Monteverde - How many ways to describe violent wind are there?

March 1st.
It was tough sleeping last night with the aggressive wind which felt like it would take off the roof and we hear loud bangs all night long with freight train winds. We both laid awake thinking of the ways to describe how fierce it was. Not breezy or buffeting. But rather - punching and slamming.

As the road was closed until 9:30, we waited till then and then went exploring. We have hired a guide for tomorrow and wanted to see how much time it would take us to get to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. What a bumpy ride to town and then, an even bumpier ride up to the Cloud Forest. We were dressed in shorts and summer wear. But, as we got closer, the cloud forest showed us what it meant; it was rainy and muddy....and cold. Nevertheless, we parked a bit away and climbed up to the entrance area. We immediately saw a white fronted parrot sitting on an electrical line. Beautiful!

We sat and looked at the hummingbirds by the coffee shop as recommended by grandson, Otis, who visited here two summers ago. We saw SO many hummingbirds and of such a variety of sizes. Plus, at the feeders we saw bananaquits which like using the feeders, too.

 After we were sufficiently chilled, we went back into the town of Santa Elena where it was not raining and was warm and sunny, just 6 kilometers away! We shopped for groceries, came home and read, read, read. We are living a non-connected life.

I am reading The Age of Acquiesence which just came out. It is excellent and I highly recommend it. It traces themes in American economic, political and social life from the time of Jefferson and Hamilton through the present. It is meant for people with a background in history, but is not exclusively for historians. It talks about labor and work and our attitudes toward both, as well as the trends Americans have followed with regard the rich and how, in our present time, workers have accepted (acquiesced) in the face of increasing income disparity. Mark is reading Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land.

We are really ready for the wind to stop!

Atenas to Monteverde, Feb 28. Climbing, climbing, climbing!

Today, we left the B n B in Atenas which we truly enjoyed. We gassed up, bought a few groceries and headed out. The first road and the last road were tough. The first because it was twisty and turny, but paved; the last unpaved and precipitous and windy, windy, windy!

We drove to Guacimal, a very very small village on Rt 606. It is a miracle that we found the Sustainability Project run by Alex and Veronica from whom we have rented Casa Cielo by Monteverde. We recognized it soley from Veronica's desciption of the building. Guacimal was having a small village fair, organized by Veronica in hopes of convincing the farmers not to simply raise cows and destroy the fields. For sale - vegetables, handicrafts and food. We had to stop there for about 2 hours because the 606 is mostly closed for construction. It is only open before 6:30 a.m., then for 20 minutes around 9:30 a.m., noon and 3:30. Then, it is also open from 5:30. So, we were aiming for the 3:30 opening. We had some local foods and chatted with Veronica, her 12 year old Stuart and two other Americans who were in Guacimal for the month doing a lot of volunteer work with Veronica.

  

 Anyhow, we eventually left and headed out on the unpaved 606. It was about 14 or 15 kilometers, but took quite a while as the road is really in tough shape. We were stopped twice before being allowed to proceed.  We drove past Casa Cielo at first and would have missed it entirely if we had not been counting the kilometers.

A neighbor, Gisele, met us in the driveway and let us in. We have to go through a gate and down a rutted path to the house. It is an A frame perched high above the Gulf of Nicoya which is in the distance. The bedroom is up some rather harrowing stairs. Gisele showed us around and took us down to a lower property to show it to us.

Unfortunately, there is no internet service. (This was written several days later.) We are in about as remote a place as we have ever been.

Birding, relaxing - 2nd full day in Atenas, Feb 27

Today we got up early to see if we could spot the toucan(s) that hang out near the entrance to the BnB. We heard it/them and saw a flash, but did not really see it well. Christine joined us, which was great because she knows the birds. We saw blue grey tanagers, western (or tropical) kingbirds, more rufous-naped wrens (noisy and happy sounding birds), yellow warblers, a hummingbird, social (or grey-capped) flycatchers, possibly a short-tailed hawk and cattle egrets.

But - the star of the morning was a pair of blue-crowned Motmots. They were behind the pool and literally posed for us. A male was wooing a female by offering her an insect. But she rebuffed him. Eventually, he gave up and flew away. But, they held a group of us entralled as they stayed still for us to take photos. Amazing tails, amazing colors - they made our day.  And, that was before breakfast!

For the bulk of the day, we hung around here enjoying the warmth and also catching up on our blog. We often write it and then add the photos later, so it takes time to upload the photos from both our phones and from the camera. We ate lunch outside here with food we bought.

We had a short Skype session with Nick, Cole and Sage, but had poor reception.

We went to dinner in town with Christine at Don Yayo, a local hangout recommended by Jonathan who works at the BnB. (fluent in 4 languages). Christine told some stories about her work with marine mammals, in particular an oil spill in Spain where she was part of a team gathering data on the dead seabirds, estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Quote of the day as we read and tried to translate the menu as I looked up the meaning of "gallo" which was the heading of a lot of things on the menu. "I am a little put off by the cock." The dictionary's definition of gallo = cock. I guess it means rooster, but that seems to have nothing to do with the dishes on the menu, so we never did quite get what it meant as there was "gallo" with chicken, with veggies etc etc. At any rate, it was a lovely evening with serious conversation punctuated with a lot of laughs, too.

First full day.....great day in Costa Rica, February 26

Today we woke up to a beautiful sunrise over the central valley with 4 volcanoes in the distance, 3 of which are still active.

We are at a B n B of only 9 rooms and have met some very nice and interesting people,

mostly Canadians and mostly very knowledgable birders which is great for us as rookies. They are incredibly generous with their time and knowledge.

We relaxed all morning and had a fabulous breakfast. In mid morning we drove into Atenas, found a bank, the post office for stamps, bought some food. It is definitely hot, but not humid. Can't complain after the winter that Nantucket is having.

We had two dips in the pool and I looked over the proofs of the book Frank and I have just written.  A hard day at work on the terrace in front of our room, overlooking the valley.

We had wonderful chat with the Belgian owner, Vera who moved here on a whim 10 years ago. She is warm and welcoming, as is the place. The internet was out a good deal of the day, but we weren't bothered at all; it is nice to be cut off from tv etc etc.

We also tried to Skype with Nick, Cole and Sage, but Nick's computer was not cooperating, so will try again tomorrow.

In the evening we went into town with the Canadian biologist, Christine, to La  Trancha which was recommended by Vera. Yum! Mark and I had their specialty salsa sauce with shrimp. Plus, we ate outside in an atmosphere that reminded us of restaurants in Egypt.

Birds galore for us and almost all "life birds."  Brown jay, Rufus naped wren (my favorite and with a great song), 3 unidentifiable hummingbirds, social or grey capped flycatcher, painted and indigo bunting, (living together in sin?), black and turkey vultures, blue grey tanagers (maybe another favorite of mine)

A really love first full day in Costa Rica!

Arrival in Costa Rica! February 25

Leaving the hotel in ft.lauderdale for the airpoto

   We had a good night's sleep at the Cambria Suites in Dania and got the shuttle to the Fort Lauderdale airport. We flew JetBlue to San Jose in just under 3 hours on a very smooth flight. We paid for extra leg room seats which were well worth it. We flew over Lake Arenal and Arenal Volcano, which was a treat, but we did not get to the camera quickly enough to get a photo, so it will have to remain in our mind's eye.

   Arrival in San Jose was very easy. We found the Economy rental car and took a shuttle to get the car, a mid-size SUV, a Hyundai. The price was considerably more than we had anticipated because of the mandatory insurance and we worried that we were getting scammed, but other travelers seemed to be paying the same, so....we went with the flow. It was also confusing trying to figure out how to use longitude and latitude in the Garmin, but, with the help of one of the guys at the rental car place, we figured it out.

    We stopped at a Walmart {ugh - yes, a Walmart] to get some essentials, like a little knife, a case of water.....
     Then, we put in the coordinates, or so we thought, for Vista Atenas B n B, 30 miles from the airport. Well, as we have heard, the roads are a bit rough, narrow, no shoulders, hairpin turns...and, I think we were on pretty main roads, Route 1 and Route 3. The GPS took us past Atenas and we just followed. Then, we went up a really narrow mountain road and took a fork which took us onto pretty much just a rock track. Mark turned around (not easily) and we took the other fork which took us to a remote cement business, or something. Clearly, we were quite lost. So, I tried to put in the B n B into the nearby lodging mode on the GPS and it took us back 8 miles to the right spot. It is still up a major hill, but.....not a rock track. We are in a B n B with 9 rooms; ours is called Orion. Our terrace overlooks the valley of San Jose, beautiful. We were too tired to cope with finding a place to eat, so we went to the supermercado, got some lettuce, a roasted chicken etc and ate it in our room. Whew.

   First impressions: really mountainous, beautiful vegetation and flowers, already seen some colorful birds, drier than we thought it would be - more like southern California than the Amazon rainforest, but that may just be the region we are in.

More Florida photos

Cold Nantucket....we've not forgotten you!

Ole friends

Family

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Florida photos friends, boids and relations

Crazy hungry reddish egret

 

Good ole friend

Nesting sand hill crane

Florida Summary - days with family and friends

We have spent the last almost 3 weeks with family. We were mostly in Vero Beach with Mark's parents, Cal and Alice. When we arrived, John, Mark's brother was also there as he drove the folks down to Florida in November and had been working there since. Two mornings, I got up with John to go with him to his daily sunrise Qi Gong on the beach. The first morning, it was only 48 degrees!

Old Florida

Either I just finished a big meal or I need to diet!

We also spent some time with Michael and Nancy, Mark's twin brother and his wife, who live in Lake Worth. They had some company from Canada visiting, too, which was fun and one night, we all went out for dinner, joined by John and his friend, Rose. Nancy, unfortunately, had a tooth abcess and was not feeling great.

Alice took Mark, me and John out for lunch, after a shopping trip to Beall's, on Valentines' Day.

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For my 65th {ugh} birthday, we drove over to Cape Coral to stay with Ted and Bev for two nights. We celebrated by going on a bird walk at Ding Darling National Park on Sanibel Island and by a wonderful lunch at Fish Tales.

On the birding front:

Burrowing owl 

We took 2  trips to Pelican Island in north Vero where we saw a bald eagle the first time when we went with Diane and Bob Robusto. The next time, we met up with 4 Canadian birders who pointed out a fairly rare Reddish Egret (a life bird for us, meaning one we have never seen before].
Weirdly, we saw our second Reddish Egret at Ding Darling....what are the odds? And, we also saw a blue grey gnat catcher, thanks to the knowledgable Canadians.
And when we were in Lake Worth, we also visited Green Cay with Mike and Nancy's company from Canada (Walt and Colleen) and met up with John and Rose, too.

February 1st. Sad day on Nantucket as well as a Super Bowl win

Today we drove the 200+ miles from Atlantic Beach to Vero Beach, arriving in mid-afternoon. John has been here since November. He made ribs and apple pie for the Super Bowl which all five of us watched to the very end. The Pats played Seattle and won it at the very end. Even for a non-football watcher like me, it was an exciting and strange game with changes of leaders etc.

But, on a very tragic and personal note, we heard from Nick that the wonderful, generous, caring Robin Harvey had just been struck and killed while running on Nantucket. The entire island is in mourning for a very special person.

M

January 31- a wonderful day at Atlantic Beach

What a great day. I, Barbara, started the day with a morning going to yard sales with Chris and Nancy. It was slim pickings although Nancy did buy a cute little fish chair for James. meanwhile, Mark and Michael did errands at the lumber company, the post office etc.

In the afternoon, the four of us took a fun bike ride through their neighborhood, and eventually to Mike and Chris's.

Later, Chris and Mark cooked everyone a great meal from two of Mark's America's Test Kitchen recipes. We has a lemon chicken dish with cauliflower and a fried rice with pork dish. The two cooks had fun, and the rest of us enjoyed the fruits of their labor. In the process, it was discovered that James likes tomatoes. The evening's entertainment was James.

January 30.....Florida!

Today we drove from Florence to Atlantic Beach, Florida and finally shed our winter clothes. Yay!
We are at Michael and Nancy's new condo. They are in the start of fixing it up to their taste and they worked incredibly hard getting the guest room and bathroom ready for us. We walked over to Cristina and Mike's place and had a lovely visit with them in the outside gazebo with toddler, James. Afterwards, we all had a wonderful pulled pork dinner back at Mike and Nancy's.

January 29 - a travel day. Washington DC to Florence S.C.

Today was a very good day for driving. We left Alexandria pretty early and drove down I-95 to Florence - just over 400 miles. We ate in the car food we had brought, so had very few stops. The weather was excellent. We started the day at 25 degrees and were happy to arrive in Florence where it is 55 degrees. We are staying just off the highway in a La Quinta, but we drove into the town of Florence to eat at the upscale Victor's restaurant in the Hotel Florence, a lovely old renovated hotel where we stayed last year, but couldn't find a good price for this year. Anyhow, we had a lovely dinner; Mark had a filet mignon with rice, collard greens, scallops and shrimp. I had salad and tuna. We both had she-crab soup, which was new to us. It was good, but a bit too rich for us.

A sunny day in Washington, D.C. January 28

What a gorgeous sunny day.....brisk and refreshing.  We finally did hear from Nick on Nantucket.He had been without power for 16 hours.  He said he played a lot of solitare and did a lot of reading.  Today he shoveled out to go to work, but went in for only an hour when they sent him home and shut down.  The roads are still disastrous,

We first drove to Alexandria and got our pre-check approval for the TSA (a political comment: we now pay to have ourselves checked out and the government has contracted it out, which is really a shame, as, if we have to pay for this, I would rather pay it to the government than to a well connected
private company.  85 dollars gets you a card that says you are not dangerous for five years.

Then we went to the National Archives in Washington and miraculously found a parking space right in front of the archives building, and what a gran building it is too.  An archivist sat with us and we explained that we were looking for a bit of a petition taken to Washington in 1842 by Cyrus Peirce. We explained that we had found it years ago, but only got a photocopy of it which was not very clear and not really good enough for publication.  He brought us up four possible boxes of files to look through and Mark found the piece we wanted. Another man helped us get high quality copies.  There over 100 names of Nantucketers on the petition, so it was quite exciting.  It includes Absalom Boston, Eliza Barney and Harriet Peirce....very cool.

Then we went to very popular Thai restaurant on G Street "Absolutely Thai"  Delicious.  Then didalittle museum hopping..Natural Science.....National Archive, (saw the original Geneva Conventions)..and the National Gallery

January 27- a day in Arlington and Nantucket in thr throes of Juno

We started our day at the Apple Genius store in Arlington to solve some of our technical problems so that we can continue this blog and keeptrack of our photos etc,  First, i could not get the keyboard to work or connect with the ipad mini.  I think that the genius fixed the problem in less than 60 seconds,although i had worked on it for about an hour last night. Sigh.  Then we worked on the slowness of my iphoto library,  He didn't completely solve the problem, but did help a lot and helped me to consolidate my libraries.  It looks as if i will need a new computer in a year or so.

Then, we went back to the hotel for a nice homemade lunch,  Then we went to see "The Imitation Game" which is nominate for several Oscars.  We loved it. Bennedict Cumberbatch's performance is amazing.  We saw "Birdman" with Michael Keaton, also nominated for an Oscar.  we also liked it, but think that Cumberbatch is the stronger contender.

For dinner we found a good Indian take away and ate in the apartment again and worked on this blog while watching the Australian Open.

We have not heard from Nick on Nantucket since this morning, but have watched the news.  Nantucket is completely cut off and without power,  So Nick sits,,,sans heat, sans water, sans power,,,bored silly.  The storm is still raging, but we hope he'll have power before the end of the day

January 26 - Dodging Juno and Delving into the National Archives

We got up early and were on the road by 7:10. Mark drove the entire way in spitting snow. The governor of NJ already had reduced speeds to 45 mph on the turnpike, but I can't say it was adhered to. We made very good time and arrived at the National Archives #2 in College Park Maryland by 10:30.

We had never been to those archives, but what a gorgeous building and facility. We renewed our research cards and went to the fifth floor where the photos are kept, or are at least catalogued. We selected a few Civil War photos for the book that Frank Morral, Mark and I are finalizing. We had to ask for one photo from the archives of the Acushnet, an IRS boat that is

key to one of the chapters that Frank is writing. The archives only "pulls" things you request at 10, 11,1, 2, 3. So, we had to wait for the 1 o'clock pull. So, we went to their cafeteria and ate. Then, when the photos came...no Acushnet. But, with help, we located the correct file and then had to wait for the 2 o'clock pull! But, then we were successful, although getting the copier to put the file on our flash drive also took another learning curve. But, we really had fun doing it all.

Then, we went to the hotel in Arlington where we are staying, The Virginian. We stayed here years ago. It is a hotel of suites and we have a huge room with a sitting area, table, separate kitchen and large bathroom. It is great. After we settled in, we went out to a Safeway, and came home and had a wonderful dinner of roast chicken, asparagus and salad.

Meanwhile, we have watched the impending storm looming over the NorthEast. Seven states declared a state of emergency and everyone is waiting.

January 25,,,,,Newton to Newark.......fleeing Blizzard Juno

We started out in Concord with Jecca, Willy, Otis and Hank. Willy took the boys to their ski race in the morning and Jecca went to her classroom to work on her grades which she had to get done before taking off in the afternoon for Cannon Mountain with the ski team.

We all kept an eye on the predictions of superstorm, Juno, which is looming. Our plan was to go into Boston tomorrow and sleep at Ted and Bev's and take off on Tuesday morning for Washington, D.C.

I spoke at 2 o'clock at one of the Newton Historical Society's properties about Cyrus Peirce to a well-informed audience. Then, at 3:30, we took off to avoid the storm which is predicted to be historic.

We drove just over 200 miles to a Best Western at Newark Airport. The drive was not bad, although there is always traffic around NYC and we did get a wee bit confused the last half mile to the hotel. But, we settled in just in time for Downton Abbey.

January 24 - Snowy, snowy day in Concord!

On the Road with the Whites, 2015 - First to Florida, then to Costa Rica!

We left Nantucket on January 23, 2015 on the noon boat on an absolutely gorgeous, sunny day. We traveled to Norwood where we met up with great friends, Nan and Jim Leighton. We visited their apartment and then we all went for a wonderful meal in Westwood at Ciara Restaurant. Afterwards, we traveled to  Concord in time to see Otis (12) and Hank (9) before they headed off to bed.

Reflections

A month later....

This may have been our best trip ever, although that is saying a lot.  This was a well-planned trip where we had few days of feeling rushed.  We went at a great pace and the trip was full of variety including our choice of venues (cities, towns, villages, hamlets, countryside) and our choice of lodgings (friends, hotels, B & Bs, self-catering apartments).  We think we stayed in 8 hotels, 8 self-catering places and 7 B & Bs.  The cities: London, Paris, Florence, Venice, Budapest, Reykjavik.
Mark figures that we slept in 25 different beds!
We drove 3 different cars, but liked the Peugeot the best; we figured we drove upwards of 8,000 kilometers in total.
We included a lot of history and culture, art and museums.  We included a lot of nature, although we saw fewer birds than we had anticipated, especially in Croatia, but we saw more than we expected in Iceland. We strolled a lot!
We made an effort to meet the people in the countries and found the B & Bs the most effective in that as we met so many nice people both as guests and hosts.
The trip was relatively inexpensive and we worried less about money on this trip than previous ones.  This was partly because we pre-paid quite a lot of it, including the airfare, deposits on the self-catering places and the car in France.  We ate at "home" fairly often and did not overspend on restaurants. 
Next time we will figure out how to use our smart phones and we will figure out how to take our own GPS system and not pay the extra fee to have one in the cars we rent.
Neither of us gained weight on the trip, even though we did not deprive ourselves of local food specialties. We ate a lot of baguettes and brie!  We think it was due to how much we walked and the lack of snacking. We did not sit around, watch tv and eat!
Our packing was excellent.  I think we both wore everything that we packed and, even though we did not have many clothes, we both probably could have cut down a bit more.  The 3-in-1 jackets from LL Bean were just right.  I am really glad that I packed my thin long underwear! 
The guides on our computers were great and saved a lot of space from the days when we lugged them around.  Rick Steves was, by far, the best that we used.  We also found Trip Advisor pretty good, especially for restaurants.  And, we found local websites very helpful.
As to the length of the trip, we both found it about right.  We thought that I would be ready to get home earlier than Mark, but we had such a relaxing and great time, that it was not the case. 
People ask us about the highlights or what was our "favorite" place and, we can honestly say that the entire trip and every country were almost equally wonderful.  Neither of us expected to like Venice as much as we did and credit that to the wandering we did and the vaporetto pass that allowed us to explore the nooks and crannies. 

And...a wonderful last day! May 24

We woke to rain today.  But, it was not windy or particularly cold, probably in the 50s F.  We packed, cleaned the little studio and walked into and around Reykjavik.  We had hoped to go birding for several but the weather was not on our side.  So, we went for lunch at the Fish Company.  And, we may have had the best meal of the entire trip!  Just by accident, really.  It is in an underground cave like room.  Mark had been wanting lamb while we were in Iceland and he finally got some.  It is against the law to administer antibiotics to farm animals and all is grass fed.  So, he had an amazing roast lamb, but it was the accompaniments that were so good and creative...parsnip foam, kale and squash purée...  I had bluelink an Icelandic fish. It was very mild, but, again, it was what it came with, including kale, barley and...who knows what.  All delicious.  Bread with three spreads were included - dill butter, yogurty butter and a red pepper, chile jam.  We split a fish soup first with coconut milk, scallops, lobster, lemongrass and mushrooms.  The waitress was awesome and wrote down the ingredients for my meal, which was the fish of the day, which was very nice of her.  We were very pleased with our last lunch on this trip, endless to say.

Then, we did a little bit of birding in the spitting rain in Hafnir, a little village on the coast.  Less than 200 people.  We did not see many birds close up, but did see some eider, some whimbrels  in the fields, and arctic terns.

Then we returned the car and went to the airport which was rather crowded with four flights leaving within a ten minute span.  We felt really glad we had been outside birding and had had such a great lunch.  As usual, we spent all our last coins...mostly on candy for our family this time.

The flight was uneventful and overcast, but smooth.  It was our fourth flight on the 757 called Eyjfallajokull.  Each time, we had an aisle seat and a window seat as the woman who booked us said that we'd have a good chance of an empty middle seat.  On the previous three flights that had not happened, but on this, our longest flight of our trip, we lucked out and had three seats to ourselves which was nice.  And, I was very happy to have my Ikea pillow to sit upon.  I watched Skyfall, a James Bond movie and The Bucket List with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson.  It passed the time.

We had a long wait for a train to Concord at North Station which was a bit of a drag. So, after landing, it took an extra three hours to get to Jecca and Willy's and we were really glad to be home.