Costa Rice: Drake Bay

We spent the first half our vacation in Drake Bay, which is in the most remote area of Costa Rica, near Corcovado National Park.  This community got electricity in 2005 and our hotel was only accessible via beach.  We spent every morning doing an activity--zip-lining, scuba-diving, an amazing nature hike through the National Park--and every afternoon reading and swimming at a deserted shady beach about a mile walk from our hotel.  Walking there one day, we heard an incredibly loud howler monkey turf war.

First drink in Costa Rica!

Flight from San Jose to Drake Bay

 Runway at Drake Bay

Runway again

Our plane

Drake Bay airport.

 View from our room


View from our first lunch, after zip-lining.


Post-scuba-diving.  We survived, despite it being 6.5 years since our last dive!


Our nearly private shady beach.





Hermit crabs

The water bottles we filled approximately a trillion times while in Drake Bay (thanks Michael and Mona!).


The view of our hotel from the water.

Spider monkeys

Coati

 Locust

 Baird's tapir

 Peccary

Peccary + Will

 Tapir

 Black iguana

 The bar at our hotel

 Breakfast at our hotel

Hotel sign + list of activities.

4 years, 11 months/2 years, 8 months.

Grammy has arrived!  After 24 hours of intensive training, she and Granny Annie are taking over for a week while Will and I go to Costa Rica.  We are eternally in your debt!

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled, "Chicks, bears, and pinch pots":

Hello all,

Monday everyone rushed in to see the baby chicks that were still busy
growing safe inside their little egg shells. Not one peep. Or crack.

After reading The Three Little Bears we got busy making our too small,
too big, and just right pinch pots. We used red Mexican clay from the
Earth and compared it with our red mom-made play dough. The children
said it is harder and heavier. We used all our might and strengthened
our hand writing muscles to push and pinch the clay. Everyone shaped
and reshaped the clay until they were satisfied with their sculptures.

We read four versions of The Three Little Bears and the children
talked about the similarities and differences. They noticed many
differences in the illustrations: outfits, sizes of bears, and that
some bears looked more realistic while others looked pretend. We also
spent quite a bit of time during drop off one morning locating
fairytale characters in the new puzzle Lily donated to the classroom.
The children took turns retelling each story. It was delightful.

We made porridge with bananas and currants Wednesday morning and
reread The Three Bears while it cooled. It was not too hot, it was not
too cold.

We called farmer Eric and he is bringing us new and improved baby
chick eggs. Yes, we put all our eggs in one basket. Patience is a
virtue. We continued waiting for our eggs to hatch. They did not. We
will get new eggs Tuesday.

The children dictated a retelling of The Three Bears and acted it out.
We had three baby bears, two mama bears, three daddy bears, two
Goldilocks, and a few audience members. The story began gently but the
bears became overjoyed when they returned home and found the two
Goldilocks sleeping in their beds. The excitement was such that we
could not hear the rest of the narration. We decided we would act it
out again another day.

The big room has been hustling and bustling as usual. But quiet time
was the quietest week yet. Almost.

Friday we did three more takes acting out The Three Bears. Practice
does make perfect. Everyone wanted to do it again. And again. And add
costumes. Hmmm. We'll see.

Please oh please keep checking and combing for lice. One of the best
ways to combat them is repeating the comb through every week in case
more eggs hatched. No hatching chicks, hatching lice?

We also read several other bear books. One a bear is mistaken for a
man and another a boy is mistaken for a bear. Beary silly. And Little
Fur Family.

Have a nice long weekend,
Therese

4 years, 11 months/2 years, 8 months.

Luda and Connor go to visit Zoey most Tuesdays.  

4 years, 10 months/2 years, 8 months.

The Octonauts and Jake and the Neverland Pirates are surprisingly palatable when snuggling with these two.

4 years, 10 months/2 years, 8 months.

Sweet treats all around today!  Connor and Will had a special hot chocolate date while Graham and I went to Noah's birthday party, where he ate the frosting only of a Star Wars cake (unfortunately, he got the starry sky, not the star destroyer).

Connor skipped his nap today, which he is doing concerningly frequently.  Too soon, Connor, too soon!

4 years, 10 months/2 years, 8 months.

Connor and I walked from the library to the Third St. playground this morning, flushing out pigeons, robins, sparrows, and doves on the way.  We found lots of acorns and threw them to the squirrels, which Connor thought were flying between the trees.

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled, Paper, wood, chicks":

Dear parents,

We brought in our new year reading Leo Lionni's It's Mine! We also
read Out Of The Egg. Both books were reminders of how to be a good
friend by sharing. We talked about the eggs to be delivered by farmer
Eric.

After snacks we made our first of many sculptures. We rolled, folded,
and taped strips of paper to create 3 dimensional structures. The
children said the folded sample looked like: a zig zag, a lightening
bolt, stairs, a chair, a star, and a robot's mouth.

Farmer Eric dropped (not literally) off our baby chick eggs bright and
early Tuesday morning. He told us there are over 1,000 different kinds
of chickens. He cock-a-doodle-do-ed so loud it startled a few of us.
He showed us Knight and Gail, the proud parents of our chick eggs. We
saw Knight's sharp claws and fluffy neck fan he uses to scare the fox
away. Eric told us about the crazy chicken dance Knight does to
distract predators from eating the baby chicks. Coincidentally we had
done the funky chicken dance the day before so we knew what he was
talking about.

After reading Pigsty and The Three Little Pigs we compared the
illustrations of pigs to photographs of pigs on The Farm book. We
talked about the difference in real and pretend pigs. Everyone chose a
wooden base and we began building our sculptures using an awful lot of
wood glue. The children said they were building: an airplane, a
smokehouse, my home, something from Star Wars, and an army vehicle
with missiles. We added wood for two days and painted for one.

Next week we will sculpt with clay. Oh, and we did count our chicks
before they hatched. There are twelve.

See you at the open house,
Therese

4 years, 10 months/2 years, 8 months.

This isn't as weird as the time that he fell asleep on the bathroom tiles, but it doesn't look comfortable.