Rain, rocks, selling bikes and a bigger baby

The journey home....

Our trip home started early on May 7th from Puerto Viejo. It had been a hot humid night and for the first time on our trip we had seen and heard a few mosquitoes flying around. Luckily, we had good mozzie nets and Hannah was in her flying peapod (not flying anymore as it was now tied down) which has inbuilt netting, so none of us got bit more than a couple of times.

Hannah woke at a good time so after a quick breakfast and packing up, we all had a last cool shower to get rid of the sweat and make not of taxi numbers, before hitting the road for the simple 4 hour drive back to Alajuela, where we were returning to the same condo we rented when we swapped cars 2 weeks ago before flying out tomorrow and back to real life, Winnipeg, grass cutting, work and weekends at the cabin. So a simple 4 hour trip.....

The shower in Puerto Viejo

A perfect place for taxi numbers....

 The weather cleared a little as we packed the car but as soon as we had locked the multiple padlocks, closed the two gates and then locked the keys in the key box, the heavens opened (Is there a heaven? or just a sky with a well known, studied and proven water cycle? I am betting on the second) The rain fell and kept falling, which slowed traffic immensely, then we hit the beautiful seaside city of Limon. Only Limon is also the main East coast port of Costa Rica and as such has a huge oil terminal and lots and lots of container terminals. This means that the main road heading West is full of trucks and tugs pulling hundreds of containers and oil from base to base. One of the main bases here is the DelMonte fruit conglomerate, who have a huge area in which to distribute the bananas and fruit around the world to your lunchbox. All this coupled with the rain meant that the road was slower than slow and we crawled our way westwards, dreaming of the lovely coastline and beaches that lay just a few hundred yards away...


This photo shows the crazy road with container bases and the oil refinery.....all coupled with a lovely photo that Limon really wants you to see!

Once we finally got past all the craziness and the rain slowed to a trickle from a torrent, we headed into the mountains again, just an hour or two shy of our last stop for the last night. Then...dum, dum duuuum.... Drama everywhere.... The road became a parking lot and we sat for about 20 minutes without moving. Traffic was slowly coming past us in the opposite direction, but we moved no more than a few yards once or twice. A car came past us with emergency lights flashing and that's when I realised the traffic coming the opposite way, was in fact cars being turned around. So I took a decision and turned around too, adding an hour to our trip we headed north further up into the mountains to try and get around the traffic jam. It turned out to be a great decision as when I dropped the rental car off a few hours later I found out there had been a landslide causing a huge rock fall, about a mile in front of us. No one was hurt but apparently, it had been on the local news as the rocks were as big as cars and had completely blocked the road.

This was the 7th May and the road was due to re-open on the 9th. As I type this now on the 11th, I took a look at google maps and there is still a huge queue of traffic on the road. It IS open, but there are repairs still being made that is slowing traffic. So I am happy we only sat there for 20 minutes before taking our detour.

We turned round where the pin is and headed north, west then south to get to the Condo

The rest of the journey was crazy, as the road was tiny and as windy as a wind up toy, being wound up by a wound up kid. It was one of the best and scariest roads we had driven on in the entire month. Trucks coming towards us on blind corners and steep up and down slopes, driving past gushing waterfalls and through steep jungle sided valleys. We would have photos, but the rain kept falling the roads were slippy and to be honest, neither of us could keep our eyes off the road or the views. It was the perfect last test for the 4x4.

We finally arrived in Alajuela nearly 7 hours after starting the drive and so I dropped Buffy and Frau Hannahbear off for a snooze before filling up with diesel and dropping Kevin Bacon off at Dollar Rent a Car. I then had one of those weird times with Uber, when the time for the Uber to get there and take me home was about the same time it would take me to walk, so I did. Straight along the side of the dual carriageway motorway, just like a local. Back through Alajuela city and home for the evening,

On the way I took a couple of photos of one of the weirder parts of Coats Rica shopping. You see they have a lot of outlet stores that sell all sorts of stuff. Washing machines, next to mattresses, next to TVs, next to motorbikes and quads. I even passed a store where an assistant was revving a motorbike INSIDE the store. Weird...

 I got home and Buffy had got most of the laundry done, Hannah had got some shut eye and we headed out for our last dinner in CR. A weird hot dog and half pizza/half burrito later and we were home, getting some sleep before a long days flying.

The 8th May and Hannah decided to be crazy, she has found her voice and decided to let the entire airport know. I am sure that everyone waiting for our flight really didn't want to sit next to us...She sounds like a rabid seagull..

Luckily, for everyone around, she was great on the flight. A couple of little moans but in general she behaved really well, making friends all around - Especially Joe who sat next to us and was on his way home to Vancouver. He played peek a boo behind his hat and kept Hannah amused a lot.

A 3 hour layover in Toronto gave us time for dinner and a last pint for me (I am quitting booze for the rest of the month just to get a break from it) and then we were on our last leg - flying to Winnipeg - arriving at just after 1 in the morning.

We were home and in bed just after 2am, Hannah was knackered and slept in well the next morning meaning we got a whole 5 hours sleep! Yay.

Its been a superb holiday. I am so glad we live in a place that allows both parents to take time off to spend it with the baby and still get paid for it. We have a thing called EI, which gives you 55% pay for the time you are off work, which is amazing. In the USA apparently even the mum only gets a few days.

Anyway, we are now settled back in and getting sorted for real life again starting Monday when I go back to work. I will miss hanging around with Buffy and Hannah all day and I am sure they will miss me a little too. For now though we are getting used to being back home. At least the weather has warmed up and so we can play in the garden, soon the patios will be open for summer.

The weird thing is we now realise how much Hannah has changed while we have been away. Seeing her back in familiar surrounding gives us perspective on her size and her actions. She can now stand and stumble around in her crib (we had to lower the mattress so she cant climb out) and she moves so well around the floor now. Along with her new 2 1/2 teethe we can see how she has grown in just 4 weeks. Its crazy!

A last ride in the holiday stroller

Yay - I can go outside!

 In other news, we had movement at the building site near us. Its been a couple of years in the making, but finally the work has begun on what will be a new condo block with retail space below. We are really hoping that a good restaurant or pub will open in the retail space once it finished.It would be amazing, if someone built us a pub, a local modern pub. For now its just a few concrete pillars, but you never know what will happen. Its all so exciting.