A Tale of Two Shoes

I have a pair of sandals that I really like. I think I ordered them from Lands End and then a friend muled them down to me.

The soles eventually started wearing out so I took then to our local shoemaker. I thought I said I just wanted new soles put on. He asked me to pay what I thought was a kind of hefty deposit (10 mil). But I paid and kept checking back every week to see if my shoes had been resoled.

What was really going on was that he was building me a new pair of shoes. His wife didn’t like the the new soles he had selected, so she prevailed and I got my new higher heeled sandals! She gave me the thumbs up. Here are the new sandals.

Quick Update

I haven’t posted much lately because we have been quite busy. We are getting ready for our move to Grecia from Atenas next week. 

On May 31, 2011, we arrived in Costa Rica, spent a week in the capital city of San José seeing our lawyer for residency matters and then moved on to the lovely mountain town of Atenas, Alajuela province. We have been living in a Tico house since then (read: small). Atenas is wonderful ... we have so many friends here (both Costa Rican and expats).

Now it is time to move on. We are moving to Grecia, Alajuela province at the end of this month (March) ... not that far from Atenas. Our new rental house is much larger. 

Continuing Eyes on Costa Rica

Visits to this blog have now been recorded from over 3600 towns, cities and other places located in 121 countries throughout the world. Since my latest post on this topic, the added countries are Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean and Albania in Europe highlighted on the map below.

All the red dots indicate places from where visits have occurred since September 29, 2016. Visits recorded before this date are not shown on the map.

Antigua and Barbuda are two islands in the Caribbean which together constitute a sovereign country. It might be noted that Barbuda suffered devastating damage from hurricane Irma a few months ago and that many residents had to be evacuated to Antigua. Costa Rica is mostly out of the range of Caribbean hurricanes, but the northern part did get sideswiped by hurricane Irma. There was a significant amount of damage but nothing like that suffered by the island of Barbuda.

Side note: In my blog on August 26, 2017, I posted a video of "Landing in CostaRica". This was on a return trip from Canada to Costa Rica via Houston, Texas. The post was done using YouTube. According to YouTube, the video has now been viewed 1100 times. At least in part, this number of views has to be attributed to people searching for information about Costa Rica on YouTube. It cannot be attributed my blog.

Weather Report, Vista Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica - February, 2018

Compared to January, temperatures were a bit cooler overnight and a bit warmer during the day. In the early mornings, sweaters or jackets were the norm. There were two days when rainfall was high - more like the "green season" in Costa Rica (May to November) as opposed to the "dry season" (November to April). According to many locals, the February rainfall was abnormally high.

Warmer daytime temperatures were mitigated by low humidities. For example there were 3 days when the daytime high reached 88° F (31.1° C). Corresponding humidities ranged between 23% and 32%. Resulting "feels like" or heat index temperatures ranged between 84.8 °F (29.3 °C) and 86.1 °F (30.1 °C). In our current house in Vista Atenas indoor high temperatures (though not measured) were quite a bit cooler than outdoor "feels like" temperatures because the house has a tile roof and is shaded by a number of trees.

The result is that we never felt any need for heating or air conditioning in Vista Atenas. We are expectant that the same will be true in our new house near Grecia. Like the current house, the new house is distant from the coast and at about the same altitude. Altitude can be critical. It should not be too low or too high. If you are too low, then you may be uncomfortable without air conditioning. If you are too high, then you may be uncomfortable with cold morning temperatures.

Cirque du Soleil Soda Stereo

On February 18, 2018, we went to see the Cirque du Soleil Soda Stereo show at Hacienda Espinal in Alajuela. This was our first time at a Cirque du Soleil show. If you haven’t yet been to one, I highly recommend that you go. There are different shows all over the world.

The Atenas Mens Club organized this outing. There were 32 of us and we had a very comfortable air conditioned bus to take us there and back. A big thank you to all those who helped buy the tickets (this was not an easy task apparently) and arrange for the bus.

An area was set up outside the venue for food trucks so we enjoyed fresh made fish and chips before the show.

We were not familiar with the Argentine rock band Soda Stereo, but the young people in the audience certainly were. They were singing and clapping along to all the songs. We were warned that the music would be very loud and so it certainly was. Earplugs would have come in handy. 

The aerialists and acrobats were simply incredible, as were the props.