A year ago tonight, my family returned to Canada from Costa Rica. We had lived abroad for a year and a half, and had done our best to make a go of a new life in a new country. But it wasn’t to be, and we finally came to the reality that we had to move back home.

So, a year ago, we packed up a highly uncomfortable hour of the morning, boarded our airplane, and spend nearly 16 hours travelling north. We arrived late in the evening, with an irate kitty, to the most amazing -18C weather I’d ever felt. Within days, we’d tried to reinsert ourselves into a society that we’d — at last in some part — tried to forget.

A year later, I’m starting to forget that we ever left.

Don’t get me wrong. I have the memories. I have a few thousand pictures (remember, this is me we’re talking about). My life changed quite a lot when I get back. We had to relearn to live like Canadians in our own country — while you might try to retain your identity when you’re somewhere else, eventually your habits change. And yes, there was reverse culture shock.

A lot happened since then, not the least of which was the arrival of our second daughter. During the last year, I’ve looked back at the things I’ve done, both here and in Costa Rica, and tried to reconcile my present. It’s not as easy as it sounds, and more and more I’m having to remind myself that I did actually live somewhere else, that it was actually a dream that came true.

Just prior to leaving Costa Rica, I felt fairly bitter. I was disillusioned, having long-held the view that living in a tropical country was a wondrous fairy tale. I felt that I hadn’t lived that dream fully, the needs of my life seemingly having stolen the preciousness of the moments. For a time, people telling me they were jealous of my experience were usually met with a somewhat brutal response, where I dashed their dreams as harshly as I had felt my own destroyed.

The kicker is, I knew that would happen. I knew that I would be far more negative than I really should. I knew damn well that it had been an experience I will likely never be able to experience again in my life. I knew that the things that I viewed as sub-par were still far better than others ever got to experience. I knew that despite my supposed troubles, there would always be others jealous of my opportunity.

Today, a year later, I finally feel nostalgic — a  ”time heals all wounds” sort of thing. I’m able to see past the trouble, and focus on the good. In effect, I’m able to finally live up to a personal favourite adage: it’s all worth it if you come away with a good story. I can safely say that I’ve got some great ones, and they start from virtually the very first day we arrived in the country.

Way up here in the Great White North, I have something else to be proud of. For the first time in a very, very long time, I finally feel like I have a home. Not just a place to live, but a place where I feel comfortable, where things seem to make sense, where I feel I have a chance to form roots. My last nearly-20 years have been pockmarked with moving between houses, cities, provinces, and countries, changing lifestyles, and growing families. This year — this last year — seems somehow more formative than any year I can remember in a long time. It holds hope, it holds promise, and allows me to consider the future far more brightly than I could have hoped.

And that’s a Good Thing™.

Almost right away, we missed some things, though most of that was due to the roughly 40 degree Celsius shift in temperature. Other things soon made themselves known, each time with the all-too-familiar pang of loss and regret.

But like when we moved down to Costa Rica, this is just something we’ll have to get used to.

Now just to be clear, there are two parts to this: things I miss, and things that I should miss but don’t (at least, not yet). I’m splitting it up this way just to avoid some of the obvious questions that are bound to appear. C’mon, I know you guys a little bit, y’know…

Things I Miss

Fresh fruit

As I’d mentioned a few times before, Costa Rica has fresh fruit. I know that sounds like an utterly silly statement, but unless you’ve been to a tropical country, you have no concept what fresh fruit is really like. None. Even the best organic produce you get at your local hippie market doesn’t hold a sniff to the stuff I got at the farmer’s markets in Costa Rica. The “reject” bananas (the “good” ones are all exported) were sweeter and lusher than any banana I’ve ever had here, the strawberries were worth killing over, and the papayas so good that I might never be able to eat them again (seriously).

Unbelievable greenery

I live in Calgary, where it barely rains. We get a nice green spring, but usually by mid-July everything’s starting to dry out. When fall hits, the primary colour is brown. We get white in the winter, at least when the snow is covering the aforementioned brownness.

In Costa Rica, it’s green. Always. Everywhere. Even on the tops of volcanoes, it’s green. There’s no effort for it to be green — that’s just the way it is. It happens naturally. No additives, no preservatives. It’s overwhelmingly green. There’s no comparison for the green. And now that brown has fully set in up here, I find myself missing it more than ever.

Volcanoes (but not earthquakes)

Speaking of volcanoes, I’ve had a thing for geology since I was a kid, and love seeing volcanoes. Especially at a distance (the active ones, any way). I’ve been fortunate to see a few volcanoes, notably in Hawaii, but also in Costa Rica (and went up Poas just a couple of days before a 6.2 earthquake levelled a nearby town). There aren’t any decent volcanoes in Canada, all of them are either dormant or entirely extinct.

Speaking of earthquakes, I rather like Calgary. It’s extremely stable. Not necessary free of tremors, but far enough to avoid anything nasty. I like that.

Price includes taxes

One pet peeve I always had with the North American pricing system was that the price you see is rarely the price you pay. Taxes are thrown on top, and usually service fees on that, too.

In Costa Rica, IVI (the tax) is rolled into everything, including your restaurant menu prices (divided into two columns). There’s no question what something costs, even if the price is in $USD (which it sometimes is, depending on how deep you’ve dived into tourist areas). I miss that kind of transparency.

Sun in the morning

Although it bugged me at the time, I now officially miss sun in the morning. The sun is still rising here, and when my alarm goes off it’s still dark. It’s something I came to appreciate a lot, as it really made things much nicer. That said, I’m going to be very happy for the late evening sun come June…

Not wearing pants

Costa Rica, duh, is warm. So I rarely ever wore pants — shorts were my mainstay for a year and a half. I hate wearing pants. I hate wearing shoes (instead of sandals). And I really, really, really hate wearing socks.

Monkeys (and wildlife in general)

No, I’m not saying I don’t like seeing deer, or moose, or anything else common in our northern tracts. But I do miss seeing wild parakeets, vibrantly colourful birds, and especially the monkeys roaming the treetops. There’s nothing like monkeys up here, save for zoos.

Driving with the window down … all year

I only realised this last weekend, but man I miss driving with the window down! You can’t do that up here when it’s 20 below! (Well, I suppose you could, but then you’re just asking for trouble.) There’s nothing like being able to go down a street at any time of the day or night, with the window down. That kind of fresh air is just amazing.

Dos Piños (and ice cream)

Dos Piños is the major dairy producer in Costa Rica, and makes pretty much everything that you can make from milk. Of particular note were their ice cream products. I don’t know what it is, but Costa Rican ice cream (Dos Piños and Pops, at least that I found) is fantastic. It’s wonderfully creamy, and not filled with a lot of crap (which seems common in North American ice creams). It got to the point where I was having one a day, on walks with Jason and Ed.

Batidos

A “batido” is (more or less) a blended fruit drink. Not with ice — just fruit, mixed with either water or milk. (Milk was my favourite version.) I know I can make them here with whatever fruit I get my hands on, but as you already know (from my first item), it’s just not the same without fresh Costa Rican fruit. I liked batidos for the fact that it was fruit, it was tasty, and often filling. It was a great alternative to syrupy drinks, or even a coffee if I wasn’t in the mood.

You’re from Canada? So am I!!

This one sounds silly, but it’s true — there’s nothing like finding a fellow Canuck (or insert your own nationality, I’m sure the same is true of other countries) when you’re abroad. I’ve been fortunate to have this happen in a few places, and even made some friends that way. It’s not to say that I can’t make friends with my fellow Canucks up here, but meeting someone abroad and sharing your experiences is very different than striking up a conversation while on a bus.

My friends

Last, but probably most importantly, I miss my friends. The people I knew well, who I worked with, the ones who lived near me, the ones who shared in the experience, the people who asked how I was and were a significant part of my life, and especially the ones so kind as to drive me to and from work every day. I feel exceedingly distant from them now, not just in distance, but because I might never see some of them ever again.

Things I Don’t Miss (Yet)

Now you’re probably wondering why some things didn’t appear in that list. Well, there are a few things that I don’t miss, at least not yet.

The heat

I have never liked the heat, at least not for long periods of time. Once in a while, for a couple of hours, I can hack. Even full days are a bit much for me, and dragging that out into weeks? HA! Not a chance. Strange as it sounds, I’ll take the cold over the heat any day.

Just so long as I can visit the heat once in a while…

The constant temperatures in the valley

The Central Valley in Costa Rica is consistent in the way you can’t even imagine. 27 degrees Celsius is the daily high, and 15 degrees is the daily low. Every day. Every. Single. Day. (It does vary a little bit from time to time, but the mode is pretty much 27/15.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking: that sounds heavenly! You never have to stare at weather forecasts! But you also never get to see seasons like we do up here. I missed fall and spring (and especially winter). You can handle only so much perfection before you start to go a little wonky, lemme tell ya.

The beaches

I know, I know, again you’re thinking I’m totally batty (and maybe I am). But I don’t really miss the beaches. That’s not to say I don’t like beaches — I love ‘em! But going to the beach was never trivial, and involved far more effort than I care to think about. So much so that, well, now I look back and I think that while I’m glad to have gone, I don’t really have any burning desire to visit another one anytime soon.

The beer

Okay, first off, I loved Imperial. Truly. But Costa Rica has a limited selection of beer, and about half of them are pretty darn close to the same thing with a different label. Up here, I can lose hours staring at a beer menu (yes, there is such a thing as a beer menu), or standing in the refrigerated room at any of the billion-or-so liquor stores in Calgary, trying to decide what to try next. That’s a level of selection I missed dearly while I was in Costa Rica, and am very happy to have it back.

The coffee

Before you freak out, there’s a really simple reason why I don’t miss Costa Rica coffee: we brought a lot of it back home with us. When we run out? Well, that’s another blog post…

You’re asleep right now, in your own room, on the mattress from one of our sofa beds. A month ago right now, you and we were standing in the immigration line, waiting to enter your country of origin, and go to your new home. I can’t say “home” the way Mommy and I say “home”, because for you, this isn’t your home. Costa Rica is more your home than here.

You still look at video of our condo in Santa Ana, and you ask when are we going home. Because that’s what you know more of. We left Canada when you weren’t even a year old. You learned to walk in Costa Rica, to swim, to talk. Almost all of your friends are in Costa Rica, you went to school there. You ask for “schoolday”, and talk about your teachers.

But you came a long way to be able to say these things, and have these memories.

When we left Canada in 2008, you didn’t really know what was going on. You’d already travelled quite well considering you weren’t even a year old, having seen a few cities in the UK, out to Vancouver to visit with your grandparents, and out to Toronto to see your aunt, uncle, and Nana. You seemed to take all of that travelling very well, something that I know made me very proud.

Even more so was how quickly you seemed to adjust to living in a tropical country. You had to sleep in a playpen for the first month or so, while you waited for your crib to arrive. You had only a few books, a couple of toys. What TV you watched was in a language you’d never heard before. The floors were cool and hard, not the warm comfort you had known.

But there were things you liked: a pool nearby you could splash in regularly, it was always warm so you never felt cold, it was always green and lush, and everyone who saw you seemed to fawn over you — you were a magnet for most of our first year in Costa Rica.

Your first word was “kitty”, which you’d learned to say before we left Canada. Your next words were in Costa Rica. You’d started to get your teeth in Canada, you got most of them in Costa Rica. You learned to use your Jolly Jumper here in our house in Calgary, but you took your first steps near the pool in Santa Ana. You met, but probably don’t remember, the children of some of Mommy and my friends. You made your own friends, all of whom spoke Spanish. You still call them by their names: Mimi, Fria, Nando.

You went to school. Your teacher, Ily, taught your class. She spoke to you in English and Spanish. After a while, you spoke some Spanish, too. “Agua”, “vamos”, “mono”. You still say “sí”, instead of “yes”. You still want to have “schoolday”. You probably wonder where your uniform went.

You saw jungles. You saw oceans. You saw beaches. You saw volcanoes. You ate fruit fresh from trees and vines. You played in sand and the sea, and romped in the rain. From the back of our Suzuki, Dave, you saw both coasts, and the highest points in between. You mimicked monkeys, saw sloths, followed frogs, bagged butterflies. You saw wonder in almost everything.

You even became an official temporary resident of Costa Rica. We have the documentation to prove it.

Mommy and I are feeling guilty about bringing you back. You were really starting to enjoy things in Costa Rica. You still think of it as home — you asked me that just the other day, when you saw a video of a beach and monkeys. As you’ve noticed, there are no monkeys here.

You’ve come a long way, Monkey. You’ve had a such a unique start, and I really hope you can remember this as you grow up. I hope you can remember the things you did and saw, the people you met. I hope you can retain some of your Spanish, and I hope it helps you learn other languages. I hope.

The year closed out on a more sombre note for me, in many ways. Much quieter, and I got to spend a lot of time with my family (which I cherish now, and cannot regret in anyway), but the future is a little less certain. I’m less concerned about that fact than I thought I would be, however.

On with the year that just was…

• Rang in the new year watching fireworks go off all over the Central Valley in Costa Rica (a spectacular sight, if you ever happen to be in Costa Rica at New Year’s)
• Had numerous run-ins with illness between The Monkey, myself, and Alex (and some far less pretty than others, lemme tell ya!)
• Experienced my first, bonafide, scare-the-crap-outta-me earthquake, measuring in at 6.2 at its epicentre
• In Costa Rica, travelled to:
  • Villa Blanca (Los Angeles Cloud Forest), three times
  • Arenal (for my very wet birthday)
  • Parque de Diversiones
  • Playa del Coco
  • Playa Hermosa
  • Playa Chiquita
  • Puerto Viejo
  • La Paz Waterfalls
• Had a few troubles with our trusty Suzuki, Dave, and spent more than a few bucks getting ‘em all fixed
• Managed to avoid becoming totally addicted to coffee, but still drank a lot of it
• Took pride in The Monkey starting school (yes, even though she wasn’t even 2 years old yet)
• Worked through the challenges of getting a startup business up and running; the stress took its toll on me and my family, and likely all lead to where I am at this very moment
• Travelled to Canada for a visa run, though it was originally planned as a family visit:
  • Barrie
  • Bolton
  • Oakville
  • And wee bit of Toronto (I had to go into the Toronto office) just for flavour
• Saw far too few sunsets on beaches
• Discovered great Indian food in Costa Rica
• Moved from our first apartment to a new apartment, after our condo management company couldn’t come to an agreement on a contract extension
• Got utterly screwed by the aforementioned condo management company, to the tune of about USD$1,500
• Celebrated 20 years of journalling/blogging with post #1,000 (total coincidence, I swear!)
• Did a Stampede-style breakfast for my co-workers
• Finally acquired my Temporary Residency visa … after realising that staying in Costa Rica long-term wasn’t an option for my family, and we’d decided to go home
• Waxed poetic on management and management style (perhaps too much so?)
• Cringed as The Monkey crossed into “The Terrible Twos” (which, thankfully, haven’t really been that bad)
• Finally snapped after running into a “Perfect Storm” of difficult project, dealing with the relocation company, organising the family, trying to sell the car, cancelling services, and making sure that what little money we had saved was properly moved out of the country before we left — I was an utter wreck at the end
• Ate far too many of our last meals in Costa Rica in a Denny’s
• Managed to survive the 19-hour ordeal of moving from Costa Rica; flying through Houston with a few bags, an irate cat in a bag, and a toddler hell-bent on doing her own thing; finally arriving in -18 degree weather in Calgary after 22:30 at night
• Moved back into a house we hadn’t seen in a year and a half, finding things we hadn’t seen in probably over three years
• Bought a 2006 Jetta TDI
• Critical Mass and I parted ways after about 9.75 years
• Landed a wonderful case of Benign Positional Vertigo on Boxing Day
• Realised that, yes, there are many things that Costa Rica has better than Canada … beyond the weather
• Rang in the new year year to come with a visit to the Calgary Zoo’s “Zoo Year’s Eve”, at -22 degrees Celsius

I’m missing easily a couple of months’ of detail in there, but the simple fact is that most of Q1 and Q2 last year were chaotic, busy, and stressful. I’m proud of what we all achieved, and I miss the people I left behind in Costa Rica. Time changes, and people have to change with them. As such, 2010 will be a year of change for me. I don’t see that as a bad thing, just that as with any human, change ain’t easy.

But change is exciting.

It’s not Costa Rica. It’s not always warm. It’s not filled with the sounds of parakeets, or tropical rainstorms, or filled with Spanish-speaking voices. This is the Great White North. It’s chilly for most of the year, leaves are seen for only five months, and the only monkeys you’ll see are at the zoo. It’s going to be an adjustment for you, and for Mommy and I, too.

It was a long road to get here.

The weekend before we left was a tough one. We had a lot of packing and cleaning to do before we could hand our keys back over to the apartment’s owner. After the fiasco with our previous apartment (no, Avalon, I have not forgotten you and the $1,500 you stole from us), Mommy and I wanted to make absolutely certain that there was nothing that would get in our way.

On Sunday, we left our last Costa Rican apartment, with help from Jason and Jenn Hale, and headed out to the Best Western Irazu. There, despite the hotel completely losing our reservation, we got a room with a nice bed for our last two nights in Costa Rica. We ate at the Denny’s there. It was a transition we needed, I think, a way of preparing for the day to come.

That day was Tuesday the 8th. It began at 4:00, when the alarm got us from our sleep (and you woke up with extreme difficulty). We ate at the Denny’s one last time, gathered our bags (and put Asia in her carrying bag), then boarded a bus for the airport. Checking in took probably three times longer than it should have, possibly due to the cat, and I’m convinced the clerk was brand new. Then came immigration (where they checked the “export” papers we had for you), and security (where they checked the export papers for Asia).

The flight was late leaving, by about 40 minutes. Murphy’s final little poke, I think. Soon, we were rolling down the runway, and the floor of the Central Valley disappeared beneath us as we lifted into the sky. I mumbled a little “adios, Costa Rica” as we drifted into the clouds. You took almost no notice at all. Asia was panicking.

The flight was about 3.5 hours to Houston. You slept a little, watched most of WALL-E on the iPod, and then wrestled both Mommy and I as we tried to get you buckled in for the landing. You would have nothing to do with either of us, and the screaming was enough to bring everyone to tears. Mommy held you tight as we landed. We would later hear from the flight attendants that your reaction is common amongst your age group.

Houston was surprisingly fast, all things considered. Immigration, zipped through customs (our bags were checked the whole way through), and security once again. We ate lunch at Ruby’s, I took Asia out for an hour in the pet relief area, we watched the rest of WALL-E and a couple episodes of Backyardigans. The five and a half hours disappeared fairly quickly, and you fell asleep while I held you for takeoff. You slept probably half of the flight to Calgary. (Which was wise, because a microwaved cheese dog is really not something you want to eat for dinner.)

Calgary was -18 upon arrival. “Chilly” is putting it mildly, since it was over 18 degrees when we’d left Costa Rica earlier that morning. Immigation took a while due to a very long lineup and having to go to the Customs desk to declare Asia’s papers for entry, as well as our stuff that’s being shipped from Costa Rica. It was almost 22:45 before we got to the Delta hotel, which is thankfully at the airport. It was our first run outside.

Your Great Aunt Brenda became a major hero, leaving us a package with a new pink parka for you (and gloves), as well as gloves and hats for Mommy and I. We spent little time settling, preferring to go right to bed. You had a queen bed all to yourself.

Be it ever so freezing, there’s just no place like home.

Assuming the rest has gone to plan (I’m pre-publishing this entry), the moment this is visible to the world is the moment I leave Costa Rica … likely forever. It’s a bittersweet moment in my life, probably the happiest and saddest moment I can think of, really. I’m happy to go home, but I’m sad it didn’t end the way I had wanted.

There’s very little limonada in this story, unfortunately.

I had always envisioned my last week in Costa Rica as being highly administrative: tying up loose ends, getting things handed off and coordinated, so that when I took my last step from the office there would be nothing to worry about. I had done this before several times successfully, and had little worry that it would be any different.

My final project, however, ended up being nothing short of a nightmare. (I suspect my name is uttered only with several choice curses prepended and appended at this point.) Ever seen Howl’s Moving Castle? It’s a wonderful story. The namesake of the movie is a massive walking castle, assembled from a bazillion spare parts, all bound together magically. There’s a scene where Sophie throws water on Calcifer (a fire demon), which nearly kills him, and he loses the ability to hold the castle together. The castle, which walks (hence the name of the story), starts falling apart — huge chunks come crashing down as the massive monstrosity comes undone, until it’s little more that two spindly legs and a wooden platform.

On Friday, that was me. A broken castle. Murphy had decided to a very poorly-timed visit — not at all what I’d wanted. And I had to give the remains to my colleagues up north (the ones likely cursing me at this point) because I couldn’t handle the project, and the primary goal of the weekend: pack up my family, clean our apartment, and move out.

Not. Fun. (The project, thanks to the dedication of a few, appears saved.)

The apartment? Cleaned. In the end, it was a marathon session involving myself, Alex, and our cleaning lady Carmen, all scrubbing and hosing as best we could. (Soap scum and mineral build-up do not come off easily, let me tell you.) I think I inhaled so much Windex that I could clean a window by just breathing on it right now.

Jason and Jenn came by around 16:00 to pick up the crib, which we’re giving to them in lieu of shipping back home. They’ll need it for their son, who’ll be crib-bound very shortly. The Monkey no longer needs a crib, so this worked out in everyone’s favour. We packed up Dave (our car, now sold to The Hangar’s newest employee, Darrell), and trucked off to the Best Western Irazu.

I’d wanted a hotel closer to the airport. But this was the only one Angelica (our receptionist-cum-Mistress of Everything) could find that would allow cats. She made a reservation for me, too. It should have been a quick matter to get checked in.

Except that they had no record of a reservation. At all.

Like we needed any more stress. (We still had to finish legal papers for the car, close the bank account, do final hand-off with the apartment, and prepare for this morning’s flight.) No place to sleep? Priceless.

Thankfully, the Irazu wasn’t full. One room booked for two nights, one cat snuck in (just in case the pet thing didn’t apply). Dinner was at the attached Denny’s. Not ideal by a long shot, but the most relaxing thing of the day.

But I digress. (It’s hard not to digress with the events of the last few days.)

When all’s said and done, I like Costa Rica. It’s a nice place to visit. And that will likely all I ever see of it again … if I ever do, in fact, return. Just that going anywhere else for a while is unlikely, and there are so many other places in the world I need to see first. Time will tell.

In the end, this is a thank you to all those in Costa Rica who made life there bearable for us: our friends, our neighbours (the ones without the yappy dogs that I wanted to drop heavy things on, anyway), my coworkers, the people who let us in during evil traffic, the waiters at Chez Christophe and Café des Artistas who’d remember us and our usual orders on Saturday morning breakfasts, the vendors in the market who didn’t gouge us extra because we weren’t Tico, and everyone who put up with our awful Spanish without making us feel more idiotic than we did.

I’m curious to see how we feel about our life here. How it will seem in a few weeks, a few months, a few years. Will it seem magical? Will it seem little more than our regular life, somewhere else? Has it affected how we will view our activities, and how we view life abroad? I hope so. Because if I return home no different than I left, what will I have gained from being here?

Not learning anything from this experience would be the worst tragedy of them all.

The biggest point, really, is still the car. Sigh. Our list now looks like this:

• Cancel our CableTica service
• Sell our car (currently trying, and having no luck at all)
• “Cancel” our phone (aka give it back to the company)
• Pack up the stuff we’re taking with us on the plane
• Have the rest of our stuff packed and shipped by slow banana boat (and I’m not really kidding about that — it probably is a banana boat) (Technically not done yet, but this starts in about 40 minutes.)
• Arrange for our utilities in Calgary (gas, electricity, water)
• Organise the times/dates for moving our stuff out of storage and back into our house
• Arrange for plane tickets
• Arrange for hotels for moving (we have to stay at least one night in CR and one night in Calgary), and it they have to take cats
• Get a rental car
• Then buy a car in Calgary (technically not done yet, but we’ve found a car and made arrangements with the dealer, and could buy it as soon as we arrive)
• Figure out how to get what money we’ve managed to save up north so we don’t try carrying it across the border (read: bad idea)
• Arrange for documentation to prove that we can take our daughter out of Costa Rica (no, I’m not kidding — Temporary Residents need this for some bizarre reason, even if both parents are present)
• Make sure we can get our cat back into Canada (read: find all the documentation we had from 18 months ago)
• Clean our apartment top-to-bottom
• Give away what we’re not taking back to friends (and other organisations)
• Say “goodbye” to the people we’ve come to know very well over the last year and a half (this is going to truly suck)
• Make sure we have clothes that are cold-weather appropriate (at least until all of our other clothing is out of storage)

This list is looking much better than it did a week ago. That’s not to say it came easily. There’s way too much stress involved with organising a relocation company that doesn’t seem to talk to itself or offer appropriate customer service (in my opinion, anyway). All part of the “fun”, though, right?

Oh, and we’ve also had to get more documentation for the cat,which we hadn’t been aware of. Thankfully, living here has made us realise that if you’re doing something without official government approval, chances are you’re doing it wrong.

(Oh, and if you’re looking at this on Facebook and thinking it looks like there’s nothing done, check out the original. Facebook drops the formatting.)

Our problem is not with Canada — all they need is a valid rabies vaccination, which we have. Our problem is not our airline (Continental) — we already have a reservation that allows us to take our cat. Our problem is with Costa Rica.

I’m so not surprised.

It hit us about a week or so ago that merely leaving the country with Asia wasn’t just a matter of having the airline say a pet was okay. There was the matter if we had documentation saying that she was okay. Wendy, our super-awesome travel agent, managed to find out that Continental needed a letter from a vet saying that Asia was fit to fly. No biggie.

So Alex trucked over to the veterinarian (conveniently located at the front of our condo complex) to get that sorted out. That’s when the complications came in. It wasn’t just as simple as a letter from the vet. Oh, no, that would be too easy. How quickly we forgot how much Costa Rica loves its bureaucracy! (Keep in mind that it took us over a year to get our temporary residency.)

No, to leave Costa Rica means that we need to have an export permit to take Asia. Export. Like she’s a Costa Rican product or something. This isn’t quite as bad as the fact that we also had to get a similar legal document so we could leave with our two year-old daughter! (That one has me at a level of disbelief that I can’t even fathom.)

[Insert rising panic here.]

This is not something you want to discover with a mere 11 days (now 10) remaining until you leave. Down here, things never happen quickly, and the word “urgent” (as spoken by a North American) never translates well.

Alex got the vet started on getting us a certificate, which could take — and I’m not joking — a week. This could get uuuuugly. We don’t have the luxury of delaying even a single day going home. We have too many things lined up to start the morning after we arrive, and the balls are already well in motion. I’m not saying we’re going to abandon Asia here (we’re not, just to make that abundantly clear), but it’s not going to make me in any way happy if things don’t go according to plan.

We even went through calling 10 different hotels before we could find one that would allow pets of any kind. That’s enough of an annoying snag. This current one is borderline catastrophic. (CATastrophic. Cat. Get it? Ha!)

I hate moving.

We’re officially out of the “long vacation” timeframe, and into the “standard” two week vacation timeframe. You know this one: enough time to fly to a distant land, see two or three different places, get really drunk in a bar and get robbed blind, realise you’ve actually got a funky disease you’re not sure if you got from the food or that person you swore looked like a woman the night before…

What? Why are you looking at me like that? You make it sound like no-one else has vacations like that.

Anyway, we’re running out of time, and it still feels like there’s a tonne to do. Our list now looks like this:

• Cancel our CableTica service
• Sell our car (currently trying, and having no luck at all)
• “Cancel” our phone (aka give it back to the company)
• Pack up the stuff we’re taking with us on the plane
• Have the rest of our stuff packed and shipped by slow banana boat (and I’m not really kidding about that — it probably is a banana boat)
• Arrange for our utilities in Calgary (gas, electricity, water)
• Get our cell phones working in Calgary (probably can’t do that until we get there)
• Organise the times/dates for moving our stuff out of storage and back into our house
• Arrange for plane tickets
• Arrange for hotels for moving (we have to stay at least one night in CR and one night in Calgary), and it they have to take cats
• Get a rental car
• Then buy a car in Calgary
• Figure out how to get what money we’ve managed to save up north so we don’t try carrying it across the border (read: bad idea)
• Arrange for documentation to prove that we can take our daughter out of Costa Rica (no, I’m not kidding — Temporary Residents need this for some bizarre reason, even if both parents are present)
• Make sure we can get our cat back into Canada (read: find all the documentation we had from 18 months ago)
• Clean our apartment top-to-bottom
• Give away what we’re not taking back to friends (and other organisations)
• Say “goodbye” to the people we’ve come to know very well over the last year and a half (this is going to truly suck)
• Make sure we have clothes that are cold-weather appropriate (at least until all of our other clothing is out of storage)

Maybe 50% of the list is done/covered. And there’s a few really big items that still worry me a lot. Like the car. I really REALLY want to sell that car. It’s an asset I don’t want lying around. I’ve got backup plans, if necessary, but having it dispensed with would REALLY help.

So… anyone in CR, want a car? Drop me a line…

This, too, shall end

I count in weeks
Soon to be days
Soon to be hours
Then minutes

The arms swirl forward
Tickticktick-twirling by
Counting out
Running down
Dwindling

Time
The end of time
My time
My awful inevitability

This end, too shallow

I sit on Temporal Row
I struggle to draw out each breath
Consume my last meal
Crumb by crumb
Measure my last mile in
Millimetres
Dread the final flick

Things I
(W)(C)(Sh)ould
Have done
Wishes, dreams, chances, decisions, regrets
…if I could do it over?

To end, this shall

Sadly, a vacation is something we’re not going to be having. Instead, we have a lot of things we have to do. Not just here, but also in preparation for our return to Calgary. In some ways, it almost makes leaving Calgary look easy…

In no particular order:

• Cancel our CableTica service
• Sell our car (currently trying, and having no luck at all)
• “Cancel” our phone (aka give it back to the company)
• Pack up the stuff we’re taking with us on the plane
• Have the rest of our stuff packed and shipped by slow banana boat (and I’m not really kidding about that — it probably is a banana boat)
• Arrange for our utilities in Calgary (gas, electricity, water)
• Get our cell phones working in Calgary (probably can’t do that until we get there)
• Organise the times/dates for moving our stuff out of storage and back into our house
• Arrange for plane tickets
• Arrange for hotels for moving (we have to stay at least one night in CR and one night in Calgary), and it they have to take cats
• Get a rental car
• Then buy a car in Calgary
• Figure out how to get what money we’ve managed to save up north so we don’t try carrying it across the border (read: bad idea)
• Arrange for documentation to prove that we can take our daughter out of Costa Rica (no, I’m not kidding — Temporary Residents need this for some bizarre reason, even if both parents are present)
• Make sure we can get our cat back into Canada (read: find all the documentation we had from 18 months ago)
• Clean our apartment top-to-bottom
• Give away what we’re not taking back to friends (and other organisations)
• Say “goodbye” to the people we’ve come to know very well over the last year and a half (this is going to truly suck)
• Make sure we have clothes that are cold-weather appropriate (at least until all of our other clothing is out of storage)

I’m probably missing a few things, and a couple of these have already been done. But there’s a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it.

*Deep breath*

Thankfully, one of the other joys of life are grandparents. You’re lucky — you’ve got four of them. And you were very excited when Grandpa and Granny came down on Wednesday. It’s Grandpa’s third visit since we came to Costa Rica, and Granny’s second. You might see them nearly every day on Skype, but there’s just nothing like seeing them in person.

Despite the previous visits, neither of them had seen much beyond the Central Valley, although on their first trip, they flew into Liberia and took a bus to Santa Ana. That’s not much, sadly, and Mommy and I felt it was important that we take them elsewhere — some place to rest and relax. Besides, it’s Grandpa and Granny’s 20th wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks, and we wanted to give them something special.

So on Friday afternoon, the four of you picked me up from my office, and we went off for a weekend excursion. Though our first stop was for lunch at a nearby Peruvian restaurant called Chancay, in Plaza Rubi. You were quite energetic and ran circles around the tiled floors, squealing everywhich way you went. The woman tending the hot dog shop was particularly entertained.

We hit the highway afterwards, heading west towards San Ramón. You’ve been this way before several times, and I think you spent more time playing Grandpa than looking out the window. Well, at least until we hit that traffic near Animas — an accident had brought the Inter-American to a near-dead halt.

Mommy and I opted to leave the highway and take the secondary roads to get around the traffic (we had no particular desire to sit still when we could just as easily entertain a more scenic detour). It might not have been the wisest of choices — the drive from the intersection with #3 to Naranjo (where we rejoined the Inter-American) is normally about 20 minutes without traffic. It took us nearly two hours. But we did get to see Sarchi, which we hadn’t seen before, and a lot more of the countryside that Grandpa and Granny hadn’t seen before.

Once we got to San Ramón, we headed north to Los Angeles, and then out to Mommy and mine’s favourite place in Costa Rica (and currently my favourite place in the world), Villa Blanca. There are few places I know of that are more beautiful or peaceful.

Normally, Villa Blanca (at least by our experience) sits very much in the Los Angeles Cloud Forest. That means the area is usually shrouded in clouds, giving the area a very ethereal look.

This time, for some odd reason, there were no clouds. At all. I don’t know if it was a result of the Tropical Storm/Hurricane Ida that went up the coast a couple of days ago monkeying around with weather patterns, or if this is the normal state at this time of the year. At any rate, when we arrived, we could see clearly to Arenal, and even saw the top of that rather elusive volcano.

Mommy, you, and I had our own cabina, with Grandpa and Granny at the next cabin to ours. You were able to walk between them, and were often sent over to say “hi”, and get people ready to go for meals. You had your own bed, too, a nice cot that Villa Blanca set up for us. Sadly, you fell out of it on the first nice — twice — so the next day Mommy and I put the mattress on the floor so you could sleep more safely.

What did we do at Villa Blanca? That’s what Mommy and I like most about Villa Blanca — you don’t need to do anything but enjoy the area. You went for walks with Mommy and Granny, played with Grandpa, read, and tried to chase the coatis. You looked at all the wonderful flowers, stared at the intensely black skies at night and saw stars you’ll be hard-pressed to ever see in Calgary (unless there’s a total blackout), and ran about whenever you possibly could (which was pretty much always).

You even tried to have a bath with Mommy. But Mommy takes inhumanly hot baths, which you found out the hard way when you nearly did a head-first plunge into the tub.

On the Saturday morning, I took Grandpa ziplining. Mommy had gone ziplining at Villa Blanca back in May when Erin came down to visit, and it was time for me to try. I would have been upset if I’d left Costa Rica without ziplining at least once. And taking Grandpa with me sounded not only like a lot of fun, but perhaps also a little sadistic.

It turned out that Grandpa and I were the first customers in a few days who wanted to go on the canopy tour, and were the only ones going out that morning. We were picked up by our guides, Luis and Oliver, at the hotel and whisked about a kilometre away to the tour’s hut.

This wasn’t my first time ziplining. I’d done the zipline in Calgary at Canada Olympic Park. But that one is quite a bit different — it’s all about the massive drop from the ski jump, not travelling through the trees. This one is decidedly more calm, and probably a lot safer (despite travelling through tree tops).

I made Grandpa go first, though he didn’t seem to mind one bit. And as near as I could tell, he enjoyed himself quite a lot, too. Even when we dropped vertically from one platform to another, hanging free. I can only hope that I have as much fun as Grandpa when I get into my later years.

We stayed for two nights, and left mid-morning on the Sunday. My idea was fairly simple: in addition to Villa Blanca, we’d also go on a coffee tour in Naranjo. My friend Mark (of Mark and Denise fame) had recommended a tour in Naranjo, and we’d seen the signs during out detour on Friday. We arrived at the Espiritu Santo coffee plantation just before noon, just avoiding a rather large tour that was just departing.

Espiritu Santo is one of an increasing number of coffee-growing collectives in Costa Rica. The colonial past of massive plantation owners gave way to smaller farms, which were then exploited by coffee buyers. The smaller farms have now grown into collectives, using their position to bypass the middlemen and go direct to the customers. In Espiritu Santo’s case, 90% of their coffee is sold direct to Starbucks.

The tour was small — the five of us, plus another ex-pat and his friend from the United States. We started in a covered patio where we sample four types of their coffee: dark, light, house, and peaberry. I drank far too much of the coffee, myself (I had a splitting headache today, and felt quite ill as a result). You drank almost as much as I did, but seemed to have very little affect on you — well, except for not sleeping at all until your bedtime tonight, that is.

After the coffee sampling (which is usually at the end), we went into the outer edges of the coffee fields. Our guide, whose name I can’t remember now, explained that the area is geologically a “failed volcano”, which explains its hilliness, volcanic-type soils, but lack of a defined peak or caldera. The hills were something to see with the neat rows of coffee plants. I wished I had the ability to take more detailed pictures of it, but someone had to keep and eye on you.

I learned a little more from Espiritu Santo’s tour than I had with the Doka coffee tour. Namely that while harvest season is November to February, it’s not a constant harvest. In fact, it only happens four times — once a month for four months. And all of the harvest needs to be processed in one day to prevent any fermentation of the seeds that will eventually become the coffee bean.

The afternoon storms were starting to roll in as we started, and Mommy quickly ran back to the car for her jacket and an umbrella. But the tour guides produced umbrellas for us, too. You held onto the one you and I shared (you were on my shoulders most of the tour), and later held it totally on your own.

We visited the processing machinery, which — at least to me — seemed so much simpler (and less interesting) than Doka’s water-powered, turn-of-the-previous-century machines. The guide explained that afterwards, the beans are taken up to an old runway (the former plantation owners were quite wealthy) where they are dried before shipping. Only some is kept for local consumption, which is roasted in-house.

The tour also featured an historic reconstruction of a typical farmhouse, where the guide explained farm life, and how Costa Rican coffee is traditionally made (which you already know — the chorreador). After that, it was up to the gift shop (of course). You played with a marimba that I know both Mommy and I considered getting for you.

Thus ends what will likely be our last trip here in Costa Rica. The next time we head out from our apartment, it will likely be to head to the airport. It’ll be hard, for all of us, as it’ll be a major change in our life.

But that’s what life is, Monkey — change. Change isn’t something to be avoided, it’s something to be embraced. It’s something to enjoy as much as you can. Because the alternative — stagnation — is really, really, really boring.

Being in good shape (namely, none of us was sick), we decided to take a little journey north to La Paz Waterfall Gardens. It’s listed in all the tour books as one of the places “you must visit”, and we’d waited more than long enough to go.

We kinda had to wait, though. It took them a while to rebuild…

You probably don’t remember the earthquake from back in January. Grandma had left for Calgary just that morning, when suddenly the ground shook. I was at work, and was fairly freaked out — mostly to make sure you and Mommy were okay.

But what we felt was nothing compared to what La Paz had experienced. Being barely a kilometre from the earthquake’s epicentre, the earthquake had done a considerable amount of damage. So much so that the park only reopened back in July, and almost half of the trails still remain closed. We couldn’t even see two of the four waterfalls there — one of which is the the most famous there, and the park’s namesake: La Paz.

Mind you, we didn’t know that until we got there. And as the saying goes, getting there is half the fun. We drove up through Cuidad de Alajuela, winding towards the Poas Volcano. Having remembered this from back in January, I sort of knew where to turn to find La Paz. The trip itself was beautiful wound through the farmlands on the slopes of Poas, as well as on the north side of the Central Valley mountains.

At one point, we got stopped as a small herd of cows were being driven down the road. As we could do was stop and let them pass by, mooing softly.

The closer we got to La Paz, the more the terrain became affected by the earthquake. Even though it’s been over 10 months since the quake hit, repairs are still on-going — and likely will be for years to come. The hills are being sculpted carefully, presumably to prevent the massive slides that killed all those people, and destroyed countless kilometres of roadways. The massive red-brown terraces made it feel like we were driving through an open-pit mine. Many of the roads were reduced to dirt and gravel, with pockets of torn asphalt.

We arrived at La Paz about 90 minutes after we’d left Santa Ana. It was, and remains for now, the end of the road. The road from there through towards Arenal is apparently impassible, and is blocked by large boulders. La Paz seems to be at or near the edge of the cloud forest, as we saw the familiar white wispy tufts wafting in from the valley beyond.

The cost to enter La Paz is steep. It’s US$35 per adult. We knew it was expensive before we went there, but we knew it was some place we wanted to go. I didn’t tell Mommy the full price until we were inside, and after I’d managed to use the bathroom. The bathroom was pretty neat — it had a waterfall instead of a tap. I really should have taken a picture of it.

We walked down the stairs, watching as workers continued the reconstruction of the buildings above us. We walked over to the Aviary, which was our first exhibit. The aviary was full of birds that we’d never seen — or not seen easily. Some were very small, barely larger than some of the sparrows back home. As we went further in, we saw four ducks that seem to fly around inside, perched right next to a hawk and what looked like some kind of eagle.

Soon, we found the toucans, which were in a larger building along with parrots and what Mommy and I are calling “love birds”. The toucans are in a very large cage, which have a pair of doors so you can go inside with them. This was something neither Mommy or I had expected.

The first time Mommy and I saw a toucan was before we were married. We’d come to Costa Rica for her birthday in 2005 (it was that trip that led to us moving here in 2008). We’d gone on a hike through the forest on the south side of the Arenal Volcano. Our guide, Oscar, claimed to have seen a toucan well over a kilometre away, and had shown us through a telescope. I never thought I might get to see a toucan any closer.

You might not remember this, Monkey — we have video to prove it to you, though — one of La Paz’s staff sat a toucan right on my arm. They are absolutely beautiful birds and despite their massive beaks, these were very tame. You didn’t want a bird on your arm. I can’t say I blame you.

There were some bright red macaws outside the hut, as we headed towards the butterfly conservatory. You’ve seen butterflies before, Monkey, and in far greater quantities than at La Paz. (I would probably put La Paz at #4 — maybe #3 — on the best butterfly places we’ve seen in Costa Rica. It’s not bad, but it wasn’t really great.) In fact, I think you were a little bored having to see butterflies AGAIN. You were far more interested in the sloths, and in what I think was a small anteater.

We would have left fairly soon after arriving had it not been for the sudden downpour outside. And with our umbrellas in the car (short-sighted decision making on your parents’ behalf), going outside was not a wise idea. Thankfully, the rain was short-lived (only about 10 minutes).

Next up? Your favourite: The monkeys. You love monkeys, Monkey. You saw the white-face capuchins almost as soon as we left the butterfly conservatory. You called them “baby monkeys”, which I can only assume is because of your baby/mommy stuffed monkey. Some of them seemed to rush over to the edge of the cage, as if to say “hi!”. Mommy found one that seemed to almost dance when it saw you.

Next to the capuchins was a cage with spider monkeys. One of them, you called “momma monkey”, which Mommy and I couldn’t really understand. We laughed nonetheless. I thought it looked more like Chewbacca than anything else (wait a couple of years, and this will make more sense — I promise!).

Then down the stairs to the hummingbirds. La Paz has a series of feeders, and the entire area buzzed with small and large(r) birds all whizzing around. It was definitely something else to see as all these birds vied for time at the feeders.

Further down the hill, we came to the “ranarium”, which is where we found the second of your two most favourite animals: frogs. La Paz does a rather neat trick with their frog display — they let the frogs move about in a room filled with large-leaved plants, and then affix little signs with clips to tell you where the frogs are, and what species. None of them really moved while we were there, unfortunately, so we could only get the picture of them all curled up.

After a short walk, we came to a small wooden building, in front of which were a pair of bulls pulling an old-fashioned colourful coffee cart. Mommy and I put you in the cart, and then you and Mommy went for a short ride around the circular garden that was there. Mommy felt like she was going to fall out, but you seemed to love it.

Then came time to see the waterfalls. After all, why go to La Paz and not?

This was when it became really apparent that we couldn’t see everything. Only Temple and Magia Blanca’s trails are open — the others are still undergoing safety repairs. Still, it was a lot of steps down just to see Temple. (But it was infinitely easier than when we went to La Fortuna!) The earthquake damage was still clearly visible there, too — the greenery of other pictures I’ve seen was largely reduced to rock and soil. It might be decades before it looks as good as it once did.

We decided not to see anything else and walked all the way back up. The man at the top of the stairs — who I think was actually La Paz’s owner — said you were a brave girl for climbing all those stairs!

We continued up the path to the Jungle Cats exhibit. Sadly, not much to see as the cats were … well, doing what cats do best: sleep. That is, except for one cat. Either a mountain lion or a cougar. Admittedly, I’m not sure which it is. This cat had been curled up in a log, sleeping soundly, until you came by. You were probably calling out “kitty, kitty”, when it opened its eyes and looked at you. Wherever you loved, it kept looking at you. Sizing you up. Deciding if you would be a good meal, or just a snack, I can only presume. Mommy told the kitty to “forget it”.

Lunch was next. From there to the restaurant for a fairly pricey meal (7-8,000 colones for each of Mommy and I). The food was good, though, and you did eat a lot. You also made some friends. As we decided what to eat, a man younger than me walked over and asked to take your picture.

This is not the first time we’ve seen this, and Mommy and I are getting used to the fact that you attract a lot of attention. Let’s be honest, Monkey — you’re insanely cute and blond. It attracts a lot of people. You liked the first man, though — you weren’t much impressed by the others. Something I found a little amusing.

We stopped by the monkeys again after lunch, and one of them came right over to see you. If it hadn’t been for the double caging, the two of you might have been able to touch each other quite easily. The monkey seemed to like you — though hopefully not the same way the cougar did. It seemed cold and unhappy, which is not unsurprising. Although the cage is very large, and offers lots of room, it’s not the same as being in a jungle.

We went back through the butterfly conservatory to the aviary, as Mommy wanted more pictures of the toucans. (I wish I’d done the same, having seen my pictures now, and they’re just not as good as I’d hoped for. Such is life.) We headed back up to the main building, where Mommy got you a bracelet. You won’t be able to wear it for a couple of years, but maybe it’ll help you remember your life in Costa Rica.

The trip back was foggy and wet — it rained most of the time. You don’t remember — you slept almost all the way back into Alajuela. We saw where construction is still ongoing, as they try to fix all the roads. Some areas probably still look no different then when the earthquake hit. It’s a scary sight.

Next weekend should be different again! When Grandpa and Granny get here, we’re going back up to Villa Blanca again. You’ll see more hummingbirds, and you’ll get to spend lots of time with Grandpa, too! And with any luck, Mommy and I will get to relax a little.

We’ve been to the Pacific side a few times now, and we’ve done the “middle” parts in between, even just a little. (Sadly, we’ll probably not be able to do the more southern parts. Or see pretty much anything else, if my job ends up being the way it’s looking.) It would have been pretty silly not to see at least both coasts.

And with our impending departure in a couple of months, we were running out of time to do it.

Last week was a short work week, and I managed to steal four days away from work so we could hit the sand and jungle. Mommy and I went through dozens of different places to see and stay, and finally decided on a place called Playa Chiquita. (“Chiquita”, for the record, has nothing to do with the banana. It’s Spanish for “petite”. Which is pretty apt — Playa Chiquita ain’t that big.)

We packed enough things for four days: Tuesday through Friday, and hit the road. (We’d wanted to leave earlier, originally, but we had a Thanksgiving Day event with the Canadian Club on Sunday, and Mommy wasn’t feeling very well on Monday.) It turned out to be for the best, as I think if we’d tried to stay a sixth day, Mommy or I would have officially gone a little crazy. (You won’t remember this, but there are a lot of biting bugs on the Caribbean side.)

The drive from Santa Ana — where we live — to the Caribbean coast is an odd one. Although it is surprisingly easy, far easier than driving to the Pacific coast, it takes quite some time. Partly because once you leave San José, the Highway 36 travels to the north before bending east through Braulio Carrillo National Park — a windy road that must climb and descend a few hundred metres in its course. The road is, at least, two-laned for the uphill portions, unlike the Highway 1 through the mountains to Puntarenas.

But from the Park to the coast is still over 100 kilometres away. A short drive in Canada, maybe, but even on what I would consider to be the best long-distance road I’ve driven in this country, it still took two hours to reach the port city of Límon. The worst part about the drive was just all the produce trucks.

East of the Central Valley is prime agricultural land. While I doubt it’s what gave Costa Rica its name, it’s certainly a major part of Costa Rica’s economy. Out there are endless fields of pineapple and banana plantations.

As far as I know, most of them are owned by either the Chiquita Brands company (formerly known as United Fruit) or Dole Foods (a result of various mergers and renamings, but contains the former Standard Fruit Company). Neither have a particularly good humanitarian history, and are largely responsible for the term “banana republic”. These companies — or companies like them (I’m unclear as to which it is) — have a tendency to worry about their crops first, and anything else second. Including those people who work the fields. Spraying pesticides from planes while workers were in the fields, and children were in company-run schools was still common only a few years ago.

We drove south from Límon until we got to a small town called Beverly, at which point I accidentally zigged when I should have zagged. (I blame the long-knocked-over road signs.) Thankfully, Mommy got us back on the right south heading south.

The coastal road to Puerto Viejo wasn’t too bad. A little bumpier, but relatively easy. About five or six kilometres short of Puerto Viejo? Gravel. And it’s like that for most of the road south to the Panama border, although oddly broken up by paved sections that are often heavily pot-holed. All-in-all, it was just shy of five hours to get to Tierra del Sueños, our cabina for the first three nights.

Tierra del Sueños is a little eight cabin hideaway carved out of the Playa Chiquita jungle, run by a pair of young Gringos, Angie and Brendan. They run a simple place about 200 metres from the beach (you have to walk down the road, and then along a narrow path through the jungle to get to it) that has little more than a bed, running water, and electric lights. Everything else is pretty basic. It was a really nice change from some of the places we’ve stayed before.

Dinner that night was at a place just down the road called Jungle Love, also owned and run by gringos (we would find out that most of Playa Chiquita seems to be inhabited by ex-pats from many countries). Although a bit pricey, the meal was fantastic, and because we were the only ones there for the first little while, we got quite a lot of attention.

It began to rain not long after we got back. And not a little rain — we’re talking Caribbean coast downpour. And as we found out, our aluminium roof not only shielded us from the rain, but also made an otherwise lovely sound of rain-on-roof turn into a tremendous racket. That night, you also slept on a big bed with Mommy — I slept on a mattress on the floor. I didn’t sleep, and neither did Mommy. You slept like a rock.

Howler monkeys woke us up the next morning before 5:00. We struggled to try sleep some more, but you would have none of it, of course. (Something about your tree-borne cousins, I can only presume.) With the rain having stopped, the only “reasonable” thing to do before breakfast (at 8:00) was to walk to the beach. We didn’t go to swim, just to look. The rain returned as we returned to the cabin.

At breakfast, we had a conversation with Angie and Brendan, while you got introduced to their two dogs, Cody and Ginger. (You LOVED being licked by Ginger, and I think as a result Ginger followed us a lot.) They suggested we go on a chocolate tour that afternoon, which sounded like a great idea, presuming the rain stopped by then.

With all the rain, there wasn’t a lot to do, so I took you into Puerto Viejo for a look-see. Despite being after 10:00 in the morning, very little was open. You were asleep even before we got into town, and remained asleep until we were back at the cabina parking. We had a snack at La Casa Del Pan’s Playa Chiquita location, where we would also have lunch with Mommy. (I ate far, far too much that day.)

After lunch, we drove the short distance to ChocoRart, an organic craft cacao plantation that offers tours (on reservation only, which Angie was very kind to arrange for us). We were met at the parking lot, led up a hill and past a stand of bamboo to wait in a … well, it looked like less-dense jungle. There we waited until our guide, Marcus — also ChocoRart’s owner and operator — came to meet us. He came armed with a machete and a long staff with a hooked end that sort of looked like a flattened metal rubber duck.

He gave us a brief history of cacao farming, and told us how cacao had once been much larger in Costa Rica than it is now. But a fungus (I’m not sure which one it was) started spreading and largely wiped out the industry. (Depending on whom you ask, the fungus was either introduced accidentally, or the aforementioned ill-behaving fruit companies let it loose to lower the cost of cacao land so they could buy it for their own needs. Naturally, there is no proof either way.) The fungus still exists, and it’s a lot of work to keep it from healthy trees.

Marcus has about 300 producing trees, and probably hundreds more “wild” trees that he doesn’t maintain. Not that you can readily tell which is which — unlike every farm I’ve been to, there were no markers, no clear delineation, and only a worn path through the grasses showed you where to go.

The cacao pods are the size of a small football, and contain the cacao beans inside. The beans themselves are covered in a white fleshy covering that has a notably tangy citrus flavour (though you don’t actually bite into the bean at this point). The pods are harvested (we were there at roughly harvest time), and then allowed to ferment for a few days. The beans, separated from the pods, are then dried in the sun (whenever possible, given that it rains a lot on the coast), and eventually sent for roasting and processing.

ChocoRart’s equipment seemed … well, not so much “quaint” as “antiquated”. But Marcus was adamant that nothing else was truly needed. The bulk of the work was tending the trees.

We finally reached the roasting hut, where we saw the small fire with the small (but heavy) cast-iron wok where a previous batch of beans were already roasting away. The smell was … well, if you’ve ever had pure cacao, you might have an idea of what it might have smelled like. After roasting, the beans were shelled with a large rock, and with a fan, the nibs (the cracked pit of the bean) were separated from the shell. It’s the same process every large company uses, too.

The nibs are then ground, which releases the oils, creating a thick brown paste of cacao. Mixed with a little water and a wee bit of spice, you get — duh — cacao. And it’s pretty darn tasty when it’s utterly fresh. (We all had small cups of it.) You loved it, Monkey. You just couldn’t stop licking your lips.

Cane juice is then carmelised and reduced, and mixed together with the cacao paste (the bigger companies do this, too — it’s called “conching”). We were served this while still hot, with a spoon, and a slices of banana. It was gritty — not the smooth chocolate common after many hours of mixing — but absolutely fabulous. It might forever change the way I love my chocolate.

We then had a chance to buy his products — short, round bars of flavoured “chocolate” that is hand-rolled. (We’ve already eaten all of it.) It wasn’t cheap, but it was utterly worth it. We had to be quick, though — you were hitting the ultimate chocolate high and were threatening to stair-dive down the very steep hill.

And that was just our first day!

You slept on the bed that night with Mommy, but fell off the side. Thanks to the mosquito netting, you didn’t “fall” so much as “slid”. You didn’t even wake up. I pulled you onto the mattress, got you sorted out, and then I slept on the bed with Mommy. (The last night there, you went right onto the mattress. We called it a “princess bed”.)

Next day? Beach day. You weren’t particularly thrilled with it at first (Mommy and I weren’t thrilled that Cody and Ginger followed, and then wouldn’t leave us alone), but you quickly changed your tune. You would love the beach, and hate to leave it.

The howler monkeys we’d kept hearing were in the trees above the pathway as we walked home, but weren’t in a howling mood at the time. You pointed and giggled happily, chanting “mono” and “monkey” (I think you’re finally understanding that the words mean the same thing). Thankfully, they’re not poo-flingers.

Lunch at La Casa Del Pan again, but dinner at Azaria (one of the other places we’d looked at), which was also very good. You enjoyed running around quite a lot.

Following breakfast on Friday morning, we moved up the road towards Puerto Viejo, and checked into Cariblue. A nice enough place, but I quickly remembered why I don’t like typical beach resorts — they all have the same campy look, over-priced food, and over-rated services. Bonus? You got to see “papa frogs” (what you call the green and black poison dart frog), Halloween crabs, and even a sloth!

Well, that and a beach, too, of course.

You had your own bed that night. A real bed.

The next morning, we packed up to head home. But we didn’t go much further past Puerto Viejo, and turned southwest towards the town of Bribri, and the Bribri indigenous reserve. Mommy’s friend Rebecca lives there now, and we wanted to see where she lived, and the things she had been doing for the last few months.

Once we passed through the town of Bribri, we turned onto a stone-laden road (it wasn’t even gravel) and drove for what seemed like a mistaken set of directions-length of time. After over 30 minutes, we arrived near the town of Suretka, and the house of Louisa and Solomon. There we found how their family, who live on the reserve, work to live off the land and hope that their efforts to drive tourism one day work in their favour.

You played for a while with their children, Allison and David, and with their toys (you particularly liked David’s fire engine). We drank some limonade, and toured the buildings. Then Rebecca took us on a long drive down a road that ran through rivers before we got to Bambú, and the Bambú Indigenous Cultural Centre.

The Cultural Centre is a place where visitors (usually university students) come to see what eco-tourism and indigenous tourism looks like. The Cultural Centre itself is set up like the traditional housing (even though almost everyone these days is in much more familiar walls-and-ceiling western-style buildings). Then Rebecca directed us back to Bribri where we dropped her off.

The drive back home was actually easier than the drive out, though it took probably about as long. It was good to be home, to see Asia again (she ran from your squealing), and sleep in our own beds. If nothing else, a sign of a good vacation.

Sadly, Monkey, my vacation is now over and I have to go back to work tomorrow. I hope that you have some memory of this trip that you can remember years from now. If not, though, we certainly have more than enough pictures of it all.

The sun shone bright on our next morning

1. I currently live in Costa Rica.
2. I’m Canadian.

One of those things is about to change.

Almost a year and 2/3 ago, I caught a rumour about Critical Mass thinking of opening an office in Costa Rica. That soon evolved into fact, then into reality, and led to me sitting where I am now. The conditions under which I came down here were set up for business purposes, but all led to one fact: I was leaving my home, moving away from all that I knew, to live somewhere else.

In my life, I have moved over 40 times. (I’ve lost count.) And I don’t mean just between the home where I grew up to university and back. I mean moved: picked up the things in my life that mattered, and transferred them to another location to continue my existence. I knew at the time that some of those moves were temporary — indeed, some of them were for school, but if I’d been told “stay put”, I’d have been quite content. Naturally, some moves — moving to Vancouver, moving to Calgary, and especially moving to Costa Rica — have been much more significant, but the basic intention is always the same.

When my family picked up to move here to Costa Rica, we severed ties with Canada. We didn’t just moved, we left. I mean, come on, we were moving to a tropical country where it’s summer all year, and everything is wonderful. Why the heck would we even dream of moving back? Right?

Right??

Yeah. Well.

Here’s the reality: for as much as the weather here is great, and as much as I love being really near warm oceans and beaches, and as much as I love the freaking coffee here (no joke), almost every other day we realise just how much we miss our family and friends, seasons that actually look different from one another, the ease in which we can do some things because we don’t have to struggle with bureaucracy, and yes, even the snow.

We’re moving home. Our home. To Canada.

Now before you all jump on me that I’ve got totally distorted expectations of Costa Rica, just hear me out. All of these things have been taken into consideration. Yes, there are things that have bothered me here. But, guess what, there are things that bother me about going home, too. Calgary’s far from perfect. Canada has lots of issues. Maybe it’s just that we’re Canadian, but they’re issues we grew up with, and issues that, in some small way, seem more manageable.

(And yes, I completely and utterly appreciate the humour/irony that we only just got our official residency status.)

When we looked long-term, staying in Costa Rica just wasn’t an option. Monkey will start school in a couple of years, and Alex’s employment prospects here in Costa Rica hinge on her becoming significantly more fluent in Spanish. As for me, my contract here ends in a couple of months, and it’s time for me to hand the reigns to someone else.

Officially, my contract ends in December, which is when we’ll be winging our way back to Calgary. I’m not looking particularly forward to returning in the winter (seriously, this could be close to the dumbest thing we’ve ever done), but it’s the right timing for us.

It’s still three months away, but already I know I will miss Costa Rica. I will miss the weather. I will miss the people we’ve met and the places we’ve been. I miss the food, especially the freshest fruit I’ve ever eaten. I will even miss the rain and the thunderstorms (mostly ‘cuz Calgary hardly ever has them).

I know we’re going to have a heck of a hard time adjusting back. Reverse culture shock, of a sort. Everything in English. Not having to argue with a sales clerk, or having to use hand gestures (note that this is a problem with us, not the clerk, just something that we’ve had to do). Having to follow enforced rules of the road (in other words, not driving like lawless maniacs). Having to actually use a furnace and blankets to stay warm at night. Wearing pants (as opposed to shorts — get your minds out of the gutters, you freaks!).

Three months. It’s equally a very long time, and will disappear in a blink. One day, not long from now, we’ll have to reminice about living in Costa Rica, just like we reminice about Calgary right now.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick…

And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

All of our documentation expired, and we had to obtain new versions of all of it. (Doing a police check when you no longer live in the city you last lived in? Not easy…)

Then we waited some more.

And waited.

And waited.

I have no idea why we waited so long. I’m sure, somewhere, there’s a reason for all of this waiting. I know we were waiting for certain other paperwork, but even that took an extraordinarily long time.

But it’s mostly all worth it. Because now, after 487 days, I’m finally a legal temporary resident of Costa Rica.

Okay, not entirely true. I was a legal resident about two months ago, after the initial government approval came through. It just took two more months to get the paperwork filed, visit the immigration offices, get yet more pictures taken, and then today get our official identification cards.

Which makes me an official card-carrying temporary resident. Which is also kinda sad, as I was rather enjoying being an illegal alien. How many times in my life will I be able to say that?

And yes, as you might expect, there’s a “but” coming. But that’s another blog post…

The bug hit me next, kicking in on Tuesday, and then taking me down on Thursday and half of Friday (I didn’t sleep at all Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday nights, partly due to your coughing and partly due to feeling so crappy.) Mommy caught it next, and her illness really kicked in on Friday, and is just coming out of her illness today.

The group of us effectively played “Sick Family Robinson”, holing up and trying to keep our wits, all the while trying not to spread the sickness to Grandma.

It’s not been an easy week. Even just the last four days have felt twice as long as they should. Part of being sick, but also from helping keep things moving here. Grandma has helped considerably, and I suppose in an odd way it’s been extremely helpful that she’s come down at what would normally be considered an inopportune time.

Mommy needed some time to herself today, so I offered to take you and Grandma out for an excursion. Despite having lived in Costa Rica for over a year now, we’d yet to do any form of a coffee tour. Although the Café Britt tour is quite close to us, just over in Heredia, we’d been warned against it by Mark, Jason, and Jen, who declared it “horrible”.

Thankfully, nearly a year ago Mommy and I had seen a sign that said “The Real Coffee Tour” while on our way up to Arenal. Presumably, the “Real Coffee Tour” moniker is used to combat Café Britt’s much more well-known tour. It kind of stuck in my head, and today (with the help of a guide book) we hunted it down a few kilometres north of Cuidad de Alajuela.

The tour takes place at the Doka Estate Farm in San Isidro, a not-particularly well-marked location on maps. In fact, if it were not for the very well-placed signs on the right, chances are we’d have had a tough time finding the place. As this is the off-season for tourists, the parking lot at 9:40 this morning was nigh-empty, and we were met by the friendly guard who ushered us to the shop and restaurant to buy tickets for the tour.

We still had a number of minutes before we started, so the highly bilingual shopkeeper led us to the butterfly enclosure they have on-site. You’ve been to a few butterfly farms, kiddo, but you seemed to have the most fun in this one. (Well, at least that I’ve seen.) You were running around the circular enclosure, constantly chattering to have Grandma and I keep up.

When it came time for the tour to start, we were joined by a family of four from Seattle. Our guide, whose name I’m just realising we never got, was either a worker who moonlighted as a guide during the rest of the year, or possibly one of the family who own the coffee farm. At any rate, he spoke very good English, and was very good at explaining a few things about coffee making I had not been previously aware of.

For example, the only coffee that grows in Costa Rica is arabica. This is, apparently, a law. Mind you, the specific version of arabica in Costa Rica is known by another name. The plants are seeded, which takes nearly three months just to see sprouting. This leads to a properly leaf structure after nearly eight months, at which time the plant is moved to a potting bag for another two years. It’s nearly three years before a single plant might turn a single coffee cherry.

(Yes, coffee is actually a cherry.)

While the coffee plants grow year-round, they only offer beans during a three-month period, lasting from roughly November to January (at least here in Costa Rica). During that time, a huge migrant population (which these days seems to be largely Nicaraguan) moves in for the picking. A single picker can earn as much as $3,000 for the season, which is enough to last an entire family a whole year.

Coffee is picked in a special basket that is a defined size (similar in concept to a “bushel”), which denotes how much coffee is put in a sack. It’s a counting thing. It sounds like overkill, but when you realise that there are 500,000 acres (over 2,000 square kilometres) of coffee, it’s probably not a bad idea of have some sense of control. It didn’t look particular comfortable — it’s about 25 kilos completely full — but I imagine it’s efficient.

The guide also explained that the coffee fields are often dotted with other plants, such as bananas, mangoes, avocados, and so forth. These plants help control the minerals in the soil, as well as provide some shade for the coffee (which apparently is needed at higher altitudes). They also help offset some of the non-coffee season with (albeit substantially lesser) income.

He also explained that the rains are a significant part of coffee-growing. Coffee, like rice or cotton, is a very water-intensive plant. In lieu of irrigation (which is very expensive), coffee tends to only grow in places that have even (and warm) temperatures year-round, and a lot of rain. So when people talk about “bad growing seasons”, they’re not saying it got cold — they’re saying it didn’t rain enough.

This is what I picked up when I wasn’t having to keep you from disappearing down the rows of coffee shrubs. I’m sure you’d have marched right into the middle of their 50-odd acre farm (just that location; they apparently have several) and likely covered yourself in dirt doing so.

I do need to add that you weren’t a lot of trouble today, Monkey, but you were a handful.

From the fields, we went into the sorting and separating house. This is a building that’s now on Costa Rica’s historic register. Even though the farm itself isn’t 100 years old, there aren’t a lot of buildings in Costa Rica older than 100 years — earthquakes tend to batter them around a lot. This one seemed old, but unlike the defunct grain elevators across Canada’s prairies, this building is still in use. Well, for three months of the year, anyway.

Coffee is brought in and sorted, using water. (Good cherries sink, bad ones float.) The good cherries are then put through a series of pitting machines that force out all the coffee beans. These are then washed, dried, and stored in sacks. All of the water, and the power needed to drive all the machines, comes from a high-pressure well found on-site. It’s a pretty slick system that involves no fossil fuels whatsoever. (And this before everyone went green!)

The sacks are kept for no more than three days before being put out in the sun (conveniently, picking season is also when it doesn’t rain in Costa Rica) to finish completely drying. Only then can they be packed and shipped to their purchasers. Only about 10% of the farm’s take is actually roasted and sold in the country.

About 50% of their coffee goes to one company. Care to guess? Starbucks.

After a quick trip through the gift shop (we were running low on coffee at home, and you really felt the need for a quick sip-or-three of espresso), we headed home.

Sadly, you slept in the car, which seemed to utterly negate your ability to nap in the afternoon. So you slept a grand total of about 20 minutes today. Which made you quite a handful this afternoon. But not as difficult as you were last night, though I’m told it’s because I got too fancy with dinner. Oops.

Anyway, we’re all almost back to normal. And your second birthday comes in just a few days! Hopefully, kiddo, this will be a much better week for all of us!

It’s ‘cuz I doubt you’ll ever see that much rain ever again.

The planning for this little sojourn was long, convoluted, and more than a little painful. Especially given all that I was looking for was a few days away from Santa Ana, to see something new in Costa Rica, and to spend time with my family — something I don’t get to do nearly enough of, which is something I deeply regret with each passing day.

Ultimately, it was decided that we’d go to Arenal. This would be your second time to the area, and Mommy and my third trip. (It will likely be our last for a very long time. I’m now officially quite tired of Arenal.) I had told Nana that she’d get to see a volcano (and hopefully see it erupt at night), that we’d stay at a really nice place, and that the Arenal area was fantastic.

Given our previous trip to Arenal (and the one before that), it seemed a fairly decent and honest thing to say. It would appear, however, that Uncle Murphy had also come along for the ride. You remember Uncle Murphy — he’s the one who takes our plans and ruins them every time.

The trip up was reasonably nice. You fell asleep along the way, despite playing with Mommy quite a lot, somewhere around the Los Angeles cloud forest. Nana was watching all the hills and valleys, lush with rainfall, while I watched for all the lunatic drivers. I’m not used to driving such distances during the week — I’m usually at work worrying about network traffic, not oncoming cars. You woke up only after a short pee break somewhere north of La Tigra.

We arrived in La Fortuna somewhere around 14:00, and I rather foolishly thought it would be a good idea to check in to our hotel first, rather than do the smart thing, which was eat. You will learn, Monkey, that your father is often none-too-bright and does some really stupid things. (Mommy will remind you of this quite often, I’m sure.) We finally got to the restaurant somewhere near 14:30, and didn’t eat until nearly 15:00.

Given that your father (that would be me) had hoped for a really nice dinner that evening, it wasn’t exactly the wisest thing. I made it even less wise when we went in search of the ice cream shop Mommy and I had found when we’d first gone to Arenal in 2005 for Mommy’s birthday. It wasn’t where we thought it would be (it had moved), but it was nice. We put you in a little kid’s ride that looked like a double-decker bus. You didn’t like it one bit.

Returning to our hotel — the Arenal Paraiso (where we had a nice little two-suite cabin, ironically number #404) — both you and I went down for a short nap. You were a little overdue, and I was plain wiped. (The last many weeks of work have sapped much of my energy, prompting the time off, and the drive had taken a big punch out of me, too.) Mommy woke us up at 17:00.

I had decided that we would eat at The Springs, a new hotel that had opened in the Arenal area only eight months earlier. My friends (and co-workers) Mark and Denise had stayed there a month or so ago, and swore the quality couldn’t be beat. They neglected to also tell us the state of the road, which was something near “unpassable”. (It’s a wonder they could build the place with roads that bad.) The three kilometre(-ish) trip took nearly 20 minutes, and was very bumpy.

The hotel is right out of Disney World in terms of engineering, marvel, appearance, and professionalism. (Hopefully by the time you actually read this, Monkey, you’ll have been to Disney World and have some idea what the heck I’m talking about.) Due to my previous mistake, I didn’t get the dinner I wanted. Instead, we had the buffet (this was mostly to benefit your current eating habits, I should point out). It was very good, and the service was beyond outstanding.

(A note to anyone thinking of going to the Arenal area: If you can afford it, I highly recommend The Springs Resort and Spa, it is truly amazing.)

That night, as we all laid in bed, Uncle Murphy arrived to join us. Along with near-three solid days of torrential rain. It was also the first of three very sleepless nights for me.

The next morning, we drove down to the restaurant for dinner. We drove because the rain would have soaked us to the bone, and because Nana would have had trouble walking that far on a rain-slicked road. The buffet was typical Costa Rican, with gallo pinto, fruit (papaya, pineapple, and watermelon), scrambled eggs, and various breads. Mommy, Nana, and I each had two cups of coffee.

The problem was what to do with our day. It was, after all, raining quite a lot. So we decided the only thing to try was do some shopping. We headed into La Fortuna, hitting a woodwork studio, children’s clothing store, two or three souvenir shops, and you and Mommy ran up and down a ramp three times. The rain becoming quite the hindrance, we returned to the car to seek more adventure.

Again with the brilliant planning, I thought we’d search out a German bakery that I’d read about in the Tico Times a few months ago. All I knew was that it was west of Fortuna along the shores of Lake Arenal. Which, in theory, is enough. And based on what I saw on maps, looked to be pretty straight-forward.

Right?

Well, one thing Costa Rica maps are notorious for is the lack of detail — notably when the map indicates a straight (or relatively straight) line, but the actual road is weavy and windy, and what should take no more than 30 minutes ends up being an hour-long trip. So about 20 minutes into the trip, we turned around and headed back. (Mommy had a massage appointment at 13:00, and we didn’t want her to miss it.)

Instead, I (again, using my ever-so-powerful intellect) decided that we’d do lunch at the Arenal Lodge, which was just before the road over the dam. The rain kept pouring, and we were traveling up a steep, wet, mossy, and windy road barely three kilometres long that took us about 10 minutes to travel. Thankfully, we have four-wheel drive on our little Suzuki.

Lunch was rather disappointing. The Lodge might be a neat place (it’s VERY out of the way), but the food is something less-than-desirable in my book. (My caesar salad was watery and lacking in flavour, and my ceviche tasted too much like fish and not enough like ceviche.) And it rained. A lot. To the point where when it was time to leave, I went to get the car rather than subject the three of you to walking through it.

While Mommy went to her massage, you and I went to splash around in the pool. It would be the only time you and I would go swimming over the last five days, sadly. I had hoped for much, much more than that. When Mommy returned, we all headed back up to the cabin so you could have a nap.

Mommy got a recommendation for a restaurant downtown in La Fortuna called Don Rufino. From the outside, it’s not the fanciest-looking place — in fact, it looks like every other bar in La Fortuna. But the food … the food! I was beside myself. I ordered a tuna dish that came with jumbo shrimp. Even though there were no vegetables, I was in heaven. (I’d been wanting a tuna for a very long time.) I think the only one who wasn’t over the moon with their dinner was you, Monkey.

It rained all through dinner, all that night, and right into the next morning.

We had thought that it might be fun to take Nana out to the Butterfly Conservatory. Which was a risky venture, given the rain, but there’s very little to do in Arenal that doesn’t involve going outside. The drive involves a 8-9 kilometre-long, very rutted, very pot-holed, very bumpy road. Nana wasn’t particularly thrilled with it. (You almost fell asleep twice.) But once again, Mommy and my “Rain Luck” kicked in, and for the time we were at the Conservatory, it didn’t rain. We even learned a few more things thanks to a couple of volunteers from Seattle who could give us a bit more information we didn’t have last time.

It was raining by the time we got back to the main road. Mommy and I had booked a zip-line for that afternoon, but somewhere 12:45 became 13:15 (or vice versa) and we ended up missing our trip. It rained all that afternoon. In fact, while you were napping, the rain came down so hard that the gutters overflowed and we literally had waterfalls come off the roof. I became horribly depressed about the weather, missing the zip-line, not being able to do anything else, not being able to sleep, and so forth.

Dinner was at Don Rufino again, not having any other better idea (and I’d ruled out eating at the hotel). It was the bright spot of my day. You didn’t eat at all.

Rain. All night.

The next morning Mommy and I were supposed to go on our re-booked zip-line. But the non-stop rain was putting that to an end, once and for all. Despite being here a year, I have yet to actually zip-line through the canopy. At the rate I’m going, I might never get a chance.

I was so put off by the weekend that I basically forced us to breakfast, so we could check out and leave. I had no desire to spend another minute in the rain. The only stop we made heading out of town was so Nana could get a couple of gifts for those back home.

Had the rain not actually stopped as we’d headed south, I might not have had my coup de grace in bad ideas and passed right by the Fortuna Waterfall. However, with the break, I thought there might be a salvageable moment in the weekend.

Sorry Monkey, your father will never learn.

After you travel up the half-paved, half-bumpy road to the waterfall park’s parking lot, you pay US$10 each, and then walk along “600 metres of well-maintained path” to the observation point. What they do not tell you, in any way, is that the path includes a 100+ metre drop into the canyon, down one of the toughest staircases I’ve ever climbed. Nana (rather wisely) gave up only 1/5 of the way down. Mommy decided that she couldn’t go any futher than about 40 metres down before she stopped — she and you never got to the bottom to see the waterfall up-close. I was there for a mere five minutes before going back up to rejoin you.

For the record, you didn’t climb the stairs. We carried you. Why the heck we thought it was a good idea to bring you when Nana was at the top is beyond me. Instead, we lugged 20 kilos of wringling dead-weight up and down wet stairs.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

By the time I got the top again, my heart pounded so hard I could hear it, my chest was heaving, and my knees were so weak I was terrified that they’d give out and I’d drop you. About the only thing I had going for me was my pig-headedness to not giving up. I could barely walk. (Today, my legs are so sore I can barely climb stairs at all.)

The rain started up again as we hit the road south to San Ramón. You fell asleep not long after.

At this point, Mommy took over decision-making, and wisely took us to a place neither you or Nana had been to before — Villa Blanca. Mommy and I had gone there for Mommy’s birthday in January, and she had gone again with her friend Erin back in May. Although it meant an extra 20 minute drive along another windy (but not nearly as bumpy) road, we arrived at a cloud-filled and peaceful place.

For the first time in days, I actually felt good. It was quiet and calm. All I wanted to do was sit on a bench and let the clouds drift over me, taking away all the crappy feelings that had been building up for weeks.

Lunch was, as expected, fantastic. You even ate most of your lunch, and even a little bit of Mommy’s.

The drive home was marked only by the usual retinue of morons on the Pan American who don’t understand the concept of lanes or allowing others to pass freely when you’re driving too slowly. (Mommy was not pleased at my driving, and rightly so.) We got home in one piece.

I tried to make dinner that night — pupusas. They were pretty lousy, unfortunately. There’s gotta be a different technique that I need to learn. You didn’t eat anything, again. I was the only one who actually seemed to eat dinner — either everyone else wasn’t hungry, or my dinner was horrible.

For my last day off before going back to work, we’d decided to try going into San José. But at breakfast, you would barely eat anything you normally like — even toast — and you made it sound like you were having tummy problems. You and Mommy returned home, while Nana and I went into the city.

I took Nana to the Central Market, where I’d last been about a year ago. I wound her through the narrow aisles, through little stalls selling just about everything imaginable (and a few unimaginable), before stopping at the Central Market Café. This is where Jason, Mark, and I had stopped for coffee (I had hot chocolate, not yet having started to drink coffee) while on our tour. Nana and I both bought coffee. I would later buy the torilla press we’d been looking for.

Leaving the market, we went down Avenida Central towards the Plaza de Cultura, where we went to the Gran Hotel for lunch. My poor ceviche at the Arenal Lodge was redeemed by possibly the best ceviche I’ve yet had, while Nana had a fried Cambenbert and strawberry sauce tapas. Spying the dark clouds that suggested rain, we headed into the Museo de Oro for an hour or so.

The rain, for once, didn’t come. When we came back out, it was only to walk back to the car and drive back home again.

Mommy and I made pizza for dinner, which was very good. You barely ate your corn on the cob or the pizza (both were favourites), which still worries us greatly.

So ends my birthday vacation. I wish I could say I had a better time, Monkey, but I’ll be honest — spending time with you, Mommy, and Nana were my shining points. Otherwise, it was a pretty lousy time. Had I known the weather would be that bad, I’d have suggested we just stay here at home.

It’s time for me to go to bed (you’ve been asleep for about 2.75 hours already). Hopefully tonight I’ll catch up on some of the sleep I’ve been missing.

Plans don’t always go according to plan, but there are those times when one plan ends up giving who new plans that are possibly even more fun than the original ones. I’d like to think today was like that, largely because we got to go somewhere fun, and I got to spend nearly the whole day with you! (Except for, y’know, when you were sleeping.)

The big plan of the day was to attend Marisa’s birthday. You know her, she’s your friend — that’s Meranda’s daughter! So after getting ourselves all dolled up, we headed out for … breakfast. It’s Saturday, we always go out for breakfast. Today, it was the Marriott again for their buffet. It’s a tasty place, and it’s near the highway. One of the waitresses there tried to get you to say “agua” instead of “water”.

If only she knew you only say “agua” and not “water”.

After breakfast, we hopped on the highway and drove to Parque de Diversiones, an amusement park just west of San José. We’d heard of the place before, and had hoped to go there before, but never had. (In fact, I had thought it to be little more than a park, and wasn’t aware what we were about to run into.) It wasn’t until we arrived in front of the parking lot that the light began to shine on what we were getting into.

We parked and waited for Meranda to arrive so the party could begin. You were sound asleep at the time, so didn’t really notice the passage of time. You were asleep maybe 30 minutes in total, maybe about 20 of which we waited in the car amidst some spitting of rain.

When we finally went in, it was just the three of us. The entrance confused and frustrated me, as even with our reasonably-okay read-Spanish, we couldn’t figure out what the heck we were supposed to pay to get in. As it turns out the park is a very interesting set-up — entrance is actually free. You pay only to go to on rides … and buy food, souvenirs, etc. So we sauntered right in.

That’s when we found out that the party had effectively been cancelled. (Mommy called Meranda.) So our original plans became just for us. And on we wandered…

We spent most of our time in an area known as the Pueblo Antiguo (“Old Town”), which is a representation of what San José was like back at the turn of the previous century. Most of it is reconstruction and doesn’t seem to feature original buildings (unlike Calgary’s Heritage Park), but it was still fun to wander around. There’s even a farm with chickens and cows and horses and turkeys and even a little train.

Afterwards, we had a light snack while you played with the spouting frogs at the fountain.  You got mostly soaked. You also ate most of my sno-cone, and wouldn’t even touch the cotton candy! I mean, what kid doesn’t like cotton candy?!

Sadly, we didn’t ride anything. We’d understood we could purchase more tickets inside, so had kept an eye out so we could ride the merry-go-round, or even the train. In all cases, we couldn’t find anything. But that was okay for us, we just enjoyed the walking around. It wasn’t insanely busy, either.

The park isn’t huge, and it has a range of different rides. You’re way too small for most of these, though. It’s a little like Calaway Park back in Calgary, or an in-between to Centre Island and Canada’s Wonderland back in Ontario. One day, I hope you’ll see all of these. For now, this will have to do.

We toured the park for about two and a half hours before it was clear that you were running out of steam (you tend to get hyper and distracted when you’re tired), so we opted to head back for home. It took longer for you to fall asleep than I’d thought — you didn’t actually pass out until we were in Escazú (and given the detour I took us on to get there, that was a good 20 minutes).

Mommy and I ate a light lunch while you slept in the car. We parked right in front of the table (which was outside at Grau), so it was very easy to see you. You didn’t wake up until we left, but were asleep again moments later.

Needless to say, we’ll be going back to Parque de Diversiones, and next time we’ll be definitely going on a few rides.

One thing the Stampede is also famous for is something that doesn’t actually happen at the Stampede — it happens just about everywhere else in the city: the Stampede pancake breakfast. It’s a tradition dating back decades, supposedly started when one kind rancher shared his breakfast with those around him.

There’s only two rules with pancake breakfasts: have a lot of people, and it should be free! (There are even websites to help people find the pancakes.)

To be honest, I don’t know who thought of it first, Alex or me. Despite the fact that we have pancakes nearly every weekend (it’s a tradition for us), there’s just something about making pancakes for others that really stuck with me. I missed it last year, and I wasn’t keen on missing another, so it was decided that The Hangar Interactive would have it’s first (hopefully to be annual) Stampede Breakfast.

The hardest part of all of this was finding the cooking surface. At home, I have to use two pans to make pancakes relatively quickly. Otherwise it just takes too long. Making pancakes for almost 40 people? You need a gas-fired grill if you have any hope of keeping up with demand.

This is where we almost had a “lost in translation” moment. Despite living here nearly a year, my Spanish is still pretty poor, especially spoken. And there’s no Stephenson’s Rentals that I’ve come across. So find a grill to rent isn’t easy. Angelica, our super-awesome office coordinator, was tasked with the act of finding one.

This is what I’d asked:

I need a grill. Like the ones you see at the markets that make pupusas.

This is what Angelica heard:

I need someone to make pupusas.

The worst part? We both nodded and thought the other person understood what we’d both agreed to. It was until two days ago that we both realised where we’d gone wrong. The grill was acquired within a coupe of hours.

Next? The supplies. None of this Bisquik crap, thank you. I make my pancakes from scratch. They’re really good, too. It’s an old family recipe, handed down through generations, and originally stolen from a cookbook (so I’m told).

• 1 cup flour (white, though you can use whole wheat if you must)
• 1  tsp baking powder
• 1 tbl sugar
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup milk (less for thicker pancakes; add a bit more for great waffle batter)
• 1 egg
• 1 tbl melted butter
• a few drops of vanilla extract

Mix dry. Mix wet. Combine. Pour onto hot (and preferably non-stick) surface to cook, flip when the bubbles form. Repeat until all the batter is gone. Will make 8-10 pancakes depending on the size. When you’re making pancakes for 40 people, you need a bit more…

• 20 cups flour
• 1 canister baking powder
• 1 sack (small) sugar
• Office salt shaker (there’s plenty)
• 5 L milk
• 20 eggs
• 2 sticks butter
• Bottle vanilla extract

Now that’s just the pancakes. That won’t get you the full Stampede appeal. For that, you need sausages, too. (Six packages of Johnsonville Breakfast Sausage, a total of 84.) And since I’m Canadian, I cannot abide by maple-flavoured corn syrup. It’s just horribly wrong. So I splurged and bought enough real maple syrup — four bottles — for everyone at The Hangar. And yes, at ~$30 a bottle (the stuff’s imported), it was still worth it … even though the syrup alone cost about 2/3 of the budget.

Ed, our QA Director, was invaluable as help. He helped get the grill going, cooked the sausages, and we did the oil & batter dance (handing the various cooking implements and materials back and forth as we made the pancakes). Needless to say, I wouldn’t have been able to do all this on my own.

The grill smelled of fish. It’s likely that this grill has been used to cook countless different things. But as always, when you cook fish, the oils get into the iron and they stay there. You never really get rid of the smell. Not that it was a major issue, nor did breakfast taste of fish. But my shirt reeks of cooking oil. (Thankfully, I brought a spare.)

Even Alex and Mi Pequeña Niña came out (I needed to drive the supplies to work, they need the car, and c’mon — it’s a pancake breakfast!), though I didn’t get to see them too much.

So our Tico staff got their first taste of Canadiana (or Calgaryana, depending on how you look at it). Next year should be an even better affair, hopefully!