July 23, 2025
- Bre
- Jul 28
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 30
This morning, I got up and sat on the balcony overlooking the jungle. It was very peaceful and serene. I heard many different bird calls, all of which were new to me. I had made myself some matcha, but we do not have a kettle yet, and I do not have my whisk, so it was not well dissolved, but it did the trick.
I went to the edge of the balcony and saw a bird below that had caught a bug in their mouth. They were banging the bug on a rock. I guess that makes sense, because of the bug having an exoskeleton. Later on, I saw a very large lizard, that seemed like it might have been a small iguana.
Later I came inside and started opening some of the blinds. On one side, I saw a massive grasshopper! It was dark, and I had not seen a grasshopper that color before. I had thought it was a beetle at first. It was hanging on one of the sheer curtains, and I imagine it got there through an open window, as this house has many doors and windows you can open, but most do not have screen doors, which I think is quite bad design. Either way, it was there, and I wanted to get it out of the house.
I opened the sliding door and tried to tap the back of the curtain to get it to fly out. It did not, and only climbed higher. I then tried to get it to move using my sandwich spreader utensil that I brought, and that made it fall, which freaked me out a bit, but I did finally manage to coax it outside. Hopefully it did not get injured in the fall, but it did not seemed to be bothered, maybe a bit annoyed at me for disturbing its rest. I imagine there will be a lot of this type of thing, where I try to get bugs out of the house. Hopefully no scorpions or spiders come in, but we'll see.
Sophie and I decided to go on a walk around the community to explore. We visited the farm, the yoga building (they call it the yoga shala), and various other places. Sophie found a really cool area of large lava rocks that she really liked. After that we headed back home.
Later On:
So turns, out I found not one, but two spiders in the house. Luckily for them, I just captured them in a cup and took them outside. We already have a spider friend outside our window near the laundry, and we do not need any in the house, thank you very much.
The house had no food, but luckily, at dinner last night, Chaka and Alan said they’d take us down to the town to get groceries after their book club meeting around noon. We had a meeting scheduled at 3pm with the architect company that designed the house, but this luckily was enough time for us to go get groceries. We Drove down to town and ended up going to two stores.
The first was primarily a produce market, with some other foods, and it was called La Gran Bodega. It had a variety of good food, and it was a really nice store with the front open, so there was a lot of fresh air. We even saw cactuses! Sophie really wanted to get one, but she decided to get one next time instead.
There was a variety of fruits and vegetables, as well as a deli counter with meat and cheese. There was another section as well with thinks like rice and beans, which we picked up. These will be our staples here, which is good, since we both like rice and beans, and the national dish, Gallo Pinto, is made of rice and black beans. We also picked up some soy sauce and rice vinegar.
The next store we went to was Maxipali, which was apparently bought by Walmart. It definitely had that feel. We searched around for things, and we found some things, but not everything that we needed. For instance, we were looking for pots and pans, but they only had aluminum items. Unfortunately for us, these would not work on the induction stove that was installed in the house we are in, so we ended up buying an electric skillet. This was just as well, as the induction cooker was fairly small, and only had two burners, so ones we get pots and pans, this will still be useful in that it will provide an additional cooking surface. We were running short on time, so we headed back to the house.
Turns out, we were right on time, as the architects were pulling up just as we were. They actually helped take in our groceries, which was very kind of them. They also brought some house warming gifts for us, such as Costa Rica chocolate and coffee, a wax melter, and a wooden mortar and pestle. This was really kind of them! Unfortunately, we did not get a coffee maker, so I will have to wait for a bit to enjoy the coffee. Luckily, Sophie’s mom will be here on Saturday, and we plan to get stuff for the house that day.
The meeting with them went well, they did some inspections, and we asked about some of the things we had found. One big thing was that the hot water was not working (taking a cold shower that morning was not the most pleasant thing). After check things out for a bit, they realized that there was a power outage that had reset the breaker on the water heater, so once they reset it, it worked again. Yay for warm showers! They showed us where the reset button was, so we can now fix this issue if it ever happens again. It seems like it probably will, as we have already experienced two brown outs since we’ve been here. Once at the hotel in San Jose, and one here at the house. They never last for too long, but it seems that this is a fairly common occurrence.
So with the meeting concluded, I set out to make dinner in our new electric skillet. Luckily, this skillet is fairly wide and deep, so I was able to boil some rice. After that, I sautéed some garlic and onions, added some canned black beans and the rice, and made our own version of Gallo Pinto (though we do not yet have any Lizano sauce, we’ll get some next time). This was our first meal in our new home and it turned out really good!
I made a good amount of rice, so I put the leftovers in the fridge for later on in the week. We then cleaned up and relaxed for the rest of the evening. All in all it was a good day, and now we have food in the fridge.
I read this while eating my lunch of beans and rice. 😀