Friday, March 29
As I begin this post, it is morning, around 9 am. We have had our breakfast, and I am sitting on the shaded balcony off our second floor apartment, again enjoying the special view of the volcanic mountains and the valley below. The web of wires tends to obscure the view in photos, but our eyes have learned to ignore them now and focus on the spectacular panoramic view. In the distance, I can see a fire burning across the valley. This is a common occurrence and nothing to be alarmed about. Someone is burning off a sugar cane field, probably with a plan to harvest the cane either tomorrow or Monday.
View from our balcony on Good Friday, 2013. Atenas, Costa Rica. (Photo by Connie)
It is a sunny, warm, blue-sky day with a few puffy white clouds in the sky. It is quite windy, which keeps things cool, especially in the shade. There are also white clouds hugging the tops of the mountains, which has been the case almost every day we have been here. There have only been about three days in March when the clouds were gone from the summit of Poas in the morning, and it was our very lucky good fortune that the day we made the trip to the Poas crater was one of those three days.
Today is Good Friday - a national holiday here as well as a religious one. I can hear, from the occasional sounds of music drifting this way, that there is a Mass going on at the big church around the corner. The street below our balcony is unusually quiet - just an occasional car going by, not the steady stream of cars, trucks, buses, souped-up motorcycles and other vehicles. Many Ateneans have left for the holidays, most all businesses are closed, and this place is a little reminiscent of a ghost town. This may well change as the day goes on.
This is our last full day in Atenas. We leave tomorrow around 2:00 pm for Escazu and the last six days of our vacation in Costa Rica. This is a day for practical things such as laundry, packing, and cleaning the apartment. It is also a day for revisiting our favorite haunts (to the extent we can when so many establishments are closed), reflecting on our time here, and planning for our return home.
Later....
It is evening now. We took a lovely walk in the twilight. The wind has been blowing all day, and the hills and mountains are now in more sharp relief. The town has been quiet all day, but now people are returning from their two or more days away. Traffic noise and street conversations are increasing.
We had planned to go to our favorite restaurant for our "last supper" here, but when we got there, Antano's was closed. A block or two away, there was a pizza joint open, and we ordered a small pizza to go - a Tocineta pizza. Tocineta, as it turns out, means bacon. It is pretty tasty.
We are sitting in our living room, eating pizza and looking out at all the twinkling lights in the valley and across the way on the slopes of the volcanoes. It is a beautiful night. One to remember.
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Some of the fires burning are forest fires. One was just to the canyon south of us at Hacienda Atenas. Last night we could see the flames and the electricity was out for 2 hours. Sadly, earlier in the week, an Atenas volunteer fire fighter was killed in one of the fires from smoke inhalation. Our fire seems to be out, but there is still some smoke. Starley Talbott Thompson.
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