Pura Vida

We left Rigby behind and flew to Costa Rica for a nice long vacation. Shannon has long had a dream to live in “a little grass shack by the sea” and this is pretty much exactly that. No return flight tickets yet, we’re just gonna see how it goes.

We are on the Pacific coast at Playa Pelada, just outside of Nosara and living, breathing and sleeping in an open air structure.

Jamaica anyone?

This is Shannon in the camp’s outdoor kitchen (the only kitchen here) offering up a glass of jamaica, pronounced ha-MIKE-uh (and not to be confused with the island nation of Jamaica 🇯🇲) that she just brewed. It’s a kind of tea, brewed from hibiscus leaves and this one has some added tamarind roots and ginger. A very nice cold drink for a hot day (which is pretty much every day here).

There are a number of other campers here as well; not just us. Currently there is a nice French couple with their boy who are on a year-long trip going all over the world. They are sleeping in a tent. There is a young (also French) woman who is also traveling all over the place as well. She is sleeping in the treehouse “basement” (right below us). And there was also a young man here who I think may have arrived before we did but he left this morning. And then there are the hosts, also a relatively young couple who run this place. So it’s feeling kind of like a commune and it’s really got that “hippie” vibe. 

It has been super warm and very muggy (temps in the high 80’s with 80% humidity) so we’re really beginning to understand the whole “take a siesta” thing. 

This is me in the treehouse at mid day today when we decided our exercise session could wait. 

Shannon handles overheating a little differently though, check this out:

That’s a chest-freezer-bathtub!

She fried up some plantains today too. They are like bananas on steroids. You know - like Monsanto bananas or something. Mmmmm delicious though!

We also rode Brie’s (Brie is our host) Navi (that’s a scooter 🛵) pronounced NAH-vee; (not nah-VEE like the aliens in Avatar) into Nosara to get some groceries. And you know what? Those things are scary! Not like a motorcycle. The geometry is all off. I don’t know how they’re so popular. (Edit: Might be because of the grocery basket on the back forcing us both way forward on the seat.)

Anyway, then we blew off our exercise session again and went for a beach walk and swim 🏊‍♀️ (but that’s exercise, right?)
And this time we were more careful. The day before yesterday we went for a glorious ocean swim and at one point I was like “hey, why is the beach so far away? I didn’t think we’d swam THAT far out “, and I looked at a rock outcropping and the point of land behind it, and I could see the current was carrying us away from shore! Yikes, time to swim hard and luckily it wasn’t at all as bad as it could’ve been. We made it back to shore on our own, but wow it required some pretty furious swimming!

So today we stayed close to shore and were very vigilant about such things and it was again glorious. 

Anyways. There’s today’s recap!