Day 15

Today was a big surprise for the children.  It all began a about one week ago when I noticed that the cost of flights to Costa Rica had plummeted.  Perhaps Tim could come and join us here for our last week of travel!  We conspired together and planned it all.  He arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica at midnight, slept in a hostel and woke up this morning to take the 7:30AM bus to San Isidro.  But there was to be an interesting twist today.

I told the children that we had to go to San Isidro for two reasons: every Thursday was the biggest open air market in the country and I wanted to buy a few things, and there was a package arriving for us at the bus station. 

A typical stall at the Market

We arrived in San Isidro and explored a bit.  We visited a bakery, a home store where we bought a ladle to replace the one was had broken, a lot of yummy fruit and some veggies at the Market, a shady spot in the central park and some comida tipico, typical local food at a cafe.  Now it was time to pick up the package.
We learned that the bus had been delayed due to road work.  We waited at the station for "the package," Tim,  until we couldn't wait any longer without missing our own bus.  So we went back to our bus stop and, blessedly, another resident from the farm, one I trust, was there with his little girl.  So I begged a favor, which was easily granted, and I dumped the kids on the bus with him, and waited for Tim myself, promising to return in 5 hours. 

It turned out that the bus was an hour and a half late because the road had washed out from last night's heavy rains!  So Tim and I had 4 hours to ourselves in San Isidro waiting for the next bus to come back to the farm. We roamed about the city buying various necessities, and eating ice cream at yet another Pop's.  When we returned, they were thrilled to see who the "package" really was.  They set about introducing him to every bush, flower and beetle which they have come to consider part of their personal environment.  It was like an abridged version of the previous two weeks: a demonstration of picking a coconut, using a machete,  the spider on the path, the woodshop,  the tool shed, the animal pens, our open-air house, this is guava, this is yucca, this is guayaba and on and on and on.  Finally we settled down to a dinner of boiled and fried yucca, salad, caimate-banana-starfruit-coconut-water smoothies, and one cookie each which Tim and I had purchased during our 4 hour honeymoon in San Isidro.

 A Blue morpho butterfly.  We saw one this morning.

Now that the sun has gone down, he has been introduced to the house gecko, a number of katy-dids and moths which come nightly, and given another round of hugs by 4 very happy children.  In a way the adventure begins all over again tomorrow as we share our Costa Rican experience with Tim.