Moving...

I've moved again. This is my ninth move in the last six years since graduation. The last move was international but this one was within Costa Rica. Joe D and I have moved from our loud, road-side condo in Escazu into one of the three side-by-side patio homes in Belen that Trax leases. The girls house is one west of us and JP and Rachel are one east. I've hooked my ipod up to the speakers Jack left behind and am enjoying Fiona Apple and a Bavaria Dark (the best beer CR has to offer) on the couch with a cool breeze blowing in from the patio.

Last weekend some coworkers and I headed out to Manuel Antonio (the national park where I recently went with my family). We scored some rooms at the amazing Hotel Parador. We arrived Saturday morning and that afternoon I convinced a few of them to take the same catamaran snorkeling tour that my family did.

It a was beautiful boat ride as before, but this trip was leaving something to be desired. Instead of my six family members having the boat to ourselves it was packed with over forty. We stopped to snorkel and they made us take live preservers and only gave us twenty minutes compared to the hour or more that my family had. After returning reluctantly to the boat I found that many people had been stung by small jellyfish. The sun was getting low when the boat set sail again. We set out from the bay looking for dolphins and after a long stretch of doubt we spotted fins and one jumping just west of us. The boat turned toward them and everyone rushed to the front to see the dolphins playing in front of it. At first they were dark blurs just under the surface, but then my eyes adjusted and I watched them weave back and forth under the boat, chasing each other, then leaping suddenly out of the water.

Two weekends ago Tony V was visiting us from the Boston office. He was supposed to fly home, but the East Coast was being overrun by a huge blizzard, and so I volunteered to show him around. That Saturday (which was also Joe D's first back) the three of us set out for the hour and a half drive to Volcan Poas. A dormant but by no means dead volcano. (Sidebar: It's silly how often Spanish words are the same as English words but with "o" on the end. Absurdly, the English word volcano becomes volcan in Spanish.) I'd been up the mountain three times previously and it had always been cold and cloudy. The one time I went all the way up to the crater I only saw fog and a seismic sensor just below me. It was perfectly clear in the morning but I knew clouds would encroach by afternoon. I hauled up the road and walked quickly once at the park. Tony and Joe must have wondered what had gotten into me.

At the top we looked out over the top of a cloud-filled horizon. It was rising fast but low enough to leave the crater exposed. There was a green lake with white steam rising out from crevices all around it. The wind would dance the steam around the surface of the lake. Where the steam rose close to the side of the crater the gray rock was stained with that same sulfurous green. The last major explosion had blasted down the west side of the mountain. Nothing grew on the grey rock streaked with a clay red. You can only look for so long before feeling the need to move on, but we looked for a long time.

Move after move it's all been worth it.

28!