I again went to a beach this weekend, but I didn't leave until late in the afternoon on Saturday after watching the games on television. I was headed to the far point of the nearby Nicoya peninsula to explore Costa Rica first national park. This meant that I returned to the beach town of Puntarenas where I waited to catch a ferry. The ferry took about an hour and a half and it was after 10 by the time I arrived at the peninsula. The bus driver wanted 6 dollars for the ride to the beach town, so being stubborn and cheap I decided to walk 11km instead. It was raining slightly and the road was pitch black, I could hardly even see the yellow line and I often stumbled into 6 inch deep potholes filled with water, but it was worth it. I didn't get up in time for the early morning bus to the park I was originally headed for, so i went to another nature preserve instead at Curu beach.

The park is full of hiking trails and they are trying to reintroduce the squirrel monkey and the scarlet macaw, which are not found in this part of Costa Rica. The trail to the beach led through a cattle farm and I was surrounded by a hundred cows staring at me intently. I got to the beach and I had to choose from among the 10 or 20 trails to follow. I was still tired from the night before so I decided to take a short looking trail to a secluded beach and relax a bit. Two hours later I finally reached the beach. The trail was marked 'difficult' on the map, but they should have used a stronger word. Most of the trail was incredibly steep as it climbed the coastline cliffs and the rest of the trail I had to basically blaze my own path through the underbrush. There were markers on the trees, but many time I had to retrace my steps because I had lost the faint trail. In addition there were many spiderwebs strung over the path and I was constantly wiping the webs and sweat off my face. I even got bit in the neck by a spider.

Luckily the beach actually existed at the end of the trail and it was nice and definitely secluded. The sand was clean and white and it was the softest I have encountered so far in Costa Rica. It was also full of hermit crabs. I ate my lunch on the beach and it was very amusing watching the crabs. At first only one was brave enough to investigate my empty can of tuna. After watching the surf for a while I looked back and there were ten crabs around the can. The next time I looked I was surrounded by about 50 crabs all fighting over my leftovers. The big crabs would come in to grab and toss out the little ones, and the little ones would try to hold on to their scrap of food and scramble off to eat in peace. It was like a giant wrestling match. They polished off my leftovers in no time flat.

In order to avoid the trail again, I attempted to return along the shore. After narrowly avoiding my backpack being soaked by waves numerous times, I decided it would be easier to take the trail. It was much easier now that I knew what to expect. I returned to the ferry and this time I was able to enjoy the trip in the daytime as the ferry passed between numerous islands, including one that used to contain a high security prison that is famous in Costa Rica. I spent most of the trip talking to a firefighter from San Jose who went to the beach with his family for the weekend. He talked about his job and how he wants to move to Canada some day.

At my company, a bunch of the workers here have organized a mini two week soccer tournament during the breaks to reflect the World Cup. We play as two man teams on a small field outside the factory. It's a fun way to spend the break, but it way too hot when the sun is out.

This week I again stayed in Bagaces to do some more eye tests on Sunday. This time it was in the school and we did exams for children. The program is working well now, but there were still a few kinks to work out. I had a different type of machine this time, one for children, so I had a whole new set of Spanish phrases to practice. Also we recorded the data for the children so I had to ask for their names. I have the worst time understanding people's names. All Spanish spelling is phonetic, so it should be an easy matter to translate the sounds into words, but I usually can't make out anything. And then when they spell it out, it ends up being something simple like 'Irene'. I enjoyed the day anyway and I now can use two extra days off in the future for a four day weekend.

On Saturday I went to a new public pool that opened up in Bagaces for a birthday party. The pool is popular among the locals and even has a large water slide. It also has a soccer field and a volleyball net and on Sunday after the eye exams I went back to play soccer in the afternoon. I didn't have a chance to get to the beach this weekend but I saw on the news that the entire Pacific coast, from California to Chile, was experiencing extremely strong waves from a freak storm in the Pacific. Considering how big the waves were last week, it's hard to imagine how big these waves were. They even had to evacuate some beach houses in Costa Rica due to flooding from the waves.

The world cup continued and Costa Rica lost their last game as well. It was the first World Cup that Costa Rica was in and did not win a game, so there was lots of talk about disappointment but there still lots of games to watch. It was also a sad day in the house when the 5 month old half Rottweiler half Doberman was hit by a car and killed. It happened last week during Costa Rica's first game and the other puppy lost her playmate. The family got another little puppy to keep it company. It was also the birthday of the youngest son last week and now they are all teenagers at 15,14 and 13 years olds.

I had a nice long blog about my trip to the beach but just as I finished, my computer inexplicably shut down and I lost it, so I will give you the condensed version. I went to Samara beach about 4 hours away on Sunday and I walked along the coast there. It was very beautiful and the waves were huge especially out on the exposed cliffs. The major news story in Costa Rica on Monday was about 4 Americans drowned in a beach just south of where I was because of the large waves. I found a scorpion in my bag and got a sunburn but I had a good time.

Costa Rica is out of the world cup after a disappointing loss to Ecuador but we have a pool going at the factory that makes all the games very interesting to watch.

This will be a short today because I have less time this afternoon. We got two hours off to watch the first game of the World Cup here at the factory but we had to work later. Costa Rica lost, but they weren't embarassed by Germany and the two goals they scored were a big thrill here. With only 4 million people, Costa Rica is the second smallest country in the World Cup, only Trinidad & Tobago is smaller, so they held their own against Germany.

Last weekend Bagaces had another big fair and the company organized a stand at the fair where they gave free eye exams to anybody who wanted them. This was partly a service offered to the town and partly a good way to test the machines and my computer program. On Sunday, the first day, we discovered many problems, but we were still able to give the exams. On Monday morning we fixed pretty much most of the problems and things went much more smoothly, at least until we were rained out in the late afternoon. Since I wrote a lot of the program, I was one of the people performing the tests. It was good practice for my Spanish, however I don't know how useful the line "What are the numbers in column A, line 1?" is going to be in the future. I also don't think I was too useful in explaining eye problems to people, "You have problem with near eye". But overall I enjoyed myself and I am glad that my program seems to be working well.

I stayed in Bagaces this weekend. On Saturday I was invited to go horseback riding. I have never been on a horse before, so I wanted to try it out. Emer, who has a company in Bagaces, had two of her friends visiting from England who were going to try it as well. Jessica and Lydia, one of the girls who follows the monkeys, also came. The owner of the company I work for has a number of horses at his ranch and kindly allowed us to use them. I got a nice little horse who was very easy to handle and was really fast when he wanted to run.

Everything went well at first as we made it to the edge of town where we stopped at a restaurant to have lunch. However, as we were waiting for our food, Emer's horse started to panic for some reason and started pulling out the fence posts. Emer went to calm down the horse but when she was tying it up again it panicked again and gave her a serious rope burn. Eventually the horse was calmed and Emer got some treatment but she wasn't able to ride any more so we headed back. We spent the rest of the afternoon riding around the farm and I enjoyed the thrill of racing around on a horse. However I did mange to lose my hat in the process. It was blown off after my first gallop and I figured I would find it later, but when I went back to look for it, all I could see was endless cow patties that all looked exactly like my hat.

In the evening we went to the local hot springs which were only a half hour drive up the mountain from Bagaces. It is a local favorite because it has a good restaurant and they let you bring your own beer. There were many different pools with both hot and cold spring water, but since the air was quite cool in the mountains we headed for the hot ones. They were very nice and ten times cheaper than the ones in the more tourist heavy Arenal area. After the hot springs we spent the rest of the night in the local dance bar.

The next morning I was walking through Bagaces and missing my hat when somebody called me over from one of the houses. I went over and was surprised to see the ranch's night watchman holding my hat. Apparently the guard dogs found it because it must have smelled suspicious to them. I guess my hat is also able to magically return to me in addition to all the other special powers it has.

The build up to the World Cup is in full swing. TV is broadcasting all the pre-World Cup friendly games, not only for Costa Rica, but also for all the other teams they will face. The first game they play is the opening match of the World Cup against the host Germany next Friday and is greatly anticipated. They also play against Poland and Ecuador. Apparently they have a fairly good chance to advance to the next round, however their team has looked pretty bad in the friendly matches.