a want of new shocks and struts or rentals were taking hatchbacks on them, very slowly, we’d pass them. The roads are so bad that the ATV that Emily was riding lost a wheel! She was riding in front of me and all of a sudden her rear left wheel came off and made a brake for the side of the road. The wheel was still attached to the hub so it must’ve lost a hub nut and washer. These thing have to take a beating. Instead of waiting for them to bring another out her and I just rode two up which was fine with Emily, she gets to enjoy the views more that way. We got to see some of the other beaches, some monkeys and sea life.  There is a beach, Pirate’s beach that we think would be nice to try and snorkel at. I have extra time and money tomorrow so we may have to see what we can do. 

Since a theme is starting you probably have guessed that we took the boogie boards out again after lunch. They are a good value, you can try and ride the waves, you can just float on them and if you don’t want to sit in the sand on the beach you can sit on your board. When we first went down to the spot where the surfers hang out we were the only ones there today. When walking down there really wasn’t a lot of action in the water but it picked up as we got closer. Then the surfers showed up and more boogie boarder’s. One family did really well at it. The father gave directions and they all did well. We should have gotten closer to hear the instructions, I couldn’t understand him, we think he may have been speaking French or Emily though Canadian French as some wasn’t familiar and he was too far away. The kids always seem to respond in English. 
I think Emily was hoping for a good story to add to the blog, seems there was something with a fin that stuck up out of the water swimming behind me that she was watching, after it was gone and hadn’t decided I looked tasty she informed me of it’s presence. We were out a little later today, we had a good time. 

We opted for dinner here at the hotel tonight, we had a mixed seafood dinner for two. There was a variety of fish and some shrimp over a bed of mixed vegetables. It was good. I believe it is supposed to have rock lobster on it, but I didn’t see any, it may be out of season. Everything tasted fresh. It seemed like a lot of protein but we ate it all. 

I need to get to work on getting my pictures sent to Emily so that she can add them. I’m going to include some random pictures of what things look like here. I’m liking it here, for it being the high season there’s not been any crowds. The beach is huge and you can find your own spot and not be close to other people if you don’t want to be. We did make it into Playa Flamingo and it is more developed there. They have more going on and it may be a good choice to stay in if you were looking for more civilization, a bank, cross fit gym, marina and more paved streets. 

I’ve noticed here that there really isn’t much garbage laying around. Things may not be well maintained or sparkly new but there isn’t garbage like when we were in Columbia. Emily said that it’s the same in Samara. I also do know that they have street sweeper here either. They do have a lot of road apples on the roads and the beaches. I have yet to see broken glass imbedded in concrete on top of a wall here but they do believe in razor and barbed wire like Columbia and Peru. Also spiky wrought iron fences. There is a police station just south of the hotel, you do see them a lot though. When you do see them with lights on they don’t really drive that aggressively, I think they just like the lights because they never seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere. 

If you have some requests for pictures let us know and we will see what we can do. If you have questions about anything we will do our best. 
Anyway I better get to those pictures. Hopefully everyone is having a great start to the week. 

Hello All: We had an unfortunate start to the morning, but our day turned out pretty well. We had a scuba/snorkeling trip planned for today, but the scuba site gave very unclear directions about where we were supposed to go and we ended up in the wrong spot. It’s a long story, and Bill probably typed it up so I’ll let him tell that one.

The scuba mix up was frustrating but we came back to Brasilito, went down to a local tour place and signed up for a bunch of tours that should be really fun. We did 4-Wheelers this morning and went to several beaches. One of them was awesome with potentially good snorkeling and some super neat spider starfish and other sea creatures in tidal pools. I’m a big fan of tidal pools. The water is always clear and they are full of interesting creatures. I could have spent more time there. Part way through the trip, I hit a large pothole in the road and broke the wheel off my 4-wheeler. Bill said he saw me keep going and my wheel rolled down the road behind me. I had to ride with Bill for a while, which was fine. That gave me a chance to look around rather than concentrating on the craters in the dirt roads we were on. We saw a road grader but it wasn’t pushing gravel or dirt into the holes, it was just scraping over the top of the road. I can’t imagine that 4-wheelers or any other vehicles last long on those roads. They are dry and fill of holes now. As soon as it starts raining, they will be full of muddy craters with small rivers running though them.

After lunch, we took our boards to the beach and spend a long time making largely unsuccessful attempts at boogie boarding. Late in the afternoon, a guy came out with his two boys aged maybe 11 and 14. All of them were catching waves and riding into the beach with no trouble. We tried to watch what they were doing, but still didn’t have much luck. It was a lot of fun though. While we were out, I saw a small, black fin go past Bill then swing around behind him. It probably wasn’t a shark, but it looked like mini-version of Jaws.

We had a delicious seafood supper. Francie, our server, brought out a big platter with a couple different kinds of baked fish and shrimp and some stirfry vegetables. It was really good. Francie was really chatty tonight so I talked to her for a while and she left me her phone so I could watch videos of her pets while she waited on other people. She has a kid who is probably about six, 3 dogs and a cat. Her house sounds like a zoo.

I’m running out of energy really fast and I know Bill has a longer post so he can fill you in on details I’ve missed. He works on his posts through the day but I save mine for the evening. I’m also teaching an online class right now, so I manage that in the evening too. I completely redid the class over Thanksgiving break so I’m working out a few small glitches with it but nothing too serious.

I’ll post some pictures below and I think Bill has more that I’ll add to his post.

Howdy! 

So if you want to speed up your enjoyment of the blog and you like apps, there is a wordpress app that you can get and use to follow Traveling with Emily. I got it and I am getting it sort of figured out. I’m able to bring it up and go right to the blog.

Today we started off early, we had snorkeling scheduled at 8:30 which was not that early since I woke about 6:15 but by the time you get moving around and have breakfast it doesn’t seem like there was enough time to do everything before we left, sunscreen takes a little time to get on using the sticks, I do like them though and it’s not a liquid according to TSA. It’s cheaper to bring than buy here or anywhere tropical. I recommend the Neutrogena. I’m also good with the equate version as well. I’m trying out some of the equate kids 50 spf this trip, so far it’s good and it does show white on the skin so that is good if you worry about coverage. It does blend in by rubbing it with your hands. 

Kevin’s Tours, his snorkeling trip is a bit sketchy. I’m not sure we didn’t just get set up with a couple of fishermen who took us out. Sketchy Kevin does have some other tours available but we’re going to see who else is offering the same things. The nice thing about Sketchy Kevin’s Tours was the fishermen didn’t make us wear the recycled from airplanes life vests and we only had us and them. They took spear guns in for a while but I didn’t see them get anything. 

Today the water was very cloudy, it’s windy and stirs things up and a little on the cool side. I may regret leaving my shorty wet suit in Emily’s SUV. 

We had a good time, we got to break in our new equipment, I brought my own flippers and Emily got a goggle and snorkel set like mine in green. My flippers are some Cressi Palau SAF flippers. They worked well, they like a frog kick the best. They are stiffer than what I am used to but they are short enough to fit in my travel bag, which was why I picked them. 
Emily said she is happy with her snorkeling set. I’ve not had any problems with mine so I’m not surprised that she is enjoying hers. They are Cressi as well and the goggles are a frameless style for travel. I highly recommend having your own if you are going to be snorkeling and these are an excellent choice. 
I purchased a new GoPro Hero 7 Black with the Super Suit Dive housing for deep diving as it is waterproof to a little ways down without a case. They have newer models but the costs go up and this one has the features that I wanted. I have had some issues making sure it is turned off. I didn’t check the battery in it yesterday before we went out and it was dead. I had specifically charged it before I packed it. The on off button also is the button used for changing the settings while it’s on along with the touchscreen. There’s also a feature that it will turn back on and start recording if the shutter button is pushed. That’s not a bad feature but I’m not sure that isn’t what’s burning up the battery. I think the internal computer deal is running just waiting for you to push it. 
It’s heavy, it will sink like a rock on its own. I have a floating handle that does work and it has a handy waterproof storage area that I have been keeping money in. My old $20 one floated, there was not stabilizing software and no metal housing. This camera also connects to my phone like the last one with an app. It seems to work well as far as clarity goes. I’m going to have to see if there is a way to zoom the camera a little and keep it there. It has zoom but currently I only know how to do that when I can access the touchscreen. I didn’t bring all the parts to use it without the Super Suit. You have to take the lens off for that. 
The water was cloudy as mentioned before, it still did well though. I captured a few stills out of some of the videos and there are some pictures that I took in Sketchy Kevin’s fishing / snorkeling boat and the restaurant here at the hotel. 
The star fish was brought to me by one of the fishermen, I was swimming along minding my own business and he thrust a starfish at me. I took it to Emily. She said she also seen a bigger one. We did see some puffer fish, the first one Emily showed me. 

Random thoughts. 
The coffee here is like it was in Jamaica, thick and black. I’m thin mine down with the hot water they have out for tea, about 50/50 and it’s still strong. They also use small cups here with tiny little handles I can barely get a finger in. 

The people here are friendly here and I am getting to hear a lot of Spanish and occasionally I will even use some that I have learned. I understand more than I can speak. Emily is usually able to tell me what’s said of I don’t. The Covid mask thing doesn’t help though, muffles some of what is said. 

The majority of the art work her looks like some people had a good time at Art and Wine. A lot if canvases all the same size and with heavy paint. 

Yesterday we included a picture of the map from the information notebook in our room but didn’t mention anything about it. It doesn’t seem to be to any scale. Also there is a bit more stuff here than what is shown on the map. This definitely isn’t a sprawling metropolitan area though. The area is sort of what I expected short of jungle with monkeys out back. It’s more mountainy in a Smokey Mountain way while you are in them rather than Rocky Mountains, with different trees and at this time no haze. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some haze during the rainy season. 

After lunch we went back down to the beach and got smashed by waves with the boogie boards again. It’s a lot of fun but it beats you up a bit. The water isn’t all that deep, most places I can stand up. While you are in the water you can float on the board, my feet dangle long enough to occasionally touch bottom still, you can float on the waves if you are somewhere they are not breaking. A breaking wave is where it starts showing white. All that white is air that if you are pointed towards shore it will go right up your trunks and depending upon the trunks you will end up with an air bubble that gives you a wedgie. If you are in the right spot in front of the wave facing shore when a good one starts to swell you are supposed to be able to time when the wave is going to break and then ride it. You have to not only time when the break will start but have to start matching the speed of the wave (these are fast) as it’s coming at you, you almost are swimming downhill just in front of it because all the water in the wave has to come from somewhere. Bigger waves the more the water drops and steeper slope. If you’re lucky you ride it if not it crashes one you and drenches you. It’s very fun either way. If you are floating between the breakers the water is more of a rolling wave that can be relaxing. It also can rise and fall quite a bit sometimes. 

For dinner tonight we went down by the beach to a Sketchy looking place which is right down by where we met Sketchy Kevin. The food was good. The restaurant is on one side of a dirt road and the main dining area is on the beach. We sat looking out at the end of daylight, the sun had already dropped below the horizon by the time we got there. There was a nice outline of the mountainous area out by where we snorkeled this morning. 

Some of the Sketchiness and Rustic could possibly come from the harsh conditions being this close to the ocean. So I do say that tongue in cheek. Hopefully big money never comes in and ruins the current vibe. It feels small towny with a few souvenir shops and lots of options for adventure! 

Tomorrow is the first scuba day! I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully I will get some good pictures and the water is clearer!!