Pity Party

It is with great sadness that we said farewell to our fellow travellers this morning. As I am writing this the Loewen family is still in the air on their way back to Edmonton. We had such an action packed 3 weeks with Kyla, Shawn and the boys that it´s hard to believe that it is over! Life seems so dull with two less adults and children around. I know, I know we keep telling ourselves that we are fortunate to be staying in beautiful, hot, sunny Central America, but that doesn´t make it easier to say goodbye. When Joel gave me his goodbye hug, he told me how much fun he had on the trip, and that was when the tears started! (tears for me... Joel was fine). Steve and I moped around Alajuela for the day, returning to the hostel for another 4 hours of sleep (card games and Settlers last night went late and the 5:30 wakeup this morning came quickly). This afternoon we treated ourselves to large iced mochas with lots of whipping cream on top. We are feeling a bit better now.
This afternoon we considered our options for the next leg of the journey. We enjoyed playing in the surf so much the last few times at the beach that we´d like to take some surf lessons for a day or two so tomorrow we are heading to Playa Dominical (still in Costa Rica). After that we are heading to the highlands in Panama for some hiking, more coffee, and fresh picked citrus fruit. In about 10 days we´ll arrive in Panama city to check out the canal and catch a flight to South America where we will visit parts of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru over roughly 10 weeks. We now have our guidebook for South America and what we´ve learned is that South America is a lot bigger than Central America. That means travel days will be a lot longer and we won´t want to do too much backtracking. Some of the things we are looking forward to are the Chilean Andes, Argentinean vineyards and wonderful steaks (we really haven´t had good steak since we left), the salt lakes of Bolivia, and the Sacred Valley of the Incas in Peru.