Friday, 29/2/08

The living room of our house. Many thanks to David Housman.

Woke up at 5:30 today cleaned up the house. We had to catch the bus for San jose by 7:20. The next shuttle to the bus stop was at 7:15 (waay too late) so we flagged down some unmarked taxi on its way out. (the driver insisted on using the "tu" form of everything...nobody does that in Costa Rica...except to Gringos apparently) We saw a monkey while we were waiting.

Thank god we had bought bus tickets earlier. We got on had front seats and took the ride to San Jose. Cool how the huge bus manipulates the sheer cliffs, narrow bridges, and flying oncoming traffic.

One of the lesser impressive views. Believe it.

There are no flat or straight roads in Costa Rica

We got off in el centro de San jose. Its a pretty cool downtown area. Very business class unlike anywhere else. All the cars seemed unusually clean.

Tia Gloriana was waiting for us and we loaded up and went to pick of the kids from their schools and head to volcan poas. We rode through alajuela, and saw great views of coffee fields and flowers. Strawberrys are a typical fruit of the area and were delicious and cheap.

Matty lookin into the Crater. That lake is 1.6 km wide, 75m deep.


Path to the Lagoon

The volcano was awesome. It was so big. The forest here was very dense but had coniferous trees and different plants from Punta Leona's rainforest. The lagoon was a previous caldera (now extinct) and it with the trees and hills behind it reminded me of Michigan. Despite the fact we were at 7500 ft above sea level.

This is the lagoon. Nothing can live in it. Its pH is like 3.

Driving through Alajuela was nice. It kind of reminded me of Puntarenas but without a beach and more active.

We came back home and watched Ratatoullie with the kids. So tired after less than three hours sleep for two days now. We ate dinner with Gloriana's family. It was great, and they tell a lot of jokes. They all kind of speak some English, but even Jim had a hard time keeping track of their Spanish gossip about the kids.

We had some tuna lasagna and a salad with carrot cake for dessert. And of course coffee. They are a fun family. Gloriana's mom speaks better English than me.

I like how women greet/meet people with a kiss on the cheek.

Now we are watching the matrix. I'm passing out.

Ciao.

Carin/o = sweet heart (a lot of movies are aired in English with Spanish subtitles)