Bicycles and Breakfast

On Sunday, August 29, 2021, we decided to drive to La Casona del Maiz to have breakfast. We have eaten there before and I have mentioned it in previous posts. Excellent restaurant for tipico food.

We made videos with our car cam of the drive to La Garita, where the restaurant is located, and our drive back home, with a stop to pick up some groceries.

Video part 1 - from our house to highway 118 south to Alajuela, then highway 3 towards Atenas. Bicycle riding is very popular in our area and weekends are the time for groups of them to travel the roads. This is unfortunate for those driving vehicles. We are required to give riders a 1.5 meter clearance when passing them. This puts cars squarely in the oncoming lane. As you will see in the videos, roads can be narrow, twisting and with little or no shoulders. They often do not ride in single file as they are supposed to do but in groups that occupy an entire lane. For this reason, we usually avoid the highways on weekends.

Video part 2 - Highway 3 towards Atenas. We are now in the area called La Garita where many viveros (garden shops) are located. I was told that the reason for this is because there are many aquifers here, which provide lots of water for the garden shops in the dry season. Also in this area is the Rescate Wildlife Rescue Centre (formerly known as Rescate Zoo Ave). We highly recommend visiting this worthy centre and there is a good restaurant, Kivu, on site also.

After breakfast, we proceeded north on highway 1 and eventually turn off to highway 154 east to Grecia.

Video part 3 - Continuing on highway 154 east to Compre Bien to pick up a few groceries. Then back on highway 154 east, until taking a shortcut route to our house. The entrance and exit gates open automatically with our Quick Pass system - a tag on our windshield.

I hope you enjoyed riding with us!

Ants, Compre Bien and a Highway Restaurant

We recently experienced an invasion in our house and surrounding outdoor areas of very tiny, reddish/brown ants. They were everywhere. As fast as I swept them up, they returned. There were piles of dead ant bodies.

Outside our back door (those brown piles are dead ant bodies):

Inside, in every room:

Yes, it is the rainy season and, yes, we live in the tropics but in our ten years of living in Costa Rica, we have never had an insect invasion like this one. We live peacefully with the odd insect who comes in our home but this was not acceptable.

It was time to call in the big bug guns. Who ya gonna call? Delgado Fumigadora, of course. Our bug technician was bilingual. The outdoor areas were sprayed as well as indoors. A return visit will be needed to spray the outside again. We, and many others, highly recommend this company. Price was very reasonable.

We had a lucky week! Both Lance and myself received our new Costa Rican Dimex (or cedula) ID cards showing that our permanent residency had been successfully renewed for another three years.

And … I won 80,000 CRC in groceries at Compre Bien, a Costa Rican owned grocery store that we frequent here in Grecia. That is equivalent to about $160 Canadian dollars.

Today (Sunday) was one of our designated driving days. These driving restrictions are in force to hopefully keep people at home in an effort to control Covid-19. We decided to go out to a restaurant for breakfast.

Searching online, I found one in San Ramon that looked promising. We never found it - it was not where Waze indicated it should be. So we gave that up and decided to head towards home and maybe find a restaurant that was open along the way. By happenstance, we passed one that looked promising (it had trucks out front, a good sign) - Comidas Tipicas El Paraiso on Autopista Bernardo Soto (highway 1) - so we stopped here.

It was a good choice. The service is cafeteria style. All the selections were identified and prices posted so you just have to point if you feel your Spanish is a bit shaky. I prefer this style of eating for breakfast and lunch as I can control the portion sizes and just get the items that I want. For me this morning it was a tamale, an egg cannelloni and a tamarind drink. The cannelloni is stuffed with meat and then wrapped in an omelette - I had never seen cannelloni prepared this way until we moved here. Lance ordered pinto (rice and beans), eggs, coffee and a sort of potato salad. Everything was excellent.

You will never guess what the final cost was for all these delicious items ….. 5,200 colones!!! That’s like $10 Canadian - for two people! This restaurant is very popular with locals.

Then, just to sweeten the pot, a special car drove up and parked. It just looked expensive … it had gull wing doors that swung open. We had to check it out when we left - it was a Tesla 10X! Except on TV, we had never seen one of those before. The starting price for this vehicle is about $91,000 in the USA, according to Car and Driver Magazine. I wonder how it came to be here and who owns it. 

I took a photo - the green-blue coloured licence plate indicates it is an electric vehicle. The people who got out of it and entered the restaurant looked just like everyone else - ordinary folk. Maybe this is a testament to this restaurant.

Click on images to enlarge.

The Craziness! How to Cope At Times in Costa Rica!

In my last post, I talked about our Subaru breaking down on us and being hauled off to our mechanic, Carlos.

So we don’t have a vehicle right now. And tomorrow, Wednesday, is going to be so busy. Our housekeeper, Flor Maria, doesn’t live far from us. Normally, she walks to our front gates and phones me and I drive down to pick her up. Then I drive her home when she is finished work.

Well, I can’t do that tomorrow so I texted her and asked her if she could take a taxi to and from our house and we would reimburse her for that cost. No problem. One down.

Number two: our side by side refrigerator broke down the other day. Our landlord, Rodrigo, arranged for a repairman to come to our house on Wednesday afternoon (or so I thought). Tonight, Tuesday, I get a phone call from Rodrigo saying “open the gate” (we can open and close the gates with our phones). I thought, Rodrigo what are you doing here at this time of night? He lives in San Jose.

He was in San Jose, phoning me and asking me to open the gate for the refrigerator repairman. The repairman looked at everything, asked me to unplug the refrigerator in the morning to defrost the freezer. And he would return at 10:00 am tomorrow. Okay, so now the repairman and our housekeeper will have to figure out how to work around each other.

Number three: I have an appointment at our EBAIS tomorrow at 1:00 pm for a routine ECG. I will have to arrange for a taxi to get me there and back. No problem - I have taxi connections. EBAIS is our assigned medical clinic. There are similar clinics all over Costa Rica.

Number four: We need some groceries... I can do an online order with Compre Bien but I don’t know when they will arrive with the order. Also I don’t know what to order until the refrigerator is fixed. No point in buying perishables if the cooling unit doesn’t work.

Today was quite wacky .. we only have one egg left for breakfast tomorrow!

Stuff Happens and Always Have a Plan B

So our vehicle is still in the shop for repairs - but that is a different story for another post. Not knowing at the outset how long our vehicle repairs would take, we rented wheels from Enterprise. Our mechanic has an agreement with Enterprise Car Rental - if your car is in his shop for repairs, Enterprise offers very good daily rates. However, once you add on full insurance, the cost adds up. Especially over a longer period of time.

We gave up the rental car after a couple of weeks. Now what? We needed groceries and supplies. This is where Facebook comes in ... I belong to quite a few Costa Rican Facebook pages that can be really helpful. And that’s where I found an ad on a Grecia FB page posted by a fellow named Minor who said he would be driving taxi 42 in Grecia on such and such a date. A number of expats gave him good reviews. So I sent him a message saying we needed a taxi on a certain date and time. He wasn’t available but arranged for Reynaldo to pick us up. Reynaldo is one of the drivers of taxi 42. And if Reynaldo wasn’t available, Reynaldo’s boss Alonso would be.

It’s so easy now - they know the number to phone so we can let them through our gate. Minor can arrange pickups for us. Reynaldo was right on time. We had Alonso today - a really nice young person with fairly good English so we were able to communicate using Spanglish. He showed us photos of his young family. He knows our mechanic Carlos - it turns out they live a couple of houses apart in the district of San Isridro, Grecia.

But wait! There’s more! Minor’s sister Laura has eggs for sale from her own hens and she will deliver right to our door. So tomorrow at 0800 Laura will be here with a flat of 30 eggs for a very reasonable price. I think it’s amazing how one person leads to another here - now we have our taxi drivers and egg lady all lined up. It’s all about who you know.

Last Saturday, I decided I would try ordering groceries on line and with home delivery. I went to Compre Biens’ website - set up an account, and completed my order. The website is very easy to use and quite comprehensive in the products on offer. I did this before the store even opened. Before long, I received an email saying my order was being filled. Not long after that, a delivery guy arrived at our house. The delivery charge was less then the cost of a taxi to and from the store. So now we know we can get groceries even without having our vehicle.

Recently, we have been experiencing rainy afternoons with lots of cloud coverage rolling in. I made this video so you can see what it looks like.

Yesterday, the cloud coverage was really thick. Our Cat was sitting out in our laneway so I decided to take a photo of him because the effect of the misty clouds and Cat was interesting. To my surprise, this is what I ended up with. I think the flash was causing light refraction from the clouds. He is perfectly in focus. A bit existential, but maybe he’s looking at his universe.

A Sunday Drive - Costa Rica - August, 2020

This afternoon, we decided to drive along the route we use to get to Compre Bien, one of the grocery stores we shop at. I wanted to take some photos of the local areas we travel in. Lance found the road on Google maps some time ago so we decided to investigate it. We discovered the drive to the grocery takes only 10 to 12 minutes from our home and we avoid the traffic in Grecia. However, the road is not always in the best condition. Part of it is not paved and the heavy rains at this time of year turn the road into deep ruts.

Turning left from our condominium gates:

                         You can take the high road or you can take the low road!

                                       We take the low road on the left:                               

A narrow bridge up ahead. What is the metal basket on the left? It’s where garbage bags are placed for garbage pickup. It prevents animals from tearing into the bags. Notice the lack of shoulders and the deep ditches which are designed for coping with torrential rains.

Start of the heavily rutted road. Notice the absence of deep ditches.

The road improves and becomes less narrow and more open:

Overcast this afternoon:

And here we are at Compre Bien, a very modern grocery well stocked with everything you could want and 100% owned by Costa Ricans.

We are driving home via a different route. I like the way this tree was not cut down for the road access. Instead they molded the road around the tree.

Sugar cane:

Home again. This is the resident rooster who lives at the condominium’s front gates. The guards feed and water him. He never strays away.

And this morning I made French baquettes:

Take care everyone - wear your masks and practice social distancing.

When Your Vehicle Breaks Down in Costa Rica

Yesterday morning, we drove to Compre Bien (a grocery chain) in Grecia to buy some groceries and supplies. That done, back home we went. As we pulled into the front entrance to the complex where we live, our vehicle stalled, stopped and would not restart.

Johnny, one of our front gate guards, the groundskeeper and one other fellow came out unasked to push our vehicle into a shady spot. 

Lance phoned Carlos, our mechanic, and was able to reach him. Carlos and his assistant arrived in good time and looked everything over. He did some tests but it was apparent that our vehicle would have to be towed to Carlos’ shop. He phoned a tow company that could pick up our car around 1:30pm.

Carlos has a special arrangement with Enterprise car rental and he booked a rental vehicle for us at the same time. If you have a car in Carlos’ shop, Enterprise offers special low rates and they deliver the rental to the shop. We didn’t know how long Carlos would need our car and we didn’t want to be without wheels.

We piled into Carlos’ car, along with our groceries, and off we went to wait for the rental vehicle to be delivered. On the way, we provided Enterprise with drivers’ licence numbers, credit card information and so on via phone to speed things up. We had to wait a while for the rental car but it was worth it as they substituted a much larger car for the one we booked but at the same price. It’s a 2020, hardly driven, Honda RAV 4. Really nice.

Here it is at our house with the Cat giving it a thorough inspection:

Arriving home, we saw the tow company picking up our Subaru so I was able to get a photo of the action. In Costa Rica it seems that tow companies mostly use flat bed trucks instead of the hook and chain trucks that I am familiar with. Here’s our vehicle heading off to Carlos’ Vehicle Hospital. 

We haven’t heard as yet what the problem is with our wheels, but Carlos is a great diagnostician and mechanic and has been caring for our Subaru for several years now.

So when your vehicle unexpectedly breaks down, you can treat the matter two ways:

Cons: My car won’t run! It’s going to cost money! What am I going to do?!! This is so inconvenient!! What about our groceries? 

Pros: Well, at least the car was polite enough to keep running until it got pretty close to our house. Lance had Carlos’ phone number and he reached Carlos right away. Carlos showed up in good time. Carlos arranged for the tow and a rental vehicle. As indicated, Enterprise delivered our rental right to the shop and we got an upgraded car for the same price as a small one.

Also, because the car is a rental (read: tourist) we are not under any constraints on the days we can drive it. We just have to obey the 5:00 pm curfew imposed because of the Covid-19 restrictions.

I think you can apply this coping mechanism to all sorts of inconvenient things that unexpectedly happen. Just make sure you always have a Plan B.

Information on our mechanic: Carlos Morera, Superior Automotriz, tel: 4033-6045/8834-1692, Grecia, Alajuela, Costa Rica.

San Ramón, Macaroni and Cheese and a Thunderstorm - Costa Rica

On Tuesday of this week, we had occasion to drive to the town of San Ramón, about 32 km away from our town of Grecia. It was a beautiful morning with clear views of the lovely countryside - hectares of coffee plants growing in neatly laid out rows on the rolling hills and dales and clear views of the beautiful countryside. There are lots of interesting towns to explore in the central valley.

Back home, clouds began gathering in the afternoon and we had an impressive thunderstorm. A made a video of it:

Our Cat likes to lie on top of our car during rain storms.

Yesterday (Wednesday), we had banking to do in Grecia and some shopping. Banco National is adhering very well to Covid-19 protocols - hand washing station outside, must wear mask, keeping one’s distance, control of how many people in bank at one time, hand gel sprayed before entering, bank personnel wearing face shields. This morning, lineups were sparse so I got my business done quickly. Then we went to Compre Bien for some groceries. We like to shop at 100% owned Costa Rican businesses so we patronize this store and also Super Rosvil.

Compre Bien also has excellent Covid-19 protocols. I’ve noticed that more and more people are wearing masks/shields compared to a few weeks ago so the message is getting out. We don’t use plastic or fabric bags - just load our goods into the cart and take them to our vehicle where we pack everything into two cardboard boxes.

We were getting low on fruit so here is what I bought. Clockwise from left: papaya, bananas, cas (aka Costa Rican guava) and dragon fruit (pitaya).

Dragon fruit is one of my favourites. The ones we find here in Costa Rica have a gorgeous red interior:

We have a cas tree in our backyard but I’ve never seen any fruit. So today I thought I would try some. This is what the cas looks like cut open. It tasted very tart! So I’ll try using it to make a smoothie drink.

Earlier this week, I told Lance that I didn’t know what to make for dinner. He replied that we hadn’t had macaroni and cheese for a long time, one of his favourites. But it had to be his mother’s recipe so that is what I made:

The recipe is so easy: boil up some macaroni - and spread one-third of it in the bottom of a baking dish (I used to use a bean pot that worked really well). Then add a layer of sliced cheddar cheese, then more mac, another layer of cheese, rest of the macaroni and the rest of the cheese. Pour over one cup of milk. I added salt, pepper and dry mustard to the milk. Cover and bake at 350F for forty minutes, remove cover and bake another 30 minutes to get that nice cheesy crust on top. We refry the leftovers for another meal with a salad. It’s a recipe that you can adapt to your own tastes but we stay with the original family recipe.

Now, moving on to the wearing of face masks during these trying times. You absolutely must wear one when out in public. Thankfully, I am seeing more and more people wearing them around our town and those that do not are becoming less and less visible. We have both plastic shields and fabric masks. My black mask is pretty boring - I was thinking of painting toucans on it but then wasn’t sure about washing it after it had acrylic paint applied. So I came up with the idea of putting pins on it:

So right now, I have on my mask a Canadian flag pin and an art deco horse pin that I found at an antique store. I’m going to switch things around with Canadian Coast Guard pins, an B-1 bomber pin and whatever else I have in stock.

Covid-19, Costa Rica, and Other Musings

As of today - June 20, 2020 - the number of new cases of Covid-19 has risen to 69. The government immediately suspended the third phase reopening plans and we are now following restrictions that were implemented during Semana Santa (Easter Sunday). You can read about it in this issue of the Tico Times.

For us, our life goes on as normal. We just need to be aware of what days we cannot drive (Fridays and Sundays) and where we can drive to on other days. We are impressed with how Costa Rica has been and is handling this epidemic.

This past week, I had to pick up my prescriptions at our hospital’s farmacia (pharmacy). There was quite a long lineup leading from the entrance to the street and down along the sidewalk. Everyone observed distancing and most people were wearing masks. It was slow moving and I must have shuffled along for an hour. Nearing the entrance, the hospital employee who was keeping everyone in check and in the right lines asked me if I was over 65. Since I am, he wanted to move me to the Old Folks and Other Deserving Conditions lineup. I didn’t really want to move as my lineup was moving faster.

Well, as is often the case here, a Costa Rican decided to be my guardian. He patted me on the shoulder and moved me to the new lineup whether I wanted to be there or not! He let me go ahead of him - Costa Ricans are very polite, like Canadians (haha).  I apologized for my Spanish but we still managed a conversation of sorts. Yes, I live in Grecia in the Puente de Piedra area. He lives in the San Isidro area. I’m a Canadian. He drives a motorcycle. He yelled out to his friends in other lineups, “Poor English”! They all laughed. I thanked him for his help when I was leaving with my prescriptions. It is these day to day unexpected interactions with Costa Ricans that really enrich our living experience here.

On one of my Facebook Costa Rican expat groups, there was a discussion of how Covid-19 and isolation practices have seriously impacted some people’s lives. The people who are very outgoing seem to be hit the hardest. They are used to meeting friends, going to dances, socializing, meeting at restaurants and they understandably miss this.

Today (Saturday) has been overcast with some rain. Our Cat knows how to deal with it:

So, everyone, stay safe - wear your masks, practice social distancing and take good care of you and yours.

Cabbage Rolls, Rainbows, Haircuts and COVID-19 - Costa Rica

Here is an update on the coronavirus in Costa Rica as of Saturday, May 23, 2020, https://ticotimes.net/2020/05/23/coronavirus-in-costa-rica-7-new-cases-7-more-recoveries.

We are still on driving restrictions. We cannot drive on Fridays or Sundays (determined by the last numeral on our vehicle’s licence plate). No car travel at all between 10:00 pm and 5:00 am during the week and between 7:00 pm to 5:00 am on the weekends. The repercussions of not following these restrictions can be severe - heavy fines and removal of your licence plates to name two. Beaches have opened but only between the hours of 5:00 am to 8:00 am - I believe this is primarily for the benefit of surfers (world class) - and of course with everyone following the usual protocols for keeping distance, etc.

A well known landmark restaurant in Atenas - Kay’s Café Pequeña Polonia (previously Kay’s Gringo Postres) - has reopened with limited hours and takeaway. They have a free lending library. Since we needed new reading material and were craving cabbage rolls, I put in an order and we drove there last week and picked them up, plus some new books. One order had dill sauce and the other tomato sauce and the orders included mashed potatoes, pickled beets, and cucumbers and onions. The portions are really large (two rolls each) so we got four meals out of the one order. Here’s the dill sauce version:

It’s really important right now to support all your local businesses. This is a very difficult time for them and many have closed, some permanently. 

We haven’t been going to barbers or beauty parlours and Lance really needed a head shave. He has a set of clippers so I volunteered to do the deed. Turns out I’m pretty good at it.

Tools of my trade:

Here’s Lance ready for the clippers and pretty relaxed.

The one thing I stupidly did not do was take an “after” photo - but the buzz cut came out so well that Lance has said I can do it again.

We found face masks at Compre Bien in Grecia. This one is washable and made here in Costa Rica. We are using them when in shops or around groups of people.

We saw a double rainbow from our house the other day - very rare. Isn’t that tree amazing? It’s the Guanacaste tree I mentioned in a recent post and it’s absolutely enormous.

I have a couple of orchids blooming:

So that’s about what is going on with us during this awful virus time. We are happy to be in this little country. Costa Rica is doing an excellent job of controlling, tracking and treating. Citizens are taking the recommendations and restrictions seriously for the most part.

Kermit is wearing his mask. Are you?