It would probably be very optimistic of me to title this "My Last 'Car Trouble' Post" - so I won't.

But I'd like to think so.

I visited a bunch of used car lots yesterday, and that just made me want to take a shower. And I spent a long time looking at used cars on the Internet, and half of them were crashed and/or recent imports that will owe another couple thousand dollars in taxes before being able to be registered in the country.

I finally acknowledged that Costa Rica is a place where you get things done based on who you know. You get a much smaller selection that way, but there's at least a flying shot at peace of mind. So the one car available to me through somebody who knows somebody who I know...is the one I'm going to buy.

It's a Mitsubishi Mirage and I'm picking it up tomorrow. It's not purple, but it's going to be mine. And then I'll turn my attention to other things, of which, if I recall correctly, there are still one or two pending. Like buying mattresses for the bunk beds (Julia's currently sleeping with me and Robin on an air mattress). Like arranging for Internet service and maybe even a phone line. Like remembering that I'm meant to be making a quilt.

Not how I wanted to spend my day

Running around town with Julia (who, it turns out, has been sick, but is getting better, but who I kept home from school today) looking for a used car.

It´s probably not the mechanic I should be disgruntled at, for saying "don´t buy that car" - so I´m not. But I am disgruntled. Just, I suppose, not at him.

*Heads off, grumbling, for the online listings because stopping by used car lots and talking to used car salesmen did not prove fruitful.*

More about the Sighing

So if you haven´t yet, read the next post down (which I only just posted) to find out what´s up with all the sighing.

Okay.

So I´ve spoken to every mechanic I know (starting with the one who came to "fix" the car I disabled myself, since it was when I called to arrange for someone else to pick up the girls that day that I discovered the red car wouldn´t be available to me for much longer), and I talked to the guys who changed my oil once, and the owner of the gym, and the aerobics instructor, and some guy who does auto upholstry down the street from the gym, and I´ve gotten all kinds of suggestions for places to look for cars.

I told everybody that I had two criteria:

• I want a small car, since the parking at the apartment is very tight - the Elantra snuggles right up to the neighbor´s doorstep - and
• I want a fuel-efficient car, since I´ll be driving about 45 minutes each way to work, and I´d hate to
  
  A) Cancel out the world-saving aspect of working to promote solar energy while burning up all that gas to get there, and
  B) Pay all that money, cause gas is even more expensive in Costa Rica than in the States.

I gave myself a strict talking-to about not falling in love with the first car I saw, but I´m afraid I don´t respond well to being told what to do, and I went ahead and loved the first one.

It´s a 1995 Geo Metro LSi, which CNN just did a whole article about how fuel-efficient they are. It´s in great shape cosmetically, despite the family having three small children and driving it to their farm on a regular basis. The engine is sparkly clean, and they just changed the oil and filters and, last year, the timing belt and the water pump.

It´s got AC and an alarm, along with luxury rims and a fancy radio that the guy said he could replace with standard rims & a plain old radio (fine with me) in order to bring the price down to what I figured I would have to spend in order to get a car I could feel good about. (You would be horrified if I told you how much that is, since cars are more expensive in Costa Rica than in the US. But $4000 is reasonable for this car in this economy.)

And it´s my absolute favorite color (the dark purple of my blog header), which I am choosing to see as a very good sign, just because I want to see it that way and you can´t stop me.

I need to organize the money end of it, and of course have a mechanic look it over. But hopefully by, say, the end of next week, I´ll have a new car to go with my new job, to go with my new apartment.

And then I´ll stop sighing and get on with it.

Post-Blogging: Oh. Wow. Whole different kind of "Sigh"

(This post is backdated because I finished moving all my stuff yesterday and by the end of it, I simply didn´t have the energy to get back in the car and come over to the Internet cafe...)

So the "car trouble" wasn´t really car trouble at all.

How did I feel when I realized that I had engaged the damn anti-theft device when I parked the car, and that´s why it wouldn´t start?

Well, I was embarassed and a bit aghast at myself. And then I figured, well, if you´re going to do something stupid, it may as well give your friends a laugh, so I guess I´ll make it into a post.

But that´s not what I mean by a whole different kind of "Sigh."

Turns out that, as of Sunday, the car I´ve been using has been sold, so I find myself suddenly in the market for a vehicle.

So once again I say,

Sigh.

There's that tag again

So I hadn't mentioned, but I have a new job to go with the new apartment. Some friends of mine have a solar energy business (I'm not even sure if "solar energy business" is the right term, but I can always come back and edit...)

My first day saving the planet was enjoyable; we spent a couple of hours talking about the business, how it works, who's involved, etc. We finished up fairly early and I was looking forward to getting back to town and moving another load of stuff down from the house before picking up the girls.

That is, until my car wouldn't start. Now I've inconvenienced four people (and counting), will not be getting back to town before the girls get out of school and...well, there's that tag again.

Sigh.

Reasons to like Costa Rica

The mechanic called yesterday at 4:00 to say that the car, which I dropped off at 7:00 a.m., was ready. We were already home for the day so I told him I'll pick it up in the morning.

When I got there this morning at 8:00 a.m., he explained to me that, since he works alone and isn't able to go out shopping for parts in the middle of the day, he went ahead and installed a used starter he had on hand. He said he'd really rather have put in a new part, but that the one he had would work for a good while. He seemed concerned that someone else, down the road, would see the repair and rat him out for putting in a used part.

Hey. It got the car working; that's pretty much what I was after. I understand that the starter was going to need replacing anyway (he showed me the damaged old one), and a car this old and hard-worked isn't exactly going to be lasting me the rest of my days. Used is fine with me.

"Great, so how much do I owe you?"
"Well, let's see. I'll need $30 for the starter, $6 for the fuses, and let's call it $10 for labor. You need a receipt?"

Raise your hand if you're getting tired of posts with the "Car Trouble" label

Yeah, me too.

So Alex was supposed to leave for Guanacaste (the north-western province) this morning, but his car wouldn't start. We tried to jump start it, but that didn't work, so we took the girls to school in the red car and then picked up a mechanic and brought him to the house to look at it (you can still do that here).

They messed around with the two cars for a while and eventually Alex told me that they'd taken the battery from the red car, put it in Alex's car, and that the old battery, now in the red car, had enough of a charge for me to start the car and go get a new one. Battery, that is.

So that's what I did.

Except that when they put the new battery in, the car still wouldn't start. The guy who had just finished installing the battery checked a few things, tried a few things, then told me it must be the starter.

Except that, you know, that car wasn't having any trouble starting till they put the bad battery into it this morning.

Long story short, coincidentally the red car now doesn't start, and it has nothing to do with the battery. Certainly nothing to do with the whole battery-swapping massacree, with the attendant circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.

Which, by the way? Was the second (massacree, that is) this month. But that certainly couldn't be responsible for the red car suddenly having alternator issues and four blown fuses (not those little plastic tabby fuses either. The big, boxy fuses up under the hood.) No, entirely unrelated. Quite a coincidence, though, they'll grant you that.

Anyway.

I got the girls picked up, Joanna and her shopping home, stopped by an electromechanical repair place (whatever those're called in English), and made a tentative appointment for the morning, drove home and parked facing down a nice, steep downhill slope (my driveway) for the morning - all without turning off the car. Well, I did stall it once trying to back up the slope of the driveway, but I was - duhhh - on a nice steep slope, so it was easy to start again.

So now I have a brand new battery and a feeling of accomplishment - and a dead car. At least it was a nice day for it.

A Question. An Answer.

Q: How many nuts does a person have to try before concluding that perhaps the reason none of them fit is that something is wrong with the bolt?

A: About six.

Welcome home snippets

Smiling indulgently at the insane drivers. (Turn signals? Whatever for?)

Breaking out at actual giggles when passing a cow standing placidly in the middle of the street. In town.

Hearing a squirrel on the roof. Big, honkin' squirrel, sounds like. Looking out window to check. That's no squirrel. That's my neighbor's chicken.


Finding out that work was done on the car while I was away: new clutch, brake work, something in the suspension, new boot, etc. Total cost: about $200.

Stopping by the mechanic because of a new squeaking sound in the suspension. He rides around the block with us, hears the sound. Gets out, rocks the car with his hands, listening. Opens the hood, listens some more. Greases the hood latch, sends me on my way.

Taking a walk around the block with Robin (around the block being just shy of two miles in our neighborhood).

Today, we talk about nothing

Holy carp I'm tired. (Did you see what I did there? It's like "holy mackerel," only different. Yeah. Tired.)

The retreat ladies couldn't have been more enjoyable, but the retreat itself had a number of hitches that had to be worked through (that is to say, around), and a couple of late nights toward the end.

So I obviously did the smart thing and came home and rested up and; well, actually I had to take buses all over town because my car was in the shop again (one of the aforementioned hitches), and then walk all over town in the course of things as well.

But I got the car and got a bunch of groceries and got home at a decent hour. Got the girls fed and into bed at a decent hour, and then went to bed myself at a decent hour.

Well, most of that. All except that last part, on the end there.

Starved for my usual Internet companionship, I went and hung out with my friends, and it was even better than usual and I ended up staying up a little past "a decent hour."

I'm paying the price today, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Just, probably not tonight.

Oh, wait.

I'm sitting here talking just to talk to keep up with NaBloPoMo, when instead I could just show you a picture.

Yes, that would be much better. Here you go. Four holes in a row:

Here's hoping brake fluid isn't caustic

Okay.

I agree that the cars benefit the whole family. I agree that both routine and emergency maintenance should be handled by anyone who is available to do so.

I agree that keeping some tools and supplies in the cars is prudent and positive.

I do not, however, agree that one needs to keep three partially-used cans of brake fluid in a single car, and I furthermore do not agree that "lying in the bottom of the toolbox" constitutes an appropriate location for these no-longer-sealed products.

I additionally do not agree that whoever finds the resulting mess should go ahead and clean it up because the cars benefit the whole family.

There. I needed to say that.

I also hope brake fluid isn't caustic (turns out it's just like motor oil. Who knew?) because I sure got it all over my hands, and I further hope that some mechanically-savvy reader of this blog can let me know whether the following items can withstand prolonged submergence in brake fluid, or whether it's best to pitch them:

• Fuses - You know, those little colored chip-like ones with two flat aluminum prongs.
• Assorted spare light bulbs of the vehicular persuasion
• Pliers - actually, the oil probably did them some good, in a way, but is there any way to clean the soaked-in oil from the metal so they'll be fit for actual use?
• Spark plugs, one apparently new and one possibly used. It doesn't seem like a spark plug is made to withstand this kind of treatment. Can I just throw them out, or should a salvage attempt be made?
• Battery-powered hair trimmer - which, what was it even doing in the toolbox in the first place? I threw out the batteries and stood it up on end so some of the oil can drain out of its innards, but I'm pretty sure this is more a symbolic gesture of futile optimism than anything.
  

Lesson of the day

Well here's something I didn't expect to learn today.

Driving in funeral processions is (pardon the expression) hell on your clutch. I never thought about it before but it's true, at least on hilly roads.

Angela had lived with Alex's family - at times his parents and at times with his grandmother - for the past ten years at least. She wasn't a blood relative but was, as they say, part of the furniture. Her life was hard, and long, and fortunately the end was fairly quick.

She died on Halloween night, which I'm certain would have meant nothing to her, but was buried on All Saints' Day, which I'm sure would have.

Not being a churchgoer at all, and certainly not Catholic, I found the funeral mass to be interesting, and although I know a lot of the form is predetermined, I thought the priest did a nice job with the content. He didn't know Angela or, as far as I know, the 20 or so people who gathered, but he spoke words that I think many of them will find comforting.

We were the only ones to have come in a car, so Alex walked with his mother and I drove some of the older relatives (Betty and her sister), as well as the three young children in attendance (Henry and Paola's kids, along with Mercedes). Alex's grandmother (who, I noticed, was wearing a sweater that once belonged to my grandmother) rode in the funeral car.

Like I said, driving uphill at a steady senior citizen's walking pace is just not what clutches were made for. Driving normally, the cemetery would be about two minutes from the church, but we took...well, I didn't check my watch, but for sure well over half an hour. When I caught a whiff of clutch and realized what was happening, I tried stopping and letting the walkers and the funeral car get a little ahead, but even then I wouldn't have my foot all the way off the clutch before it was time to slow or stop again.

Anyway. That's what I learned today. Well, that and some not very nice things about the morgue at the public hospital in Heredia.

Vehicular Fubariness*

I guess we're overdue for a "Car Trouble" post. I mean, it's been three whole weeks since the timing belt went out on the red car.

So naturally on Wednesday the black car had to throw some sort of bolt or belt in the engine, which in turn did plenty of internal damage before Alex was able to bring the car to a halt. He had it towed and fixed (including a new timing belt...I swear they might as well be siblings) and we got it back on Saturday.

Yesterday Alex insisted we use the newly repaired car for all errands, so that if something was going to go wrong, it would do so before he headed back out to the provinces.

As you can tell by the fact that this post is still ramping up to some sort of punchline, he was wise to so insist.

This time he was within spittin' distance of the house, so he called me and I went down and towed him back here.

See, Alex went out and bought two lengths of this super-heavy rope a few weeks ago, and put one in each car. I really couldn't see us actually using one car to tow the other, but fortuitously opted to keep my trap shut, because since then we have towed each car with the other. Twice, if you count towing the respective disabled vehicles to a suitable overnight location as one, and then getting them each down to the mechanic's the next morning as another.

I'm just worried that the cars have got rivaling crushes on the mechanic. Not that he's not cute, if you like the (probably slightly more than) 17-year-old ragamuffin eyebrow ring type, but frankly I could do with seeing less of him.

* Thanks to Phydeaux for the phrase

A truncated post that is, nevertheless, reasonably complete

Just a quick update - it was, in fact, the timing belt.

I stopped by the shop this morning and the mechanic called his partner to come watch the shop while he came with me up to the restaurant where the car spent the weekend. On the way up, I told him I was taught that the timing belt is something you want to replace on a regular basis because when it goes, it takes other things with it.

He said that it's true a broken timing belt (such as ours) can (and did) cause costly damage, but added that, here, most people (like, apparently, ourselves) don't replace it until it breaks.

People do change their oil here, but other kinds of routine maintenance are, I think, a little less routine. Part of this may be cultural, although I can't really put my finger on what it says about the culture.

One thing that is interesting to me is that I heard once that Costa Rica is one of the most (I think it was the third most) expensive country in the world in which to own a car. If that's even close to being true, the ratings are obviously calculated relative to the local economy or the most expensive countries overall would also be the most expensive in which to own a vehicle.

Anyway, my point is that it is, in fact, very expensive to have a car here, in the sense that our gas is around $4/gallon (while an average income is something like $300/month), the annual vehicle tax is very high, and imported cars (the only kind there are, since they don't make 'em here) are taxed close to 100% duty upon entry.

On the other hand, car insurance and maintenance are both less expensive than in the US. I don't know why the insurance is so reasonable, but the repairs are reasonable because labor is inexpensive here.

Wow.

I took a few minutes off from writing that to read an E-mail and check in on a comment thread and now that I'm back I have completely lost interest in pursuing that line of thought any farther.

Oh well, I think that was most of what I was going to say anyway.

I'll add only that this is the second time that living on a mountain has worked to our advantage, in that the various mechanics we frequent have their shops downhill from us, which saves on towing if you're willing to be a little inventive and/or brash; two categories into which many Costa Ricans do, in fact, fall.

Blame it on the moon

Dad says there was a full moon a couple of days ago and I'm inclined to believe him. Part of his job as the official Silent Partner of the Costa Rica Quilt Retreat is to receive checks made out to Rita or, usually, myself, and deposit them in the appropriate local bank account.

Over the past couple of days he has received two checks from two different future clients. One was made out to Janet (instead of Jennifer), and the other was actually made out to Dad instead of to Rita. And they got his name wrong to boot.

I blame the moon.

The effect is only just now reaching down here to the tropics though.

This morning one of Alex's clients needed to send a fax. Not sure why he felt it was necessary to call me "my love" while asking for a fax tone, but there you have it. (Seriously, how inappropriate is that? I'll assume he didn't realize that he was addressing the wife of the professional he's pressuring to get some work done as soon as possible. Which, curiously, doesn't make it any more acceptable. Can you believe people still do that?)

Ahem.

Anyway, the fax machine ate the fax, then ran out of ink film, then flat out broke. Really. A piece broke right off and now the cover won't close even though I've replaced the ink film and cajoled it with dulcet tones.

Anyway, the fax is no longer my problem.

The timing belt on the car, a little more so.

Heard this clanking noise as I was driving home this evening. At first I thought it was a rattletrap of a pickup truck that was passing me, but the sound stayed with me after the truck was gone, so I pulled into a restaurant parking lot and had a look.

Couldn't see anything about the tires or trunk that looked clattery, so I started the car back up and determined that the sound was coming from the engine. It seemed to be coming from the belts that are visible outside the engine, but I couldn't see anything obstructing them or scraping against them.

The lady in the restaurant placed a call to Alex for me, and he got the girls back in the car and came down to stare uncomprehendingly at the engine with me. (It takes two, you see.)

Alex thought the sound was coming from the timing belt, not the harmless little rubber belts outside the engine, which put the whole thing into another realm of "how bad could this be" - at least in my mind. Alex still wanted to try to drive it home, but the question was rendered moot when he tried to start it back up to stare uncomprehendingly at it for another little while, and it wouldn't start.

So we went back to the nice lady in the restaurant and got her kind permission to use the one car to tow the other car to the back parking lot and abandon it there, at least for the night.

So we did.

When we got home, the cat had vomited, wetly, on the ottoman of the glider rocker. Pretty much every other surface upon which she could have let loose can be thrown in the washing machine. The ottoman not so much.

Guess it was a pretty good day for me to pick up Buffalo wings and beer on my way home, no?

Things work out

Not too long after José bought the red car, the left rear seatbelt got jammed. I jiggled it but it stayed stuck, so I had Robin sit in the middle for the ride home. The next day I fiddled with it again and it released, and that was that.

A few weeks ago, it got stuck again. I jiggled it like before, but it stayed stuck. I had Robin move to the middle again, and every few days I would remember and fuss with it again, but it didn't want to budge. I figured we'd eventually have it looked at, but I kept forgetting about it since it wasn't inconveniencing me in a very noticeable way (except for the daily tragedy of the girls having to sit next to each other after school. Together! Touching!)

On the way up to my house, there's a spot where there are often pedestrians, but there's good visibility so it's also easy to tell if there's nobody around. When possible, it's good to build up a bit of momentum because it's the beginning of a two-mile climb. See, here's a picture from last year. The spot I'm talking about is right where the rain starts in this picture.



So I was heading home one day last week. There was nobody walking on the road, and for some reason the oncoming lane was a solid line of stopped cars, so I picked up speed as I approached the hill.

Except, of course, that someone in the solid line of stopped cars had very kindly refrained from blocking a seldom-used side street which was, at that moment, being used.

I am happy to report that the Brake/Swerve/Honk reflex was alive and well in both myself and the driver of the big red pickup truck that was trying to pull out into my lane.

I had actually been wondering about the "Honk" part of that reflex, since the horn in the red car works fine, but is a little stiffer than the one in the Montero and I have repeatedly failed when trying to give a gentle beep, for example before passing a stopped bus, or if it looks like someone is getting ready to back out of a driveway in front of me. But the OhGodHitTheHornNOW instinct goes straight from eye to hand, bypassing the section of the brain that, under ordinary circumstances, might hold back, and Honk I did.

So we both stopped short, his radiator about an inch shy of my side mirror. Somebody shouted something - I'm thinking it was the driver of the pickup giving his opinion to the person who presumably gave him the friendly "go ahead, I'll wait" gesture without checking for oncoming cars. Then I continued on my way.

All of this happened on the left side of the car, while the girls were buckled into the only functioning belts in the back seat - in the center and on the right hand side.

Two days later I picked Robin up at school and without thinking she got into the left rear seat. And put on the belt, which wasn't stuck anymore.

Where to, Ma'am?

So we've both driven José's new car around and about. We've both managed to back it out of its cozy little lair without, for the most part, hitting the concrete column. (*cough* wasn't me *cough*)

Alex has gotten a lot of little things fixed on it so, for instance, when one drives at night the dashboard lights now illuminate not only the little dials, but also--and this is key--the needles that point to specific spots on the little dials.

He also got copies of the key for all concerned, installed some plastic thingies at the tops of the windows so the rain won't drip in (not an issue now, but a mighty good thing to have starting about next April), and helped José pick out a new set of tires.

Oh, and he also got the engine block repaired because of this ka-CHUNK sound we kept hearing when stopping, starting, accelerating, braking or turning the car. And this ka-CHUNK kind of thuddy feeling I was getting under my feet on the passenger side. But that's all fixed now (and fortunately the engine didn't fall out on the roadside) and things are looking good.

This frees us up to focus on just how much this car still looks like a taxi. For one thing, Costa Rican taxis are red, and this car is cherry red. For another, it still has a triangular shape on the door where the official taxi insignia was taken off when it stopped being a taxi. But if you don't look too closely, all your eye really registers is, "Yep, there's the triangle. Flag it down!"

And, of course, the illicit "pirate" taxi business is a thriving one in Costa Rica, so any car in any shade of red (up to and including deep burgundy) is potentially a taxi in the mind of the public.

I have not been flagged down, myself. Me, I get the double takes. "Wha...is that a woman driving that thing? Hold the phone. A gringa woman? Wha...huh?" Yeah, not a lot of female taxi drivers around these parts.

Being neither a woman nor a foreigner, Alex is perfectly believable as a Costa Rican taxi driver, so he gets a lot of what a friend of mine used to call the "dinky wave." When you want a taxi or a bus to stop in Costa Rica, you stand on the side of the road and extend your arm, palm down, and make kind of a beckoning motion with just your fingers. (Try it. There's no manly way to do that. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just kind of surprising in a machista culture such as this.)

You know, too, that people expect a certain kind of behavior from a taxi. As a driver in this country, I know for a fact that a red car is more likely to cut me off, or pull out abruptly, or pull over in a no parking zone, or jump the red light, or any number of other things that taxis habitually do. Alex claims not to respond to this - or even to feel it - and I'm not saying I'm a less careful driver in the not-quite-a-taxi, but it does kind of color your responses, knowing that folks are, subconsciously at least, expecting you to be a pushy driver.

Anyway. I wasn't looking forward to driving it at first. Not because of any of the things I've said here, but simply because it's not what I'm used to driving. The Montero is so high off the ground that I feel like I'm sitting right down on the pavement when I'm in the red car. You have to reach up to rest your elbow on the window frame, for crying out loud. And the clutch is less sensitive than the one I'm used to, so I ended up revving the engine at every gear shift and stop sign the first day (of course this fit right in with the whole taxi thing).

But I'm used to it now. And I can appreciate its good qualities, like how it's sleek and sporty and more powerful than a diesel Montero. Even? Maybe? Just a little sexy? A 13 year old Hyundai Elantra with cracked hubcaps? No? OK, forget I said anything.

Not Puntarenas

The plan, of course, was that the new car would enable the whole family to take trips to the beach together.

"The Beach," to my in-laws, consists most especially of Puntarenas, which is the closest water to where we live. Puntarenas (which means "Sandy Point") is not known as an especially attractive place, but it's nearby and it's what they think of when they think "beach," so it was chosen as the first destination.

The new car performed like an old pro. The old car, however, felt that it was overdue for some mechanical attention and threw a belt before we were even half an hour out of town. The brakes and power steering both went out, but Alex handled it so well that the only reason I knew something was wrong was that I heard him apply the emergency brake, which one doesn't ordinarily do when driving at full speed on a busy highway.

We were just reaching a two-lane bridge, after which the highway widened back out to four lanes, so he was able to pull over into the extra lane, where there was no danger from oncoming cars not noticing us in time. This is fortunate, as most Costa Rican highways have no shoulder to speak of.

We called the others (huzzah for the inventor of the cell phone!), and they turned around and came back to hem and haw over the engine trouble with us.


I called my friend (huzzah!), who lives fairly near to where we broke down, to ask her for her mechanic's number. She got us in touch with him (huzzah!), but before he showed up, we attracted the attention of a traffic cop. He seemed happy to help us tinker, and stayed until he, Alex and Alex's cousin Randall had managed to re-seat the slipped belt. It was frayed and clearly needed to be replaced, but they clipped off the strands that had split off, and we hoped it would get us a mile or so to the nearest service station.

(The cop had the same last name as Alex's mother, and had a small injury to his left ear that I recognized as a parrot bite. In one of the brief lulls in engine tinkering I asked him if he had parrots and we spent a moment comparing scars and defending the birds that gave them to us.)


The re-seated belt held long enough to get us off the highway (about 500 yards), but slipped off again at the exit. There is a plant nursery at the exit, and Alex parked there.


Randall took all the others a few miles down the road to a sort of inexpensive public country club that we've been to before, where they could all have breakfast and the girls could swim. It's no Puntarenas, but given the circumstances, it would make a worthy substitute. They also stopped at a grocery store and bought beer, whiskey, soda, and a cake.

Meanwhile, Alex and I walked across the street for our own breakfast, which was served in Ye Olde traditional Costa Rican style, with the coffee in enameled tin mugs and the food on a wooden board covered with fresh banana leaves. The tortillas were homemade and, having been unnaturally fatigued the day before, I felt it was only prudent to ask for a big honkin' order of bacon with my breakfast. You know, in case it was anemia. (I don't know if that's what made the difference, but I had plenty of energy all day long.)


After breakfast we updated the mechanic guy with our new whereabouts (huzzah!) and then wandered around the nursery looking at beautiful plants.


And some with monkey arms.


Then the mechanic showed up, having gone to three different shops to get the appropriate belt, and fixed our car.





He charged us the cost of the belt ($8) plus $15 for his time. We paid him and then joined the others at the park/club.









Once we pried the children out of the pool, we all sat around in one of the picnic shelters and let Robin serve drinks to whoever would accept one.


Alex's elderly grandmother María was with us. More about her in a minute.



When the drinkers were tired of drinking and the sunbathers were nice and toasty and everyone was about ready to move on, we got out the cake and sang Happy Birthday to Alex's mother, who asked me to confirm the math and then agreed that she was turning 59.



As the afternoon wound down, Yolanda reminisced about where she and her mother had lived when she was a child. It was not the first time that I had heard about how nice it would be to take the grandmother back to her hometown for a look-see, but for some reason it was the first time that I consciously heard the name of the town.

It's just a couple of miles off the main road from where we do the Quilt Retreats, and I had even been there myself once, to buy a last-minute cake when one of the ladies at a retreat mentioned that it was her birthday. It was also no more than 15 minutes from where we were sitting at the time.

So once we packed up the extra cake and drinks and wet bathing suits and folding chairs, we all piled into the cars and I showed them the way to the itty-bitty town of Turrúcares. Yolanda had mentioned the train tracks, so we stopped at the old train station.

Costa Rica's rail system was abandoned completely for several years, then revived, then abandoned again. At the moment, there are a couple of tourist trains on the main routes, and one of them comes through here on the weekends, but I'm sure it doesn't stop.



We drove down to the town church, where María used to come to Mass on the weekends. Yolanda took her into the church and said that María said that everything was different - the pulpit, the confessionals, nothing was where she remembered it. Someone overheard her, and said that the church had been rebuilt in the 80s, and that María was correctly describing the way it used to be set up.



She said the town where they actually lived was called Cebadilla, and was far from Turrúcares. Knowing that "far" in the days of foot and train travel might not actually be that long a drive, we asked some guys for directions and found it just a mile or two down the road.

We again stopped at the train station (now just a concrete platform) and Yolanda and María began talking about which way it would have been to their old house, which was near some large concrete troughs used for watering cattle. A man overheard and suggested we drive around a block and up along the tracks, rather than trying to walk there.

We found the place he said, but when we asked someone else, he didn't know the way to the troughs. We walked a ways up the train tracks anyway. We didn't find the troughs, but we apparently would have found them if we had gone farther down the tracks. Yolanda and María felt that they had revisited the old homestead in any case.









I would have liked to end on that picture, but actually we stopped for coffee and chorreadas on the way home. Chorreadas are a sweetened pancake-like food made with fresh corn in the batter. They're served with sour cream and grated cheese on top and this restaurant specializes in all things corn, so they were really good.



Best. Breakdown. Ever.

Sweet anticipation

The photos below are just the first three I took today. There are many, many more.

I may not get to editing and posting the whole series tonight, but just to give you a taste of what lies ahead, I've gone ahead and tagged this post with all the appropriate keywords.

That sounds about right

The four most recent searches that led people to my blog:

"Quick-dry paper mache"
"Fixed thermostat in car still running sluggish"
"Transition songs about trees for kindergarteners"
"Stripper"

Coasting Richly...striving to provide a little something for everyone.

And also, could I just say that it is not fair that people who spend 95% of their time speaking a second language end up sounding drunker sooner than the other people in any given social group.

Or so I'm told.