Rincon de la Vieja

 We went on a hike in the rain forest in Rincon de la Vieja volcano. The trail to the crater was closed since ol' Rincon has been too active lately, huffing and puffing and apparently killing fish in the streams. And besides a 16 km round trip is a bit too long for our boys. Instead we enjoyed the 3 km round trip and took almost 4 hours walking it, stopping to admire the nature and me taking photographs.

 First we had to cross Rio Colorado.

I wanted to take a photo of the boys and asked them to stand still for two secods. Not happening.

 Jungle view. We saw several morpho butterflies, blue, big fluttering mittens, but they were hard to catch with the camera lens.

 Mushrooms are great subjects for photography, they don't move. During our trip we heard thunder quite often, but not a drop of rain.

 Even though we couldn't visit the crater we saw a lot of other volcanic activity. Bubbling hot water,

bubbling hot mud,

 steam coming from underground,

 and more bubbling mud, frosting on the cake being the repulsive rotten egg sulphuric stench.

 There was a beautiful waterfall,

beautiful vegetation,

and happy kids running back and forth telling us what they saw. Tuomas had his magnifying glass and binoculars, but in addition to the morphos we saw only one frog, leaf cutting ants and a dead spider. We heard birds singing and probably some insects, too, but they were hiding.

 I realized from this picture that Risto has grown a lot! He'll be 10 in a couple of months.

 When we headed home from Rincon the sky was overcast, but we could see the whole volcano. Huge storm clouds were forming above the adjacent Volcan Miravalles. Gradually they moved over Rincon and then headed towards the shore. We stopped on our way home to admire the setting sun color these clouds different shades of pink and blue.

 I set up my tripod for one last picture and was lucky to press the shutter at the right time. Got it!!

Life in August and September

 The hills are certainly green now, greener than in this picture which was taken back in May. We've apparently had slightly less rain than normal. Mornings are usually dry, with rain and quite often thunder in the late afternoon, evening and night.

 We needed a desk in our house and asked a local carpenter to make us one (no IKEA here). This is the result of our dictionary-aided conversations, a beautiful desk made of Guanacaste wood.

Last week I went back to his workshop and this time without a dictionary. Hopefully next week we'll get another desk for the boys and a bookshelf.

 The boys at the independence day parade sipping pipa frias with their friend Truman.

 Tuomas and Jenher have been best friends since day one.

In August we were invited to our neighbour's daughter's 15th birthday boat cruise. This is Stefanie jumping from the boat. Risto and Tuomas were happy to take turns with the nine bikini-clad girls.

Stefany's adoptive mother Heather and I pretending to be mermaids.

 John, Stefany's adoptive father enjoying the ocean.  Their family of three are wonderful neighbours who have helped us a lot and are also dear friends.

 After jumping and swimming around the boat we went to the beach for a bbq and games. One of the games was trying to hit the orange ball with a plantain tied around your waist.

 Another fun game was to try to move a cookie from your eye to your mouth without hands.

 We also found a dead sea snake. Oh, btw, I am not holding it.

We enjoyed some water sports, too.

Jaakko was very happy to be in the water and not go on a banana boat ride.

 

I was the designated photographer and DH the handyman.

 In addition to fun-fun stuff we have also pulled a couple of teeth, two from Jaakko (his first ones) and one from Tuomas. Don't worry, new ones are growing.

 DH working on his computer. Or actually he was listening to music full blast. I don't remember which was louder, the music or the snoring. So, if you happen to fall asleep with your hands on the keyboard you get q-tips in your mouth and a photograph.

 Another beautiful sunset.

I went on a photo shoot with a local photographer. We left at 6 am, drove to the top of a hill and worked there until the sun had risen completely.

 Then we headed to the nearby village of Guardia to take pictures of local people. She was one of a group of students.

 She really loved her parakeet. 

 

 Swimming in the rain, but it's not really cold

 Our traditional wedding anniversary picture was taken at the sunset lookout point.

 We asked the boys to set the table for our anniversary dinner. They wanted us to stay in the bedroom while they worked. Candles and a bottle of wine opened. And it was not a screw top bottle! I'm not sure if I should be proud of my 9-year-old for being able to do that. I don't know who was responsible for the plates, but he did not set one for DH.

Animals

These pictures are in no specific order. I know I should up-date more often, but life in paradise is still normal life with three boys.

This post is about animals that we've encountered lately, dead, alive or fictional.
Gray hawk greeted me up in the tree behind our house one morning. I took quickly a couple of pictures with my zoom lens and then got my tripod to get an even better picture. Once I had it set up, the hawk had flown away.
We have also seen a squirrel cuckoo. The rainy season makes bird watching a challenge because of the foliage.
One more Izzy-Lizzy.
This poisonous cascavel, rattle snake, was not a welcome guest on our deck. I tried to shoo it away with a broom and it just curled and hissed at me. Then I tried my luck with the pool net, but no success. It just didn't understand that I wanted it to leave and I did not want to kill it. Well, then some workers came to our deck, saw it "muy malo!" and chopped it into pieces.
We had tons of bugs at the beginning of the rainy season. In the evenings we saw them flying against our screen door and most mornings I could sweep half a liter of dead bugs from the deck.
And some of them were quite big! But one gets gradually used to them, though I did scream when I opened a kitchen cabinet door and out crawled a bug almost 10 cm long.

We called these the mac-mac frogs. When the rainy season started they were everywhere. Literally thousands of them squished on the roads and singing their never-ending mac-mac-mac-mac-mac mating song in the night. For the first couple of nights we could hardly sleep. When one started with a short innocent mac-mac he was soon joined in song by thousands. We had one in our bathtub, too. DH tried to get him out with a broom, but it just hopped 1 m up on the wall.

I had to look twice at this insect before I was sure that it wasn't a leaf. A beautiful creature.

Huge moths are regular night guests.

Red snapper with garlic and butter, que rico! I just don't like their eyes.
Anorectic fish on the beach.
This cute puff fish was getting quite crispy on the beach. No wonder it was attracted by the fly.
Opossum in 2D.
There floppy-eared cows are everywhere. They have a gentle gaze, but I keep a distance or preferably a fence between the bulls and myself.
Our bat family has one more member. See the baby underneath the mother!
I spotted this huge wasp nest high up in a tree. Apparently they are a very nasty type of wasp, over an inch long and venomous. The nest itself was well over 1.5m long!

I've been riding quite a few times at a nearby finca. One Saturday we rode on the back roads, over the hills in the forest surrounded by all the mysterious sounds, dozens of butterflies and even a few mono congos, howler monkies. We ended up on Playa Panama, galloping on the beach! The boys are too inexperienced to join on these rides, but Risto and Tuomas took one lesson which was unfortunately interrupted by thunder and rain. I took Tuomas another time. He gets frustrated very quickly, but is willing to learn more.Tuomas riding Tuto.
Risto riding Palo.
Me on Milennium. Note: no saddle!

Results of art class. The penguin on the left is Tuomas', the one on the right is Jaakko's. Risto's elephant is top left, Tuomas' on the right and Jaakko's at the bottom. Art classes for Tuomas are very frustrating. The blank white paper just scares him and nothing is accomplished without tears. I'm trying to help him to get over this, but it is not easy. For either of us.