We woke up lazy on the 25th, made some coffee and loaded up Louie (the blue 60) for what might be his last day trip with us... hopefully. Assuming we sell him this week.

Got the dog and various other things piled into the truck and pointed south on nearly-deserted streets and roadways. It was such a pretty morning that we found ourselves just poking along, enjoying diffuse sunshine and browning green fields with (relatively) fat cattle munching away. Very bucolic.

Along the the drive we saw dozens of families relaxing around their homes. Some with decorated trees, some not. All seemed happy and we got a lot of waves and smiles as we went.

By 10 or so we got to the beach at Marbella. Beautiful cove with pea-sized gravel on the beach. The gravel is what we had come for as we've used some of it in our landscaping and wanted to add a little more. It is a nice bonus that this also happens to be one of the prettiest and least-crowded beaches within an hour of our house. Then again, I would probably say "prettiest" about most of the beaches within an hour of our house! But the least crowded part isn't as easy to find.

We loaded up a few buckets of gravel, played with the dog in the surf, swam some, hunted super-special gravel by hand (super special=odd chunks with interesting inclusions/different colors/cool shapes) and generally had a nice beach morning.

As we were leaving, we helped pull someone else out of the sand as they had gotten stuck. Pulling other people out always makes me feel like I'm a Good Person and I genuinely enjoy it. I suspect that there is an element of feeling superior that is also at play, but I hope that most of my pleasure comes from just helping somebody else out.

We also found a fence-row that someone had planted with Jatropha. By the way that they have pruned it, it seems obvious that they aren't harvesting the seeds, but rather just taking advantage of the fact that it makes a really good fence-row. I pulled a few cuttings off of a few different plants to start them at home.

While I was doing that, Bb was hunting driftwood to decorate the garden. She found some truly wonderful pieces, but since A) we can't lift 1,000lbs and B) we don't own a flatbed truck, we had to leave them at the beach. Maybe someday.

The sun had come out in full force by the time we pointed north for home, so the drive was wonderfully beautiful in a subtly different way than it had been on the way down. We took back roads to enjoy the scenery. Along this particular stretch of road there is a section that is full of huge, old trees. We enjoy it every time we take it.

We also stopped along this road to pull some agave plants that were growing wild on the roadside... they'll go into yet another part of our garden, hopefully before we let them dry out completely.

Finally arrived home around 2pm, and unwrapped a couple of much-appreciated christmas gifts that had been generously left behind by my parents when they visited last month.

We were due at a friend's house for dinner at 3 or 4, but the swimming pool was too compelling, so we lounged here for just a bit, then made some food, cleaned ourselves up and headed over, closer to six than five. It was a lovely gathering of friends with more delicious food than the 20 or 30 people present had any chance of eating. Wow! What a spread!

After more than a few glasses of wine, hours of nice conversation, and a little too much delicious food, we finally mosied home again, enjoying the cool (for here) night air and feeling like it had been a wonderful way to celebrate christmas.

Labels: day trip, food, landcruiser, tamarindo