Week 9: Getting Mail, John’s First Game, and Flooding

We have been asked what our “address” in Costa Rica is; well, we really don’t have one! Technically, this is what it is: “one mile south of the Huacas intersection, across from Scott Furniture, Huacas, Guanacaste”. There are no numbers here and rarely any street signs. We do not receive mail here, and when I went to the post office to get a P.O. Box, they said they were all full. We decided to have people directly mail items to the post office in our name and go in occasionally and ask if there is any mail for us. Joe and Shelby had to send us a small package that contained a TI-84 Calculator that Ray needed for his Algebra class (the school didn’t tell us he would be advanced to Algebra until the school year started). While they were at it they also included some things we forgot at home like fishing lures, sunglasses, etc. The package weighed about 4 pounds and cost them $60 to send to us. After a few days I went to the local post office to see if it had arrived. They told me that the package was intercepted and sent to a different city almost 3 hours away to go through another “customs” process! Apparently this is a random process. I finally took the time last Monday to go and get it (if they have to hold it longer than 30 days they get rid of it). I brought our trusted friend and local, Edgar, with me just in case I should run into any problems (not to mention the fact I would not want to break down on the side of the road by myself in the middle of a foreign country). Once we arrived at the customs office (after 3 hours of driving) it took another 2 1/2 hours to get our package with only about 10 people in line before us! Fortunately everything was still in the package (they have to open it right there in front of you and go through all of the contents) and we were only charged a “tax” of $10. The people in front of us had ordered a small part for their golf cart that cost them $270 and they were taxed an additional $135! Yikes.

One thing that made our trip a bit longer is the continued strikes. Unfortunately the government and the unions here cannot agree upon how to fix their financial problems and deficits.

John’s first soccer game:

John has not has his first official soccer game with his own team yet, but was asked to play a game with the older 6th and 7th grade team. They played a local school and the game was considered a “JV” game. He ended up playing 7th and 8th graders, and although he was small, he did a good job keeping up with the big kids. They lost 7-0, but played a tough game. In reality, Ray and his 8th grade teammates should have been playing this team, but they were moved up to the Varsity team. We’ll see how John’s younger team does when playing against their own age.

Flooding:

We are in the rainy season and have finally felt it! It has rained nearly every day for the past week and then on Thursday evening it started to rain and continued to downpour throughout the evening. We believe that the rain exceeded 12 inches as we had a plastic pitcher outside that was overflowing by morning. The rain washed out some roads and bridges and downed some large trees. Due to these events, school was canceled. Kind of like a “snow day” in Costa Rica! One issue is that the boys’ school is located down a long dirt road and the bridge to the school was washed out. Mark was ecstatic as he got a day off of teaching; I was a bit bummed because I had a sub job lined up and was looking forward to it. We have been told that the rainy season last year was ten times worse with occurances like this happening daily, including mudslides.

We made a visit to the beach in the evening after all of the rain had stopped just to check it out!

Other interesting notes:

There is an illegal activity here where people try to steal the wood from the protected Cocobolo tree. This wood is illegally harvested and turned into furniture for top dollar. Our friends had “visitors” last week who cut down their largest Cocobolo tree in hopes to steal it off of their land. They were called in the middle of the night by someone who lives on the property (the grandfather purchased about 1000 acres of land 20+ years ago) and called the police. They stayed the night protecting the tree (below). They are waiting for the people to return for the tree in hopes of catching them and arresting them. Otherwise, the case will go to court and the judge will have to grant the owners the right to be able to take this tree off of the property and use it at their discretion.
The other night our landlord had us over to his house which is about 1 mile from where we live. It is unreal! He lives on the top of a large hill/mountain that overlooks the town, ocean, and surrounding areas. It is like he (and his wife and dog!) live in the clouds. We had to drive a winding dirt road almost a half mile up to get there. It is like something you would see on House Hunters International; the picture doesn’t do it justice (and yes, that is an infinity pool looking over the edge)! We told him we would be happy to dog-sit if they ever have to leave town 🙂