Rio Celeste

Shaul is leaving tomorrow and I hope he had a good time. As a colleague told me early on, the neat thing about Costa Rica is not the monuments or the cities, but the great natural wonders. Last night, Rob and Rena took us to Playa Flamingo where their friend, a master chef, served us in style in a great hotel right on the beach. Wouldn’t you know it that there was also a casino on site where Shaul and I spent some pleasant hours after dinner…not quite enough to pay for the dinner, but enough to take a good bite out of it. Frankly, most of the Americans who live here tend to gravitate down to the Nicoya Peninsula and live on Playa Flamingo which they seem to ‘ooh and aah’ over because of the white sand or Tamarindo. I personally love Playa Hermosa where I live where the water and sand are great, I think, and it is always empty!

It was also great to show a new teacher some of Costa Rica. Since he has been here, he has only seen Playa Coco where he lives and has no idea about the real show here. Today we took him to Rio Celeste in Park Tenorio. About an hour or two from the school there are about five volcanoes and any one of them is great to see because it is always cooler up high, it is actually amazingly green as you can see from the pictures of the jungle and I continually see great new things every week. For example, I loved the huge waterfall l and this is the dry season) and the blue water from the sulfur. As we were climbing our way down we could hear the great rush of the waterfall and when we actually saw it, it was like Shangri La. I can’t wait to go back next week-end with a gang of teachers to see the rest of it. We did not get to the mud baths or the agua caliente, unfortunately.

What I did learn about myself this week is that I seem to have way more energy than many of my colleagues. I don’t seem to get hungry or tired, which begs the questions of why I am so overweight, but that is another question. As we were trekking through Park Tenorio I realized I only have a few years left to do this sort of stuff. I was grabbing tree roots coming out of the side of the hill just to not get killed as the path down was muddy, steep and slippery. I did make it in one piece, but it was not easy. Once my knees are completely shot it will be impossible to do what I did today, so I feel that from here on in I better see it all. Once the legs go, I will only be seeing these things on television or in book.