Blog note: I decided to write this blog as an easier way to communicate while I am here in spectacular Costa Rica. The posts and thoughts are in no particular order of importance but I am trying to note something interesting each day (not hard to do here!). Obviously I am a few days late starting, but I do have a bit written for each day that I will post all at once here at the beginning. Make sure you make it to at least day 3--or maybe it's day 4.   --Suzy

Day one--A few things I remembered I love about Costa Rica when I returned here

1. You quickly recall how to chill: missed my flight to the coast because of a delayed flight out of LA; the next flight there is in three days, no refunds but we’ll give you a voucher—for $25, go to bus station in San Jose for four hour bus trip to a town still 2 hours from my destination; I’m in line to board and the idea is hatched to rent a car instead since can be returned by Hank and Marie the next day when they fly out, take taxi to rental office but promised car is not there but it will be here in only one hour. Finally heading NW making good time: I pass all the slow trucks like a local, get no flat tires in spite of hitting some potholes hard once I’m on the side roads, stop only once for birds (whistling ducks) and am only ten miles from the house when I am stopped cold by a landslide that has covered the mountain road just minutes before. But since it’s Costa Rica, someone on the other side has a machete and another a shovel and within thirty minutes I’m bumping and sliding over a path just wide enough for the car—with an eye-popping drop-off outside my window.

2. Animals are everywhere! It’s the only place I get to see cattle being herded down the road, where horses are tethered on the shoulders for grazing and you never know when you’ll spook a giant iguana when you come around a bend.

3. Sundays are extra colorful: laundry is hung out to dry like festive flags in nearly every yard.

4. The center of every village is a bright green, perfectly maintained soccer field.

5. People use the hammocks that are hung up on their front porches.

6. In the country, everyone raises a hand in greeting when you pass in the road.