Christmas with our Tico family

So we were invited to Christmas with our newly adopted family!
We took a digger for their son & to see how the house is coming along. It looks amazing, in such a short time. We ate traditional crimbo food; hot tamales & cafe negro!!!

Christmas morning in Costa Rica

The house today!

How much it has come on. It will be finished in two weeks, ready to move in. Fantastic news!

My gorgeous husband splashing about

The view from our terrace of the valley

Hammock or rockers????

Eejit

If proof were needed..

Ok, you may not have heard of the famous rice eating mozzies of costs rica. Lorraine has, only Lorraine has in fact. Fortunately, when she left the dinner table for a moment, she implemented her cunning plan to thwart their evil, vegetarian intentions. She chucked her napkin on her dinner. Yeah, that'll do it.....

The summit of Turrialba Volcano

David and I at the summit

You have to wear hard hats to protect your head from falling rocks and masks to protect from the poisonous gases and vapours pumping out. Glamorous or what!!!

The very amazing Turrialba volcano

It was last active in January 2010, when the residents were forced to leave forever & move to different towns, further away for safety

Life is a beach... and a beer

Tucan or toucan?

Get off my iPhone and leave me in peace...

I'm calling Chris!!

Yeah, whatever

apparently, anybody else Lorraine's ever dated would be happy, sitting beside the pool. Well. Fine. Maybe she should have considered that earlier. Fact is, I'm bored.

Lorraine has suddenly turned into Margo from "The Good Life"! Good job I married Helen....

David contemplating his next move!

Today we are at the monkey rescue centre

Chiquito is a baby howler monkey - rescued from a family who thought he'd make a great pet. One costa rican girl had a baby howler as a pet & took it into school & charged her mates for photos with it! Bazaarly it wasn't the school who reported it!

We've looked after the rescue sloths, seen red eyed frogs, snakes and a baby deer who's mother was killed after her birth & is now not street wise enough to go in to the wild. 'Chai' will now live out her days at the rescue centre. She loves licking your hand, but of course I jammed my hand right in there & she bit me (which David thought predictable where I'm concerned!!). Harsh; but fair!!

Our bungalow in the Caribbean...

They even left a bottle of champagne for us!! I'm on the virgin mojitos which are gorgeous! Davie's on cerveza Pilsen, or cerveza imperial, or cerveza sol, or cerveza... can you see the theme yet?!

We have the makings of a house!

Despite the two days of rain, the walls are going up...

They do not have ginger beer...

but at least they have cafe latte (or cafe late?!)

The whole gang!

Madre y Bambino

The family who will move in

Look how much we have achieved today!

Finito for today...

We're all whacked & just waiting for our bus back to town. Davies cerveza awaits!

Then the cement...

which is being mixed from scratch on the ground. No mixers for these guys. They cost $5 per day to rent which they just cannot afford.

The trenches are dug; now for the re bars

Brekkie en route to the site... Costa Rican coffee!

The current house & more digging

The house the family currently have isn't great - no plumbing and full of dirt. This new place will be a godsend.

More work...

The cement just arrived. Although we're still digging foundations!

The children

These are the children of the family moving into the house when we finish

Our journey to work

The bus from San Ramon to San Pedro (via the coffee shop for cafe con leche & chilli buns!)