Forgiving look

Ehkä lapsi katsoessaan minuun
näkee sen lapsen joka
joskus olin.

Ja on kuin olisin jotakin
saanut anteeksi.

- Risto Rasa -

Maybe the child sees the child
I once was
when he looks at me.

And it feels that
I was forgiven something.

- Risto Rasa -

Travelling tips

We have been asked how we survived the long trip across the Atlantic. First of all, we've done that several times. I think the most challenging trip was to Curacao three years ago when the boys were 1, 3 and 5. Within an hour after take-off from Frankfurt I had changed the clothing of two boys and my jeans were soaking wet from a cup of tea that was poured on my lap. And I didn't have any extra clothes.

Basically, it's just a matter of attitude. It's just a couple of hours of your life (and hopefully not the last ones). It's going to be uncomfortable, the boys are going to argue and we might end up sitting next to people who would prefer to sleep the entire flight. In the end, we've been positively surprised.

On this trip we used bribery! The boys were promised 20 dollars each if they didn't fight, my dad promised another 20. It was a challenging for them, poor kids. Once we could almost see steam coming from their heads, but all DH had to say was "20" and they walked away in different directions. We also had help from a PSP2 and iPod Touch, books and crayons. And patience, patience, patience!

Jet-lag takes a couple of days. This raging bull was with us in Florida last year, picture taken on the first day after arriving. As with the trip to Florida, also in Costa Rica we ended up carrying sleeping boys from dinner to the hotel. Oh, I remember Valentine's Day in 2005 on Marco Island, Florida. We had a dinner reservation in the evening. Risto didn't want to eat anything and just nibbled his food, and by the time we had the bottle of bubbly and sword fish brought to the table, Tuomas had a fit so we took turns eating and trying to calm down a raging 1-year-old outside the restaurant. An elderly couple looked at us smiling; the scene had brought back sweet memories from several decades back "You'll smile at this later".

PS: the number of visitors to my blog has increased significantly despite the fact that I don't update that often. I recognize a few locations of friends and family, but there are several regulars that I don't. It would be nice to know who you are! Drop me a comment!

Pura Vida Part III, miscellaneous pictures

"Ok, boys, you can go down to the beach, but stay out of the water so you don't have to drive back to the hotel in wet clothes." The picture is self-explanatory.
The pool at Una Ola was nice and compact. Perfect for three boys who can barely swim.
Sea shell, need I say more.
"Yeah, definately bigger than dad's!" Ricardo was the best surf instructor, he was absolutely great with the boys and took the not-so-nimble parents into consideration, too. "Ok, Mama, hop on the board!"
Jaakko with his Pina Colada without the rummmmm.
Butterfly, duh!
Jaakko left his mark on the beach. It was washed away by the tide within seconds.
Bubbly water. This time unbottled.
Beach chick. This is about the maximum amount of skin I could reveal even with SPF 50. And I still got an allergic reaction! Oops, forgot to tuck my tummy in....

Pura Vida Part II, miscellaneous pictures

White chested magpie blue-jay was the name of this bird. I think. At Rick's hotel.Rick's pool. The last night in Costa Rica. Howler monkies are sleeping.
Monteverde Cloud Forest. I think I saw Tarzan riding a T-rex...

Motmot at Rick's.
Hummmmmm. Humming bird.
We found theses tracks on Playa Grande early in the morning. I think we were on the beach at 6 am when the sun rose. It looked like a one-wheeled tractor had driven from the sea. A leatherback turtle had come during the night to lay her eggs.
The tracks led to this nest.
We found two dead, crispy little turtles. They didn't make it to the ocean.
This plant was found in the cloud forest.
Coati on our way to Arenal volcano. At Rick's place there was one (or probably a few, since you couldn't really tell them apart) that was tame. The boys fed him raisin and nut bread.
Calamari pasta. Risto and Tuomas shared this portion and I think their plates were empty in 5 minutes. Seafood is their thing!

Pura Vida!

February 16th took us to Costa Rica via Frankfurt and Houston. 27 hours after we woke up at home we arrived at Rancho Armadillo Estate in Playas de Coco. Rick, the owner of the 6 room "hotel", is an amazing person. Despite the late night he showed the boys all kinds of critters with his torch. Within an hour of arriving we'd seen gekkos, bats, scorpions and scorpion spiders. The next morning before breakfast he took us on a tour on the estate showing us lemon trees, orange trees, cashew nut trees, bananas and a tree that one shouldn't touch since it's protected by ants whose sting hurt really bad. And we saw and heard howler monkies (in addition to our own).The dominant male of the crowd is on the left. It's quite obvious.

After two nights at Ricks, a canopy tour with 13 zips that petrified the smaller boys for the first few (more like 5-6, I thought they'd never forgive me) and tarantula hunting, we headed for the surf camp at Una Ola, Playa Grande.For six days we had 2 hours of lessons everyday, DH, Risto and myself; quite often the class was in the morning at 7 due to tides. Tuomas and Jaakko played with a babysitter with whom they had no common language.
A week of practice gets you here.... I wish. Risto was definately the best of us, thanks to his skate boarding background. Tuomas and Jaakko tried it, too, with the teacher and enjoyed it. We slept 9-10 hours a night, it was a quiet neighborhood except for some migratory birds that slept in a tree next to our hotel. Boy, were they noisy! They flew in around 5 PM, "chirped" until sundown, kept quiet for the night, but started their morning 12 hours later very loudly. We met really nice people at the hotel; it was a 8 room hotel so you got to know everybody. Colin, the manager, was super friendly and helped us with a lot of things.Sunsets were amazing.
After the surf camp we headed for the mountains and cloud forest of Monteverde. The distance was only about 200 km, but it took us half of the day. The last 35 km took us an hour. The last leg of the journey started at Tilaran. We just had a very general map, but the road from Tilaran to Monteverde was very well signed. Or that's what we thought. Just a few km out of Tilaran we suddenly came across a sign that had Monteverde crossed out. We made a u-turn and before we could say "pura vida" there was a friendly guy knocking on our window with a photocopy of a map, explaining quickly the road to Monteverde "make a left, a left, then right, left here". The map cost 2000 colones, about 4 dollars. It was so obvious that there was a connection between the misguiding signs and the friendly guy with the map!!! We paid him the 4 bucks and off we went.

The hotel in Santa Elena right next to Monteverde was amazing, The Hidden Canopy. Treehouses! We threw in our luggage and headed down to Monteverde for lunch and a quick look around before coming to the hotel for 5 o'clock tea (an experience we were told you don't want to miss.... so true). In Monteverde we noticed that we had a flat tyre. We were lucky: right across the road was the only service station in the area. We had the tyre filled, but they said it looked punctured. When we got back to the hotel, I asked the hotel owner Jenn (yet another amazing person!!!) if she could help with the car. She just said in a very calm voice "no problem, we'll take care of it. I'll just book you on a cloud forest tour bus for the morning, and while you're in the cloud forest I'll have the car fixed". Every word was true, no problems! And it cost us less than 10 bucks. Amazing.

Sunset at Hidden Canopy. Gulf of Nicoya in the background. This hotel was small, too, and very intimate. Jenn's a great host and it seemed like only nice people stay at her hotel :-) We walked a 3 km long walk in the cloud forest with 8 bridges across the canopy. Jenn told me to ask the boys if they could spot any dinosaurs. "Mom, they're extinct!!!" Couldn't fool them. But I think I saw Tarzan. In the clouds.

We visited the Bat Jungle, but it was quite obvious that the tourist stuff was a bit too much for the boys. They were restless and wanted the company of children.

Luckily we ran across José-Pablo and all four boys were happy to play some football.

Two nights in Santa Elena, then we headed back to Tilaran and around Lake Arenal to see the volcano. In Tilaran we stopped at a bakery and also to get some fruit. The road from Tilaran to La Fortuna combined with a toffee filled doughnut was too much for Jaakko. Two kilometers before our next hotel, El Silencio del Campo, and after I put the plastic bag away that I had held infront of him for the last 20 km..... well, all I need to tell you that Jaakko entered the hotel in his underwear.

This hotel was nice, too, but a bit of a disappointment after the three previous ones. We didn't meet the owner at all (it was a bigger hotel, though) and the staff was semi-friendly. The towels were nicely folded.
Plus it rained and rained and rained. Driving into La Fortuna we saw 4/5 of the volcano, but didn't take any pictures; left it for the next day. Mistake. The next morning was totally overcast and it rained. We enjoyed soaking ourselves in the hot spring and
we did see this happy little creature in his natural habitat.