Saturday 11/15/08

Today was family road trip day! I was so excited to hear the news because last Saturday we literally sat around and did nothing but watch movies. When I woke up and ate some breakfast I was notified that we were going to Volcan Poaz, one of the volcanoes I hadn’t visited during either of my trips here to Costa Rica. We headed out around 8:30 and made our way along the whindy roads of Costa Rica. We pulled over millions of times (to fix seatbelts, to move the noisy plates, to pee in the bushes. We pulled over for pretty much anything and everything). Two of our coolest “pull-overs” were at two different waterfalls. I had seen the waterfalls on my very first bus ride to La Virgen, but didn’t have the chance to get out, explore and take pictures, so today was exactly what I had hoped to do. We eventually hopped back in the car and finished the journey to Poaz. When we got there we realized that locals pay 1000 colones (2 dollars) and tourists pay 5000 colones (10 dollars). We did our best to pass me off as a tica and we succeeded and I got into the park for $2. We wandered down the trail and eventually made it to the look-out point. It was cloudy at first and I was concerned it was going to be like my first trip to a volcano earlier this trip (Volcan Irazu), but luckily it cleared up and we got to see the crater, take lots of pictures and enjoy our time exploring the volcano and smelling to strong smell of sulfur. One random thing is that we’ve recently been calling my dad (Licho) Santa Claus because of his big beer belly gut and the nickname has stuck. All day whenever we’d lose him or he’d be trailing behind my mom would simply yell for Santa. It caught quite a bit of people off guard as he would respond as if everything was normal. After spending the morning at the volcano, we headed back out by the parking lot, found a picnic bench and ate our homemade lunch of arroz con pollo. My family was fascinated by a little squirrel that came and ate near us and I told them to come to Oregon where there are plenty. As we made our way back to La Virgen, we stopped again for everything and anything including a small lagoon where we took some more pictures. We eventually got home around 4 and enjoyed looking at all our pictures on the bigger screen of the computer. While the boys watch Sylvester Stallone movies, I taught Maria how to make Rice Krispy treats and she taught me how to make arroz con leche (Kim, I think this is the treat you had mentioned a friend really enjoyed). Before dinner, Maria, Miguel and I went to the internet café to get their computer looked at because it wasn’t working. It took forever to fix and so we searched google for my family members (Mom and Dad, there are pictures of you when I googled your name) and used Google Earth to show them where I live. We came home and ate dinner and somehow got into an amazing conversation about millions of things. We finished the night by watching the grand finale of “Bailando por un Sueño” where Franklin and Viviana (our favorites) won! Today felt like how I would spend a Saturday in the States and therefore I felt especially “at home”. Prior to this trip I didn’t realize how much I love this feeling.