Grampies Go to Costa Rica

 We had planned to go through both photos describing the day and the ones of birds each day, sorting and identifying the birds and posting both ones new to us and generally great shots as well. But that blew up today, as we made over 500 photos today and then had to go to both dinner and a group meeting. It will take us days and not hours to make sense of today. So, we'll try to tell and illustrate the story of the journey. and post a few of the most interesting bird photos. The rest will come when we have hours and days back home! Meanwhile, we are hoping that lots of our cycling audience are actually following this expedition. Here in (rather lame) Blogspot you can still leave comments - just need to look for the thing to click. Let us know you are out there. We find this thing to be as tough or tougher than a cycle tour, and any moral support would be most welcome! We began at 5:45 a.m. at Bougainvillea. 5:45 is the magic time, because it's when the light arrives. The extens...

  We went for our new standard Gallo Pinto and fruit/granola breakfast, and found ourselves way early for meeting the driver who would take us out to our next stay, at Bougainvillea Hotel. We took a seat in the lobby of the Cultura Plaza to wait, and I like the rest of the world was looking at my phone. Dodie pointed out that I would be running it down, so I requested she entertain me with some scintillating conversational topic. Instead, we thought about sending me the 1/2 block to the corner convenience store, to buy some snacks for later in the day. It was a good idea, but convenience store snacks here are so costly that we rejected the notion. Instead I set off on a brief circle walk, and was pretty sure I would spot a bakery within the available time. The walk put me on 1st Avenue, by the Cultura Plaza, and immediately I was back in the active street environment that I rather liked in San Jose, and that Dodie had not been keen on. 1st Avenue Sure enough, within a square block ...