On our own

Good morning everyone!
Well I watched the sun come up over Volcano Arenal this morning...what did you do? Arenal is near the town of La Fortuna, we are actually on the other side of Arenal from La Fortuna but this is on the lava flow side and thus the reason we chose to stay where we have. Our hotel is named Linda Vista del Norte, in case you want to Google earth it. We are in room 18 in case any of you want to stop in. :-) You have to take an 8 klm. drive on one of the most desolate and rough roads I have seen but once here the hotel and view are worth the drive. We have been able to see the peak both days so far which is almost unheard of this time of year. Actually weather has been amazing so far, usually its clear in the morning then clouds up and rains every afternoon, but while we have clouds everyday, we have had no rain, so the clouds just work to cool things down as it can be hot and humid in the afternoon. We are only 10 degrees from the Equator here so we are closer to the sun and thus it can be much hotter to the skin. Right now Arenal is coughing out smoke and lava, he's been rumbling too which sounds like thunder. We are probably about 2 miles from the base, which really is pretty close. I really enjoyed the hot tub last night, then ended the night sitting on the back patio after everyone else had gone to bed and watching Arenal do his thing.

Breakfast today was typical, toast with Pineapple jelly (a new addiction) rice and beans, 'squeaky' cheese, as Kevin calls it, its a native white cheese that squeaks on your teeth when eating, its really pretty good, eggs, fruit, juice and coffee or hot chocolate (another new addiction) the latter has a very diff. flavor than what we are used to in the states. Today we are going to Tabacon Hot Springs Resort, there we are going to enjoy the pools of hot water that run off Arenal, my knees can't wait! We will eat lunch there and then head maybe into some town and see whats there. I think tomorrow we are going to a place where we can do Bungee Jumping, Zip Lines and the Tarzan Swing. This where they have you on a long cable on platform and you jump off and free swing several hundred feet. I plan to do all 3! Wow! the ground just rumbled from Arenal, pretty cool. We may not be doing much hiking after Kevin hurt his knee lastnight, he was up in the pool while I was writing all you and Arenal started really working at sunset, so he ran down here to get the camera and on one of the steps his knee popped and he's been hobbling around since. I hope it does not get any worse.

Yesterday, the 9th, we rented a car and struck off on our own. Rafa said to get the smallest 4 wheel drive we could get. Kevin had priced them in the states and it was going to run close to $1,000. for the 2 weeks! Rafa has a nephew who is in the business and got a great mini SUV for about half that. It pays to have contacts! It was a little freaky heading out at first but once we got out of Alajeula it was really no big deal, roads were good and it was similar to driving in the states, the bad news...we have to drive back into Alajeula fri. May God have mercy on our souls.

We got to La Fortuna about noon so ate lunch at an open air restaurant, La Fortuna is a tourist town so the menu was mainly tourist food, I decided to get a hamburger w/ fries, not because I wanted it so much as I wanted to see what their idea of it was, pretty much the same only they also put a slice of ham on it, I guess they take the 'Ham' part of Hamburger literally.

Well more later, enjoy your day, we plan to!
Don