An Empty Calendar is a Strange Thing

About a week ago, I opened up my Google Calendar to find only a family birthday and the reoccurring Tamarindo Saturday Market on it. For someone that is used to having between say five and ten things scheduled each day across both a work and a personal calendar, I can’t tell you how weird this is. For those of you who have similar schedules, imagine if you looked at your calendar and everything was all pretty much gone? Imagine if nobody expected you to go to work tomorrow, or the next day? It’s weird. It makes no sense to my brain. Where did all the stuff go? Oh, right. We canceled all the stuff.

After a couple days of mild ennui and a touch of loneliness, I realized I needed to start to fill our lives back up. Nothingness is great on a vacation, but at some point in the last week I feel like we passed the vacation phase and are now just living here. So perhaps we need to start putting things back on the calendar, but this time we’ll do it with things we really want to do.

So we rented a car for the weekend for the first time and we got out of town. Friday, we went to the Black Stallion Ranch for some zip lining for the boys and a Sunset BBQ. The owner, who was apparently a professional South African surfer in his youth, was quirky and entertaining as he told his story and how the ranch came to be. He drove me and another couple up to the highest point on his 1,500 acres to watch yet another incredible sunset. When we came back down, Matt and the boys beamed as they told the stories of their zip lining adventure.

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On Saturday, we drove up the coast and checked out Playa Brasilito, Playa Flamingo and Playa Potrero. Each had a unique character, which I was a little surprised to see. I am certain the boys will want to go back to Playa Flamingo for some epic wave jumping. Yesterday, we drove down 10 km of either deeply potholed asphalt or dusty, bumpy gravel to get to Playa Avellanas. It stressed the group out to different levels and for different reasons, but I’m glad we persevered. Playa Avellanas was a large, wide open beach with one cool looking restaurant. I think it’s definitely worth returning…yet next time in an SUV and on a less windy day.

I’ve also been turning my sights to the future and the other places we want to go. So, if any of you were wondering why there wasn’t much blogging last week, it was because I was madly googling, researching for our next trips. We are set for a three night trip to Monteverde (the cloud forest) later this month. It’ll be refreshing to experience some cooler weather. I am also working on putting together an April trip to Panama and the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. And, we’ll need to go to Nicaragua some time before the end of March to get new traveler’s visas.

The ennui has subsided, now that we have gotten outside Tamarindo and have some exciting trips on the horizon. I am hoping the mild feeling of loneliness will too. I am missing all the wonderful friends and family we have in Portland…you know who you are. I miss you. I am finding that I’m ridiculously excited for the “sunset meet and greet” the boy’s school is hosting Thursday. I am feeling the need to be more connected, to have a community here, since I am so far from my community at home. I know that these things take time, it will happen…it’s just a little hard to wait.