I started my trip with a few days in Disneyworld where I had a conference. Disneyworld may be the worst place in the world, a kind of Orwellian Dystopia, where everyone is urging you to have a magical day despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s the kind of place where one of my work colleagues nearly got into trouble for jogging along the road. Clearly, I was happy to leave Florida and even happier when all our planes worked out and Erin and I met in the customs line in the San Jose Airport. We took a cab to our hostel, shared with these two Americans, neither of us were quite sure if the taxi driver had any idea where he was going. Somehow or other, we found our hostel-I’m still not sure if our taxi mates made it out of there. Our hostel, Kap’s Place, was extremely cute. Very friendly and full of French families and ceramic mosaics.
	We woke up fairly early the next morning to have breakfast and figure out where we want to go that day. We mention to Karla, the owner, that we’re interested in going to Arenal to see the volcano, and she suggests taking a tour up there, doing the tour, and then staying there instead of returning. We ask her when they leave, “today’s leaves in about 15 minutes,” she said. We packed in record time.
The tour took us the few hours over to La Fortuna, near one of the major active volcanoes in Costa Rica. One of the nice side effects of volcanoes is the hot springs.
	There’s usually a cloud that completely surrounds the volcano, but it was almost completely clear that day. There was a little eruption and we could see the gas puffing out the top. That night, after it got dark, we went and saw the lava flowing down the side of volcano.
Costa Rican places were very keen on folding towels into unnecessarily complicated shapes.
The next morning, we rented mountain bikes and rode to a nearby reserve. It was steeper than we expected and spent much of the ride up walking the bikes up the ridiculously steep hills. We were a little sweaty, but luckily, we were heading to a waterfall. We swam underneath the waterfall and in the natural whirlpools down the river, narrowly avoiding the school of fish that were either pirhanas or the equivalent of minnows.
	And had some yummy yummy beans and tortillas that we had packed for lunch. Mmm, mm good! Costa Rican food is well known for its wide variety. Breakfast: Rice and beans and eggs. Lunch: Rice and beans. Dinner: Rice and beans and meat.
We made our way down the mountain, amazingly without either of us getting injured. Back in town, we had a couple of hours to kill before dinner, so we went to the local crocodile farm. We got the deluxe tour from this kid who spoke no English. We saw lots of crocodiles and the kid tortured lots of crocodiles for us for no extra charge.
	The next day we discovered the joy that is Costa Rican back roads, as we took a Jeep-Boat-Jeep combo over to Monteverde Cloud Forest. The roads near the beautiful places they don’t upkeep as an ecological measure. It was very pretty, though.
The cloud forest was amazing. It’s hard to describe, but it’s just this denseness of life. Trees growing out of other trees. Tiny flowers, growing at the top of a 100 foot tree. We were looking hard for monkey or sloths, but we weren’t that lucky.
We did see some animals like these Racoon-ish things.
	And frogs.
	The next day, we took the bus, through even worse roads, to the Pacific Ocean. A place called Playa Tamarindo.
We settled into our room and spent the next day alternating between the pool and the beach, with a couple of trashy novels in hand.
	For a day, we rented a 4X4 where I got to test my driving skills on the roads, and explore some of the surrounding areas. I think the rental places make most of their money by not providing insurance for popped tires. Apart from the massive potholes and random boulders, there were a few other obstacles like these cows. Both of us survived the drive without developing that many grey hairs.
Rattled nerves aside, it was worth it.
	It was so sunny that even Erin went searching for some shade.
Other animals had other ways of cooling down.
	I was the big winner of the whitest guy on the beach award. It was also around this time when I realized that I hadn’t loaded the film in my camera properly, meaning that I hadn’t taken a single picture all trip. Luckily, Erin had been taking all the good pictures anyway.
We almost got to be regulars at this place called the sunset bar. It was run by this couple who only opened it on the weekends, and spent the rest of the week relaxing. They cooked some great food!
	The last morning we got up with the sunrise and walked along the beach, watching the fisherman heading out.
We had a little extra time, because we were planning to take the bus back to San Jose, but were convinced that flying would be a better idea. So I had a chance to write some postcards.
	This was the plane back to San Jose, taken from “inside” the airport. I didn’t tell Erin this, but I noticed when we were getting on that the wheels were held together with duct tape. Nevertheless, it was so, so much better than the thought of spending another 5 hours driving on those roads.
Tamarindo from the air.
	The end.