Happy Birthday!

And welcome to the Tree Houses staff.

Yiandra, who is the newest addition here at the hotel, had a birthday the other day. As is the custom in Costa Rica, her birthday was celebrated with a round of eggs atop the head, as Miguel (back) and Effran (right) are displaying. This was after Patricia and Seidy also egged her.

Yiandra, who was born in Costa Rica, lived in the U.S. for eight years and had never been given the Costa Rican birthday treatment until now.

You can see

The shower head a bit better here, hung up atop a branch that stretches across.

As we're now not fully

booked, we close down each tree house for refurbishing this time of year.

This year, however, we're sprucing up the bathrooms in several of the tree houses.

This is the Sloth tree house, and we have added a river-stone tile to the walls and some non-slip ceramic tile to the floor.

The shower is now hooked up to a branch that reaches across and there will be a new vanity and mirror in there as well.

More pics to come, as we're going to milk the art while we have it!

This fellow. . .

Had just finished his weekly business on the ground (looks like a huge rabbit or medium deer) when it started to head back up the tree. This is on the footpath that goes up to the rancho, where breakfast is served.

It was on the ground, but by the time we got the camera and back out, it was moving up slowly, but surely.

After. . .

Ta-dah! The editorial department had braces way back in the day (in the 1970s) and these are the new and improved version. Sounds like there is some of the same soreness, though they're ceramic, not metal on the teeth.

This is before. . .

And you'll have to return on Monday to see more.

Back. . .

Things have still been busy down here, even though we had our first vacancy of 2014 at the end of August.

This is the time that we shut down each tree house for a week and sand, strip and re-varnish them. September and October are the only months that we can do so, as those are the only months that we're not completely full.

We actually had to start planning out the closures in April or May of this year, as enough reservations were rolling in for September and October.

We will actually have some pictures coming up -- of the art department, not by the art department.