The End of the Jungle and Home Sweet Home

Well as the old cliche goes, all good things must come to an end.  Our trip ends with a spectacular sunrise over the national park, the warm jungle breezes and the screams of monkeys in our ears.

As usual, Rolando is waiting for us and sometime tomorrow I should have a picture of both him and our spectacular bus here for your viewing.  We had a nice leisurely three hour ride back to San Jose through linguini shaped roads over and down the mountain side.  I have to tell you passing through these mountains with massive vertical slopes of coffee plants, I have a greater appreciation for that cup of joe when I indulge.  I have to admit these people must be nuts to work on those slopes!  One fall and they are either dead or mamed for life.

Finally, the only down note of our expereince with Rolando came as we get to the airport.  We had probably assumed (although I could swear I asked the question) that we could pay with credit card... no such luck.  So as he sits at the curb, I have to dash into the ATM and make three withdrawls in a row in order to pull enough cash out to cover the cost of the weeks fees for Rolando and his van.  Now we had been purchasing Rolando his lunches every day at the clip of about $10-15 and provided him a tip that brought us to about 13% for the week (Costa Rican standard is about 10%) and he just looked abjectly dissapointed and didn't really have much to say to us after that.  Very odd and very dissapointing for us as we thought we'd been pretty generous the whole trip and never really asked too much from him in terms of driving us around early or late.

Anyway, I now sit on the comfort of my own couch missing the sounds of the surf and the jungle but as I always do, I will adjust.  The trip was fantastic and I would love to go back again soon!