Visiting a waterfall naturally implies a lot of moisture. However when we spent the morning at the La Paz Waterfall Gardens with our visiting kids last week, there was a whole lot more water falling from the sky then crashing down those waterfalls! We were forced to purchase lovely “Pura Vida” ponchos conveniently offered in the […]
Read more "Mostly Water and some Tasty Chicharrones"Starting today, I am moving forward and refocusing on pura vida with a first plunge into the lap pool this year! The water is still a little murky, granted, but in those high-end spas people pay top dollar for algae packs and assorted nonsense. I figure a few greenish clouds won’t do me any harm. Thank […]
Read more "Araçari Alert"“Ihr Lieben Goldigen” this has been my greeting for my far-away family for most of those decades I’ve lived abroad. It was the header in uncountable letters to my parents, those real, pre-internet letters, written on crinkly onionskin stationary to reduce the cost of overseas postage. This very personal address is composed of “My Dears” and […]
Read more "Busy Times"We continue to stumble across minor and major reminders of the explosion which blew up part of our home last April. The acid vapor cloud penetrated into the far reaches of the house in an intriguingly random pattern, so elusive that we still find evidence of damage here and there after all these months. Two […]
Read more "Candied Curry Chicken"It was our gardener’s assistant who sounded the alarm. The undergardener had been clearing underbrush behind the laundry drying area in the far corner of our “plantel”. El plantel is the level area of a property on which people build their homes. In our mountainous Central Costa Rican neighborhoods, a pantel is usually carved out of the face […]
Read more "Snake Scare"Prompted by an article in my daily English-language newsletter called A.M. Costa Rica I was reminded of a potential problem which had been quietly lurking in a back corner of my mind ever since we visited Nicaragua in 2013. The object of my concern is an interoceanic shipping canal which José Daniel Ortega Saavedra, President for life […]
Read more "WATER – All important. Under Threat."It is the small stuff, the jolly you-must-be-kidding non-events in life that sometimes throw you for a loop. Earlier this week, we found out that our kids will come and visit us in Saintes, France over Christmas and New Years – now, that’s big! That’s a mega-event of delightful proportions, an occasion that puts a […]
Read more "Über die Lungensucht"[continued from “Walking About – Part Two] I never realized how much I click the shutter release until I started this third part of my little twenty-minute walk home from physical therapy and saw, how many pictures I had accumulated … Anyway, after our encounter with the deer late in the last walkabout post, we’re […]
Read more "Walking About – Part Three"[continued from previous post “Walking About”] This timeworn front door caught my fancy as I turned from Rue Saint-Saloine into Rue Saint-Vivien. It’s not ancient, maybe from the 1940th, and it hasn’t been well maintained, but I think it shows that the original owner gave some extra effort to beautify his or her home. I felt […]
Read more "Walking About – Part Two"My new Frenchy family doctor prescribed physiotherapy for me to try to get a handle on my persistent back and leg pain. A physical therapist is called a kinésithérapeute in French, quite the tongue twister! Mine is located in the quartier Saint-Vivien, the neighborhood around the church of Saint-Vivien. This is also the neighborhood which […]
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NOT IN A STRAIGHT LINE by Photolera Claudinha 