We plan to remain parked in Lagos Del Rio (“lakes of the river”) campground until Monday morning when we will resume our drive through Costa Rica. We met the owner of this gorgeous campground yesterday.
Rafa was checking the property and stopped by so we could tell him how much we enjoy the place.
He was interested in our Starlink as he wants to add WiFi to the campground but the phone company will charge him $2600 for the privilege. Starlink is sold in Costa Rica for $500 and $99 a month for the service. The cost of the satellite internet system gives you an idea of the standard of living in each country. Our Mexican Starlink costs us $78 a month (1,350 pesos) because we have roaming privileges from Alaska to Panama. If we used it only in Mexico they charge $61 which indicates an estimated higher standard of living in Costa Rica. In the US Starlink charges -no surprise -$150 a month. Lucky us we bought ours in Mexico.
Rafa’s gardener and sole architect of this amazing garden is Hosoyindio who lives in the property with his family and has worked in the sand job for twenty years.
He told me about a Canadian traveler who ended up spending three weeks here he liked it so much.
Rusty’s pretty happy wandering around between rain storms and going for walks with me. We’ve done some chores, cleaning and rearranging the cabinet contents aboard GANNET2 and at $20 a day with Layne cooking instead of eating out we are saving money in the “most expensive country in Central America.”
When we were sailing these parts 25 years ago supermarkets never sold decent bread so we made our own on our boat and I got into the task experimenting with flavored breads in various anchorages as we waited out rain storms back then as now. Plus there is a kitchen in this campground.
After we had exercised and swum in the freezing cold pool it started to hammer down rain all afternoon, a good time to sit out under a roof and read. Or do something if you have married an energetic Type A… “Time to make bread” herself announced and it was.
The open air kitchen has power and a sink and a trash can, everything a camper needs. We wash our dishes here and I fill our water tank using our collapsible buckets at the potable water faucet in the sink. You can see why this place will be hard to leave, especially as we are alone much of the time…
Getting messy with flour. Layne found an air fryer receipe which was simple enough: one and a half cups of flour, salt, yeast and water. We mushed it all up and let it rise for a couple of hours. Then we heated the air fryer for twenty minutes at 400f and in the ball went.
I think the air fryer is ideal for nomadic life. It’s lightweight even though it’s bulky and you can cook anything in it including the best home fried potatoes. It’s lighter and far more versatile than the Instapot or the ghastly bulky toaster oven Layne used to insist that she needed. When that broke she had a hard think and in a sign of her open mindedness agreed to try my suggestion we use an air fryer.
Outside the rain was hammering down but under the roof the electrical supply was regular and constant and the air fryer did its job.
We ended up, would you believe with ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner. The plan had been paella but that got shelved for a night.
It wasn’t at all bad for a first attempt. Our Irish friend Paula suggested soda bread and Layne promptly found a receipe. I think we’ll cook it a bit longer uncovered to brown it more thought it did have a crust. I also like feeding the yeast with sugar and water before adding to the flour but we followed the recipe and I don’t think it rise as much as it should. But at least now we have cracked the baking thing and it wasn’t at all messy (except for me) so I shan’t hesitatecto bake in the van.
Best of all we had “The Great British Baking Show” (aka: The Bake Off) streaming on the iPad. It was patisserie week and the quarter final so they stressed way more than we did.
