Well Jerod & Becky have come and gone, and we had a fantastic time together... but, those stories are for another post.

This is a short overview of my time between visitors. After Mom & Dad left in mid September, I spent about a week readjusting to the solo lifestyle I live down here. It was difficult at first, mostly because I miss them so much and we had such an amazing time together. Eventually however, I slipped back into the routine of things.

Shortly thereafter I was fortunate enough to meet a new neighbor who moved into the condo next door. Turns out he's a chef, and is in Costa Rica to research restaurant opportunities. He has been very generous with his cooking, and made some mouth-watering dinners for me. Through him I met a whole new group of people, and this was just what I needed to get back into Coco mode.

During October our little gang spent nearly every Saturday & Sunday together watching football & baseball. I have never been much of a sports fan, but do enjoy the big, once a year sporting events like the Super Bowl & World Series. Needless to say that when the World Series was happening, it was all hands on deck for every game.

We have people here from all over the US: California, Texas, Florida & Philadelphia, among others. Texas & San Francisco went toe-to-toe this year, with SF winning the series in game five. For a guy that doesn't watch much sports, it was really a lot of fun, and not just because of the hundreds of chicken wings that my neighbor made.

October was also filled with several poolside BBQs. Like I said, my new neighbor is a chef, and I happened to mention how hard it is to find a decent hamburger in this town. He took care of that with these huge burgers that were over-the-top delicious. On another night he even made some blue cheese burgers, a favorite of mine.

One weekend four of us wanted to do some deep-sea fishing. We hired a local boat captain and set out at 8am for some big game fish. After a couple of hours trolling around the open ocean, we had still not landed any fish. As my buddy Scott would say, its called fishing, not catching. We ended up back on land around midday, empty handed. So, to-date, in Costa Rica, I have only caught a 14 inch skipjack, using a hand line off the shore. At least I've caught something during my time here.

I got to visit a couple different houses over in Ocotal, the next cove over. The first was a beautiful mansion overlooking the canyon & the beach. One side of the house was nearly all glass, a perfect wrap around design. It also had an infinity pool with a beautiful view of the sunset. A few of us threw a house party over there one night, and guess who got stuck with Q-duty, yours truly. I cooked 14 steaks, and BBQ'd over 20 potatoes while the girls put together salad and the cheese breads; everything was gone within 25 minutes.

About a week later I got a chance to visit a second house in Ocotal. This one was higher up on a different hill, but closer to the shoreline. We had a smaller group of people, but had just as much fun. In the evening it started to rain, and my friends & I were ready to head home. The car we borrowed wouldn't start, so we were relegated to the scooters. Driving in the dark, up & down a winding road, in the rain on a borrowed scooter is probably not something I'll do again any time soon.

Although I don't have a lot of specific stories from October, I am left with a feeling of rest & relaxation with good friends, good food, and all sorts of entertainment. Even though October is the first full month that I have not had any visitors from the US, time still seemed to fly by, which is usually a sign of having fun...