We will miss North Carolina for sure

But we are super excited to have Fernando, Eva and Leo coming to San Antonio!!!

Some pictures from our last trip to Durham.

Our usual routine, go grocery shopping and buy Leo a balloon!

Passing on gardening skills

His balloon dog that he got while eating at a good barbecue restaurant.

Visiting the museum of Life and Science

Leo was skeptical at first of these foggers but he got into them and then loved running through them.

Ooops

Flying the ladybug kite.  He is a good kite flyer!

These trees were so beautiful all over Durham, but we found out that they are not a good thing.  Ornamental pears apparently are killing off other native trees.

Painting a gift for Papa's birthday

Leo has gotten so fast on his balance bike!

Our latest Costa Rica Trip part 2

From Samara we drove to Manuel Antonio 

We stopped to walk on a bridge over the Tarcoles River to look at these big crocodiles.

The beaches of Manuel Antonio are really beautiful.

We stayed at a place called the Plinio Bed and Breakfast.  It was a nice place and we enjoyed being in Manuel Antonio.  It's a cute little town.  We visited the National Park there and it sure was not the way we remembered it back in 1995.  They have made a new entrance to the park, and the line to get tickets was very long.  The whole park was very crowded with people.  But we had an enjoyable time hiking some of the trails in the park anyway.

This was our view of the beach one evening.

 We heard that usual road to Monteverde could have many delays at various hours due to construction so we took another route up.  This road had also obviously been worked on because it was nowhere near as rough as the usual road.  Most of it was paved!  I remember one of our prior trips to Monteverde, bouncing along that super bumpy road.  On the one hand, we thought how nice it would be if they paved it to make the drive easier, but on the other hand, we also thought that would make Monteverde more crowded.  Oh well, they have already started paving one road and are also working on paving the other road.  We shall see what impact that has.

Having a nice dinner at Morphos in Monteverde

We had many nice breakfasts at various cafes in Monteverde and also good dinners.  We stayed at the Tree Top House, which in better weather would have been a dream place to stay.  But the weather while we were there was extremely windy - almost hurricane like - and quite cold and rainy.  The Tree Top House was very drafty.  The wind also blew the tree branches against the sides and roof of the house which many times made it sound like something was about to cave in.  Not much sleep those nights for Guillermo and I who took the top floor!  The others had the middle and bottom floor and those floors were quieter from the wind.  The neat thing about this house is that it seemed like just around any corner you'd find another room or a cute little nook.  It was quite interesting discovering all the little spaces in this house!

Nice tree along the trail in CuriCancha

Stopped along the road for a few pictures as we were driving down from Monteverde.

 Time to return our rental car.  A couple of pictures before taking it back.

Now time to just hang around the pool at our hotel and wait till it's time to head to the airport for our flight home.

We had time for one last walk into Liberia to eat at a restaurant we had eaten at our first night in Liberia - Tierra Mar.  We enjoyed some good tostones and a drink in the open air restaurant.

It was a very enjoyable trip!

Our latest Costa Rica trip

Here's hoping I can start keeping up the blog better than I had been doing lately.  It has gotten quite a few requests....

At the beginning of February we made a trip to Costa Rica with 5 of Guillermo's brothers and sisters.  Charlie and Aida flew from Tucson to our house and then flew with us to Houston, where we met up with Connie and Harold.  Gloria flew to Costa Rica from Phoenix a week later.

Upon arriving in Costa Rica, we found our rental car company and got in their van to the rental car place.  We got a nice white van that would hold all 7 of us comfortably.  Once we had our van, we drove to a little restaurant along the road and had a good lunch.

We've eaten here many times, as it's usually the first good place to eat that we come across after leaving the airport.

Then we found the house that we rented for the next three nights and got settled in our rooms.  It was called the Liberiana House and was just outside of Liberia.  We all enjoyed staying there.

While staying close to Liberia, we visited Rincon de la Vieja Park, Palo Verde Park and Santa Rosa National Park.  We tried to visit Rincon de La Vieja and Palo Verde the day after we arrived but Rincon de la Vieja wasn't open and we got to Palo Verde 30 minutes before closing time.  So, we left Palo Verde and instead parked alongside a rice field and cut open a watermelon that we had bought from a roadside vendor.  It was delicious!!!

Santa Rosa is where Fernando has done a lot of field studies so we always like going back to that park.

This is the Capuchin Monkey, the kind of monkey both he and Eva studied in this park and other nearby parks.

After leaving the Liberia area where it was good and hot, we drove more into the mountains where it was a little rainier and cooler.  Guillermo's brothers and sisters went to Tenorio National Park and hiked a trail there that Guillermo and I have done several times already.  We decided not to go this time because it was cold and raining hard at the hotel.  Another day we took a drive around the area and visited another hotel that we had stayed at before.  As we walked down from that hotel, we ran into a couple taking a walk who had a really nice property along that road, Aves de Tierras Altas was the name of their place, and they said we could just go on their land and walk around.  When they came back from their walk, the lady kindly met up with us and pointed out some of her plants and we all found visiting with her to be enjoyable and interesting.

After leaving the Bijagua area, we got back into hot weather again.  We stopped at a place along the Corobici River to have lunch before heading to the airport in Liberia to pick up Gloria.

After picking Gloria up from the airport, we drove to Samara where Guillermo and I had lived for a little over 2 months.

It was nice being back on this beach again!  I rented a bike from downtown and rode almost all the way to the end of the beach.  It was very hot but it was a lot of fun!

Another day, we took a drive out into the country to see what we could see.  We marveled at these "living fences".

So, in Samara Guillermo and I tried to visit all the places that we had frequented while we lived there.  We visited Marlene at La Mansion B&B, we checked out the old grocery stores and noticed what businesses were new and which were now gone.  We also walked to Boheme Chic, where we lived for several weeks.  The place is totally changed, looks like a totally upgraded place.  

 And how exciting that we ran into Rebeca's co-worker Karen and her husband Lars there in Samara.  We knew they were going to be in Samara at the same time as us, so we were keeping an eye out for them.  After having dinner at Mama Gui's one evening, we walked slowly up the street back to our hotel.  I stopped to peer into an open air restaurant, looking over everyone seated just in case they were having dinner in that restaurant.  Not seeing them, we kept on walking when all of a sudden I heard my name being called out.  I turned around and was so shocked to see Karen and her husband.  We found each other!!  The next evening, they joined us on a drive to do some bird watching at a river and then for dinner at Gusto Beach on the beach.