LOCAL FARMER’S MARKET....just a quick 20 minute walk down the street. We’re living on the side of the mountain so the walk back up was harder and hotter!!!!
We’re starting to feel a bit more comfortable in our new surroundings. Mike and Andee gave us lots of good coaching before they left yesterday. They’d been driving us around for the past few days, trying to point out landmarks, good places to eat, shop etc. Needless to say it was a bit overwhelming because San Jose and the surrounding towns are pretty big and densely populated. Driving, well that is quite the experience in this traffic and on some of these narrow roads....motorcycle drivers are crazy the way they weave in between cars and pass you on both sides!
They don’t use street names or numbers for their addresses, it’s just descriptions. As a result, most of the streets don’t have signs so getting from A to B is tricky and with all the little roads, very easy to get lost when you’re new in town. Luckily we brought our GARMIN GPS with us and we found a recently created map package for Costa Rica called EZFIND. It just came out last fall and has excellent reviews.
So far we think it’s going to be worth every penny we paid for it. We had to take Mike and Andee to the airport yesterday and then find our way back home....by ourselves. All the coaching we got helped us get back into Escazu but without the GARMIN, I’m sure we would have taken a few wrong turns on some of these little roads. When we were supposed to turn on a road that had no name, GARMIN would just say, turn left on “road”. So the map is very detailed and accurate. Got us exactly where we needed to be, which was a huge relief. Had a few drinks to celebrate that accomplishment!
Today we ventured out for our first walk in the neighbourhood. Every Saturday morning there’s a local farmer’s market, just like at home in the summer. Lots of produce (some of which we had no clue what it was) and meat, all for pretty cheap. Sure would have helped if we knew more Spanish but we’re working on that and pointing goes a long way to getting you what you want. It’s a popular destination as you can see by the crowd in the pic.
It was a good first experience, can’t say I’d be walking around in these streets if I wasn’t living here right now. Definitely not a normal touristy area. Safe enough in the day, but we wouldn’t do it at night. We have to be very careful to lock up the house and the compound it’s in every night...daytime too.
Spent the rest of day relaxing, reading and getting this website updated! It’s very comfortable here!
Just outside all these windows you see is the walk out patio and the view you saw in the previous entries pictures. We spend a lot of time just looking.......There’s lots of birds to check out including a big flock of very noisy green parrots. But no complaints, I’m watching parrots in my back yard!!!