Well, my intentions were great for keeping up the Blog and then the busy season in real estate started and priorities took over to “make hay while the sun shines”. So, I did and must say I have had a tremendous first half of 2010 – I am very blessed and thankful. Along the way I did have a few adventures. In April my daughter came from Scotland with her three children and I treated them to an all expense paid trip to Costa Rica to see my son. Well, that may sound exciting until you actually make the death-defying trip yourself and travel down dirt roads with potholes as big as the small car you usually lease. You hope and pray it isn’t rainy season because then the holes are mud traps where most cars get stuck if they don’t have four wheel drive. You will actually see Oxen pulling a plow with a Costa Rican farmer holding the reins and the plow handles behind the Oxen.
You see, my prince of a son chooses to live in the natural forest, eat natural food, meditate and practice Yoga – oh yes, and SURF!! He thinks his parents are a little nutty to work so hard but you see someone has to support he and his wife and so we seem to be it! I have spent the past couple of years investing a fortune in the “Zen Cafe” in hopes of making it a platform for him to launch a successful career. Well, Bill Gates or Michael Dell he is not and I still love him regardless of the fact that The Zen is a money eater – not a money maker.
This time our arrival in Liberia, Costa Rica is graced by the Prince coming to meet us – a first for him but mostly because we had four large containers and suitcases full of supplies for them (not counted in the fortune we have spent over the years). We had to of course rent a huge 12 passenger van due to having seven of us riding around the dirt roads and the luggage with all the supplies into Nosara which was two hours away. Taking a bouncing van over those road conditions was even a worse experience than the small cars we had previously.
The good thing about the trip was the food from the Zen Cafe. Talent is not something the Prince and Princess are missing in cooking as well as massage therapy, yoga training and just general knowledge. Actually, super talented and brilliant which makes it all that much harder that motivated is not a word you can use to describe them. The bad things about the trip while too numerous to mention in full were, the heat, the bugs, the lack of civilization, a rented house where the landlord was a maniac and tyrant and of course THE ROADS. Oh, yes, and the driver of the van (the prince) drove like he was competing in the Indy 500. At one point after driving across the worst of the roads we arrived at a natural spring. The Springs were too muddy to dive into due to the heavy rains so my son decided we would take a long steep hill ride in the van down to see the Springs and Falls from the road. As my voice was trailing off saying – DON’T GO DOWN THIS HILL……. he did and promptly got us stuck in mud up to the doors of the van with no way out. After four hours of this and some amazing Costa Ricans that happened to be working there we did miraculously escape but to what extent the van was damaged after being hauled out with a rope tied around the main frame – I have no idea. That is until later on finally getting to a paved road when the whole car began to shake and shimmy as if the bottom was falling out. The Prince decided it would hobble back to the rental place so we gracefully marched onward hoping we could get on the plane and leave town before they came after us with clubs for ruining their van.
After four times visiting Costa Rica and the prince I had the same comments to make to the rest of the family “I will never come back here again”. Well, I have taken several family members with me who have said (and meant it I might add) “Well, not with me anyway, I’m FINISHED”. So, basically I am running out of family to drag down to visit these laid back, beautiful people who love their remote, laid-back life there. Although I wonder if maybe they wouldn’t come back to our great United States of America if their money supply was cut off???????
Stay tuned for other adventures including my first annual CAMP BEBE (Bebe is the name my grandchildren call me)
