2 Weeks in Orosi, Costa Rica

Orosi is a beautiful valley of coffee fields and small farms surrounded by mountains. Each morning the sun shines bright and with my pants and rolled up long sleeve shirt I´m sweating early in the day, but I don´t want the bugs to get to me so I´m not giving into the temptation to wear shorts. haha.

We decided not to head to Puerto Viejo after all. It´s funny the way things go, but after calling the number of the hotel that was listed in the book and getting a wrong number, I looked it up on the internet and tried again. That number was wrong too! I couldn´t believe it! And the other hotel listings were more than we wanted to pay, so I didn´t book a room and we decided just to head over there the next day. Well, that night Beth ended up getting ill (don´t worry she´s much better now. probably at 80%. Looks like she had a little bug and maybe some dehydration.) So we ended up staying in the hostel since. So now we´ve been in Orosi for about a week. Not a bad place to be.

Before Beth got sick we took a nice walk through a couple little neighoring towns and did a 6 hour mountain hike that was really beautiful. The trail (really more like a dirt road) was lined with dense jungle along with intermitent coffee fields. The kicker was that after 5 hours the monsoonish rains came. By that time Booster had been in our litle backpack for a few hours. He was just laying in the bottom with his head out the zipper. Imagine that! I put on my rain jacket and it fit perfectly over the bag and my under arm vent that zipped open provided the boy with fresh air without getting a drop of rain on him. So as the rains fell (picture the hardest rains you´ve ever experienced without letting up for hours) we made our way down the mountain and soon the trail turned into a stream. We were getting nervous when it started to lightning. We decided to stop at some sort of large warehouse farmy thing and before we got there we ran into a woman and her like 3 year old daughter walking with only umbrellas (the little girl had her own and wasn´t even holding her mother´s hand. Picture it!). They told us just to head the way we had been going and ignore the 5 inches of water that was rushing down the mountain. And after seeing this girl doing it we figured we could too. So down we went. (As a sidenote, while it was lightning I thought back to our time watching Man Vs. Wild and what he did when it rained. I suggested to Bethanie that we find an open spot and get down just like he did. And she was like,¨Okay, but I don´t think bear was standing in a river when he gave that advice.¨ Oh yeah. Truestory.) We probable spent 10 or 15 min. milling around under some trees for cover hoping the rain would let up before we ran into the woman and her daughter. And then after taking her advice we hit the town 5 minutes later. It was crazy how remote we still felt and really we were only five minutes from town. At this point we got so stoked because of what we felt we had accomplished and we treated ourselves to some take out costa rican food and headed back to the hostel for the night. What fun!

So, now that Beth is getting better but is still not 100% we´ve decided to make the most of our time and we´ve enrolled in a 1'week intensive Spanish course. We´ll start tomorrow and have 3 hour lessons each day and then do a lot of independent study on the side. We are really excited about it, so wish us luck! A few other people at the hostel are taking courses and they warn us that no miracles will happen in a week it is time and money well spent. So we´re stoked.

And by the way speaking of the hostel, right next door to it is a beautiful lot (with fruit trees) for you to buy and retire on. I spoke to the owner yesterday in Spanish and he´s selling 6047 or there about square meters for $50 per meter. So for a little over $300,000 you´ve got a few acres. They will need some irrigation work to prevent all the siting water after the rain and you would have to stop his brother from letting his horses graze there (if that bothers you. They´re actually quite enjoyable to watch and if any animal is going to wake you up with the sounds they make a horse neighing is much better than a cock crowing. Trust me on that. There are plenty of roosters around here and most of them don´t know when the day begins so you hear them from 1 am well into the morning).

Well, we head to the farm to start work on Saturday, Oct. 18. Wish us luck!