Many Rivers to Cross

We have had two fun adventures in the past two days in our brand new used Mitsubishi Montero, whose new name is Tica the Tortuga, or something to that effect. We are not entirely settled on the name except for general agreement that the car is to be thought of as a white turtle, amphibious in her nature.

And why amphibious, you may be asking. Check out this attached video for true back-country excitement!! (OK forget it...it took 30 minutes plus to uploaded the video and it was still not uploaded...trust me, it was cool!)

Seriously, it was quite fun crossing this river yesterday. The kids got a real thrill out of it. All roads within 20+km of Nosara are dirt roads and very prone to flooding. And, in some spots, it is not so much that they are prone to flooding but rather that the roads cross rivers and yet are bridgeless. When a bridgeless road crosses a river it necessarily goes through the river.

I'll tell you about our destinations but the trips were really the most fun. Today's journey made yesterday's videotaped river crossing look like absolutely nothing. The river we crossed today was wider and deeper and when we plunged into it, a wave of water shot up over the hood of the car and covered the windshield, temporarily giving us a view similar to what those on the Titanic must have seen near their bitter end. Fortunately, we pulled through. The kids (and Mom and Dad) loved it!

Our destinations: yesterday we were headed to Ostional, a playa just 10 km north of us that is home to massive turtle nestings. 1000s of turtles come to Ostional and lay their eggs. We are hoping to go back tomorrow and will post more on the blog if we see some turtles. As they primarily lay eggs at night, our dusk trip yesterday was a bit early for them.


Today we went south 20 km to Samara, a playa that is a bit more developed than our own beach. Roads in Samara are actually paved and even in this low season (which ends Nov 1) there were a number of tourists in town. Riley and Tara found horses on the beach and went for a nice ride, Tara really getting a good gallop. Baker and Tae and I amused ourselves with a good game of coconut bocce. Not sure if there are many coconuts in Italy--maybe in Sicily?--but this could well be how the game was invented.


In addition to physical rivers to cross, we are finding some symbolic rivers to cross in the past few days. Tara had the poor fortune this morning to attend a community meeting in Nosara where the topic was local crime. As a result, she received a real sense that, unfortunately, crime has become all too common in Nosara, with both foreigners and Ticas falling victim to thefts. Fortunately, there is little (not none, but little) violent crime. That meeting was a bit of a downer on the day and figuring out how to make sure we keep ourselves and our stuff safe while also maintaining an atmosphere of fun and adventure for the kids has been a topic of conversation for Tara and me today.

Oh yeah and...

• the guy who takes care of the yard at our rental house is drinking on the job
• the house we hoped to get after 12/15 now seems to be rented out
• there is too much English spoken here
• and everything seems to be closed because it is rainy season!

Whew! Good to get that out...Not everything is rosy...But the cows...man are they good-looking!