Day 7 - Monday 6-01-04

This was a fun, but VERY long day. We got up at 7am and a bus picked us up outside for our all day tour to Arenal Volcano. We said goodbye to Ron's friend that was flying back to DC that day. The first stop along the way was a small village called Zaragoza, where we walked around in this pretty cool park that had sculpted hedgerows and was in front of a pretty church. it was a good get out and strech your legs stop and took some pictures. We got in the bus again and headed to Saartchi to a wood gift store (sorta hokey, but i spent $30 on some nice wood candle holders and cool boxes). We got in the bus again and drove to some random stop along the way where all these HUGE lizards were outside and people were feeding them and stuff. Had a pretty good ice cream cone. We headed towards Fortuna and then went to Tabacon Hot Springs.

Honestly this got boring really really fast, we were there for like 3 hours relaxing with people three times our age and none of them of our persuasion. It was really nice and really clean and if i was with a group of friends (other then just one!) or a spouse or something i can see where it would be nice to relax, but overall it was boring. We stayed there for a pretty tasty buffet dinner that was included in the price and then drove to the volcano. We drove to this interesting lookout point and could see some lava flows on the side, not a lot though, but overall the volcano was pretty cool. Had it been erupting more i would have thought it was better. We then made a long ride back to CR and got in about 4pm. We went out for dinner and i don't think we went out that night.

DAy 8 Tuesday 6/1/04. SJO-PHL

We got up and got going about 7 or 8am because Ron had a 955am flight back, so he got on his way and i remember getting up and going to check email, chatting, grabbed an early lunch of a sandwich and left the hotel about 11 00 for my flight, which was a bit too early. I got to the airport a good solid hour and a half and breezed through security. I ran into the same national geographic woman flying back and said hi, and as I walked by the people seated, much to my amazement was someone else i knew! It was a friend of my friend Jeff's I had met at a party. I ended up talking to him for the rest of the time with his parents too about their trip. I made an attempt to upgrade him, but first class was full. The flight was non eventful, I did give the flight attendant some round stones she had asked me for on the way down for her massage therapy business. We got in on time, and the flight back involved some sleep for me.