Eyes on Costa Rica and Weather Records - August 2020

During August, visits to this blog were received from the following 22 countries:

For all years, the total number of countries from which visits have been received remains at 130.

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

August was marked by more rain and cooler daytime high temperatures than last month. The maximum rainfall for any one day was a record for the year.

Friends who live south of us on the Osa Peninsula have reported incredible amounts of rain over the last couple of months - far more than our experience in Grecia where we now live and in Atenas where we previously lived.

Though it cannot be blamed on the weather, a significant magnitude 6.0 earthquake occurred mid-afternoon on August 24. The epicenter was about 40 miles (64 km) from where we live as the crow flies. We felt it for about 5 to 10 seconds. Apparently, it was more intense in other regions near where we live but with little or no damage.

Sourdough Bread, El Residente and Heavy Rain Storms, Costa Rica

Recently I had the urge to make sourdough bread. I used the recipe provided by Gemma at her website Bigger Bolder Baking. The recipe is for sourdough beginner bakers and wasn’t too complicated. Watching the sourdough starter bubble and grow is fun. Here is what mine looked like at day 3:

Today I baked a loaf and here it is:

We haven’t tried it yet but will have some slices with dinner tonight. I found out that when you feed the starter every day and have to discard half of the starter, the discard can still be used for baking. King Arthur Flour has some good ideas - I made their cracker recipe and the results were excellent.

Here is the latest edition of El Residente magazine, published by the Association of Residents of Costa Rica (ARCR). As usual, it is full of interesting articles and useful information.

Lance had a dentist appointment yesterday at 4:00 pm in Grecia. By the time we arrived in town, the rain was coming down in torrents. We found a parking spot very close to our dentist’s office which just happened to be situated under a pipe spewing out rain water. The rear end of our vehicle is super clean! The building in the background is the Grecia municipal building.

Headed home after Lance’s appointment. As we arrived at the gates to our complex, we noticed the resident rooster has an interés amoroso (love interest). He was flapping his wings as if to say, “look, look!”. Beside him was a sweet little hen. I’ll try to get a photo of them together.

It was starting to get dark when we arrived home. We sat outside to enjoy the rain and the storm and eat some Pop’s ice cream. Here is a video I made of the storm. Our Cat likes to lie on the roof of our vehicle when it is raining.

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.

Impromptu Road Trip and ARCR El Residente - Costa Rica

Recently, we took a little impromptu road trip around the area where we live. There are so many winding and hilly roads leading who knows where that it’s always fun to explore them. You never know where you will end up and what you will see. If we get lost, we just punch our home address into Waze. Waze is the best navigation system around as routes are constantly updated by actual drivers and it lets you know of congestion, police road stops, accidents, etc.

So we started out from our house at Hacienda El Paseo, headed to ruta 1, then to ruta 715 and drove as far as we were comfortable with and then turned around and went back on ruta 715 and onto ruta 710. This led us back to ruta 1 until a turnoff which took us back to our house (follow the red arrows).

The following enlarged portion of our route shows where we turned around on 715 near the Rio Grande River because the road suddenly became unpaved and very rough - it was already quite narrow. We speculated that it probably led to a deep river canyon and a Bailey bridge which we were not inclined to check out. Lance did an excellent job of turning our vehicle around in a very tight space.


The scenery all around us was, as usual, beautiful. This is the way to see the real Costa Rica. We drove through lots of small communities, waving to people and they would wave back.

Horses in a field:

I’m not sure what was growing here and the purpose of the white markers - perhaps vegetables.

Hectares and hectares of coffee plants - all neatly planted in rows.

Young coffee plants:

We have been members of ARCR - Association of Residents of Costa Rica - since 2010. Their lawyer, Romulo Pacheco, and his staff have done all our legal residency work for us from the beginning. They produce an excellent magazine - El Residente - that can be read on line. The magazine provides so much useful information as well as interesting and well written stories.

Here’s the front cover of the latest issue - the photos are amazing:

And here’s the link to this latest issue - July/August 2020.

Eyes on Costa Rica and Weather Records - July 2020

During July, visits to this blog were received from the following 24 countries*:

The number of countries (24) compares with only 16 countries in July 2019. For all years, the total number of countries from which visits have been received remains at 130.

* Hong Kong identified above is not an independent country. It is a special administrative region (SAR) of China.

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

Despite fewer days with rain, there was more total rainfall in July than there was in June. Reminiscent of the dry season, there were several days in the middle of July with little or no rain and a substantial amount of sun. Temperatures bordered on hot, albeit with low humidity. This is a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the Veranito (Summer) or Veranillo de San Juan (Summer of San Juan). In English, one also hears "little summer".

Apparently, the phenomenon arrived a bit late. Normally it occurs in June.

Here’s a video I made of a thunderstorm at our house in July:

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.