No Water? No Internet? Pura Vida??

What a funny, unpredictable country Costa Rica is! In my last post, I reported the frustrating saga of the undelivered remote control from SKY TV and the numerous trips to the post office and phone calls to the company trying to track it down. In that last phone call when Tech Support guided me through a repair of the frozen television picture as well as a resuscitation of the unresponsive clicker, the techie had also canceled our order for a new remote control since we no longer needed one. So what happened yesterday morning? At 7:15, there was a call from the post office informing me that the remote control had been delivered. LOL! Somehow I managed to convey the information that the order had been canceled and our patient postal clerk said fine. I presume the unwanted clicker will be returned to SKY. Now we’ll wait and see if the $19 charge for the thing is on our next bill. If it is, still another call will be required to reverse that. Patience, Gringa, patience.

Downtown San Jose traffic 

Meet my dentist, Dr. Alberto Meza

So after being without water off and on for days now, yesterday and this morning we had no Internet. Costa Rica may not be “third-world,” but it’s not exactly “first-world” yet either. As addicted as we are to online news and email and Facebook contacts, it has been a trying couple of days. 

The Internet is truly our lifeline to the world and to family and friends back home. Easing the pain yesterday was the fact that our Tai Chi class filled much of the morning, then in the afternoon we bused into San Jose to my dentist’s office to pick up a night guard. Dr. Alberto Meza assures me that I need to wear this mouthful of plastic in order to protect the implant he did several years ago on my first medical tourism trip to Costa Rica. Being a light sleeper, I do hate the thing. But the implant has been so reliable and trouble-free, it seems prudent to follow the doctor’s orders on this.

The rainy season has evidently started early this year. As the clouds appear here in the early afternoon and the thunder rolls in the distance, it’s clear we’re in for another shower today, the third day in a row for late-afternoon precipitation. At least we don’t have to water the garden so much now. But it could spell trouble for our friends’ Sue and Christine who are due to arrive on Thursday for a visit. As reported in my last post, their original flight was canceled at the very last minute, literally at 4:00 a.m. when they arrived at the gate.  

Part of last year's Oxcart Parade

 La Estrella Valley

But the silver lining to this story is that their re-booked trip is now two weeks instead of only one, giving us much more time to tour the country. And we do have some great trips lined up: sea kayaking and off-shore fishing at Bahia Rica on the Nicoya Peninsula; more kayaking, hiking and volcano watching at Hotel Tilawa on Lake Arenal; enjoying this year’s Climate Fair and Oxcart Parade here in Atenas; and finally, visiting their high school pal, Layne’s first wife Kate, and her Tico husband Gilberto high up in a tiny mountain village called La Estrella, or The Star. Along the way we’ll visit the Gold Museum, the Jade Museum and perhaps the beautiful Teatro Nacional in downtown San Jose. All in all, it promises to be a pretty fabulous trip not only for our visitors but for Layne and me as well. We’ll be seeing some parts of Costa Rica that we’ve never visited and I look forward to sharing some of our adventures with you! Pura Vida!