Correction

My dear husband reminds me that Ylang Ylang is the correct spelling for the restaurant name in the last post. Silly me. It is also the correct spelling for the name of the flower and tree from which it comes. This gives me a chance to tell you about this flower and also add something that I omitted from the previous. We have several large ylang ylang trees near our house here that we planted. One of my favorite times of day is at about 3:30 when the flowers release their scent into the afternoon and early evening. It is intoxicating. The ylang-ylang is used by perfumers in very expensive perfume.
We also have stylized ylang-ylang painted on our wall in the house.

The other point that I wanted to mention was about restaurants here in Costa Rica. All restaurants wash all their dishes by hand. Can you imagine this in the US? We have a terrific fish restaurant at the foot of our mountain. They do pretty big volume for a local place. I glanced into the kitchen the other day and a man was standing at a sink washing dishes stacked four feet high. It looked like an old cartoon feature. People here are very hard-working.

Happy Valentines

We shared this little Valentine's treat at the Uvita farmer's market. It looks prettier than it tasted; coconut, coconut oil and chocolate were some of the ingredients. Very healthy and not especially sweet. We celebrated the day by going out to a very fancy restaurant in Ojochal, the Llang Llang. We spent St. Valetine's Day at this same restaurant last year, but with our friends Jock and Hannah Holden. In fact we spent the previous two years with them on this date. Interesting This year the Holden's have sold their home in Costa Rica and Hannah is touring in India at the moment. I'm sure ihe wanted to escape the cold and snow in the Northeast where they now live. Dinner was fabulous. The restaurant serves Indonesian food, quite unusual for Costa Rica. The owners Hans and his wife are both Dutch. Dinners are served for two persons and the menu is based on the different eating styles in the various regions of Indonesia. You can choose, for example, a menu from Sumatra, Java, Bali, or a Llang Llang special menu. For example Sumatra's menu includes fish and is seasoned with lemon grass, among other things. Each choice includes two main course dishes plus two vegetables, yellow jasmine rice, white jasmine rice and pickles. Though starters are not included in the menu (extra cost) they are absolutely a necessary add on. I had "Lumpa", sticky rice with ground beef and spices. Mike had chicken or pork satay with peanut sauce. All the recipes are authentically Indonesian and made from scratch on the premises. I am sure it isn't easy to get kaffir leaves here! Yum.

I hope all of you spent the day with people you love and those who love you and that you did a little something special.

Bigger than Texas

I am constantly surprised by the scale of everything here, especially plants. This is a photo of flowers from the Philippine Wax Flower, at least that is what we call it. The flowers are from one plant and the green leaves are from a different plant type. The flower stocks look like torches and one stem is often taller than I am, with the stalk bigger around than my thumb. I will cut a leaf from a random plant while walking along, thinking to put it in vase and I find that I have nothing big enough to hold it. I notice when I am looking at subjects to paint that everything about a scene is bigger and always brighter than I can cope with. Shade is highly prized. Also spots to temporarily hide out from the big scale of everything, including the sound of the jungle. I hide out for brief periods in the bodega just to get away briefly from it all. This plant grows best in shade. We have transplanted them all over the place now, but the first one came from Nancy's land. I call it the mother plant and these blooms are from her.

Amazing Weather

I can't seem to get an image to upload so this post is image-free.

We are having very non-February in Costa Rica weather. For the past 3 days we have had rain, sometimes torrential rain, and temperatures in the high 60's and lo 70's. February here is normally blistering. The weather is so unusual that the BBC reported it in its world weather review. We had guests for dinner last night. I baked a cake, and cooked two dishes in the oven. We don't have a barbeque and normally I don't enjoying hosting because the house is so hot. No so yesterday. I thought the cool weather was just ordered up for me. It is supposed to last at least through Tuesday. Some kind of a weather mass is parked off the coast. The rest of Costa Rica is not getting rain which is too bad since it is sorely needed. Until then, I am in heaven. Cool breezes so that I need a blanket at night and sometimes a shawl in the evening.

Living in Costa Rica, even part time, is about solving a series of problems. A new one appears every day, so we can't say that it is boring around here. But I have to say we sometimes do tire of having what seems like an unbroken line of hurdles. Yesterday's two were water related. No water is flowing into our side of the mountain's holding tank. It hasn't been since some time on Friday. We wished that we knew this was the case on Thursday since we started to refill Bob and Gitti's pool on Thursday and that surely went a long way toward emptying the tank. In any case, the problem was no water flowing in not too much flowing out. So our Association President, Peter, reports that the lines are too old and all have to be ripped out and replaced. This will occur on Monday and Tuesday (weather permitting I add). But you will remember we were having guests on Sunday. Even with strict conservation our water would not last. We are only sharing with one other lot at the moment but even so, we were down to 1/3 of a tank. So Peter came up with a brilliant idea to run a hose from his house to ours and draw from the tank that serves the other side of the mountain, turning off the flow from our tank and connecting directly into the hose bib by our back pila. It worked like a dream. BUT, there is always as but, when we did that the pressure was so great it caused one of the hoses to the washing machine to push out water; not a lot of water but it took us a while to diagnose the problem, correct it and clean up. So we are limping along until we can get back to our own water source. Not earth shattering problems this time.

We are off to Dominical later today to meet with a Real Estate agent. When we talk about out house, all of our talk about it will be pura vida.

Coffee

The other day while we were in Dominical we stopped at a coffee shop for an ice cream. This is my favorite coffee sign on display. Costa Rica grows lots of coffee. Costa Ricans prefer a medium roast so we have to search for the less popular dark, oscuro, roasted beans. Mike grinds them himself for the freshest coffee available. He serves me coffee in bed every morning, one of my favorite parts of the day.

It turns out we did no go to a Superbowl party last night. We enjoyed a fish dinner at home, taken out from the best fish restaurant in the area that happens to be at the bottom of our mountain. Convenient.

The stupid thing that we are giving up today is our air mattress. Greg suffered with it when he visited a couple of years ago. We have replaced the valve and repaired the visible leak. We can't figure out why it still will not hold air. So, out it goes.

It only took 14 years

This looks like one of the photos you sometimes see in the newspaper: "What do you think this is?" I'll save you the suspense. It is one of two light covers that we found at a the Blue Genie Christmas bazaar in Austin. Mike spotted them and we thought that they might be just the right size. We guessed right. They are lazer cut and made of very light wood. I like these a lot. The light is very soft and diffuse. We turn them on in the morning at 4:30 when we wake up and can't really tolerate light yet. We have had bare light bulbs on these fixtures in the little wall above our bed since the house was built in 2000. Since we hung a fan with lights in the big bodega, I think the only bare bulb fixture remaining is in the laundry bodega. I don't care about that one.

Today we are off to our friends Eddie and Betty to watch the Super Bowl with a bunch of gringos. I'm interested in the socializing but New England IS playing.

Batte of the Bands

Sunday afternoon fund raiser for the benefit of PAWS, the local group that cares for dogs. The band was terrific. A local musician, Kim Carson from Canyon, Texas (lives now in New Orleans and Uvita Costa Rica) played with her band and was our favorite. Mike spent a lot of time doing the Texas bonding thing, doesn't hurt that she is a pretty woman.

 

Lots of older gringos in the audience. We fit right in.

 

Quepos Marina sunset

 

The Marina at Quepos is being developed and beginning to look like a real resort seaside marina. We had dinner and enjoyed the sunset there. We took this photo for sister Pat. We are certain some friends of Pat and David must own this boat and we want to go for a ride. Please arrange it Pat. Dinner was good but way too expensive. We learned that the smart money goes in the bar for happy hour and bocas (small appetizer plates) at about $1.25 a whack. Guess where we will be next time.

New Road

A new road was completed just after we left last season. It extends from Greg's gate above our house at Nancy's property and covers the Y in the road and down past our house and just below Bob and Gitti's lower driveway. It isn't very long but it sure is nice. No more maintenance needed on this strip after the rainy season. And what delights me is less dust in our rancho and in our house. What luxury.

We just finished lunch. I made cream of celery soup with evaporated milk instead of cream. Better for us. I never think of evaporated milk. Now it is time for a siesta.

Catch up

It has been nearly a week since I posted anything. We have been BUSY. We are trying to knock off all the TODOs right at the beginning so that we can relax (and probably do more todo's. hah) Trying to gi
et in a year's worth of truck maintenance and house maintenance during a relatively short visit is not easy. Anyway, mostly we have been engaged in that work. Paying taxes in Quepos, getting new tires for the car, new printer for Mike's work. But we did take a nice break on Sunday when our friends Scott and Joyce invited us to afternoon dinner by the pool. In addition to Scott, Joyce, Mike, me, Bob and Gitti, we caught up with our Canadian friend Patti. We met two new people, Gerta and Jim, also Canadians and newlyweds. Gerta and I had met before but really had not yet gotten to know each other. Scott and Joyce put on a FEAST. Here are a few photos. Excellent filet mignon. Mon dieu!

A Painter Must Paint

Bought this little folding table from Maxi Pali yesterday. (Owned by Walmart) Looks perfect for holding my pallette and everything else I need. The canvas on board looks like it will work though sitting down isn't ideal. Vermeer painted in candlelight. I can put up with this. Of course the excuse for driving to Quepos was paying taxes. But we all know why I wanted to go. 

Weekly market - Check

These pics are of the weekly market in San Isidro. This is where the professionals shop, buyers and sellers. The produce could not be fresher, cheaper or of greater variety. The market  is held weekly in this huge permanent structure. Good thing to keep us all out of the sun. Fruits and veggies are sold by the kilo or fraction of same. Few vendors are organic but there are a couple. This is still relatively low carbon footprint eating. Fertilizer from animals is used and the truck that brought the produce from the farm did not drive far. I bought a mountain of produce, including organic kale.

Landed

This is the scene 24 hours after we arrived at our home in Matapalo, on the Pacific Coast. We are 99 % unpacked and I made a  big pot of beans. It is going to rain in a bit. It will be great to bring down the humidity. It is  a shocking temperature contrast to the 30's in Texas. Here we have 84 degrees and humid. Tomorrow we will be off early to the weekly market in San Isidro.

Heading out of the cold

This is a test message to see if this blog can be restarted for our upcoming time in Costa Rica.