Wet & Dry

My friends Aidan and Paul are here at the moment. They arrived last Sunday week. We were in Puerto Viejo for a wet and dry weekend. This is my last week in school for this semester, and my Christmas party is on Saturday.

Dry weekend
---------------
The mayoral elections were held on Sunday. You may remember from the Presidential election that there is a dry law in Costa Rica, and it kicked into force this weekend. Terrible timing for my visitors. The sale of alcohol was banned from midnight on Friday until midnight on Monday.

Wet weekend
----------------
We went to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean for the weekend. The weather, particularly on Saturday, was amongst the wettest I've experienced since I got here. While the wet October last year was pretty bad, I wasn't on holidays and entertaining visitors, so this seemed a lot worse.

During the week Paul and Aidan went up to La Fortuna to visit the Arenal volcano, but despite staying for two nights, they didn't get to see any lava. It was cloudy and rainy and they saw nothing. However, they did go horse-riding and had a canopy zip-line tour. This is something I haven't had the courage to do yet, being afraid of heights. You clip yourself onto a pulley and shoot across the rain-forest hanging from a wire.

Puerto Viejo
------------------
I was working until Thursday, so on Friday I met up with Paul and Aidan in San José, fresh from their Arenal trip, and we went down to Puerto Viejo. We had a nice night on Friday, before all the bars closed at midnight. In planning our weekend, we decided to buy spirits so we could just order coke, and top it up with rum or vodka. It's difficult to know how much you'll drink over a weekend though, and we vastly overestimated. I arrived home carrying 2 and a half bottles of spirits. Which they emptied out of my bag with much amusement at the police checkpoint on the way home.

Although weather-wise Saturday was a washout, Sunday was beautiful. We hired bikes and cycled 13km to the unspoilt beach in Manzanillo. It was beautiful, although we did get quite a bit of sun, and the back of my hands are burnt. I obviously didn't think to put suncream there, unaccustomed as I am to cycling here.

I came back yesterday morning, and the two have continued on to Bocas del Toro, some very picturesque islands in Panama.

End of semester
------------------------
This week is the last of this semester. It seems to have gone faster than most, but I'm looking forward to the time off. After Thursday I'm not back in work until January 18th. Our Christmas party is on Saturday.

Picture of the week
----------------------------
I'm just testing this feature. This week's picture is Paul and Aidan on the sunny beach of Manzanillo on the Caribbean. I'm testing the picture feature (rather than adding another 1,000 words), and if it's successful I'll give people the option of getting it on the email or not.
-----
Well, that's it for this week. I'll probably join the lads on the Pacific coast on Sunday for a weeks holiday before they go home.

Until next week,

Pura Vida,

Éamon

Today's headline from La Nación: Falling unemployment and rising job numbers in Latin America