July

Still holding my breath…

We went to a local coffee shop after breakfast. We brought my laptop with us and worked on Doug’s e-learning course on the deck of the coffee shop. Now that is the best way to do homework!

Communication down here has been difficult. I have not arranged a phone for myself yet so this has added a greater challenge to the house hunting. I was waiting to hear about the rustic house today. Jack, the man who owns the home was going to call Kathia, the lady from the school. She was then going to pass along the message to her daughter Naomi who works in the information centre up the road. Well unfortunately Kathia was out of the school all day and the information centre was closed today! I managed to contact someone else from the school by e-mail and she told me that you can purchase a phone card from any of the grocery stores and the phone cards work in any of the payphones in town. Well, first of all I never knew there were payphones in town, why did nobody mention this sooner and how is it I didn’t even notice them! We actually had to go to three stores before we found the phone cards and then it didn’t even work in the payphone. Fortunately Doug and I have hung out in town enough that we have made a few friends, one of which is Miguel, a guy who works at one of the tour companies. He was kind enough to allow us to keep using his phone all afternoon. He has also offered us accommodation if we need it. It turns out his mother rents out rooms in her house so we won’t end up stuck at least. I have heard through someone else that the rustic house is in fact available and we can get it at a reasonable price but I tried all night to reach the owner and never got an answer. He leaves town at 1PM tomorrow so I will have to try again in the morning. Talk about cutting it close!

In the mean time Miguel figured out the mystery behind the phone card. The instructions on the card and the payphone say that you have to dial 199 when in fact you actually have to dial 1199. How on earth he figured that out I don’t know. He also knows a guy who will set me up with a phone and he introduced me to a man who teaches self-defense in town. Might be a good class for Doug to replace the Karate that he is missing. Miguel may end up being a great contact.

While I was finding out as much as I could from Miguel about life in Costa Rica Douglas made friends with all of the local skateboarding boys. The language barrier was overcome by Doug’s ability to show off his talent on the skateboard. Given that he has had very little else to do, he has become very good at it.

Doug and I made a pact not to go to the same place twice in order to force ourselves to try all of the different restaurants in town. I have already broken this pact because the latte at the Treehouse restaurant is soooo good we have now been back twice.