Geckos and Volcanoes

One of the early mysteries of our stay in Costa Rica was an extremely loud chirping that occurs at around dawn and dusk. We thought it was a bird but we could never find the bird making the noise. We also thought, with some trepidation that it might be a frog. We were really hoping it wasn’t a frog because we have one upcoming house guest who is deathly afraid of frogs. Jill’s dad solved the mystery when they where here. He went searching on the Internet for animal calls until he found the one that matched. The super loud chirping noise comes from a tiny lizard that is native to Asia, but has arrived in Costa Rica on-board ships and flourished here.

Over the last few days, both the Poas and Turrialba volcanoes have been spewing ash. The effect is a little bit eerie, but it makes for some fantastic sunrises.

Once the sun is up the ash is indistinguishable from smog. It makes everything look hazy. The only official notice we have seen has been a PSA warning pet owners to give their outdoor pets fresh water frequently so that the water is not contaminated with ash. I’m guessing that ash falling in water will create a little bit of sulfuric acid?

So far the ash has not affected flight operations at Juan Santamaria Internation airport. We’d like to keep it that was because Non and D fly in on Saturday evening.

We had a good day at Spanish school today. Today’s class was mainly us telling Profesora Ana in past tense what we did this weekend. I managed to recount my failed car rental experience to the degree that she was crestfallen when I got to the part where I forgot my driver’s license. And Jill told the story of the frozen box of wine at Frank’s restaurant.

We found ourselves with a bit of a logistical challenge today. One of the challenges we have set for ourselves is to get our taxes filed without an extension while we are in Costa Rica. We managed to get all of our tax filing documents to our accountant in Austin earlier this week and she got our taxes done this morning and emailed us a couple of documents to print, sign, and scan. As we don’t currently have a printer at our rental house, I took my computer to Spanish school hoping to use their printer. Profesora Ana made me explain to Juan Diego (the owner of our Spanish school) what I needed to do in Spanish 🙂 For reasons I can respect, Juan Diego didn’t seem to be a fan of me connecting my laptop to their network. We had a little back and forth about how I could get him the documents. He asked if I could email them to him and I held up a USB flash drive. He knew what it was, but he asked me what it was called in English. He was delighted to learn from me that we call it either a “thumb drive” or a “USB flash drive.” In Costa Rica they call it a “llave Maya” (literally a Mayan key). Fascinating.

I dropped the documents on the flash drive and we went on with class. A few minutes later Juan Diego brought back the paper copies for me and Jill to sign and then he took those back to his office to scan and we picked up the originals and the scans as we were leaving school. Our accountant now has our signatures and our tax returns have been filed!

Jill only has one client tonight, from 6:30-7:30, so we had pretty much the whole day together. We took a two hour walk, exploring our neighborhood. Costa Rica never disappoints on the flora front. Pictures below are all from our walk today, just random trees and shrubs growing wild.

We had a great time with Jackie this weekend, but we slacked off on our Spanish flash cards while she was here. We made up for that this afternoon following our walk. Jill is the keeper of the flashcards and she adds to the pile with each word that we miss in class. I think we are up to about 600 flashcards at this point so it takes a good 2 hours to get through them.

Jill made some of her delicious pico de gallo for our afternoon snack while I labored over a local Costa Rican staple called gallo pinto. It’s a dish of black beans, rice, red peppers, onion, garlic and salsa. Jill and I like it with a poached egg on top. We got bonus cred with Profesora Ana when I shared my gallo pinto recipe with her 🙂

We’ve got a full moon tonight. The moon just appeared above the ash cloud.

Jill should wrap up her evening client session in the next few minutes. I’m to have chamomile tea and biscuits ready for her when she comes down 🙂