One of the great things about living in a tropical beach town is, of course, the beach. Every year for two weeks- late december and march/april- the beach is packed with people visiting from the interior of the country for Christmas vacation, then for Holy Week vacation. The crowds are amazing. They've gone now, so after a few days of picking up their leftover plastic trash, life can return to normal. Whew!

Banana.com: Complete Guide to Bananas - History - Recipes - Nutrition - Medicinal Use. Pretty close to everything you (n)ever wanted to know about bananas.

Watched Lost in Translation last night. Great movie. Nice to watch something that relied on plot and dialogue instead of special effects and violence. Definately worth checking out.

Found an interesting website that discusses the efficiency of various products. The article that lead me there deals withPlastics, but there are many other topics as well. Interesting stuff.
Also spent some quality time reading up on Graywater Systems. Looking forward to picking up some books on the subject. Found out about a book on Clumping Bamboo, which I'm hoping will shed some light on how to grow a sustainable, low maintenance, low cost wall that looks nice and won't take over the whole town.

Humvee crashes perplex Army. Shoulda used Landcruisers. Ok, those would roll over too probably. Shoulda taught the guys how to drive better.

Quick rant today against fast food. First Burger King is trying to make a foothold in Tamarindo. I'm appalled. Didn't move thousands of miles to eat the gutbomb crap they shovel out and I don't want to see their wrappers all over my beach. Then today I read a story in the news about McDonalds suing some rugby team in Australia because their sponsor's name includes "Mc". What kind of hogwash is that? As if they have the exclusive rights to Scottish heritage or something?
The rugby team is boycotting MickyD's. I'd threaten to do the same but haven't actually eaten there in a decade, so it is a pretty hollow threat.
Feeling pretty powerless in the face of these multinational purveyors of homogenized foodstuffs, but wishing that people everywhere would put just a little more thought into what they put into their bodies.

It rained today. That is extraordinary in the true sense of the word... in speaking with several people who have lived here 10 or 12 years, nobody could remember it ever having rained in March. When I say it rained, I mean it for real-- not like some little penny-ante drizzle-- it actually poured down. Once we got over being alarmed and a little bit confused, we decided that the showers were pretty cool- both in the literal "cools stuff off" sense and also in the "Wow, that's pretty cool" sense of the word cool. Now all the leaves and rooftops are shiny-clean and dust free for a day or two. But still... rain in March is as normal here as snow in August in most parts of the USA.

Labels: photo

While poking around the net tonight I came across thisAround the world on a bike website. Haven't gotten too far into it yet, but so far it seems good enough to go ahead and point it out to everyone out there who is interested in travel. Don't expect anything too fancy... pretty basic site. But the content is pretty good.

Labels: travel

It has been an awfully long time since either of us has taken a day off to just... go somewhere. Odd, considering that we both refer to our year of itinerant travel as being among the best we've had.
So Saturday we finally decided to just drive down the coast and check out some of the little towns that are within a few hours from here. We had a great time driving around, looking at houses and views and beaches, playing with Caly, watching a guy prune coconut trees while sipping an ice cold beer at a little beach shack, all that stuff.

While we don't relish driving rutted roads at night, we just couldn't tear ourselves away from the sunset and the friendly folks we had been chatting with. Despite the friends and their entrieties to stay and watch some live music, we jumped back in the cruiser for the dark drive back to Tamarindo. We made it as far as Villareal (just down the street from Tamarindo) before hunger took over. Stopped at a cute but simple little house/restaurant and had a great tipico meal - Steve had fried chicken, Beebee a pork chop. Each came with a huge portion of rice and beans as well as some salad. Yummy fare served up with two cold ones for a total of about six bucks. Full and happy we came home and got a great night's sleep.

Labels: landcruiser, photo, travel

Finished off the day yesterday with a long walk down a nearly-deserted beach (we saw only one other person) as a huge fiery sun dripped into the ocean. The one person we did see is Luis, a turtle volunteer. He was shooing vultures away as some baby hawksbill turtles struggled towards the surf.
Times like this, watching baby turtles on a deserted beach with tropical breezes blowing... well... sure is nice living here.
Caly loved it too, of course, as she found one of the biggest sticks yet (about 4" diameter, 4 feet long) and carried it with her the whole way.

OH! And mangos are in season. Steve loves no food more. So life is pretty darn good right now.

Labels: beach, food

Oreos and The Federal Budget - TrueMajorityACTIONFunny little flash animation that points out some interesting aspects of the federal budget funds allocation. Created by one of the founders of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, so it must be good, right?

Labels: news

With a million and ten things to do at his own job today, Steve somehow managed to spend some time shooting a bunch of jewelry shots (in between cellphone conversations with clients and sellers) for the soon-to-be-revamped JocelynBroyles.com website. Shooting with a digital SLR makes the job so much easier! And focusing on someone else's business is almost relaxing compared to grinding away at the wall of inefficiency that we sometimes have to deal with around here. Not quite a day off, but when work days often consist of going to the beach, rest days can be busy too.

Labels: jewelry, photo