You say Monteverde...

I say Vermont!

Monteverde is a secret outpost of Vermonters and Canadians. They've even set up the same institutions that you might find in the northern environs:

Local Yoga studio featuring $5 classes and unlimited monthly pass for $40 (take that Vermont)

Monteverde Cheese factory. Milk gets delivered here from 50 local farms, some of whom carry it by ox cart in metal cans. We get our milk from Benito (dairy farmer, nature guide, and surrogate sloth mother), every Sunday at Quaker meeting.

Now this is just weird.

racoons....Actually this is called a kawati, but it looks and acts just like a racoon. It eats the compost that we throw off our back porch.  There is this solo male, and then a pack of 20 females and youngsters that regularly ambles through our yard.

Jam sessions in our living room. Somehow 3 copies of rise up singing managed to make the packing cut (along with a 40 pound mortising machine, 72 pounds of chisels/planes/tools, 2 fiddles, an accordion, a banjo, and a sourdough starter that was lost en route...are we the same couple that biked across the US?).

Freak February Snow Storms. Just kidding, this is the driveway at the Mcintyre estate as of yesterday. Apparently the truck made it out alive.

Such is our life in Costa Rica. Full of the same wonderful things that fulfill and sustain our lives in VT. Much love to the snowy North!