Very Busy

Into our seventh month and we have been incredibility busy socially. We are so fortunate to have many wonderful friends and making more all the time. We feel privileged to be invited into their homes and sharing meals and good times.

Enjoyed Beach Day on Monday - how could one not enjoy it. Lots of waves to body surf in, good food, good friends. I'm going to have to get some more bathing suits. Going to the beach a couple of times a month is such a great idea - we get the best of both worlds living in the Atenas area and visiting Playa Dona Ana.

See the cart in the photo? The fellow sitting in the shade operates his little business making granizados -  he shaves ice off a big block, puts it into a cup, adds powdered milk (if you want it), more ice, condensed milk and then covers the whole thing in flavored syrup - they are SO good. Cost: 1 mil (1000 colones), or about 2 Canadian dollars. I hope he is at Playa Dona Ana every time we are. Granizados can also be had at the Atenas park.

I'm still looking for a pipa guy - the vendor takes a young coconut (pipa) from iced water, machetes off the top, sticks a straw through the flesh and there you have it - a refreshing drink. I think there is a vendor in the park - just haven't found him yet.

Jose, one of our gardeners, dropped by last Saturday and we gave him his Christmas bonus. We sat around and had coffee and practiced our Spanish with him. He showed me how to better prepare pineapple tops for planting. I wasn't removing enough of the lower leaves.

We had a large bunch of bananas that were ready to be picked and he showed us how to do that too. His first method was to just punch through the pseudo stem, then he pulled one completely over with his arms. We fetched him a saw - much better. Jose has arms like a weight lifter. So he sawed the whole banana plant down and then it was an easy matter to cut off the banana bunch.

Our first tropical Christmas is only ten days away. I draped a strand of lights over the lime tree stump and that is our Christmas tree.

 I so do not miss the craziness of a modern Canadian Christmas - all that endless mall shopping for stuff nobody needs, all that money spent, people making themselves crazy preparing too much food. It used to be simpler and that is how we want our Costa Rican Christmases to be - more meaningful and involving people, not products. Of course, it must also involve good food! but that doesn't mean I have to prepare it. Lots of businesses out there do it better than I can and we're helping to support the local economy.