So what's new here...
The rainy season has brought with it all the incredible flowers and an intense green all around. You can really feel the life and energy in everything. It is a good feeling!!
My friend Nancy from Victoria visited us for 10 days. She even celebrated her birthday here with an official Costa Rican birthday cake. We also took the opportunity to go and visit Manuel Antonio Park and Beach. We took the bus from Grecia to San Jose and then from San Jose to Manuel Antonio. It was very easy to do and it dropped us off right in Manuel Antonio strip of restaurants and hotels which made it easy to find a place to stay. The entire trip took about 4.5 hours...not so bad.. The beach is really beautiful with lots of natural surroundings and monkey's sloths, iguanas and snakes all trying to share your lunch!!
We did alot of day trips to local attractions like Poas Volcano, La Paz Waterfall garden, Doka Coffee (where we learned that 70% of the coffee they grow goes to Starbucks) and we also visited the Botanical Gardens in Sarchi. It was a great adventure and I really have to thank Nancy for bringing lots of little treats for Karl and I...they were really appreciated.
Another grand adventure was having Bernie (a long time friend of Karl) & Anne Marie, also were here for some time and Karl got to do some mountain biking with them in Poas and Volcan Barva. I decided that I should give it a try to we all went to a little town called Santa Rita with some other Tico friends and took a nice quiet 15KM!! ride. It took about 3 hours and I was not sure I was going to make it...yet I did finish the whole thing! I did quite a bit of walking my bike up the hills and I managed to make it to the end. I was pretty proud of myself. The family that we biked with was so incredibly generous...not alot of money, yet they were willing to do anything and with such happieness and no expectation in return! It was a really heartwarming experience.
I think I will leave it like this for now and promise to keep you updated more often!
Hasta pronto, Monika
