Costa Del Sol

Que Ondas Todos? (What's up everybody?)

We spent Sunday at the beach - Costa Los Blancos, a stone's throw from the better known Costa Del Sol. Our friend Sonia invited to pass the day at family's beach house so we made the easy one hour drive to paradise.

It's the first place we've been in El Salvador that we could actually walk on the beach for any distance...                                                                                  Sonia & Kathleen

After we all went for a dip we went shopping for fish! Sonia, Mario and Natalia took us to Paty the fish monger, only 100 meters from their house...

 it was incredible and we bought a couple pounds of freshly caught huge shrimp..

Paty's Shrimp

...and some great Red Snapper that Paty's folks filleted for us

Natalia with a TINY fish

All in all it was a beautiful day and we had a great time swimming in the ocean, away from the very smoggy city. Bye now

Belize

Mark had a work trip to Belize, so we went together to check out the smallest capital city in the world, Belmopan. It is so small - 7,000 inhabitants - that we didn't take a picture. There is not much to see, but now we can say we visited the smallest capital in the world!

We left Belmopan after Mark met with all the necessry people there, including the ambassador, a school friend of Obama's. Caulker Caye (pronounced key) is where we headed, to relax, take it easy, walk around, see the lovely Caribe, maybe snorkel or dive -- just generally vacate.

local sculpture

Caulker Caye is famous for , hmmmm, let's see - I think it's famous for a lot of rasta-looking folks who are very very very relaxed. I mean, very relaxed. The motto of the place is 'go slow' and so we did.


Our first night we stayed at Mara's Place. Most hostels are better. After being eaten alive, we switched hotels to a place with a lovely view. And screens. And room to turn around.

Kathleen outside Mara's - the best place to be in that hotel (sorry Mara)

The view from our second room - at The Barefoot Caribe

Snorkeling - look at all the pretty fish!

So our analysis of Belize is - a lovely, relaxed, and laid back atmosphere, great for diving or hanging around in the sun. We'll be back (for business) and may visit a different caye or explore some Mayan ruins... we'll definitely bring a good book.

Current Events

Happy St. Valentines and Presidents Day Everyone:

Kathleen just returned to El Salvador from 10 days in Chicago; anyone familiar with the Windy City knows it's not first on the list of winter vacation destinations - no, Kathleen was in town to assist her parents whose home was badly damaged in a pre-Christmas fire last December (that's their place on the top floor in the photo below).

Firemen enjoying the view one floor down - from the condo that burned

Needless to say Kathleen and her mom had a very busy week in Chicago punctuated by a winter storrm (par for the course) and not much down time.

In January we helped out with a Habitat for Humanity build in a rural area near the city of Sonsonate, about an hour from San Salvador. It was hard work but lots of fun with a big group of embassy folks. A couple of pix from the build:

Kathleen builds a septic tank!

Mark puts his training to work sifting













We're now solidly in the dry season in Central America - often threatens rain but definitely won't until May. Our Spanish continues to improve (Kathleen's is definitely better) so we're seeing one of our goals come to fruition. Our travel schedule looks quite active in the coming months - Belize shortly with Honduras and Guatemala hot on the heels. Stay tuned...

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