BootsnAll Travel Network



Waiting for the X-Ray

When we started writing our blog we wanted to have 2 to 3 entries every week. In the past the problem wasn’t lack of ideas and stories, but lack of internet access. Now it’s different. We have wireless internet in the apartment in Alajuela, but no stories to tell.

 

Life here is even quieter since Allison’s parents left. Now we can’t even complain about them anymore. However they still get all the blame for the kids being spoiled and watching too much TV, even after they have left.

 

 

One of the nicest things about being in one place for one month is the cooking opportunities. We have a big kitchen and it’s so much fun to spread out and take time to cook great dishes. The cooking gets even more fun when all of the fruits and vegetables are bought the same day super fresh from one of the local markets.

 

Going to the markets is the biggest excitement these days. Markets in Central America never get boring. They are very chaotic (not so much in Costa Rica) and they have an incredible array of things to buy. We also get great fish and shrimp that were caught the night before and I mostly enjoy buying meat at one of the butchers.  If you get there early in the morning you see men carrying half a cow on their backs into the stalls in the market.  Or you see people peddling cows bones out of the back of a run down pick up truck.  You can also buy a pig’s head if you are hungry for it.  It sure is different from the meat counter at Safeway where the workers are dressed in what almost looks like a Haz-mat suit and all the meat is served on white Styrofoam trays wrapped in shiny plastic wrap.

 

But after a while the markets get less exciting.  The amazement of the strange green dimpled fruits I’ve never seen before just becomes “Oh, there’s that weird fruit we have no idea about.”  The most exciting thing is that you notice how the beets and radishes get larger and the lettuce gets tougher each week.  The drudgery of cooking every day has begun to set in, and now I just want to go out to eat.  I can tell you exactly how to get through town which means we don’t get lost anymore.  Getting lost is almost always fodder for great blog entries.  Our life is getting a bit boring and therefore our blog is, too.  Yesterday we noticed that an open bottle of motor oil spilled out into our cupboards in the Yoda Van.  Trying to get motor oil out of our REI camping towels has been the major excitement of the week and is hardly blog worthy.

 

It really has been nice to have a break from being constantly on the road, but now we are ready to hit it again. Our nomadic tendencies of the last 5 months are making us stir crazy.  On Wednesday Julian gets one more x-ray and I hope we will be on the road again by Friday and then we should have more interesting stories.  We’re considering parking the Yoda Van in Alajuela, packing our backpack and doing Panama by bus.  We’ve met a lot of backpackers on our travels and are intrigued by that way of traveling.  If we end up doing that I’m sure the stories will get much more interesting fast, so stay tuned.



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