March 8 - first day in the Paradise of Playa Flamingo!

We woke up today to a beautiful, if windy, day, but nothing like the winds of Monteverde. We had a wonderful fruit and eggs breakfast overlooking the bay. Wow; we feel very blessed. We chatted with a young couple from Philadelphia; she is a nurse and he is an engineer. They are here for a few days and gave us some advice as to where to go etc.

After a leisurely breakfast (it has not taken us long to adjust to the slower pace!), we headed to the white sands of Playa Flamingo Beach where we planted ourselves on towels under a tree. As we were there early, there was no competition for parking or shady beach spots. We took our first ocean swim; it felt great; we both thought that the water would be tepid and like bathwater, but is was refreshing and not warm, just nice.

After an hour of beach sitting, which is about all we can really do, we headed to find some groceries. We found a SuperCompra a few miles away. Unfortunately, the electricity went out and we waited a long time (30-40 minutes) in line waiting for the electricity to come back on so that the computers could be used. No using paper and pencil in today's world with the suspicion that a clerk might steal. Ridiculous. Anyhow, standing in line, we met the most interesting family. He was a first-generation descendent of the original 40+ Quakers who settled Monteverde in the early 50s to protest the Korean War. So, the man grew up in Monteverde and told us some stories of his youth when the area was cut off for weeks because of impassable roads as there were no bridges at all then and he said the mud could rise to his knees. His parents were part of the cheese producers. Eventually, he left and married in the U.S. and had children; his second wife, also a Quaker was with him and two children. It turns out that she is related to Tristam Coffin, an original settler of Nantucket, as well as to Lucretia Mott. They now raise goats and make cheese in western Connecticut. They are here to see his parents and to vacation; they have 14 people down at the beautiful point overlooking the bay in Playa Flamingo. Talking to them made the time pass very quickly and we were soon out and back to the BnB where we made lunch for ourselves and hung out at the pool all afternoon, blogging, emailing, swimming and reading.