Carolyn flies home

I put Carolyn on the airplane at the small but elegant airport in San Jose and 25 minutes later I had the Landcrusier teetering on two wheels. Bentley was standing with two paws on the right front window and two on the floor. The front left and right rear wheels were on the ground while the front right was about four feet down in a deep hole and the left rear floating in the air.

Carolyn and I had found an interesting real estate development in Athenas the day before. Athenas is famous around here for having been voted “the best climate in the world” by National Geographic a couple of years ago. My guess is that the ‘best climate’ award was made with votes from plants and people being weighted equally as it was preparing to rain as i fell into the hole.

Athenas is a pleasant little town largely populated by ex-pats from around the world. The development is billed as a Bali style community and consists of a dozen lots and several very pretty Bali style homes. I think its a pretty good deal, you can get a 2900 sqft house and pool on two acres for around $271K. The spec home is beautiful with about 900 sqft of its 2900 sqft consisting of indoor/outdoor terrace. The swimming pool is mostly outside but a portion of it wanders indoors where there’s a small bridge (inside the house) across the pool. You have to walk across the bridge to get to the master bedroom; the arrangement allows you to swim into the house.

All I did was attempt to park on the side of the road near the entrance gate of the development. Plants grow really fast in Costa Rica, we spoke with a fellow yesterday who planted a banana tree last year and this year it’s 15 ft tall and producting; likewise a bunch of plants had grown over a hole (3ft x 3ft x 6ft deep) at the side of the road. As I slowly pulled off the road the right side of the car suddenly dropped into the hole.

I slowly got out of the drivers side door and had a look. No damage at all but i could easily shift the cars balance with one hand. Quickly a few workers approached to admire. I asked them to stand on the left read bumper which nicely lowered the car to a nearly level position. I then locked the hubs, put it into 4×4 and slowly backed to onto land. No damage at all, in fact the car body never touched earth! It’s pretty easy to get into such a predicament around here.

The drive back to Faro (our little house at the beach) from airport was a rainy one. The roads continue to get worse day by day. The proceedure here is to fix the roads in the dry season then let them fend for themselves during the wet season. We’re now getting close to the end of the wet season and the roads show it. Interestingly as I drove along the PanAmerican highway I came to a place where the road narrowed to one lane. It was two lanes a few days ago but today there were several trees and misc other plants occupying one lane; the largest of the trees was about 30 ft tall. The land the trees were growing on was a piece of dirt 20 ft by 20ft and 6ft deep. This block of land had slide down a nearby cliff and landed intact in the north bound lane of the highway. There ws only this nice little patch of jungle and no sign of there ever having been a road at this location. It sure wouldn’t take long for nature to reclaim this whole place if left alone!

Carolyn is returning to San Diego to take care of some business there (and not in small part to avoid the central american border crossings). She took our laptops back with her but i think I’ll post the occasional update on the solo travels of Bentley and me as we travel North. We’ll be leaving Costa Rica next week and intend on spending a week or so in Nicaragua.