In Feb. 1984, I went to San Jose, Costa Rica with Jim and some others from Bali Co. for an anniversary of their plant in Cartago. We flew into the capital city of San Jose, circling the area several times spiraling down between the mountains to land. The natives on the plane began cheering because the pilot had landed on the first attempt! This was not a vacation trip but one filled with meetings with officials from Costa Rica at parties, dinners, etc. They were happy to have American plants located in their country. Click on the map to enlarge it and see where we visited.
We did manage to have some time to explore the area, play some golf on a course at the resort where we were staying, and visiting in homes of dignitaries in the countryside and on the Pacific Coast at Puntarenas. You can see we are dressed in summer clothes here. Back home in Winston-Salem, NC it was snowing. My sister Susan was spending the week with our son. They were "snow bound" for a couple of days. She was finally able to drive 25 miles to Greensboro where she taught nursing at University of NC at Greensboro. All the snow was gone when we got back to NC.
I'm pictured here with two Costa Rican ladies at a country club where we had lunch. In the background are large bougainvilla bushes blooming. They were every- where. I had never seen such pretty flowers. I knew they wouldn't grow in NC but when we moved to Elba, AL, I had to have one. That is until last summer when I threw it in the trash! I got so tired of watering it and it had big thorns that were always sticking in me. I decided I really did not want that bush.
You can see in the photo here how colorful the bouganivallas were in Costa Rica, often climbing up on tops of houses. There were so many pretty birds in Costa Rica. I came home with several stuffed parrots and Maccaws, and a variety of pottery birds. This parrot hangs in our laundry room looking out the window. He is outside by the banana bush in this photo.
Coming home through customs in Miami, we were in a very long line. A customs agent walked through the line and motioned for us to follow him. I thought "what have we done" but when we got inside he said we wouldn't have to wait to go through customs. I don't know how he picked us out of the crowd! Jim told me they sometimes do that for people in business clothes.
