Getting around in Costa Rica

A long time ago, I wrote about the daily contrasts we run into here in Costa Rica. This past week, I took a short trip up to Guanacaste, the northwestern province of the country, to visit our new neighbors and give Justin, an intern that worked with us this past summer, a look at a very different part of this small country. As we drove through San Jose, everything was fine. Shortly after we began climbing into the mountains, my 4runner started knocking and pinging like the engine was going to fall apart. This really made me sick at my stomach for a couple of reasons…first, it’s not good to be stranded on the highway in CR, and second, I just had to have the entire engine rebuilt earlier this year and it shouldn’t be having problems. Anyway, we had a couple of choices… stop and find a mechanic to look at it (a dicey proposition at best) or keep driving and see what happens. I decided to keep driving and as bad as it was, it didn’t really get any worse.

We made it into Junquiallal around 6:30 that night and were welcomed by Mike and Joanna (who are moving into the house next door to us here in Puerto Viejo tomorrow). Turns out that Mike had to take his car to the mechanic on Monday, so I just planned to go along with him. That being decided, we ate and then hit the sack so that we could get up and surf the next morning. We ended up getting some decent surf and then just hung out with Mike and Joanna the rest of the day, visiting an Indian village with them in the afternoon so that they could buy some pottery for the shop they are opening here in Puerto. Monday was spent at the mechanic’s…from 8:00am until 5:00pm. Tuesday was the reward as we caught some of the best small waves I’ve had in months, not more than 200 yards from Mike’s house.

Now, about the contrasts that I mentioned earlier… First, we had a safe trip to Junquillal but experienced some car trouble (got that fixed), then, we scored some good waves but my car was broken into while we surfed and I lost about $350 worth of stuff. Great surf topped of with a robbery. Par for the course. Anyway, it was a great opportunity to get to know our future neighbors a little better. Turns out that they are Christians and had been praying that they would find a house near another Christian family, specifically one with little kids. They were really excited that God answered their prayers so specifically and we are looking forward to them moving in. They have already come to our house church once, when they were in town looking for a house, and are looking forward to coming on a regular basis. God is really doing some cool things and we appreciate your prayers as doors continue to open.