Team Wander

Que Locura

2010-05-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

We've had many questions regarding our vegan adventure and if you guessed that we wouldn't be able to do it, then you're right. However, even in the short amount of time we changed our lifestyle, it altered our point of view and we have cooked less meat ever since. The first week we were able to cook entirely vegan (we did eat pulled pork at a dinner that week, but you can't turn down such a rare delicacy here). The hardest part, not drinking milk or using butter. The following two weeks, we continued vegetarian, but butter, eggs, etc. started slipping back in. It is great to get some new recipes in the mix though and we'll continue with lower meat consumption overall in the future.

The past few days have been very exciting. We are now into our final month here in Costa Rica (unbelievable) and so everything has to be crammed into the last few weeks. Thursday we went to play paintball with 10 friends in Liberia. It was a blast! True to Costa Rican fashion, a guy shows up with some paintball stuff in the back of his car and takes us to an abandon lot on the edge of the city. Miah was the hero of the day, stealing our opponents flag and bringing it back to safe territory.

Yesterday our architect and his wife invited us back to their hometown for a day of fun. We started th e morning with a boat tour down the most crocodile infested river we've ever seen. There were plenty of birds, monkeys, and iguanas, but the highlight of the trip came when the captain of the boat held a stick covered in chicken skin out over the water. It didn't take long for a crocodile to show up, probably about 4 meters long and looking for lunch. He lunged out of the water multiple times to get the meat. His teeth and jaws were remarkable. For lunch we went to their aunt's restaurant and had one of the best meals we've had in Costa Rica. Even better, it was family style so the table was just covered in food.

After lunch we went out to her parents' farm. We saw two calves that had just been born that morning. We explored the property and walked through an old forest that reminded us of the Redwoods. It had huge Guanacaste trees that were hundreds of years old. We rode a horse and made friends with their new puppies. It was a fantastic day, but exhausting speaking Spanish for 10 hours with their family.

Luke and John are headed down here on Wednesday, our last set of company before we leave. Hope all is well in the States.

Love,
Team Wander

Volcán Marshmallow

2010-04-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

We spent last week on our final visa run [wipe away a tear]. Originally, we had planned to take a quick flight down to Panama City, Panama and see what the canal was all about, but about 12 seconds before booking that ticket, we saw that flights to Guatemala City were on super special, so there we went.

It turned out to be a great decision.

Costa Rica has some amazing things going for it. It's beautiful, the people are friendly and open, the food is great, etc. But it has one characteristic that just doesn't seem as strong as it does in many other Latin American countries: a strong sense of cultural heritage. Guatemala, on the other hand, is teeming with it.

We only had four days in Guatemala, so we couldn't venture too far from the capitol, but we got very lucky, because the places that we did go to were all fantastic.

First off, we left Guatemala City as quickly as we could. Interesting little factoid: during the 10 minutes in a car that it took us to get out of Guatemala City we saw not one, not two, but three Chuck-E-Cheese restaurants. They were all engaged in the ongoing battle of brightest neon lights with their fierce competitors: Taco Bell, Pollo Campero (KFC of Guatemala), McD's, BK, and all your other favorite places to eat.

We took a chatty shuttle from the airport to Antigua, a historic gem of a town about 40 minutes away. Antigua serves an interesting purpose in the Guatemalan tourist scene, because it is the central hub of non-spanish speaking tourists. There is an intensely high concentration of bilingual Guatemaltecans who are willing to pack you in a 15 passenger van with 20 other unsuspecting victims and cart you off to anywhere in the country, be it 15 minutes or 15 hours away. This fact made Antigua a pretty good springboard for us though, because we could leverage the availability of transportation to get to see as much of the country as possible in the limited time we had.

Tourist Antigua itself is an adorable little cobblestoned, colonial town, that's built in a traditional grid, with houses that all have internal courtyards and high walls facing the streets. Given the reputation that Guatemala has for crime, Antigua stays very safe, and we felt no concern walking the streets at nearly any hour. It is an extremely touristy area (language schools are huge) so we made sure to dine on the variety of ethnic food that isn't normally available here in CR. In two days I think we had Greek, Indian, and a 12 oz bowl of molten garlic cheese that somehow made a viable excuse for dinner.

After bouncing around in Antigua for a while, we decided it was time for adventure #1: Volcán Pacaya. This is one of 3 active volcanoes around Antigua and true to form for every country outside of the US, for a fee, the Guatemalan parks service will let you hike, virtually unchaperoned, right up to the flowing lava. Unfortunately for us, it was a day without much flow, so instead of roasting our marshmallows over a river of molten rock, we had to settle for a gas vent that was so hot that the rocks around it were glowing red hot and Leslie's marshmallow was immediately incinerated.

From there we headed up to Lake Atitlan to spend an evening in this little lake
town, which served mostly as a staging point for the next day's adventure. We did take the opportunity to eat at a vegetarian mediterranian eatery that was used to inaugurate the culinary adventure we're going to be starting this week (more on that to come).

Lastly, we spent a day prowling around in the largest market in Guatemala. This market is held in a large but culturally bustling town called Chichicastenango and stretches for as far as the eye can see, and then a little bit more. We romped around for a day, tasting everything edible that was being sold and looking at all of the amazing colors and skill that go in to the Mayan fabric work. The most notable thing we saw while we were there though, which was simultaneously super sad and super adorable, was the five year old kid that was walking around in the front of the church spit-shining shoes.

All in all, the whirlwind trip was amazing and we would have loved to have more time. We highly recommend Guatemala for any adventurous spirits out there.

Hugs,
TeamWander

PS. A side note about the vegetarian adventure. Starting this week, Leslie and I are going to be doing our best to eat as vegan/vegetarian as possible for three weeks. We know it won't always be possible, but we won't ever find ourselves in another place where produce is so fresh and so cheap, so we wanted to give it a shot while we could. We're going to do our best to post photos of all the cooking adventures as well as a few good recipes, so stay tuned. To whet your appetite, here's the cornucopia that came out of the trip to the veggie market today.

Desastres Naturales

2010-03-24T18:47:00.001-07:00

The last weekend of February (yes, we know we're now coming up on the last weekend of March, sorry about that) we headed down to Santa Teresa because our wedding photographer was here visiting. He had come down to avoid any more snow in Boone and get some time to surf. Our wake-up call in the morning was an alarm of a possible tsunami headed our way due to the earthquake in Chile. We searched the water for Ivan, thinking we could head to higher ground for awhile, but to no avail. We instead just decided to wait it out with the others and thankfully it was just a false alarm.

The next weekend we headed down to San Jose to meet two of our friends at the airport. We had just gotten settled into our hostel when the whole building began to shake. By the time we realized an earthquake was happening, it had basically passed. Nothing too serious, but our first encounter with an earthquake. It only measured a 4.8 but the epicenter was only five miles from where we were staying and extremely close to the surface.

We headed out of San Jose first thing the next morning and headed south to see the Carribean coast. It was our first chance to really explore Costa Rica outside our region and it was really interesting. We took winding mountain roads out of the city and stopped for lunch at a town in the middle of nowhere. Five hours later we ended up in Puerto Viejo for the night. It was a super hippy town that was trying to deal with the large influx of tourists. The highlights of the town were 1) The pirate we found down by the beach who carried a handmade slingshot in his pocket and was hacking away at a block of wood with a machete trying to make what appeared to be a boat and 2) Ali Baba, a middle-aged, shirtless (always), heavyset owner of a Middle Eastern restaurant who belly danced as customers walked in the door with his pants ready to fall to his ankles at any second.

The next day we decided we should head to the Panama border since we were only an hour away. We got to the river separating the two countries but were only able to walk 3/4 of the way across the bridge because we had no proof we were leaving Costa Rica again in three months and they wouldn't have let us back in the country (and because there was an angry looking Panamanian soldier carrying a fully-automatic machine gun at the other end). Oh well, it was worth a shot (forgive the pun). From there we drove north along the coast to Cahuita National Park. We hiked a trail along the coast that was full of wildlife. We saw two types of monkeys, a few sloths, a coati (pronounced koh-ah-tee; or maybe you know them by their other names: Brazilian aardvarks, hog-nosed coons, or snookum bears), and countless leaf-cutter ants. Our hike was cut short by a huge rainstorm coming in, the first rain we had seen in months. The weather and surroundings of that area made it seem like a completely different country than where we're living.

At the end of the day, we drove to Poas Volcano, a mere 45 kilometers from San Jose, but once again a whole other world. As we climbed the mountain, the fog was so thick we could barely see past the front of our car. To make matters worse, this is where the large earthquake of last year had taken place so the road was still covered in mud and you had no real way of knowing where it ended and there was a steep cliff along the side. The car was deathly silent as we crept up the mountain and finally arrived at our lodging well past the Costa Ricans' bedtime and had to find a nightguard to let us in.

The view we woke up to was well worth the peril - you could see the mountains surrounding San Jose and the city in the middle. We continued up to the crater of the volcano which was spectacular as well. There was a sea of clouds surrounding everything but the crater and when you looked inside there was a teal green lake. Definitely one of our favorite places we've seen here in Costa Rica.

Miah heads to Seattle tomorrow morning and we should be able to make our decision as to where we'll be moving to by the end of next week. We'll keep you posted...

Team Wander

Animales del Mar

2010-02-10T16:42:00.000-08:00

We had our first visitors of 2010 arrive last Thursday, just in time for us to be too busy to even pick them up. February has started out crazy as Miah is trying to put the finishing touches on the houses in time for our boss to arrive this week and Leslie is working double time at the school substituting for another teacher this month.

We had a fantastic time with Sarah and Rachel visiting though - packed with adventures in only a few days. The first night they were here, we went north to a beach that is part of the Las Baulas National Park. It is nesting season for the leatherback turtles, but only about 40 come on shore each year now, so it is a treat to see them. We waited about 3 hours as the guides combed the shore for any turtle activity. We were lucky enough that one came ashore so we got to watch it build a nest and lay its eggs. These turtles are huge - the one we saw was about 6 feet long and weighed 600-700 lbs. It was an amazing experience to be less than an arm's length away watching her lay eggs.

The next day Sarah and Rachel had a tour planned at Rincon de la Vieja (Jane/Daniel, remember bubbling mud pits?), but through some miscommunication they missed the tour. Instead a plan was made to go out on a deep sea fishing trip and see if we could catch dinner. The ride to the harbor was spent with six, boisterous Italian guys who couldn't make it to the boat without stopping for beer. None of our language abilities coincided, so we talked to them in Spanish and they spoke to us in Italian and it worked better than expected. Lots of laughter to fill in the gaps. Once on the boat, we quickly realized we were not cut out to be fishermen. Almost every time we would try to reel in a fish, we would get it 3/4 of the way in before losing it. We were able to catch two good size tuna and three mackeral, as well as a bunch of smaller fish that we just threw back. As always it was a beautiful day though and fantastic just to be out on the water.

The next day, we all took the well-loved catamaran tour. We have become experts at the snorkeling area and were finding wildlife for the guide to catch and show everyone. We caught another puffer fish and also saw our first turtle in the water. The best part was the hilarious guides and the 15 other people on the boat with us. Everyone was quick to make friends and it made for an even better day. By the end of the day, we were all making shadow puppets of all sorts on the sails as the sun was setting and no one wanted to leave the boat as it was getting dark.

Sunday we grilled out some of the tuna we caught at the Superbowl/Election party at Zach's house. The Costa Rican presidential election was held that day and the votes were being tallied as we watched the game. The number of Costa Ricans who actually vote puts the US to shame. The first female president was elected, so many of the people we were with were very excited.

Miah leaves for his first university visit next Tuesday. Getting a full tour of the University of Utah, potential advisors and other grad students, and seeing if Salt Lake City would be a good fit for us. It is exciting to begin planning the next stage in our lives.

Go Duke! for anyone watching the UNC/Duke game tonight,
Team Wander

Amiga de Mr. Gobble

2010-02-02T16:42:00.001-08:00

Our friends here were so generous to us in raising a turkey for Thanksgiving, and their generosity continued with fulfilling the promise of a portion of Mrs. Oink. Who's Mrs. Oink, you ask? Well, while we were up at the farm of Mr. Gobble (our special Thanksgiving guest), there was cute little adolescent pig romping around at the farm. The farm owner told as that Mrs. Oink was due to become her dinner in a couple of months and offered a piece of her to share. So, lo and behold, 3 months later, sitting in our friends' freezer was one of Mrs. Oink's rear legs.

So, a little bit of internet searching, quite a bit of laughter, 20,000 handwashings, and 5 hours in the oven later... out came this!

The skin and top layer of meat being cut off are used for a Costa Rican delicacy called chicharrones. The rest made fantastic BBQ and I think it's safe to say we have finally optimized our Costa Rican BBQ sauce recipe.

Another fun adventure last week (after repeating bacon night as told in an earlier post) was the homemade hot tub. We managed to find a hose long enough to siphon water from the kitchen sink down to the back yard and fill a kids' pool with hot water, actually too hot to sit in for awhile. If only we had pictures of the boys trying to get the siphon started...

As for the project, we have been working to find an alternative route to get families into the homes sooner. Our main goal this month is to start finalizing some names. We just met one potential family who have two children and live in a house that floods every year. The university the husband works for is letting them stay in the house, but it could be taken away at any time. When the engineer started talking to the son about the houses we were building, he immediately ran home and took his parents to the worksite. His words to describe the houses were that they were "palaces". He started yelling that they were moving, they were moving into the palaces, so hopefully we can make that dream into a reality.

Hope all is well in the US and that you are still enjoying the snow!
Love,
Team Wander

La lista de diez

2010-01-12T08:44:00.000-08:00

Saturday night we joined some friends at our favorite bar to watch the NFL play-offs. We were also celebrating a friend's birthday and realized that it was at his birthday party last year that we had met all of these people for the first time. It is amazing to think of how different our lives were in January 2009 than they are in 2010. It got us thinking and here are the top 10 things (in no particular order) we have learned after living in Costa Rica for one year...

1) Spanish! (though this is surely still a work in progress)
2) The ability to do nothing and enjoy it
3) A renewed appreciation for the beauty of nature
4) Importance of a simple life, less cluttered by "stuff"
5) How to bake bread
6) What extreme generosity really looks like
7) How to be successful as a married couple (also a work in progress ;-) )
8) How concrete construction works, at least Costa Rican style
9) A whole bunch of new hobbies
10) That sometimes clouds are nice

What's your list look like?
Team Wander

Cambios

2010-01-07T12:18:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year!! We hope everyone had a great Christmas holiday and a blast ringing in the New Year. It was certainly great to be back in the States for a couple of weeks to see family and friends, but our preparation for the cold was like running a mile to train for a marathon. The majority of our winter clothes are snugly packed away in storage, and not one week into our stay, we were greeted by 20 inches of snow. We successfully battled that storm out of DC, only to make it NC and be slammed by 2 or 3 inches of ice on top of that. As a result, we lost power and water on Christmas morning and did not get it back until Sunday. Thankfully we had a wood fireplace, so we spent two days huddled around a fire, making grilled cheese sandwiches over the flames, and playing games to pass the time. A memorable Christmas to say the least.

For New Year´s Eve, we made it back to Raleigh for a fantastic party. We have finally spent enough time out of Raleigh that it oddly no longer feels like home, but thankfully our friends are as amazing as ever. To end a wonderful trip, Michelle took us to the Panthers vs. Saints game in Charlotte. We had never been to a Pro Football game before, and it was a blast. The fact that we couldn´t feel our fingers or toes did little to curb our enthusiasm for seeing football in person for the first time this year. Go Panthers! (They won by the way.)

Ninety degree heat welcomed us back to Costa Rica, and it took us a good day or two to readjust to our lives here. One of those days was spent celebrating Miah´s 28th birhtday(!) and another visitng the worksite to see how things had progressed while we were gone. Sadly, not as much happened on the houses as was promised (why this still surprises us, we´ll never know...). Our guarantee to have all finishing details complete in January is quickly becoming a dream of the past. Hopefully we can get everything wrapped up sooner rather than later though.

For all of you who donated clothes (or tried to, sorry we didn´t have time to cross paths with all of you!), the workers were extremely appreciative. The guys were crowded around the back of a pick-up truck with 100+ pounds of donated clothing from which to chose. Thanks again for your generosity.

Have fun watching the National Championship Game tonight!
Team Wander

Dia de Acción de Gracias (or better known as Miah's Favorite Holiday)

2009-12-10T14:12:00.000-08:00

Sorry we are so delayed getting this posted. We know your curiosity is killing you as to how Thanksgiving in Costa Rica played out. It was quite an ordeal that began 6 months ago when we realized that turkeys were very difficult, and expensive, to come by here. No matter what part of the world we've been in, we have always made sure to make a Thanksgiving feast, so this hurdle wasn't about to stop us now.

Thankfully, our coworker's mom has a farm about an hour away and was willing to raise a turkey for us. We named our turkey Mr. Gobble and he had a very happy life until November when it was our job to get him oven-ready. The drive to the farm was absolutely beautiful. Once there, one of the farmers helped us catch Mr. Gobble and have it drink cheap liquor until it was good and drunk. We let him stumble around for awhile before hanging him up to kill. We weren't sure we would be up to the challenge, so someone helped us out. Then, it had to be plucked before we could take it home.

Mr. Gobble was quite a substantial turkey by Costa Rican standards, but only 10 pounds which was not quite enough for the 20+ people we had for Thanksgiving the next day. We had a very cross-cultural feast combining friends from the US and Costa Rica, with traditional Thanksgiving dishes as well as typical fare from here. Keeping with the tradition though, there was more than enough for all and we were happily stuffed and sleepy after eating.

All in all, Thanksgiving was quite a success and certainly a learning experience for us as well. Next we'll have to teach the art of southern BBQ when Mrs. Oink is ready...

Back to the US tomorrow,
Team Wander

Club de yates de los campesinos (redneck yacht club)

2009-12-01T08:05:00.000-08:00

We thought we were finally getting a handle on all the surprises that Costa Rica had in store for us, but boy were we mistaken. See, we had some grandiose plans for a Thanksgiving dinner (a family friend has been raising us a turkey for the past 6 months - that we will soon have to go butcher), but then we got wind of something new and exciting that was going to fall on the same day as said Thanksgiving. A little social maneuvering and a couple of emails later, we had everything reorganized and were on our way to Raft-Up.

Turns out that Raft-Up is really like the Costa Rican redneck yacht club. Erm... correction: it's like the Costa Rican Expat Community's redneck yacht club. At 9 am Sunday morning, we caught a surfboat (complete with deckhand Golden Retriever) out to a hidden bay along with some 300 other expats and the occasional fortunate tourist. The boat showed up in the bay and dropped anchor along-side fifteen other boats and we caught a dinghy to shore (well, Miah jumped ship and swam, but he was pretty excited to get off the boat).

From there we had a day of beach volleyball, grilling out, snorkeling, body surfing and live music. It was great! But it has inspired us to hold our own redneck yacht club sometime after we get back in North Carolina. You should come.

The one heartbreak about raft-up is that it was going to be the kickoff event for our week with the most recent group of visitors, Graham and Julie. Julie is in school at C.I.A (Culinary Institute of America) so her timing for a visit was pretty much perfect! Unfortunately, there was a little bit of a passport finding fiasco that caused them to spend the day they were supposed to be flying down here driving over 20 hours hunting down passports, so they ended up missing raft-up (insert emoticon super sad face here).

They did manage to make it down the next day, however, and we had a fantastic, food and adventure filled week with them. We went and worked on the houses together, cooked up a storm, golfed, played some Killer Bunnies and generally had a great time. We miss you guys already!

Anybody watch the Wolfpack beat Carolina last weekend?
TeamWander

House Photos

2009-11-30T15:28:00.000-08:00

En el trabajo

2009-11-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

Things have really picked up here as we find ourselves in the last month or so of our first neighborhood of houses. It has been extremely exciting to see them come together and they have turned out nicer than we could have ever imagined. We have floors, ceilings, electrical, stucco, etc. on half of our houses (photos to come). In early November, Miah put in a lot of hours at the worksite installing everything electrical and learning the true inner workings of our construction team. It´s still a toss-up as to whether this helped or hurt his Spanish, since 10 hours a day is plenty of time to practice, but most of the Spanish he´s learned can not be repeated outside a small group of local guys (think crude surfer guy speak).

There is never a lack of interesting stories from the worksite, but here´s one we want to share. We had stopped by for a quick update from the construction foreman and to check on the delivery of some additional materials., but when we arrived, everyone was crowded around one of the holes that had been dug for a septic tank. Slightly confused, we walked over to see what was going on, and upon peering down in the hole saw a cow´s head with horns. At some point that morning, it had managed to fall in the hole and so the guys were trying use bars and ropes to get it out. The poor cow was absolutely terrified, but just watching the entire situation play out, it was quite comical. Fifteen guys were heaving with all their might to haul this cow out and it was doing everything in its power to stay right where it was. We were worried it might have broken a leg or something in the fall, but when they finally did manage to get the cow out, he was perfectly fine as far as we could tell. Needless to say, we were late for our next meeting, but we couldn´t walk away until the rescue operation was complete.

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving feast,
Team Wander

Dientes Limpios

2009-10-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

Thankfully, we´ve been super lucky so far on our travels not need any sort of medical care. We were long overdue for a good teeth cleaning though, so we decided to try our luck at a local dental clinic. We had seen one situated in a small town about 15 minutes from us, next to our favorite pizza place, so that seemed as good a sign as any to choose that clinic.

We walked in for our appointment and as usual, things are running on Tico time so we had plenty of time to strike up a conversation with the receptionist. She was a Nicaraguan who had moved to Costa Rica with the hope of making more money to send back to her children who were living with her mother. Not five minutes into the conversation, she was baring her soul to us. It was great to have a truly candid conversation with someone from such a different background, not only to learn about her life, but to get a different perspective on the project we are working on here. If she could bring her family down here to live with her, these are exactly the type of hard working families that we would like to be helping. She brought up some interesting questions and concerns though that can be used help us to improve before our next project.

The other patient then came out of the exam room, in one piece and looking happy enough, so we figured things couldn´t go too bad. The dentist was super nice and started the cleaning innocently enough. Next thing we know, he had placed a towel over our face and chest and proceeded to start sand-blasting our mouths with baking soda. If you have ever been out on the beach when a huge gust of wind picks up and you feel the sting of the sand against your legs, you can begin to imagine this, but then transfer that feeling to your tongue and lips instead. When he finished, despite the best intentions of the towel, our faces were covered in a thin-film of baking soda. Certainly an interesting experience, but short-lived enough and well-worth the sparkling clean teeth afterward.

Big smiles,
Team Wander

Los Estados Unidos

2009-10-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry, apparently we forgot to post this when returned, but here it is now...

Whew, we made it back to the land of rice and beans after a whirlwind of a trip to the US. As some of you might have heard, Leslie´s grandmother died suddenly on September 30th so she had to make a quick trip to Florida that weekend for the funeral. Traveling started by leaving the house at 3am to catch a bus to San Jose airport. Everything went smoothly until arriving in the US where the custom´s officers played 20 questions about anything from being out of the country too much to not having enough luggage. It was all worth it though because the service went really well and it was fantastic to have all our family together.

Leslie flew back to Costa Rica the following Wednesday only to fly back out on Thursday morning. We spent Wednesday night with some friends who live near San Jose (Jessica, they may be our toughest Boggle competition yet). We left our car at one of their friend´s houses whose German shephard had puppies about 3 months ago. Three of the were quickly growing as you would expect, but the runt of the litter had barely changed size at all. She was a tiny ball of fur and the cutest thing ever. We´re not sure if she´s ever going to grow, but it took every ounce of our strength to walk away empty-handed when he offered her to us.

Next we made it to DC to spend some time with Miah´s mom and for him to take the GRE. Our first day there was a blast, we took a bike tour around the Mall (the best way to see the sights), visited the Smithsonian, and ended the day with a night-time boat ride up the Potomac. In between test taking and essay writing the rest of the weekend, we managed to cram in tons of good food.

One of the most interesting things we saw in DC was the solar decathalon taking place on the Mall (http://www.solardecathlon.org/). There were 20 universities competing for the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. All the houses were less than 800 square feet, so not only was the environmental impact of the houses amazing, but so was there innovative use of space. We learned so many neat things, we´re ready to build our own house now. Here are a couple pictures of the houses:

Love to all,
Team Wander

Muchas Aventuras de Comida (entre otras cosas)

2009-09-28T08:19:00.000-07:00

Kiddies, we've got a lot of ground to cover, so I'd recommend before getting started on this post you make up some hot chocolate and grab the comfiest chair in the house. The past few weeks here have been wonderful: progress on the houses is coming along extremely well, we should be finishing on schedule; we've made quite a bit of progress beginning the permitting process for the next lot as well. We have also been fortunate enough to take part in a couple of awesome adventures over the past few weeks and those are the experiences we'd like to share with you all.

First off, two weekends ago us and a few of the people who work for the foundation decided to have a road trip. The two of us don't travel too much within Costa Rica because we're living on the traveler budget, and focusing a lot on developing our relationships with the folks around here, but we're sure glad we were a part of this trip. Seven of us took the hour drive down to the very tip of the Nicoya Peninsula to a town called Mal Pais.

We spent the weekend relaxing, hanging out at the beach and hiking to some neat waterfalls. Oh yeah, and eating. You'll quickly notice that food is very much the central theme of this post. As we spent the majority of our time less than a quarter mile from the ocean, the seafood was wonderful, so we made sure to concentrate our consumptive energy on that cuisine. One of the neatest parts about the weekend, however, was the cultural mix that we had within the group. There were three Ticos and four of us from the US and it's fair to say that the weekend was completely bi-lingual; it was perfectly acceptable to speak to someone in either of the two languages (irrespective of what their native language was and even in what language they had just spoken to you).

That was a really neat experience, it made for some neat polylingual conversations, and of course, the everpresent meta-conversation about languages. All of us non-spanish speakers took advantage of having three friendly, walking dictionaries at our disposal and worked hard to pick up as much spanish as we could during the weekend. We even spent a few hours one night playing Catchphrase in Spanish. For the silly little gringos that we are, I think we did pretty well.

Here's a picture of the lovely little bungalows that we stayed in (close enough that the sound of the surf rocked you to sleep at night). What a great weekend (Thanks Yanith!)

Next on the docket of fun things to talk about is one of the culinary adventures that we've been having here at home lately. We've been experimenting with food a lot lately and are absolutely loving it. Produce is cheaper here than it will ever be again in our life (at least that what my mom hopes for, because cheap produce would imply another transcontinental adventure) and so we're making the most of it by cooking at home lots and lots.

We've decided a fun thing to do in the blog is to start posting more and more of the recipes that we're currently trying to let the foodies in all of you give it a try at home.

This past week we made a loaf of bread that was absolutely spectacular. Miah has gotten in to breadmaking (he's still pushing to open up a bakery / B&B somewhere in the south of Italy - sorry mom) and decided to hunt down and try out a recipe for fresh thyme bread. Here's the result of some of the experimentation:

Thyme Garlic Bread
4 cups flour
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 tsp sugar
4 cloves minced garlic
2 tsp yeast (more colloquially known as yeasty beasties)
2 tsp salt
2 Tb finely chopped fresh thyme

Dissolve yeast in warm water, let sit for 10 minutes. In a large bowl, mix 2 cups flour, sugar and salt. Add yeast mixture and mix together well, scraping the sides of the bowl. Slowly add as much of the rest of the flour as you can stopping at a medium dough. Turn out the mixture on to a lightly floured surface and knead for 8 minutes. Flatten out the dough and spread the thyme and garlic evenly throughout. Knead for 2 minutes more to distribute the spices. Place in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a moist cloth. Let rise in a warm place until doubled (roughly two hours). Turn out dough on to a lightly floured surface and knead for two more minutes. Put in to a bread pan or form in to a loaf on a baking sheet and let sit, covered, for 10 more minutes. Bake on 250 for about 50 minutes. Enjoy

A word to the intrepid about our baking temperatures and times: our oven is loco. Our cooking temperatures seem to run pretty low, so you might want to consider bumping up to 300 or something. I look cooking this bread so low because of the way the crust turns out (not too thick, not too tough), but you can experiment and see what you like best.

We made grilled cheese, avocado and tomato sandwiches out of this bread and they were absolutely incredible. We highly recommend (5 gold stars for you little buddy), and we have included a salivation inducing photo.

Lastly, let's talk about football (and food). For those of you who live on the moon, both college and pro football are now a few weeks in and possibly the most exciting thing currently happening on the face of the planet. This last weekend was sort-of devoted to that end. We spent the weekend with our buddies Zach (yes sir, you made it in to the blog) and Eric, bouncing around from house to house watching obscene amounts of football. The true trump-card of the weekend however was not the 10 hours of football we watched over the course of two days, but instead the meal we cooked on friday night. If anybody from 1410 is reading this, they'll be proud to know that this meal was brought to you by the letter bacon, and worth every artery-clogging calorie.

The menu in brief: NY strip wrapped in bacon, portabella mushrooom slices wrapped in bacon, pinapple wrapped in bacon and banana stuffed jalapeño peppers (we ran out of bacon). We cooked it all up on the grill and feasted. Hooray.

As for now, we're back to the grind, trying to get some houses built and write some grad school admissions essays,

We hope everyone is doing well, we love and miss you,
Go Pack! Go Chargers!
TeamWander

Fiestas de Santa Rosa

2009-09-01T13:09:00.000-07:00

Wow! I don't even know where to begin. From roughly our first week here in Costa Rica, we've been hearing many tales about the fiestas that can be found throughout Guanacaste. However, there's really one festival that is touted and bragged about more than any other: Santa Rosa Last week, we were sucked in to the tornado of Guanacastecan debauchery that is la fiesta de Santa Rosa.

Imagine a cross between a full-on rodeo, a NC State Homecoming tailgate, and the biggest house party the local authorities would let slide. All of these events combined make up this fiesta. We started out at 8 am, wandering up and down the dirt streets of Santa Rosa looking for someone to rent horses from (why do we need horses? to go get the bulls of course). Fortunately we had a nice Tica friend to help us negotiate the cost of horse rental down by 30 percent.

We got our trusty steeds rented and set of for what, unbeknownst to us, was going to be the longest (and best populated) horse ride of our lives. I say best populated because joining us to go collect the bulls were about 1000 of our closest costa rican friends; on horseback, on fourwheelers, on dirtbikes, even hanging out the back of shabby pickup trucks. Us and this motley crew traveled for about 3 hours on horseback, stopping of course to buy beer from the roadside beer trucks, and hitch our horses for a drink or two at the local establishments that we happened to pass by. The road ended for us at a giant hacienda with a brass band playing, a team of ladies selling fried chicken out of plastic tubs, and reliably, requisite beer stands. After a few hours of this, the throng of people (somehow without receiving any sort of perceivable signal) all hopped back on their horse (or whatever, we did meet one guy riding a donkey) and started traveling back the way we came. However this time, this crew of people was herding the bulls that would be used for the bull-fights of the evening.

So to rewind the first three hours of the trip, we took the same 3 hour ride back, stopping again at the local watering hole along the way. On the way back however, our horses (read: Miah's horse) must have discovered her love for a good chase because we did a lot more galloping than anything else. Nothing like racing an 8 year old costa rican on horseback down a dirt road full of people all traveling a different pace.

Once we got back and got our horses returned apparently we had completed the prelude to the day as it was time for the real fiesta to start. There were purportedly hours more of parties and bullfights (we had friends who came home well after midnight) however we didn't have the steam to stay in the running, so we headed home to cook a yummy dinner.

Unfortunately for them, two passers-by (Jessica and Hugo, down from California) happened to be pulled in to this adventure as well. Little did they know when they were planning their visit that this would be how they spent their saturday. It wasn't till sunday morning that we all collectively groaned and whimpered our way out of our respective beds that we realized how sore an 8 hour horseback adventure could really make you.

What are you doing on thursday night?
Team Wander

La langosta, como prometida

2009-09-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

Per Ryan and Shannon's request, here's a pic of the lobster that our tico friend spent over an hour digging out of the bottom of the ocean for us. It must have been a heck of a battle, because the tico came up bleeding and the lobster came up missing a claw. But it sure tasted good!

La vida se acelera

2009-08-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Life has really picked up the pace here in Costa Rica this month. As soon as the volunteers left, we started our first week of teaching. Two days a week Leslie is teaching first through third graders reading, writing, grammar, and phonics. Miah is subsitute teaching for a month, filling in for the math teacher. It is hard work, but very rewarding. The students are kids from all over the world whose parents do not want them to attend Costa Rica public schools but cannot afford the big private school in this area. Therefore, most of the kids speak two if not three or more languages which makes us so jealous! It is especially difficult teaching the first graders though because a few of them are still struggling to grasp the English language, much less handle classes reading, spelling, writing, etc.

We also had another set of visitors, the newlyweds, Ryan and Shannon who were in Costa Rica for their honeymoon (congrats, you two!). They spent the first half visiting the Arenal volcano and then came to Guanacaste for some beaches and sunshine. Luckily, the rainy season is very late in starting this year so the weather has remained beautiful. As usual, the highlight of their stay was the sailing/snorkeling trip which we caught the very last day before the boat is dry-docked for the next few months. The water was the clearest we had ever seen it (the guides said the same thing). We found a giant manta ray and plenty of fish. We spent most of our time trying to catch a puffer fish, but to no avail. Our guide was able to catch a large lobster though and afterwards we took it to our favorite restaurant in Tamarindo for them to cook for us. Delicious!

We also went to a going away/birthday party for our Costan Rican sister before she left for the Foundation's scholarship program at LaGrange college in Georgia. It was our first proper Costa Rican party and they certainly do things right. They had a chef in from San Jose who cooked amazing appetizers and dinner. We also played Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Musical Chairs, and other such games that had been off our radar for too long. They had made a homemade piñata as well as balloons full of flour for the end of the night farewell. Our moment of glory came when we were able to win the married couples "guess your partner's answers" in Spanish. We were handsomely rewarded for our efforts with a blue duck butter dish.

The rest of the month looks like it will stay just as hectic. Three more sets of friends are coming to visit, but only two will be staying with us. A last hoorah before Chez Wander is empty for awhile. We are counting down the days until football begins!!

Go Pack!
Team Wander

Que semana más loca!

2009-08-11T09:24:00.001-07:00

What a week! We just wrapped up a week-long adventure with a volunteer group of 15 some-odd folks who came down from various parts of the southeastern US. Descriptions can't really do this week justice. We were dirty, soaked in sweat, hot as Hades and happy as we could imagine with how the week went. The volunteers (thank you all so much!) worked like troopers all week, mixing concrete, laying block, painting roof members and making friends. It was a beautiful sight to see the 10 local members of the construction crew working hand in hand with the 15 volunteers and everyone seemed to be having a great time of it. We went back to the worksite yesterday it just wasn't the same without the gringos.

Seeing the houses become a reality is an amazing experience for us. They're really coming up now (see the pictures) but two of the houses have roof members welded on, four more are in some state of block being laid and that leaves two more foundations to dig and pour.

Having the opportunity to work out there last week really took the two of us back to the days of Habitat work trips at NC State and it was a great feeling. The sense of exhausted completeness at the end of the day is a really wonderful sensation. And getting to learn all the new skills (in spanish, yikes!) is a lot of fun too!

At any rate, words can only say so much, so here's a few pictures to put you guys on the worksite with us!
The crew and one of the houses

Siesta, and well deserved at that

Viktor (his spanish name), our resident masonry expert

Aaaaand... Leslie O being a rock star.

Middle School Fun

2009-08-01T13:51:00.000-07:00

Last night turned out to be too amusing not to share with everyone. It
began quite ordinarily when we were invited to dinner with our Costa
Rican family (Quick side note, dinner was a cross between lasagna
and chicken pot pie, which, as fate would have it, is an amazing combination).
After dinner, our sister suggested that we go to the town center because
there was a roller skating rink in town for the month. What?!? Not
wanting to pass up a trip down memory lane (think prime middle school
story material) we quickly agreed.

Turns out we were exactly right; the two of us were older than
everyone there by at least five years and the only two non-Ticos.
Apparently roller skating is not like riding a bike, you cannot just
pick it back up a decade later. Well, at least I couldn't, Miah still
had a few tricks up his sleeve from his rollerblading days. One lap
around and he was convinced that I was capable of skating on my own.
Clearly not the case and one of Stephanie's friends quickly came to my
rescue to keep me on my feet and not cause a disastrous pile-up
on the floor (quite a few of which we saw). Slowly it all started
coming back to me though, and all of us had a blast.

We came home and went to bed and about 2 hours later I was awakened by
a huge crashing noise. I wasn't sure if it was just part of a dream or
something outside, but a few minutes later I heard another smaller crash followed by metal scraping metal. I attempted to rouse Miah but he wasn't waking up for anything, so I bravely peeked out the window to see who was trying to break into our house. Turns out, it was a bull on our back patio who had pushed over the grill and was ramming it with his horns. I ran into the
living room and turned on the patio light, trying to scare him away, and he just stared at me, not a foot away. Then, he just went back to eating the charcoal (don't ask me why). Finally, after banging on the door for awhile, he sauntered away. Needless to say, our grill has a few dents in it this morning and is missing one of the legs...

Los Toros

2009-07-31T08:45:00.000-07:00

Apparently all of this talk about rainy season is just hype (we'll regret these words later). The month of July has been beautiful here, we have hardly seen any rain at all. Even better, it is slightly cooler with the clouds, so it is even better for outdoor activities. Nick came to visit for a week and may be more accustomed to the heat than we are since he´s been in Texas for the past few years. The first night we took him to a friend´s house where we decided to get a poker game going. Three sets of pocket kings later (one of which matched extra nicely with the pair of kings that appeared during the flop), Nick had put everyone to shame and raked in about $60. Great way to start a vacation!

During the week it was really busy here because we also had one of the foundation's administrators from Georgia visiting. She was so excited to see the progress on the houses (we now have all the walls done for four houses and a partial roof on one). As always, she was a great sounding board for us to really figure out what is the best way to maximize the benefits for the future homeowners.

One of the highlights of Nick´s week was to get in a dose of culture at a local fiesta. We ate lots of meat on a stick and drank beer as we watched the bullriding festivities. Not only does someone ride the bull, but there are also about 50 people in the ring trying to run from the bull once he throws the rider off. Thankfully no one was gored in the process, but at least three people were rushed to the first aid center on one edge of the bull-ring when they were unsuccessful in running from the bull. Also in the ring were the town drunks who were getting as many cheers from the crowd for their performance as the bullriders were. Afterward, we went dancing where Nick proceeded to put the rest of us Gringos to shame with his dancing abilities.

After Nick left, the fun times continued as we celebrated Leslie´s birthday. It was a fantastic weekend (and following week!) Miah was full of excellent surprises and gave an awesome sweatshirt he had designed. The slogan matches an old recipe box from Leslie´s grandmother.

Starting next week, we're having the equivalent of a Costa Rican blitz build. A group of nearly two dozen folks is coming down from the states to help us put together two more houses at the Chircó site. We can't wait to get these houses finished and to get some families in to them. We'll have lots of pictures and I'm sure some exciting stories to share when the week's over. Check back soon!

Love you all,
TeamWander

Family Time

2009-07-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

We apologize that we are getting worse and worse about keeping everyone up-to-date with what is happening in our lives. At the end of June, we had to make another trip out of the country to renew our visas and the timing perfectly coincided with Mama Wander moving from Greensboro to DC, so we headed back to the States to help her move. She got a new job working at American University, so we packed a trailer and a truck and fit what we could to move her into temporary housing until she finds a permanent place. Our first request upon returning to the US was Indian food (followed by Japanese food, BBQ, Lebanese food, Thai food, etc). Since we had no kitchen while we were moving, we spent our first week frantically scrambling from restaurant to restaurant trying to catch up on all the cuisines we've missed here in Costa Rica. There are really two types of food here, the typical rice & beans cuisine or pizza (with the occasional Chinese restaurant thrown in for good measure). Especially after our trek through Asia, we miss the other cuisines.

From DC, we made a quick stop to see Leslie's uncle outside of DC and then down to Boone to visit Mama O and Luna. It was fantastic to be back in the mountains - we went hiking and tried to get in as much time with the dogs as we could. Thankfully Luna still remembers us, hopefully she still will by the end of our stay here. After a short weekend in Boone, we flew down to Mobile, AL to see Leslie's grandparents and on to Panama City, FL to visit Miah's dad. We were able to catch our breath down there, plenty of time for playing cards, doing puzzles, running errands, etc. It was fantastic to have so much time to spend with our families.

There was certainly a bit of culture shock as adjusted to our time in the States and then once again returning to Costa Rica. One of the biggest differences you see is the number of choices (which also translates to opportunities) available in the US is so much more than in Costa Rica. This is true for simple things like brands of food and radio stations, all the way up to larger choices such as education and career. We walked through the aisles of Target just trying to imagine what our friends in Costa Rica would think if they saw such a mammoth store where you could buy almost anything you *need*. Those type of places just do not exist here.

We made it back to Costa Rica just in time for our friends' wedding. Although the rain tried to ruin the event, and the wedding had to be moved under the tent instead of out on the beach, it turned out to be a fantastic night. A rainbow cut across the entire sky just after the ceremony and a beautiful sunset followed.

As for the houses, they are coming along great so far. The walls are finished for two houses and the foundations are finished for two others. The construction crew is amazing - we're not sure how well we would fare working in 95 degree heat, 100% humidity, digging foundations by hand, hauling double-size cinderblocks for the walls, mixing the cement by hand, etc. We will get a taste of it the first week of August as we lead a crew of volunteers to began building our next four houses.

Mixing Cement

Happy Birthday to Papa Wander!!!

Love,
Team Wander

The South comes to Costa Rica

2009-06-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks have been rather exciting (aka super busy) but wonderful. First we had 180 people from Georgia come to Costa Rica for this Leadership Georgia conference. They were staying at the nearby resort listening to speakers ranging from alumni of the program to the President of Costa Rica. They also wanted to volunteer in nearby schools and see how our Habitat projects were coming along. While they were here, Jane and Daniel were also coming to visit, but their original flight got canceled and the trip was pushed back a day. Unfortunately that means their flight arrived at the same time that we were supposed to be taking the Leadership Georgia people around to our worksite and the other Habitat neighborhood.As usual, it all worked out in the end though, the Leadership Georgia people were two hours late arriving for the tour so we had plenty of time to pick up our visitors and drag them around on our tour to the Habitat houses as well. They also got a taste of our weekly English class to the first graders in 27 de Abril. The cutest students ever, but with little understanding of order in a classroom which is typical for many students here. A few games of duck, duck goose managed to get some of their energy out though and at the same time, drain all of ours.

Jane and Daniel got the full Costa Rican experience, from monsoons to sunburns, but it was a great trip. We started with a Sabenero show, which is the typical dancing and horseback riding of the Guanacaste region. Afterward there was dinner and drinks on the beach, where we began a proper celebration. Over the weeekend we went hiking at a nearby volcano (Blair, does Rincon de laVieja ring a bell?), whose crater is no longer active, but there are tons of bubbling mud pits, hot water pools, fumaroles, and waterfalls around the mountain. It was a beautiful hike through an amazing forest with the largest leaf-cutter ant mounds that we've ever seen. Those ants were always focused on their task and left people alone, but as we found out the hard way some others do not. We were swimming (well the boys were swimming, and the girls were wading) in this crystal clear, freezing-cold river when we noticed a black army swarming all over our stuff on the rocks. We quickly hopped out to grab our stuff and move it away, but the ants just kept coming and coming and apparently could follow our scent wherever we took our stuff. Yikes! For the more relaxing vacation type of things, we also went sailing/snorkeling, ziplining through the jungle, golfing, laying on the beach, etc. Even better we ate tons of good food, probably topped by our homemade sushi that was swimming just hours before we ate it.

During all the fun we were also trying to get the construction crews everything they needed to start building. As always there are last minute fees and complications trying to hinder progress, but we managed to overcome all of them (that we know of). The foundations have been dug and you can see the outline of each room of the house. The construction crew is amazing - after 30 minutes of being on the worksite we're tired and drenched in sweat, and they are out there 10 hours a day in the ridiculous heat, digging the foundations, mixing concrete, etc. We can't describe how fantastic it is to finally be building though. Even better, the crew is also working to clear the second lot so we can begin the permit process on that land and hopefully build there as soon as this neighborhood is done.

Hope everyone had a great Father's Day weekend. Huge hugs to all you dads out there.

Love,
Team Wander

Éxito!

2009-06-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

A foreigner who has been working in Costa Rica for many years gave us some advice this week. In order to get anything done here, it requires ¨slight but constant pressure.¨ We think that is the best description we’ve heard yet. We’re walking this tightrope between trying to accomplish things in a reasonable amount of time and not bugging people to the point they won’t help us again. We’re slowly learning how to keep this delicate balance and it is paying off....we’re picking up our construction permits TOMORROW!!!! Yes, six months later, we have success. Tomorrow the construction crew will be out there cleaning the lots, marking the houses, and building a shed for the materials. Next week, we’ll have our materials and they can start building.

This morning we had to tie up the last loose ends and the process was comical to say the least. We went to the main offices in Santa Cruz because they were missing one piece of paper to approve the permits. A quick description, this building is divided into little windows, almost like bank tellers, where you can apply for all types of permits, pay taxes, declare land, etc. The final papers we needed for the permits were all in this one building, mere feet from each other. Apparently, plastic dividers are enough to cease all (work-related) conversations between these offices so we had to run between each one to obtain the last requirement. The person at the permit window told us to go to the next window to get a stamp on another piece of paper so she could give us what we needed. Well, the lady at the second window asked us to go to a third window for yet another sheet of paper. The third lady needed us to go upstairs to pick up another piece of paper so she could give us the other paper to take to the second window to get another paper to take to the first window and so on. Absolutely ridiculous. It’s no wonder people get so confused here, keeping up with so many pieces of paper for the same thing. While waiting at each window, we amused ourselves by people watching. A personal favorite, the man who walked in carrying a pigeon on a leash and each time he needed to talk to someone he would step on the leash and the bird would try to pull free. Pigeons? As pets? In government buildings? Like we said, extremely amusing.

All that matters now though is that we’ve made it through our first set of permits and learned a lot in navigating the Costa Rican legal system. Hopefully the subsequent permits will be quicker and easier now that we know where to get each of the requirements (and the five requirements needed for each of those). Two more visitors were supposed to fly in today, but their flight was cancelled, so well have more fun stories to tell next week of our adventures with them.

Huge hugs,
Team Wander

El Hermano y la Llanta

2009-06-02T08:51:00.001-07:00

The first day of Eric and Trevor´s visit to Costa Rica, started out innocently enough. A day at the beach, cooking a great dinner, etc. Then, rumor spread of a Bingo night at a nearby bar that was a fundraiser for the beach clean-up crew. Always willing to do our part to help, we quickly rushed over to Bingo night and threw our money down for a lucky card. There were 9 prizes to be won that night, and somehow our group managed to win five of them. It was absolutely ridiculous and more than one of the more experienced Bingo players was ready to take us out at the knees. We ended the night with two sailing trips, dinner for two, a month membership at the tennis club, a 30 minute massage, and two whole pies from Nogui´s. Needless to say, we had our work cut out for us to add all this fun into an already fun-packed week, but we somehow managed.

The rest of the week included golfing, a trip to a nearby village that specializes in traditional pottery making, lots of game playing, and of course great food. Our boat trip was rained out the first day, but we came back the following day to perfect blue skies and more coconut daiquiris than anyone should ever drink. While snorkeling we once again found a blowfish (this time an extremely spiky one that we couldn´t hold on to), starfish, eels, and lots of fish. The sunset was beautiful and after dinner, we stayed on the beach for hours.

For the weekend, we decided to head to Tenorio Volcano National Park. We had heard great things about Rio Celeste, a river in the park that is a spectacular blue color due to the volcanic minerals. The only problem is no one could tell us how to get there besides look for the dirt road near Bijagua. The drive started out easy enough, but soon the car started shaking violently. We made it to the next gas station only to find 3 large holes in our tire where you could see the metal weave of the tire breaking. They didn´t have any tires that were the right size so they sent us to the next tire place down the road. We stopped at three or four more places who all said they didn´t have any tires to fit, but by this time we were being told that if we kept driving on the tire we were going to die. Problem was, our spare tire also had a few holes (in true Costa Rica style, it was patched again and again without ever being replaced) and was almost entirely deflated. At the sixth stop, we refused to go any farther and said they had to help us figure out something. He blew up the spare tire as much as he could and said we could make it about 5 miles and hope for the best at the next shop. Thankfully, we were lucky at the next stop and he had a new tire to sell us, although the spare is still deflated in the back.

We made it to the tiny town of Bijagua and drove around forever looking for a place to stay. Unfortunately, our little low-riding Hyundai hatchback was no match for the dirt roads full of potholes and boulders. When we finally found a place to stay, they informed us that there was no way our car could make it the 11km to the National Park entrance. As always, he knew a guy who knew a guy who could give us a ride the next day. The trip out there was exciting to say the least, and our driver stopped along the way for us to try water apples. They are a bell-shaped fruit that have the texture of a pear, but taste like a flower (have you ever tried that fruit, Jessica?). We were greeted at the park office by an entire wall of jars full of the dangerous species of snakes, lizards, scorpions, and bugs that you might encounter in the park. We signed in and began our hike into a Jurassic Park like jungle, surrounded only by the sounds of the bugs, and a heavy mist that had settled in the trees. The first view of the river was at a spectacular waterfall ending in a bright turquoise pool, unlike anything we had seen before. There were no people anywhere and we felt as if we had discovered our own private paradise. We continued our hike, finding the point where the two rivers meet and the water turns blue, and ending up at a set of hot springs. Careful placement of rocks had made a perfect pool that allowed enough cold river water in to mix with the hot springs to make a great place to sit. We stayed there for awhile and had a picnic lunch before hiking back.

A great week overall and now back to the office to finish the quest for our construction permits. Looks like we can have them by the end of the week and if the construction crew is ready, begin the houses next week! Very exciting news for us. We hope all is well in the US and we miss you all!

Hugs,
Team Wander

Las mamás (don't forget the accent)

2009-05-13T14:00:00.001-07:00

We finally had our first visitors in Costa Rica. Both our moms and Hank came the last week of April and were able to stay in this beautiful house on the beach in the nearby resort. Even better, the house had a chef that we are now teaching English to, so we got to eat lots of great food while they were here. They were fantastic and each brought down an extra suitcase of stuff we had forgotten in the US or couldn't find here so now we're set here.

The first few days we just showed them around our life here in Costa Rica, our job, our old house/town, our friends, etc. We gave them a true Tico experience by taking them to the festival in 27 de Abril with bullriding, greasy food, and plenty of crazy drunks to top things off. Needless to say, they were happy we had moved to a new town.

We all took a horseback tour through Hacienda Pinilla – through the fields, up a mountain to have a great view of the ocean, through the mangroves, and finally emerging on the beach. The next day we split up, Miah and his mom taking a canopy tour through the jungle and the others going on a snorkeling/sailing trip. The canopy tour was quite a new adventure for mama wander, and though she didn't go racing through the trees hanging upside down from the cable (like Miah did), she seemed to have a fantastic time.

The sailing trip was a blast. It was a huge boat that our friend is the captain of and it's all you can eat/drink. It can hold about 75 people, but there were only nine of us that day so we had the boat practically to ourselves. Halfway through the tour we all went snorkeling and the guide was able to catch a blowfish. We got to hold it as well, which felt like a giant soft water balloon. We finished the trip at sunset at a new beach to the north and were shuttled back to Tamarindo to end the evening.

We also took everyone to our favorite restaurant here, a little thatched-roof fishing shack called Pedro's. They go fishing everyday and serve whatever they catch. The restaurant doesn't even bother serving drinks – you have to walk to the bar next door to order what you need. It is the best fish and shrimp you can find in Tamarindo eat though.

For all of you adventurous chefs out there.....

2009-05-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

....an amazing new dessert that you should try to make. We have been performing "scientific experiments¨ here to find the best Tres Leches in Guanacaste and here it is. If you are brave enough to try to make it, let us know how it turns out.

Tres Leches (Three Milks)

Ingredients:
6 Separated Eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup flour

1 can evaporated milk
1 can sweetened condensed milk
8 oz. of whipping cream
1tsp. vanilla
2 capfulls of guaro (or white rum will work fine)

1/2 cup sugar
scant 1/4 cup water
3 egg whites

Using a mixer, beat the 6 egg whites until they form medium peaks. Slowly add the yolks while continuing to beat. Slowly add 3/4 cup sugar and 1 tsp vanilla (still beating). Once everything is thoroughly mixed, fold in 1 cup flour a bit at a time. Pour in a greased 9x13 baking dish and bake at 350degrees for about 20 min. or until a toothpick comes out clean. When the cake is finished, poke about 100 holes in the top of it to allow the milk mixture to penetrate. Also separate the edge of the cake from the dish.

In a blender, combine the three milks, vanilla, and liquor. Slowly pour mixture over the entire cake, allowing it to soak through to the bottom. Place in the fridge until cool.

In a small saucepan, combine water and 1/2 cup sugar and heat until mixture becomes thick. Beat the 3 egg whites until stiff peaks form. Slowly pour the sugar mixture into the whites while mixing then spread over the top of the cake.

Enjoy!! Stays well in the fridge (although the icing begins to deflate).
In the name of science,
Team Wander

A New Hobby

2009-04-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

We had a nice, relaxing Semana Santa (Holy Week) here in Costa Rica. We did have to suffer through that terrible NCAA Tournament National Championship Game, but otherwise we had a few days to spend time with friends and get hooked on a new hobby....golf. Yes, you may laugh (we are hilarious to watch at this point), but it is a blast.

Back at work we met with a new engineer who is now going to be in charge of our first project. He seemed great and is able to get all the approvals we need in the next two weeks. If all goes as planned we may get to begin building in early June. Just in the nick of time too, because the president of Costa Rica will be here in the middle of June to see the progress of the project. We´ve learned a ton over the past few months though, and we should be able to acquire the next set of permits quicker, although we will always have to battle the pura vida mindset.

Over the weekend we went back to try golf some more, but halfway through playing we got a message that we needed to go on a horseback ride with our boss (meetings are a little different around here!). Sounds like a great idea if you´re prepared, unfortunately we were not, and riding in a skirt is not recommended. We were able to get to the top of the mountain just before sunset though and caught a beautiful view before trying to ride back in the dark.

Sorry this post is late being published, but next update we´ll catch you up on our adventures with our first guests here in Costa Rica.

Love to all,
Team Wander

Nicaragua

2009-04-06T15:36:00.000-07:00

Home early.... if one thing can chase us out of a country quickly, it´s bad food. Unfortunately Nicaragua could not compare to the cuisine of Costa Rica (or any other country we´ve been to for that matter) and we decided we were just as happy coming back early.

We caught the bus to Managua, Nicaragua on the side of the road in Liberia, Costa Rica. We were told we had about five hours of driving, and an undisclosed amount of time to wait at the border. We were exactly at our 90 day limit here in Costa Rica, but thankfully the border guards did not seem to care at all. It was absolute chaos once we crossed into Nicaragua and had to go through customs. The bus driver took everyone´s passport and so we sat there waiting outside the bus for an hour while he went to get them all stamped. Meanwhile, everyone around us was selling food, hammocks, illegal movies or changing money. Then everyone scrambled to get their bags from under the bus and take them over to another mass of people who supposedly check them and send you back. The entire process was a joke, and seemed to take the maximum amount of time possible. A couple hours later we were back on the road and headed to Managua.

As soon as we arrived, everyone began telling us how dangerous the city was and to be careful. We walked around for awhile and as it got dark figured that we were safest just to watch a movie at the nearby mall. However, the movies now showing in the theater in Nicaragua are the same ones we were watching as Redbox rentals last summer. It was still worth the $3 of entertainment and was the coldest we have been since arriving in Central America. The next morning we decided to head south to Granada, since everything we´ve seen and heard is that it´s a gorgeous city. As the bus pulled into town, it reminded us so much of Peru. The city center is full of old churches and convents and the city is situated on Lake Nicaragua (which is so big it looks more like an ocean and even has sharks).

While walking around the city, we happened to run into another American couple we had met on the bus ride to Nicaragua. We joined them for the rest of the day and cooked a great dinner at their hostel with some of the other guests. This was the best meal we had in Nicaragua. The next day we took a bus to Masaya to see the huge markets there and a nearby volcano. Volcán Masaya was amazing because it is still active and gas was rising from the crater as we looked over the edge. It feels as if you have left Earth and have been dropped on some remote planet. Our plan was to hike back down the mountain and flag down a bus heading to Granada. However, the park officials offered us a ride back to the main road and it was all down hill from there. Another couple also waiting for the bus managed to flag down a truck and we all climbed in the back. About half an hour later, we figured out that they were not headed to Granada at all so we hopped out and waited for another bus to pass. This bus could take us to a town that had a road leading to Granada, so once we got off we tried hitchiking again. It took longer to find a ride this time, but finally another truck full of ladders in the back stopped and the four of us managed to squeeze in around them and finally make it back to Granada. Just in time too, we were able to catch tip-off for the Final Four Games. The outcome of the games was definitely not what we were hoping for, but we were able to drown our sorrows in $1 mojitos and beers.

The next day we were going to head to another nearby volcano to hike, but we were awokened at 5:30 to church bells, drums, gunshots, and a parade going through the streets. Samana Santa (Holy Week) had begun and everyone was up early to begin the celebration. We had been teetering on the edge of coming home and the promise of a week of 5:30 am wake up calls was enough for us to call an end to our time in Nicaraga, and catch an 8am bus back to Costa Rica. Eight hours later we managed to make it back to our apartment, thankful to be back. We will certainly give Nicaragua another chance in three months, but for now it is nice to know that Costa Rica is starting to feel more like home.

Eat lots of Cadburry Cream Eggs for us,
Team Wander

Moving Day!

2009-03-31T11:49:00.000-07:00

To ease any worried minds at home, we now have a new place to live that is much more secure. The complex where our office is also has about 20 apartments and houses for the employees of Hacienda Pinilla, so we are moving to one of the apartments. It is a definite step back towards life in the US from our simple life in 27 de Abril, so we have mixed thoughts about moving, but overall the pros far surpass than cons. The place is much smaller, but super nice. We´ll be back to a world of kitchen appliances, washing machines, and TV. Most of our friends live nearby and we don´t have to make the 20km trek on a dirt road to and from work each day. It is amazing to be able to pack and move all our belongings in an afternoon, a testament to reducing the amount of "stuff" that accumulates as you live in one place. This week is hectic with visitors from the US, moving, and heading to Nicaragua for a new visa on Thursday, but hopefully when we return after Easter we will have time to write more.

We hope all of you have a wonderful Easter!
Team Wander

The mother of all blog posts

2009-03-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

So, it would be safe to say that the past week has been exciting. Not necessarily exciting in a good way, but exciting nonetheless. Last Thursday night, Miah got invited out to play futbol-cinco with some of our Tico friends (and Zack). After the sweaty, hard-fought tie, we all decided a pit stop at the local bull-riding festival was in order. We stayed there most of the night and didn't make it home till about midnight, at which point we set about our typical going to bed tasks... toothbrushing and the like. It wasn't until Leslie walked in to the bedroom and said "Miah, come take a look at this" that we knew something was amiss.

There was glass strewn all over our bedroom floor and the curtains for the window were flapping about wildly even though the window was closed. Immediately, we walked through the house only to discover (much to our dismay) that the guitar, the laptop, and both of our IPods were gone. We began cleaning up the glass in shocked silence, waiting for our emotions to kick in to what had just happened. We both felt an overwhelming sadness, not anger and not fear, and spent the next few hours talking and re-evaluating the world around us, since sleep was not going to find us anytime soon. The next morning we went to the office to talk to our boss and then into Santa Cruz to talk to the judicial office to open an investigation. Thankfully the lawyer who works for our organization was a great help to us and walked us through a process that we would have never known exisited otherwise. This was especially helpful because everytime we went to the local police office, it was closed, and therefore not much help at all.

We spent the remainder of the day around the house, in sort of a weird mood that we couldn't break. All our entertainment had been taken, so we read and read and read (which also continued for the rest of the weekend). That night, two investigators showed up and questioned Miah about what happened for a second time. Then they began CSI 27 de Abril, dusting for fingerprints and conducting a full search around our house. The rest of the weekend was uneventful (although we did get to watch some of the basketball tournament, extremely happy to see college sports again).

Monday morning we finally got a new pane of glass to fix the window and two members of the Foundation's construction crew started welding metal bars for our doors and windows. A friend in town came by to tell us that he found out who the thief was and to return the IPod speakers that had been stolen. He suggested we go talk to the thief in person and see if we could get him to return the stuff without police involvement.

The suspect's house was not 100 meters down the street from us, but when we got there, only his parents were around. We began the toughest Spanish conversation we've had yet, explaining the situation and that his son's name had been given to us. They did not even question what we said and offered that we could wait until he returned, so wait we did.....for two awkward hours we sat at the thief's house with his parents glancing over at us every so often and the mother trying to be hospitable by giving us each an orange. When he finally arrived, we showed him the speakers and said we were told he was the one selling the stolen items. He quickly got defensive and kept demanding to know who had told us. We said if we could just get our stuff back, the issue would end there, but he refused to cooperate. So we contacted the police again, and are just hoping that they act quick enough to recover our things.

Apparently he is having trouble selling the items, because everyone in our town and the neighboring town know that they are ours. It is extremely frustrating because our stuff seems so close, but there is nothing else we can personally do to get it back. It is very encouraging that so many people have been willing to help us though, and their kindness just reinforces our belief that we are doing the right thing by helping the people here. We'll keep you posted as to what happens, and hopefully this story will have a happy ending.

Love,
Team Wander

Trabajadores

2009-03-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

We had a very rewarding, but very tough week last week with 20 high school students here from Atlanta to help volunteer. They were hoping to build houses, but since there are no permits yet and the only Habitat project in the area just finished, we had them help in some of the local communities. We painted three schools and repaired houses that had suffered severe damage from the floods last fall. The kids got a quick introduction into the dry heat of Costa Rica and the rock hard soil when they were trying to build a ditch for the water and electric lines to the houses.

The schools we worked in were 1st – 6th grade, typically with one teacher for all the students. In some of the more remote towns, we were told that only 1-2 students will graduate high school from a class of 30 and many of them just stop school after 6th grade. The schools looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in a decade, so it took a lot of scrubbing before we could even begin painting inside and out. We were quite a spectacle to the children, and they loved running over to say hello or any other word they knew in English (usually 'I love you') and run away again giggling. Best of all though, the volunteers had each brought an extra suitcase of stuff to give away, and we got to hand out gifts to each of the students. You should have seen the children’s eyes when we told them that they could each pick a toy from the piles we had at the front of the room. Stuffed animals, jump ropes, hats, balls, books…they were thrilled. We even sang songs with the children and tried playing a few games.

We also got the Costa Rican high school students that are in the Foundation’s Scholarship program to join us for a couple days. It was great for them to interact with American students and practice their English. Some of them may even being going to the same colleges next year in Georgia so they could get some great advice for what to expect. This week, we are working in the same locations to finish up the last details with two other guys. No rest for the weary, but it is great to be doing some construction work again.

Hope everyone had a great St. Patrick’s Day last night!

Team Wander

Trabajadores, Agua y Perritos

2009-03-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, here´s a testament to our dedication to writing in the blog. In order to get to the internet tonight, we had to break into our office since we don´t have a key. Picture Miah lifting Leslie above his head to slide into a tiny window above the shower in the office bathroom. Besides a few scrapes and bruises, our recon mission was successful and here we are. It´s been quite a week here, since we´ve been hosting a volunteer group from the US. We´ll provide a full account of that next week though when we return to the office.

Great news, we can finally take hot showers. This is definitely one of the blessings of home that we always took for granted. After $150, a few days of work, and a very Tico style of running wires out the bathroom window (it looks awesome leslie, hush), across the house, and into the breaker box, our shower head now runs a current through the water to heat it instantaneously. As soon as we got the shower head installed, however, our water was shut off for four days becuase the bill is apparently delivered to a neighboring house that no one lives in and so it wasn´t paid for the last two months. It is all taken care of now though, and we return to having water during the week, except from 6 to 8 in the evenings, and only in the mornings on the weekend. As we continue farther into the dry season, the two rivers in our town have dried up and the soil is hard as a rock. It is interesting to only have two seasons, dry and wet, and never need a weather report.

We almost became dog owners once again this week. A tiny puppy found its way to our front porch and was so adorable we could not turn her away. After giving her dinner and a few pets, she permanently attached herself to us. Wherever we would go, she would follow, and if she couldn´t be directly in contact with us, she would crawl into our shoes, a purse or backpack, or just curl up on our socks so she could feel close. It was absolutely adorable. Unfortunately she had fleas, so she had to sleep outside. She whined the entire night, only to stop from exhaustion for short breaks, before starting up again. Needless to say, we didn´t get much sleep, but as soon as we opened the door in the morning she was happy as could be. After work the next day, however, she was gone, which is a blessing and a curse. We would not make very good owners here, since we work so far from home and are not around enough, but it was so happy to have a dog again.

Well hopefully you are all watching the Wolfpack play as we write this... we have to be satisfied with ESPN updates since we can´t watch the ACC tournament here. We miss you all (and college sports as well).

Team Wander

La Guerra con Los Animales (parte dos)

2009-02-26T10:22:00.000-08:00

Turns out, even after burying the garrobo hole when he/she wasn't home, the problem of his/her existence wasn't eliminated. We had a pair of watermelon plants that made it through the initial onslaught of the garrobo only to be nibbled off a week later. Sounds like most things are going to grow inside now until they're old enough to stand on their own too feet.

A fence is also in the works to help defend the plans, but nothing has been finalized yet. It feels a little silly to sink fenceposts to surround a 2 square yard plot of land, but we'll see if we can't "engineer" something tico style.

In other news, we received our first piece of actual mail. Carol O'Loughlin is the winner for first piece actually delivered. And the successful address (the most important part for you guys taking notes at home, because this is how you can actually send stuff to us in the future):

800 oeste del cruce a Playa Avellanas
Villas San Francisco, Casa #16
Hernandez de Santa Cruz, Guanacaste
Costa Rica

For those of you who might have used other addresses, or who have sent stuff that hasn't yet arrived, we still hold out hope that it will make it through the maze of the costa rican mail system. If it shows up, nay... when it shows up, we'll be sure and let you know.

Only one more thing to report: we've been adopted. There's a family of angels here in costa rica that has taken it upon themselves to make sure that we don't get skinny during our time down here and every week they do their best to prevent our emaciation. They also give us some spanish lessons over dinner in exchange for some english lessons going back the other way. It's nice to have a local ma and pa.

That's about it for today, we mostly wanted to report on the winner of the mail race,
Hope everything is going well up north,
Team Wander

Los Animales

2009-02-19T13:15:00.000-08:00

This week we have been introduced to more of the crazy animal kingdom living here in Costa Rica. Some of these introductions have been nicer than others.....

First, Miah has declared war on the garrobo that lives in our backyard. What is a garrobo you may ask? Well, it looks like a giant iguana and apparently tastes like chicken (we don´t know from experience, although the battle may come to that). We have been working on a garden the past couple weeks and finally got our first watermelon plants to sprout. They lasted about two days before Miah found the garrobo in the garden and no more plants. Since then, Miah has been trying to chase him from his home and has finally filled it with concrete blocks and dirt. It is yet to be known the garrobo´s next plan of attack.....

Second, we had a very interesting Valentine´s Day that included a mother turtle. Our friends took us on these crazy ¨roads¨ (more like 4-wheeler trails) to a secluded beach and we built a huge bonfire. As the guys were looking for more firewood, they found a sea turtle coming on shore to lay her eggs. We watched her slowly make her way up the beach and dig a large hole. Another group of people showed up who wanted to steal the eggs after she laid them (unfortunately, turtle eggs are popular down here). One of the girls in our group tried to convince them that this turtle was sick and the eggs would be bad, but we´re not sure if they listened or not. We left around 1am before she had finished laying all the eggs, and the others were camping nearby. It was surreal to watch the entire process though and we will definitely go during the height of turtle season at the end of the year to watch hundreds of turtles lay their eggs.

The next day we went to another nearby beach for Miah to get another try at surfing. Besides, not realizing the tide was coming in and it sweeping away all our stuff, we had a great day. As we were leaving however, Miah was stung by a bee. His foot quickly started swelling and continued to grow for the next couple days. We found a clinic that gave him a shot and some medicated cream and slowly his foot has been returning to normal. It is still a size or so large than the other foot though.

Last night, we saw our first armadillo rumaging around the yard. They look a lot like giant, armored rats and are suprisingly agile. We don´t know if he plans to make a home nearby as well, but hopefully he makes a better neighbor than the garrobo....

Team Wander

"Vacanejos"

2009-02-12T12:26:00.001-08:00

Day to day life here is not too exciting, but we do have a few stories that may be of interest to you. First, we got a real taste of Guanacaste last week when we went horseback riding and to a typical horse show, called a Sabanero. Horseback riding was a lot of fun but the guys with us kept hitting the trees with their machetes to piss of the monkeys and make them yell at us. Apparently the next step is the monkeys throw poo at you from the treetops so we headed out of there as quick as possible. The show was the cowboys of the area showing off their talents and people in crazy giant costumes running around in circles trying to hit people with their long, flapping arms. It ended in a fantastic dinner though and we had our first great steak here.

Since we're in a holding pattern at work waiting for the permits, we have been helping some with the education part of the foundation. There are about a dozen students being tutored to pass the TOEFL and ACT so that they can be given scholarships to universities in the US. We have quickly become attached to these kids and they made this huge presentation for their parents last week that was fantastic. It is amazing how great their English is now; they even wrote and performed songs in English. If only our Spanish could be that good.... We have convinced one of the girls to trade Spanish classes for Math classes each week so hopefully that will help us out some.

Miah got a new best friend and a lawn mower in the same day. His name is Oscar and we have attached a picture of him below. The horses in our backyard and all the cows in the area never cease to amuse us. We have renamed the cows here "vacanejos" (a combination between cow and rabbit in Spanish) because their ears are so big. Getting caught in a traffic jam of cows in the road is not a rare occurrence and it's always funny when one of them rump bumps the side of the car.

We had dinner with some friends and their parents this week at a beautiful restaurant overlooking the ocean in Tamarindo. We drank wine and ate Italian food while watching the sunset. It was beautiful! Afterwards, they introduced us to this bar that apparently makes the best pie around. We had coconut pie, banana pie, and a new one, pineapple pie, that were all fantastic. Ice cream may have a new rival for choice dessert here.

We hope all of you have a great Valentine's Day weekend!
Love,
TeamWander

Screen Door - Tico Style

2009-02-04T06:22:00.001-08:00

Yes, I know it's been more than a week since we last posted. Sorry, we wanted to make sure we had some worthwhile stories for you. So here's one for all the habitat kiddies that are reading our blog.

The backstory: it's uber-duber hot in CR. When we get home from work each day it's about 90 degrees inside our house, and we don't have A/C. Fortunately for us, we sort of live in a natural wind tunnel, so if you put everything that could conceivably blow away (paper, puzzle pieces, glasses of water, your wife) under a rock or weigh it down, then you can open up all the windows to the house and the temperature will get comfortable pretty quickly.

The problem: the wind comes and goes in gusts, and when it's not gusting (especially after dusk) the bugs use the opportunity to invade the house in droves.

The solution: screens... on everything. Over the past few weeks we've screened in all of the windows in the house as well as the back door. The latter being the story worth mentioning.

You see, in this endeavor, there were a number of forces conspiring against us. First, our dictionary doesn't have the right word for screen (as in the material) - so when we first went to the hardware store we were asking them over and over for something akin to a portable divider wall. Second, buying materials here is an interesting adventure. The lumber that we bought... 1"by 1/2" gets sold in three lengths: un barra, dos barras, o tres barras. What's a barra you ask? I can't help you, I don't know. It looks to be about 30 inches give or take 6. We bought 10 sticks of 2 barras each and the length varied by about 2 feet. Third, we don't have actual tools. Here's a picture of all the tools we used to make the screen door and another one of the screen door itself.

To build it we had a hammer, scissors, a pencil, a tape measure, a dollar bin target multiscrewdriver, a leatherman, and a hacksaw blade that we found in our backyard (used both for cutting the wood and chiseling the inset in the door for the hinges).

All things considered, we're pretty stoked with the outcome. We now have access to a much cooler, relatively bug free evening and the fact that the door is already beginning to sag doesn't bug us too much... The closer it gets to the ground the tougher it is for spiders to crawl under.

What's going on in your life? Love,
TeamWander

Nuestra Vida en 27 de Abril

2009-01-26T07:24:00.000-08:00

Around the House

Our Backyard

The center of town

Las dos llantas ponchadas

2009-01-22T06:57:00.000-08:00

Sorry it has been quite awhile since we've written. We are getting settled in our life here, and it's slower than our lives have ever been. Tico time must be contagious. The excitement here this week is a bull riding festival in Santa Cruz, the biggest town in our area. For nine days they have our equivalent to the State Fair, just with 8 hours of bull riding every day, and it never really closes down. We saw people camping in the streets and others just passed out where they were last standing. Apparently every town in the area will have a similar festival over the next several months.

Slow as our time these days might be, it hasn't been without excitement. For example, we recently learned the word for flat tire (llanta ponchada). Then we learned it again, just two days later...when we were further away from our hometown than we had ever ventured. Fortunately we also learned how to ask for a tire repair shop, etc. So in the end, it all worked out and we discovered quite a bit as a result.

Spanish has been going well. Yesterday we drove to Liberia with some of our friends here and they only spoke spanish with us for about six hours. Though we're pretty sure they were talking to us at the pace they'd normally use for a four year old, our comprehension was good. We'll chalk that up as a victory for the good guys.

It looks like - after legally dividing the plots and acquiring the building permits - we'll hopefully get to start building the first development sometime early this summer. We'll keep you guys posted with photos of that for sure.

Make a snowman for us,
TeamWander

El Rey de karaoke

2009-01-14T11:30:00.001-08:00

We survived the karaoke party with our boss....not only survived but actually had a great time and met some fantastic people. They all work at the resort close to where we work and most of them live where our office is. Miah had his first karaoke experience, a strong showing of "No Rain". We also tried to learn to dance, although our hips have no chance of keeping up with everyone else. There was one couple there who was American as well so we spent Sunday at their apartment watching football. We're not sure which was best 1) real football, 2) TV, or 3) AC, but minus the Chargers losing, it was a stupendous afternoon.

As far as our job goes, it looks like we will waiting for awhile. It is one of those "hurry up and wait" situations trying to get the necessary permits. Apparently knowing people in each of the offices is the way to get things done, but we're going to have to figure out a new way for now. We don't get much of an inkling that our Spanish is getting better (we still don't understand too much more than the grocery store conversation), but our English is definitely declining, so we're going to take that as a positive sign. Maybe we'll forget enough English that we're forced to talk in Spanish...

We did our best yesterday to start meeting the folks in our town. We played frisbee in the soccer field in the center of town and were a spectacle to say the least.

Lasssstly, we finally got a mailing address. It's to our office, but it's probably the most reliable address that we can give:

Hacienda Pinilla
Villas San Francisco
Casa 16
Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

We would give you the other address, but we can't really remember it all, it had something to do with 200 meters on the road toward Paso Hondo from the main soccer field in the middle of Ventesiete de Abril. Good luck with that.

Love you guys!
TeamWander

La Primera Semana

2009-01-09T12:11:00.000-08:00

We survived our first week here. All in all, it has gone extremely well, although it has been extremely frustrating at times as well. The people we work with are amazing; they have been so friendly and helpful to us which has made a huge difference. The small town we live in is a completely different world than the coast where we work. The closest town on the beach is Tamarindo, which is aptly refered to as "gringo town". There are more tourists there than Ticos and prices are referred to in American dollars. Not so much our style, but at least there is a regular grocery store there where we can get food that is otherwise not seen in Costa Rica. The contrast between the tourist areas and the rest of the region is striking - oxcarts, horses, and cattle are not uncommon to see wandering around our town. However, there's no internet or cable, and apparently phone lines are hard to come by as well.

Life is certainly different down here...the attitudes, the sense of time, the pastimes, everything. Everyday we get stuck on our way to work by construction (today we counted 30+ dumptrucks lined up in a row who just dumped gravel as we tried to squeeze past - less than 2 feet away). Yesterday they just had everyone turn around and take a detour through a couple of villages and eventually through a river to get back on the regular road. A river?!? We were greatly amused and thankfully our tiny car made it through.

As far as food stories go, not much to report yet. Our fridge and oven are broken so we've been eating whatever we can make in the microwave this week. We did go out for pizza with our
coworker and her boyfriend which was delicious. Seems like we will have a diet full of rice, beans, and meat though and of course, lots of mango juice.

Tonight we're headed to a suprise party for someone we haven't met yet (que surpresa! - complete with karaoke) with our boss, so more stories to come....

Miss you,
Team Wander

P.S. The earthquake hit farther south so we did not feel anything. Thanks for your concern!

Estamos aqui

2009-01-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

Day three in costa rica begins to the tune of about 88 degrees fahrenheit in our bedroom. at 8 am. this is pretty similar to day two, and since day one only really began at 5 pm when the airport officials had finally (after an hour and a half of battling and towing the plane around the tarmac) discouraged the bees surrounding our plane and consented to let us off we don't have an 8 am data point. It's amazing here - not amazing good , not amazing bad. Full of potential, but full of difficulties. Ask us what we think two years from now.

The town that we live in, vientesiete de abril, is a tiny village of mostly dirt roads, one church, two 'super-markets', an elementary school and a soccer field smack in the middle. There is also a pub that hopefully may allow us to open up the lines of communication with the locals over a cerveza or two. Yesterday, we went for a walk through town and within a mile found ourselves on the other side, headed out in to the fields surrounding town.

The first few days have been a vacillation between exciting and quiet, including, but not limited to: being stopped by the costa rican police at a checkpoint only to find the registration on the car we have here expired two years ago (it was only as a result of our stumbling spanish and stupid smiles that we got off without a fine); removing the current residents of the house (countless giant jumping spiders, two dead frogs, and one scorpion) less the lizards, who we have decided to keep on hand on account of their voracious apetite; meeting most of the residents of the town in an effort to find out who had our key; trying to figure out why none of the outlets in the kitchen work, trying to get the water to work again after trying to figure out why none of the outlets in the kitchen work; realization of the true meaning of manana (for the first of many times); holding 6 hours of self taught spanish lessons; watching 2 hours of the first season of 'how I met your mother'; reading 450 some-odd cumulative pages of fiction, and celebrating one three month anniversary.

The house is incredible, even if slightly buggy. We can understand why there may have been a little disagreement as to whether or not it was too nice to be a model habitat house for the area. We're going to try to figure out how to post our grand tour video on either youtube or facebook so everyone can have a look. For the next little while though, it appears that internet access will be minimal, so please send us your love, though if we don't respond quickly, please don't take it as a slight.

This will be an incredible adventure - difficult, but incredible. For those of you who plan to come visit, prepare yourself as your arrival will increase the caucasian population of vientesiete from two to three. Enjoy the cold weather back home, at least half of team wander is madly envious of you.

Adios,
TeamWander

P.S. We don't have much internet access these days, so please make comments and send us emails anyway - but don't be sad if we don't respond immediately.

In the US

2009-01-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

We hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year. We certainly did, three times over, as we rushed around trying to fit in as much time, with as many family members as possible. Although we weren't abroad for that long of a time, it is always interesting to return to the US and realize just how different it is from the rest of the world. First things first, we hopped in a personal car and drove to Ohio. No more trains, buses, boats, or any other form of public transportation, we could be where we wanted to be, when we wanted to be, and were once again in control of our own destiny. Great in some respects, but certainly more selfish and less appealing in others. It was even more shocking to return to gas prices that were less than half of what we had seen when we left and almost comical in comparison to the countries we'd left when thinking about the cost in comparison to the total cost of living. Our first food stop was a Cracker Barrel in West Virginia, a slight deviation in demographic than we'd been accustomed to lately. We were craving cheese, biscuits, and other such foods that we had missed while in Asia. It was quite a challenge (though one we valiantly overcame) to eat the pile of food given to us, since by Thai standards it was two meals or more. The greatest shock of all was the weather shift from 90 degrees to 19 degrees, unfortunately we did not get to see snow. Returning to a land of public toilets and toilet paper has been great though.

It was wonderful to ring in the new year here with such amazing friends, and will be tough to transplant our lives to a new country. We're so thankful to have all of your love and support though and we have an open invitation for anyone who would like to come visit. We'll miss you tons; please keep us posted on your lives as well since we'll do our best to continue our updates through this blog.

Happy New Year, do something great with it,
Team Wander

Tokyo!!

2008-12-19T13:36:00.000-08:00

After managing to sleep a couple hours on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo, we braved the cold and headed into the city. It was quite a switch from 80-90 degrees to 40 degrees, and to top it off, it was raining. First purchase, an umbrella. Then we just ran (literally since we only had 6 hours before heading back to the airport) through the city to keep warm and had a fantastic time. We went to the Senso-ji Temple, saw the huge pagoda, and walked through stalls and stalls of fans, swords, dolls, tea sets, etc. In order to escape the cold, we found a museum and amused ourselves playing any kind of drum you could imagine. Most of our time though was spent eating (no surprise there). The best was a sushi restaurant that we were pulled into by a man yelling at us from across the street in Japanese. As soon as we got in the door, there were waiters/waitresses everywhere also yelling at us. We couldn't stop laughing since they could have been yelling absolutely anything at us, and somehow managed to figure out the computer at our table to order our meal. It was delicious! We also found these crazy desserts which look like tiny billiard balls, but were flavored like green tea, red bean, coffee, etc. Despite the weather and our short time there, it was one of our favorite days of the trip. Tokyo is definitely worth another trip.

A few more random photos...

2008-12-13T02:42:00.001-08:00

Ko Tarutao

Krabi

Overlooking Phang Nga

Heading out to the fishing village island

Kuala Lumpur (again)

2008-12-13T02:19:00.000-08:00

Our plan was to head south to Kuala Selangor from Pulau Pangkor, but once again we were thwarted by mobs of people trying to travel during a Malaysian holiday. So instead we returned to KL and see if we could see a new side of it. Somehow we couldn't avoid the mega-malls, but we also were able to explore some new markets, watch a battle of the bands (Xmas style), and have our feet nibbled on by pedicure fish (this was wierd! believe us). Then we headed north to a Hindu temple situated in a set of huge limestone caves. The temple was crawling with monkeys who could care less that humans were around, except for the fact that they could steal their food....Got Milk?

Sadly, we did not luck out as much on food in KL, which is surprising given its size. However, we did stumble upon the best breakfast ever and plan on bringing it back to the US for the State Fair. Here it is just french toast, but we'll sell it as "fry bread" and make a killing. It's three pieces of white bread with the crust cut off, layered with peanut butter in between, battered with egg and fried. Then, it is topped with sweetened condensed milk. If you've never tasted heaven, this is it.

One last stop in Malaysia before flying out on Tuesday....seems like we've been here forever and no time at all simultaneously, strange!

See you soon,

TeamWander

The promised photo as well as some other food photos

2008-12-13T01:58:00.000-08:00

ABC

Laksa and Beef Curry

Dim Sum

The best fish dinner we had

Our Thanksgiving dinner

Whirlwind through Malaysia

2008-12-10T01:57:00.000-08:00

So only a week has past, but we're another country and four stops later which might make for a lengthy blog post, but we'll do our best to keep it short. Our first stop was the island of Langkawi. This is the duty-free beach haven of Malaysia, a long cry from our last island stop...about as far as it could possibly be actually. The Lonely Planted touted beaches so bright that you would need shades and they weren't kidding. Accompanying that was every ounce of tourist economy you could manage so we didn't stick around long. The guesthouse we stayed at was adorable though, and run by a Japanese women who had lived all over the world. When she found out we had just gotten married, she made every person who passed by wish us well in their native language. She handed out beer at the same time so quickly we amassed a table of people from all over the world and spent the night in great conversations, only interrupted by her playing the wedding march to keep everyone in the spirit.

The next stop was Pulau Penang, another one of those legendary places that you hear about, but would never imagine going to. It was much much more of a city than we imagined, however that turned out to be for the best, since it made for more places to eat. The cuisine in Penang is where the legend comes from and the food we got to eat certainly lived up to it. Yeah, we did some other stuff too, including hiking through a national park to monkey beach and dropping in to an icy theater to watch "Bolt" and the new James Bond movie... both of which we put on the recommended list for anyone who hasn't seen them yet.

After that we cruised up to the Cameron Highlands in the interior of Malaysia and spent a couple of days shivering. It's amazing how much the temperature can change over a five hour bus ride (the pitch of the road should have given it away). We didn't stick around too long as the weather was pretty wet, but we did take the time to tour a local tea plantation and have a pot of strawberry tea on the veranda.

The last stop in this post is another Malaysian island: Pangkor. It is much different - again - from any of the islands we've seen thus far. The biggest thing here is that there are very very few caucasian tourists. Apparently Pangkor is the Malaysian tourist getaway, and as we decided to come here during a school holiday, we got to meet that fact head on. It's been wonderful though, with some island side snorkeling and a decent collection of Malay food stalls to keep us fed. Ooh... a good story about that actually. In Malaysia they have two deserts that we have never come across before and will certainly be doing our best to bring home with us (in some way, shape or form): Cendol (pronounced chin-dool) and ABC (hopefully you can figure that one out). Both of them are basically like a big snow cone covered in anything syrupy you can imagine - in all combinations. We've had them both covered in molasses, sweetened condensed milk, cherry flavoring, gummy bears, peanuts, pinto beans, black beans and the piece-de-resistance green jelly-wormy-noodles. If it sounds intense, it is, but it's also perfect on a super hot day. We'll eat another one tonight and post a picture.

Much love, don't freeze!
TeamWander

P.S. We heard a rumor that NC State is in a bowl game!!! Party time at Mama Wander's house....

Last Hurrah in Thailand

2008-12-03T04:58:00.001-08:00

So we finally made it away from the hordes of people who travel to the beaches and islands in the south of Thailand by heading to Koh Tarutao national park - it is the lonely, blue/green watered island that you would imagine when you think of the perfect place!! To get there, we first had to stop in the port town of Pak Bara for the night before catching a ferry to the islands. The town was not much to speak of, but we had one of the best dinners of the trip in a little bungalow on the beach at sunset. Almost too perfect, but the mosquitos came out in a fury to remind us of reality. They also found a way to infiltrate where we were staying the night, so needless to say between them and the mouse (yup a mouse) also sharing the room, we didn't get much sleep.

Once on the island though, we couldn't have asked for more. We had a cute, clean bungalow, a set of half a dozen new friends that we had met en-route, and stretches of unpopulated, beautiful, white-sandy beaches. We spent a day riding around the island on a long-tail boat (basically a canoe with an 8-cylinder diesel engine strapped to the back) and our new friends, stopping off to explore vacant coves and try to do a bit of snorkeling. Other than that, we took our sweet time doing nothing - we finished books, laid on the beach, and had a blast for our last hurrah in thailand.

Next stop - Langkawi island in Malaysia, possibly the direct opposite of Tarutao... we'll report back soon.

Heard the wolfpack might make a bowl, yessssssssssssssssssssss!!

Go Pack,
TeamWander

Krabi - an unexpected adventure

2008-11-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

Our next stop was a small town in the southern-most part of thailand called Krabi (gra-bee). It sits just outside the common tourist path and is well in to the part of thailand where Islam is more common than Buddhism. You can definitely notice the difference, most namely in the availability of alcohol (or lack thereof), but also in the fact that Mosques now outnumber the Wats.

Krabi was a wonderful surprise to us, we spent the very first night at a beach just outside of Krabi and to waste no time beating around the bush, it sucked. it was 100% a tourist economy and not the yummy interesting kind, the yucky kind instead. So, needless to say, we hopped a shared taxi back to Krabi the next morning and found different accomodations to spend the next couple of days. Krabi had so much to offer, both expected and unexpected. We ate most of our meals at a bustling night-market (the very best way to eat in Thailand) where you can walk from stall to stall and give everything a shot. One night we ended up drinking a couple of towers (not to be confused with a couple teen) at an expat bar that was running a few english movies and spent most of the night talking with the bar owner and a few of his friends.

The next day, we recovered from our minor hangovers and went to a buddhist temple here that is about 8 km out of town. the temple exists half at the base of a mountain and half up a flight of 1,283 steps. The view and serenity that we earned at the top was worth every bead of sweat on the way up. Plus we made some amazing new friends. One of our most unexpectedly amazing nights here in thailand, we joined up with a pair of Scottish expats, took a taxi to the wrong town, feasted on tons of indian food and countless carafes of wine and drank the rest of the night away at an irish pub. Ian and Stella we hope to cross paths with you again someday - look us up in Costa Rica.

We've since headed even further south, we're now a stone's throw away from the malaysian border. There's a national park down here that consists of about 91 islands and we're going to go camp on one of them for a few nights. should be beautiful, we'll let you all know.

Hugs to everyone,
TeamWander

PS. We sent half of our stuff home (quite literally) with Mama Wander and are now living out of one (the smaller of our two suitcases). It's proving to be an amazing lesson in how little stuff you actually need, and hopefully we can carry it over to packing for Costa Rica.

Sorry we're slow...

2008-11-27T00:31:00.000-08:00

All our company in the past week and a half has distracted us from blog writing, so you can blame them. ;) Just kidding, it was fantastic to see some familiar faces and we had a great time. Miah's mom arrived first, followed a couple days later by Michelle and Jaime. We decided to celebrate Thanksgiving once they all arrived since we'd be back on our own for the official celebration. (Actually, that's today, so HAPPY THANKSGIVING everyone!) We made a pretty impressive spread if we do say so ourselves, so each of you should tell us yours so we can compare. We managed to make chicken and sweet potato coconut curry, glass noodle salad, spring rolls, pork with holy basil, pad thai, coconut rice, and a "birthday cake" to celebrate the ones we'd missed. Our cooking class apparently paid off.

Once leaving the resort, we all headed down to Phuket Town and took a boat trip out to Phi Phi Island which was destroyed by the tsunami a few years ago. Thanks (kindof) to big tourist dollars, the island bounced back almost immediately. At least this time around there's a little more thought about sustainability. There was a coral reef along the island which was great for snorkeling, and otherwise we just enjoyed the sunshine and blue seas. Our last night in Phuket, we had one of our best meals of the trip, at this out of the way seafood place right on the water. Everyone was a bit taken aback when the food arrived (lots of animal eyes staring back up at us), but it was delicious! Even better, Michelle was almost scared to death by a lobster the size of your torso (she'll have to post the picture).

After Phuket, we headed north to Phang Nga, to a sleepy town surrounded by cliffs and mountains. What seemed like a relaxing night turned quite interesting when we returned to the guesthouse to find muddy footprints on Jaime's bed and up the wall. The guesthouse owners (who didn't speak English) came to the same conclusion we did that someone had broken in to the room, but they did not seem concerned at all. It seemed as if the guy next door had crawled into the ceiling, over the wall, and down through their drop ceiling to get into the room, but was scared off before he could take anything. Finally (after much hand waving and arguing), we were able to convince them we did not want to stay there and moved to another hotel down the street.

Strange things continued the next morning when we decided to visit a nearby cave. When the tuk-tuk dropped us off though, it looked like we had stepped into the Thai version of South of the Border. The place was deserted but there were odd animal statues all over. We wandered farther back and were greeted by dozens and dozens of monkeys climbing over these animal statues and up the rock cliff behind them. We were dumbfounded watching them all and then a monk showed up with food and they quickly surrounded him and were trying to tear the bag from his hands. The larger ones would run in screaming trying to scare the others off and it was complete mayhem. If this monkey colony wasn't strange enough, we then entered this giant dragon's mouth and started following a dark, creepy passage through his body to reach the cave we were trying to find. Reaching the other side, there is a garden of statues that are portraying hell, tortured in any variety of ways. The cave itself was beautiful though - huge with a wandering stream down the middle. The monks had constructed bridges back and forth across the stream until you reached a shrine in the back. The whole experience was just bizarre, no description can do it justice. We'll try to get some photos up next time we get to an internet cafe with our camera.

No sooner did we finish this, that we started on another - though slightly less awesome at the outset - adventure. We took a boat tour of the bays around Phang Nga. This included going around the mangrove forests as well as out in to the bay and to see the illustrious James Bond island (from "The Man With The Golden Gun" for those of you watching along at home). Turns out the "boat" was barely big enough for the six of us and putzed around at just under snail pace and James Bond island paled in comparison to the limestone monsters that filled the rest of the bay, but all things considered, once the rain stopped we had a blast. The last part of the trip was really the most notable. We spent the night in a Muslim fishing village at the mouth of the bay. Established (officially) about 15 years ago the village is basically a random collection of huts that all sit up on stilts at the base of a big limestone rock that pops up out of the sea. The centerpoint of our time in this village was dinner. It was amazing. Plate after plate of yummy thai seafood dishes came out from the kitchen and the 12 people at the table (all of us were part of the same tour) ate every scrap of the food on the table.

We've just come across a small mosquito emergency here in the computer lab, so we're going to disappear for now. Hope everything is wonderful and don't forget, we want to hear your thanksgiving stories!

Eat up!
TeamWander

Chiang Mai (An Addendum)

2008-11-18T22:12:00.000-08:00

I can't believe we forgot this in the other post. It must have been long enough already, but this is news that's simply worth posting, so it deserves it's own special note. While we were in Chiang Mai, we also decided that we would make a voyage to the nearest town to the north (about 15km) in the back of a pickup truck to go pet baby tigers... yes, that's what I said: pet baby tigers. What an incredible experience. There's a rehab/breeding center/tourist attraction in this town that affords visitors the ability to be a part of the recreation of young tigers. We spent 15 or so minutes in a big cage with 5 4-6 month old tigers. We'll have some more pictures up on flickr soon if you want to see them. What an experience!!

Hugs and go Wolfpack,
TeamWander

Heading South

2008-11-16T21:12:00.001-08:00

From Chiang Mai we took a night train to Bangkok and then flew down to Phuket. We'll leave out our day spent in Bangkok since it was probably our least favorite place we've been to so far. Once in Phuket we had another week at a resort that was given to us as well. We had no idea how amazing it would be though. We pulled into a driveway lined with huge torches of fire and were greeted with leis and mojitos to check-in. They took us to our villa which had 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, kitchen, living room, deck...everything set in the jungle. The pools are huge with turtles and elephants shooting water, slides, etc. and it is all set on these gorgeous white sandy beaches with crystal blue water. We never stayed anywhere so nice in our lives, but could definitely get used to the high life here. :) Our backpacker nature came out quickly though, and we had to rent a motorcycle to get to town 40km away so we could buy and cook our own food. Let's just say that two people and 40 pounds of food is no easy task to drive back on a bike. We wake up in the morning to yoga and pilates classes and then enjoy a day in the sun. Sorry for all of you in winter weather at the moment! Company comes later this week as Miah's mom, Michelle, and Jaime come to join us here.

Love and sunshine to all,
TeamWander

Chiang Mai (part sorng)

2008-11-16T20:26:00.000-08:00

Wow! What a couple of days! Chiang Mai is reputed to be one of those places that backpackers/travelers will find themselves staying in for longer than they expected. We were no exception at all to this rule. Chiang Mai is fantastic. Slightly bigger than we expected, but we would say Raleigh-ish in it's healthy cross between availability of everything you could ask for and lack of big-city feel.

We spent a few more days here and got ourselves in to some great adventures along the way.

First, we decided to splurge on a cooking class (liza, you would have loved it!!). It was an all day affair, and began with us being hustled in to the back of a pickup truck with 8 other sleepy looking westerners. Once everyone was gathered up from their various guesthouses we headed off to the market. Our guide gave us a full lesson on all the various ingredients we'd be using for the day (there are 4 types of basil used in cooking, did you know that?) and then set us free to explore the market on our own for a few minutes while he did the day's shopping. A bag of dried kiwi, rolls of huge sausage and one dead rat later, it was time to go.

Back at the kitchen, we started cooking like crazy and didn't stop (except to get tipsy) until late afternoon. It was incredible to learn to cook all the dishes that we've been eating on our trip. We cooked and ate (I know we'll forget something): red curry, green curry, pad thai, coconut soup, HOT and sour soup (the guide was out to get miah on this one), tiger's tear chicken salad, holy basil stir fry, spicy glass noodle salad, spring rolls, sticky rice and baby coconut dessert and coconut milk with bananas. yummmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

To be honest, it's pretty hard not to make friends with the folks working around you in something like this - you're working side by side all day together, laughing at each others mistakes, and lending a hand here and there. So we got to know a few of the people in our cooking class, and decided to try to meet at the big loi kratong festival that was happening in chiang mai. [enter sinister theme music]. Little did we know the grave danger we put everyone in with that innocent gesture.

Loi Kratong is sort of like a war zone. with out the 'sort of'. Think of the fourth of july with about 25 times more adolescence fueling everyone's actions and no real control as to the 'variety' of fireworks sold and combusted. The advertisements for the festival show smiling people sending their Kratong (a little boat with flowers and your hopes for the year) down river, but the reality of the situation was more like Michelle and Leslie running to the riverside, trying not to lose a shoe in the mud to drop their boat as quickly as they could. All this to avoid the four year old that was throwing lit fire-works at their feet (much to his glee). It seemed as if the entire city had congregated on the riverside and everyone was trying to send off as many fireworks as possible in any direction they could find space. Part of their amusement must be watching the Westerners covering their heads and practically running for their lives. There were thousands of meter in diameter hot-air balloons that everyone was launching in to the sky that were so beautiful and filled the evening with what looked like a new set of stars... those that weren't shot down by bottle rockets. Michelle put it best, Loi Kratong is a PTSD nightmare. To anyone in our cooking class out there that tried to find us at the bridge and lost a limb in doing so, we're deeply sorry.

Don't get us wrong, though, death-defying excitement aside, Chiang Mai was a wonderful place, and we had a blast while we were there.

Hope everyone's well,
TeamWander

Leaving the Lonely Planet Behind

2008-11-11T03:07:00.000-08:00

Travelling through Asia we have found that people tend to regard the Lonely Planet book as the end all and be all of travel guides. We're not sure if the dependence is stronger due to the extreme communication difficulties, but it was time for us to break away and see what happened.

Before we begin this story though, a little moment of thanks to Michelle Marlowe, our island of NC here in thailand. We met up with her in Chiang Mai (she's living there, working two jobs as a social worker - very interesting, but you'll have to convince her to start a blog for all the details). She was nice enough to be our tour guide for a couple of days and let us leave our big bags at her place (the detail that made the following adventure at all possible). Thanks michelle!

So, we left 90% of our "stuff" at madame marlowe's and hopped on a bus headed north out of chiang mai to a tiny town called chiang dao. The claim to fame of this town is that it's settled at the base of the tallest limestone mountain in Thailand (2700 or so meters) and home to an extensive network of caves that have been somewhat of a Buddhist gathering/worshipping ground for the past 300-500 years.

We were headed north on the bus, pretty much unable to tell where we were at all, and thankfully the driver took pity on us and stopped the bus to kick us off in Chiang Dao. Thus we started our search for a place to stay for the night. easier said than done. 6 km of walking out of town and back in later, we finally found a place; a cute bungalow with a couple of friendly dogs to greet us. And finally, Miah convinced Leslie that renting some powered transportation might be in order (enter the 125 cc mega-scooter!). We spent the next couple of days tooling around the Chiang Dao area (heading to the caves, bathing in a sulfuric hot spring, and feeding bananas to elephants) in pure style. It was the best 12 dollars ever spent (in miah's opinion, at least).

Hope everything's going well back home, Ryan, don't work too hard in St. Jo,
TeamWander

Yet another cross country adventure

2008-11-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

Our last stop in Laos was Luang Prabang, a beautiful city along the Mekong River. More than anything, we used this city as a epicurian adventure. We started out upscale to celebrate our one month anniversary, including a great wine bar with big beanbag chairs and comfy couches. Every other day, we decided to eat as cheaply as possible and find foods that we'd never tried before. This included a great vegetarian buffett where for 50cents we filled a plate with pickled cabbage noodle dishes, green papaya salad, mixed veggies, fruits, and the standard fried rice. We also tried this chewy dough that was grilled on a stick that somehow managed to taste like seafood. More importantly, we ate these yummy deserts: tiny pancakes that tasted like a breaded tapioca pudding, gooey green balls that were covered in coconut (suprisingly delicious), fried bananas, carmelized sweet rice with pineapple/banana, etc. Almost everything we tried was really good, but our luck ran out when we tried escaping from an afternoon rainshower into this tiny restaurant that was attached to a motorcycle repair shop (maybe this should have been clue number one). No one spoke English so we pantomimed until the waiter understood that we would like to eat. He came out with two steaming bowls of noodle soup that on first glance looked to be delicous. Turns out, it was random meat bits including intenstine and some unidentifiable, blueish organ and fish balls in a bland broth. We ate what we could and considered ourselves lucky for all the other great dishes we have stumbled upon.

Our plan was to fly out of Luang Prabang at 4pm Friday to meet a friend in Chiang Mai, Thailand and had bought tickets a week before. However, when we arrived at the airport at 1:30pm, a very distressed employee told us the flight had taken off 30 minutes ago. Apparently we bought tickets to a flight that didn't exist, even though it was on the airline's website and the travel agent had booked it. Ooops! We were disappointed to mess up our fun weekend plans with Michelle, but headed back to town to spend another night. The next day we got to the airport at 11am so we'd be there plenty early. However, our 1pm departure time came and went with no word from the airline. Eventually they came around with a little lunchbox and told us the flight would leave at 3pm. Once again 3pm came and went. The next estimate was 5:30pm, but since the maintenance crews were still straddling the top of the plane, this didn't look hopeful either. We were going crazy in this little two-room airport, so we headed back outside and found a tiny dirt road to follow. We were first met by a group of bison, and then found a little village behind the airport. Apparently this was not a place that "falang" (foreigners) ever made it to because the first little girl we saw started pointing and screaming. We walked through and found a restaurant to drink a beer at before returning to the airport. Our plane finally left at 7:30pm and we made it to Michelle's house, only 30 hours later than expected. Still quicker than our alternative transportation, which was a 2 day boat trip up the river, but needless to say we're extremely happy to be back in Thailand.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!
Team Wander

A new business model

2008-11-05T01:10:00.000-08:00

So we have a plan, we all need a find a river somewhere in the southeastern US (somewhere that it gets hot enough that tubing down the river is a good plan) and we all need to construct float-by river side bars with 40 ft tall swings, slides and zip lines in to the river water. If we add enough mud, loud music and falangs (thai/laotian for westerners) you'll have pretty much exactly what we got to experience in our latest town. Believe me, it was awesome. If we build it, they will come.

Vang Vieng is a sort of backpackers hedonist mecca that has sprung up in northern Loas (a country that brings in much more backpackers and upscale travelers than one would expect). It is something that can't really be adequately described, but is somehow simultaneously a wonderful and terrible place to be.

Imagine a small college town. Very small. With a big, easy college. Now leave all the students, and subtract all the classes, textbooks and professors leaving cheap beer in place to fill the void. Plop this town down in the middle of Laos and you have Vang Vieng. It was outrageous. We couldn't stay too long, for fear of never leaving, but the time we had there was incredible. We spent a day hiking, climbing and tubing through a handful of caves, walking through some amazing traditional villages an, of course, tubing down the river.

Though we didn't have as much time to invest in to the last activity as we would have liked (thanks to our icky tour guide) it definitely took the cake as the most memorable. We were hauled off of our tubes, and in to one of the river-side bars by a 18 year-old crossdressing laotian guy, where we met up with a throng of bathing-suit clad backpackers, all in various stages of drunkeness. Like we said above, this bar had all sorts of exciting swings and slides you could play on (between shots of lao-lao whisky, of course). It was incredible, we only wish this computer had a way to let us upload a few of the pictures (dad, thanks again for the loaner waterproof camera!).

Alas, all good things had to come to an end and our time in Vang Vieng was capped off with a 7 hour minibus (basically a full-size van) ride north to Luang Prabang. The ride was breathtaking, up and down a steep, switchback laced mountain with rural rice villages scattered the whole way through. we'll definitely have a picture to post for this one.

Hope everybody is doing great,
TeamWander

Yay Obama!

Woooooooohooooooooooooo!

2008-11-05T01:05:00.000-08:00

First things first..... OBAMA WON!!!!!!!!! Yay! We spent our morning in a bar in Luang Prabong, Laos cheering with people from around the world as more and more states popped up as blue on the map. Super bonus points to all of you who voted. It's great to see North Carolina turning blue as well. The bar owner handed everyone free champagne as Obama was announced president. We have constantly been asked about the election over here...it's really interesting how involved the world is in our political system and is yet another wake up call for us to know more about the rest of the world.

Anyway, enough political stuff, time to catch up on what's been happening. So our last stop in Thailand was a border town called Nong Khai. We took a night train there from the jungle and arrived at six in the morning. We got a tuk-tuk to a hostel that we immediately fell in love with. If we weren't heading to Costa Rica, we would have taken them up on a job offer and stayed for a few months.

We rented bikes and toured around the town and surrounding countryside. There was an amazing sculpture garden nearby that had tremendous statues and depiction of the wheel of life that was really interesting (photos to follow since we can't upload them here). We also had our second taste at Thai massages (they are only $4 an hour here, but it feels like such a splurge based on how much we spend on a daily basis), which leave you feeling like jello for the next couple hours.

Our favorite part of Nong Khai however, was a place called the ISARA learning center. We spent one evening teaching English to people from elementary school age up to adults and it was an incredible experience. Much more difficult than expected, especially with the young kids who only repeat what you say. It is so hard to convey that you are asking a question and trying to get them to respond with a different statement. It ended with all of us singing head, shoulders, knees, and toes though, which was adorable. The organization ISARA was founded by a guy who used to work for Microsoft and moved to Thailand five years ago or so and started this group. They are funded by use of their website (www.isara.org) so all you have to do to help out is to make this your homepage. The page has a google search bar and links to gmail, hotmail, facebook, etc. right up top, so it is only one click to get to anything else you need. Such an easy (and free!) way to help and then these students get free English lessons, free computer lessons, health/safety information (i.e. helmets to wear when riding a motorcycle since that is the main form of transportation here), etc. We wish we could have helped out more at the learning center but we had to head on to Laos. You can also check out the group ISARA on Facebook to learn more information. New post for a new country.....

Yay for you if you voted,
TeamWander

Snakes and Leeches and Scorpions, Oh my!

2008-10-30T04:07:00.000-07:00

What a day! We spent 12 hours on a jungle trek in Khao Yai national forest. Reading through our guidebooks, they "strongly suggest" taking a guided tour through Khao Yai as tourists guiding themselves have a tendency of getting lost in the 800 square mile forest and needing to be rescued. After our tour, we have to agree that this is sound advice.

The trek itself was amazing though. We saw fields of monkeys by the side of the road, a few hornbill birds (as neat as birds could be, though they were still birds), and barking deer.

The forest had its host of dangers though. During the course of the day, we had to dodge a zillion leeches (really, a zillion, no exaggeration), a white-lipped pit viper, a pissed-off burmese python (our guide ended up picking this guy up by his head and tossing him away from the trail), a giant spider, and the piece-de-resistance, an 8 inch scorpion that somehow (thanks to our clever guide) ended up on Miah's shoulder.

We can't really do the experience justice in any way other than the photos, so we've posted a few here and there are some up on flickr as well. However, if you ever make it to central thailand, we can recommend a tour guide.

Hugs!

TeamWander

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/31348233@N05/)

Geez, 5 days...

2008-10-30T03:44:00.001-07:00

We're sorry, Thailand is just amazing, and we haven't been as diligent about blogging duties. So we'll try to post two or three tonight to get everyone back up to speed.

First things first, after we got to the end of our harrying travel adventure in to thailand, we somehow stumbled on one of the most fantastic places that we have seen so far on this trip: Ayutthaya, Thailand. It's the former capitol of thailand and super rich with cultural history (lots and lots and lots of temples). It is a manufactured island of maybe 8 sq miles that sits at the confluence of 3 rivers. Everywhere you turn there are ruins of ancient temples and fortresses as well as all of the modern day ones that have been built alongside. One of our favorite places had a tree that had grown around the head of an old Buddha statue. We were able to climb down to the crypt and up to the top of these ancient structures. One of the modern temples had a tremendous Buddha (6+ stories tall) seated inside. He filled most of the main sanctuary of the temple and it was evident that the room had been built around him.

This was our first foray in to local thai food. and it's incredible. with few exceptions, everything we have eaten has been fantastic, and cheeeeeeeeeeap. One of the food pics we actually remembered to take before devouring our meal was from our favorite restaurant so far on the trip... Liza this one's for you:

A funny story about this meal is that for the most part, the portion sizes in Southeast Asia have been much smaller than everyone in the states is used to. It's kindof refreshing actually to leave a meal and not be completely stuffed. However for this meal, everything looked so good and we were so very hungry that we decided to order three dishes. Coincidentally, this is the one restaurant we've been to where the portion sizing rule didn't apply. Needless to say, we ended up with mountains of food on our table and "had" to force our way through every bit of it. Rough life.

We've posted a bunch of the pics related to this post that can't fit in the blog on our flickr site.

Hope everyone is great!
TeamWander

And We've Made It To Thailand (easier said than done)

2008-10-25T02:54:00.000-07:00

We commented back to you guys to answer some of the questions we got from the last post (keep them coming, it's awesome).

But to the story... Yesterday we managed to crawl out of bed super early to try to catch the bus from Kuantan to Kuala Lumpur. Little did we know that it was the Sultan's birthday, which is apparently quite a big deal, and a four-day weekend for everyone. So they were all at the bus station trying to head somewhere else, there was not a single bus seat to KL (five hours away), and we had a flight to catch that afternoon.

As is customary, we were mobbed by the taxi drivers as we left the station and when they asked if we wanted a taxi and we responded, "yes, across the country," they didn't look at us like we were crazy. They just said, "I Know a guy..." and proceeded to drive us to the taxi driver hangout and invited us to join them for breakfast. (By the way, the Malaysians make the most incredible coffee we've ever tasted). Their "guy" then drove us on windy back roads through the jungle (which has sadly now been mostly turned into palm tree plantations) at 90+mph. Needless to say, we made the trip in 3.5 hours and were plenty early for the flight.

We thought that might be the end of the adventure, but of course not. Apparently they don't book seats on AirAsia flights so there was just a mob of people, in what used to be a cargo terminal, trying to fight to be first in line so they can sit where they want in an extremely hot plane. We were definitely ill-equipped for the struggle.

Anyway, upon reaching Bangkok, we somehow managed to get a bus across town (which also takes a couple hours since the traffic rivals NYC at rush hour), catch a train from a station where we could not understand any signs or anyone, and make it to the town of Ayutthaya where we are staying. The best part of the trip was the last five minutes where we got to ride in a tuk-tuk to the hostel, which is a little three- wheeled truck that you climbed in the back of...looking a lot like a cross between a tricycle and an open-topped VW van. But we're here and so excited!!

The Camera Works Underwater (Leslie's new do)

2008-10-21T22:31:00.000-07:00

Yay! The camera that my dad loaned us for the trip is actually waterproof. At first, we couldn't believe that it was true. But apparently, it is (it still turns on at least). This is a cool, cool thing. Team wander gives two thumbs up for things that work underwater, especially since that's where we spent most of this past week.

This is the pool at the resort, a comfy swimming temperature. We don't however have any pictures of us in the ocean because we're pretty sure the ocean water is boiling. It's a solid 85-90 degrees in the ocean. It's the craziest thing ever, but needless to say, when it's 100 degrees outside of the ocean and 90 inside the ocean, the ocean doesn't turn out to be all that refreshing.

The resort is set about 15km from the nearest town, but the restaurants inside are very boring (and expensive), so each night we've been trekking down the road to find these tiny restaurants whose menus (and owners) we cannot understand at all. So far, this plan has not failed us at all, although we have ended up with some crazy dishes (we'll start taking pictures for you Liza, that's a great idea.) One icy dessert that's worth noting is called cendol and at first glance looks like a regular snow cone, but as you start getting into it, you find black beans and strange green noodles. Delicious though!

We braved the bus this morning just so we could get to the internet cafe and write a message to everyone. The comments waiting for us made us sooooooo happy. Somehow we got lucky and only had to wait half an hour, apparently they only come by 2 or 3 times a day. The driver just slows down and as you are climbing in, he starts going again. It was so full we were standing on the steps driving down the road.

Aaaaand, for those of you asking about the new travel 'do, here you go....

We hope everybody has a great next couple of days, we miss you all!!

Love,
TeamWander

Post Flood

2008-10-18T01:38:00.000-07:00

Finally a chance to write a little bit when we're not fighting back sleep or sketchy, slow computer labs. We spent one more day in Kuala Lumpur, more than enough time in such a big city for us. We hit the proper tourist center of the city and went up in the Petronas Towers for a birds-eye view of the city, 170m or so up in the tallest set of double towers in the world, complete with an 8minute glorification of the oil company who built them. Then we headed to an amazing market and just got lost in rows and rows of fruits, veggies, and whole animals (think splayed chicken legs and bulging fish eyes). Eat your heart out Anthony Bourdain. We ended up with some unknown curry food for lunch that was excellent.
Yesterday morning we made a cross country trek to Kuantan on the east coast. Here we're having our "proper honeymoon" aka, not having to straddle a toilet in order to take a shower. We're staying at a nice resort on the beach (thanks Mom!) and plan on having a very relaxing week. Might be another week (and on to a new country) before you hear from us again. Jumpa lagi!

Flooding in Kuala Lumpur

2008-10-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

We made it to KL (yay!). It's a crazy melting-pot of a city and though we've only really seen about 6 hours of what it has to offer we've been lost at least once in each of those six hours.

It's late and we've been chugging away at a computer for 1.5 hours trying to tickets up to thailand booked, so we won't be too verbose here, but here are a few of the highlights...

We spent a few wonderful days hanging out in Chinatown in Melaka, Malaysia, eating all kinds of crazy food and hanging out in life-sized pirate ship replica museums (pictures to come in the next picture post). It was hot there. Verrrry hot, and sweaty. And our hostel, though run by the most gregarious of people (we'll call him Howard, for the sake of brevity) we have met here to date, did not have any A/C. So we had three sweaty days of awesomeness. From the first moment we were there, he insisted that we (along with every other hostel guest he ran across) join him for a food adventure that evening. Picture seven westerners (and howard) having fondue... except the fondue is actually a boiling pot of satay sauce, and the items put in the satay sauce are gathered from a giant buffet full of skewered (and sometimes unidentifiable)goodies, including, but not limited to the biggest shrimp we have ever seen. Again awesome, and amazing that we escaped food-poisoning free.

On our first day in KL we met up with the Rain. I thought I had seen rain before, down in florida, on a muggy summer night. But compared to this, that floridian rain was a sprinkle. We were standing at a corner, waiting for a break in cars to cross a street (dry, at this point). We made it half-way across the street and stopped in the median to wait for a break in the cars coming the other direction (a mild sprinkle at this point). By the time we got to the far side of the road, we were both soaked to the bone... completely. Somehow in the amount of time that it took us to wait for a break in the cars and cross the road, the bladder of heaven opened up and we were caught in the deluge. It was ridiculous.

Last note, before we turn in for the night (and we apologize for the lack of editing and coherence in this post, we're sleepy). Today we went to a mall. It was ten stories tall and had a theme park included inside. Within the theme park was a roller coaster that stretched over at least 5 of the interior stories and did a loop-de-loop. Mall of America, look out.

Hugs,
Team Wander

PS. Miah convinced Leslie to chop all her hair off. He has a hot wife.

Flickr

2008-10-13T03:59:00.000-07:00

We started a flickr site to satiate your curiosity. The entry for today is a pictures only entry, mostly because it's 80 zillion degrees and we're sweaty and lazy. A lot of them are from the ones my dad took at the wedding. Dad, hopefully I took out the ones you weren't as proud of. Everybody, have fun!! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/31348233@N05/)

No 2

2008-10-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

We're on our last day in Singapore. We think it might be too overwhelming to try and pack all the stories from the past few days in to a single blog entry, so instead we're going to choose a select few.

... Meant to be ...
We were about 22 hours in to our 24 hour journey to Singapore (hooray for Ambien), curled in to tight little balls of sleepiness and restless energy on the back of the plane. All of the sudden the stewardess materialized right in front of the two of us with a tray carrying two glasses of champagne, two pieces of cheesecake, and a card saying happy wedding day. Awesome. We don't even like champagne, but it was still uber cool. When we asked how she knew she leaned in and replied, "I know everything about you." After that we thought it best to quit with the questions and just enjoy the champagne and goodies.

... Lunch ...
Our first meal in signapore, we set off, sweaty already (90 degrees-ish and as humid as possible) in to little india. Little did we know we were about to embark on an epicurian adventure of fantastic proportions. After letting a few restaurants fall to the wayside for various reasons, we found a place in a small, unidentifiable, lunch spot. We sat down, a little confused as to what we'd need to do to get food and then all of the sudden it appeared. Mounds of rice, curried veggies, chicken, lamb, all served to us sans utensils (right hand only, zeke) on a giant palm leaf. Also awesome. The food was incredible, and just kept on coming. The total, with drinks, was a pittance for what we got. Best of all, neither of us got food poisoning.

... Aminals, so many aminals ...
Yesterday, we decided to brave the singaporean public transport system and make our way up to the Zoo. Best decision ever, until the thunderstorm. And even with that, it was only relegated to possibly the second or third best decision ever. We have mixed feelings about zoos, kindof like pancakes. Here's why: when you receive the promise of pancakes, you're absolutely stoked. Ready for the stack to come your way. The first bite is like heaven. By the time you get halfway through the triple-stack of flapjack goodness, you've realized that maybe a plate full of pancakes has it's downsides as well. The downsides of pancakes being that they just get boring; the downside of zoos being that sometimes it's pretty easy to feel bad for the animals. Here's where the true awesomeness of the Singapore Zoo comes in. These were the happiest zoo animals I have ever seen. They had tons of room and we're all energetic and entertained. We watched a young elephant spend 30 minutes playing with a giant bouncy ball and a log the size of leslie. They also had one hell of a collection at the zoo. Monster snakes, asian otters, the biggest tortoise we've ever seen, and three white tigers (funny note about this one: 1 in 10,000 tigers is a white tiger. there are 7,000 tigers in the world. we were looking at 3 white tigers yesterday, can anybody help with that one?). At any rate it was killer. ... Only downside is that I forgot the cable connecting my camera to the computer, so until we can find a sophisticated internet cafe (with a card-reader for xD cards) your imagination will have to suffice.

We hope everybody is doing great, we miss you all!

The most amazing day ever

2008-10-07T13:40:00.001-07:00

Sounds trite, doesn't it? But it's not an exaggeration, we promise you. Every single person, every vendor, every friend, every family member involved in last weekend deserves the largest possible thank you we could muster. The presents all went the wrong way. From setup of the barn in the morning, to the biggest cry-fest we've ever been a part of, last saturday was the most memorable experience of our lives. We want to send you all a million thank yous, followed by a million invitations to whatever country we might be in at the time you want to visit.

There's no rest for the weary though, so true to TeamWander form we are on our way. The flight to Singapore leaves in about 18 hours, and for the most part (complete lie) we're packed. We're going to do our very best to update this blog, but I'm going to tell you kiddies how you can get us updating it more often than not.... ready for it? comment back. make fun of us. tell us (and everybody else) about your most recent booboo. anything. We promise that we'll miss you guys more than you could miss us and we want to hear from you too!

With love, may the road rise to meet you,
Team Wander

Coming soon

2008-08-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

Team Wander blog entries coming soon. We're still holding tryouts for the team, but we should have the line-up set by early October.