Our 5 Star Break

Our friends from Calgary, Michael and Sue Kallis, had extended us an invitation to visit them at their new villa on the west coast of Costa Rica near a small town called Brasilito. We had been lookng forward to seeing them and to have a break from our travelling and touring, so it was with great pleasure that we saw their Toyota SUV pull into the driveway of the Rancho Corubande around 10 Tuesday morning.

After hugs all round, we were introduced to a young fellow they had brought with them. Fabian is a very sweet 16 year old member of a single parent family who the Kallises have more or less adopted. Sue and Michael are very generous people and they have extended their help and kindness to Fabian and his mother Roxanne, who live in a dirt floored house in Brasilito. Roxanne works as a housekeeper at the villa, and Fabian works around the grounds, keeping property and the their two cars clean and tidy. They are paid a good wage by Michael and Sue, but they have also set conditions on Fabians employment designed to promote a healthy future for the lad. Fabian quit school in grade seven after a fight with his mother and ran away to work on a fishing boat for two years. Michael and Sue have told him they will employ him part time as long as he agrees to go back to school and get an education. Michael is also teaching him about responsibility in areas such as showing up on time and keeping books, in hopes that Fabian will one day be able to develop into a successful businesman. On this particular morning they had brought Fabian along to visit a shopping mall in Liberia to equip him for school which was starting the following Monday. So we headed into town and spent an hour or so buying clothes, a backpack and sundry other stuff for the young man. Fabian spoke English reasonably well so we got to know him a little over the next few days. We will be interested in hearing about how he progresses over the next ffew years as Michael and Sue will spending their winters here in Costa Rica from now on.

We arrived at their villa an hour or so later and were bowled over by the place. Their villa was completed in December 2006 and they have been living here since the beginning of January. It is situated in the Reserva Conchal, a huge property in the hills leading down to a beautiful bay and white beach. The area has been under development for a few years now, but only a small per centage of the hundreds of acres of land have yet been developed and plans called for many years of future development. There is a championship golf course already completed and a huge beach club is under construction.

Michael and Sue have one of 6 large villas built on a hill with an awesome view down to the Pacific and some small islands off shore...the Catalinas. Their large home is absolutely gorgeous, and is furnished with beautiful furniture and artwork from Costa Rica. They have a small infinity pool that sits at the back along with a sweeping patio and barbeque area overlooking the sea. The guest bedroom we stayed in was huge and luxuriously appointed. Better than any five star hotel we have been to. Needless to say, we were more than delighted to be upgrading to this wonderful villa and to be able to share a few days with Michael and Sue.

Later that afternoon we took a drive with Sue while Michael attended to some business. He is still stuggling to get everything completed with the villa and to agree final costs for everything so had to meet with some people that afternoon. He told that the building of his villa has generally gone well, though he has been frustrated on many occasions by the ¨manana¨attitude and questionable cost accounting from contractors and Reserva Conchal executives. But, most there are only a few things left to straightened out and they can say they are truly finished construction.

Anyway, Sue took us on a tour to Tamarindo, a very touristy town which is apparently party central for the many younger folks staying in the many hotels there. The town is set on a huge beach and is full of restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops, and has an air of some of the beach towns we had experienced in SE Asia many years ago. We walked along the beach in the hot afternoon sun ... the thermometer in the car displaying the outside temperature read 38 degrees...and collected a few handfuls of shells from the plentiful supply scattered everywhere.

That evening Michael bar-b-que´d some fresh tuna that Sue had bought from their fish supplier earlier in the day. That is one thing we were very envious of...their access to fresh and very cheap seafood....something I am sure they will miss when they return to Calgary in early April. It was absolutely delicious and the left overs were used in a fabulous pasta sauce the next night. We certainly ate like kings for the time we were there.

Michael and Sue are early risers...generally around 6 am or even earlier for Michael... and they were already out for their walk and workouts when we went out for a stroll the next morning about 7. The day was clear and already hot, so it was not long before we were wanting o return to the airconditioned comfort of the villa. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon pottering around the villa and sitting by the pool. Then around 2, Michael, Sue and I headed over to the golf club to play eighteen holes while Sue worked on the blog. We had a very enjoyable round, Michael and Sue playing their usual excellent golf...I think Michael shot 82 while Sue had a very respectable 96. For my part...I really enjoyed swinging a club again which I managed to do more times than I care to admit. But we had a great afternoon and surprisingly to me, the nearly 40 degree heat did not bother us too much.

We had another great fish and salad dinner with wine. The wine was a real treat each evening at the Kallis villa as we had not had a decent vino in nearly 2 months. And then that evening, we settled down in front of the tv to watch an episode of Gray´s Anatomy which we did every evening. Sue and Michael have been getting dvd´s of tv series and watching one each night before bed...a great idea. But as usual we were ready for bed by 9:30...Robb already having snoozed through half of the show!

The next morning we pottered around having a leisurely breakfast and blogging, and then later in the afternoon we drove to a lovely secluded beach some miles away. The waves were very strong but we splashed around for a while and then sat watching the beautiful bay. About 6 we watched in wonder as the sun descended producing beautiful pastel organges, blues and pinks over the sea. With beers and spritzers in hand we can truly say it doesn´t get much better than this!

One of the interesting things about this area of Guanacaste was the number of brush fires burning. Michael said there were hundreds of them and no one does anthing about them and they are allowed to burn. This creates quite a haze and smell of smoke in many areas, but doesn´t seem to be a hazard to towns in the area for some reason. One such fire was burning just by the road as we left the beach and as we passed a burning tree, it suddenly broke in half at its burned-through base. Luckily it just plopped vertically to the ground and must have been help upright by its branches intermingled with other trees. It certainly gave us all an instant shot of adreniline and Michael instinctively floored the gas pedal and the Toyota jumped forward out of harm´s way.

Saturday morning we drove to a near-by town to visit a pottery where Michael and Sue had purchased some beautiful earthenware pots and vases to decorate the villa. The pottery is a small family business, the mother seemingly the "jefe" of the operation. Sue and Michael picked up a new vase to replace one that had deteriorated unexpectedly, while we pottered around...excuse the pun! After our pottery trip we drove to Santa Clara to a vegetable market. We and Sue toured the market looking for the best fruits and veggies while Michael had a siesta in the car. The fruits and veggies we had here, and throughout our travels for that matter, were so much better than we get in Canada. They are full of flavour and of course are often dirt cheap. And we topped off our morning excursion with a "almuerzo tipico" at a local eatery they had been to previously...good fare indeed.

We took M&S out to dinner in Tamarindo that evening to thank them for their hospitality...a very nice restaurant called The Dragonfly. Although we were all pretty full following our main courses, we split two desserts, a chocolate brownie and something called pastel de tres leches...three milks. The brownie was scrumptious and we had to stop ourselves ordering another! Before dinner that evening we had driven up some steep hills behind the town where some developers had built paved roads in anticipation of housing developments. Some of them had incredible views over the ocean and surrounding hills. When Robb commented that some of these lots would probably fetch half a million, Michael said that one mil was more likely. The super rich only need apply!!

All good things must end and Sunday morning S&M drove us to the bus stop in Brasilito for our bus to San Jose. Michael had tried to convince us to take the $80 flight to San Jose, but we had opted for the $6 bus ride, trying to keep our continually-challenged budget in some semblance of order. We wondered about the wisdom of this as the bus drove around the immediate area for 90 minutes, even backtracking at times, picking up people at stops everywhere, but after that, it picked up speed and drove more-or-less directly to San Jose, arriving around 2:30. From the coast, we drove through dry, sun-baked pasture lands and only as we approached the Nicoya Penninsula, where we had to cross a long suspension bridge, did the terrain turn to the lush green we had experienced in most of Costa Rica.

Back in San Jose, we again checked into the Don Carlos and were warmly welcomed back by Sira or as she pronounced it - Sida. The Costa Ricans (aka as "ticos") seem to pronounce many of the r´s in the midst of a word as a d...thus their favorite express...pura vida... is pronounced puda beeda. Anway we had a lovely room at the Don Carlos, our best yet, and once again found the San Jose´s cool temperatures to be a welcome relief from the heat of the coast.

We didn´t fly out till Monday afternoon, so the next morning we managed to fit in some t-shirt shopping at the main market and a visit to the Museo de Oro Precolumbino to see some wonderful gold pieces that the Spaniards must have missed plundering! And then we hopped a cab out to the airport and boarded our flight to Lima, ending our nearly three weeks in CR. We had had a great time, seem some great sights, spent time with friends and generally thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We were wondering if things could get much better and if Peru would live up to expectations. Well we were about to find out as we sipped on a complementary rum and coke aboard Lasca airlines on route to the southern hemisphere.