Richard's Travel Blog

Before coming to the mostly urbanized area around the capital, San Jose (Chepe to the ticos), no place seemed like anywhere we’d like to live. Our first stops in the central valley didn’t appeal to us in that respect, either. We’d read a post on the International Living magazine website by a couple who retired on the hillside above Grecia, so we headed for Grecia. It’s a city of a few tens of thousands. For us, it was too sleepy. The church to the left is just one of many churches in town. Towns like this everywhere, including America, have no shortage of churches.

Even sleepier was Sarchi, even though it’s hyped as a center for artisans. The day we were there was a Catholic saint’s day, and there was a little life in the park in front of the church. I think that was what passed as action for Sarchi.

Oxcarts are emblematic of how ticos see their heritage. The park’s main attraction was this brightly painted, giant oxcart.

The high energy in Grecia and Sarchi was too intense for us, so we went on closer to San Jose, to Heredia. It’s a university town, sort of. There IS a university there, and a little student ghetto around it, but mostly Heredia is run down and a little creepy after dark. The hotel was weird; I don’t even want to talk about it.

It’s obvious the city is trying to brighten itself up. The street corners have funny busts on the top of the posts, and the park has these.

Saturday is market day.

Usually, the closer you get to the capital of countries like this, the grottier it gets. We thought, well, if Heredia which was supposed to be a college town is like that, it’s going to get worse as we near San Jose. We were driving around the hills north of Heredia and got lost, eventually finding ourselves down in Alajuela, the second largest city in Costa Rica, population 50,000. We figured, oh man, this is where the airport is and it might be seedy and worse than Heredia. To our pleasant surprise, Alajuela is nice, even at night. It’s not run down, maybe because so many people spend a day or two there arriving or leaving Costa Rica from the airport. I’m thinking that brings loads of hot money into town, and that provided the prosperity. It’s not a tourist destination for any reason other than the airport. It’s just comfortable. Myung likes it a lot. I think we have added it to our list of possible places we could plunk down, at least for a while.

You’d think we’d have photos. We have five, and they don’t say much. Alajuela isn’t photogenic. Here’s what we have. Here’s a shot down a narrow street. I put it here because Alajuela has a lot of lorikeets, whereas most cities have 99% pigeons. Some of the lorikeets make their homes in the wall of that yellow building on the right.

Here are the other three pics.

About 25 km from Alajuela is a famous volcano, Volcan Poas. At this time of year, you are lucky to be able to see down through the clouds that usually blanket the peak. Here’s a picture from the pamphlet you get at the entrance.

Here’s what we saw of the main crater for a few minutes when it wan’t totally obscured.

The smaller crater with the lake at the top was more visible.

There have been 39 eruptions from the main crater since 1829. The last time was in June, and the last major eruption was in 2009. The little one hasn’t blown in nearly 10,000 years.

While we were up there, we ran into some Korean people. The woman in the lower left lives in Quito. She is visiting the people on the right, who live in Heredia. Needless to say, we got the Ecuadoran’s email and phone number.

Complete change of pace… We went to the capital. The total population of Costa Rica is 4.5 million, and the greater San Jose area, which would include Alajuela, has about half the population of the whole country. San Jose proper has about 350,000, so it doesn’t feel like some huge city. Even right downtown is fairly mellow.

There’s a little Chinatown there.

A lot of markets in the big cities are hectic and rude. I’ve gotten to the point where I try to avoid them. This one is chill, like the ticos. This mahi mahi is very chilled and fresh.

The most interesting thing to happen the day we wandered into town was coming across this yellow building. It’s called the Yellow House, and is the foreign ministry.

It looked like something was going on, which is probably rare in a country that hasn’t even had an army since 1948. Turns out, Ban Ky-Moon is here for a vacation from dealing with countries who definitely do have armies. We hung around till he came out.

Then he came out. Myung was excited about seeing her famous compatriot. Security was a joke. No one seemed to even look at us with our day packs. hanging out across the street. I think we could have walked right up to him and shook his hand.

That’s going to do it for now. Next up is the Cartago area, where we are till tomorrow. Be well, all of you.

So, we left the Pacific coast and headed back into the Central Highlands. Here’s the view back toward the peninsula.

The number one mountain destination for Costa Ricans (who call themselves ticos) is Monteverde. Almost all tourists who get off the beach go there. I can see why. The parks, Monteverde and Santa Elena, are in a cloud forest about 1400m (4600 ft) up. The constant mist creates a cool jungle. You can have a jungle experience without the heat or the mosquitoes. The town everyone stays at is Santa Elena. It is the classic tourist town, with dozens of sleeping options from backbacker dive to upscale. This appeals to most tourists, including us. The first non-indigenous people to settle there were American Quakers who refused to be drafted into the Korean War. After their imprisonment, they emigrated to here. It was a hard life then. You wouldn’t know it now, Costa Rica is no Honduras. Life’s good, Or as they say here, pura vida.

There are quite a lot of animals here. As always, we have some pictures, mostly bad, and didn’t see the rare animals. There are mountain lions and ocelots, and many others we haven’t seen in Central America. We did see an armadillo. It was dark in the forest, so the image is out of focus.

What I would call a coati, and they call a pizote, was hanging around a picnic table at the entrance.

There are loads of butterflies and birds. We went on a night walk with a guide, and saw a sloth and another kind of racoon-type creature that lives in the trees. No good pictures of them in the dark. He pointed out a couple of cute frogs I never would have seen by myself. There’s so much life in the forest but, like when I’m diving, I just don’t have a good eye for seeing, especially little things. These frogs are about the size of your thumbnail. Looking at them reminded me of looking for nudibranches while diving. I know they are there, but don’t see them as often as a lot of other people.

Heres a taranchula, a couple of venomous vipers and a colorful bug.

Myung is really into flower and foresty pictures. She takes about 90% of the pictures. I’ll put a few in here to give a feel for the places. I know, these all look the same after a while. You gotta be there, though. It’s beautiful.

Where’s Waldo?

It goes on and on.

Y’know, if, by chance, anybody wants to look at sometimes hundreds of pictures of some place we’ve been, I can send you “albums” have have stored in the cloud. Those go all the way back. India, Southeast Asia, Korea, China, Nepal, Mongolia, Africa, South and Central America, Myung’s pictures from Turkey. Just ask and I’ll email it to you.

That’s it for now. Coming soon is a post from the urbanized central valley around the capital. Be well, all of you.

We went to some beaches on the Nicoya peninsula between Coco and Tamarindo. Neither one of us are really beach people, so after three days it was time to return to a cooler climate. There’s not much to say. In general, I would say the beaches we saw, except Tamarindo, weren’t nearly as touristy as we thought they would be. They are unspectacular, but quiet aned peopled mostly by locals. Maybe at one time there was more of a scene there, but now it seems the property bubble has burst and there are cheap digs all over to rent or buy. We rented a four bedroon house for $40/day. It was nice to spread out and have a kitchen to ourselves.

As I said, the beaches weren’t spectacular. We did the walk along the edge of the water thing and went swimming once.

For me, the best things about tropical beaches are the sunsets during the rainy season when there are clouds to provide character and color…

…and the fresh fish. This is just a guy who caught one about 50 meters off the beach.

We bought littler ones from a fisherman, and Myung cooked them up. Man, she’s good at fish.

There isn’t much else to say about those days there. I’ll just post a few people pictures and declare victory. Very soon, maybe tonight, I will post about the Monteverde cloud forest, where we went next.

We’re back to being our itinerant ways, only this time we have a car. For the next month, there will be no more waiting in the park till whenever for a bus to near where we want to go. Like, I chilled out in this park in the charming little town of Tilaran, looking after our stuff, while Myung walked around.

That’s all fine, but when we got to La Fortuna, it became obvious that renting a car is definitely the way to go in Costa Rica. So many places, especially the parks, are accessible only with a car or with an expensive tour or even more expensive taxi. So, we are stylin’ in a teeny Suzuki.

We’ve been here for nine days. So far, we’ve done some of the things tourists do in the Lake Arenal area and Rincon de la Vieja National Park. La Fortuna is where most people base themselves for the Arenal area. Even though we could have stayed anywhere because we have wheels, we first arrived there via public transportation and it’s there we stayed. There’s little photoworthy about La Fortuna. There’s a park and a volcano, of course.
La-de-da.

We stayed in a hostel, as we usually do, because they usually have kitchens, and that saves a fortune on food. Just coffee in the morning adds up. It seems so far that the main way people make coffee here is to put the coffee in what is basically a sock, and drip it through that. It works fine. I first saw this as the usual way back in Malaysia about 15 years ago. Here, the hostel manager is making herself a cup o’ java.

Lake Arenal is a lovely lake surrounded by parks and scenic areas. It rained a lot of the time we were there, but here is a picture we took during one of the brief periods you could see fairly well.

The first nature walk we went on was a little wet and slippery, over this bridge and into the forest.

We aborted that one after a couple of hours because it was too laborious dealing with the rain and the mud. Later that afternoon, though, we indulged in a soak in one of the free public hot springs around there. There are many resorts which charge $10-$75 to partake in the spa experience, with swim up bars and everything, but the springs create such a volume of hot water, whole creeks are hot. This spot is not more that 50 meters off the road. Just scramble down the bank and you are there.

Rincon de la Vieja National Park is a World Heritage site, north west of Arenal. Boy is it worth going there, even if you did have to spring for a $30 per prson tourist shuttle! It’s a beautiful hike through forest which is dry during the dry season and mostly green at this time of year. The main hikes people take are the 10 km round trip to these falls and a 3 km loop. It’s muggy hot, so a cool dip when you get to the falos is refresshing, to say the least.

We have pictures of the walk, like this one…

… but you’ve seen a lot of tropical vegetation photos, so I’ll spare you. The only good animal picture we have is the lizard at the top of this post. There are bad pictures of a tapir, a raccoon-type creature with long legs, and some birds. Myung saw a couple toucans and some wild pigs, but didn’t get a photo. There were capuchin monkeys we saw and some howlers we couldn’t see.

After that part of the day, we returned to the start and went on a little 3 km loop which is the main attraction of the park. There are fumeroles…

… boiling hot springs…

… and boiling mud pits. These pictures don’t do them justice. Just use your imagination and picture these water and mud pits, fumeroles being very active, not to mention very hot to be near.

Blurp, blurp.

I don’t know what this town is, but driving around, this is a typical, lovely Costa Rican setting.

Costa Rica isn’t quite what I expected. I knew it was going to be considerably more developed than Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, but I didn’t expect it to be this developed. It really seems it has tried to emulate the US. The style of development is very like in America. The stores and shops are like in the US, and we haven’t seen a traditional town market yet. You might guess correctly that the produce isn’t nearly as good as in the CA-4 countries, which is a shame. We both miss that. I haven’t asked anyone if they mind having American quality, pretty but lousy tasting produce. They must be getting used to it. We did. The amenities are nearly what you’d expect in the States, though noticeably funkier, for sure. What is a bit of a shock is the the cost of things. Nearly everything is more expensive here than in the States. All the more reason to cook in accomodations with kitchens. At least the car rental is cheap, $20/day.

One source which studies the happiness of people around the world uses criteria which awards Costa Ricans as the happiest in the world. Y’know, one of the first things you notice about the people here is that they are not only nice, but seem happy. I, for one, feel like I’m being out of place when I’m perturbed about something like the slowness of the check out at the supermarket. Everyone else is fine with just about everything, it seems. I’m hoping it’s as infectious as it seems to be. This is a sweet country, so far at least. I’ll keep you posted on that experience.

That’s going to be it for now. This was a good time to post something, as from Rincon de la Vieja we went to the Pacific coast and are currently doing the tropical beach thing. A post on that should come soon.

Be well, all of you.

And I thought Honduras went fast! We had 8 days left on our four-country visas, and blew through El Salvador and Nicaragua in that time. Basically, we did two things, scope out La Ruta de Los Flores in El Salvador and Granada, Nicaraqgua. I think it’s fair to say we have now technically been to those countries and can tick them off the list, but have only impressions and really know little more than we did before.

So, this story can be short. It took almost all day to leave Honduras and get some distance into El Salvador. We got to a town and spent the night in a No-Tell Motel across the road from the bus stop to continue on. No wifi, but the porn was on cable so we didn’t have to worry about bandwidth. The next day, we went to the main tourist town on the Route of Flowers, Juayua. Here’s Juayua…

La Ruta is one of the main tourist destinations in El Salvador, along with the beaches and the capital. There aren’t any more flowers along there than anywhere else at this time of year in Central America. I guess it’s catchy draw, though. What you notice immediately after coming across the border from any of the neighboring countries is how relatively colorful it is. All I know is what I saw in three days, and maybe it’s only around there, but everywhere around there is brightly painted. The people dress in bright colors. At least in a couple of the villages, mosaics are popular. All in all, I can see why tourists enjoy coming to this area.

There are, of course, flowers. Myung has taken hundreds of flower photos over the years. Here’s a few from there.

Another thing almost everyone does during their stay in Juayua is walk to this falls. It only takes about a half hour to get there on foot. It’s modified natural. The water blasts out of the rocks and from above. The pool and the artificial looking lower part is obviously man-made. It’s still nice.

On weekends, there’s a food fair. It was gourmet, by Central American standards. That red tint in the one picture is from bright sun through the red tenting over the area. Gotta love the frog on a stick.

We like ceviche.

From there, we bolted for Nicaragua. They put their best foot forward at the border post. Another thing you notice is El Salvador is more prosperous than Guatemala, Honduras or Nicaragua.

Granada was our only stop in Nicaragua. For the first 200 years of Spanish rule in Central America, Granada was second only to Antigua in importance. It isn’t nearly as preserved as Antigua. It remained an important city after time passed Antigua by. Old buildings were replaced, whereas in Antigua there was nothing happening after the capital was moved to Guatemala City, so the buildings were left to crumble on their own. It’s still a very nice city to visit, with enough of it’s colonial heritage left to give you an idea of how it was.

Granada sits on the huge Lake Nicaragua, which is the dominant geographical feature in Nicaragua. While we were there, there was a stiff breeze off the lake for the whole time, making the hot temperatures quite bareable. The east side of town features a wide prominade, lined with many mostly fancy restaurants, heading toward the water. Then you get there.

Actually, much of Granada is a bit scruffy. Here’s the market and a street off to the side. There seems to be a lot of this in Nicaragua, from what I could tell from Granada and looking out the bus windows.

The good news is they sell ceviche by the bucket-full for about $2/pound. Yum.

I don’t remember whether I was asking directions or negotiating the price of eggs, nor if she was pointing the way or stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

We had two full days in Granada and got into Costa Rica in the afternoon of the last day of our visas. So that’s it for the CA-4 countries. There is so much more to see, someday I’d like to come back.

We’ll be in Costa Rica and probably Panama for a month and a half. It’ll be nice to not zoom around like we just did after leaving Antigua. This phase of our journey will be completely different. For the first time since Africa, we have a vehicle. Costa Rica is very Americanized; we rented this puddle jumper from Alamo.

We will be looking at a lot of nature stuff and for places to maybe plunk down for an extended period. I’ll try to be timely with the posts.

Until next time, be well, all of you. Continue reading →

Even though we were only in Honduras for a couple of weeks, it seems like we did quite a lot. Usually, we go pretty slow, but we went faster this time because our four country visa expires July 11 and we have to get into Costa Rica by then. This means we did what most people on their two week vacations do. We did the Copan Ruinas area, went to the locally famous D & D Brewery and Resort near the north end of Lake Yojoa and took in nature stuff around there, checked out La Esperanza and Gracias, then split for El Salvador. Fast and nasty, but perfectly fine.

If you are on the two or three day tour of Guatemala and Honduras, you would probably go from Antigua to Copan Ruinas on the shuttle and come back the next day. We took it one-way and continued on in chicken buses. There are two main things to do there. One is to see the Mayan ruins. The other is to go to the hot springs.

The ruins are significant and interesting because of the good condition of the sculptures and inscriptions. The structures are far less impressive than major sites like Tikal, Pelenque, Chichen Itza, and so on. I don’t really care about the historical details, so here are just a few pictures with little verbiage.

The archeologists consider this stairway a treasure. Inscribed on it is the dynastic history of the area over it’s three hundred year glory days.

This altar and statue of a bird with a fish in it’s mouth are in the site museum.

After so many posts about Mayan stuff, I’m going to leave it at that, even though we have many, many more pictures. You’ve kinda seen it all already.

I think the better thing to do in Copan Ruinas is going to the hot springs. They are 23 km and an hour away on an awful road, but worth it if you don’t have to stand in the back of a pickup the whole way. It was developed beautifully in the forest by an Italian hydrologist. This has to be one of the very nicest hot springs I’ve ever been to. And that’s saying something.

You go over this bridge and through the trees, and you’re there. The pools get cooler as they go down.

Here’s the area for massages.

There’s even mud for your do-it-yourself facial. Man, it really does make your skin feel good.

D & D’s is a favorite place to base yourself for a few days while you partake in the many activiites around Lake Yojoa. It was started and continues to be run by a 27 year old guy, Bobby, from Portland, Oregon. What a great job he’s done, and at such a tender age! He make four different beers which are available on tap. The food’s decent and the beds are cheap.

From there, we did three of the things to do, visit a falls, go on a birdwatching boat trip, and take a nice 7-8 km walk in a nearby national park.

Pulhapanzak Falls is right nearby and reached by a short walk. You can drive if you have a car. It’s just a couple of views and a zip line in front of the falls.

Next up was the birdwatching. Actually, there is an ecopark area along the canal. We walked that the day before.

Okay, here are ther boats and the ride. The guide was essential for spotting the birds. We’d have missed the frickin’ toucans without him! No toucan pictures here. They are too small. The other bird pictures are hardly National Geographic quality, so here’s just the boats and some water lilies.

The last thing we did from D & D’s is take a day hike in Meamber National Park. It’s basically a forest shlep up a mountain into the cloud forest and back down. Most of it is jungly.

There are miradores of the lake from the openings.

After descending, there is a fall right close to the entrance anybody can reach with ease and is a popular swimming hole.

That’s almost it for Honduras. From D & D’s, we went around the south end of the lake and looped back toward southwest Honduras near Copan/northeast El Salvador. On the way, we spent a day in La Esperanza. It’s a peaceful place of no particular interest. We did have a very nice day with a very nice American/Korean couple. Myung identified the woman as Korean right away. (There aren’t many Koreans in this neck of the woods.) She chatted with her for awhile, and we ended up going over to their house to watch the US/Belgium World Cup match and having lunch. La Esperanza is forgetable. Meeting these people, John and Ana, is what we will remember about La Esperanza.

We spent a day in the equally calming but forgetable town of Gracias. For a short time in the 16th century, it was the capital of Spanish Central America, but that was then and this is now. Time has passed it by.

From there we went to El Salvador, where we are now for a few days. We’ll stay in this one place, Juayua, on La Ruta de las Flores, and go through Nicaragua to Costa Rica by this Friday. Then we’ll slow down again.

As always, be well, all of you.

Well, it’s time to go. Tomorrow, we leave for the Mayan ruins in Copan, Honduras. We’re basically biding our time now, not that it looks different than when we aren’t biding our time. There’s nothing we really need to see or do here at the last minute. We’re eating the last of our food and timing the last of our Guatemalan currency, just as if we were leaving any other country. All this time, we hadn’t gone around back of the cathedral to the ruins there, so we did that. The cathedral grounds used to cover six city blocks, but it all was abandonned along with almost everywhere else in Antigua after the third big earthquake destroyed everything in 1773 and the capital was moved to Guatemala City. Only one square block of ruins remains.

Across the street is a facade from that time.

I feel like I should have some final words before leaving what has been home since last October. I can try. It’s been a good time, probably just what we needed, now that we don’t have the mental stamina for travel we did. We stayed a bit longer perhaps, waiting to make sure my Social Security actually happened and we could actually impliment the plan I wrote about in the last entry. Antigua is not on our list of places to stay again for an extended period but, as I said, it has been what we needed.

Here’s a last picture of the group at our place. Norm, the American, moved a couple of months ago. In his room stayed an Argentine couple till last week. Left to right are Santiago, Felix and Annie’s handyman, then Felix, Annie, the Argentines Carolina and Mateus, then Myung and me.

With that, it’s hey-ho and off to Copan we go. Be well, all of you.

Straight to the point, I always say.

Myung and I are planning to seek residence somewhere in Latin America, maybe Ecuador or Costa Rica. The best way to qualify for residence almost anywhere is to be married, so we’re going to do it. We’ve gotten through enough with each other and in life to feel confident we’re staying together. It was kind of easy to talk it over and decide. So there’s that, short and sweet.

Plan details: Since I started to receive my US pension, Myung can join me in most countries with pensionado residency programs, even though she herself doesn’t have any guaranteed income. We haven’t got all the details about all the documentation we need, but it does appear being married in the US will streamline some of the procedures. Because of our increased income, we have the discretionary money to make a trip to the US, which we sill do Sept 6-Oct 6. It’ll be fun to show Myung around, and we can take care of some practical matters, particularly that documentation.

We plan to have a simple civil wedding. I don’t expect many will want to attend, but anyone who wants to join us at the courthouse is welcome. Maybe we’ll have a little wingding afterward.

Even if we don’t apply for residence anywhere, it will be good to have some of our i’s dotted and t’s crossed. I’m hoping that stuff doesn’t sop up too much time, so we can tour around and have a good time. Actually, more than a month would be good, but my discretionary money isn’t enough to last longer.

That’s all happening in September. The short-term plan is to stay here in Antigua till our current rent runs out on June 22. From here, we will first go to the Mayan ruins in Copan, Honduras, then probably tour quickly around Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. By mid-July, we will go to Costa Rica. Obviously, we will be checking that place out as a possible place to stay. People say it’s great, though a little expensive. After a month there, we should know about all we need to regarding this. No doubt, we will go down to Panama, too. Panama has a very attractive pensionado program, but it doesn’t have much cool highland. We aren’t into hot tropics. Anywhere we go will have to be cool. Then on September 5 (arriving September 6), we’ll head up to California.

On Oct. 5 (arriving Oct 6), we will fly down to Colombia. We’re headed for Ecuador, but the flights to there are hundreds of dollars more than the Spirit Airlines chicken bus to Colombia. Likely, we’ll stay no more than a week or so in Colombia as we bus toward Ecuador. Ecuador is another possible retirement destination, but it’s procedures are a little daunting. I’m trying to figure out that place now. I wish I could reach a human at any of the Ecuador consulates in the US.

That’s the big news. We’re winding down in Antigua, basically hanging out and eating up our foodstuffs. Not much to say about that. We have spring fever.

I’ll leave you with what is still my favorite picture of us, the one taken on the terrace of the Taj Mahal back in January, 2008. Be well, all of you.

It has been anything but a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. Last time, I was talking before about the religious events leading up to Santa Semana, Holy Week. That activity heated up till it’s culmination on Good Friday, the Friday before Easter. Easter itself was quiet as usual, except there were still about a thousand foreigners in town who were here for the processions and whatnot. The few thousand Guatemalans, mostly from Guatemala City I guess, generally went home most nights.

I have many, many photos. Too many. I need too cull some. for now, I’ll look through and try to pick out some good ones.

The most photoworthy opportunities were of the processions. There was something nearly every night for the last two weeks. Some were huge events, some were not. Sometimes those mandalas, which the Guatemalans call carpets, were placed down, sometimes not. You’ll be able to see from the pictures what a zoo it was around here. I’ll start with the view down our street one evening. This was replayed several times. This first one is right outside our front door where the street had been turned into a parking lot. Very many people from Guatemala City and around here drove into town for this.

This is what it looked like from standing in the back of that red Dodge pickup Myung is leaning against.

Those pics were with zoom. We also watched it like we were on safari. As you can see, some of the participants weren’t totally devotional all the time.

These coming up are of different processions on different days.

By the way, that’s not smog, it’s incense.

There was a cute procession, la procesion de los ninos, the children’s procession. Some of the kids were too little to carry even the little floats.

As I’ve said, they frequently put flower and produce art on the street. They call them carpets. Here are a few more pictures.

So, here we are back to normal. We have a few ordinary pictures, like of Eunice, Annie’s friend who was a volunteer at the chocolate factory where Annie works. Eunice is from New Zealand.

Here’s a cute picture of Bisquit. He’s actually a pretty nice dog.

I was trying to think of what else is going on. My big deal is I applied for and am officially going to start receiving Social Security next month. That will double our income. Needless to say, that’ll be nice.

So, that’s going to be it for now. Until next time, be well, all of you.

There are many thousands of people in Antigua this weekend. There are supposed to be many thousands every weekend until Holy Week, then for all of that week. The processions and other religious activities continue. Last time, I wrote about the “Christian mandalas”. They are making them again today. Such effort to make them nice! It takes hours, not to mention the preparation of the flowers, the flower powder, and the other plant materials needed to make them.

We went out this morning before the crowds were too intense. Here are some pictures, most of which are of mandalas being prepared and some finished ones.

The little helpers are so cute.

So, here are some mandalas made mostly of flowers. The tan backgrounds are this huge grain, something like oversized wheat. They crush it into powder and lay it down. It’s a little windy today, so they have been spraying a little water on it.

Like I said, it’s a good thing we went out early. Around 3 o’clock, the procession started. In true Tibetan form, all the hard work was obliterated. Some pics of the procession are coming after more mandala photos.

The material for this street art isn’t limited to flowers. Fruit and vegetables are common. Myung and I noticed yellow carrots for sale, which I hadn’t noticed before. I was telling her that I have bought those and don’t think they taste too good. Now you’ll see why they were for sale. When you look at these pictures, just check out what all the different veggies and fruits are. Like, this first one has carrots, yellow squashes, cabbages, red leaf lettuce, green beans, strawberries, mangoes and I don’t know what the blue things are.

This may not be particularly Catholic symbolism, but this mango penguin is toooo cute.

Speaking of cute, my friend Barbara posted a picture of bananas with the stems slit and eyes dotted on them to look just like dolphins. Her photo had grapes in the dolphins’ mouths. Here’s Myung and me plagiarizing her idea.

We have loads of procession pictures. For now, I’m going to go ahead and post this. Be well, all of you.