Christmas Day in Atenas

With sunny blue skies and a light breeze blowing, Christmas Day in Atenas was celebrated by many families in the Central Park where the Fuerza Policia (local police) had set up their awning and were handing out food and gifts to the kids. There were trampolines and music and a clown to entertain. A totally festive scene with many smiling children running to and fro.

Meanwhile, Layne and I met up with friends for a relaxed afternoon at the lovely home of Glynn and Darlene, feasting on cheese and crackers, chips and dips, wine and some delicious chili made by Leonard. The hit of the day was Sally's outrageous chocolate drops made with Oreo cookies and cream cheese! Holy waistline!

Happy Holiday Party Time!

Happy Holidays to all my loyal readers! I hope your holidays are blessed with joy, good friends and beloved family and that the New Year brings you prosperity, peace and good health.

Flowers on our fence

We are in full-blown Christmas party mode here, imagining that the sunny skies and warm temperatures actually harbor snowflakes and icicles. If you delight in fall colors, winter snows and spring blossoms, Costa Rica may not be the place for you. Well, the spring flowers certainly burst forth, but oddly that happens here during what is North America’s winter season. Since the end of the rainy season a few weeks ago, colorful blooms have sprouted everywhere and the trees are neon green with new leaves and flowers, promising abundant fruit just weeks from now. So it’s Christmas in Springtime here in Costa Rica.

A beautiful couple, Sadie & Marcial

Daniel, Sadie, Marcial and David, neighbor dog Bean

This week has been party central for us. Thursday night we enjoyed grilled sausages at Marcial and Sadie’s home a few blocks from us, celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. We sat around a small campfire they have in their yard and listened to their son Daniel play his guitar. It was a really fun evening and made Layne and I nostalgic for all the cozy wood fires we used to enjoy in California winters. On Friday afternoon there was a community party honoring senior citizens of Santa Eulalia and our neighbor had invited us. With a clown to entertain and some tasty pork stew for sustenance, the elderly crowd seemed to enjoy themselves. Layne and I were tested on our ability to follow instructions in Spanish as we got picked along with several other couples for one of the playful exercises on stage. We held hands, then let go, hugged then released, touched cheek-to-cheek then backed off and finally we danced. Everyone was gifted with a small picture frame and lotion for the women and socks for the men.

Daniel serenades us

Today it’s a pool party at our Japanese friend Hisano Bell’s bed and breakfast down the hill in barrio Rio Grande. I’ve made a big pot of Italian Sausage Spaghetti Sauce with Marcial’s great sausage (do you see a pattern in our food these days?) for the potluck and look forward to some relaxing at poolside. Then tomorrow we’re off to our friends Glynn and Darlene’s place in Turrucares with local pals Sally and Leonard, Neil and Jackie and our sidekick Marc. New Year’s Eve will find us partying with our favorite realtors, Dennis and Gerardo of Pure Life Development, an event we’re looking forward to enthusiastically. These two guys, along with their office helper Nelson, are some of the nicest people we know here and they have been so helpful to us in our long house-hunt before finally settling here in Santa Eulalia. We know they will host a kick-ass party!

So we hope your holidays are as full of fun as ours are and that 2012 brings Pura Vida to your doorstep! 

Good Friends, Gourmet Food and Golf!

Tico chefs

What a whirlwind of activity, travel and parties the last two weeks have been for us! It’s hard to know where to start on our various adventures. There was Francis and Brian’s excellent backyard party mentioned in my last post. We enjoyed dancing to the live music and nibbling on our friend Marcial’s delicious Italian sausages, grilled to perfection by a couple of happy Ticos, plus chicken, veggies, beer and wine. Lots and lots of wine! We met so many of our Santa Eulalia neighbors and several hours into the event, Daniel, my publisher from The Costa Rica News (TCRN), joined us at the festivities. After the music ended and we were satiated with food and wine, Daniel and Layne and I returned to our house for another hour of convivial chat. Oh, and more wine.

Earlier this week we joined a crowd of expats at Mark and Nancy’s lovely home in Guacimo where we enjoyed more good food and wine and made lots of new friends. Then last night we taxied into Atenas with Marcial and his lovely wife Sadie to Colinas del Sol for a wine tasting party featuring the excellent imports of our friends Shannon and Rolando along with delicious appetizers from the restaurant and Marcial’s great sausages again. We saw so many friends there, including our dear former landlords Odie and Eduardo and our former upstairs neighbor Linda. It was a festive evening!

But the high point of recent days was undoubtedly our visit to Hacienda Pinilla, a stunning 4500-acre beach resort and residential community near Tamarindo in Guanacaste province on the Pacific Coast. If you think the place looks nice on their website, you should see it in person. The long-time owner, a North American from Georgia, has developed the property with a commitment to keeping as much of the land and beaches natural and environmentally pristine as possible. They plant thousands of trees each year, preserve acres and acres of the land in its original condition and in many ways, encourage ecological practices in the hotel, the restaurants and in the building practices used in new construction.

The Beach Club

Our bedroom 

Recycling at La Posada Hotel, Hacienda Pinilla

A mention of golf in my column in The Costa Rica News some months ago led to our visit. Their charming young sales director Cynthia apparently read my article, then contacted me and offered a complimentary stay so that we could experience their golf course and other amenities first-hand. How’s that for a stroke of good fortune?

Putting on the 15th hole

And speaking of strokes, I think the Adams Golf clubs that Hacienda Pinilla loaned us for our round took at least a stroke per hole off my game. I was hitting them long and straight. Although I prefer my own Cobra driver (which is, unfortunately, in a bag in Portland, Oregon, at the moment), I really liked the hybrid 5-iron for fairways shots. Over and over, I turned to that club for distance and accuracy. I was also pretty wowed by the putter, which helped me get a par three from a lie just off the green probably seven yards from the cup. Between the broad open fairways and smooth true greens of Hacienda Pinilla and those Adams clubs, I almost felt like a “real” golfer. And when we came to the spectacular oceanside 15th hole, we could imagine what it’s like to play Pebble Beach.

After golf we returned to our big, comfortable suite and were delighted to find a bottle of champagne and birthday greetings for Layne, courtesy of Cynthia, since Saturday the 10th was his big day. Later that evening we enjoyed sipping the bubbly as we gazed up at a full moon above. So romantic!

Then there was the food. Oh. My. Goodness. Gourmet hardly tells the tale. As usual when faced with a huge selection of appetizing options, making the decision of what to eat at each meal was the hard part. Although a tough choice, I’d say my favorite was the Herb-crusted Tuna with Ginger-Basil Aioli that I had at lunch at the Beach Club the first day. It was just delicious. Layne took the chef’s recommendation, Garlic Sea Bass, also excellent. We both so enjoyed the Fried Calamari appetizer with its delicate batter and spicy dip that we had it again the second day.

The Conchal Hotel pool 

Simon and Hilda

When we reluctantly left Hacienda Pinilla, we drove north about forty-five minutes to the tiny beach town of Brasilito and spent the night at the Conchal Hotel, a charming little boutique lodge just a short walk from funky Playa Brasilito, Run by a delightfully low-key couple, Simon and Hilda, it was the perfect place to unwind and relax after the busy two days at the resort. And while we thought the food was good at Hacienda Pinilla, we were simply amazed at the fabulous fare at the Conchal’s cozy Papaya Restaurant. Chef Hilda serves a marvelous array of gourmet seafood and vegetarian dishes. Our one night there was not nearly enough to enjoy all the area offers; we certainly hope to go back soon for a longer visit.

So now we’re home and trying to settle back into our routine, with the feria tomorrow morning, the organic market on Saturday and my TCRN column due next week. But we made enough memories in the last week to sustain us for a while. Pura Vida!

December = Springtime in Costa Rica

What a thrill! We had a Blue Morpho butterfly flutter through our backyard yesterday afternoon. What a gorgeous creature it is with its iridescent azul upper wings. A friend said that the butterflies are returning in force now that springtime is here and the rainy season is mostly over. That’s good news for us as we love watching the amazing variety of mariposas here in Costa Rica. Of course, the visiting Blue Morpho was gone so fast I had no time for a photo so I’ll just “borrow” one from the Internet.

There was no problem identifying the fellow as we recently visited the Butterfly Farm in La Guácimo when our friend Marcy was here and learned all about the Blue Morpho as well as many other types of butterflies and moths. Although there are numerous such facilities in Costa Rica, this particular location not only breeds and cares for butterflies, from caterpillar to chrysalis through their magical transformation into beautiful winged fliers, but they also export the embryonic form, the chrysalis, all over the world to botanical gardens, other butterfly farms and nature centers. It was extremely educational and quite a treat to have the lovely creatures light on our clothes or arms.

Another wonderful feature of our new neighborhood are the incredible sweet flower smells that arise in the late afternoon and evening. I have located the source of the odors, in the white flower boles of tall plants nearby but a Google search failed to turn up the name of this tree. Every evening lately at about five o’clock, the air is filled with a rose-and-jasmine fragrance that just takes your breath away it’s so sweet. I’m led to believe that the smell attracts nighttime pollinators, such as bats and moths.

We seem to be blessed with some of the best of Costa Rica’s flora and fauna here in Santa Eulalia, including a young raptor we spotted in a tree on our latest walk. Then there was the three-foot long iguana I spied waddling along across the street today as we waited on the bus with some of our neighbors. I pointed him out to the others but no one was concerned. Just part of the local color. Welcome to Costa Rica. Ho-hum.

December marks the one-year anniversary of my trip back to California last year to put my dear horse and good friend Mojave down. After a very intense and poignant dream about him a few days ago, I have appreciated even more some of the horses that live nearby, such as this little yearling colt. He lives alone, it appears, in a large pasture down the road from us, and when we approached his enclosure he trotted eagerly over to say hello. I think he’s a bit lonely as he was most appreciative of my brief affections and followed us along the fence line when we turned to go.

Coffee plant Christmas tree - click on to enlarge

Much of Santa Eulalia is agricultural with acres of edibles nearing maturity. The coffee plants seem primed for the Christmas season, ripe red berries suspended like so many ornaments. Papaya trees are heavy with fruit and the feathery flowers of the sugarcane dance in the wind. Peanuts are laid out on canvas tarps to dry in the sun and our own naranja (orange), mandarina and limon trees are filled with fruits. 

Field of Papaya

Preparing peanuts for market

Add to that the many friends we have made here and you can understand our contentment. And if we needed anything more to please the senses, we got it on Thursday at new amigos Francis and Brian’s jam session. With Francis on keyboard and singing, local musician Barry on saxophone and young Daniel on guitar, Layne and I added our vocals on several songs as we all whiled the afternoon away. 

Tomorrow we’ll visit them again for a huge neighborhood party they are hosting to celebrate the sale of their southern Indiana property. We’ve found a good spot here in Santa Eulalia! Pura Vida!