Cloud Forest, Hot Springs

Costa Rica is the last leg of our Central American journey and everything's changed: a new arrival brings a new dynamic, we've rented a car and are armed with a faulty road map, we've picked up two stranded travelers we recognize and the weather turns to torrent rains. Our bodies are a rainbow of bruises and bites and at the pool we point them out, play a game and sport them as badges of honor, can we name that injury on eachother? This sprain, that gash, where did it come from and who has the best, the biggest? We don't mention by the time we're healed, we'll be far away from the storymakers and street chickens, Imperial beer and the British we keep bumping in to.

Prices are up and we're counting our colones aloud...is there enough for rice and beans and ziplining both? It's hard to break the mold of cheaper places, we decide that we'll do whatever we want, a rule that should have gotten us into a lot more trouble by now.

So we walk in the clouds and slip in the mud, fly down lines over green valleys and turkey-necked cows, shacks and barns, coffee farms, we jump into the Tarzan swing and into a freefall and the forest echoes our screams. We get lost, we get found, leave blood all over the ATVs, Pina Colada glasses on the edges of beautified hot springs until the dignified waiter takes them away, eat mealy corn cakes at the Volcano Festival, drive many hours to find that the lagoon at the top of the crater's edge is closed and the view is sparse. We fight, laugh, shake our heads, sadly pack our bags and then, get on with our real life and try to remember how it felt when our biggest worries were how we'd ever manage to find a shower...