Day 11 - Relaxing at Hotel Caleja

Reminds Anna of Number 5 from Short Circuit

Today was to be a day of rest. The kids slept in the longest this morning since coming to Costa Rica. Olivia was the last one to awake. She rose at around 9am this morning. Anna had breakfast ready for everyone. Rosa the housekeeper even had some papas with us after she arrived . Not sure what the day would hold, we didn’t really have a schedule.

This picture is 4'-5' x10'-12'. Pretty big.

We lollygagged around for another hour and then looked to going to Montezuma for the afternoon. We got our things together and headed down to the bus station to catch the bus at 11:15am. Understand that is 11:15am Costa Rican time. At 11:50pm we simply started walking toward Montezuma and found our way to Hotel Caleja. We figured we would sit a spell, have a beer and wait for the bus there. On our way I took a picture of one of the local power meters. I call it a “Costa Rican Circuit Breaker”. Couldn’t resist….Haha!! With all the wet weather it just totally baffled me. None of the electrical wires on poles here are insulated either. No wonder there are so many outages.

Can you tell Mama's happy?

When we arrived at the hotel, Marco, the caretaker greeted us. We proceeded to introduce ourselves and then immediately ordered a cerveza. It was hot, what can I say! We met his wife, Corolla, a couple days prior. The hotel property was beautiful. When you walked into the main area it opened up to a bar/restaurant area facing a pool. The covered area’s ceiling was covered with some local made artwork. Burlap sacks painted with various art covered the entire circumference. My favorite was one of several birds, mainly portraying a toucan.

Caught in mid-air!! 

Cadush, a little Jack-Russell with tons of energy was quick to come out and make himself known once we sat down. Olivia and Thomas immediately became good friends with Cadush. We popped a squat and let the kids play with the dog. We were right by the street, so you could basically hear if a bus “were” to come. “No problem”, I stated to Anna, “If I hear the bus come, I’ll run out and hold it.” Holding a bus out here is quite common and is most likely the cause of some of the delays we have heard about.

After a while we all got a bit hungry and decided to order some lunch. “No problem, if the bus comes we can get the food to go.” I said. We ordered another round of Imperials. The kids decided to cool off in the pool before eating and were having a great time at the newly found splash pad. Still no bus. Not yet. It was now around 1pm. No worries we thought. The next bus scheduled to pass by was to be around 1:15. “Order another round sweety. I’ll keep my eyes out for the bus.”, I told Anna.

The tree has literally 7 separate roots going. The branch spanned around 20'.

Needless to say at around 3:45pm we decided the bus was not ever going to come and we didn’t actually care. “Pura Vida” = Pure Life is the saying down here. It means Enjoy the Day! We definitely enjoyed the day. The kids liked the down time and had a ball swimming at the pool.

Click on the picture and you can really see the thorns.

The two above tree were some that were on the property where we spent the afternoon. If you check out the first tree, you will notice that it is growing horizontally. The second tree is one mean mother. The spikes are hard and cover the entire tree. Don't see to many of these back in the Carolinas.