It has been quite an adventure here in Costa Rica. With two days left, I am sad about having to leave. It has been an extraordinary experience- the beach club that we have been allowed to stay at is pretty sweet--the people there have all been so accommodating; our condo has been pretty exceptional, given that there is no way to avoid the large ants that roam as freely as the redshirt men that come walk through our yard and pool and property every other minute of the day; and surroundings and food have been nothing short of spectacular. This town is also just a really cool hippie town--where people just want to live and surf. I know. sometimes the simple things in life don't always mean that they are the only way about it, but here, people seem to just eat to live, surf to live, and do the things they need to. 'Not everything is permissible or beneficial...' but I tend to think that we have become and overcomplicated society.

This leads me to my next story. For the past week that we have been here, everything has really fallen into place; we have had really great adventures, great weather, good food, good company--and I've met some interesting people along the way. But on Tuesday night, we returned from la playa to find that there was no water. "Thank goodness you have a pool," is what the property manager said to us. We had also been out surfing--needless to say, a shower was in order, but we were told that the town shut off the water when people were using it too much. hmmm. So we did the next best thing--we jumped in the pool, tried to get as much sand and salt off of us as we could, and then dressed for dinner and had an evening. The water was back on when we got back on Tuesday night, and we thought, "great, all is well."

Except that yesterday, after a pretty terrific birthday celebration day for Michelle, we returned once more to a waterless house. So...we took some desperate measures. I called the Capitan Suizo hotel, a boutique hotel down the road from our house, to see if they had running water. They did. And a last ditch effort (shameless I know) on my part resulted in asking if the three of us could possibly shower over at the hotel. I waited. and waited--their muzak is pretty nice--and waited, and then the nice man came back on the line: "yes, you can come shower". What a godsend!

So we hiked over, and indeed, they had a little bathroom with a shower stall for us to shower in--I have never, in a long long time ( my first shower after a service in the philippines, after finally being able to afford a bungalow with running water in Krabi, and after my camping trip in college, are some similar experiences) felt so thankful for running water. I was then met by a herd of cats and raccoons--feeding on dinner--in the hallway of this boutique hotel. Yes. this hotel has pet raccoons. weird. But I finally got to have a tamarindo juice, and we ended the day with some ice cream (homemade cinnamon and coffee) and a banana split and a strawberry tart.

Running water: it's a precious commodity. We have our conspiracy theories about this place, namely that they ARE trying to conserve water between the hours of 3-9:30pm (the water was, of course, running when we returned), but we are also aware of the fact that the developer is in a little bit of financial trouble.

ah, costa rica.