Jaco Beach

Christy and I have been at Jaco Beach (pronounced Ha-Ko) the last couple days having a nice time. Jaco is not known as the 'nicest beach in Costa Rica' by any stretch - it is however about the closest Pacific beach from San Jose which is why we decided to go there. Down town Jaco is really no different than any-beach-town USA except that maybe it is a little less developed (that is changing) and it is not as safe. By that I mean you just should not be out at night really and if there is no need to carry much cash or your passport - don't. For the most part, people come here because it is incredibly close and also because they have great waves for surfing. We are staying at an older Best Western hotel that has served our purposes just fine. In the front they have this little toy car like you usually see outside of grocery stores for that the kids can ride for some amount of change. The kids LOVE just being in it - even if we do not have a 100 colones (20 cent) coin to make it go.

We have been getting a taste of the different animals in Costa Rica almost from day one. When we were staying with the Befus' there was an amazingly beautiful - and loud - bird that started going nuts every morning at about 5:45. Also, there are different sounding Cicadas than I had ever heard before. Here by the beach, there are lizards everywhere which for a midwest boy for me who only ever saw salamanders in window sills is pretty exciting. Can you find the one on the picture in the left? I almost stepped on it while it was resting on the sidewalk and it dashed into the grass, they are so well hidden there. The other one on the right is much easier to see. This one is only a little over a 1.5 feet long, but there are a couple that are well in excess of 3+ feet just tooling the grounds. I also saw one run today - and they are surprisingly agile and fast! If one ever started chasing me I would not even know what to do. In my estimation, man to lizard in a hand to claw battle, lizards are by far higher on the survival of the fittest scale.

What good would blog entries be without me making fun of some signs? One of my favorites one is on the left. I'm not even sure what this sign means. In case you do a U-turn please run into the pacman shaped 'C' ? Watch your step on the tripper-thingy as you enter the door and remember to turn around as you pass through it? In all honesty - I think it means use the stairs in case of emergency based on where it is placed - but who would even get that? Another one that Christy and I liked was on the right. If you have guitars, drums, harmonicas - hey - no problem. But you'd better not be playing trumpet on the first floor! What it should actually say is, 'No playing any instrument loud because it might distract the guests at the hotel - and that is OUR job when we play loud dance music until midnight on the weekends. Thank you.'

One thing that is very evident here is God's amazingly beautiful nature. One of the best way to see that is in the sunsets. I asked Christy the other night 'I wonder if the locals ever get tired of the sunsets...' and two seconds later a local hotel guard came over and said something in Spanish that I could interpret from his hand signals and voice as 'Take a look at that sunset - it is amazing'...that answered my question. And to be fair, who would? I snapped a couple pictures so everyone could see. The picture on the left shows one side of Jaco Bay mountains as the sun is setting. Where the 'clouds' appear to hit the water in the distance you can actually see more land which is a very large peninsula. The picture on the right is a similar one with the kids looking cute. Sammy has his favorite bucket and lizzy is enjoying a stawberry icee drink. She's actually enjoyed MANY of those over the last few days :)

To give you a little different view of the beach I took a snapshot of the other side of Jaco Beach. There appear to be some amazing mansions up on the cliffs in the distance. The waves are quite large here and I have enjoyed body surfing in them even though there are signs that say 'Drag your feet to avoid getting stung by the rays in the water.' The right shows the hotel. Don't be deceived, we are not staying in the large luxury condo building, if you look just below and to the left of the life guard / security guard tower - you can see a little sliver of the old Best Western that we are staying in :) However, that large building right next to the hotel shows you the massive development going up in this area. Ramada is building a five building complex that will be a resort/hotel/condo area. Also, there appears to be another huge hotel project going up about 1/2 miles down the beach. Lisa Befus told us that welders are hard to come by in the central valley where San Jose is because they have all come out to the beach to work on the large hotel projects up and down the Pacific coast.

Totally unrelated to the beach, we appear to have found housing! This is a huge answer to prayer. The Prather family (our big brothers at the language school) toured two houses in walking distance to the language school for us on Saturday and after a brief phone conversation we have chosen one. It meets almost all of our requirements and we are looking forward to making it our new home over the next nine months as we gear up for language school. The move in day is May 1st, which is two days AFTER language school orientation starts - but honestly we are so happy to have a place to move into eventually that the wait almost is not that bad. Luckily, we can just stay with the Befus' until the place opens up.

Let us know how you all are doing and how we can be praying for everyone. Talk to you soon!