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| During this rainy season, every blue sky is a treat. |
“Sightings from the Veranda in Costa Rica”
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| During a pelting rainstorm, this gutter pipe, stemming from the villa’s roof to a portion of the lawn, was spouting like a fountain due to the powerful rains. |
While preparing yesterday’s post, Tom heard a loud boom that sounded like a transformer blowing out. Indeed, seconds later, we lost power along with the WiFi connection.
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| A school we passed in a village as we drove through the mountains. |
Rather than panic and rush to the store to buy ice to preserve the food in the refrigerator and freezer, we decided to give it some time to be resolved. Based on the reading on the clock, it came back about three hours later while we were gone on a sightseeing expedition.
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| The trees are painted to avoid rot and insect infiltration. There’s some debate about the effectiveness of this technique, but we’ve seen this done in many countries throughout the world. |
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| We encountered many old tiny houses along the way. |
Instead, he suggested, once we were back inside the villa and found we had power once again, that we’d start accumulating plastic bags of ice to store in the bottom of the freezer for just such a purpose.
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| The greenery everywhere is breathtaking. |
During the last power outage, we didn’t have a car to drive to town to buy ice, but we managed for 10 hours without it. If we keep our supply, we won’t have to worry when this occurs again…and undoubtedly, based on two occurrences in two weeks, this will happen again.
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| Fences made with unfinished logs are commonly seen in Costa Rica. |
I guess the most challenging part of being without power is being unable to complete and upload the day’s post, the apprehension as to how we’ll preserve our food, and the anticipation of spending the evening before bed in the dark.
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| The sunny morning allowed us to takes photos with expansive views of the valley. |
Now that we’ve decided to do the five-day car rental every other week and compact our exploring and sightseeing into these small time frames, it’s less problematic when we may not always be stranded when there’s a power outage. Without a car, the lack of power seemed to add to the inconvenience.
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| It’s not unusual to see welcoming signs when entering an area. |
After picking up the rental car on Monday morning, we’ve made a point of getting out each day. Today, we have enough new and exciting photos from this week’s activities to upload over the next month with the experiences we so enjoyed in the process.
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| A corner shop in a tiny village in the mountains. |
Yesterday was such a unique experience. We may share that story and photos over a few days, beginning tomorrow. It was one of the best production/farming tours we ever experienced in our five years of world travel. We can’t wait to share it with all of YOU.
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| Fence making not entirely completed. |
We’re sorry for yesterday’s lack of a post. We could see from the stats that many of our readers continued to see if we’d ever been able to add a normal-sized post. We’d hoped to get started on it early this morning but at 7:00 am, we were out the door and on our way to the Friday Atenas Farmers Market.
We won’t have a car again until September 18th, although we already have plans about what we’d like to do. A few days ago, we’d written how I wasn’t quite up to hiking. In the past two days on specific tours, we embarked on two strenuous hikes, although only one hour each. I managed pretty well and was pleased to be able to participate.
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| Every road is bordered by lush greenery. |
In time, I’ll continue to rebuild my strength to handle the possible eight to 10-hour hike to see the gorillas in Uganda upcoming in about eight months. The best way to do this is to get out and walk as much as we can. We’re working on it.
Here’s the photo from this morning’s trip to the Farmers Market, including the cost:
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| Included in this morning’s farmers market shopping but not shown in this photo are two giant free-range chickens and a small bag of fresh turmeric root which I’ll use to make a tea. The total we spent for all the items, including those not shown, was US $48.50 (CRC 28,058). |
Photo from one year ago yesterday, September 7, 2016: (Since there was no post yesterday, we’re including September 7 and September 8, 2016, year ago photos. See below):
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| Each morning when we walked in Bali, we’d seen this huge pig, but they hadn’t been in a good spot for a photo when the yard is shrouded in greenery. That morning, we had a chance to see “a pig in the mud.” We howled. For more photos, please click here.
Photo from one year ago yesterday, September 8, 2016:
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