dear blog, I’m writing this from costa rica. I’m laying in bed with dogs surrounding my body and jungle noises filling my ears, and using my notes app to type this for my next trip to the Internet cafe. the shutters are open and the mosquito net is covering the bed. this is our second night and we’re still getting used to the crazy change in evironment.

i was anticipating a nightmare travel experience due to the fact that we brought 4 minpins along with us, but they proved us all wrong. after 7 hours in the air and an 11 hour layover in a newark new jersey hotel, they hardly made a fuss and even the people on the planes that sat around us couldn’t believe they were sitting next to 4 dogs. they made us proud.

once we landed and went through customs, i saw our rental car guy who was waiting for us with a sign along with about 100 other guys waiting to pick people up. we finally get all of our bags and dogs to the car and find out they don’t have the size that we rented. they swap it out for another car the exact same size. they tell us they can bring the correct car where we’re staying and we cram the car full our stuff and take off on a 4 hour drive east to the other side of the country.

driving in san jose is pretty crazy if you don’t know where you’re going. you rarely see a street sign, and it’s easy to get lost but people are friendly. I had to stop twice to get help to find the road I just drove on back in january. but we found it and left the city. you drive through the mountains and the cloud forest then out through banana fields and finally to the other side and you see the ocean. The moon was huge and reflecting off the water. we head south at limon and continue on to cocles. only 45 minutes to go.

it got dark as we drove and it started to rain, so the drive was definitly an adventure. we contacted the caretaker and after a quick stop at the store we made it to our final destination.

the next morning we took the dogs on a walk to find the beach. we went left and ended up walking further then we meant to and went to the same beach spot in front of cariblue where we stayed in january. the ocean was amazing, with nice waves and it is so warm. we took the dogs in one at a time to get them wet and they seemed to sort of like it. we’ll see.

we drove to puerto viejo which is about 3 kilometers north to get some groceries and when we got back we left the dogs at the house and went back to the beach, but found the much closer path. we met a nice retired canadien on the way and he showed us the way to the water. without the dogs this time, we could all enjoy ourselves in the surf. it felt great and this was just our first day.

you have to walk about 100 yards to get to the main road from our house. to the left another 100 yards is a little store and to the right about 200 yards is an Internet cafe. on the way down to the main road, about halfway, we all start getting these sharp pains in our feet as we must have walked right through a fireant highway. it was ridiculous! in the dark, feet stinging and we’re still another 50 yards to the nearest light. we didn’t know what was going on at first so as I shined my flashlight on dawn’s feet she had just started to lean up and she smashed her right temple into the top of my head. we we’re able to get out of there quick, if not we’d keep getting bit. after a few minutes of making sure we were all ok we continued to the cafe.

since the house we’re in is stil on the waiting list to get internet service, having the cafe so close is nice. we went for a little while last night and sent out some updates, posted some photos, sent some emails. I had a nice coffee while paul got some whiskey and then dawn got a salad and we all nibbled on it. the internet is like $3 an hour or I can pay $40 for a month of access…

…i had dozed off while writing earlier and I’m now at a place that charged me $3 for 7 days of Internet access. much better deal! so I’m posting this update now and will continue my journal offline.