Intermission is almost here

Tomorrow morning Jill and I head back to Austin for our intermission. It’s crazy to think that tomorrow marks six weeks in Costa Rica. Jill and I are both a little unsettled. Tomorrow morning at 6AM we will lock the door on our rental house and head for Juan Santamaria international airport. We are packing light, since we have plenty of clothes at home and we will be back here on March 19th. It’s a bit of an odd feeling leaving your belongings behind in a foreign country.

We did get a nice surprise last night. Jill’s sister Stephanie will be meeting us in Costa Rica for a visit when we return on March 19th. We will do our best to show her a good time!

We thought it fitting to have our last lunch before the intermission at La Fiesta de las Pupusas. We got our usual (2 Pupusas Mixto and 2 Batidas de Cas) and it was delicious.
We can now understand much of what is on the Spanish language news. The last two days in Costa Rica have been super windy. The wind is strong enough that it’s caused sporadic power outages all over the country. Costa Rica is a small enough country that the local news, which was on at La Fiesta de las Pupusas, had a running count of the number of times los bomberos (the firemen) got called out to react to wind related issues. At lunch the count was 148.

I was amused to see this official vehicle in the La Fiesta parking lot…

I told the cashier at La Fiesta de Pupusas that I’d see him in two weeks, paid for our lunch plus a bag of pineapple empanadas. We tipped the yellow vest guy at La Fiesta de Pupusas and he held traffic for us so we could head for La Coope.

Side note about food: Since the food in Costa Rica is generally not much to write home about (What about pupusas?! you ask… Pupusas are Salvadoran), a bit of a surprise for both of us is that there’s not some uniquely Austin food or dining experience we are craving. While I’m not one to avoid wheat gluten, a thing I’ve noticed about Costa Rica is that it seems really easy to be gluten free here. Lots of ground corn. Not so much ground wheat. The only sources of wheat gluten I think we have in our weekly staples here are: frozen pizzas from PriceSmart, empanadas, jalapeno cheddar flour tortillas, and the delicious almond coconut cookies we have most nights with our Sleepytime tea.

We laid in some basic breakfast supplies at La Coope so that the refrigeradora (yup, refrigeradora is really Spanish for refrigerator) won’t be bare when we get back with Stephanie.

I’ve been keeping meticulous track of our out-of-pocket (everything except house rent, car rental, and hotel rooms) expenses since we got here. Over six weeks we’ve spent almost exactly 1,000,000 Colones (997,630 Colones to be exact)! That sounds really impressive, but it’s only $1,662. That’s an average of $277/week. One of these days I will do a blog post on the distribution of where our out-of-pocket money goes.

Next week will be a little crazy.

Jill will be slotting face-to-face sessions with all of her clients into Monday through Thursday of next week, which means late nights at the office for her every day. I’ll be working at the Tango office all week. We are both really looking forward to seeing our respective co-workers. We are also meeting friends for happy hour on Thursday. Jill and I agree that there’s not anything material that we’ve really missed, but there are definitely people we’ve missed.

Then, on Friday we are headed for New Orleans for the weekend to meet Mia and Rich and good friends for St. Patrick’s Day. There MAY be blog posts from New Orleans, if time allows.

We just got back from evening walk. Today’s theme: Dogs (and cats) of Costa Rica.

It seems like every yard and vacant lot here has citrus trees and mango trees. The citrus here is so good that we both feel a sense of loss when we come to an empty lot where the ripe oranges are all just laying on the ground.

We stopped to chat with our landlord, Magda, at the bottom of our hill to let her know our plans. We also noticed that a new retaining wall was going up at the bottom of our hill. Magda sold one of her houses to her brother who is converting it to apartments. Two guys with machetes cleared this hillside and then spent all day with a trowel building this retaining wall.

Here’s my summation of our six weeks in Costa Rica: We love Costa Rica. The people are fantastic and the country is a non-stop highlight reel natural beauty. We are both feeling like we should know more Spanish by now, but our Profesoras keep telling us we are way ahead of plan. I feel like my driving skills have improved. And Jill and I have never been a better team than we are when we are driving in Costa Rica.

Things we are looking forward to: We are looking forward to seeing the people we care about. We are both looking forward to getting behind the wheel of our respective vehicles (sounds shallow I know, but Jill misses her car and I miss my truck). We both need haircuts. The only food we can actually say we are craving is morning breakfast tacos from Tacos Ivan. And finally, the thing we are both looking forward to most…

PEDICURES! On Sunday afternoon we will be enjoying the Organic Green Tea and Lemongrass Spa Pedicure at Pamper Nails. Hot stones and a paraffin dip are in my future 🙂

Adventure is out there!