May 30, 2014

Our house is about 6 weeks from completion. Plastering should be completed next week and painting started. Our builder prefers to plaster the inside drywall and put a special paint on to combat the mold and humidity from living in the tropics. He uses a greenboard where ever moisture is present, like in bathrooms and outside where water will splash up on the house, he uses cement board. Everything gets plastered over. Even our basement block has plaster, much more than we expected.

This is a sloth near our house, it was in a tree between the rental house and our new house. A worker told us that he has seen sloths here in Serenity about 6 times so far. But spotting sloths is very hard since they don't move very fast and blend in with nature. John would have missed it had it not been pointed out to him. He rushed home to get me and we got pictures. (Still no sloth crossing the road though.)

At a party someone brought Ceviche de Banano (green banana ceviche). Most common is ceviche made with fish. But this was a vegan ceviche and it was very tasty. So I asked Aldemar to find out who made it and could I get the recipe. He brought his sister Cecelia over and she taught me how to make Ceviche de Banano. This is a picture of us working in the kitchen. Aldemar stayed to translate and then I helped his niece with her English homework. It turned out to be a very interesting Sunday afternoon.

 

 

We mostly eat outside and have found it helpful to cook some things outside on the porch.  Here I am making pancakes on a Sunday morning.  At our new house we will have a kitchenette on our veranda so cooking out there will be easy.

Two weeks ago when we went to San Isidro many of the roads were closed in preparation for a parade celebrating Saint Isidore, patron saint of farmers. While at the bank sirens were blaring with a fire truck leading the procession right by the bank. Painted ox carts being pulled by decorated Brahma bulls were common along with horses, carriages, children with carts filled with produce, floats of agriculture displays, everyone dressed in traditional colorful clothing and more. This is a picture of one of ox carts and bulls. Costa Ricans love their parades, celebrations and holidays.

And finally but not least, as we were driving through a mountain neighborhood a pair of Scarlet Macaws came swooping down to our car and circling it. It was an amazing site. Normally we only see them high in the sky flying in pairs like 2 stunt planes, swooping, spiraling and making quite a spectacle; and sometimes in trees. The colors right in front of our windshield were vivid and the birds huge!! We got out of the car and a lady from nearby house came out to try to talk to us about the birds. Unfortunately she only spoke Spanish and our Spanish is very limited. It seems that she feeds them because one landed on a frame crossing her sidewalk to her front door. It allowed us to get near and take many pictures. As this one hammed it up for the camera the other stayed nearby calling from a tree along with many toucans flying back and forth. I've got to get back to this lady and find out how she attracts both macaws and toucans; somehow finding a way to converse with her. Oh how I wish we knew more Spanish! We are trying but our old brains keep forgetting all that they try to teach us!

 

May Changes

Afternoon of Heavy Rain

Now that the rainy season has started; which brings afternoon rains, we have stood amazed at the deluge of water a few hours of rain can bring down a mountain. We have never lived on a mountain before so this is all new to us.

The easiest way out of Serenity is crossing what has been a little river. But the deluge has seriously washed away the land bridge (tubes underneath to drain water) we normally drive over. Two afternoons of rain last week brought so much water down of what was a quiet stream, that the strong current washed away the road bed and left us with a difficult drive over it. And forget about driving over the stream during the deluge, the current is strong enough to wash a car down the river or at least cause serious damage. There is another way out going further up the mountain in Serenity and across the mountain top by the Community Center. But that road is VERY steep and washed out. It is supposed to be worked on this week to improve the drive up. Hopefully we won't have any emergencies and need to leave Serenity when it is raining hard because neither way out is safe right now in a heavy rain. We obviously need a bridge but not sure when that will happen. But no doubt, we need a new bridge before August when even heavier rains will come for 3 to 4 months.

 Before Picture--We can easily walk across the bridge, unto the rock and climb down to a little pool of water below the falls for swimming.

After Picture--This is what happens to the river after a few hours of hard rain.

  Look for the little bridge in lower left corner!  No swimming today!

This is the "lazy" stream crossing after a hard rain.

  You can't really get the feel for the torrent of water it has produced by looking at the picture. 
We couldn't drive across until the next morning.

House Update

The stairways are constructed in our new house so I got to go upstairs for the first time this past weekend. It is going to be a great area for guests. It is exciting to think about many of our family and friends visiting Costa Rica and us. Don’t make plans to come until after the holidays though unless you really like rain. The rainiest months are September, October and November. That leaves December as a month of transition into the dry season but really...do you want to travel at a time of heavy holiday traffic and high air-fares? Best to wait for January through April. I am liking this May weather also, it is cooler but you do have rainy afternoons.

 That whole upstairs area is for guests!  I had told John for me to be able to move to Costa Rica,

 I had to have a guest area.

All the "green" should be plastered or this week. The house will be stucco. 

Mangoes, Mangoes Everywhere!

This is the high season for mangoes in southern Costa Rica. They grow up and down our mountain road, really an exciting sight to see. The market has them pretty cheap too. I didn't know there are different types of mangoes. The smaller mangoes are the sweetest and less fibrous. What to do with all these mangoes...? Fruit smoothies, tomato salsa (a chopped mango adds a nice dimension), mango salsa for fish (delicious!), jam, salads and more. Never has my kitchen been so filled with tropical fruit. I also chopped and freeze all types of fruit for frozen fruit smoothies, makes it very much like sherbet.

Diane with a new friend, Jaden, one of our builder's daughters.

Water Apples

We have water apples galore on our property. There are so many falling to the ground that it smells like vinegar standing on the veranda! Water apples are very popular here, I will have to ask what they do with them. We really aren't fond of them eating them like an apple as they are soft in texture. They would be good in smoothies and would like to try making water apple preserves.

We had a green banana ceviche at a party. It was amazing. I really need to get the recipe for that! It reminded me of potato salad! I put Aldemar on the hunt for the recipe.

Relearning Nature

Trees down here behave very oddly to someone that hails from Michigan. The fruit trees often have 2 or more crops and some trees, like the mandarin lemons, bear year round. Leaves on some trees fall off only to be replaced the next week! We have seen orange trees with new blossoms that are also producing fruit of all stages, some of the fruit near maturity. There is so much to learn about nature in Costa Rica. Since we love nature, it is exciting for us to discover new things about it.

Rainy Season Approaching

The rainy season has started slowly and will build so that by September, October and November we will experience lots of rain. Right now the vegetation, rivers and ground are being replenished from hardly any rain for the past four months. Some Costa Ricans, (mostly just those who have been to the States) sometimes call the rainy season “winter” but that just seems odd to me. Days that still reach into the 70s to 80s can't be “winter”. I'll stick with “rainy season”. Currently we have mixed cloudy/sunny days with periods of rain but haven't had a full day of rain yet. The further you get away from the mountain the more likely to have sun. Sometimes we can we look out into the valley from our new house and see sunshine way out there in the valley and other mountains.

House Construction

Our house is about 2 months from completion. We have picked out most of the lighting, tiles and fixtures. Still working on kitchen appliances. This is the third house John and I have built together and we both find it intriguing; it is an exciting process. I like the designing part and John is into the construction so we fit well together building a new building because it exercises our creative sides.

The upstairs level is for guests.  Bedroom, full bath and loft area. 

As I have mentioned before, many Costa Rican guys that work outside often bring their dogs to work with them. Pictured here is tired little Oszo. His owner, Victor, was walking back and forth taking gravel down the hill to a building site. Pictured with Victor is Odilio. Oszo the dog, finally got tired and needed a ride. Oszo follows Victor everywhere but has little legs. One Sunday, when Victor took his family to the ocean, Oszo got anxious for Victors return. So Oszo trotted up to our building site (Victor sometimes works for our builder) looking for Victor. After about 2 hours I said to John, “Lets go up to the house to see if Oszo is still up there because I haven't seen him back down.” Sure enough, Oszo was in our house waiting Victor. Awhhh!

Victor, Oszo and Odilio

Pacific Ocean Picnic

While driving home from San Jose a couple weeks ago, we had food in the car along with a blanket. We stopped at a popular roadside cliff overlooking the ocean for a picnic. The waves were very large that day, the picture doesn't really show how big they were. And we saw 4 Scarlet Macaws while there. It made for an lovely picnic.

Surfs Up!

Scarlet Macaws