Peach Festival

Our home town before moving to Costa Rica was Lafayette. It’s about a 20 minutes drive East of Boulder. Every year they have two fun festivals; Oatmeal Festival in January and then Peach Festival in August. We were very excited to attend as we missed last year’s due to scoping out where we were going to move to in Costa Rica. This years was even bigger than two years ago. More art, food, games for kids, live music, and of course peaches!

It was a hot sunny afternoon so we drove with the windows down and listened to Jim’s new “Indie Mix.” (I love that he’s getting more into music I like. Hahaha.)

When we first started walking we were excited to see The Styria Bakery stand. Styria is the part of Austria where my sister-in-law and her husband got married just last month.

So many people! Our first stop was to get Jim some peach cobbler (which he shared a bite with me) and then walked around. We got there late in the day so many of the food vendors were running out of food so i missed out on falafel. Oh well.

They had rides for kids too, which they didn’t have a couple years ago. After walking up and down Public Road checking out all the options and comparing the prices of peaches I decided I needed some roasted corn. We got some and found a nice shady spot in the grass.

Jim put some spicy stuff on his.

I loaded up on pepper (or course) and a little salt.

Happy to have eaten such juicy sweet corn!

We went back to the peach vendor we liked and got a large sack of peaches (some of which we’ll eat right away) and others we’ll freeze before heading to my good friend Coleen’s wedding this week. The stand we chose was local and organic and also had the cutest shirts that said “Don’t squeeze the peaches.”

We then headed over to our friends Kate and Sita’s house. They bought a place in Lafayette just as we were moving back to CO. We now live in Kate’s old place in Boulder. I was SO excited to check out their garden. Kate built the beds!

They have all kinds of goodies growing including tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, carrots, beets, chard, and melon!

Kate and Jim used to work together at HP and are super fond of each other. Scratch that, we’re all fond of each other!

It was nice to relax, eat a little (I brought a veggie and bean quinoa pilaf), and chat with people. They have such nice friends and family.

While sitting there an old war plane flew overhead. I had such a fun time watching some boys at the party play together. Remember when it didn’t take much for us to be entertained, all we needed was to be outside? These boys reminded me of the simple joys of life and the never ending curiosity and wonder that’s inside us all.

Now, did you notice that I forgot to take photos of both the peach cobbler that Jim ate and the sack full of peaches we bought?! I know, it doesn’t seem like much of a Peach Festival without the photos, but trust me, peaches were the focal point.

How Many Cars Did We Drive in Costa Rica?

Between arriving in Costa Rica on September 17th and leaving April 22nd we drove a few vehicles.

First was our Mitsubishi rental car…

Which needed it’s battery changed before we could take it off the rental car lot.

We had hoped to find a car within a week and although we did, there were many hoops to jump through before we could get it. Some of the hoops were getting in touch with the owner, how to pay for the car when our cashier’s check wasn’t accepted by the bank (Oh, Costa Rica), getting a few things fixed on the car, as well as having the right papers (everything is done through lawyers there) and getting it to pass the required inspections.

We didn’t want to keep our rental but needed a car. Thankfully our new friend Jason (who helped us find our place) lent us his car while he was away in California for ten days (at a cheaper price than the rental car). We drove our rental back to San Jose, stopping to eat at a Middle Eastern restaurant that we love, before returning it and taking a bus back to Jaco, where we got the car from Jason.

Like most cars in Costa Rica, Jason’s had it’s quirks. Of course it did not have any AC.  The windows would stick so you’d have to help them up and down. The driver’s window was so bad that you could break into the car just by pushing the window down from the outside. During a parade in Jaco one day Jason saw a guy walking down the road with flip flops, sunglasses, and a towel similar to his. The more he thought about it the more it was clear the guy had stolen his stuff out of his car. Luckily Jason just had to approach him and ask for his stuff back, but the guy had clearly seen him struggle with his broken window previously.

The greatest thing about Jason’s car was that we could fit a surfboard in it. It didn’t have racks to put the board on top, but it fit inside nicely. This allowed us to not only pick up the long board that Jim borrowed from a friend while he looked for one to purchase, but also allowed us to take it to and from Jaco when he’s surfed with friends there.

Jason got back to Costa Rica, but we were still in the process of waiting for everything to come together in order to buy our car and then the car had to get some things fixed immediately. Thankfully our friends Noah and Erik came into town and let us use their van when we needed to go into town. (They drove from Colorado to the tip of Argentina. To read about their adventures and see incredible pictures check out Noah’s blog or Erik’s.)

Then we had another rental while our car was in the shop with Eduardo (the first of a few times). Eduardo was hysterical, he was all about the fist bump and loved Coca Cola. I learned a lot about cars from him, which is funny because I don’t speak much Spanish and he doesn’t speak much English. Thank goodness for universal gestures/sign language.

Then we finally got Esteban, which Jim named and because of it refuses to name another car again. (You’ll understand why soon enough.) We we thankful to find a Toyota we could afford as cars are twice as expensive in Costa Rica as they are in the US because of an outrageously high importation tax. In full disclosure we had set aside about $5-6k for a car, but thought we were getting a deal on Esteban at a price of $2,600. Esteban was a 1987 4-runner (AKA old enough to drink).

Esteban has some “character” as my dad would put it. Here is the rusted wire hanger “antennae,” though the stereo didn’t work though.

The 1987 4-Runners only have two doors. The passenger-side door, as you can see, was missing the electrical needed for the window (meaning the driver had to open the window for the passenger every time) and the buttons.

The passenger-door also had two handles, just in case your sitting the the back seat and either no one is sitting in front of you (and you’re making the driver drive you around like a taxi driver) or the person who’s sitting in the passenger seat gets out and closes the door on you.

Esteban did have those sweet window visors which really helps us get air (we didn’t have AC) when it was raining.

The window on the back door started sliding down as we’d drive. This wasn’t always fixed by just pressing the window’s buttons or pulling over, opening and closing the door. It became unbearable when my mother-in-law came to visit, and it went down and stayed down while we were driving into town, with me sitting the the back. The exhaust was horrific. Thankfully she was willing to rent a car during her stay (and even let us hold onto it a few days longer) while Esteban went into the shop to see Eduardo for the second time. The issue was that the window wasn’t the original and had been replaced with one that had belonged to a whole different kind of car. Eduardo did his best to “fix” it.

The issue continued and we brought Esteban back to Eduardo and had him replace the back door with a whole “new” door of another 1987 4-Runner. Oh Costa Rica!

So Esteban was in decent working order for a bit. We drove to and from Jaco and to places for Jim to surf and me to walk for hours. Esteban then started to act up a bit. We’d be driving in the lower gears and the car would shut off, but we’d be able to just start the car again and we’d go on our way. We were going to take it into see Eduardo again, but then on the way into Jaco with a friend of mine it started making some funny noises, it did it’s usual shut off, the car started to smell, and it wouldn’t start back up. We hitchhiked back to the “village” Jim and I lived, found Jim on his way home from surfing and sent him with one of the keeper of the grounds of our community, Marcos, to go tow it to a mechanic Marcos and many of the people we knew recommended.

When we went back a few days later with our new friends and visitors from Boulder, Gwen and Joel (their car not shown) we were surprised to find Esteban’s guts all over the place.

Some were in the trunk.

Few were under the hood.

And more were  on the ground.

The repairs were cost prohibitive, so we made an agreement to sell the car to Dennis for a couple grand for parts, though he actually fixed it and sold the car to someone in San Jose.

So we needed to find another car (maybe even a long term rental) but in the meantime we got a short term rental car (read expensive). This little hatchback was great. We could fit Jim’s surf board inside and ride comfortably.

It was great until the bumper fell off. Seriously, it just fell the fuck off while we were driving in down the main drag in Jaco.

After creating a mini scene at the rental car place and Jim being all patient we got a replacement rental car.

We started looking for cars to buy or even rent long term. We took a trip with our friend Surfer Mike to the central valley to look at cars, but nothing was in our price range (which was low as we had already spent so much money on cars).  We also needed to get our money from Dennis for Esteban. We probably visited Dennis over two dozen times before we actually got the money. Oh Tico Time!

Here’s Jim cleaning out the last of our belongings out of Esteban, with the radiator in the cab.

While we were waiting (which you tend to do a lot of when trying to get things done in Costa Rica) we returned out rental and took a trip with our friend Raeann to Nosara. Here is a view out the back of her car as we drove through a river.

While in Nosara we rode in our hosts’ car a couple times (one of which we had to stop and fix a tire in the dark) and also rode in their golf cart.

When we got back we got a mini rental. Thank goodness Jim’s board fit on top.

Finally after months of car issues, we found a guy who was renting his car long term out of San Jose. We drove the mini car there and then we each drove back. I must say that learning to drive stick shift and feel confident driving around San Jose were the best things that came out of all of our car troubles. Here’s our long term rental:

Two things that needed to be done soon after getting our long term rental was get the breaks replaced, including the parking break, and take it for it’s emissions test. Dennis did the work on the breaks and during that time lent us his car. This is the type of car we probably should have gone for in the beginning, rather than be enchanted with the Toyota brand. We were warned about buying a car by the beach as the elements do a number on cars. As you know though, we didn’t listen. Next time! Neat thing about this car of Dennis’ is that the speedometer didn’t work.

Here are the worthless brake pads:

All in all our long term rental served us well. Just before leaving Jim found an email from just before we moved down to Costa Rica and it was to the owner of the long term rental about the same car. In the email it was for sale. If we had bought it, we would have saved thousands of dollars. Oh well!

Before driving the car back to San Jose to return it to the owner, we had the car washed. The young guy who did the bulk of the cleaning hit on me, in Spanish of course. I told him I was married and showed him my ring. When Jim showed up he asked his he was my father because of his beard. Cheeky kid.

Here’s an entertaining sign at the Lava Car Wash:

While I was waiting I noticed that another car there had the standard Jesus sticker on it:

While in San Jose, before we dropped off the long term rental to its owner (who was a real character) we picked up our last rental car of our stay:

So we drove a lot of cars. Four of which our visitors rented and we got to drive. Let’s see, that adds up to 18 cars we rode/drove in more than once (that I can count/remember). All of them were a financial investment because at the very least we paid for gas. This does not include cabs or buses we took either.

Clearly we learned some great lessons. Some of which are: Cars in Costa Rica cost more than in the U.S. due to outrageously high importation tax, don’t buy a car by the beach as they won’t last long due to the damage the elements have done to them, don’t be enchanted by brand names you know, don’t buy a car that is old enough to drink, don’t try to save money on a fix-er-up car, plan to spend $4k+ on a car, and if you have a bad feeling in your guy about the seller don’t buy from them. There are many more lessons, but I think I could go on for a while.

So when people say, “Seven months? But I thought you were going to stay longer?” My response is, “We thought so too.”

The Garden Along Our Place

There is a small garden area off the side of our place. Three of our windows look out to it. It was so covered with weeds that after pulling all the weeds, tilling, and planting, our landlord’s wife asked if we had put up the winding stone barrier to contain the garden. She’s really quite thrilled that we planting there as well as in all the pots she gave us. The dirt along the house isn’t very good. Even after after 1 bag of top soil, 1 bag of compost, some organic clay buster, and adding some manure, it’s just not that great. In hindsight more topsoil and compost should have been added. I guess there is always next year. But before we give up, check out what we did…

My buff handsome hubby tilling.

Here is part of the tilled garden, hens and chicks succulents, and irises.

Aren’t they so lovely?!

Dirt ready for planing seeds (with leftover plastic spoons from our BBQ as labels), seeds and raspberry bushes from Marissa, more seeds from Kate and Sita, and my trowel (Jim is adamant that it’s not a shovel).

What a perfect way to give away seeds!

Aren’t they so lovely? Each type looked so different from the others.

After both the community garden and our home garden planted Jim and I enjoyed the lovely weather. Check out some of the pots:

Everything is looking much more vibrant than when I last took the photos, but I wanted to document the early stages. About a week after planting the seeds some of the radishes started to poke up (see below). The arugula, kale, squash, and peas are looking good too, but the beets, romaine and spinach haven’t appeared. Maybe they won’t. I’m not too worried as I’ve got all of those things growing in the community garden. Sadly, the raspberry bushes didn’t make it. The weather has been too chilly and they just couldn’t take it. I am sad about this as they were transplants from Marissa’s garden and I also love raspberries. Along with the veggies, we bought some and then were also gifted some flower seeds. They have been dispersed throughout our home garden and many are starting to appear! More photos later!

Triple Whammy Party

Within a few days of each other Jim celebrated an anniversary, I turned 27, and we moved into our new place. It was the perfect occasion for a party. Luckily the weather was beautiful so we grilled and ate lots of other great food (lots of vegan options)! It was so fun to catch up with friends and just enjoy spring. (As a side note: for the first time I feel weird about getting older.)

Delicious salad made by SimJam.

Of course our friends didn’t start showing up until 30 minutes after we said we’d start grilling.

I love Marc, and I appreciate his interest in being the grill master, because after the veggies were done I didn’t want anything to do with the grill. Some people have to have their meat.

Rick making burgers. Poor guy, I threatened him not to get his meat hands on any of my stuff.

Annabel gave us the coolest glass platter that is perfect for our coffee table as a housewarming gift. It’s so colorful! She also gave me the sweetest silver friendship necklace for my birthday. (I’m wearing it in the photos). Funny thing was that the weekend before we were at her housewarming party, though she actually bought a house. I had the most incredible experience with her while helping her shop for her party. With out all the details, I found out that her mother (who passed away last year from brain cancer) was the most influential woman in my life (other than my own mother) in terms of instilling a passion for food within me. This revelation lead me to drop all my self-doubt about pursuing a career in food (and both of us crying in the middle of Super Target). It was beyond incredible. Here’s a photo of us at her party:

Here are some of my friends forgetting that they are white and live in Boulder, therefore negating any toughness they may have.

My friend Gabe became a vegan while we were in Costa Rica! Love this rascal.

Natalie looking oh so summery. She brought us a flowering violet orchid that reminds me of Costa Rica.

So great that Adam came up from Denver. Wish he’d move back to the bubble!

This became the “smoking section.”

Lita and Sasha both went crazy when they saw Marissa. She and her husband Jeff used to watch the girls for us when we’d go away. Even though they hadn’t seen each other in 8 months the girls remembered and greeted her with exuberance.

Lisa (on the left) has been my biggest mentor and hero since we met almost nine years ago. She and Ashley are gems.

Marissa kindly asked me what seeds I’d like to have as a housewarming gift to plant in our gardens. Isn’t she the cutest?!

Baby Eliza is the cutest chunk of a baby you’ll ever see. She’s so social and smiley. Alisha gave us a gorgeous blue hydrangea plant that reminds me of Costa Rica.

Kate, used to work with Jim at HP and also used to live in our place. (She and Sita just bought a place in Lafayette.) We were thrilled to get in touch with the landlord before they had started advertising.

Natalie, Kurt, and Cecilia are our next door neighbors (and rock). Cecilia loves Sasha and Lita. It was great that Kate and Sita came from Lafayette as we didn’t get to chat with them much at their housewarming party the week before. Fun for them to be able to see the work that was done on the place and Kate’s old neighbors and friends.

This didn’t last long as most people were more interested in going to play frisbee golf.

It was such a fun party, with lots of great friends, food, and lovely weather. It’s times like these when it’s nice to be back in Boulder and I don’t miss the beach in Costa Rica so much.

The Community Garden

Our friends Heidi and Noah petitioned to their HOA to build a community garden. It passed and they/we built one. Not many people were interested in it so we were granted a generous amount of space. The sides of the raised beds and the door are made of old fencing that their HOA replaced, the soil and rebar came from Heidi and her connections with the Broadway construction project (she had a buddy dump the dirt over the fence, and some of the fencing was donated too. Noah and another guy along with Jim’s help did most of the work. Then, between Noah and Heidi and Jim and I, we got a bunch of bags of top soil and compost and Noah got some llama manure. Before adding all those goodies to the dirt, we sifted all the large rock out of the dirt with a giant sift Noah made. The soil is awesome!

The Boulder Community Gardens had a plant sale a few weekends in a row and Noah, Heidi, Jim and I went wild and purchased a ton of plants and seeds. It was way too cold for a couple weeks after getting the plants so they had to stay inside. (It has snowed 6 times since we got back at the end of April!) When it got warm enough we planted. Most of our plants and seeds went to the community garden, but the herbs and edible flowers were planted in pots at our place. We’ve also planted some more seeds at out place. I see the whole thing as being a massive science experiment on growing and sustainability. I planted a tea garden at the preschool I used to work at, have had potted flowers, tended to the preschool’s garden, and planted lilies last year at our old house (which have grown back this year!) but other than that I haven’t had a proper garden since I was a kid (and that was really my mom’s garden). I’ve been so impressed by the generosity and hard work of our friends. It’s fun to be apart of something you do as a group, each of us checking on the garden to see if things need to be watered, pruning, weeding, and replanting when critters have dug things up. It really turned out to be an awesome garden.

These first photos were taken a few days after planting. Jim and I love riding our bikes there when it’s warm.

Two weeks after planting we stopped by the same time our friends Noah and Heidi did. They had planted a week earlier but our seeds had started to sprout too!

Three and a half weeks after planting we were delighted to find that our tomato plants were bearing fruit and our cucumber and yellow squash seeds were sprouting (which we had only planted a week before)! The rest of the plants really burst with life.

Jim and I went again today to check on them and even with cold temperatures and 3 days of rain everything looks great. I’ve been educating myself on how to care for plants, esp. pruning and harvesting. It’s quite fun. One of our spinach plants is ready for it’s first harvest!

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