Late Night Breakfast at Denny's!

After spending the afternoon playing cards with Emma & Jon, and talking about some of our old favorite food haunts, Gene suddenly remembered that he hadn't had chicken fried steak in at least five years! And yes, we really do have a Denny's! This was our first time there and it was weird. It looks exactly like the ones in the US, with the prices to match - and maybe more! But Gene got his fix of chicken fried steak. Late night breakfast was fun, with free coffee refills and all! Of course Jon's $3 coca cola made up for the coffee refills!

Sunday Afternoon

Sunday brunch at Maiz Tico. Really good "tipico" food. Really fun band. Really great friends. It doesn't get any better than this.

An Afternoon with Old & New Friends

One of the luxuries included in our retired in Costa Rica lifestyle is having the time to visit with friends. We had been wanting to get back to the Spanish restaurant that we recently "discovered." So we called a few friends who agreed that spending Friday afternoon consuming tapas and paellas and sangria would be a great idea. Then Jim (of Jim & Flora in the mountains) decided we should post a message on Costa Rica Living in case anyone else wanted to join us. What a great idea. Loyd (Zendude) showed up. We hadn't seen him in ages. He says one thing he loves about living in Costa Rica is that he can go dancing almost every night of the week. He's buying a house back in Texas and planning to spend part of his time back there in order to help out his Mom. The trouble with traveling, he says, is that he always needs an extra suitcase for all of his footwear for various types of dancing! What a guy! Jim's post also got noticed by Charlotte and David, which was a real bonus. We had been meaning to call and make arrangements to meet these new imports from Texas ever since David had posted a message on CRL which had got us involved with volunteering at the orphanage. Then we had heard that they had spent last month on the Caribbean, where they had met our friends Judy and Bob (who deserted all of us in the central valley last year and decided to live in a tropical jungle beach area.) So now instead of hearing about this new immigrant couple from the sidelines, we have acquired them as new friends. Our buddies Emma and Jon had given us (Gene and me and our good friend Dale) a ride to the restaurant, so we drove to their house after the lunch, with Charlotte & David following. After some more conversation and another glass of wine at their house (OK, some of us had Emma's delicious fruit drink!), Charlotte & David dropped us off at our house so they'll know how to get here next Friday when we do a follow up afternoon at our house. As usual we got so busy having fun that we forgot to take photos 'til the end. So here you have Gene & me and then Flora and Jim, followed by Loyd and then Dale. Some people claim that we never stop partying around here! I wouldn't go so far as to say that, but we certainly have a good time!

Matices & San Rafael

Got ready for our trip to the Peninsula tomorrow and then walked downtown and messed around for the rest of the day. Had lunch at Azzurra and dinner at Matices in San Rafael de Heredia. Really like that place a lot and also like San Rafael a lot. I ordered a “boca” for something like 700 c, expecting a little bite to eat, and got a whole plateful of dinner! I definitely could live in San Rafael.

Independence Day

Let’s go to “SantAna”! By the time we got started with our day, we figured the parade was long over, since Baldwin, the owner of Azzurra’s, had told us it started at 8 am. Thinking maybe we would find someplace to stay in the Santa Ana area for after we get back from the beach, we headed out for the day. Surprise! We got to downtown Heredia in time to watch the end of the parade! We’d forgotten about “Tico Time!” And a great parade it was! Seemed like everyone was out there – all of the school kids playing in their bands (and they are good!) and their parents and everyone else they know showing up to watch. Huge crowds. Gene, of course, could see over everyone’s heads, and took some pictures holding the camera over his head. I climbed up on a concrete wall and hung on to an iron fence and had a fairly good view! It was fun!

Once the parade was over, we had some corn on the cob and “corn pancake” things from a stand in the park and watched the holiday action for a little while.Then we rode to San Jose and took another bus to Santa Ana. Hadn’t been able to reach Dale, so took off on our own, looking for a neat sounding B&B we had read about in one of the books. Went to Tex-Mex to ask for directions and found out the place we were looking for is no more. What’s in its place now? Tex-Mex!!!
Had beer and munchies and then bussed over to the next village, Piedades to look at a hotel we had read about over there, Hotel Posada Canal Grande. Very nice, up on a hill with a beautiful view out into the hills. Beautifully decorated rooms with a veranda overlooking the pool. Nice, but not all that convenient for location and quite expensive (he came down to $50/nite from the $70 mentioned in our book). E-mailed Sharon and Dale asking if they have any suggestions for where to stay while we come back for a week or so to do Sharon’s party and Dale’s play.

La Garita & Atenas

Finally made it to La Garita and Atenas! Yesterday we took the bus from Heredia to Alajuela, then another toward Atenas. We jumped off the bus just before La Garita when Gene thought he saw the restaurant we were looking for, so we were at one of the knock-off corn places instead of the Fiesta de la Maiz that we had heard about, but it turned out just fine anyhow. Food was excellent – and cheap. Charming place.

We had been wanting to check it out to see what sort of places there might be to stay in that area. We picked one (Apartmentos Atenas), which, unfortunately was all the way on the far side of Atenas. Called a taxi to take us there and went over all these windy roads out in nowhere. By the time we found it, it was getting dark and we had spent something like 6500 c for a taxi, so we decided to stay the night! Stayed in an adorable little cottage fully equipped with little kitchen. The grounds were really nice and there was a small pool. It seemed like we were really out in the jungle. You could be comfortable there for a long stay. It was fun. But even though it seemed like we were out in no where, there were several dogs barking in the night and a lot of traffic noise from the busy road just past our cabin.
They served us a very nice breakfast in the morning. The couple who were running the place are just friends of the owners, who are currently back in Germany on vacation. This couple are in the process of having their house built on their finca. They haven’t lived here very long. So they are staying at this place while their home is being built and are taking care of the place for the owners. They were very friendly, and he gave us a ride into Atenas in the morning so that we could catch the bus. He also gave us the “grand tour” of the area, driving us up into these beautiful hills where lots of people have built / are building homes. The road was really scary on the side of the mountain. He said the homes there are selling for $120,000 – 150,000. They were all incredibly beautiful and unusual and all had pools!
The area around Atenas is all very beautiful, mountainous, and has lots of flowers. The town of Atenas seems like a really nice small town, with a nice park and church in the center. We walked around the town for a couple of hours. There was a lot of activity going on (like a fiesta) outside the Mas X Menos (grocery store). We were looking at the very beautiful church and realized there was a wedding going on, so we stayed and observed for an hour or so. I even got to throw rice at the bride and groom when they finally came out! We decided maybe it was too hot for us in Atenas, but when we headed home (via busses) we realized it was just hot everywhere today. We may have to check out Atenas some more some day.
Tomorrow is Independence Day so there’s a lot going on. We wanted to stay downtown because the torch was being passed in Heredia at about 4 and at 6 the kids were going to do some sort of candle thing in the park, if it doesn’t rain. The torch thing is really neat. The main torch is relayed all across the country, lighting smaller torches as it goes. The smaller torches are then run out to all of the outer reaches of the country, so that by the end of the 3 days every piece of road in the country has been run with one of the torches! Sounds really neat! Big parade tomorrow morning. We were getting tired and figured we should go back to Hotel Roma and see what was going on, since they had said they would need us to move downstairs today. They helped us move when we got there. We now have a private enclosed patio, but it doesn’t make up for the view upstairs!

Never Curse Fate - Again!

With all appropriate papers in hand (passports, copy of utility bill from Hotel Roma to show where we’re living, the temporary “orden patronal” from ARCR, and the very official blank piece of paper obtained at ARCR, the “papel oficio,” along with the “timbre fiscal of 25 colones,” obtained at ARCR) we headed out by taxi to San Rafael to the “estacion de la guardia rural de San Rafael Heredia. This was the next step in getting registered in the public medical system.

We had made plans with Nidia at Hotel Roma that she would call them at 1:30 to let them know what we were coming for, and that we would arrive there at 2:00. When we arrived, the guard at the desk spent several minutes or more looking and relooking at all of our papers and somehow (he spoke no English and I really could not understand any of his Spanish) communicated to us that we should return tomorrow morning after 8:30 because the secretary, pointing to a metal desk with an ancient Underwood typewriter, who types the paper that we need is not there today. Found out later that Nidia had found this out when she called but had no way to reach us to tell us not to go. It was o.k. Now we know where the Estacion de la Guardia is, a plain and ugly concrete block building hidden behind a concrete block wall with chickens running around the mud-filled yard.
We walked around and saw the beautiful church and really liked this small, neat, clean town. Wide streets. Not much traffic. Nice school next to the park by the church. A nice man who was doing some work on the outside of the church (it appeared to be freshly painted) saw us gawking and asked us if we like it. We told him it was gorgeous. He seemed very proud of it, and a few minutes later came running after us with a very nice full color glossy booklet that had been printed a few years ago for the centennial of the church! The sky was getting ready to open up, so we had coffee at the nice big soda on the corner and watched the world go by for a little while, before catching a taxi back to Hotel Roma. Never curse fate. If the secretary had been there, we probably would have spent some time at the police station (Guardia?) getting our papers, and by then it would have been raining, so we would have missed our walk around this charming little town. We might never have seen the beautiful church, talked to the nice man who was working so proudly on it. We might never have discovered the corner neighborhood café with its great-smelling lunches being prepared behind the counter. I could live here!

Never Curse Fate - Electric Outages, Sushi Restaurants & Moveable Bus Stops

By a "lucky" turn of events, we discover a Sushi Restaurant!

Took bus to San Jose to pay our INS insurance and check on the status of our residency application. Oh, stopped for ice cream at Pops on the way! Talked to a nice young woman from the states who is a student at the University. International Business. Interesting. Never curse fate. The insurance person was out to lunch and the lawyer couldn’t give us a letter re our residency application status because the electricity was out. The electric was out in that whole area of town. While walking around looking for somewhere we could get something to eat (no one’s cash registers or kitchens were working because there was no electric) we ran across “Restaurante Pacifico” (at Toyota 100 este 25 sur Paseo Colon – 257-9523). In spite of the fact that it said it was a Korean/Japanese Sushi restaurant, we tried it. Comfortable little place, got table by the courtyard. Sushi was not bad. Of course, it’s not Sushi Blues, but it was o.k. So if we hadn’t had the problems with no electricity and the insurance person being out to lunch, we never would have found it. I realize now that the subject of sushi had come up frequently lately. We must have been reaching our limit of going without our sushi fix! Had a couple of nice rolls + 4 sushis + beer for 5610 c. Went back to Casa Canada and got all the rest of our business done too! They moved the bus stop for Heredia! What luck that someone else waiting for a bus on Paseo Colon asked us where we were going and told us she had just found out that her bus stop was now one street over (north) and that she thought ours might be too. Otherwise we might have waited forever. As it was, it only took us about half an hour to get a bus. Then they made us get off around the corner at the next bus stop and wait for the next bus. Because it was already full and we were standing? The driver raved all the way to Heredia about the situation with the changed bus stops. He was raving in Spanish and I couldn’t figure out anything he was saying, but it was clear that the changes had not put him in a good mood. Good day for us anyways. Coffees at Azzurra’s on the way home to celebrate making it through the day. Es todo.

Sunday Morning at Azzurra's

Met the Gallo Pinto Group at AzzurraS. More & more people kept arriving until we ended up with 13 people, mostly expats from the US. Chuck & Linda, and a bunch of people we hadn’t met before. Tim, Richard & Elizabeth, Emma & Jon, Lori, Jim, Loyd, Lisa and us. Emma & Jon have been here only 4 wks. She’s very friendly-wants to get together-maybe do some traveling together. They’re renting in La Garita. Will try to get together with them this next week. I already know that Emma, who is originally from Bolivia but has lived in the US for many years, is going to become one of my best friends! Lori is staying at Hotel Roma.She came to Costa Rica with a friend 1 wk ago. He’s found a job and now she has to figure out what she’s going to do, find a place to live and a job. She came up to our apartment and visited later in the evening. Jim we had met a few days ago. Lisa lives near Chuck and Linda; works for a sports-book outfit. Has been here 2 years; seems interesting; just had cosmetic surgery and has 2 dogs, at least one of which is a Doberman. Elizabeth is Richard’s Tica novia and is also very friendly. Richard is getting dental work done and currently has no teeth!
Had lunch at a Chinese restaurant that Linda had recommended. It was pretty bad and I’ve definitely sworn off Chinese food for the rest of my life in Costa Rica.