Happy Birthday, Mom

Today is Thanksgiving. A day to reflect on what we're grateful for and what truly means the most to us in this life.  A day to put aside differences, take a good look at our lives and say "damn, I'm blessed". And every few years, Thanksgiving happens to coincide with my mom's birthday on November 26th.  She used to hate it when that happened.  I remember hearing her in the kitchen like it was yesterday: "Today's my birthday and I'm stuck in the kitchen ALL day making food, cleaning...ugh!".  But, deep down, I secretly knew that she didn't mind it one bit.  My mom loved us - her family - so very much, and loved doing things for other people.  She LIVED for helping others.  So to spend her birthday surrounded by the people she loved, making food with and for the people who meant the most to her?  Well, I think she wouldn't have wanted to spend her birthday any other way...

And that's why the holidays are so hard for me now. Ever since her passing 9 years ago, they've never felt quite the same.  My mom WAS the holidays.  Her cheery disposition, her warm hugs and smiles, the way she decorated the tree and filled the house with love.  Until she was gone, I never realized or appreciated the fact that she truly was the energy and the sparkle behind the magic of the holidays.

So over the years, the celebrations have evolved.  The first few years after she died, I think my dad and I just had Thanksgiving on our own.  That was hard.  During those times it really sunk in that she was gone.  Then we spent a few years going up to Seattle and spending Thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family, like we had done many years in the past when she was around.  But the commute was long and there was also a feeling of absence - someone missing -from those Thanksgivings, too.

In recent years, Thanksgivings have greatly varied.  If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll remember my Thanksgiving in Tanzania, 3 years ago.  That year I had to learn to create a new network of family for the holiday. That gave me a good reminder of what I had to be thankful for back home.  And for the past couple of years, my dad and I have spent Thanksgiving up in Portland with our neighbors from home (Newport) that I grew up with.  We've started creating NEW traditions and embracing our extended network of family: our friends, our neighbors, our loved ones.

This year, we're heading back to the coast, to Lincoln City, to spend Thanksgiving with my boyfriend Jeff's family.  Lincoln City is just a short drive up the road from where my dad still lives and I grew up, and it will be my first time spending Thanksgiving on the coast in years.  It will be a small gathering: my dad, his mom & step-dad, and the two of us.  Intimate and peaceful.  Familiar, but new.  This will be the first time our families will have gathered together for the holidays.  And for Christmas, Jeff & I will host everyone in our home up in Portland.  We are now starting new holiday traditions in our own home, and that is refreshing and exciting for me.  After 9 years, I am finally starting to feel like the holidays are something to look forward to again....

 And while we are moving forward and creating new Thanksgiving traditions with family and friends, new and old, my mom is with me today maybe more than any other day of the year.  Her spirit of giving, her thoughtful ways and her warmth and love are so fondly remembered and sorely missed.  And I couldn't be more grateful for having had such a caring, loving mother.

So squeeze your loved ones extra tight today and keep gratitude in your heart for their presence at your Thanksgiving feast...even if they annoy the heck outta ya ;)

She would have been 65 today.  Happy Birthday Mom.  I love you and miss you every day.

Costa Rica - From Sea to Shining Sea...(and Volcano...)

 Many things haven't changed in my life since my last blog post...and one big thing has.

I am still living in Portland, Oregon, loving the outdoors and the quirky ways of the city.  Still teaching dance at Studio One Dance Academy (getting ready for our big show in June!) and working for Chopstick Art.  I still LOVE to travel.  And, I still love writing on this blog (albeit, it's been awhile....)

The one big thing that has changed in my life is that I fell in love.  After years of being single and countless horrible dating experiences, I basically had decided that I was going to be alone for the rest of my life.  And, that I hated all men.

Right about at that time is when Jeff came into my life.  And despite my bitterness and closed off-ness, he slowly and gracefully proved to me that I could trust him and that he wouldn't hurt me.  And over time, my huge walls of hurt, pain, and fear slowly tumbled down, and I am now happier than I have been in a very long time.  He is an incredible partner. And, I think that the best part of the whole thing is that while I love him completely, through all of my years of being alone, I now know that I don't NEED anyone.  I'm fine on my own, and know I can stand on my own two feet. And that feels good.  But, he sure does add insurmountable amount of fun and joy to my life.  Isn't love an amazing thing?!

So, after being together for a while, naturally my travel bug came out.  One of the things that makes our relationship really great is that we both love to travel, and both value taking time off work to spend time with each other and disconnect.  So, after many months of debate, we decided to take a trip and tackle Costa Rica.  Originally we were looking into traveling to Bali or Thailand, but in December, Jeff's band "The Lonesome Billies" (look them up - they're rad!) was offered the chance to play at SXSW in Austin, Texas (a huge music festival, if you haven't heard of it).  Once that was booked and we both decided we were going (duh - I'm not going to wait around at home!), we decided that it was easier for us to head South from Texas, to somewhere in Central America.  I'd always had Costa Rica on my bucket list, and Jeff had a good friend traveling around Costa Rica with some great insights, so it didn't take us too long to decide that that would be our destination.

We did, however, revise our travel itinerary about 5 times.  Turns out, Costa Rica had been on a lot of other people's bucket lists too.  I came to learn that about half of my friends had been to Costa Rica. And the more we talked with folks the more confused we became.  Too many options!  Where do we start?!  Costa Rica has an abundance of fun, wildlife, and adventure, so it was really difficult to decide what to see with only 2 weeks to travel. Eventually, we looked inside to who we are and what we wanted out of our vacation, and we decided to travel to the places with the least amount of tourists as possible, and that we wanted to see 3 really distinct areas of the country: the Pacific Coast (Nicoya Penninsula, including Santa Teresa & Montezuma), Arenal Volcano & Hot Springs (in the middle of the country), and the Caribbean Coast (Puerto Viejo & Manzanillo area). And on March 22nd, our flight from Texas to San Jose, Costa Rica landed, and our adventure was under way...

These three areas of the country had some similarities, but many differences.  I'll do my best to illustrate them with words & photos here:

The Pacific Side - Santa Teresa & Montezuma:
When we first arrived here, we were floored by the beauty of the landscape, and the people.  This area of Costa Rica is a major surf mecca, and all the people on the beach were ripped! (Um...we didn't get the memo about the body building competition???  Whoopsies!) The people on the beach, however, were predominantly imports.  Meaning that although many of them lived there, most were not originally from Costa Rica, but rather from Europe or some other first world country.  And I can see why they moved.....

White sand beaches (with almost no one on them).  Impeccable waves.  Deliciously fresh seafood and fruits. Pelicans riding the surf. Hammocks for days. Howler monkeys jumping from tree to tree. Breath taking sunsets. Large iguanas crossing the street in front of you.Waterfalls. Secret snorkeling tide pools. Fresh coconuts to sip on...

Sunset, Playa Santa Teresa

...5 minutes into our walk on the beach the first day, we were brainstorming ways we could move there, too.....

Don Jon's - Santa Teresa - The first place we stayed at. We were on the second floor - that balcony with the towels! We spent a lot of time on the top floor, too.  Swinging in hammocks and watching the howler monkeys...

Surf's up - Jeff in Santa Teresa, walking to the beach to catch some waves

Beach - Santa Teresa

Dinner at Katana, next to the jungle canopy.  Some of the best food we'd ever had. And, despite 10 layers of sunscreen, some of the best sunburns, too. Muy langosta!

Snorkeling in our own private tide pool/hot tub - Montezuma

Snorkel Bob, at the ready!  This tide pool was so magical.  One of our favorite spots on the trip....

Hang time in our hotel yard - Montezuma

Montezuma Water Fall

Our hotel yard in Montezuma, again.  Happy people :)

Arenal Volcano & Hot Springs:
Our next stop was in the middle of the country. We only spent two nights here, and were very happy we did.  While I'd still recommend putting this on your travel itinerary to Costa Rica, I wouldn't make it a point to go back here again.  Too touristy.  This was our worst hotel stay too during our trip (Hotel Kokoro). Another traveler even let us know that she had had money stolen out of her room while staying there.  Bummer.  It's simply a tourist trap, with locals that are probably annoyed at the overwhelming number of travelers coming through each day.

That being said, its gorgeous, and we did a really good job of avoiding anything that was majorly touristy.  We spent one full day here, and spent the majority of our day going on this back breaking hike to Cerro Chato.  It was literally one of the hardest hikes I've ever done in my life. 2 1/2 hours straight up hill.  Jeff called it "relentless", and that it was.  Almost no breaks where the ground evened out...just straight uphill the whole way.  We were so proud when we reached the top, and we were so tired that we almost didn't hike down to the lake to take a swim....but we did.  The GREENEST lake I've ever seen.  Truly breathtaking, and worth the climb.  And we only passed 2 couples on the hike up, because so few people are willing to undertake this monster...

Volcan Arenal

A bridge on our way to the Cerro Chato hike

The top of Cerro Chato, and its volcanic lake...

Jeff has made a discovery in the swimming hole! (not really....)

Reflecting...

A Coatis on the trail...

All uphill baby! Work those glutes and roots!

The reward.  Drinks at the Observatory after.  Cheers!

 And in the evening, we visited the hot springs.  Before we left on our trip, we'd had many people recommend that we visit Tabacon or Baldi hot springs, but these were resorts, and cost as much as $100/day.  We knew that there had to be a local hot springs option somewhere.  So at dinner that night in the town of La Fortuna, Jeff asked around the restaurant for tips.  And, low and behold, RIGHT next to Tabacon hot springs resort was an amazing little hot spring spot.  I wish I had pictures for you, but we didn't bring our cameras that night.  Locals bring candles to light the way and place them all along the rocks and crevasses that create the hot springs.  Fireflies swarm around.  It was a really special way to end an extremely exhausting, but fulfilling day.

The Carribean Side - Puerto Viejo & Manzanillo:
This was by FAR our favorite part of the trip.  We spent the most time here (half our trip), and when it was time to go home, we both agreed that if we could spend more time in just one place in Costa Rica, it would be in Manzanillo.  The Carribean side was way more laid back than any other part of the country we saw, and people seemed to be more open, relaxed and welcoming there.  We felt right at home.  Add that to the incredible wildlife we saw (sloths, toucans & monkeys living in the tree in our yard, toads, hermit crabs, snakes, bullet ants, bats, blue crabs, butterflies and fireflies frequenting the trail in front of our house...a tarantula IN our house...yikes!)  and the breathtaking, vacant beaches, and you have paradise found (which actually happened to be the name of the house we stayed in!)

We spent 2 nights in Puerto Viejo, a little party town, and then 4 nights just south of Manzanillo, almost to the Panama border.  While Puerto Viejo was fun, Manzanillo we loved the most. In Manzanillo, we stayed in a home in a protected wildlife refuge, so we were in the midst of real jungle living, and the ocean was just a stone's throw away.  Fresh fish or lobster were on the menu daily, along with coconut rice, fresh bananas and mangoes.  We spent our days jungle trekking, snorkeling, attending the local carnival (that was there in honor of holy week, the week before Easter.  They have a  huge week long festival where everyone flocks from San Jose to the Carribean coast to party), or simply kicking it on the beach.  Locals were vacationing on the beach with us as well, and spent time hanging out and dropping by our home.  And although we did and saw SO much, we feel that there is so much more to be discovered here.

A beautiful flower in Puerto Viejo at Azania Bungalows - where we stayed.

Hammock life.  Morning coffee

A fruit that looked like an orange on the outside, and like maggots on the inside.  We tasted it, and while it didn't have a horrible flavor, couldn't get over the texture and decided to pass.  We tried many exotic fruits and vegetables I'd never seen before in my life (come to find out later, this is a passion fruit!).  The diversity of foods and animals in Costa Rica is outstanding.

Kickin' it at a local restaurant - "Johnnys" on the beach in Puerto Viejo.  The next photo (below) is the view from our table shown here...

Local kids enjoying Holy week - one week off school

Poser!  Just kidding...I did surf, but I'm not very good at it...

Manzanillo - Our favorite beach on our entire trip and where we spent most of our time.

Aquilles, our tour guide, found a rubber tree.  About a half an hour after he rubbed this sap in his hand, the rubber was hard. Really cool.

Aquilles took us to a cave next to the ocean where we saw bats and waves crashing up over the edge

Hermit crab beach.  There were hundreds of these guys all around

Spiny lobster dinner, cooked at our house for us by Mamie :) We cooked all of our meals while we were at this house in Manzanillo except for this one, so this was a real special treat.

A look-out point near our home in Manzanillo. Breathtaking.

Jeff on the beach - Manzanillo

My favorite little neighbor girl during our trip.  She'd bring me flowers and draw me pictures and I'd do my best to read to her in Spanish.  So cute!!

The house we rented in Manzanillo..."Paradise Found"

We played for a good 30 minutes at least on this palm tree.  Favorite palm tree on our favorite beach.

Inside our home.  Getting ready for the beach.

Breakfast :)

Eyelash Viper

Lobster dinner from Mamie

So long story short, Costa Rica was amazing, as you can probably tell.  One of the easiest travel experiences I've ever had.  Most people spoke English (although we tried to use what little Spanish we spoke as much as we could), dollars were taken as easily as colones, roads were passable (for the most part), and people were very, very helpful and friendly.  We felt very safe and welcome during most of our trip.  And, possibly the best part...we didn't get sick once!

I disconnected for 2 weeks.  No phone, no internet. That, in addition to experiencing the beauty of Costa Rica really put into perspective what is important in life.  It's not the money.  It's not the job.  It's not how many people "like" your status.  It's not your appearance or what others think of you.  It's your heart.  It's the connections you make.  It's the people you help.  It's the lives you affect.  Costa Rica reminded me to be thankful for what I have and how oh so good my life is.  I feel more grounded and blessed than I have for a while, and I feel more like myself.  That is why I continue to travel, and always will.

Thank you for sharing my journey with me!