Last night we were treated to an impromptu fireworks show a few miles down the valley. Whoever it was, they must have brought in the professionals as it was quite a show.
Since we’ve been running around quite a bit we decided to stick close to home today. We started off the morning with our normal sunrise coffee service. Then we did a little bit of yoga on the upper patio (I bet no one reading this would have ever guessed I’d be doing sunrise yoga in Costa Rica).
At the feria on Friday we bought some artisinal cheese, which allowed me to dress up my breakfast repertoire a little bit. Todays’ breakfast was a tomato and semiduro queso omelette with mango, honeydew, and watermelon fruit salad.
I’ve been wrestling with the WiFi in the house since we got here. The WiFi is great upstairs where Jill will be doing her online counseling, but it’s crap in the main house. We are both tired of holding our phones up the ceiling to try to get on the network. I continued to screw around with it this morning and decided to nuke and pave the whole setup. Fortunately Jill’s parents are coming to visit on Thursday so I put in an order for four Google WiFi endpoints. If anyone has any sort of home WiFi issues I cannot recommend the Google WiFi mesh network approach strongly enough.
Today marks one week since we landed in Costa Rica. We are getting settled in to the house. At home we keep pictures on our refrigerator to remind us of our great our life is. Jill, being super smart, packed a care package of pictures for our refrigerator in this house to make it feel more like home.
Since we resume Spanish lessons tomorrow at 8AM, we spent this morning doing our Spanish homework from Thursday’s class. We also went through all of our flashcards twice going from Spanish to English. Currently it’s easier for us to look at the Spanish word and figure out what it means in English. Hopefully soon we will be able to do the flash cards in English and translate them to Spanish.
After studying for a while we decided to knock off an walk down the hill from our house to get some exercise. Technically the exercise actually happens on the walk back UP the hill. We hope to get to the point were we can do it without bending over and holding on to our shorts to catch our breath.
After yoga, studying, and our hike down the hill we decided to reward ourselves with lunch at a restaurant, preferably someplace that the locals eat. We had a couple of items to pick up at La Coope so we kept our eyes peeled on the way there for likely lunch spots. La Fiesta de las Pupusas de Atenas was clearly hopping. La Fiesta also had the requisite guy in a yellow vest orchestrating the parking ballet. Having learned my lesson, I made eye contact and waited for him direct a car out of a spot then he motioned me into the newly vacated spot. I’m not sure whether I did a good job of parking or if he was just too busy to critique my parking, but for the first time in Costa Rica I was not shamed into moving my vehicle. Otra victorio pequeno!
There were 4 beefy motorcycles to the left of our vehicle, between us and the next vehicle. That will come into play momentarily.
Jill and I picked a table and sat down. We were delighted to see the place was full of Tico families. There was only one other table of gringos (I came into this adventure thinking gringo was a term I should avoid using, but we’ve had several different people volunteer to us that the term gringo is the non-pejorative and culturally appropriate way to refer to Americans, Canadians, and northern Europeans). The other gringos were four guys in motorcycle gear who clearly belonged to the motorcycles next to our car. Someone came over to give us menus and ask what we would like to drink. We correctly asked for two glasses of water (Dos vasos de agua, por favor). If you mess that up they will bring you expensive bottles of water instead of glasses of tap water. One of the main reasons we picked Costa Rica is the water is safe to drink.
Our guy then proceeded to fire off a question we couldn’t understand, which we took as a good sign. Our Spanish must have been good enough when ordering water that he assumed we were more knowledgeable than we are. At that point he handed us off to someone who spoke English. That gentleman gave us the lay of the land and recommended the Pupusas Mixto (queso, frijoles, and pork). We went with his recommendation.
Just after we ordered our waitperson came over and asked if we were in the grey car next to the motorcycles. Unsure of what was going on, I was relieved to say “No es mi carro.” Apparently one of the four gringo motorcyclists had too much cerveza and managed to tip his very heavy bike over when mounting it and it fell against the grey car putting a dent in the passenger side door. What followed was a comic scene where the motorcyclists spoke no Spanish and the car owner spoke no English and or waiter was translating for everyone. It was 20 uncomfortable minutes of motorcycle guys staring at the ground with their hands in their pockets, the car owner with his arms crossed, our waiter doing shuttle diplomacy, and a crowd on onlookers stopping to see the show. At some point someone must have called a tow truck, for which there was clearly no need, and that guy joined the circle and was trying to figure out what he was doing there.
In spite of our guy being involved in the rodeo outside, the pupusas arrived quickly. The man who delivered them also arrived with a freshly filled crock full of a cabbage and vinegar slaw (Rich Mosher – no mayonesa) and a pair of tongs in a sanitary sleeve. He also brought us a spoon in a sanitary sleeve for scooping out the pickled relish in a jar at the table (think pickled carrots, jalapenos, onions, and celery) and pantomimed what we should do with the slaw and relish. The addition of the slaw and relish was truly transformative. I thought I liked pupusas before, but now I REALLY like them. We are now professionals and can help any of our visitors through the proper dressing of a pupusa 🙂
We watched how everyone paid and determined that the checkout process was to go to the Caja at the back of the restaurant and give them your table number, which they would use to look up your bill. Confirming that we were table fourteen I confidently strode to the back of the line and watched two guys in front of me checkout. When it was my turn I said “Catorce”. Once again I got a question I couldn’t parse so I admitted I’m just starting to learn Spanish. I gave him my best “Como se llama?” and learned that his name is Alfonso. He told me in slow Spanish that our bill was 6900 Colones ($11.50). I paid and we chatted for a bit. I told Alfonso (yup, we’re now on a first name basis) how much we’d enjoyed the meal and the lesson in how to eat pupusas. He told me that the next time we MUST try their fresh fruit drinks as they take the pupusas to the next level. I pointed at Jill told him we would be back soon to try the full experience. I also asked how the guy in the yellow vest directing traffic gets paid and he said he works for tips (which makes me think I should have tipped the yellow vest guys in our earlier encounters).
We tipped the yellow vest guy and I pointed my arm in our desired direction of travel so he would know which way to hold the traffic. Once we were in reverse he held us until pedestrians cleared behind us and then gave us hand signals to back out. We backed out and I thought we were golden. About that time a motorcycle traveling the wrong way in our lane of travel tried to swing into our parking spot. We had what I can only describe as a Costa Rican standoff until our yellow vest guy cleared a little more room for us to back further out. The moral of the story: If you see a guy in a yellow vest in Costa Rica you want him on your team.
It’s Super Bowl Sunday and I have managed to get us set up to stream the big game. I’m not really interested, but Jill loves the commercials. We will watch in our TV room upstairs while drinking our box of Cabernet (you read that right) and munching on popcorn (if I can figure out how this inductive stove top works).
Jill’s side note: I’ve noticed myself slowing down today. Our house doesn’t have a dishwasher so we’ve been washing our dishes by hand. This morning I was washing the dishes, looked up at the view, and felt joy. I felt joy for having a beautiful view of nature, for being here with my favorite person, and for not having anything pressing to do. So washing a few dishes was perfectly rewarding. In Austin, I’ve been so busy rushing to the next task I forgot to pay attention to the simple tasks at hand. I like this slowing down.
Jill and Todd in Costa Rica 