Costa Rica Mornings

It has been a while since I posted and it is fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. I was on vacation and decided to be on vacation from computers too, which was the fortunate part. What a holiday it was, not to be checking emails and sitting and staring at a computer screen all day. Even though I had some good advice (from both Sarah Hamlin, and my Mom), to keep a journal during my trip and then transfer over my journal entries, I didn't (and that would be the unfortunate part).

But, I am hoping that my short term memory (jeeze, it was only a week ago, come on!) will prove itself and I can write about our time in Costa Rica clearly, from memory. I have decided to enter my Costa Rica entries in posts depending on the time of day and will start with the earliest time of day; mornings.

Mornings in Costa Rica were warm, but not hot, hence why the sheet on our bed would be pulled up to our necks most mornings. The fan would be on constantly on in our big open concept apartment and help with the morning chill that, yes, you can even have in the tropics. Jon would spoon me for a little, and then start with the "UP", "UP" that he likes to yell out in a loud voice to indicate that he is ready for me to wake up, which he knows pisses me off :)

A few mornings I was woken quite early by howler monkey's, there bark so loud and scary sounding, that it would make me quite alert. They sound like elephants in fact, but they are only the size of fat cats up in the trees. Although they are vicious little guy's supposedly. This sometimes was on my mind when we passed them up in the trees near the surf shop and restaurant, but mainly they were high up and cool to watch eat leaves and howl at eachother...but anyways back to the morning...

Jon would usually be the one to skip up to the kitchen and either pull out an almond bar protein ball from the fridge (which I picked up at the health food store before I left) or make us a smoothie with banana and pineapple. We would sit up in bed, eat and forecast what we thought the waves might be doing. Sometimes (especially when high tide) we could here the waves clearly from the house, but sometimes not so much.

After the little breaky Jon would head out of bed and get the boards outside ready for a morning wax. I would hit the washroom, brush my teeth and throw on my bikini top or a tank top and a skirt of some kind, and my flip flops. Then I put my damp rash guard and bottoms in a plastic bag and pretty much from there we would grab our boards and walk down to the beach.

Let me tell you, this was not a 5 minute walk to the beach - it was more like 12 minutes and doing it like 6 times a day would get a little sore on the legs (of course, that could have been the surfing or the tiredness that comes from walking in the shallow waters to get out past the beach break in low tide - but I will explain that in another post sometimes). The walk in the morning's was usually quite silent, we might talk a little about the people we would pass, which were not many...say hi to Juan at the surf shop and maybe Sue at the restaurant. Usually though, we wouldn't stop at all and try to make it to the beach and in the water as early as possible to avoid the morning crowds.

We would pass beautiful flowers on the morning walk. The most memorable were bright blue flowers on a vine along the road side and tons of yellow flowers on the beach side in the meadows. The flowers would be bright and plentiful, but disappear entirely after noon. Morning glory flowers, I suppose.

Most mornings we were in the warm water by 7am and the heat would start up (my chill would be gone), the sun would be bright and the surroundings would be stunning. I would feel energized and fresh and we would want to stay in the water until the crowds thickened and our stomachs growled. This would be around 8:30 or so. On our walk home from the beach we would discuss our best waves, talk about the folks we were surfing around ("uncle fucker", "Ben Kingsley on a longboard", and the "guy in the blue rashgaurd", as examples). Mostly on our walk though, we would plan our big breakfast and make sure we had what we needed. If not, we would come home, shower and quickly head out to the local store. We would pick up the missing ingredients and by then, starved, we would rush home and cook up our feast.

We would almost always have scrambled eggs cooked with onion, garlic, tomatoes and accompanied with black beans, white rice - which would usually be made into a "ginto pinto" (local Central American rice and bean dish, flavored with salsa and onions and garlic). We would serve this with warmed tortilla's from the frying pan, local salsa (hot sauce really), coffee and tea. This breakfast would make us very happy and afterwards we would sit around, digest, chat with Benny if he was around, and/or flip through our novels, magazines or local English newspaper of the area (made for the Americans living there).

Often after breakfast, sitting outside on one of the patio's where we would be eating (either our downstairs patio deck or Ben and Sue's upstairs patio deck) we would just stare out at the vegetation and point out to each other how big and different the tree's were, how beautiful the colours were on the flowers and plants (well, usually I was pointing that out to Jon, he is a lovely man, but not that perceptive:)) We watch the cool red squirrel's in the tree's or the Pisotto's (a funny looking half ant-eater, half raccoon looking thing) in the neighbors yard (they fed them, we think) or just watch the local Costa Rican butterflies cruise by.

Morning's in Costa Rica were very peaceful, somewhat surreal and extremely interesting to take in. They were by far, my most favourite time of day.