Greetings blog fans. Iīm out of the country, so that means blog updates. Good times.

Lissy and I are currently in Costa Rica, at the foot of the Arenal volcano in La Fortuna. We arrived in San Jose on Saturday where we spent the night. Early sunday morning we took the local bus ($4!) for four hours to La Fortuna which is a little town at the foot of a volcano that has been erupting continuously since 1968. Apparently if itīs clear you can see the lava flows from the town... but thereīs no chance it will be clear during our visit.

Today was the first non-travel day of the trip. We really packed it in: we spent a few hours this morning doing some canyoneering. This involves making your way down a narrow canyon, rappelling down waterfalls. Two of the falls were 150 and 220 feet, so it was no joke. Usually these kinds of tours are a bit week, but this was quite good. Then we had a two hour break, and started another tour which involved a variety of activities. We drove to the other side of the volcano to see the lava (we didnīt see any, too cloudy). Then we hiked through the jungle to a really nice waterfall where we went for a swim. Finally we drove down the road to some hot springs.

Usually hot springs on these kinds of tours are pretty terrible: big swimming pools filled with flabby tourists in tepid water. These were different. We stopped on the side of the road, just after a bridge and the guide said to get out. We walked down under a concrete underpass, where about 3 inches of hot water was flowing over a concrete slab and guide told us to slide off the edge of the slab into the darkness (it was pitch black). Turns out there was a nice pool there, and you could hardly tell it was next to the highway. Then we spent some time sliding on our backs under the underpass in three inches of water, and finally headed up stream a little to a spot where a hot stream met a cold one. Pretty good.

Tomorrow is whitewater rafting. Wednesday we head to the coast.