We welcomed Keith and Chere to Jaco this week. It was so fun to see our friends and remind us we have another life back in Utah. We’re spending a few days here before heading up to Tamarindo for a week. So, not to let any grass grow under our feet, we headed out the first morning to find some secret waterfalls way out in the sticks. We found out why they’re so secret: they’re almost impossible to find! Even the locals didn’t know exactly where they were. So we poked around back roads and finally found a trail and trudged up a creek bed for about 1km. Along the easy we saw a gorgeous large white falcon (wasn’t quick enough with my camera to get a pic!!), spider monkeys in the trees overhead, and all kinds of critters. We finally arrived at Tres Piscinas (three pools). It was worth it. Diving into fresh, deep pools formed by waterfalls. Watching as dozens of spider monkeys showed their skills in the trees around and above us. Spectacular place!!

We’ve met so many interesting people on our trip. Here are three more..

We met these three at lunch and then invited them to dinner at our place a night or two later, told stories and had a some laughs. That’s Stan and Ginger  on the right, from Kodiak Island, Alaska. They own a great little place (40 acres) along the Kodiak shore and Stan (“Skipper”) runs his own commercial fishing boat. He’s at sea for a couple of months each summer. Ginger’s just a force of nature and a ton of fun.  A couple of live wires! They are going to be starring in a reality show filmed at their place in Kodiak this coming year–on History channel, most likely.

Tracy (middle) met them in Jaco and they’ve become fast friends. Tracy has a fascinating story. For thirteen years she was part of an international drama that played out in a very public way in Canada and Bulgaria. Her husband, a businessman, was imprisoned in Bulgaria for 13 years. Tracy spent her time, energy and money during that time fighting for his freedom. Part of that time, she was also fighting cancer. There’s much, much more to the story. Maybe we’ll help her tell it someday. She’s such a sweetheart!

Well, the kids remembered they had kids at home and hopped a plane back to SLC. But not before we could recuperate with a massage  and see one last sunset from our place. It’s not easy to find ten massage therapists in Jaco to come to our beach at sunset –on an hour’s notice. But when you’re married to Mary Poppins, anything’s possible.

Things are gonna get a little quieter around here…

Yeah, another great day!  Started with an early yoga session on the beach.

Piled into our van and headed for Dominical–the ultimate hippy surf bum town. Hard to describe, really, but charming. Our destination was a nearby waterfall. Here’s a little video, including my perfectly executed back flip off the rope swing at the end. Solid. I felt it for a few minutes. WATCH:  http://youtu.be/WAsBong17h8

Mermaid sighting

Mer-MEN sighting. Plus a monkey…

Yeah, mermaids are better!

Came home for some surf and sand.

Dinner at one of our favorite haunts…TacoBar. Their spicy fresh seared tuna tacos are pretty tough to beat.

We pretty much have the funnest kids in the world, and things never slow down. Fall into bed every night and get ready for action in the morning!

The kids arrived and surprised us by ambushing us at our pool. We hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks, and I think the celebration caught our neighbors a little off guard. Oh well, we’re used to causing a scene.

Our first day included a tour up the Tarcoles river in a flat-bottomed river boat in search of crocodiles. Yeah, we found some! Up to 16 feet long and hungry! Here’s our guide feeding one–with my GoPro strapped to his chest. Yes, I know that seems risky, but put your mind at ease…I did get my GoPro back. With some pretty amazing video, by the way.

Never smile at a crocodile–esp at 12 inches away. Brandon and I petted this one…from the boat!

Yeah, we tipped our guide. His little savings program could come in really handy for his family some day. Now, this river dumps into the ocean not far from Jaco, and we talked to people who say they have actually seen crocs swimming near at the beach, but I reckon we have more to fear from our surfboard fins than from these prehistoric reptile behemoths.

Which brings me to our next activity–the boys took a surf lesson, and it’s as hard as they say it is. But we all managed to ride some waves. Some better than others. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves…

Taylor Shreddin it

Here’s Brad & Brandon calming the seas

Steve doin’ it in style

The old dude. Nuff’ said…

Boys of Summer

What a fantastic Valentines Day–Sorry I’m a little late with this post but it was awesome!

We got up early and ran down to our hole-in-the-wall gym “Pure.” It’s owned by a really cool young American couple—Warren and April. We really like them. They met at the Burning Man retreat in Nevada, which by itself makes them colorful… They are part of a little group of gringo couples on this side of Granada that hang out together and own some of the local businesses (a bakery and the bar and the restaurant at Casa San Francisco). We got to know all of them and really like them—even though they’re half our age.

After our workout, we ran back to our room and our new Swiss friends (Vivi and Tscheugge) were 30 min early to pick us up for our adventure–Swiss precision and all.

We had a riot with them.  Vivi is age 53 and has a very sarcastic, hilarious sense of humor!  He and Bill were going at each other all day. He owns restaurants in Switzerland and is an adventurer.  He runs marathons all over the world. He’s climbed Kilimanjaro twice. etc, etc. Tscheugge is a really sweet, thoughtful man.  We talked about every subject you could think of,  including quite a bit about our religion.  We drove up to the Volcano Masaya and saw a panoramic view of the region. Then we drove to this quaint, darling, colorful little town called Catarina that looks over Laguna Apoyo (see our last post).  Such a colorful little town–painted 10 different bright colors and  full of colorful flowers.

Got back to the hotel, dipped in the pool, had some Valentines Day fun:)  Ate tapas by our pool.

We were joined by Terri Leary, the owner of the hotel (and about 20 other properties in town) . We had spend some time with her a couple of days earlier and she has an amazing life story. Lots of tragedy to overcome, but she’s a builder. She has spent most of her career managing very tough (and large) government and NGO projects in the world’s worst war zones. Kosovo, Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Iraq. Crazy life! So we asked her to sit down with us and tell it while we recorded.   We recorded it and will be posting it to our Witness Project website.

Then we hurried off to our Valentine extravaganza at the Spa. There were about ten of us–from all over the world. A gal from the Yukon territory. Two young girls from Australia who are biking across Central America. A girl from Amsterdam who is here for a year or so helping to make a documentary about “Love in Latin America” for Dutch TV….etc.

The “extravaganza”  started out with about 90 minutes of meditative yoga (heart opening yoga for Valentines—very cool, actually–led by Warren the yoga master). Then  60 minute massages for everyone, and then a really yummy dinner cooked at the little kitchen in the spa.

Then, to top it off, we learned to make chocolate.   I’m talking roasting the cacao beans and grinding them and melting the raw sugar.  Oh it was sooooo delicious! Dark chocolate stuffed with hazelnuts, ginger and sea salt!

A really sweet part of the night was when we were sitting around the dinner table as a group and they wanted to hear our story.  So I told them our story of  how we met and they all sighed and said “Oh how romantic–thanks for sharing!”  The owners of the Spa (Warren and April) are engaged to be married in August of 2015.  Bill said, “When I met Susan, I looked into her eyes and I had never seen that kind of energy!  She’s like Mary Poppins—when you are with her everything just turns out great!  April has that energy, Warren—you have a lot to look forward to.”  Everyone sighed again!  A lady said, “Oh what a beautiful tribute, and you managed to compliment two women at once. You’re good!”
Of course, the day and night followed the theme of Nicaragua:  EXCEEDED EXPECTATIONS!!!

Off to Atenas, Costa Rica at 5 am.  Night Night!!!

Best day yet! Got up early and took our cameras out to photo the city before it got too congested.

Came back to the hotel for breakfast. Had to switch rooms (hassle!) then our driver arrived to take us to Laguna Apoyo.

Amazing! Spent the day at San Simian resort—tiny little resort with about 5-6 casitas, great view of an amazing lake in a 23,000 year-old crater. Huge crater (4 miles across) filled with fresh, geothermal warmed water. Fantastic swimming.

We immediately met a cool couple—Rick and Diane from Nevada City, CA, sort of near Tahoe, I think. They were staying in one of the casitas there. They have been EVERYWHERE. They have special full-sized road bikes that they can take apart in 30 minutes and put in their suitcases, so they take them to Europe and everywhere and just see the world by bike. Maybe a little older than us. Great salsa dancers! They may or may not have recently biked around Cuba–rebels!

We talked about everything—including family, politics, religion and the pros and cons of the war on drugs. Then we walked up to their casita for some salsa music and dancing. Here’s some MUST SEE hilarious video–love the suggestive moves and semi-perverted grin at the end.  

When we were leaving we chatted with these two Swiss guys, and they were hilarious. One about my age (very fit–marathon runner) and another older guy (who was gimpy since he ruined his knees playing pro hockey). Our ride was waiting so we had to cut it short. But then when we were having dinner Cafe de los Suenos back in Granada, they came walking by. We insisted they sit down and chat. It took a little persuading, but they finally did. The younger one, Vivi, was really engaging and we had a wonderful chat about Switzerland vs. America, challenges of modern society, Mormonism, family. Just a great guy, and another world traveller. Then we walked down and had gelato together.