Changes

Many of my family and friends from the US, Mexico, and Canada have asked how I enjoy living in Costa Rica and how it differs from living in the aforementioned countries.

My immediate response would be that in Atenas we have consistent climate and more limited items to shop for than either country.  Costa Rica also is a much smaller country (smaller than the state of Texas where I lived most of my adult life!) and much smaller population.  I suspect that both of these factors tend to contribute to the selection of stores with the variety of goods found in the USA.  However, I have learned less selection does not mean lower quality of life or deprivation.  In fact,  the only items that I have not been able to find in the grocery stores that I previously used in cooking or preparing desserts is Velveeta cheese, Cool Whip, and Rotel tomatoes.  Two of the three items are processed foods which I am probably much better without eating!  Most of the other food items not readily available here in Atenas can be found at stores such as  AutoMercado, WalMart, PriceSmart, or Saretto, all within less than 30 minutes from our home.  Imported grocery items do come at a premium price so through attrition I am replacing old recipes with new ones that incorporate local goods, including an abundance of very cheap veggies and fruits.  Just the other day, for example, I purchased over 6 lbs. of fresh tomatoes for less than $2.00.

If pressed to name three things I miss, besides family and friends from each place, I would say sweet bread from Mexico, cherries and raspberries from Canada, and food from PF Changs, a favorite restaurant in the USA. Oh, yes and Orville Redenbacher popcorn for my air popper.  For some reason, good popcorn is hard to find here.

I have very few complaints about Costa Rica.  The lack of road signs can be frustrating, daunting, and yet adventuresome.  Since street signs are pretty much non existent, you have to learn to rely on inexplicable directions involving trees, businesses that are no longer there, the few hundred meters, and other assorted markers.  Besides, for me personally, the great things about living here far outweigh the minor inconveniences.  

Two blessings of our new lives here are watching a lot less TV (we were both kind of news junkies) and living a much slower pace of life that allows us to take in the beauty around us, and spend more time with new friends.

Nine month anniversary

It has been nine months since we made the big move to Costa Rica.  We have settled in nicely and made many new friends.  Some things in our lives, such as taking care of a senior citizen with dementia, are challenging no matter where we live.  We do our best to manage a difficult situation and are fortunate to have one another to lean on for moral support.  Unless a person has cared for a person with special needs, another cannot possibly understand the patience that is required and the mixed emotions a caretaker faces.

Even taking care of old dogs can be challenging.  The other day while my senior citizen Chihuahua was out taking care of his evening business, I noticed the neighbor standing at the end of our driveway with a long pole.  I asked him what he was doing since he seemed a bit frazzled.  As it tured out, his old dog had walked into a drainage tunnel (for the second time in a week) that runs underneath our driveway.  The dog appeared to be stuck or too tired to come out on his own.  Since our neighbor had been trying, unsuccesfully for over two hours to rescue the dog, I offered to help.  I found a shorter wire pole and hopped down into the drainage ditch at the other end of the driveway and managed to hook onto the dog.  Once the dog realized I was there to help, he started trying to crawl with his front paws.  He was exhausted by the time he was rescued.  It truly felt good though to have the doggie out and safely on his way home.

We get some horrendous electrical storms here with lots of rain.  The poor ole' dog would have easily drowned if a rain storm had developed that afternoon.  We did have one such storm just yesterday, which caused loss of power for over an hour at the house and Internet disruption for most of today.  We depend so much on the Internet these days...no Skype phone service, no television service, no shopping online, and no emails!  Whew, it was a long morning, but we did get some weeds pulled and even scan through a couple of books that had been collecting dust.

While we realize our paradise is not everything we wished for due to our circumstances, the consensus among us is that we made the right move and there is nowhere else we would rather be than in our home here in Atenas.  Posted pictures may help explain why.

Life.....Beautiful and Scary

Despite the last couple of months being filled with many challenges, this place has magical (or at least in my view they are magical) ways of renewing my spirit of discovery.  Mother nature has blessed this country with an overwhelming bounty of beauty, whimiscal, and scary!

The beauty abounds in the diversity of flowers, plants, butterflies, and birds. For example, the other day while waiting for my doggie to find the perfect place to do "his business" I noticed a critter that looked like a miniature hummingbird fluttering around a lantana plant.  I stared at it long enough to realize the critter in question was some type of moth or butterfly with the speed and flight pattern of a hummingbird.  After Googling my imaginative description I found out that the flowers were being visited by a "hummingbird hawk moth," otherwise known as macroglossum stellatarum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroglossum_stellatarum).  

I have also learned from our local herb man who I always visit at the Friday morning farmer's market that there a a number of interesting plants used for natural remedies.  We recently purchased a Juanilama plant that apparently is useful for helping with digestion and upset stomach when the leaves are steeped in a tea.  We were also introduced to the Carao bean yesterday, also known as the Stinky Toe Bean.  From what I have read, the odor of the contents of the bean can have a pungent smell like some types of expensive cheese, or plain ole stinky feet!  However, the taste of the nectar is supposed to be pretty good when mixed with milk or served in various concotions.  The bean is touted as aiding in circulation, anemia, and is even considered an aphrodisiac.

I am always surprised at all the new fruits, vegetables and plants that we are introduced to during our daily lives here.  The double pleasure of learning about them is that they are readily available and very inexpensive.

During one of duties playing tour guide to relatives last month we also visited the wonderful Cafe Toledo here in Atenas.  We all enjoyed the very informative tour provided by Gabriel, the son of the owner of the coffee farm.  We not only got to sample some extraordinarily good coffee, but also learned about the importance of biodiversity of plants and weeds in the farm.  We even discovered another new favorite fruit, mamon, a green large queen olive size fruit that has a great tangy taste.  

Now, for the scary.  Probably the two biggest fears that many expats like ourselves have in common living here are home robbery/invasion and close encounters with a fer de lance snake.  Both of these items seem to be common topics of conversation....and where to find certain imported items that we miss having readily available at the local grocery store.  Last week we heard the scariest story yet about an encounter with a fer de lance.  A couple in a nearby neighborhood found one of those dreaded, poisonous, aggresive snakes in their bed of all places.  Fortunately, the couple were able to dispatch the snake to a better world before the snake bit either of them.

We have so much more to learn and explore here.  We also have to learn to adjust our perceptions of norms and customs, but as long as we have great friends to help us navigate the maze we will continue to be more blessed than we deserve.  

My husband asked the other day if I felt we had a mistake by moving here.  I responded, "absolutely not!"  Happiness is a choice and state of mind.  I had a couple of rollercoaster months that had nothing to do with this place, but rather circumstances and it all just caught up with me emotionally last week, but the good here far outweighs the bad.  The natural beauty here renews me everyday and I look forward to the small surprises that abound in this paradise.

Twilight Zone

The whole month of July turned out to be like being swept up into a reality/telenovela show based in the twilight zone.  My brother and his two beautiful children had been to visit for two weeks and we had just said goodbye to them a few days before the saga began on July 4th.  

We recived a call from our friend, Julio, telling us that an older friend of hs that lived up the road in another community had been involved in an accident and had to be taken to the emergency room at a hospital in San Jose.  The man, Mr. C, ended up having emergency surgery and has been in ICU, unconscious since that day.  We located information to contact his daughter in California who flew down to assess the situation.  

Since she spoke very little Spanish, Julio asked if I would help her upon her arrival, which happened one day before we were expecting company more family to arrive for a visit.  Throughout the next 10 days or so we learned about this man I had never met through various people in the community as we went around town trying to take care of his personal business.  It was like having a portrait painted of him through the stories of people he dealt with in town and in his neighborhood.  Mr C moved to Costa Rica seven years ago and drove down here in an RV all alone.  He wanted to raise chickens, sheep and had two beloved dogs left behind while he was hospitalized, whose names we did not know, but through savvy detective work managed to discover.   The funniest story I heard was that Mr C had purchased a sewing machine to be able to mend his underwear.  Just one of many eccentricities that seem to be part of his character.  Strong willed, independent, cranky, and generous were the impressions that seem to personify Mr C.  

Things went from bad to worse though as the caretaker we placed at his house immediately after Mr C was hospitalized came down with dengue and then had to be fired by yours truly after some unfortunate things happened.  The last straw, though, was that we built a security cage to secure Mr C's valuables until he could return home.  Three days after the cage was completed, someone broke  into his home and stole all of his stuff.  We were shocked, angry, and saddened that this crime would be committed against a poor old man who was battling for his life in the hospital.  It is unlikely the culprits, who obviously knew exactly where to go for the goods will be caught.

We had two rounds of family visitors in July in the midst of the whole ordeal with Mr C so we were quite busy on all fronts.  I am glad July is behind us, but hope that Mr C will eventually recuperate and that he will be able to have some quality of life left to enjoy.  

As for me, I have learned more about the Costa Rican judicial and medical system than I wanted to know so early into my life in this beautiful country.  There is so much natural beauty, but that can be sometimes overshadowed by the rampant theft, lack of accountability for criminal behavior, and complexity of laws.  

We love our new homeland, but do wish that home robberies were not so commonplace and that criminals were more aggresively prosecuted.  Sadly, we had been warned that as soon as Mr C's home was left without a person living there fulltime, the home would be broken into, and sure enough, the predictions became reality.