High Season at Casa Sweeney-Britton

The guest season has officially begun!

We are so excited to share our lives here with friends and family and have been looking forward to visitors coming. The prize for First Place goes to Jason and Amy, who were our first guests and spent 4 nights in the casita. Lucky for the rest of you they figured out how the shower works, discovered the leaky toilet, and rid the place of the World's Largest Spider. It was wonderful to have them here, and not just because they brought us an ICE CREAM MAKER (and a box load of other goodies).


We had a great time showing them around. They were lucky enough to be here for the hatching of the baby turtles so we all got up before dawn to drive (and successfully ford several large rivers) back to Ostional to see the results of the mama turtles' hard work a few months ago. As the sun rose, baby turtles wriggled their way out of the sand by the dozens and we followed them as they made their long journey down the beach to the water. Volunteers stood watch, ready to chase vultures away, mark new nests with sticks, and gently assist babies that were stuck in holes or behind logs. Only about 1% of the hatchlings survive to adulthood, but we imagined these babies we saw enter the sea safely returning to this same beach decades later to lay their own eggs.

In addition to seeing the baby turtles, we took a surf lesson, went on the "longest in the world" zip line, swam in the pool (Sadie finally met her match in Amy who spent an hour in the rain in the pool with her), cooked (and ate) lots of good food, and did some work around the house (Jason got to use his mad manly skills to hack down and haul away a tree that fell over on our driveway).

Jason and Amy left on Sunday morning to explore more of Costa Rica and Ian's mom, Karen, arrived Sunday evening. It is wonderful having her here, and not just because she brought BINOCULARS and other goodies.

We are doing our best to wear Karen out with our hectic schedule. Her first day here Ian took her at dawn to Ostional to see the hatchlings, and then she went with Sadie to school and had a tour, after which she rushed back out with me to go to boxing class, I then dropped her off back home and took off for a meeting of the school's Environmental Committee, and then brought the car back so Karen and Ian could rush off to the library in time for him to teach his class, and then they went for a walk on the beach, and then they picked up Sadie from school, and then...we let her rest for a few minutes while Sadie went to Ballet class and I went to Zumba. In between all this we all periodically rushed out to the balcony to try out the new binoculars. A ship! Monkeys! Birds! The Iguana! Surfers!

Phew! I think we were all asleep by 8:30.

We're trying have a more mellow day today - maybe some time actually spent just reading in a hammock. However, so far after taking Sadie to school we went for a 2 hour walk on the beach and now she and Ian are at Yoga class, and then there's surf club, and then....

My mom comes next but before she gets to Nosara I'm meeting her for a mini adventure to the Osa Peninsula. I'm leaving the computer at home so no blog posting next week.

We love having guests!