Our Home in Costa Rica

The coat-of-arms (COA) near the center of the flag The Costa Rican flag (A simpler version omits the COA) If you look closely, the COA shows two ships on either side of a thin strip of land with mountains down the middle.  Pretty accurate!  I think that the stars represent the seven provinces (i.e., states) in Costa Rica.

Back in 2006, my wife, Connie, and I took a terrific cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to Seattle by way of the Panama Canal.  The canal was a high point of the cruise and you really should see it, if you have the chance.  Another high point came after we left the canal and headed back North, stopping in Puntarenas (i.e., “Sandy Point”), Costa Rica.  We took a tour bus from the dock to an aerial tram near Jaco beach where we got a wonderful ride through the canopy of a tropical forest.  We saw lots of beautiful birds, trees, flowers, and even a Capuchin monkey with a little baby monkey clinging to it.  Our guide knew the name of every bird and even what page it was on in the birdbook.  After we left the tram and headed for lunch, our guide told us that we would have the traditional Costa Rican “beans and rice” and, if we didn’t want that, we could order “rice and beans” instead!  Fortunately, he was joking: the food was excellent.  A couple of years later, we rented out our house in Dallas and found our home in Costa Rica. We couldn’t have made a better choice, although it was difficult to leave family and friends behind in the good old USA.  We visit occasionally, when we can, but this our home now.

I hope to show you some of the character of Costa Rica, the land of “Pura vida!” (pure life), by adding pictures and stories to this page.

This is sunset from our back yard, looking toward Juanacaste and the Pacific Ocean.	This is almost the same view in the daytime, though taken a few months later.
If you turn completely around from where the previous photo was taken, you see the back of our house. Note the puppy dog by the corner of the laundry room (on the right).	“Pepito” is a local dog who has adopted us.  He was our first friend in Costa Rica.  The ball is a gift from our daughter, Jen, and her husband, Matt.
This is our front gate seen from the street. The mountain gets a little steep in places.	Looking down the driveway toward the street it doesn’t look any flatter.
This is the front of our house. The front porch doubles as a garage when needed.	Looking from the front of the house up toward the back gate, you can see the driveway going off to the left in the foreground toward the front gate.
If you walk toward the back gate and turn around, you see the house again and Pepito looking curious.	Walking forward a little, you can see how steep the mountain is on the side of the house behind our bedroom.
	Our son, Ed, and his wife, Katie, came to visit and we took them up North to see the Arenal Volcano.  This is a view from the “hanging bridges” near the volcano.  Geovanni, in the back, is our favorite guide.