Many, Many Pictures: Dustin and Samantha's Visit!

Dustin and Sam on a bridge near Termales del Bosque. Dustin is opening the glowing box made famous by the movie Pulp Fiction.

For two weeks in June, our friends Dustin and Samantha visited us from Colorado. That's the main reason the blog has been pretty MIA of late, by the way. I've got some good stuff coming up, though... don't you worry. In any case, it was really great to have Deuce and Sam visit, and I wanted to put up a few pictures from their stay. Hope you enjoy them, and that you're tempted to visit, as well! (All but the first four are from Dustin's camera... I didn't ask permission, but hope that's cool I'm putting them up, Deuce)

Angela and I at the waterfall near La Fortuna.

Some cows in their natural habitat: the beach.

Dustin and Sam at Playa Manzanillo, on the Caribbean coast.

Who doesn't love cows? Not this guy!

A weird Costa Rican anomaly: there are a lot of Holsteins here, but for some reason or another, there are tons of Brahma cows.

I was still employed during the first week of their visit, so there was a fair amount of sitting around during the first part of their trip.

However, the probable monotony of Berlín was occasionally interrupted for them by something exciting, like a random doctor's visit!

I was at work at the time, but apparently this doctor just showed up on his motorcycle, took everyone's blood pressure, and rode off into the mid-day sun.
Doctor's visits? Chickens in trees? Angela chasing cows out of the yard? How come all the interesting stuff happened when I was gone??

Another thing that happened while I was gone working: we got another cat. We kept trying to discourage it, but after hanging around on the back porch for two weeks, it seems to be here for good. We still don't have a name for it, but we've been calling it "The Other Cat." Notice Cucho scowling at it in the background, from behind the plants.
This cat kinda sucks in comparison to our other cat Cucho, to be completely honest with you.

During their visit, Dustin and Sam were able to enjoy some of the unique charms of San Ramón. Here, we see a "watchyman" carefully attending the parked cars near the church. Needless to say, when we left I avoided giving him any coins for keeping an eye on our car.
Right after that, we saw another possibly homeless guy sleeping on a park bench. This would be not so extraordinary, except this second guy had taken out his false teeth and they were sitting on his arm as he slept. And the set of teeth was missing random teeth.
Man, Sam Ramón is pretty shitty.

More Tico charm: We were all dazzled by the ridiculous titties on the Costa Rican manequins. I've already decided that I need to address this issue in a separate, exclusive post.

Ah yes, and no visit to Costa Rica would be complete without the ubiquitous "Floating Crucified Sad Jesus Head" stickers on the cars, buses, and, especially, the trucks. Last November I wrote about these stickers, but since then they've taken on a whole new level of interest for our American visitors. What started as an occasional remark while Annie was visiting morphed into an obsessive decal-counting game during Dustin and Sam's visit. I believe that our "Sad Jesus Head" sticker count on the way back from the Caribbean worked its way into the mid-60s!

More weird Costa Rica: the "guava" in all its broken-phallus glory. We bought these from a guy on the side of the road near a tollbooth. The weird thing: this isn't even a guava. That's just what everyone calls it. What we would call a guava in English, people here call a "guyaba." But I have no idea why this seed thing is called a guava in Spanish.

Guavas are freaking weird. When you break open the giant-green-bean-looking thing, there are little fuzzy white clumps. You eat that fuzzy white crap, and inside there's a big, cockroach-looking seed. For some reason, when God invented guavas, He decided to make them so that they could split open and serve as earrings (as Sam is modeling).

Dustin bought a souvenir spoon, and the shopkeeper threw in this Imperial bandana for free. At least that's what he claims.

Sam posing (awesomely) with her food and a napkin/flower Angela made.

A hermit crab with a sunscreen cap for a shell. Just a second ago, I accidently typed "crap" instead of "crab," but not that I've corrected it, I think I may have been right the first time around.

During our stay in Cahuita, Sam finally got her wish of relaxing in a hammock.

And finally, on the last day, we saw some beautiful Costa Rican engineering as a car pulled a moped on the highway. Remember, folks in the U.S., this is the Interamericana Highway, the one that goes all the way from Argentina to Alaska, and these guys were headed north. They may have graced America with their inspiring presence.

Anyhow, that's it for the pictures for now. Hope you liked them, and maybe you learned something (certainly not).

Thanks again to Dustin and Sam for visiting, and we hope to have you come back very, very soon!

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