Breakfast at El Fogon Campesino, Atenas

I’ve been meaning to mention the great breakfasts served at El Fogon Campesino. We ate there when I was participating in the Just In Time For Christmas art show and sale in Atenas in December, 2022. I did a blog post on this event and you can read it here.

I think they serve some of the best breakfasts around. 

My choice was avocado on toast with scrambled eggs (3 pieces, large):

Lance decided on two eggs on toast, bacon, avocado, pico gallo and two pupusas (corn tortillas stuffed with cheese):

Here is a recipe for pupusas.

I don’t have a photo of their breakfast menu but it was quite varied. They are open for breakfast Saturdays and Sundays only, starting at 0800. 

Breakfast - Granja Rysol

I learned of Granja Rysol from a Grecia Facebook friend who said it was a fun place to visit and have a meal. It has lots of farm animals to interact with, which is just up my alley. So on January 14, 2023, we decided to go there for breakfast.

At just 6.4 km from our house, it didn’t take long to drive there.

Hours are 0845 to 1600. There is a large parking lot with a nominal charge to park there for the day. This is the entrance:

Here are some photographs of the restaurant area with fun art work:

We could hear “moo’ing” behind the log wall and I discovered a couple of calves, two pigs and a horse!

After breakfast, we walked around the grounds. Here are my photos of the critters we met up with:

While we were having breakfast, the workers were bringing in fresh cut grass for the three horses that were used for giving short rides to kids. They were saddled with kiddie saddles. It’s not grass like you may have for your lawn but long and thick grass. All the animals were well cared for.

An interesting sign near the front entrance - notice where the top arrow points to. It points upwards to “Dios” which is the Spanish word for God.

One arrow pointed to Volcán Poás (under “gallinas” and above “burra batalla”):

We live on one of the ridges of Poas Volcano. Here is a good article about our area.

The trade winds were blowing hard on the day we visited Granja Rysol so we didn’t stay as long as we wanted. That’s fine … a good excuse to go back and visit, have lunch and pet more farm animals.

Click on images to enlarge.

Lunch - El Mirador de San Luis Restaurant, Grecia

In late November of 2022, we went to El Mirador de San Luis for lunch. Here are our driving routes:

We took a different route going home. As is true of all of Costa Rica, the vistas are stunning. “Mirador” means lookout and the restaurant is aptly named. 

Some of the views:

For lunch I ordered the seafood soup and Lance decided on rice with shrimp:

Lance ordered an Imperial beer. I like the way they serve beer with ice here.

Beautiful setting and the food was good. As we were leaving, we met a gentleman walking his dogs and enjoying a glass of red wine as he walked along. There are a lot of dogs and dog owners in this area!

We made a wrong turn as we left the restaurant and stopped to ask him for directions. You can hear our discussion on the dash cam video which I have posted below. Some of the views while driving downhill were spectacular.

Click on images to enlarge.

Eyes on Costa Rica and Weather Records - December 2022 / Year End Review

During December, visits to this blog were received from the following 10 countries:

From the time I started to keep track, the total number of countries and non-independent jurisdictions from which visits have been received remains at 135. Of this number, 13 are non-independent jurisdictions (e.g. Puerto Rico).

During the year, visits were recorded from 44 identifiable countries and non-independent jurisdictions.

As of 2022 year end, the total number of visits to this blog approached 50,000 according to a widget called RevolverMaps. In the right hand sidebar of my current blog the number indicates 25000+ views. However, this number is for the period from Sep. 29, 2016 to date and does not include 24000 views during the period from Nov. 13, 2012 to Sep 29, 2016: see my blog post on Oct. 4, 2016. The following map projection indicates by red dots places from where visits have been received since Sep. 29, 2016:

The right hand sidebar also includes a widget indicating that the "TOTAL PAGEVIEWS" is approaching 250,000. This widget is independent of RevolverMaps and the page count is current from the inception of the blog to date.

Not unrelated to my blog, the YouTube video I posted on Aug. 7,  2017 with regard to landing at the Juan Santamaria International Airport (SJO) continues to attract interest. As indicated in the following chart**, the total number of views is over 9700 and the average is over 140 views per month:

Some of the views have undoubtedly been motivated by earlier blog posts which included a link to the video. I expect that many are from persons who have had their "Eyes on Costa Rica" but who were oblivious and remain oblivious to the existence of my blog.

** Note: While the horizontal x-axis distance between successive data points in the chart is uniform, the number of months between each pair of data points is in fact quite irregular. For example, the first data point after the landing date was recorded about 7 months after the landing date; the last data point (Dec. 31, 2022) was recorded about 1 month after the second last data point.

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The following is a summary of the weather for December in the area where we live:

December 2022 was an extremely dry month. Unlike previous Decembers where we recorded at least some rain, nothing was recorded in December 2022. There were dribbles on a couple of days. But, our rain guage is a wireless system (Acurite Model 00899) with a remote collector and a digital display. If the rainfall on any given day fails to reach at least 0.01 in. (0.25 mm), then the record from Acurite for that day is "0.00".
 
That said, the following chart indicates the monthly pattern of rainfall in 2022 in the area where we now live ("San Roque de Grecia" as distinct from "San Roque" per se or any other "San Roque de ..." which you might find in Costa Rica). This pattern is compared to patterns in Hacienda El Paseo where we previously lived in 2020, 2021 and the early dry season part of 2022:

2023 - A New Year

Happy New Year!   ¡Feliz Año Nuevo! 

On New Year’s day, we went to La Terraza Guest House B&B for food, drinks and a good time. I wrote a post about our recent stay at this B&B.

We had a super time. The setting is perfect for a large gathering like this. Here are some videos that Charles E. Owens gave me permission to post here. 

Enjoy! and turn your sound on to hear the music:

• Introduction
• Bridge over the river (as seen in the “Introduction” above)
• Charles BBQ’ing
• Music

All videos courtesy of Charles E. Owens.

You Need a Plus Code!!

What is a plus code you may well ask? Read all about it here.

Today we wanted to order a pizza from Pizza House in our small community of San Roque de Grecia. I contacted them via WhatsApp (Costa Rica runs on WhatsApp), put in my order, my name and phone number, the plus code and a short description of how to get to our house.

The short description is okay but the plus code is what really pinpoints where our house is. In a country that doesn’t really have street addresses the way we were used to when we lived in Canada - this is the best way to ensure delivery.

It worked! I had to do a few English-Spanish translations on WhatsApp but now that Pizza House knows who we are and where we live, it will be easy next time.

Our delivery guy on his moto:

The Supremo Grande:

It’s really good pizza!

Click on images to enlarge.