Turns out, even after burying the garrobo hole when he/she wasn't home, the problem of his/her existence wasn't eliminated. We had a pair of watermelon plants that made it through the initial onslaught of the garrobo only to be nibbled off a week later. Sounds like most things are going to grow inside now until they're old enough to stand on their own too feet.
A fence is also in the works to help defend the plans, but nothing has been finalized yet. It feels a little silly to sink fenceposts to surround a 2 square yard plot of land, but we'll see if we can't "engineer" something tico style.
In other news, we received our first piece of actual mail. Carol O'Loughlin is the winner for first piece actually delivered. And the successful address (the most important part for you guys taking notes at home, because this is how you can actually send stuff to us in the future):
800 oeste del cruce a Playa Avellanas
Villas San Francisco, Casa #16
Hernandez de Santa Cruz, Guanacaste
Costa Rica
For those of you who might have used other addresses, or who have sent stuff that hasn't yet arrived, we still hold out hope that it will make it through the maze of the costa rican mail system. If it shows up, nay... when it shows up, we'll be sure and let you know.
Only one more thing to report: we've been adopted. There's a family of angels here in costa rica that has taken it upon themselves to make sure that we don't get skinny during our time down here and every week they do their best to prevent our emaciation. They also give us some spanish lessons over dinner in exchange for some english lessons going back the other way. It's nice to have a local ma and pa.
That's about it for today, we mostly wanted to report on the winner of the mail race,
Hope everything is going well up north,
Team Wander
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Los Animales
This week we have been introduced to more of the crazy animal kingdom living here in Costa Rica. Some of these introductions have been nicer than others.....
First, Miah has declared war on the garrobo that lives in our backyard. What is a garrobo you may ask? Well, it looks like a giant iguana and apparently tastes like chicken (we don´t know from experience, although the battle may come to that). We have been working on a garden the past couple weeks and finally got our first watermelon plants to sprout. They lasted about two days before Miah found the garrobo in the garden and no more plants. Since then, Miah has been trying to chase him from his home and has finally filled it with concrete blocks and dirt. It is yet to be known the garrobo´s next plan of attack.....
Second, we had a very interesting Valentine´s Day that included a mother turtle. Our friends took us on these crazy ¨roads¨ (more like 4-wheeler trails) to a secluded beach and we built a huge bonfire. As the guys were looking for more firewood, they found a sea turtle coming on shore to lay her eggs. We watched her slowly make her way up the beach and dig a large hole. Another group of people showed up who wanted to steal the eggs after she laid them (unfortunately, turtle eggs are popular down here). One of the girls in our group tried to convince them that this turtle was sick and the eggs would be bad, but we´re not sure if they listened or not. We left around 1am before she had finished laying all the eggs, and the others were camping nearby. It was surreal to watch the entire process though and we will definitely go during the height of turtle season at the end of the year to watch hundreds of turtles lay their eggs.
The next day we went to another nearby beach for Miah to get another try at surfing. Besides, not realizing the tide was coming in and it sweeping away all our stuff, we had a great day. As we were leaving however, Miah was stung by a bee. His foot quickly started swelling and continued to grow for the next couple days. We found a clinic that gave him a shot and some medicated cream and slowly his foot has been returning to normal. It is still a size or so large than the other foot though.
Last night, we saw our first armadillo rumaging around the yard. They look a lot like giant, armored rats and are suprisingly agile. We don´t know if he plans to make a home nearby as well, but hopefully he makes a better neighbor than the garrobo....
Team Wander
First, Miah has declared war on the garrobo that lives in our backyard. What is a garrobo you may ask? Well, it looks like a giant iguana and apparently tastes like chicken (we don´t know from experience, although the battle may come to that). We have been working on a garden the past couple weeks and finally got our first watermelon plants to sprout. They lasted about two days before Miah found the garrobo in the garden and no more plants. Since then, Miah has been trying to chase him from his home and has finally filled it with concrete blocks and dirt. It is yet to be known the garrobo´s next plan of attack.....
Second, we had a very interesting Valentine´s Day that included a mother turtle. Our friends took us on these crazy ¨roads¨ (more like 4-wheeler trails) to a secluded beach and we built a huge bonfire. As the guys were looking for more firewood, they found a sea turtle coming on shore to lay her eggs. We watched her slowly make her way up the beach and dig a large hole. Another group of people showed up who wanted to steal the eggs after she laid them (unfortunately, turtle eggs are popular down here). One of the girls in our group tried to convince them that this turtle was sick and the eggs would be bad, but we´re not sure if they listened or not. We left around 1am before she had finished laying all the eggs, and the others were camping nearby. It was surreal to watch the entire process though and we will definitely go during the height of turtle season at the end of the year to watch hundreds of turtles lay their eggs.
The next day we went to another nearby beach for Miah to get another try at surfing. Besides, not realizing the tide was coming in and it sweeping away all our stuff, we had a great day. As we were leaving however, Miah was stung by a bee. His foot quickly started swelling and continued to grow for the next couple days. We found a clinic that gave him a shot and some medicated cream and slowly his foot has been returning to normal. It is still a size or so large than the other foot though.
Last night, we saw our first armadillo rumaging around the yard. They look a lot like giant, armored rats and are suprisingly agile. We don´t know if he plans to make a home nearby as well, but hopefully he makes a better neighbor than the garrobo....
Team Wander
Thursday, February 12, 2009
"Vacanejos"
Day to day life here is not too exciting, but we do have a few stories that may be of interest to you. First, we got a real taste of Guanacaste last week when we went horseback riding and to a typical horse show, called a Sabanero. Horseback riding was a lot of fun but the guys with us kept hitting the trees with their machetes to piss of the monkeys and make them yell at us. Apparently the next step is the monkeys throw poo at you from the treetops so we headed out of there as quick as possible. The show was the cowboys of the area showing off their talents and people in crazy giant costumes running around in circles trying to hit people with their long, flapping arms. It ended in a fantastic dinner though and we had our first great steak here.
Since we're in a holding pattern at work waiting for the permits, we have been helping some with the education part of the foundation. There are about a dozen students being tutored to pass the TOEFL and ACT so that they can be given scholarships to universities in the US. We have quickly become attached to these kids and they made this huge presentation for their parents last week that was fantastic. It is amazing how great their English is now; they even wrote and performed songs in English. If only our Spanish could be that good.... We have convinced one of the girls to trade Spanish classes for Math classes each week so hopefully that will help us out some.
Miah got a new best friend and a lawn mower in the same day. His name is Oscar and we have attached a picture of him below. The horses in our backyard and all the cows in the area never cease to amuse us. We have renamed the cows here "vacanejos" (a combination between cow and rabbit in Spanish) because their ears are so big. Getting caught in a traffic jam of cows in the road is not a rare occurrence and it's always funny when one of them rump bumps the side of the car.
We had dinner with some friends and their parents this week at a beautiful restaurant overlooking the ocean in Tamarindo. We drank wine and ate Italian food while watching the sunset. It was beautiful! Afterwards, they introduced us to this bar that apparently makes the best pie around. We had coconut pie, banana pie, and a new one, pineapple pie, that were all fantastic. Ice cream may have a new rival for choice dessert here.
We hope all of you have a great Valentine's Day weekend!
Love,
TeamWander
Since we're in a holding pattern at work waiting for the permits, we have been helping some with the education part of the foundation. There are about a dozen students being tutored to pass the TOEFL and ACT so that they can be given scholarships to universities in the US. We have quickly become attached to these kids and they made this huge presentation for their parents last week that was fantastic. It is amazing how great their English is now; they even wrote and performed songs in English. If only our Spanish could be that good.... We have convinced one of the girls to trade Spanish classes for Math classes each week so hopefully that will help us out some.
Miah got a new best friend and a lawn mower in the same day. His name is Oscar and we have attached a picture of him below. The horses in our backyard and all the cows in the area never cease to amuse us. We have renamed the cows here "vacanejos" (a combination between cow and rabbit in Spanish) because their ears are so big. Getting caught in a traffic jam of cows in the road is not a rare occurrence and it's always funny when one of them rump bumps the side of the car.
We had dinner with some friends and their parents this week at a beautiful restaurant overlooking the ocean in Tamarindo. We drank wine and ate Italian food while watching the sunset. It was beautiful! Afterwards, they introduced us to this bar that apparently makes the best pie around. We had coconut pie, banana pie, and a new one, pineapple pie, that were all fantastic. Ice cream may have a new rival for choice dessert here.
We hope all of you have a great Valentine's Day weekend!
Love,
TeamWander
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Screen Door - Tico Style
Yes, I know it's been more than a week since we last posted. Sorry, we wanted to make sure we had some worthwhile stories for you. So here's one for all the habitat kiddies that are reading our blog.
The backstory: it's uber-duber hot in CR. When we get home from work each day it's about 90 degrees inside our house, and we don't have A/C. Fortunately for us, we sort of live in a natural wind tunnel, so if you put everything that could conceivably blow away (paper, puzzle pieces, glasses of water, your wife) under a rock or weigh it down, then you can open up all the windows to the house and the temperature will get comfortable pretty quickly.
The problem: the wind comes and goes in gusts, and when it's not gusting (especially after dusk) the bugs use the opportunity to invade the house in droves.
The solution: screens... on everything. Over the past few weeks we've screened in all of the windows in the house as well as the back door. The latter being the story worth mentioning.
You see, in this endeavor, there were a number of forces conspiring against us. First, our dictionary doesn't have the right word for screen (as in the material) - so when we first went to the hardware store we were asking them over and over for something akin to a portable divider wall. Second, buying materials here is an interesting adventure. The lumber that we bought... 1"by 1/2" gets sold in three lengths: un barra, dos barras, o tres barras. What's a barra you ask? I can't help you, I don't know. It looks to be about 30 inches give or take 6. We bought 10 sticks of 2 barras each and the length varied by about 2 feet. Third, we don't have actual tools. Here's a picture of all the tools we used to make the screen door and another one of the screen door itself.
To build it we had a hammer, scissors, a pencil, a tape measure, a dollar bin target multiscrewdriver, a leatherman, and a hacksaw blade that we found in our backyard (used both for cutting the wood and chiseling the inset in the door for the hinges).
All things considered, we're pretty stoked with the outcome. We now have access to a much cooler, relatively bug free evening and the fact that the door is already beginning to sag doesn't bug us too much... The closer it gets to the ground the tougher it is for spiders to crawl under.
What's going on in your life? Love,
TeamWander
The backstory: it's uber-duber hot in CR. When we get home from work each day it's about 90 degrees inside our house, and we don't have A/C. Fortunately for us, we sort of live in a natural wind tunnel, so if you put everything that could conceivably blow away (paper, puzzle pieces, glasses of water, your wife) under a rock or weigh it down, then you can open up all the windows to the house and the temperature will get comfortable pretty quickly.
The problem: the wind comes and goes in gusts, and when it's not gusting (especially after dusk) the bugs use the opportunity to invade the house in droves.
The solution: screens... on everything. Over the past few weeks we've screened in all of the windows in the house as well as the back door. The latter being the story worth mentioning.
You see, in this endeavor, there were a number of forces conspiring against us. First, our dictionary doesn't have the right word for screen (as in the material) - so when we first went to the hardware store we were asking them over and over for something akin to a portable divider wall. Second, buying materials here is an interesting adventure. The lumber that we bought... 1"by 1/2" gets sold in three lengths: un barra, dos barras, o tres barras. What's a barra you ask? I can't help you, I don't know. It looks to be about 30 inches give or take 6. We bought 10 sticks of 2 barras each and the length varied by about 2 feet. Third, we don't have actual tools. Here's a picture of all the tools we used to make the screen door and another one of the screen door itself.
To build it we had a hammer, scissors, a pencil, a tape measure, a dollar bin target multiscrewdriver, a leatherman, and a hacksaw blade that we found in our backyard (used both for cutting the wood and chiseling the inset in the door for the hinges).
All things considered, we're pretty stoked with the outcome. We now have access to a much cooler, relatively bug free evening and the fact that the door is already beginning to sag doesn't bug us too much... The closer it gets to the ground the tougher it is for spiders to crawl under.
What's going on in your life? Love,
TeamWander
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