¡Felicidades! We hope your holidays were fantastic and apologize for the tardiness of our greetings. 2014 was a busy, fun year that brought many new experiences. We spent 5 months in Heredia, Costa Rica studying Spanish and exploring the country. We lived with 2 local families, had classes 4 hours a day, and discovered we were not the brilliant students we were 35 years ago. We loved everything about our stay with the exception of Costa Rican cheese and the pickpocket trio who relieved Mike of his wallet.
Vulcan Arenal This was our view from our hotel east of La Fortuna. The top of the volcano is visible 70 days a year which didn’t happen to coincide with the 4 days we were there.
Granada, Nicaragua Arenal & Monteverde Heredia San José
Granada, Nicaragua boasts beautiful colonial architecture and claims to be the oldest European city in the Americas. We were there for Semana Santa (Holy Week). All of Central America takes the full week off and the border is officially closed on Easter Day – its only closure all year.
Monteverde Puerto Viejo
Montezuma Manuel Antonio
Bocas del Toro, Panama
is across a big lake from Arenal in the cloud forest atop the continental divide. It is very beautiful and one of our favorite places. It offered great hiking, varied wildlife, Mike's first experience zip-lining, and sightings of the elusive Wattled Bell Bird and the Quetzal, the national bird of Costa Rica.
Manuel Antonio
Montezuma is a quaint, funky beach town not quite ritzy enough for your average North American tourist. It attracts life’s vagabonds and offers nightly street festivals reminiscent of Key West. We drove all over the Nicoya peninsula on some seriously rough roads atop a 4-wheeler that Mike nicknamed “Big Red.”
is Costa Rica’s #1 tourist beach. Mike failed to land anything while deep sea fishing but was consoled by 500 dolphins the boat followed for over an hour.
Puerto Viejo has a more bohemian vibe with a pronounced Caribbean flavor in people, music, food and cannabis.
Bocas del Toro (Mouth of the Bull), Panama is an archipelago of 9 small islands. On a nighttime beach tour, we watched a 1-ton Leatherback Turtle dig a huge hole and bury several hundred eggs in the span of two hours. This was one of our favorite experiences of the trip.
Crazy Presidential Elections & World Cup Pride Frankly, we couldn’t tell much difference between the two as both involved flags and car horns. A 13-person presidential primary ended in a 2-person runoff in which the candidate of the party that has been in power forever quit campaigning and the other party won by a landslide. The streets exploded with multicolor flags and cacophonous car horns, which was also true when Costa Rica advanced to the World Cup Quarter Finals for the first time ever.
Graduation Day Suzanne finished “advanced,” Mike “intermediate,” but we've both since regressed to “beginner.” Jesús, Samuel, Monica, and Nuria were terrific instructors and fine, interesting people who deserved much smarter students.
Meanwhile, Back in the U.S. Our return on June 17th came as a shock and landing in Dallas amplified the geographical and cultural differences. We stayed near what we consider our home base (a storage unit in Lewisville) and updated our wardrobes, readied the RV for travel, and assuaged our cravings for beef and Mexican food.
Alt Loup We then began what we thought was a 6-week tour of the Midwest to reacquaint ourselves with family and friends before going to South America. Here we’re in Nebraska showing off our gorgeous tiedyed t-shirts painstakingly created by the Dicke’s.
O Canada We took a sharp left turn after Missouri because we couldn’t get our South American plans pulled together. We met these dapper gents in Ottawa.
Why did we leave Costa Rica? It was 17 degrees at Mount Washington, which held the world record for wind speed (231 mph) until a typhoon in 1996. We enjoyed New Hampshire so much we stayed a month.
Sampling Maine Suzanne enjoys a whoopie pie, 1/3 of the Maine Holy Trinity (according to Spencer Morrow). Mike’s Moxie soda and lobster roll complete the triumvirate.
Homecoming
Appalachian Trail - Shenandoah National Park
It was great to return to a place where you wake up in the morning and ABSOLUTELY KNOW that sandals and shorts are the appropriate attire. This cotton field in North Carolina finally made us feel like we were back in the south.
(wimpy southern version) A person hikes 80% of the distance of the trail before New Hampshire but completes only 50% of the effort, says author Bill Bryson. We believe him – New Hampshire doesn’t believe in switchbacks.
Not Bad for $22.78 Here we model our thrift store finery at a wedding in Atlanta the weekend before Thanksgiving. Mike is very proud that his portion of this extravagance was only $1.75, but he didn’t have to purchase shoes or jewelry. After a brief stop in New Orleans, we hightailed it back to Dallas to prepare for our next adventure and spend Christmas with our families.
Suzanne & Mike
Gone But Not Forgotten After 75,000 miles and 46 states, our “Little House” is off on a new adventure with her new owner while we explore South America. We will be “brushing up” (ok, relearning) our Spanish in Lima, Peru. for a month, then traveling through Argentina, Chile and Ecuador. Wherever 2015 takes you, we hope you have a great trip. You are always welcome to come visit us. suzanne.shelton2@gmail.com
mikesump53@gmail.com