April in a nutshell

Apr 29 2013

Greetings,

April has been a good month. Capt Johne has been getting a lot of work and keeping very busy. We had our friends Victor and Natasha, who we hadn’t seen for a very long time, aboard for a week. And we’ve just celebrated Johnes 66th birthday.

Right now I’m on a plane from San Jose Costa Rica, to FL for a few weeks of work. 
"Costa Rica? Weren’t you in Panama?" You ask.
Well, Johne need a new Panama visa, and it was cheaper for me to fly from San Jose, so we made a weekend of it. The trip up on the bus started out fun. When we got to the border it wasn’t clear that there were two steps to the check out. So after we pay our exit tax, we walked over the old rail road trellis bridge to the Costa Rica side. When we went to check in there we found out we missed a step, so back across the bridge for one more stamp. Then across again once we had gotten it. After getting done with  check in on the Costa Rica side we got settled back on the bus and were looking forward to the scenery on the ride. But about half an hour after we got rolling again, an oncoming SUV lost control, swerved into our lane, and hit the bus head on. No one on the bus was injured except the driver who bruised his knee. But the SUV was crushed and three of the six people in it were killed. It was a sobering experience and definitely put a damper on the rest of the day. 
When we finally got into San Jose, we got together with Linethe, a Costa Rican friend we hadn’t seen in years. We enjoyed a lovely dinner and catching up before heading back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.
The next day, (yesterday) we went out walking to explore San Jose. The central part of town has a couple of old theatres, museums and a big cathedral on the central park. We decided to go to the national museum and were pleasantly surprised when we got to find that they were having a Europe day event that included a small symphony concert. Just by chance, we arrived right before they started. They played music from all over Europe. It was a wonderful treat. 
After the concert, we walked around the museum and then went looking for lunch. As we were looking for a good place to eat, we went by the national theatre. I love theatres and Johne ask if I wanted to walk in and see it. I thought we should find food first but we went ahead and checked it out. It had a beautiful lobby with marble statues and an elaborately painted ceiling. And just off the lobby was a charming café that had crapes and sandwiches. It was just what we were looking for and we enjoyed our lunch there very much.
Later that evening we found an Argentinean restaurant and had a wonderful dinner. Over all, it was a great day.

This morning Johne got on the bus to head back to Panama and I was off to the airport. I’ll be headed back to Panama the third week in May and then we’ll start getting ready to make the transit through the canal. We expect to be going though about the third week in June…