Pura Vida in Samara!

We survived the week and made it out to Samara! We are so relieved and happy to be here finally. After a few days in Grecia looking for cars, we bought one, packed everything up, and drove for what seemed like days (it was about 6 hours). Our *new* car (a '98 Toyota Rav 4 with a 4x2 engine) nearly died several times. The poor little guy just couldn't handle all the hills here in Costa Rica. We were really excited about this car, but it turned out to be a lemon. And after only one day! BOO! We are going to see if by some slim chance we can return it (the car dealership owner is super nice) or get it fixed up so it can actually function. 

 What a sad thing to buy a new (used) car and have big problems with it the first day :( Oh well. It was all worth it now that we are here in paradise. The kids did pretty well on the drive - I probably whined more than they did!

We were so glad to see these road signs! Woo hoo! I was sure we would be stranded on the highway in the middle of the jungle and get eaten by rabid monkeys.

 There he is. The rabid monkey swinging through power lines!  (Just kidding, he was really cute, and monkeys don't have rabies...do they?)

 Peter and Jackson were SO glad to get out of the car, they headed straight for the water.

 We met up with our landlord and headed out to our house on this road! We kept saying, "Woah! We live here now!" Palm trees on the left, ocean on the right, sandy beaches ahead.

The sand here has a lot of rocks, shells and coral reef in it so it's really pretty! There is some coarse sand and some smooth sand farther out in the water. Our feet are going to have to get really tough so we don't have to limp around on the beach.

Here's our house! It's nice and roomy and very nice inside. We love having the beach right out our windows and the nice ocean breeze coming in the windows. This morning I woke up to see pink sky shining through the palm trees so I headed out to walk along the beach with Elora (who has been waking up WAY too early - 6am). We saw a big iguana on our roof! He sat there forever just looking around. There were some more iguanas next door in the front yard. I think it's fun as long as they don't poop on my stuff...

 And now for the cute baby picture of the day: Baby Elora eating a baby banana!