Day 49
We are a two-bike family of five. This involves a bit of creativity when taking Cali to school. Here’s the routine. I make her lunch and then walk to her school, which takes me about 40 minutes. Then Cali and Paul ride the two bikes to her school, then Paul and I ride them home. In the afternoon we ride the bikes there and then Paul jogs home. It’s a good way to make sure both of us get in a little exercise.
I walk by myself on my early morning walks, but I’m never alone. The chickens are out everywhere, scraping around for their breakfast with their little chicks.
The dogs, almost all of them well fed and with collars, have been let out by their owners to do their business. There are three horses in a field I walk by.
The sidewalks are covered with centipedes, like their early morning rush hour. It’s pretty creepy, especially in flip flops. But my favorite company are the Scarlet Macaws. They live here in big numbers. We can see them fly by our balcony in groups of 10-20. On my walk to school I can hear them in the trees and see them fly from one favorite tree to another. They mate for life and are always in pairs.
Every morning I pass a Spanish Mennonite church. It’s ironic that we couldn’t find one in all of Southern Florida, and on my little walk through a coastal town in Costa Rica I found one.
Every day to school we pass many murals painted on walls. These are a few of my favorites.
This morning we were out of coffee. We’re usually pretty good at not letting this happen. I guess we’re enjoying the pura vida a little too much. After we dropped Cali off at school, we had a half an hour to kill before the groceries stores opened. We found a little coffee place open on the strip.
The woman who owns the cafe is Canadian and came from BC over 45 years ago. She and her husband came to live off the land, moved to a small place in the mountains and raised three children there. They grew their own food and were self sufficient. It was a fascinating story. She also bakes here own bread and the coffee was smoothly fabulous. Those decades of living off the land for decades certainly paid off. We’ll be back.
After that we went looking for a lunch box and pencil case for Cali. Not as easy as it sounds. The lunch boxes were either covered with baby cartoons, overly boy colored or overly girl colored. I know, it’s complicated! There were very few to choose from, but we bought the best option
and hoped it wouldn’t be rejected. Under pencil case we were running into the same category issues as the lunch boxes. We did find one.
We bought some fresh fish for supper and made tico rice and beans to go with it. Feels like in many ways we have settled in quite nicely here.