Seeing Stars ***

Age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Every day I am reminded I am not in the bloom of my youth anymore.  Physical strength isn't what it was.  Right hip is going to need replacement down the line.  A few wrinkles sneaking in. Worst of all, the saggy skin that cannot be tightened up, sans plastic surgery.

But wonder of wonders, I see stars.  I see them like I have never seen them before.  Literally and figuratively.  The magical serendipity continues in my life as I was just last night looking up at the sky full of starts and was awed at how much brighter and clearer they are here.  Is it because they are closer since we are closer to the equator?  Is it because the air is cleaner in this tropical jungle?  Are my eyes, along with my heart and soul, seeing things clearer than ever before?  I don't know the reason, I only know the stars were amazing to behold last night.

So today, with my aging body staring me in the face, I see the figurative stars clearer than ever before too.  I still don't see them all, no matter how much I search though.  I just know I am getting to know myself better and better.  There is something to be said for being alone in life. That is to say, without a better (or worse) half.  It has been many years since I have been in this space and at the time I was a teenage girl.  A totally different mind set and focus than finding myself alone in these, ummm, let's call them "mature years".  :)   Maybe a little scary having some real time to sit and introspect but all in all, a good thing.  The challenge for me is to use what I am discovering for a better future for myself and all those I encounter and connect with in this life.  I am very excited for my future.  I mean, some people live to in their 100's and it is true that you are as old as you feel.  I feel very young here.  I am very free.

Don't look to me for the answers in your own life though.  Everyone has to find their own stars. So don't be afraid of the darkness, it only helps your stars shine brighter!!!

Moving on to what is going on here in beautiful Costa Rica. :) 

It is the dry season now.  Temps consistently in the mid 90's.  Low humidity though.  All the luscious green is starting to dry up.  No worries though, it will come back around in May when the rains start back up.  The dry season is also called the "high season."  Not sure why except that everything goes up in price because of a lot of tourists in the country.  So it is "high prices" and "high tourism".  That is not all bad because especially here in this little coastal village, most of the money is made on tourism.  And the full sunny days are great because no worries of when you should go to the beach.  You can go anytime.  No worries about torrential downpours.

However, high also means "high dust".  The roads here in Nosara are not paved.  They are gravel with a lot of dirt under the gravel.  So as the traffic going down the road increases, so does the dust level.  We drive down the road on our moto with rags over our mouths to help from breathing in the dust.  We had to move our clothesline where we dry our clothes because it was too close to the road, even with a green bushes barrier.  Then moving our clothesline meant we had to treat the tree bases that we hung our lines from with insecticide because ants were getting all over our cloths.

The way that some areas here deal with the road dust is to pour molasses on the roads.  Yep, that's right, no tarred roads for us.  We just sweeten the area.  :)   It is because molasses is much cheaper and easier to get.  Remember, this country grows sugar cane.  And yes, if it does rain, the molasses all dissolves.  However, on the Pacific side here, it is very unusual for it to rain anytime from December to March.

I came up with an amazing chocolate sauce for our dessert business.  It will go on many things but for starters, plantain fried in organic coconut oil.  We found out about Frankie, who lives just down the road.  He grows and makes his own organic cocoa and coconut products.  Their flavor is amazing and the freshness cannot be beat.

For the time being we have decided not to have people come to the house.  We are going to make the desserts to go and take them down to the local beaches around sunset.  Each night around a hundred or so tourists gather at the beach to watch the sunset.  We think at least some of them might enjoy a fresh, locally made dessert.  So we will take a cooler with desserts to go down and try to sell them.  First try is New Years Eve, when I figure quite a few people will be at the beach to watch the sunset on the past year.  

A medium sized cooler at the super is $90.00 but fate stepped in, once again.  I had called a woman about possibly buying a bike they had for sale.  We decided not to buy the bike but they also mentioned they are moving back to the U.S. at the end of January and had other things for sale.  I called her and asked her if she happened to have a medium sized cooler with a handle. She said yes and that she would sell it to us for $20.00.  Wooo hooo!  

I am excited to finally get even a first step going on our new little venture to thrive and survive in this foreign land.!

A Nosara Christmas

Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have not goal that is important enough to you, or you are not using your talents and efforts in a striving toward an important goal.

— Maxwell Maltz

I am back in Costa Rica, yet again.  I hope very much to stick it out this time.  We have plans and a purpose this time so I think I will be here awhile.

When I walked in the door on December 18, I saw a beautiful Christmas tree the boys had made of driftwood and it was covered in lights.  I also brought lights from the US to put up around our courtyard so your little place looks very festive.

We had the rental car for a few days so we went to Liberia looking for things.  Founds a few kitchen items we needed, some acrylic paint and a few other things including a little Elf on a Shelf.  We had fun over the last week or so posing Elfie for his Costa Rica Christmas pictures.  Here he is macking on a French chick who was here for a yoga retreat.   

 Jacob has been working on his masks and there was a little art show in Guiones.  I finally talked him into us going and setting up a little table.  He sold one of his masks.  Everyone LOVED his work.  He is so talented.  Remember, all of these are made with recycled materials.  The main material is recycled egg cartons, but he also has collected shoes at the mouth of the river (Boca Nosara) and used bits of pieces of shoes, hats, anything he finds at the boca. 

Here is the mask that he sold.








A couple night before Christmas, we decided to make some ornaments for the Christmas tree.  Here are a couple I made from shells. added a little glitter too.  We had a lot of fun coming up with our creative fun ornaments just using what we had available to us.

On Christmas eve we played Cards Against Humanity:  A card game for horrible people.  We didn't know how horrible we actually were until we started playing that game. It is similar to Apple to Oranges but very rude, sex ridden and downright mean at times.  However, we found it hilarious and I cannot wait to play it with some people that I know.  :)

 

A couple days before Christmas, we obviously had some kind of illusion that we were still in the US and decided to go to Super Nosara in search of a turkey for Christmas dinner..  Do you have any turkey?  Gobble, gobble  No, no turkey. Awww, darn it.  Ok, we will have chicken or something.  So Jacob and I are doing some more shopping and the woman who owns the super, came and found us and motioned us to come back to the meat area.  There was a woman from the US there.  She is married to the guy who runs a local surf shop.  They have lived here for several years, her kids were born here and she speaks really good Spanish.  The owners of the super bring out a huge frozen turkey.  The woman, Sarah, said she had a really small oven which wouldn't fit that big ole turkey and did we want to get half the turkey.  We said YES!!  We were soooo excited.  And even more so when I found out that half the turkey (approximately 12-14 pounds) was going to cost $40.00 US dollars.  Wow!  Pretty expensive turkey but it is Christmas, so yes, we want it.  Then the crazy tico owners asked us which way we wanted it cut in half.  All we US folks started laughing.  Well of course we wanted it cut the long way so we each got half a breast, a wing and a leg.   They take it into the back and wham, cut that big old frozen turkey in half with their meat cutter.  The universe, serendipity, whatever you want to call it, helped us out again. Then we find out the woman is in charge of the activity program for the children's Christmas break.  She had heard about Jacob and his art work and had wanted to talk to him about volunteering to teach some art in the program,  Jacob had already heard about them wanting him to teach but just had not connected with her yet.  So he and Sarah got to meet and talk about it. The craziness and magic of this place just does not stop happening. 

 

Finding everything for a traditional US Christmas dinner here was somewhat of a challenge but we managed to do it but I had to make my own corn syrup.  Then no pie pan so took the handle off of a fry pan and mad a pie in that.  The challenges never end here but it is also fun having your creativity and resourcefulness put to the test.  We had a woman, Maria, that is living here with her teenage daughter and no other family or close friends around.  She is from England but has Italian parents.  We had a good time hearing some about her life.  She was very talkative and interesting.  Her daughter however, did not seem real happy to be dragged out.  LOL  Maria is vegetarian.  Her daughter was VERY excited about the turkey and definitely enjoyed that.  I don't think she gets meat at home even though it is obvious, she likes it. 

 

All in all, it was a very fun Christmas here in Costa Rica this year.  Feliz Navidad.