A new used car, a Costa Rican Swiss train and a revolving restaurant

Last night around 10 pm I finally made it home with our new car.  My three hour fifteen minute drive into San Jose took about 5 hours to return, in large part thanks to gnarly Friday afternoon traffic in the city.  Only one minor non-intentional detour, which fortunately took me past the striking national football stadium.  Our new ride is a 2006 Mitsubishi Montero, with the key features being 4x4 and the ability to seat seven.  So we can take those of you to come to visit on some adventures with us.  We found and bought it with the help of a great small business that takes all the hassle out of the process of finding and buying the car.  It’s finally done.

Finally!

We were up early to return the car we rented for the day yesterday to shuttle kids around.  While in La Fortuna we pretty much completed the school uniforms, welcomed Madeleine into the world of her own cell phone, endured some griping having to old-school text without a keyboard (first world problem), picked up a baking dish to replace one that had broken and walked around the touristy town.  The church was not especially attractive on the outside but the typical Latin colorful decor inside did not disappoint.

La Fortuna's bright church

Church but no volcano in the background today

We moved on to the main attraction of the day, to satisfy our young train enthusiast and to feed us all.  Les Heroes Hotel, in the guidebooks, is reported as a Swiss retreat deep in the heart of Costa Rica on the shores of Lake Arenal.  Founded several years ago by a Swiss couple, the grounds include the hotel, two dairies with requisite cows, a very cute chapel on the hill and a real Swiss miniature train that takes guests waaaay up the hill to what is billed as the only revolving restaurant in Central America.  Was this place designed by a five year old?  How crazy is that?

Switzerland with palm trees

The Swiss mini-train grinds up the hill

It was a pretty cool 25 minute ride up the hill and the views from the top were worthy.  Plenty of the ubiquitous and ever-busy leaf cutter ants were doing their work and making trails.  

This beats walking up the hill

The revolving restaurant was fun and a first for our kids but seemed like a bit of an anomaly in the middle of the countryside.  Sullivan, of course, soaked up every minute of the train ride.  

Apparently the only 360 degree rotating restaurant in Central America

On the ride back down we chatted with a young couple, doctor and nurse, from San Jose.  He is a general doctor and she is a psychiatry nurse.  They were friendly and Diego’s English was very good.  He felt the licensing exam would not be hard for me and invited me for a tour of his hospital or a mountain bike ride sometime.  Sounds like fun.  First, some more sleep for all in preparation for tomorrow.

Ready to enjoy the view

A Happy Friday and the Long Haul for Nik

The 7am start to the school day for Henry and Sullivan was surprisingly unshocking.  Thanks to the sun and the birds and an early bedtime for all, getting the crew up and going was pretty easy.  This was Sullivan’s first day of school, and it was another great success!  How can we be so lucky?  Nik took him to his classroom, and without a tear, he took the plunge.  Henry was also eager for his second day, and his classmates were able to tell me that school ended at 11:30 today.  Madeleine did not have school today, apparently due to a teacher meeting.

A successful day for our Sully.  Love the cutie uniforms.

Nik was to head off to San Jose to return our rental car and pick up our new (used) car, so we solved the transportation issue for the day with another rental car.  Madeleine and I rode with Nik as far as La Fortuna (1 hour from Nuevo Arenal) and rented a car to drive back and use for the day.  This was my first real driving experience in Costa Rica, and it was a breeze.  I feel lucky, as Ticos do have a reputation for being insane drivers.  We picked up a very happy Sully at 10:30 and heard from his teacher that he’d had a great time and was very patient and attentive (well, I think that is about what she said).  We spent an hour in a small park near the school and at our now very familiar produce market, then picked up Henry at 11:30. 

Sully in his Kinder class area

A happy guy, ready to be sprung

Madeleine spent the afternoon at her new friend, Fiorella’s house, along with three of their classmates.  One of the classmates is a boy from Montana, Dawson, who seems to be happy to act as interpreter for Madeleine and her other friends.   I am sure this makes for easier conversation, and hopefully will not impede her progress in learning Spanish.  Their goal today was to complete a social studies project on the regions of Costa Rica, but when I picked up Madeleine at 5:30, they were outside playing tag and had not quite finished their work.  From Madeleine’s account, school here is much more laid back than in Portland, the kids in her class are more rowdy and loud, and perhaps as a result, less learning is accomplished.   I do like to hear that while kids her age have cell phones, they use them to listen to music and send texts, but they don’t play games on them.  Thus the time for lots of games of tag.

…ugh, just had an unpleasant bug encounter in which I tried to catch a large skittery cockroach in Madeleine’s bathroom, but it was too fast and left me with curled up toes, while it hid itself in some dark crevice.  Eek.

Henry reported today that his new good friend, Daniel, invited him to come to his house and swim one day.  They attempted to draw a map to Daniels house, including little circles to denote the unpaved rocky road, but will need more time to complete it.  Another friend bought him snacks at recess, some kind of dark juice/ soda thing in a bag and something else that involved a tortilla and some kind of cheese, but sounded like more than an average quesadilla.  I like the mystery of the recess snacks.  Nik and I may never get to experience these delicacies.

Nik has had a very long day, which will be his story to tell.  As I write, though, he is on his way back from San Jose in our new used Mitsubishi Montero, 14+ hours after he left this morning.  He got to experience the joys of Friday evening traffic as everyone in San Jose heads out for the beach.

Pasta by candlelight to end a great day.

We love school!

Madeleine and her amigas with smiles galore

Could this really be the happiest place on the planet?  I’m starting to be a believer.  For our family, today was just about magical.  Madeleine and Henry went to school for the first time today and the consensus was a resounding “It’s great!”.  Even though they knew no one, speak only very little Spanish and were scared out of their pantalones, they both absolutely loved it.

Butterflies were swarming in the stomachs of all three kids last night and this morning.  The moment of greatest anxiety for them, possibly in their lives, was here.  We showed up at the school at 8 am, feeling like we were sticking out like never before.  We took Henry to the fourth grade class (he was in third grade in the States but not here) and met his teacher, Nuria.  She was full of kind words, smiles and affection, even though none of it was in English.  She put her arm around him and took him into the class.  And like that, he was gone.

We were taken to meet the kindergarten class who was in the computer room.  Sullivan’s teacher, Madaline, was also quite kind.  As we were talking to her, he began to be very sad, cried and hid behind Erica.  It was decided to show him around the classroom and have him start tomorrow.  The classroom was exceedingly cute and very decorated, especially relative to Henry’s fourth grade class.  In addition to the fancy guppies in the fish tank, it was explained to us that there are two free-range turtles patrolling the classroom but we couldn’t easily locate them today.  Sullivan was very intrigued.

Sharp-dressed man

Henry was full of smiles and good cheer when we picked him up, having had a great time.  He claimed the kids were super nice and the math was fun.  He’d made a list of new words he’d learned including “silencio” and “regla”, which means ruler.  At 9:30 everyone was fed a hardboiled egg, some beans and rice and pineapple juice.  Recess was good fun.  He was befriended by a fifth grader from Montana whose family are apparently the only other “extranjeros” in the school.  The schedule his teacher glued in his notebook looks great, includes English, Spanish, science, math, religion and agriculture among others.  What an education this will be for us all.  There are about 15 students in Henry’s class and he is eager to return tomorrow already.

English won't be so bad and Agriculture will be very interesting.

The depth of Madeleine’s terror prior to starting school at 12:10 was equal to her joy at pickup.  There was a gaggle of about 10 girls from her class waiting outside the school with her.  They’d had a great time already, were exchanging hugs and kisses on the cheek with her and planning a get together tomorrow!!  We were absolutely dumbfounded at the warmth the kids showed her on her first day.  There is no school for the sixth graders tomorrow but she will join her friends at one of their houses to work on a social studies project.  In theory, anyway.  A friend gave her a highlighter.  Another bought her a treat at recess.  Madeleine’s asking for a cell phone after her first day of school so she can go places with her friends before or after school already.  Not sure how her day could have been any better.  She was thrilled and we were so relieved.

Some school uniforms were bought and the day finished off with some special treats (fruit/ice cream shakes) from our new favorite drink place here in town, Cosechas.  This day will go down as a great day in the history of our family.  Tomorrow I’ll venture to San Jose to pick up our new used car, as our wire transfers went through today!!  It’s all falling into place.

Yummy and healthy too!

School progress and termales

Third try was a charm, and we found the school director at school today.  After some challenging conversation, Nik was able to understand that we needed to bring 2 copies of each report card and email them as pdf files (again).  Our kids will be starting school tomorrow!  Henry and Sullivan will go to the morning session, and Madeleine will go in the afternoon.  The kids do not need school uniforms and books right away, so we will probably get those next week.  While Nik was trying to understand the school director’s lightening-speed Spanish, I talked briefly with a boy who was waiting outside the office for the director.  He is from Montana and started school here last year.  He was interested to hear that our kids would be starting school here too.  He’s in 5th grade and knew a bit of Spanish when he started.  Alas, I did not have time to pump him for more info.  

We left feeling a little shaky and nervous (at least the kids and I were), but we are excited to be making progress and for the kids to get a couple of days of school under their belts this week.  (Or get the agonizing first day over with!)  We shopped for some snacks afterwards, and I had no problem with Madeleine and Henry picking out some comfort junk food.  

To decompress and celebrate the kids’ last day of freedom, we drove 45 minutes to Termales Los Laureles, near La Fortuna, and spent the afternoon soaking in varying temperature pools, heated by Volcan Arenal that loomed in the near distance.  We met up with some Portland friends of friends, the Murphys, who are spending 2 months in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.  Their son Simon, along with Madeleine and Henry and the braver adults among us enjoyed the water slide into the “cold” pool.  Los Laureles is refreshingly non-touristy and relatively inexpensive ($38 for our family for the day).  

Termales Los Laureles with Volcan Arenal in the background

Good news/ bad news

Enjoying the sun with Lori and Christophe.  

Henry demonstrates one of the pools

We spent a lot of time today trying to ease our kids' fears and anxieties about school.  I think that Nik and I had some darn good advice, but I am not sure how much of it sank in.  It is hard to see our children feeling stressed, but we are confident that everything really will be ok.  Still, not easy.  Nothing worthwhile is easy?  

Sullivan did share a secret with Nik and me… (shhh)… he is excited for school.  

Blue-Grey Tanager visitor

Oropendola envy

Here is a quick video of the Montezuma oropendola's fantastic call.  First, there's a squeak, then some static-like sound and finally its call.  We love this bird!

Another day of contrasts and chayote

Nature trail nature

Although it was a beautiful sunny day today, there was no grand adventure with huge views.  Such is the difference in living abroad instead of having a shorter trip with little work and all fun.  We are trying to get some things accomplished.  The post-breakfast early morning time was filled with more math work and game making.  Madeleine wrote and illustrated another first reader book for Sullivan, this time entitled "Peter the Pizote".  

Hard at work

We trekked into town to the school yet again.  We did meet with the very friendly English teacher, Ron but alas, the school head was again not present.  Ron did tell us that there are two other “extranjero” or foreign students in the school who are maybe just a bit older than our crew.  He was encouraging and made us feel quite welcome.  Each time we visit there is a little less anxiety for us all walking in the door.  We’ll try again tomorrow and one of these days we’ll get our kids into school.  

Amazingly I don’t feel any frustration towards trying to enroll the kids into the local school but the opposite is definitely true for the wire transfer situation so that we can buy a car.  Forgive my small rant.  DHL sent me an email this morning stating they delivered our six pieces of paper at 11:16 am.  I spoke with E*Trade bank and was informed that once the wire is processed that it’d be 2-7 business days for it to go through, which is 2-7 days longer than I thought it would be.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I’ve been so frustrated from beating my head against the wall.  How difficult can this be?  Early afternoon beer, lunch and a nap were sufficiently therapeutic.

For me, the kids and Erica really made the day better.  Sullivan has been asking me specifically to do so many things with him and has been wanting to hang out a lot.  I’m not sure we’ve ever been closer and I love it.  Having the opportunity to spend this amount of time with the kids every day has been superb.  We took our daily stroll down to the nature trail/”fishing” pond and had plenty of time to look for animals and play in the dirt together.

Good thing we can buy food, too

The new food for dinner tonight was a chayote, which has been described as similar to summer squash.  Indigenous to Central America, it is actually a fruit.  To me it tasted like a mix between broccoli stem, apple and butter.  Pleasant, but nobody seems eager to run out tonight to buy more.

Chayote

After dinner we enjoyed two games of Clue, one with each of the elaborately homemade and complete Clue games.  Not exactly sure what got this kick started, but it's safe to say they wanted to play Clue.  Henry’s game accommodates up to 12 players, has a dragon theme from a book he's recently finished and includes weapons such as wing claw, fire and breath.  Madeleine chose the traditional Clue characters and weapons.  Both were “laminated” with packing tape. Good times were had by all and nobody cried!  

One third of Henry's illustrated and "laminated" Clue cards

Madeleine's companion homemade board

Tomorrow, we’ve already decided to go and visit a nearby “termales” hot springs after our daily visit to the school.  I’ll continue to hope for a miracle wire transfer.

Mini-me and me

Monday news

We have been dabbling in homeschooling this past week as we wait until our kids can start at the school in Nuevo Arenal.  Last week we tracked down Madeleine and Henry’s most recent report cards and emailed them to the school director.  We had planned for all three kids to start school today, but decided to postpone until we are able to make the swap between our rental car and the car we are buying.  This will require a full day trip to San Jose for Nik, and without a car for the day, I would not be able to get the kids to school and back.  Unfortunately our house in Las Flores is not within a very easy walking distance to town.

From our limited experience, home schooling only works well when everyone’s mood is aligned just right.  This morning that seemed to have happened, and it was a lovely thing.  Madeleine wrote a first-reader book for Sullivan to read, including illustrations that he could color.  All three kids (mostly) happily completed their work, and Madeleine and Henry have been working on designing their own games of Clue.  We brought some compact games with us, like travel Scrabble, Uno, Yahtzee, etc., but no games that require a big board.  So our industrious children decided to create their own.  Madeleine opted for the classic version, while Henry designed a Clue game based on the Wings of Fire series about dragons.  We are eager to try them out!

Henry and his custom Clue cards

We hoped to meet with the director of the school today to iron out details, however he was not in today.  We will try again in the morning.  From talking with several people around town, we have some details, such as: there is a morning (7am-noon) and afternoon (12:30-5pm) session, and kids go to one or the other.  We can buy school uniforms at a shop in town.  There is a school bus.  Now we just need to pin down the fast-talking school director and connect the dots.

While in town not making any progress toward school, we made grocery and produce store visits too.  Madeleine would like to make biscuits, so we tracked down the ingredients; hopefully what we bought is really baking powder.  At the produce store, we bought some yucca to try.  Eventually all of the fruits and veggies for sale will be familiar to us.  

Happy shoppers

We had more bird excitement outside our front door this afternoon.  We spotted a small toucan-like bird in our tree; it then flew to our bird feeding platform to check out the pineapple offerings.  Soon two of his friends joined him.  They stayed just long enough for some photos and a positive ID as Collared Aricaris (or Tucancillo collarejo in Spanish).

Aricari visitors

Our hopes for tomorrow include a successful wire transfer for the purchase of our car.  Today being President's Day in the US, E*Trade was closed and could not receive our DHL “overnighted” written, notarized wire request.  We are still hopeful that this is the week we will be able to return our rental car, pick up our car and get our kids enrolled in school!  Patience…

-Erica

La cena: insalata de taco?  Sully made the guac.

Rain!

There's no doubt in my mind that some of our friends and family might find some solace in the fact that it not only was raining this morning, but also that we put on sweatshirts.  It was reminiscent for me of my time as a teenager in Singapore when some of the locals put on ear muffs and warm coats when the temperature dipped down to a bone-chilling 70 degrees.  We still took our French toast outside and with pineapple jam.  Even we can't eat rice and beans every day for breakfast.

The only real plan for the day was to head to a bi-weekly farmer's market we'd heard about.  Rumor also has it that an American realtor and her husband sell sliders there as well.  By the time we arrived at the fledgling market, the rain had stopped and the sliders didn't disappoint.  In addition to some kettle corn from a gringo hippie we made two other tasty purchases from a Tico named Rudolf.  He and his wife sold us the last of their green caimitos (star apples) and some special juice/extract that he makes.  We sampled several varieties, including some alcoholic ones.  We settled on a bottle of Jugo de Uva Güiscoyol without alcohol or extra sugar.  It's apparently made from the "grape" of a certain palm tree, reportedly similar to acai berry.  Of course it has many health benefits.  We were cautioned to keep it refrigerated or it would turn to alcohol and then vinegar.  It's in the fridge.

To health!

After a couple of errands in nearby Tilaran, we returned to our side of the lake and drove up a very steep but well paved hill to look at the view from some lots that look like they've been on the market for quite some time.  Didn't seem that any houses have yet been built but it was tough to argue with the advertised "Million Dollar View".

Maybe we could pitch a tent?

A little bit of stir-craziness ensued upon our return home.  Erica and Henry agreed after a pretty impressive amount of begging to take Sullivan back down to the nature trail at the bottom of our neighborhood that we'd all walked earlier.  He was eager to begin sweeping all the debris off the trail.  A lot of playing and some working was accomplished, but it was perfect for a Sunday afternoon.  As a possible solution to the barking neighborhood dogs, Erica had had the brilliant idea to buy some dog treats to give to them when they yelp at us.  Unfortunately, two neighbor dogs turned their noses up to her offerings this afternoon.

Hard at work

Some quiet time for the crew and a quick workout for me preceded pineapple fried rice with fried plantains for dinner.  Today we continued our culinary tour with a local rum/pineapple juice cocktail.  Yes, there is a theme developing.  Tomorrow we hope to finalize the plan for getting the kids in school on Wednesday and to make sure the wire transfer goes through for the car purchase.  I'm cautiously optimistic that by next weekend, we'll have a car, the kids will be settling into school and that we'll be headed to the beach to visit with one of Sullivan's best friends from his school in Portland.

Salud!

Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal

Volcán Arenal

Without a doubt, today was one of those days we’ll remember for quite some time.  It was one of those days that exemplifies why we left our comfortable lives in the States and moved to Costa Rica.  We spent our Saturday exploring Arenal Volcano National Park, about 45 minutes from our house.  In short, Arenal is one of the 10 most active volcanos in the world and the most famous in Costa Rica.  It was thought to be just another mountain by the locals until July 29, 1968 when there were several huge explosions and enough lava flow to destroy three small towns and kill more than 80 people.  Fortunately Arenal was a bit more gentle for us today, only venting the occasional puffs of steam.  No large boulders were shot out of the top.  Maybe next time.  

We arrived before 9 am, which was something to celebrate for our family.  On paying our entry fee we mentioned to the ranger that we were considering the heliconia trail.  In a moment of candor, he told us that it wasn’t really that pretty and that we should take the other main trail.  So we did, and we were not disappointed.

Sully being Sully

The hike in its entirety was about 6 km with mostly gentle climbs punctuated by a few steep step ascents through the lava flows.  We’re still adjusting to the humidity and the excitement of discovering and learning the new plants and animals but enjoy the similarities to our hikes in the Pacific Northwest.  One of my favorite things about this move to Costa Rica for us is that each of us is experiencing our new reality in our own ways.  Sullivan (age 5) remains very playful and seems completely oblivious to all the change.  Everyone else is adjusting on their own terms.  We did enjoy our fair share of new animals today including white-throated magpie-jays, a camera-shy collared anteater as well as this sunbathing lizard.

Central American whiptail

Unidentified resting butterfly

As was expected, the vistas of the volcano itself were awe-inspiring.  Interesting, the first viewpoint was quite busy.  We met a large middle school group from Massachusetts, two young men from France, a German couple, a couple from Quebec and a group of Floridians.  Trying to speak French seems a lot tougher now that Spanish is currently occupying my cerebral bandwidth.  The second viewpoint was at another lava flow and was much more deserted.

Arenal dominates the skyline

Erica and her new home Lake Arenal in the distance

Our return route took us on the Ceiba trail, so named for the very large Ceiba trees.  These are some of the largest trees in the American tropics and in the Peruvian tradition, apparently, they are inhabited by deities.  It's easy to see why they inspire such thoughts.

Big roots, no?

Our crew couldn't keep themselves off the trees nor could we resist swinging on all of the vines.  Kids will be disappointed that the internet is too slow tonight to post their vine-swinging videos.

Madeleine the ceiba climber

Good times

Our Costa Rica wildlife guide card has proven to be as handy as it is popular.  We think this is a common dink frog we spotted on a leaf.  

Though we all thoroughly enjoyed the sights as well as the workout, nobody complained when we arrived back at the car.  We grabbed some ice cream, checked out some possible future adventures (hanging bridge walk, night jungle walk, butterfly garden) and headed towards some dinner.  On the way we encountered some hungry locals in the road looking for food.

A posse of pizotes

Unexpectedly super dinner was had at a small German restaurant (La Rana) very near our house.  We enjoyed speaking with the German owner in Spanish, as he said his English is not so good.  Home for a little dessert and some screen time for everyone to reconnect with the rest of the world.  We are fortunate to have had such a great day.  

Birds, monkeys and snakes!

Good morning!

Pretty much the entire family has settled into an early morning schedule.  The sun rises just before six and the birds serve as our alarm clocks.  Despite the complete lack of any time restraints on our days, everyone is typically up before seven which definitely is not the norm in the history of our family.  Today there was a large and very loud group of birds that didn’t even fly around for us to be able to see them.  The volume is similar to what is heard in our neighborhood daily around 6 am.

More schoolwork for the kids until we get them into the school in town next week.  I took a stroll down the hill to a nature trail in the neighborhood.  The only real wildlife I encountered were two retired Canadian couples overwintering two houses away from us.  They’d fled -30 degree weather in Calgary.  Madeleine, Henry and I headed back into town to resupply, including a stop in the produce store.  We stocked up including a couple of fruits completely novel to us.  Here is a caimito (aka star apple), which the clerk reported to us was “muy rico”.  Sure enough, it was sweet, creamy and delicious.  Of course, it’s purported to have healing properties also.

Caimito, a new treat

Sullivan and I ventured back down to the nature trail, met yet some more Gringo neighbors and had much better luck in the critter-finding department.  He was equally enthralled with the small kitten, Zappy, as he was with the two impressively loud howler monkeys (Congos).  They made a lot of noise and were staring at us intently but managed to resist trying to pelt us with excrement.  We could’ve watched them a lot longer but the red ants nipping at our feet moved us along. 

Near the end of the trail we saw a colorful red, yellow and black two foot snake slither away from us.  I think I’ve got myself convinced that it was the non-venomous Tropical Kingsnake and less likely the venomous Costa Rican Coral Snake.  Though Sullivan was nonplussed, we watched our steps that much more carefully.  Home for an earlier dinner and bedtimes, as the plan is to head out early in the morning for some trekking on the flanks of Volcan Arenal, with some more flora and fauna along the way.  Enough of this domestic transitioning, give us some more adventure!

Little man ready for adventure