Homeless...no vehicle; wait, what?

Our house of 31 years is no longer ours. Our truck of 28 years is no longer in the garage we don't own, or registered to us. As we take stock of our possessions; we have 2 suitcases of retirement wear and a couple of storage bins containing the dreaded jeans and sweatshirts we need for a short visit in November. It feels pretty good!

​EP's annual Taste was a great time seeing friends and family along with the great food and music. It was so cool that most of the nieces and nephews came Friday to see their favorite auntie!

Speaking of hot...I would say that the Taste had weather that sucked the sweat out of a petrified stone. Man it was hot and humid! Luckily the beer tents were always manned and rehydration procedures were allowed to occur.

​Thanks to the B & N Lowe bed and breakfast joint we found in EP, we didn't have to sleep in Central Park prior to our CR departure. Friendly owners and a nice pool! Highly recommended, we gave it 5 stars!

I realized as Sha was waiting on our Uber to Midway Thursday morning at 2 AM;  that we also had 2 backpacks containing some of our treasured possessions that made the cut traveling to Costa Rica as well as the previous list I gave you. 

Got to Houston by 8 am and things were progressing nicely. Got a little exercise as they changed our departure gate--was good to walk off breakfast, and we left only about 25 minutes later than scheduled for the last leg to CR. It was exciting to see the ocean from the air as we left the Texas coastline! Mexico is the next identifiable thing that appears as we continued over the ocean. Clouds started obscuring everything below the plane, but the flight was super smooth. Just as we were starting to get excited about landing in CR, the pilot announced that storms were over the Liberia airport and that we would have go into a holding pattern for a bit. That didn't last too long before we were told we needed to divert to El Salvador to refuel and wait for better weather.

El Salvador is only a 25-30 minute flight from Liberia. We landed in an airport that didn't have any planes at its terminal.  I wasn't getting that warm fuzzy feeling that this might be a quick turnaround. An American airline plane did land after we were on the ground for a spell, so that made me feel a little better. On the ground and stuck on the plane for 3 hours, we were finally able to talk to someone about getting the paperwork to get the gas, getting the paperwork to get the gas, get the gas, and then get the paperwork to say we got the gas and paid for it so we could takeoff and return to CR.

Our original 1:15 PM arrival time turned into a 6:15 PM arrival. Rain greeted us on the ground (it's the Green season!) as we breezed through Customs and finally got to our poor cab driver that had to wait all afternoon for us to arrive. Evelio drove us to Coco, in the rain and darkness. We asked him to stop at the Supermercado (grocery store) and we picked up a few things for breakfast and lunch to bring back to our "house" for the next two and half months. We spent the next couple of hours unpacking and settling in, before turning in after a "hard" day of traveling.

Good morning from our balcony in Costa Rica! Here's our pool and you can see our 2nd floor condo.

We fixed ourselves some breakfast  and then headed out on our first scouting trip on foot. We walked a good 8 km as we went down to the beach and walked to the next town of Ocotal, then followed the road back into town and price-shopped the tiendas and mercados we passed on the loop back to our home.

Went to the pool to cool off and met our neighbors Karen and Norm from Tampa Florida...who bought the condo on the first floor and now live here. Our  conversations about our retirement ideas were mirrors of each other; even down to the exploring of unknown roads to see where they went. Gave us some good tips having been here almost a year. Nice couple!

Afternoon thunder is in the background and we're waiting for the rain to start. I'll let you know if it brings anything unusual.

​I think I'll have a beer. Talk to you soon! Pura Vida!😎