Saturday 8/9- The cleaners were coming at 8am today to get the house ready for our guests, which meant that we had some pre-tidying up to do before they got here. We spent about an hour putting away all of the stuff that we didn’t get around to yesterday morning and moving things out of the way so they could do a good job of cleaning. Once the cleaners get here, we feel like we are kind of banned from being in the house, so I sat outside and worked on the computer & blog stuff while Ramie worked on some projects.
One of his projects was to tidy up the A/C lines and install some new, nicer looking covers. He spent most of the day getting all of that put together and then painted the new covers so that instead of the standard white, they blend right in with the house.
Sunday 8/10- Today is going to be a hectic one! We started our day as we normally do. I had a phone call with my mom and Ramie played his games on his tablet. When we were done doing our normal routine, we got back to work getting the rest of the house ready for our guests.
Around noon we went to pick up the rental car, and started the long drive to San Jose at 2pm. The reason we got a rental car is because for the cost of a 1-day rental of a Toyota Corolla class car plus the gas to and from San Jose, it actually costs less than the full tank of gas in our truck to make the same drive. This is a no-brainer, because then for the same money, we save the mileage and wear and tear on our truck. Taylor and Dylan's flight wouldn’t arrive until 6, but there is some road construction that we’ve been hearing reports about, and there are times that this particular bridge closure can cause up to an hour wait. We got stuck in traffic, but made it to the airport with about 15 minutes to spare.
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| Everybody looks so happy (some of which might be due to not being crammed into a little airplane or Corrola seat for a few minutes!) |
As we've mentioned in prior blogs, Dylan would be coming back to Uvita with us, but Taylor would be heading to the Caribbean side with a group of girls for a week to work at a turtle reserve over there, before joining us in Uvita. We met Rafa, the shuttle drive who would be taking care of Taylor’s transportation, at the airport while we waited for them to make it through customs. This evening Rafa would be bringing Taylor to the hostel that she is staying at for the night, and tomorrow he would be picking up the whole group of girls and bring them to the Caribbean side. We got to see Taylor at the airport for maybe 15 minutes before she headed off on her separate adventure. It was time for the 3 of us, Ramie, Dylan, and me, to hop in our car for the drive back. We thought Dylan would be hungry, but he said he could wait for a while, so about half-way through the drive back we stopped in Jaco for Burger King, a quick grab and go, and continued our way back to Uvita. We finally made it home a little after 10. Skye was definitely unsure about Dylan since this was her first time meeting him, but this isn’t surprising to any of us because even at more than 2 years old, she is still the biggest chicken of a dog that I have ever met. After a little bit more talking, we all were ready to get to bed and said our good nights at a little after 10:30pm.
Monday 8/11- I started work late this morning because of the late-night last night, but I wouldn’t be taking the whole day off because there’s always something that must be done at work. When Dylan finally rolled out of bed, the first thing on his to-do list was to try to warm up to Skye. Even after bribing her with treats and doing the things you do when meeting new dogs, she still was not so sure about him. It takes her some time… she’ll get there; there’s no rushing this dog to make new friends! Eventually, Dylan started to unpack and bring out all of the stuff that we asked him to bring down for us. Once again….CHRISTMAS at Casa Costa Breeze!
Later that afternoon, Ramie brought Dylan to town so he could get some groceries and snacks that he wanted for the week. Otherwise, it was just a lazy day around the house for the guys. Dylan didn’t give up on Skye, he worked on her all day and she started to trust him a little bit. I’m sure she figured out that he was going to be here for a little while and that barking at him wouldn’t scare him away, and running and hiding all of the time wasn’t really an option either.
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| Ok, I'll let you pet me now |
Tuesday 8/12- My plan is to work “normally” most of this week, while Dylan is here. Next week when Taylor returns from the Caribbean and when Dylan’s family arrives, things will be much different, so I’ll save my time away from work for that.
Ramie decided that he and Dylan would take a ride up to the coffee plantation to pick up some moonshine and visit Deiner. They left the house around 9am. When they arrived Deiner was giving a tour but asked Ramie and Dylan to stick around for a while until he was finished. While Deiner continued with the tour, Ramie & Dylan were treated like family, as we always are when we go there. Rita, brought out her famous Chicharonnes, and later brought out a plate of food while the tour group ate. Emilo made sure they had coffee, moonshine and baileys to drink. Sadly though, Emilo ended up having an asthma attack and Deiner had to bring him to the hospital to get it under control, so they didn't end up getting to hang out before Ramie & Dylan headed home. They finally got home sometime after 2:30pm, and once again, Dylan worked on bonding with Skye some more, and Skye finally wanted to play with him.
Wednesday 8/13- The tides have not been in the favor of the teams doing the turtle walks this week, and tonight's walk was at midnight. Ramie had asked Dylan if he wanted to get up in the middle of the night to go, and he was all for it. I know that when Ramie has these middle of the night walks I don’t sleep well either, since I’m woken up when Ramie gets up to leave, and then again when they get home. They promised that they would try to be extra quiet when they returned, as they expected to be home around 2:30am and chances are, if I wake up too much at that point, I won’t fall asleep again before my wake up time of 4:30.
Little did we know at the time that we were talking about all of this that tonight would be a little bit different from Ramie’s prior turtle walks. It turned out, that this would be a night to remember! In Ramie’s words, it ended up being one of the most epic and beautiful nights out saving turtles.
Almost right away upon getting to the beach, they spotted a turtle; Dylan was in luck! While they waited for the mama turtle to do her thing, he explained to Dylan what they were going to do when she was finished laying, and then waited until they could move in. Ramie helped Dylan measure the turtle and then Dylan helped Ramie by holding the turtle while he tagged it. By the night's end they ended up tagging 2 turtles (that's the first time this has happened for Ramie) and safely relocated 5 nests. Dylan got the opportunity to be hands-on as Ramie showed him how to locate the nest, how to exhume the eggs, how to measure a turtle (he's now a professional tape measure reader), and how to tag a turtle.
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| Typical Dylan photo! |
In addition to the turtles and nests, they also had mysteries of attempted nesting (turtle dug a hole but didn't lay) and false crawls (turtles come ashore looking for a prime spot but are not satisfied and leave). They also found an old nest that was only at the very surface of the sand, and too close to the high-tide line (Lazy momma) and getting soaked by the incoming waves on their walk back to the cars.
I expected them home around 2:30, but when I woke up at 4am and they still were not home I was getting a bit worried. Did they fall into the ocean or something? At 5am when they still weren’t home I texted Ramie to see what was going on. Then, finally, they pulled into the driveway at about 5:20am. As I hadn’t received a text response, I had to go out and inquire what took so long! While Dylan was rinsing off outside with the garden hose, Ramie quickly recapped their night for me.
Both Ramie & Dylan were completely exhausted, as one would expect of a short sleep and then a very long walk on the beach, so they each took a quick shower to get the rest of the sand out of their hair and everywhere else it shouldn't have been, then went back to bed. Unfortunately Ramie’s natural clock just wouldn’t let him sleep for very long and was awake and up and around again at about 7am. Dylan managed to sleep until around 9.
The picture below shows their finds for the night. To explain it quickly: 99@ 29, that means there were 99 eggs found at marker 29. 43 False Crawl means that at marker 43, there was a false crawl. You can see the stats from that night… and compare it to many nights when there is nothing.
The rest of their day was quite laid back day without much for activities because of the middle of the night excitement; it was certainly an experience Dylan will remember, though!
Thursday 8/14- Ramie and Dylan didn't do a whole lot today. There was supposed to be a container to load with Randall, but because of paperwork issues, that was delayed. Dylan tried to get “some color”, but as soon as he got in the pool the sun went behind the clouds. It was just a laid back vacation day for these two, and there was nothing wrong with that.
Friday 8/15- Just like Wednesday, tonight's tide was not super favorable either, and this morning they had their turtle walk at 3am. Instead of the whole Team Turtle, this morning it would only be Ramie and Dylan walking, as the other half of the team walked at about 10pm last night before the high tide due to the weird times and highly active part of the season. The other half of the team had left Ramie some messages about a potential nest to check for, as they couldn't locate any eggs and the tide had been creeping in on them fairly quickly, so they headed back to the car knowing that Ramie would be back later. Unfortunately for Ramie and Dylan, this morning there was no momma turtle action but they did end up finding two nests.
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| I think Skye likes him now! |
Sunday 8/17- Today Taylor would finally be be arriving at our house to join the family fun week. She won't be here until the late afternoon/evening though, because of the long drive from the Caribbean. Taylor would get in her shuttle around 10am on the Caribbean side and Ramie & Dylan would go pick her up in Quepos this afternoon when the driver anticipated he would get there. Ramie was in constant contact with both Taylor and the driver during the long drive back. Unfortunately, the main road between the Caribbean side and San Jose has been closed for 3 days due to landslides, which is not uncommon this time of year, and they would have to take an alternate route. Now, instead of the drive from the Caribbean to San Jose being 2-2.5hr, it would be about 3-3.5hrs. The driver was even nice enough to send us a live location pin so we could watch their progress as they made the 6+ hour drive in our direction.
This morning Dylan’s family group wanted to try a traditional Tico breakfast so we went to a place that we’ve been to that is walking distance from our house. Why is the walking distance part important? Well, they haven't rented a car yet, and our truck only holds 5 people! We have a group of 10! After breakfast, their group all walked into town to the grocery store to get some food, and when they were done they called Ramie to come pick them up so they didn't have to carry all the bags the mile or so home. There were no plans for the rest of the day so we hung out with Dylan's family for a few hours while we paid attention to the progress the driver & Taylor were making across the country. We spent the afternoon chatting by the pool next door where Dylan’s family was staying. Eventually, around 4pm, Taylor was getting close enough to the drop-off point that Ramie and Dylan left to go collect her. Thankfully, it was only a 45 minute drive (each way) for these guys, and they were home before I knew it.
Monday 8/18- Since there was nothing really planned for today, I worked a normal day. I might as well make the money and not waste a day just sitting around when we weren’t really going to do anything anyway. Ramie went next door to the rental in the morning to help the family schedule the tours and stuff they were interested in doing this week.
Later in the afternoon most of the family wanted to go walk into town and explore, but Chris (Dylan’s mom) decided to hang back and came over to our house to chit chat. Ramie entertained her for about an hour, then I joined them when I was finished working. It wasn't long after that that the rest of the family came home and asked if they could come over to see our house and hang out. Of course, come on over!
After a tour of our house, everyone decided that getting in our pool this nice afternoon was a good plan. Most ran back to the house to change into their swimsuits and when they came back to our house, they brought drinks! The whole clan spent a few hours at our house having a good time, lots of laughs, and some crazy conversations!
Tuesday 8/19- Finally a day with a fun activity! Obviously, since we had something fun and planned, I took the day off of work! The plan for today was to rent ATVs and go to the coffee plantation for the tour. Ramie left the house around 8 with 5 of Dylan’s family clan to go pick up their rental ATVs and motorcycles. It took a little longer than expected to get home, and once home they had an issue with one of the motorcycles, so they had to wait for the company to bring another one.
Finally, once everyone was ready to go, we hit the road. Because it took longer than expected to get going this morning, we took the main “quick” road to the plantation. It was slow going, with stops every now and then for pictures,
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| Checking to see if everyone is doing alright and a quick scenic overlook. |
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| We made it up the mountain to the plantation! |
We arrived at the plantation with only about 10 minutes to spare before the tour started.
Deiner is always happy to see us, and by now our regular readers should know the routine of what happens at the coffee plantation! Shiny moon and coffee to start! The tour happened, and everyone really enjoyed it and had a great time.
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| Deiner sitting down on the job and laughing at the crazy people! |
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| The tour is always hands on |
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| If you could only smell a picture! This is pure heaven! The difference between medium & dark roast. |
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| End of the tour picture! |
Wednesday 8/20- Early early this morning Ramie took all of “the kids” on a turtle walk. Because of the weird tides still being... well, weird… Ramie’s Team Turtle split the walk again. Val took the early shift last night before high tide and Ramie took the late one this morning after high tide. They found 1 nest and 4 false crawls. Not the greatest results, but at least they got to see what it was like. Taylor finally got her turtle experience since her trip to the Caribbean side was a bust!
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| Taylor exhuming a nest |
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| Pure happiness right there! |
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| Kylie getting her turn at helping exhume the nest |
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| Yep, more happiness! |
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| The things we find washed up on the beach! Yes someone's dentures in the middle of paradise. |
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| The group inspecting a false crawl track |
Their group also rented a car today, so that will make getting around and getting to “things to do” a lot easier for them. They jumped in their car and Ramie, Taylor & Dylan in ours, and they headed off to the farmers market. While they all walked around and looked at the different vendors, Ramie went straight for the coffee booth. Juanca was selling coffee today for the plantation, and was happy to see Ramie again. They all scoped out the market for about 30-45 minutes until they had seen enough. After that, the family wanted to go souvenir shopping so Ramie told them the stores to check out and they went their separate ways.
As mentioned before, in the afternoon around 1pm Ramie brought them down to the turtle reserve where one of the staff members brought them to the butterfly garden and talk about the butterflies they had here. Unfortunately, it was pretty empty in there right now and there was not much to see. After that they walked to the nursery so Ramie could show them where the eggs were brought after they had been relocated from the beach and to tell them the process of what “happens next” when a nest is placed here. On the walk to the nursery, they ran across a troop of White Face monkeys. Of course, being the first live monkeys that they encountered, the stopped to take a lot of pictures and videos of them. After they were done with the nursery, they walked to the beach just a short distance away to look for crocodiles, but didn't see any.
Thursday 8/21- Today would be another activity day that I took the day off of work for. Today was a whale watching tour. It is prime birthing season right now, and there are a lot of whales in the area. Ramie has contacts with one of the tour companies, and we see many of them posting on the Facebook groups that they have been seeing a lot of whales in the area, so our hopes were high that we would get a good view of them today. The tour started at 9 so we had to be checked in by 8:30. After some instruction, we made our way to the National Park, paid our admittance fee and then got to the boat and out into the ocean.
The tour operators all work together and radio each other the locations of where the whales or other interesting marine animals are hanging out. We didn't have to go far to catch our first glimpses. There were 6 whales in the area today, 3 mommas with their 3 babies. Even through there are a handful of companies out there doing the same thing, tour operators respect the space of the whales and make sure that there are not too many boats around and bothering a particular set of whales. The boats split up and follow different ones, only getting as close as allowed, and then allowing other boats to get in and see too. The momma and the baby we were nearest to were quite fun to watch. The baby would breach out of the water and was playing a lot. Then the momma would poke her head out of the water to see what was going on around her. They were quite active and so cool to see in person.
Eventually, the whales got too close to some rocks so we moved on to find another set of whales to watch. These were not as active, but momma would stay right on the surface of the water and hold the baby up with her nose. The tour guide thinks that the baby was feeding. We spent about 3 hours watching the whales and it was certainly worth it!
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| They made us take our life jackets with us, but at least we didn't have to wear them. |
This afternoon was low key and some of the family took a drive around to see more things, while some of others stayed home.
This evening, we were back to the touristy things, and had a night walk tour scheduled. We met the guides at the trails at 6pm, got our rubber boots and flashlights, and were ready to start trekking through the jungle to look for all of the night critters that we could find. This is a very interactive tour, and in addition to the 3 guides looking for and pointing out what they see, everyone is in charge of helping to look for all of the night creatures they can find. As we walked the trails we would stop to point out insects, spiders, snakes, butterflies, lizards, frogs, birds, or mammals, you name it. Whatever you see, call it out, but whatever you do, don’t touch it (and even if it’s an icky bug, don’t step on it!) The guides would tell us what the animal is and a little bit about it. We saw a lot of different creatures, most that you would never see during the day, and many that you’d probably never spot on your own without a guide pointing it out.
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| Glass Tree Frog |
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| Rain Frog |
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| Hooded Basilisk |
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| Poison Dart Frogs |
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| Vine Snake |
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| Owl Butterfly |
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| Walking Stick |
First thing when they got to the beach they spotted a turtle track right in front of the parking lot. Unfortunately, that turtle came up and was likely scared back into the ocean before she had a chance to lay her eggs. By the looks of it, she was likely scared off by people who were still at the beach when she arrived based on all of the human footprints on the beach near the track.
A short distance down the beach, Ramie spotted another track and this time, a turtle had just made her way up the beach. After Taylor’s super disappointing turtle trip to the Caribbean side, she would finally get to work with a real live turtle! Ramie explained the process of what to do and when, and then they waited.
You could see the excitement in Taylor's face as they waited. Finally, when the turtle was done laying her eggs, they could go in and do what needed to be done. Dylan, the official tape measure reader, did his job and Ramie handed Taylor the iodine and showed her what to do, then had Taylor hold the turtle while he tagged the flippers. Of course, we had to get pictures so Taylor could share them with the turtle group she just left to let them know that, despite the very disappointing trip that they had, she still actually got to work with turtles!
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| I'm was so happy to share this experience with Taylor! |
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| Sleep is over rated, this is the best! |
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| Momma is heading back to the safety of the ocean |
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| Timing the waves to tag her |
Wow 3 turtles in one night, that’s amazing!! Taylor was beyond excited, and this certainly made the trip to Costa Rica worth it for her! I guess it’s a good thing that even at 24 years old she still followed dad’s “demands”, and realized that he wasn’t wrong when he told her she would be disappointed if she didn’t go with tonight. I think the few hours of missed sleep in the middle of the night was worth it!
When they finally got home from dropping off the eggs at the sanctuary, they all went to bed. Ramie woke up at 6am, his usual time, but Dylan didn’t roll out of bed until around 9 and Taylor slept in until about 10. It was a good thing that these 3 didn’t have any plans for Friday!
Friday 8/22- Dylan’s family had scheduled the Sierpe Mangrove tour today and had to get on the road early this morning to make the hour drive there. For those of you who have been following us for a long time, you may remember us talking about this tour when we went with Taryn, Steven & Will in 2022 or when we went with Katie & Jamie in 2024, but in case you’re new to the blog, this is a 3-3.5 hour tour on a pontoon boat with a guide and a captain. You make your way down the mangrove rivers looking for all sorts of different animals, including monkeys, macaws, sloths, snakes, crocodiles, insects, birds, etc. Basically anything that calls the mangrove home. It’s a great way to see a lot of different animals all in a short period of time, all in the same place. If you want to read those blogs click these links Blog # 84. from 2022 with Taryn, Steven and Will or Blog #146. from 2024 with Jamie and Katie
Taylor and Dylan decided to stay back from this tour, but Ramie brought them into town to do some shopping for snacks to bring back to MN with them and look for souvenirs. I worked all day to catch up on everything that got put off yesterday, of course.
Saturday 8/23- Dylan's family had to return their rental car today, so they all loaded into the car one last time, dropped it off, and then walked to the National Park to check out the Whales Tail and get a bit more beach time in.
While they did that, the four of us went to Ventanas beach to search for shells, and Taylor still needed to find somewhere to get a copa…more on this in the next paragraph. During her last trip here, Taylor brought down a display case for a small shell collection that she wanted to fill up. By small shell collection, I don’t mean a few shells, I mean small, like TINY shells! The spaces for the shells are smaller than your pinky nail, so you have to be very specific about the shells that you’re picking up!
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| Lego Mini Fig for size reference |
Once we finished our copas, we made one more walk around the area that had a lot of shells. The tide was coming in, so the waves were washing through these areas and new shells were being exposed. I think we spent close to 4 hours at the beach before our pockets full and made our way home. Sorry for no pictures, we were at the beach and didn't want to get our phones wet and full of sand.
Dylan’s family got home shortly after we did, and they still wanted to go to the small waterfall here in town so they caught a taxi to bring them there a couple of hours. They want to pack as much in as possible and I don't blame them!
Sunday 8/24- Often the worst day of vacation- the last day! The shuttle to bring Dylan’s family back to the airport was scheduled to show up around 7:30am this morning. Ramie and I stopped over there to see them off, but Taylor & Dylan opted to sleep in instead. After that, the rest of our day didn’t bring any excitement, just some laundry and pool time. Taylor and Dylan still had a couple of days before their flight back home. Dylan was finally able to get some sun as well.
Monday 8/25- I only worked this morning until around 10am because today the 4 of us would be headed up to San Jose. Ramie and Dylan dropped Skye off at doggy daycare around 9:30am and then picked up the rental car at 10am. By about 10:30, we had the car packed up and we started our drive north up the coastal highway.
We are headed up to San Jose because Taylor & Dylan’s flight is at 7:30am tomorrow, which means they have to be at the airport around 5am. They could have gotten a shuttle to pick them up, but they would have had to leave our house at 1am, not to mention, the shuttle would cost about $200 or more. Instead, Ramie and I volunteered our time to drive them to the city, stay at a hotel near the airport that is connected to a huge mall, and spend the afternoon hanging out together walking around the mall with them, having a different kind of fun.
So, this mall is like the malls that I remember from growing up, not like malls in the US any more (at least the ones that I’ve been to in the last 15 or so years are turning out to be). There were lots of different stores including many of the bands that you recognize from the US, as well as local chain and single mom & pop type stores. Of course, one of our stops would be food court. Once again, many names you would recognize, and a handful of others that you wouldn’t. Ramie and I opted for Chinese food and Taylor and Dylan got good old Burger King. We spent a few hours here today checking out many different stores and people watching, and over all, had a good time.
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| Is that Hot Topic? Well, it isn't... but it sure looks like it could be! |
When we had seen everything we wanted to see and were tired of the mall, we went back to the hotel and hung out in our rooms to relax and watch some TV. We talked about going out for dinner, but none of us were hungry after our late lunch. While we were each hanging out in our own rooms, Taylor messaged Ramie that they were watching 90’s MTV music videos and we should come over, so we sat together with them and watched what was mostly videos that neither Ramie nor I had ever heard of, with a few that we did recognize mixed in, and laughed at the “old” music for a few hours. By around 7:30 it was getting awfully quiet in the room and everyone was pretty tired so we went back to our room to go to bed. The alarm would be going off at 4:30am tomorrow to get them to the airport by 5.
Tuesday 8/26- BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP! UGH! Ok, up and at em… Thankfully, the airport is only a short 5 minute drive away. We knocked on their door at about 4:45, loaded into to the car, and dropped them off at by 5am. Just like always, there were once again a few tears. It's always hard for Taylor and Ramie to say goodbye.
With them heading into the terminal, we had nothing else to do but make the early morning drive back home. This should go smoothly since it's so early in the morning. Or, that's what we thought anyway. Only 15 minutes down the road we ran into a huge traffic jam that took us over 20 minutes to make it through. Finally we had made it to the main road and had a good feeling, but then Google Maps mentioned an accident and lane closure ahead. UGH, ok! At least it says it's only a 10 minute delay… Almost 45 minutes later we finally made it to the original accident area, which was now cleared, only to find a different car that was in front of us rear end the truck in front of it. Screw this! Ramie quickly went into the oncoming lane to get around it so we could keep going without getting caught up in another long wait.
After all that, we finally made it to the highway toward Uvita, only stopping in Jaco for some coffee to-go and a bathroom break, and hitting the road again. We made it home around 9am, which actually wasn’t terrible timing considering all of the slow downs in the city, and went to drop off the rental car and pick up our excited Skye. We were only gone for 24 hours, but by the sounds of her whimpers and excitement she thought that we had been gone for months.
I decided that since we were home early enough, I’d log onto work for a few hours, and Ramie decided to cut the grass and do other yard work.
Hasta Luego to our visitors. I hope you enjoyed your trip! Dylan, next time don’t wait so long to come back again!
Pura Vida!
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