What a nice looking bunch.

This is an installment in an ongoing post series detailing a typical day in one of our destinations. Not everything in this schedule might happen on any given day, but it should give you a good idea of our usual activities.

5:00AM – Howler monkeys, the jungle’s alarm clocks, start their deep guttural bellows from somewhere unseen.

5:30AM – Alright, howlers (and frogs and birds and bugs), alright. We get it. It’s time to get up.

5:45AM – Coffee and tea are ready. This month’s coffee is a rich 100% Arabica bean grown in the Costa Rican highlands. It’s apparently a small family-run venture (there’s a picture of the four of them right on the front) and at 1440 colones ($2.85 USD) a bag we couldn’t be happier.

6:00AM – Ian’s work shift starts. There will be more on this later, but midway through the month Ian’s laptop decided it would rather be a worthless brick, so we’ve been making due with taking turns on Brie’s machine. It’s certainly annoying, and it means that our total “work day” ends up being a bit longer, but we’ve managed okay. During this time, Brie reads, writes, does yoga, and does whatever she can offline to get ready for her shift.

9:00AM – Breakfast #1. Brie has gotten quite good at taking advantage of all the available fresh tropical fruit by making smoothies. Frozen bananas, mangoes, and soymilk are the staples, though peanut butter and oatmeal have been known to make an appearance as well.

10:00AM – Switch! Brie to the computer and Ian to read, write, workout, etc.

?:00 ?M – Low tide is obviously always changing its exact time, but it is the best time to walk on the beach here in Zancudo.

12:00PM – Breakfast #2. Fresh local eggs, tortillas, and hot sauce. Sometimes avocado.

3:00PM – Switch again! The computer is a hot commodity around here, though we have somehow refrained from going all Gollum about the thing.

5:00PM – Final scheduled switch. Brie has probably just finished up prepping ingredients for dinner, and Ian will finish the process from there.

6:00PM – Supper. That’s right, I said supper. Not sure I’ve ever actually typed that word before. We usually listen to the Royals in the evenings and while we eat.

7:00PM – I know it may not seem like it given our blogging output this month, but we’ve had a lot to do over the past few weeks, most of it having to do with preparing for our jump of the Darien Gap into South America. We’ve been hard at work finding lodging in Panama, figuring out what we need to ship the CR-V (and trying to find another vehicle to share a shipping container with), looking at flights to Colombia, figuring out how to get the dogs on the plane with us and into a new continent, finding lodging on the other side in Colombia, and all of it with only a single computer at our disposal to boot.

9:00PM – Winding down, watching Crash Course, reading. Brie is currently reading a giant book about the Panama Canal. Ian is currently reading garbage.

Our alarm clock goes off every morning at first light.

Playa Zancudo during midday.

The skies tend to catch fire over the Pacific at dusk.