Our First Thanksgiving in Costa Rica!

We wish we had pictures of Thanksgiving but our camera was in the car!! DAH!!!  I was hoping some of the other people there would post on FB and I could snatch some photos but, so far, no luck.  We've filling in with the beautiful sunset that we came home to after eating way too much!

Yesterday, I wrote this page and realized, after I had spent lots of time working on the blog, I had run out of minutes on my internet data stick and couldn't "Save" or "Post"!!  So...here goes once again.  

When we arrived at the development where Thanksgiving was being held, we met Captain Jack who, upon learning that we were planning to build, took us to his casa or should I say compound.  He has one finished, remodeled Tico house and is in the process of building 2 more houses on the side of this very steep hill.  House #2 at this point consists of a two story cement block wall which, hopefully, is holding back the side of the hill!  The houses were only a small part of this very unique compound.  Also being created is a Botanical Garden and Amphitheater on the side of this hill which used to be a coffee finca.  We climbed to the top along walkways and by beautiful flowers and plants to where the amphitheater was and marveled at the view and the entire creation we were visiting!

Back to the gathering people were eating and we quickly joined in.  We were delighted to discover that there are some very talented cooks in the group and we truly enjoyed turkey, chicken, dressing, cranberry salad, potatoes, vegetables, mango pie (to die for), chocolate cake and numerous other dishes that we had no room to sample and some we couldn't name.

It was a wonderful opportunity to meet new people and we are very grateful to our friends in Berlin, Barbara and Douglas, who gave us a ride to the celebration with our rotisserie chicken.  Somehow, getting there on the bus seemed like a daunting task!  We met a couple, Skip & Donna Anderton, who are also new coffee farmers and enjoyed chatting about coffee.  Yeatmans, Paul & Gloria, were there.  They are the couple who met us at the airport and Dean, another new friend we met in San Ramon, was there but his wife, Randi was home with the flu and hopefully recovering.  We met many more but you know how the memory goes.......

While in San Ramon last week wandering around we discovered an "art show" along the side of the road.  Someone had even drawn Ronald McDonald!  One of the artist was named Roy and we've seen his work in other parts of San Ramon.  This portrait above is one of his which he signed and included his web site looking for work.

I'm the one standing next to Ronald in case you were wondering!!

This is only one of the walls on this street covered with art.  They went on and on!

We cannot believe how many bananas grow on one shoot!!  We are banana rich!! Roberto trimmed off all the dead leaves so the bananas are much easier to see!!  Thank you Roberto!