Iguana outside

Here's a picture of what greeted Guillermo when he opened the door one time this morning.

I tried to get a better angle with the sun, but he was very skittish and walked off.

The wren and the snake

Yesterday we witnessed an amazing scene between a wren and a little snake.  When we first saw the wren, it was jumping around all crazy, and then we noticed what looked like a little snake around the wren.  The wren was trying to do the snake in.  Here the snake is still alive.

The wren would rear its head up and then quickly strike down with its beak, which is what it is doing here.

The wren pretty much has him now.

Carting him away....

This was all taking place right outside our room.  And in those last pictues, those are pods that fell from a tree.

The tide

Yesterday and the day before, Guillermo and I walked into town to do various things.  On the 11th, we walked around town with a realtor looking for what other choices in apartments there are.  That was one hot walk, although we were doing it in the morning.  On the 12th, we walked to the beach access from the main street and then to the cell phone office to see how much time we had left on our phone.  We did all that EARLY - before 8am, and it was STILL hot!!  We are learning to go out in the morning and be back to our place by 8am, or better yet, to go out in the late afternoon - sometime after 4:30pm because by then, things are starting to cool off.  Here are two pictures of the beach here in Samara.

There is an island that people can kayak to from the beach.

So, there is this big stretch of time during the day when we just stay inside.  We watch TV, read, play around on the computer, nap, fix lunch.  These are lazy days for sure, but they are nice.

Yesterday, in the evening, we walked to the beach to watch the tide come in.  There's this estuary that comes in on one part of the beach and that is where we stood to watch things.  The sun was behind the hills so it was nice and cool.  The tide takes a long time to come in, so we stood around quite a while - watching the people jumping over the little strand of the estuary.  This is the little strand before the tide comes in:

By the time the tide came in, it was too dark to take any more pictures.  Once we saw the that the tide was coming in pretty good, and it was getting too dark, we walked back to the main street access.  We were going to eat at a Thai restaurant, but couldn't find it so we had dinner at a Spanish restaurant.  Guillermo had gambas al ajillo and I had gambas a la plancha.  As usual, Guillermo picked the better dish!!!

Pictures added

Going back to January 3rd, there are a few new pictures that I was finally able to add!

First full day

This morning we decided to drive around as much as we could, since our rental car is due at noon.  So, we had a quick breakfast and then drove to Carrillo beach again - except this time we drove past it, through the little town of Puerto Carrillo.  We liked Puerto Carrillo and decided we'd stop in that town on the way back to see about a place to live for February.  Yep, we're not too happy with where we are staying for January.  First, the internet reminds us of when we were in the trailer.  Second, it's hot here in Samara and there's no air conditioning  where we are living (there is one ceiling fan and one box fan, so thank goodness for those).  Third, the kitchen situation isn't the greatest - we LIKE having a microwave because it's so easy to reheat meals that way.  Some other things we can overlook, like the bathroom being miniscule and having to walk our dirty clothes to a laundromat.  But what gets us the most is there is so much NOT here, yet we are paying about as much as we did for that HUGE, well-equipped, excellent internet, much better TV channels, washer/dryer on premises, 5 room house!!  Hmmm, it must be we are paying for the privilege of living close to a beach, there's no other explanation for it.

Back to our little drive.  We drove about 7 kilometers past Puerto Carrillo, and tried to go down a road to see Playa Camaronal, but the road had been washed out by a river, so we had to turn around.  Back in Puerto Carrillo, we stopped at several places for rent and there is ONE place that we are going to look into for February.  Cheaper than where we're at now, but it has MORE.  Granted, Puerto Carillo is not as big a town as Samara, but we checked it out, and it has a decent grocery store, and 3 decent restaurants so we're fine with that.  And it's close to the nicer part of Playa Carrillo.  So, we'll see if we can get that place for February.  Here are pictures of Carrillo Beach, this isn't our favorite part of the beach, but I haven't gotten pictures yet of the nicer part.

At noon, we turned in our car and then had a small lunch at a nearby bakery before walking back to our house.  We spent the hottest part of the day inside, fixing up our place and putting things where it's convenient for us.  In the early evening, we decided to walk to the beach - going to one end and then walking back to the other end which leads to the main street.  But we had to give up that plan when we got to a section of the beach where the tide had come in, blocking off access to the other side of the beach.  So, we just turned around and went back.  But it was very nice walking along the beach in the evening with the ocean breezes making the temperature pleasant.

January 9th, 2011

Today we drove to Samara.  It was a very pretty drive from Liberia to Samara.  We came into more mountains than I thought there'd be - since we were headed to the beach, but a lot of those hills come right up to the water.

We found right away the place where we were going to stay, but since it was too early, we decided to drive around a little bit.  The town of Samara looks nice, it has quite a few restaurants, several little grocery stores and from what we can see (from a distance) the beach looks beautiful.

We had dinner that evening at a pizza place called Al Manglar.  Absolutely delicious pizza!

January 8th, 2011

We got up QUITE early this morning, because "someone" looked at their pedometer and thought that it was 7:05 am, forgetting that we're now in Costa Rica where the time is one hour earlier.  So, we get up at what we thought was 7:05 and it really was 6:05.  But it turned out for the best!  We had a lot to do this morning before meeting up with Fernando and Eva and getting up so early gave us a chance to do everything we wanted.  :-)

First thing we did was head across the street from the hotel to another hotel to make a reservation for that night. Once that was taken care of, we went back to our hotel and had breakfast.  Then we got in our car and drove about 20 kilometers out of Liberia to a pharmacy to check on medications for Guillermo.  And at the same time we visited a GNC store to buy some power bars for Fernando and Eva to eat out in the field.  We were so happy to find those bars at that store for them!!

Back in Liberia, we did some grocery shopping and then checked out of our hotel, got back in the car and drove out to Santa Rosa National Park where Fernando and Eva are doing research.  We met them at their dorm room, Soooooo happy to be with them again!!!  We gave them the groceries they had asked us to pick up, and a few other things from us (Birds of Panama book, wine, cranberry juice, the power bars, etc.)  Then, since it wasn't quite time to have lunch yet, we walked to the campground and sat around on the picnic tables and just talked and watched birds - we were hoping to see monkeys but none every came around.

At around 12:30 we went to the dining room and had lunch.  After lunch, Fernando and Eva decided to come back to town with us to do a little shopping.  Here's a picture of them with us at our hotel:

While in town, Guillermo and I bought a cell phone and Fernando and Eva bought some weights and picked up several things from the grocery store.  We took all that stuff back to our "new" hotel room and then rested a little there in the room.  After we had all rested a little, we walked to the plaza to have a little ice cream.

At 6, we had dinner at a sushi restaurant which was a surprisingly nice little restaurant and the food was good!  After dinner, we drove Fernando and Eva back to the park - getting there a little after 8:30pm.   It was a very nice day with them and we drove back to our hotel happy that we were able to spend so much time with them that day.