Sunday, January 26, 2020

Saturday Day 5

Costa Rica is a tiny Central American nation north of Panama and south of Nicaragua. It’s conveniently located about 2-1/2 hours flying time from the South Florida airports and is in the Central Standard time zone.  Home to around five-million people, Costa Rica is about the size of West Virginia. About 80% of the population live in urban areas such as San Jose (333,000). The San Jose metropolitan area's population is over two-million people.

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The sun comes early near the equator where Costa Rica is located. By 6:00 am it has risen over the mountains in the east and by 9:00 am the temperature is climbing quickly. That said, the climate is still quite pleasant. At 3,000 feet elevation and 10 degrees North of the equator year-round averages are between 67-82 F. which is just about perfect for anyone—especially Floridian expats.

We took an early morning walk in Altos de Antigua, the gated community where we live.  It was only a half-hour walk but it was a steep climb half of the way---the way back! Morning walks will be nice, but we will need to be out and about early to avoid the heat, which is not that bad for Floridians—the difference between 70s and 80s. Maybe an early and a late walk will do the trick. 

We rise with the sun at about 5:30 or 6:00 am. It is cool at that time of day—and by nine o’clock the temperatures are climbing through the 70s to a day’s high of 80 degrees by noon. Very pleasant unless you happen to be hiking in the Costa Rican mountains—or up our street.

We spent most of the today relaxing and hanging out on the patio and taking in the awesome views. And even though our pantry had a weeks’ worth of food we still didn’t cook a real meal today. Snacks and the remains of the roast chicken we bought at the Maxi Pali was plenty.

Tonight someone shot-off a big display of fireworks just above our casa. There were aerial boomers that scared the devil out of the pets. It lasted about fifteen minutes—which was plenty! 

Must have been some unknown Costa Rican holiday.