I think we decided if we came back to Costa Rica we'd stay in Playa Flamingo. The waves and beach are better and less crowded - and since clearly we are not party animals the night life in Tamarindo is not a requirement! I think I'd like to come in May one year, before it gets too hot, when the dive visibility is still good. Maybe 2015. I think Trevor is still willing to vacation with us, even though we've got the kids! That's a lot of I thinks.
Trev and I are just killing time until 2:10pm when we get picked up for zip lining this afternoon. It's freaking hot! I was going to change out of my swimsuit to come read (and write) under the pergola but decided against it because I'm pretty sure I'm going back in the pool sometime in the next hour! Jay is trying to catch a nap now before we head out, we get picked up in an hour.
Completely off topic, you should have seen the size of the grasshopper I rescued out of the pool last night. Well, rescued I'm not sure is appropriate since I don't know his ultimate fate. If you hold out your thumb and extend your pointer finger in a gun motion, this grasshopper MIGHT have fit between the two digits. MAYBE. It was huge, Jay saw it land in the pool and I was swimming after putting the girls to bed (at 7:20, and they asked to go to bed...they're so beat from the sun and the water, its awesome). So I went to rescue it and then decided I couldn't bring myself to use my hand. Seriously it could bite off a finger! So I grabbed the girls snorkel and scooped it underneath and you could feel the grasshopper latch on...that freaked me out so I dropped it and so back in a the water he went. Now that I knew what to expect, I scooped him again and when he latched I lifted the snorkel out of the water so he could fly away, but he started walking towards my hand - so I dropped the snorkel back in the water again! Yuck. Then a third time I scooped him and quickly went to the side of the pool and put the snorkel on the edge. The grasshopper climbed a few inches and then the weight of him rolled the snorkel back into the pool again! This thing had a death wish! Finally, I scooped him up and flung him into the trees, which is why I'm not sure the fate..he either landed safely in the tree, flew away or landed unceremoniously on the road below the pool. Poor guy, but yuck again.
The air is thick today, it's a good thing it's breezy! There is no way I could come here and sit in the sun, the shade is where it's at! The house has AC, the wall mounted units, in every room. But we usually just turn them on at night in the bedrooms..and even then ours is turned to 26 or 27 degrees and it's cool enough that you just need the sheet and a blanket. The pool has full sun and is probably about 87 degrees, which is perfectly refreshing day or night - you can just walk into it with a sensation of being refreshed. The ocean is the same, yesterday diving was 27 degrees at 60 ft below the surface. We had 3mm wetsuits on, and it was perfect.
We were looking at the weather this morning and see that Toronto is slated for another big storm on Sat night and Sunday morning and we are scheduled to land at 2am on Sunday. So we're hoping we're not delayed or cancelled..we would have to find a place to stay in Liberia for the night. And Trev would be in big trouble, he didn't realize we arrive home early Sunday morning and booked his flight home for the holidays to Nova Scotia for Sunday at 8am going out of Porter at the Island Airport..so if we're delayed he could miss his flight home, which would suck. I just turned to him, swinging away in the hammock behind me and said "if your flights do get screwed up you can always come up to our place for Christmas.." He said "I don't know, you guys might be sick of me by then". Listen, we've spent every day together for the last 5 days, I would know if we were sick of eachother and we're not. Oh, and that reminds me of what Jay said last night at dinner that was funny...Trevor as waffling on what to get for dinner, the braised lamb and porcini mushroom pasta or the Malbec tenderloin. I said "I'm getting the tenderloin and I was thinking of the pasta, why don't we share?" Jay said to the waitress, pointing between him and I "we are actually the ones who are married, but you'd think they were married"..then we shared dessert too! I had caramelized apple crepe with rum flambé and icecream and Trev had a dolce de leche crepe. Jay, of course, had the chocolate volcano cake and was quite disturbed when the girls wanted to share his (and actually liked it so ate most of it!). For dinner Jay had a 17 oz rib eye steak for $21! Everything was delicious.
26 oz of rum between us and several hours later this is my first drunk blog, so here goes...
So, Paige had a rough day..
Earlier she got punched in the face by Sophie while swimming and has a black eye, and then Sophie kicks her in the face in the pool and finally her tooth falls out! Yay! Sophie said to Jay "daddy, are you proud of me for kicking Paige in the face and getting her tooth out?"... Uh, what do you say to that?
Just after this Trev and I left to go zip lining, so much fun. On the walk down the hill to meet our transportation there was a loud scuttling that startled us both - we looked into the tree and there was a huge iguana that had been quietly sunning himself that was now rocketing to the top of the tree! He was about 3 ft long, orange and yellow and FAST!
It's about a 15 minute drive to the canopy zip, up, up, up!
I think I might have to pass and blog the rest tomorrow...
Good morning! Much better. I did a pretty good job on what I wrote, I didn't have to go back and fix anything.
On the way back from the tour we saw a couple of kids playing with a bike with no wheels...so sad. I asked our driver about the average income here, he said it varies, but the people working in the hotels might make $500 a month. I was asking a lot of questions because his English was really good. The houses that we were seeing, that were typical would cost about $30,000 to buy and most people do own their homes with credit from the bank. I forgot to ask how much the interest rates are..I just looked it up, rates are 9.05% (their prime) plus 0, 1 or 2% depending on how much you need to borrow for an 11-30 yr term, fixed for the first 5 years and then adjustable.
Back to the house for swimming and drinking. Even though I've been mentioning the tequila sours we've only ever had a couple of drinks a day because we're so busy doing stuff and tired from the day in the sun. Today we spent from about 4pm just at home relaxing and drinking because we felt otherwise we would have a lot of open alcohol to leave. We needn't have worried about that! Jay and Trevor's rum and orange juice looked like poo water it was so strong and my last piña colada was taupe.
We were swimming earlier and Paige said "I'm drowning!" Trev said to her "you're drowning my ass!" "Uh hum, excuse me Uncle Trevor?" "Whoops, sorry, I meant I don't believe you are drowning!" Then we had to have a conversation about saying you're drowning and the consequence if they do it again.
Jay put oldies on the jam box and did what we call the perfect perfect dance with the girls in the kitchen, I have a couple of cute videos. We talked about staying up past 8:30 tonight and playing cards and the girls said Grampa taught them to play Go Fish, so we all sat and played a couple games. When Sophie started the first game and asked me for a card I said "go fish sucka" and when it got around to Paige, Jay hinted that he had a 4 so she asked for a 4 and he said "how did you know I had a 4?" And she got up in his face and said "cuz you told me sucka!"
We were dancing in the pool for the girls 8th swim of the day, just before bed and got a couple more sunset shots from the pool. I said to Sophie "I'm going to put a swimsuit on". She said "I'm going naked!" "Ok, I'M going to put a swimsuit on". We spent about 15 mins dancing to the oldies on the pool steps then it was bedtime for the girls, I stayed in the pool for a bit and Jay got up and said to Trev "Trev, make my wife a piña colada while I go take care of the kids...my wife, your wife, whatever". It's a team effort this week!
We stayed up and played bugger your neighbour until the rum was gone and then conceded that Trevor was winning this game since we had no hope in catching him. Drinking improves his card play, it must be an east coast thing!
I thought piña coladas were supposed to be taupe.
ReplyDeleteCongrats, Paige, now I won't have to "help" you with that tooth. We'll done, Sophie ��