From Costa Rica

Howdy folks! It is a real pleasure to be writing this blog poolside in Costa Rica. Yes, (note picture on right) we finally received our Honduran license plates and registration card last Wednesday! That meant we were able to go ahead with obligatory travel plans for renewing our visas. Yesterday, Sunday Jan.25th, we left Valle de Angeles at 5:00am hoping that we could reach our destination in Liberia, Costa Rica the same day. Thankfully everything went smoothly including the 2 border crossings and we had a pleasant and enjoyable trip for the most part. We drove about 2 hours in Honduras then made our first border crossing into Nicaragua. This border procedure went relatively quickly. We then traveled the whole length of Nicaragua taking about six hours to do so. I was expecting some bad roads in Nicaragua, but came away quite impressed with the ones we traveled on. Also some pretty sights along the way. Saw rice fields for the first time! The border procedure from Nicaragua to Costa Rica took longer (about 2 hours). It is a much heavier traveled border with some of the longest lines of trucks we've seen at C.A. borders. The Nicaraguan side was the usual confusing unmarked chaos that we are getting used to. The Costa Rican side was less confusing(and cost free except for vehicle insurance). From the border we drove about an hour arriving just after 5:00pm at our hotel in the small city of Liberia where we will be staying until our 3 days are up and we can go travel back to Honduras.

So far we are enjoying Costa Rica very much. The area around here is flat cattle country, very pretty with mountains to the east and the Pacific ocean about a half hour to the west. We hope to explore a bit in the coming days. Today we are just relaxing at the hotel, enjoying the pools and the warm sun. This area is in what I believe they call the "dry tropics". It is considerably warmer than in Valle de Angeles. There are several tropical fruit trees by the pool. Mangos are everywhere but unfortunately they are quite green yet, not what I'm interested in eating. It is rather windy here too.


Activities (and stresses) from the previous week are already receding from the mind as we unwind here. But here are some we can recall.




Me teaching my Sunday school class.
















Celebrating Janelle's birthday with the Kennel family at their home. We also watched part of the Eagles game there.









Planting of seeds and related work continued under Dwain's direction. I was also working on getting a water line set up for irrigation. Friday we took a field trip to a well known agriculture school located about an hour south west of Tegucigalpa. We were not able to get in to see everything we wanted to because a guide wasn't available. We hope to return sometime to do that.

More on Costa Rica and related travels next time!