24 hours of fire and brimstone (and waterfalls and ocean)

Neel here. A brief recap of the last 24 hours:

• Saw a Volcano: Very cool. I wish I had a 'things to do in my lifetime' list, because it would be nice to cross "see smoking volcano" off of it. But I don't, so I guess a blog post will have to suffice.
• Soaked in Hot Springs: A fringe benefit of nearby molten rock is very hot water. The hotel puts it to good use as a series of 25 hot spring pools of varying temperatures. I played goldilocks: 95 was too cold, 152 was too hot, and 104 (plus a cold beer and fake waterfall) was just right.
• Did Not See a Volcano: We drove over to the other side of the volcano at night to see the red lava glow. Instead, we saw clouds. I have nothing against clouds, but glowing redhot lava would have been preferable.
• And as an Aside: The name of our hotel was "Baldi" - was this an unconcious nod toward our receding hairlines?
• Hung out at a Giant Waterfall: After leaving our future-namesake hotel, we checked out a very large waterfall (probably 200+ feet and large water volume). Beautiful! It also happened to be the first time that we actually saw a crowd of tourists - otherwise it's been stunningly deserted. Or, as I learned to say in horribly accented Spanish, "no persona."
• Like the Central American Version of Lewis and Clark: We spent the afternoon navigating across the western half of Costa Rica to discover the Pacific. Okay, well, our driver Rolando did the navigating. And the only thing we discovered was that Bill left his credit card at our lunch spot. However, the credit card was re-discovered, as was a cute hotel on the Pacific (I'm listening to the crashing surf as I type this).

Where there's smoke, there's... clouds

Relative to my expectations, the weather has been great - plenty of blue sky, occasional clouds and rain, but nothing that persists for too long. The food is tasty and the people friendly. Bill and I are making for good travel buddies: complementary personalities, laid back attitudes, and no particular agendas other than having fun. Now that we've reached the Pacific, I think we enter a new mode - beach bum mode! And on that note, time to go bum on the beach...