The Rasta Rodeo and Puerto Viejo

The Rasta Rodeo and Puerto Viejo



Our schedule here is a bit open. Most days, Chad works in the morning until lunch time, while I do some grocery shopping, work on homework with the kids, and we explore Puerto Viejo a bit. This is a laid back town, where most tourists are surfers or hippies, many of whom, it seems never go home, and end up opening a bed and breakfast type hotel / hostel, specializing in their native language and a little spanish. There are quite a few Italian, Argentine, and Spanish restaurants, and many German hotels.  When people ask us where we are from, they seem to genuinely want to know... like it is not immediately obvious that we are Americans.  It's nice.  This past Saturday we were out on a drive to explore around a bit, and we stumbled upon a strange sight.  There were heaps and heaps of locals gathered together dressed in cowboy hats, and many of them had horses with them.  Their cowboy attire mixed with their normal rasta wears was an interesting mix. We decided that whatever was going on, if it was good enough for the locals, we had better investigate.  I snapped some photos as we weaved through hundreds of people, seemingly dressed up for the occasion, dozens of food carts and vendors, and hundreds of horses, all on a small street that backed up to the beach.  Then, as if in practice, we noticed some of the horses begin to do a strange kind of dance.  The riders would whip them a bit, or nudge them or whatever, and the horses would trot around,  kindof flexing and pointing their horse feet.  I don't know how anyone would ever explain this rationally. We asked one of the other spectators, and they told us that people come from all over Costa Rica to compete to see which horse can dance the best.  The winner gets some sort of prize.  A few minutes later, they all lined up and rode their horses about a mile along the beach towards the center of town. Many of the horses danced along the way. We stayed on the beach and didn't watch the contest, but it was a crazy procession to stumble upon.

Chad hard at work in his "office".

Our front gate.

The little lounge at the hotel near our house.

The main street in Puerto Viejo.  It gets a bit wild here at night, especially on the weekends.  We can often hear dance music in the distance.  One night when we were driving down main street on our way home from the beach we saw two men having a machete fight.  I've never seen that in South Jordan.

A nice lady asking for donations outside one of the markets in town. 

This is the beach that runs alongside the main street. Half of it is regular sand color, the other half is black sand. 

A "pipas" (coconut water) vendor protecting his ankles from one of the many stray dogs.

An Australianish restaurant, "Outback Jacks"

Out for lunch at one of the local "sodas". Most restaurants offer "casados" or quick plates with a meat and rice and beans and sometimes plantains and a salad.

The Rasta Rodeo

Many of the horses manes were trimmed short like this...

 Michael's reaction....

 The procession down the beach towards Puerto Viejo

The horse dance. 

  

Here's a little video of the horses dancing:

This week Michael spent a lot of time in the waves learning how to boogie board. He loves it, and is getting better at it every day.  He also learned how to snorkel, and we were able to see some fish, lots of urchins, and a wiry starfish on our first time out.  Ella is enjoying learning letter sounds and is starting to sound out words.  We practice wherever we are... the sand makes for an excellent chalkboard.  Violet likes the boogie board too, as well as playing in the sand, and eating new foods.  She loves calamri.  

Land crabs like this one live in holes around our house. Their bodies are about as big around as a softball.

Big banana leaf that we used for dinner one night. We cooked red snapper in it. It was fun, but needs a little perfecting.

Our little outside table where we eat most meals. We have to clean up after ourselves pretty well or else we are invaded with ants the next day. 

Obligatory beach pics...

Beaches, church, and the loudest sound in the whole world. Ever.

Beaches, church, and the loudest sound in the whole world. Ever.

After driving 2 hours in search of the church in Limon, we did find it and a few sweet people. Zoibeida and her daughter and grandson were teaching Primary.  They only had 1 student, Britani, so when we showed up with three kids who were too shy to stay in Primary alone, we more than doubled their class size.  Two other kids came later on, but it was a big change from our Primary group in South Jordan.  Since my kids don't speak Spanish (yet), and Zoibeida doesn't speak English, I tried to translate the short lesson.  I'm pretty sure I butchered it.  My Spanish has gotten pretty weak and lazy over the past 9 1/2 years since I got home from my Spanish-speaking mission in Texas. In general, I can communicate, but it is far from fluid, and the locals have had to exercise extreme paciencia conmigo.  Zoibeida thought my accent was funny, and asked me where I had learned Spanish.  I'm sure my mix of Utahn, Texan, El Salvadoranian, and Mexican (with a little Dominican and Gutemalan mixed in), is pretty strange to listen to.  She and the other few branch members were very kind and inviting, despite my accent, and asked us to stay after church for cake for one of the Young Women.  It was delicious.  I broke my gluten/dairy/sugar free diet in an effort at gratitude and good manners.  It was very worth it.

We stopped at Cahuita National Park on our way home from church to have a picnic lunch and play in the ocean.  We had taken the kids to another beach just the day before.  It was Violet's first time seeing the ocean and she loved it!  She was fearless, as always, and leapt into waves taller than she is, and came up with a smile on her face.  It's very scary. She lacks a healthy amount of fear of things like oceans, or big dogs, or drowning, that seem like they would be helpful to a 2 1/2 year old.   Aside from the drowning threat, the ocean is a great way to keep my kids entertained for hours and ensure that they will be very tired that night.  How do we not have an ocean in Utah? It would be my best babysitter ever. Cahuita is beautiful and captivated the kids instantly. It wasn't until I yelled "Monkey"  that they got out of the water.  A little White-face Capuchin monkey had appeared in the trees above our beach towels.  He was not the least bit afraid of us... even with Violet shrieking with delight he came very close to us for maybe 5 minutes.  Then he made his way down the beach, and my kids made their way back into the water.   Only a few minutes later they came running ashore again when I yelled "Raccoon!"  The kids arrived just in time to see the bold thief running away with our cookies. I thought our afternoon couldn't be topped.  A monkey AND a raccoon... hard to beat. However, as we walked along the jungle path towards our car, the girls strutting in their ocean-wet underwear that we told them looked like swimming suits, we were stopped by a guide who showed us a couple of "Lazy Bears" high in the trees.  The 3 toed sloths were impossible for Violet to see, and Ella only saw shadowy blobs, but Michael was able to point them out to me, as so many other tourists passed by unaware.  It was a trip home from church that shall not soon be equaled.
 

Sleeping here in our little Jungle house is a bit tricky.  The jungle is quite noisy at night.  Frogs and bugs and birds and who-knows-what-else sing and croak all night long. Often the dogs bark... there are dogs EVERYWHERE in Puerto Viejo. Occasionally the sky opens up and pours an unearthly amount of rain down on our metal roof... I mean heaps and heaps of water... it is ridiculously loud.  But none of that compares to the loudest sound in the whole world ever.  Try to imagine a lion and a grizzly bear attempting to imitate the sound of a rooster, into a microphone.  And not a cute cartoon grizzly-bear-lion, but a real, terrifying, king of the jungle and/or Rockies, grizzly-bear-lion.  Anyway, if you can imagine that at 4am right outside your bedroom window, that is the sound of a male Howler Monkey, and that has been my alarm clock for the past 4 mornings. And let me also say that it is awesome once you realize you are not in immediate physical jeopardy. The first morning that I heard it, I was honestly scared.  I'm talking a lot of volume. I didn't think it could be a monkey making that racket.  But when I googled it and found out what it was, I was pretty stoked.  As soon as the sun came up enough for me to see out my bedroom window, I could see 10 or so Howler monkeys in the trees right behind our Jungle House. I woke up Chad and then Michael, and we sat there watching and trying to take pics of the monkeys for an hour and a half until the girls woke up.  It was fantastic.  The pics don't do it justice, of course, but it will give you an idea of the view from our front porch at around 5 am. Amazing. We did snap a few shots of a mama monkey with a baby on her back which was really awesome.

This is the mom with the baby sitting just to her right, holding on to her back.

Mama and baby again.

A pretty bird.

And to top it all off, last night Chad and I saw a kinkajou climb up onto our roof just off the porch we were sitting on.  We think one of the dogs that lives here scared it.  Seriously, it's like we are living in the middle of an amazing zoo.  We love it.  Here are a few pics of my cute kids and some of the other stuff we've been up to. 

Painted Tree at the CATIE Environment Education center.

Cannonball tree

Seriously, there are dogs everywhere. Violet loves every one of them.

Tide pools at the beach near Rocking Jays.

Violet carried around her poor hermit crab for far too long.  She couldn't figure out why it wouldn't come out of its shell while she was holding it.

From the Jaguar Animal Rescue Center:

A kinkajou :)

A giant beetle on a slice of watermelon

This baby anteater was my favorite animal at the Rescue Center. Sooooo cute.

Feeding the awesome Spider Monkey. We were also able to pet a small Howler Monkey and see what they look like up close. The guide explained that each group has only 1 adult male, and the other adults are all females.

Who knew there were deer in Costa Rica too?

We stopped to turn around near the Jaguar Rescue center, and found hundreds of these freakish fellows in webs that stretched from the ground up to the power lines above our heads.  The larger ones were 5 or 6 inches long (including the legs).

Working on homework before we can go out on another adventure.  Michael's teacher sent his math homework so that we can keep up while we are gone. Ella is really close to being ready to read. She loves working in her Kindergarten workbook. Violet tries to ruin everything that anyone else is doing. But she usually does it with a nice smile on her face.