What are we doing in Costa Rica?

Some photos from the past couple of weeks, as well as a few notes on jungle living that have been rattling around in my brain. I’ve been way too lazy about uploads! You can view more photos here.

Horses wander freely about the town.

Dogs do too!

Our closest beach, Playa Negra, in the late afternoon. The black sand is super fine and gets into everything.

Graham is very dramatic in his refusal to love the beach.

Big, crazy spider in our sink one morning. It hopped at me when I tried to scoop in into a glass. YIKES!

Zach preparing one of the fish he caught. Such a provider!

Finally got close enough to one of the dart frogs to take its picture.

Dean bringing me flowers.

——
Both boys are expanding their vocabularies in Costa Rica. Dean is saying dog, cat, thank you, bye, mama, and dada. He also pants like a dog whenever he sees any four-legged creature, and he has started waving. Graham has started saying “chillax.” That’s chill + relax for all you oldsters . As in, “Daddy, it’s time to go to bed and chillax!”

——
How humid is it here? Dishes don’t dry in the draining rack. Some of our clothes are mildewing. Books and paper are just slightly damp at all times. Our bathroom is like a swamp.

——
The big, exciting news this week is that we are making friends! Graham had his first play date yesterday with an awesome little boy and it was a big success. His parents own the coffee shop in town — could there be a better family to befriend?! They played with rocks and cars, chased each other around the shop, and got ice cream cones. We have some more potential friend irons in the fire as well.

The more time passes since I last wrote, the harder it is to write anything at all, because all my observations are competing for space. This is going to be a hodge podge assortment of ideas, hopefully enough to get me out of “blog debt.”

Simpler, But Not Easier

Life here is simpler than in the States, but simple things are hard. There is less of everything except untamed wilderness: fewer people, less traffic, less media barrage, less stuff to buy, fewer choices. If you had a million dollars down here, nobody would know it because there’s nothing to buy except food, sundries, and what few garments are suitable for sweating it out in the jungle. Imagine, if you will, no Best Buy, no Home Depot, no PetCo, no Old Navy, no Barnes & Noble, no Bed Bath & Beyond. And lo and behold, your life runs perfectly well without them. Living here is uncomplicated, and generally low-stress. However, basic things take a lot of energy. Taking care of the kids here is a lot harder, because it takes both parents to get them out of the house. We don’t have a child care option yet, and no parenting staples like playgrounds and children’s museums. Stocking the refrigerator is a challenge, since we can only carry the equivalent of a single grocery bag in the bicycle basket. We go the various small grocery suppliers almost daily. By the time I have biked home with a full basket, I just want to drink a cold beer and go to sleep!

Bug Update

We’re adapting. Graham’s legs have downgraded from “Fangoria” to “merely bad.” To paraphrase Forrest Gump’s momma, the jungle is like a box of chocolates… We are constantly astonished by the variety and unpredictability of our insect situation. Case in point: two nights ago at dusk the entire house was enveloped in a swarm of moth-like creatures with slender black wings. We hid out for a while under our mosquito nets. It felt like an episode of “Tales from the Crypt.” Within about an hour, they were gone, and the spider camped out above our staircase was exhausted. We’re learning to live side-by-side with our six-legged friends. They are a fact of life here. On the other hand, when one of them flew straight into my right ear at dinner, all the way to my eardrum, I almost lost my mind.

Man’s Place in Nature

The first thing you think when you see this country is “OMG, it’s so beautiful.” After a few days, this evolves to “I am a stranger here, and Nature wants to eat me.” Now that we’re four weeks in, I can feel another transition. “Holy crap, I am an animal too! I really do belong here; growing up in a manmade world made me forget how.” I am becoming attuned to the natural world in subtle ways. For example, we had two straight days of rain this week. This morning, I knew the rain was finished because the cicadas were making a racket, which they never do while it’s wet. We don’t have any clocks. Honestly, we tell the time by looking at the sky.

In our time here in Puerto Viejo, I’ve noticed something interesting about the energy parents put into keeping their kids safe. Kids here seem to have a lot more freedom than children the same age in the States. You see little kids riding adult bikes by themselves, or playing in the street together (the quiet side streets — they’re not dodging traffic or anything), or walking through town. You also see a lot of parents biking with their kids perched any which way on the handlebars. I saw a mom riding down the main street one day with a small boy standing behind her holding on with one hand. He looked blissfully confident. I’ve seen one baby carried in a carseat bucket, and that was a tourist family. Overall, I don’t think carseats are widely used here, though I haven’t researched it. The playground in town has really overgrown grass (snakes!), broken swings, rusted ladder rungs, etc.

I’m enjoying this in certain small ways. I love that on the property here Graham can be out of my sight and I feel comfortable that he’s safe as long as I know where he is. He’s not a huge risk taker, so he always comes back into my line off vision shortly. Even Dean can wander way more freely here than at home. The couple of times we’ve had a ride into town with the kids, there was no question that we’d bring the carseats. We did have them strapped in on the way from San Jose — my heart would never have been able to take the lane changes otherwise! — but they’re currently gathering dust upstairs.

Certain things are different here that make these safety things palatable. The drives have been short and slow. It’s a TINY town (I see the same people all the time) and people know each other and their kids. Cars are very accustomed to sharing the road with bikes and pedestrians and are generally very courteous. But it definitely puts an interesting perspective on things. I spent hours researching car seats when it was time to switch Graham into something bigger. I wouldn’t dream of leaving Dean unsupervised in our front yard in Texas. Yet maybe when we get back I’ll a slightly less paranoid mama? Who knows…

In an interesting twist, apparently Americans are much more cavalier about babysitters than the Ticos. I thought it would be easy to find some part-time babysitting here, but the idea was met with… well, not horror by our hostess, but no recommendations either. “I don’t know who I could trust — I mean, it’s your children!” were her exact words, if I recall correctly. Pretty different from the “Hey, that kid down the street looks old enough to dial 9-1-1,” approach to hiring sitters that a lot of Americans have. (For the record, our sitters in TX have all come from trusted recommendations or with references, but I haven’t been running their prints or anything.)  The only lead on a babysitter I’ve been able to get down here was from a woman who looked suspiciously like a “lady of the evening” who solicited me as I biked through town with Dean one day. Hmmm.