This weekend I went to Playa Flamingo which is on the Pacific coast. One of the people here in Saco had a friend visiting from the States and invited some people to come stay in a nice hotel on the beach.

The beach town is full of different types of resorts and it was an impressive site at night with the colorful lights of the resorts lighting up the ocean. The main beach at Flamingo had clean white sand and the hotel itself also had a small private beach that was a little rocky but also nice. At night it was protected from the resort lights which resulted in a great view of the stars. There was a bunch of meteors, including one that lit up the sky and left a smoky trail.

Most of the beach town catered to the tourists, so the restaurants were relatively pricey compared to the rest of Costa Rica, but there were some good ones. The dry season has just started and the town was still not very busy as the high season doesn't really begin until December.

It was an interesting week in Costa Rican soccer as the Central American club final was played on Wednesday. It was won after penalty kicks by Puntarenas, which is a club from the beach town of Puntarenas. Puntarenas only has about 50 000 people, so it was a major shock that such a small team could beat out all the teams from the big cities in Central America. All of Costa Rica was cheering for Puntarenas because the two big teams, Saprissa and La Liga, had already been eliminated.

This weekend I went for the first time to a canopy tour. This is one of those zip lines that let you fly through the trees. These type of tours are extremely common here and it is almost a Costa Rican tourist staple, so I figured I should try one out.

The place was about 30 km north of Bagaces on the slopes of the nearby Volcano Miravalles. I went with a friend of the owners and we only had to pay a fifth of the price normal tourists pay. There was another group of tourists from Florida that went with us. The first part of the tour was a steep kilometer or so walk up into the forest. The forest was a rain forest and was full of animals and birds. There was lots of toucans in the tree and agoutis (they look like big rats) on the ground and there were plenty of leaf cutting ants making trail. Then we reached the first platform and we were hooked up to the line and zipped down to the next platform. There were about 10 or 15 different platforms and some were steeper or longer than the others. On some of them you could go upside down or in superman fashion which really felt like flying over a forest. The final zipline was about 500 metres long and went all the way from one of the tallest trees in the forest back down to the road where we arrived.

The weekend before I went horseback riding again, but halfway through I had to stop for a soccer game. It was the first time I have played in the big stadium field and it was a lot of fun. The field was slightly square which made the goals closer together and the sidelines really far apart, but it didn't take too long to adjust to.

This week marked the return of the dry season. On Monday night the wind started to blow and it has been blowing ever since. All of the clouds in the sky are gone now and there is no rain. It is also unusually cold. It must be in the low 20's with a high wind chill factor. I actually had to use my blanket for the past few nights. I also started taking weekly dancing lessons in Bagaces so I can go from a horrible dancer to merely very bad. I am learning dances such as merengue, salsa, and kumbia which are always played at the nightclubs here.

This weekend was similiar to two weeks ago. I again visited a popular volcano near San Jose. This time it was Volcan Poas.

The bus left from San Jose at 8:30 am, but I decided to stay overnight in Alajuela, which is about 11km from San Jose and is where the San Jose Airport is situated. The bus passes through Alajuela on the way to the volcano. The guy at the hotel spoke pretty good english and he mentioned that he lived in Toronto for a couple of years going to school. There were a couple of nice cathedrals including one that had been completely restored after being damaged in a 1991 earthquake. I ate pizza at a Irish-American-Italian-Tico restaurant which had a nice balcony table which was one of the few times I've been above the ground floor in Costa Rica.

The bus arrived in Alajuela at 9:00 and it was an extremely clear day on the drive up the volcano. The guide book warned me that the volcano would almost certainly be covered in clouds by 10 am, but when the bus arrived at 11 am it was still sunny. The Volcano is in a national park and it is probably the most popular park in Costa Rica because it is so accessible. It was only a short km hike up to the edge of the crater. This volcano is slightly more active than the previous one I visited and there was some smoke rising from different parts and the smell of sulfur was strong at times. Apparently they have to close the park sometimes if the wind is wrong and the toxic gases are blown towards the people. There was a big lake in the crater which is normally a bright blue, but for some reason it was white that day.

There was another trail that went to an old crater. This crater had a lake in it which was still slightly acidic and was deviod of most life because of this. The trail went through dwarf cloud forest and there was lots of moss and flowers on the trees. The volcano is lower than the previous one I went to so it wasn't nearly as cold, especially in the sun. There was a very tame montane squirrel, which only lives at high elevations, that came right up to my feet to beg for food. I also saw a number of hummingbirds and other birds. There was also a museum that explained the history of the eruptions of this volcano and other interesting facts.

This weekend I went horseback riding again. I had been planning to go last week but it was rained out, but this week the weather was fine. This time we went through Bagaces and then along the Pan-American highway for a while on a trail. There is a good restaurant some kilometers out of Bagaces that we stopped at. The place is on top of a hill and it has a really good view of the surrounding area, including a nice sunset. Returning was quite a bit more difficult because the sun had gone down and there was no moon. Luckily the horses knew where they were going and they have pretty good night vision, so we got back to the stables without running into too many trees.

Earlier in the week I won about $50 playing poker, so I decided to spend it on a bike. I bought a nice 10 speed bike from a former coworker who moved back to San Jose and didn't need the bike. It's made getting around much easier. It takes 5 minutes to get to town when walking used to take about 20 minutes. I also plan to spend one weekend biking down to Palo Verde and finally see that national park that is so close and yet so hard to get to.