We are alive and well...

I have had trouble with this site... sorry for the delay. We have been at a wouderful B&B called Caasitas Tenorios for the past few days. This is a organic farm owned by a Costa Rican named Donald and his wife, Pip, who is from Austrailia. They run it as a way to bring steady income to farmers in this region, while working to preserve the environment. The issues here are deep and complex. We had long discussions with Donald about their work (Pip is in Austrailia). Louis feels that most of the tourist industry in Cost Rica is owned by people from other countries, and that the money is taken out of the country. Casa Tenorio wants to bring stability to the coutryside in tbhe face of all tbis. See www.casasitas tenorios.com for details. The farm is beautiful. The rainforest was cleared from this region for farming decades ago, some of the old forest still runs through this property. Donald and Pip work with a local youth group that wants to reforest the area and create a wildlife corridor between two volcanoes and wild areas. We saw sloths in the trees, and howler monkeys woke us at dawn. A flock of parakeets flew loudly over the farm all the time. There wee so many bird songs that it was hard to distinguish among them, although we were doing it by the time we left. The same held true for flowers, trees and other plants. We could see the two volcanoes from the property. One is Volcan Tenorio, I am forgetting the name of the other. We miss this place, I will post pix soon. We wre now in Granada, Nicaragua, which is both a place where traditional Nicaaguan communities thrive and a center for the international party crowd. It is beautiful, and rather overwhelming. We will be here until Monday, more details to follow. For now... I gotta mellow out! More to come, stay tuned.