Our Trip Back to Costa Rica For a Spell

We haven't been around computers in a long while so here's an update from mid-October.

While we were in Boquete, Panama we learned that Michelle's brother and sister-in-law were heading to Costa Rica for a 10th anniversary celebration. It turns out that they were going to be only a few hours from us so we decided to crash the party. First, however, several factors came together at once to make Mark decide to cut his hair.

1. Michelle's brother Kevin asked Mark if he was going to be joining Al Qaeda;
2. Mark kept noticing 1-3 year old little girls with the same hairstyle as himself: Namely, a pony-tail directly on top of the head;
3. Finally, Mark was fed up with his longish hair and wanted to look more presentable when meeting people for the first time.

It was a great experiment.

After the haircut we headed back to Costa Rica where

Boquete, Panama

We headed inland to Boquete, Panama mid-November and landed at the Pension Marilos after a full day of travel. We ended up taking the one room they had left which was a single with a shared bathroom, thinking we would move the next day when a double opened up. Well, we found the twin bed cozy and we loved the room and the price ($6/night), so we ended up moving in and staying for a month. It's like home. There is a female parrot named Ricki who has fallen in love with Mark and has sworn off Michelle as her mortal enemy. It's pretty funny watching Ricki alternate between making sweet love purring noises to Mark, and chasing after Michelle to bite her toes--cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West when Michelle dances out of reach.

As soon as we arrived we met a gal named Lorie from Oregon who had the same problem with Ricki dating back years to when she and her husband and son stayed at the pension while they built their home in Boquete. Ricki fell for the husband and son and to this day remains an enemy of Lorie, even though she hasn't been back to Boquete for years! Lorie invited us up to their lovely home on a small coffee plantation in the hills above Boquete.

We´ve made a lot of great friends here because the word has gotten out about