peterchristopher's blog

In order to get your noni seeds to germinate, you need to crack the hard shells somehow.  Otherwise, the seeds will simply sit for month and years without germinating at all.  The best way is to use fingernail clippers and just clip off one quarter of the seed at the thin end, so that the water can enter there.  Then of course you plant the seeds just like any other seed in a small starter pot, maybe a 4" pot, and when it is 6" tall after 3 months you can transplant it.  One to two years later you'll have ripe noni in your tree that you grew from your own seed.

I just listened to Lisa Valencia's sample episode of her audio version of her Costa Rica adventures.  If you've got just a few years of commuting and rat race before heading to Central America, you might want to get a copy of her audio stories to listen to in the car to keep you going in the home stretch!  Her website is http://www.travelexperiencecostarica.com - enjoy.

It took us four flights to return from San Jose to Manila (then another flight to our home in Dumaguete).   Here is our photo collage of the flights.

The first flight was no problem.

Yesterday Rosalinda developed either the interest or the ability to reach for UFOs and try to eat them. At first I thought she was smart enough that she was recognizing popsicles as being particularly tasty, but then I realized that she was also fond of anything else.

I got very tired about two thirds of the way through reading this minute-by-minute report from last month's one hundred kilometer running race on Nicaragua's Ometepe Island, the Fuego and Agua 100k. But by the end I felt sure I could do it also though;)  Well, I think it was just the delusion of the adrenaline. Now I've recovered and I think I won't try it after all.

Let me first say that I'm not complaining.  I'm happy to be online again, and enjoyed helping the ICE repairman today.  My wife and I had a three day vacation in Uvita, Costa Rica free of our modern obligations and didn't even need to leave home.

We noticed that the line had gone out 6pm on Saturday.  This happens from time to time, but when there was still no voltage or dial tone Sunday morning, I decided I had to act.  I walked the part of the line on the property, and it did not look visibly damaged. 

The next thing that ran through my head was, "My landlord didn't pay the bill this month?"  So I called the ICE bill information number, and the computer told me there was no payment due on our number. 

We've now had a week with hardly a drop of rain here in Uvita.  I assume people all over Central America are in about this same phase of transition.

Yesterday I pulled out the garden hose and started to water the plants.  They needed it.  I managed to break one of the plastic connections (very brittle from the sun) on the water pipe and so we currently have a rather large fountain spraying in the yard, luckily right next to the sugar cane.  Tomorrow I'll head to our local hardware store and see what Costa Rica has to offer to fix the pipe back up.

Today I found out a guy named Robert who is making coconut oil in Panama and selling some(giving it away at the price I saw advertised).  I invited him to join here, and now I see he has joined.  Hurrah for coconut oil!  So if you're in Panama, send a message to user bratliff on this board to find out how to get your hands on some of his coconut oil.

A few days ago I went riding up into the mountains in search of a small village called San Luis.  This was the third time I had attempted to find it.  (The first time Milyn and I had tried to get there via Platanillo near Dominical, but that turned out to be the worst choice and we ended up checking out Reptilandia instead; the second time, we only made it partway.)

Finally, after crossing a formidable river-crossing, the road climbed straight up the mountain. Near the top, there was a ten or twelve year old boy, and I stopped to chat with him.

"Regale me una naranja?" I asked him.  He took two out of the tree and gave me one.  Delicious.  We chatted for a few minuntes.  He told me I was almost in San Luis.  His name was Jose, and he was in his sixth and final year at the elementary school before embarking on the work-life tending cattle.

When I previously lived in Nicaragua, I found that dogs and horses were rarely free.  And any dog of a known breed was quite expensive.  Here in Costa Rica, dogs and even horses are often free.  Not the very best ones, of course, but we've got a golden retriever who was free, no major problems.  Tomorrow we're visiting a horse that is free; maybe we'll get some pictures up here if we like it, or even if we don't.  I never heard of anything like this in Nicaragua.  Indeed, although I bought quite a few dogs and a horse in Nicaragua, I always found out later that the animals had had problems - sick, injured, unable to bark at strangers, etc. 

We've had our dog Winter for almost two months now. He's a golden retriever. He is about three years old. He was a gift from a local woman who felt she could no longer take care of him. Indeed, he arrived with a small itchy infection in the skin of one leg.

We washed it, and it seemed it was not too bad. But slowly it got a little bigger, rather than smaller. Yesterday, I was talking to a local friend, and he told me that I should take a careful look: if there is a 'breathing hole' in the bump, probably there is a worm inside the infection. He insisted the thing to do was to squeeze it out like a pimple.