The beaches of Tamarindo are filled with locals, visitors and people selling stuff to the tourists. On any given day you will find no less than 50 “beach vendors” walking the beach, peddling their wares. These vendors are not regulated (from what we can tell) at all, and thus walk into the restaurants, approach youKeep Reading!
Jacob turned 8 on April 29th. His birthday will be the only one we celebrate in Costa Rica this year. Jacob knew that this birthday would be different without the typical fanfare surrounding all of our celebrations. But all of us counted down they days for weeks prior, enjoying the excitement and anticipation that comesKeep Reading!
Goodbye’s are hard. We are anticipating ours – one month from today. It’s difficult not to “go there” yet, considering we have had so many happy Hello’s as of late. We have been blessed over the last five months in Tamarindo to have made so many new friends while also welcoming friends from home toKeep Reading!
Last Thursday I got a call from our friend Elsy and she told me about a surf competition that was going on in Tamarindo that coming weekend and she wanted to know if we were interested in coming. “Sure!” I replied, assuming that she meant to watch. As the conversation went on, I realized thatKeep Reading!
Jeffry was cleaning the pool at “our” house long before it was our house. Houses here are different – they come with a whole history – written in Spanish on lined paper. They are not owned by people, they are owned by a corporation that gets passed from owner to owner. Most people we haveKeep Reading!
We arrived in Costa Rica on December 5th, a very beautiful, and very quiet time here in Tamarindo. When tourism and the start of the Costa Rican summer season picked up mid-December we were told that the crowds we were seeing were just the beginning of a very busy, but important time in this smallKeep Reading!
It takes a lot to make me laugh. It’s not that I don’t get amused. I chuckle and smile a lot, but a good, solid, bring me to tears kind of laughter session has never been at my fingertips. Most often, this happens when I am with my family or with really close friends. OurKeep Reading!
I am addicted to speaking spanish. I’ve learned a ton, but I have a really really long way to go. Erin is always laughing at my crazy attempts to speak in spanish, especially when I try to explain something complicated or with many layers. Erin and I have been reflecting this week about how differentKeep Reading!
Yet again, we experienced another first this morning, not quite as fun as our other firsts though. This week is Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Latin America. It’s the busiest time in Tamarindo for the entire year, the week leading up to Easter. The entire country shuts down this week and it seems that theKeep Reading!
Yesterday we bid farewell to our last set of friends coming to town for a visit as Brent, Kristine, Aliya and Jaz. We had another wonderful time with them and the kids really enjoyed getting to know their girls better. Our week was filled with surfing, a night out a Bamboo Sushi Club, journeys toKeep Reading!
We have been living in our own little world for months now and have had very little interaction with our friends from “home” other than a few emails, random texts and the occasional skype calls. We’ve talked on facebook and a little through the blog, but for the most part we’ve been completely on ourKeep Reading!
This past week was another week of firsts. First week in the new house, first family friend visitors from Colorado, first emergency trip to the dentist, the list goes on. Many stories to tell, laugh about and share. Theme? Colorado meets Tamarindo. I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes trying to find a specific topicKeep Reading!
This past week marked another milestone in our adventure. For the first time in 3+ months our 10 feet were joined by the familiarity and comfort of 2 visitors (and 4 more feet) from home, Yaya and Grandpa Buzz. The anticipation of visitors from “home” was enough to make the kids seem drunk with excitement. For theKeep Reading!
We had our first visitors since we arrived in December. The kids were counting down the days until Matt’s parents arrived at Casa Xanadu. They arrived late enough that we had to put the kids to bed in anticipation of early morning hugs and kisses from YaYa and Grandpa Buzz. And the morning came earlyKeep Reading!
It’s been a little over three months now since we moved to Tamarindo. We have experienced more as a family than I ever could have hoped for and still I feel we have so much to look forward to. If someone were to ask me how my life as a father has changed during thisKeep Reading!
Ben has worked very hard to create a project for his class back in Colorado about the tides in Costa Rica (and the world). He has been studying the tides as they are an important part of life while surfing in Costa Rica. Different beaches are better to surf at at high or low tidesKeep Reading!
We spent our last morning in Nicaragua at the “Chocolate Factory.” It was located on one of the main drags in Granada. Like every other door we walked through in Granada, there was a whole different world past the entrance. First, we bumped into Julian, a friend from Spanish School. He was in class withKeep Reading!
One of the most distinct memories I have (and will have) of our trip to Nicaragua was no longer than 30 seconds. We were walking back from dinner (in the dark) to our hotel. Erin mentioned this previously, but our hotel, while fairly nice, was just far enough off of the main square that itKeep Reading!
Our trip was motivated by a number of factors, but first and foremost was a desire to expose our children, (and ourselves) to a life beyond the walls of our home and community. While Tamarindo, Costa Rica has been different and challenging, (in relatively small ways), it has not been a shock to the system.Keep Reading!
Thus far we have written about some of the more intense elements of our trip to Nicaragua. This post is about a whole different side of Nicaragua. The day we arrived in Nicaragua was quite busy and filled with new experiences. Once we arrived at our hotel (Real Granada) toward the end of the day,Keep Reading!