do you know the way to san jose?

so i'm not technically in costa rica anymore, but i am currently without computer at home (it died a slow and painful death i'm told). just got back tonight and happened to have the opportunity to use someone elses... so i figured i'd do a quick little update while i have access.

so last i wrote it was beaches, beaches, and more beaches... and i think there was another one - we went to playa tamarindo and spent a few days there. it was actually a great beach, but it's a very touristy, very rich gringo area. we managed to find a hostel that was a decent deal, and well, everything is close to the beach. a lot of the restaurants were on the pricey side, but we had some good food and spent a lot of time at the beach working on my tan (and oh my am i tan now - jealous? all you pasty northerners? :P )

after tamarindo we headed inland to arenal volcano. it's the most active volcano in costa rica and it last had a major explosion in 1986, but it's also had some smaller explosions in 1991 i believe. so you can hike into some of the old explosion spots and every once in a while (at least twice during our hike) there is an actual explosion. though really all you can see in the daylight is the ash shooting up into the air. at night you can see the lava actually shooting up out of the top and starting to stream down the side of the volcano - it was sooo cool.

another cool thing about the active volcano is the hot springs it creates. we went to this place called bondi hot springs where they have all these different pools that are various temperatures based on which shoot off of the stream they come from. lots of fun. there was even a swim up bar - and pricey drinks.

after arenal it was a long journey back to san jose so that i could fly home. didn't really see or do anything in san jose, just had some food and went out for some beers.

this morning i woke up early (6am) to get a taxi to the airport. a long day of flights and airline regulation hassles and now i'm finally home. well, sort of. i'm at my nana's. and it's freezing. haven't taken my jacket off yet and we've been inside for the past 4 hours.

so my plan was to do a few posts over the next week or so and put some pictures up - but depending on when the new computer arrives... i don't know when that will be. but for now, i'm home. still trying to plan my future... possibly back to costa rica... who can say.

:)