Uruguay!

1st picture: Fish market - fresh off the boats!

2nd picture: At the end of the pier

3rd picture: The Yachy Cory and I are going to buy! Someday...maybe?

4th and 5th picture: "The Hand" was done by a Spanish artist. It looks like a hand is coming up out of the sand.

Costa Rica what a beautiful country...

We are now in Uruguay and I hope you enjoy the pictures below from our travels around Costa Rica before we left. We had a great time and got to see and do alot of things. We left Nosara on the bumpy 40 minute drive to pavement and have not seen a gravel road with pot holes since. I have to say I do miss Nosara, it is a great small community with amazing beaches and a tranquility that you can not describe. We met several poeple there that we will stay in touch with probably for the rest of our lives. We got to see 2 very different places on our trip. When we were up in Arenal we hiked, relaxed, and went to Baldi hot springs (highlight of the trip). The kids got to swim in hot springs and they had slides. The pools ranges from 93 degrees to 109 degrees. Then we went down to Manuel Antonio. It is a very touristy town. I felt like I was in another country compared to Nosara. The beach is beautiful, but lined with umbrellas you can rent for the day from $6-$10, people you can order drinks and food from, people selling everything, banana boats, parasailing, jet skis, you name it you could do it there. We went to dinner one night to listen to music and a taxi pulls up full of tourist. They were dressed nice for dinner, the kids had their hair combed. I turned to Cory and said I think we are in a different country. It was completely opposite of Nosara. You just wore your swimsuit everywhere, flip flops or not, hair combed or not, just being you! I like both, but both very different. It was great to talk to the kids about the differences and how both are perfect. We enjoyed ourselves very much but were eager to get to our new home away from home. We are now in our house in Uruguay and what a beautiful place. Stay tuned for pics! We have interenet at the house, so I will be able to keep the blog updated on a regular basis. Miss you all!

Last week in Costa Rica

See below for what we did our last week. I am also working on uploading pictures to another website, so you will be able to view more of what we are doing and seeing. I am trying to take alot of pictures for us to remember and to share with everyone.

1st and 2nd picture are of monkeys right outside and on our deck in Manuel Antonio.

3rd picture is of Manuel Antonio beach - way different than Nosara.

4th picture having lunch with and incredible view.

5th picture getting ready to go jet skiing! Alot of fun!

Last week in Costa Rica

I am back to were I have internet connection! We are in Uruguay now, but I thought I would first catch you up on what we did the last week we were in Costa Rica. We spent 8 days traveling around Costa Rica visiting 2 of the most visited spots in the Country. Arenal Volcanoe and Manuel Antonio. We had such a great time. We started out leaving Nosara and driving to Arenal to see the volcanoe and lake. Then we drove down to Manuel Antonio which is in central Costa Rica. On our drive to Manuel Antonio we got to see some of the earthquake distruction. Large landsides that washed away entire hillsides. Once we got to Manuel Antonio we relaxed on the beach, went jet skiing, enjoyed monkeys from our hotel room. Then we drove from Manuel Antonio to San Jose where we stayed the night and caught a plane the next day to Uruguay.

Top picture is the view we had from our hotel room in Manuel Antonio.

2nd picture is the family with Arenal Valconoe in the background. It was mostly cloudy while we were there so we never got to see more than that! It is an active volacanoe and if you are a lucky visitor and get to see boulders and even lava flows. We were not one of them!

3rd picture is of a hike we did thru the jungle over 16 bridges, 6 of them were hanging bridges. It was a great way to see the jungle.

4th picture is a view of Lake Arenal from the dam.

5th picture is of Playa (beach) Ostional which is north of Nosara. It is a black sand beach that is protected because of the turtles that nest on that beach.

We are on the road...

Hola Familia and Amigos,
I won´t be blogging for a week or so. We are leaving Nosara on Sunday and traveling around Costa Rica for 8 days. Then we are off to Punta Del Este, Uruguay. Our new house has internet, so I should be able to post more often. I promise once we get settled I will upload pics of our travels and our new place.

Week ending Saturday 1/10

What were up to last week?

Pictures (top to bottom) The neighborhood kids all on a floaty in the pool! Having too much fun in the sun! Turantula, it is a baby. It was on one of the noodles in the pool. The kids showingoff their paintings I did on them. The last picture is of me volunteering at Escuelita; which is at the local elementry school for Costa Rican's. They are off for thier break and the Gringos in town put together an program for them while they were out of school. I painted faces for 3 hours! It was alot of fun. I learned Spanish from all the little girls - Flores (flowers) Mariposa (butterfly). It was alot of fun.

Change of plans!

I have not been taking as many pictures lately, but thought I would update you on what we have been doing and most importantly where we are off to. We have decided to travel more now that we are down here we are getting the travel bug. We have met some many people who are traveling with children and visited so many places. So, we have decided to leave Nosara and travel around Costa Rica for 10 days then we are catching a plane and heading down to Uruguay. Sounds maybe crazy to some, but we (Cory) actually did research on Uruguay also. I just couldn't take the leap to travel down there (so far away), but since we are down here why not. The World is too big to stay in one place. Who knows where this adventure will take us, so we definetly need to take advantage of it. Our goal is to figure out who can live somewhere like Costa Rica or Uruguay part time and part time home in "sunny" Oregon. Stay tuned for news and pics.

Friends in CR

Hola, These are pictures of friends that we have met in Costa Rica. Brian, Danielle, Owen, and Lucy. Their kids are the same age as ours and get along great.

Having fun!

Last night we went to a house that is way up in the hills. Alot of the expat community that is here in Nosara was there. They had several belly dancers do a show. It was so beautiful. It is nights like that where adults and children are socializing in an amazing place, with good music, and dancing. The kids were so tired Ava was asleep in my arms before I could get to the car.

What have we been up to

Hello family and friends. This picture was taken on Christmas eve on the beach at sunset. We are really enjoying ourselves. We had a great Christmas week enjoying being with eachother. We really don't do alot here, just school, beach, surf, get food, watch movies (no TV). We went to a rodeo (see pic below) We have met some great people. We had some friends we met over for fresh Mahi Mahi. They were here from Miami. The kids play with the neighbor kids. I practially have to drag them out of the pool or ocean. Ava has learned how to swim! She is so proud of herself.

Kai surfing and boxing

Kai is learning to surf and he goes to boxing class on Saturdays. He is loving every minute of it! He is tired he has been going to bed at 7pm!

Costa Rican Rodeo (Bull Riding)

The Costa Rican rodeo (bull riding) is very hard to express in words or capture in a picture. Something you just have to experience. The buy rides the bull for as long as he can then the fun starts there are so many people in the ring and those people tease the bull and try to get him back into his pen. Spectators get in the ring. The more they drink the more people get in and the more they tease the bull. Crazy Ticos, but there were gringos in there as well! If you ever come to CR go to a Rodeo just once to see it!

Christmas

We had a great Christmas. The kids opened presents. Christmas night we built a bonfire on the beach with some friends. Unfortunetly it got rained out. It rained so hard we were soaked by the time we got to the car. We did roast hot dogs and made smores! Building bonfires on the beach is something people do all the time down here, so we will do it again.

Crossing our first river!

If you take the beach route sometimes you have to cross rivers. We took a trip to Samara the first weekend we were here and crossed our first river. In the rainy season you can not go this way. There were a whole bunch of Tico's on the hill waiting for people to get stuck. Then they pull you out for a fee of course. They clapped and hoorayed when Cory made it with out getting stuck.

Putting the kids to work!

The kids have been wanting a job! We got an idea to have a car wash from our friend at the Frog Pad (read below). The cars here are VERY VERY dirty. The roads are not paved and it gets dusty. There is no car wash in Nosara, so we are the only ones washing cars. This is a picture of the sign I helped the kids make and them holding up the first money they made. They made 5000 colones in about 2 1/2 hours. That is about $10! Not bad! Retirement Plan! So, we are going to do this every Sunday for about 3 hours in the Morning or Afternoon. Not sure of the details,but they are going to save the money they make. I told them they have to pay for the soap and sponges. Click on the picture to make it bigger. Notice the prices for the different types of transportation is in Nosara. Quads are very popular!