I'm Off to Costa Rica

In about an hour, Lesley is driving me to the Airporter, where I’ll catch a plane to Houston, then Costa Rica, where my friend Chil&oactue;n will join me and we’ll spend a few days in San Jose, then catch a $99 plane ride out to the southern Pacific coast. I’ve got surfing, swimming, hiking, shooting pix, exploring the tropical world on my agenda. As well as exploring with Chilón; we’ve been on many avventuras together in Baja: remote ranchos, small-town festivals, cave paintings, y mucho mas.

18 years ago I went the Caribbean side of Costa Rica.. I went from Puerto Viejo south to Manzanillo. From there a friend and I took a 2-day walk through the jungle and along the beach when possible, into Gandoca, a small town in Panama. I remember two things:

1. When we got to the town, it was a dirt road, and the dirt was brick red. It was raining softly. I looked down the road and thought, what if I just kept on going? See where it leads?

2. But I didn’t, and we went into the open air bar and sat there drinking beers. A big guy walked in, carrying a machete. No shirt, kind of sweaty, he’d been working.

“Come éstas?, he said.

“Bien, y tu?

“Tranquilo’

How great, when you ask a guy how he is and he says, “I’m tranquil.” It’s relaxed and friendly.

I actually love posting these blogs — it took a few years, but now it’s part of my fabric. I like telling people about what I find, because goldarnnit, I run across so much interesting stuff. Check here in about a week or so for La Costa Rica Avventura de Chilón y Lloyd…

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

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