Getting Here – A Long Strange Trip
It has been an exhausting 2 days! After a journey that took much longer than we anticipated, we are finally getting settled in our place in Atenas, a small village in the Central Valley of Costa Rica. National Geographic ranks it as among the best climates in the world. Days are typically in the upper seventies to low eighties and dry, while evening temperatures drop to the sixties once the sun goes down (at about 6pm).
It has been an exhausting 2 days! After a journey that took much longer than we anticipated, we are finally getting settled in our place in Atenas, a small village in the Central Valley of Costa Rica. National Geographic ranks it as among the best climates in the world. Days are typically in the upper seventies to low eighties and dry, while evening temperatures drop to the sixties once the sun goes down (at about 6pm).
So, our trip began on Monday 1/12. We were supposed to leave on a 6:50am flight, connecting through Houston, and arrive in San Jose at 3pm. I had not slept a wink the entire night before, and both kids had a hard time getting settled to go to sleep as well. At about age 24, having flown my whole life (my mother even learned to fly small planes). Every time I go up in the air I am convinced I will draw my final breaths as the plane comes plunging back to earth in disaster, leaving us all smashed to smithereens. Over the years (15 of them, to be exact), I have developed various coping techniques, some of which involve medication. Others involve grabbing the hands of various strangers with the misfortune of sitting near me, forcing them to talk to me, reading the faces of the flight attendants if they are within view, closing the windows (not always an option), etc. I had learned to manage this pretty well (and unmedicated) during the work years I spent on a plane nearly every week of my life, but suffice it to say that I’m pretty rusty now that we fly only a few times a year. AND flying with my children adds another layer of anxiety to the mix.
We woke at about 4am, got ready and went to the airport. In our seats on the plane, awaiting push-back, already 15 minutes late, the announcement comes on that there is a problem with the hydraulic system on the plane. Having spent about 7 years traveling for work (prior to kids), I know this is bad and we would not make our connection. I get off the plane and immediately go to the gate agent to find out our other options. This is very fortunate. Had I waited any longer, we would have been leaving for Costa Rica either today or tomorrow – ALL flights on all airlines to San Jose (the capital city and about a 30 minute drive to our rental home) are booked. I ask it we could fly into the country’s other international airport, in a beach area about 4 hours away from the rental house. Fortunately, there is space and we get on those flights. But, we arrive in at 8pm, have to spend the night in a hotel in Liberia (the airport town), and arrange for transportation the next day to our destination. All of this is facilitated by airport wireless internet. Wish they’d had that in my work travel days!
I wasn’t too upset about this change since I was able, by simply asking the gate agent, pretty please, to change our return flight to a much more convenient time and this time wanting to leave out of the Liberia airport, which is much closer to the beach where we will spend our last 10 days of this trip. He did so at no additional charge!
So we arrived at our rental home yesterday at around 1pm. The house is about 3km from the city center, overlooking a beautiful a valley and mountains. It is just beautiful. The house is all windows and has a large front porch. For those of you that know me, you’ll not be surprised that my first task was to go to the grocery store. That was an ordeal with two tired and hungry kids, and let me tell you, it was BIG trip! I know what it feels like to be a Costa Rican “ama de casa” (housewife) in the countryside.
The Home Front – Some Thoughts on Laundry
It is interesting for me to note the ease with which I have become accustomed to certain amenities that I haven’t enjoyed for all that long in my adult life. Amenities such as an automatic washing machine, a dishwasher, vacuum cleaner (which admittedly, I don’t use all that often), good kitchen tools.
While our house is lovely, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed to see the washing machine was one of the little ones that I used when I lived here from ’92-’96. Basically, it’s about a step above hand washing. For starters, to give you a perspective on its size, my front-loading machine at home can hold in one load about a week’s worth of a color load for a family of 4 (including 2 children who change their clothes at least once during the day). This machine will hold about one day’s worth of clothes for our family. So, I’m doing laundry every day.
Here’s how you do it: there is a wash basin – you have to remember to close the drain on the machine (which I forgot and wondered why the hell the tub wasn’t filling), add the soap, the clothes, and then wait about 7 minutes for the wash basin to fill up. After filling you set the timer for the agitation cycle. You wait for the cycle to complete, then put the soaking wet, soapy clothes into the centrifuge, set it for the 5 minute cycle, drain the wash basin, put the clothes back into said wash basin, refill with clean water for the rinse cycle, wait for the cycle to complete, and then put the now presumably soap-free clothes into the centrifuge again. Finally, hang the clothes to dry. I didn’t mind doing this when I was just me – I could do a few loads about once a week. But for a family of four, every day laundry will be imperative unless I want to spend all day washing clothes. Strangely, though, I felt a great sense of accomplishment after doing my family’s laundry last night, far more so than I can ever imagine feeling after doing laundry at home (throw tons of clothes and soap in the washing machine, return after 1 hour, throw clothes in dryer, wait one hour, let clean clothes sit in laundry basket for one month). I should mention that now (compared to 15 years ago) it is much more common for average families to have “automatic” washing machines (what we take for granted).
I should also mention that with the manual variety that many families still do use, in order to save time and money on water, they don’t change the wash water between loads. So, it is actually imperative to sort clothes by color and to wash your whites first. By the time you get to colors, the water will be black and filthy. I used to do this, too. If/when there are times I must do more than one load, I WILL change water between cycle.
I am going to allow myself one luxury here, though. “Una empleada” – or a cleaning person. This is something I allow myself a few times a year at home when, say, I have company coming to stay and I haven’t done a good cleaning in a month. To clean the main level and upstairs, roughly 1500 sq. ft., it runs me about $125. Here, to clean about 1,000 sq. ft., the upper end of the going rate is $16.
That's all for now. Thanks for checking in and I hope those of you in the upper Midwest are staying warm!
