The Sea is a Salty One

 Picking up again almost exactly a week ago. All photos from the Museo de Oro Precolombino .   Thoughts on San Jose and homelessness: During our recent vacation we spent two days/two nights in San Jose. Now we don't go there very often. During the best of times it's a good five hour drive, much of it through road construction and bumper to bumper traffic. Many streets are one way, the street numbering makes zero sense, and it is a vast sprawling city that makes both Google Maps and Apple Maps give up the ghost! Most of the time when we go it's because we're seeing a specialist at the hospital. It's just too nerve-wracking any other way.    When we're in San Jose we don't get to see the tourist things at all! During Jim's medical trials last year and this year I started attempting to book us into a hotel near the hospital yet overlooking Calle Central, not far from the Central Market, Theatro Nacional, Museo de Oro, etc, etc, so at least we could sit on ...

 So we were out of town last week. My rantings and ravings part uno! Arenal garden in front of the church. Extremely cloudy this trip! We’ve gone off on a vacation before our real vacation. Three days in Arenal/La Fortuna, two days at Copey de Dota/Santa Maria and two days in San Jose. I’m not looking forward to the drive back because Backstabber Bridge is still closed, so it’s about another hour up to Liberia and another hour over back home to Tamarindo. There is a ferry, but there seems to be some confusion about how to reserve a spot, and a small number of spots available. It doesn’t help much that the ferry seems rather poorly run on it’s cruise to the Nicoya Peninsula.  Sorry to start on such a downer note, but as I like to say, it is what it is.   Arenal and La Fortuna were lovely as usual. We made two trips to the Chocolate Fusion for delicious treats, and we had the usual amazing time at the villa we stayed in near the waterfall. We also spent a wonderful day...

  The beach at Carillo we visited last Monday! So aggravated this morning. Why? Couple of things. This happened on Wednesday. The Asada (local water company) decided to replace all of the water pipes around our village. I was glad they started doing this considering every time they repaired a leak in the system they shut down the entire system. We have a tank outside that holds something like sixty gallons so we have enough water to keep going some hours, but if I don't know the water is off I don't always cut back the amount I'm using. Why does this matter? Because if there's a system shutdown I don't do things like run the washer or the dishwasher (me).  You cannot see it, but our auxiliary tank is up those legs! So cool beans, they were replacing the pipes! Better water pressure and less down times I hope! Later that same day we went to the local Wal Mart subsidiary to pick up cat food and milk. On the way back it started raining, turning all that dirt into a riv...