Saturday, breakfast at Marie’s and hung around at the beach.

We walked up the beach to look at some condos on the beach to rent next year if we can come again and bring all our children. It’s doable.

Lunch at Marie’s—guacamole and salsa. In the evening, we drove into Liberia (pop. 2000?) for their annual fair, which turned out to be an old-fashioned seedy carnival with amusement park rides, a midway with games of chance, and lots of snack foods.

One booth said, "Carne de ?" I asked what kind of meat it was, and the owner said, "Cheap!" I thought he meant cheap meat, but it turns out he meant "Sheep." There was a large rickety wooden arena which we entered to watch the corrado de toros, the running of the bulls. They let the bulls that will later die in a bullfight loose in the bullring, and the population is invited to enter the ring to try to dodge the bulls, who try to gore the people. Score one for the bulls, as one gored a man right in the gut, tossing him high into the air. An ambulance took him off (the man). We didn’t stay around to watch the bull get his later.

We arrived back in Brasilito for a late-night pizza at Il Forno.

     Sunday, we woke up early for a last breakfast at Marie’s, checked out of the hotel, and drove north of Liberia to the Buena Vista Lodge at the Rincon de la Vieja, a mountain reservation at an active volcanic crater.

There were simple functional rooms at $30/night and dining hall eating with one menu choice (although they graciously cooked some tofu for Neal. Carol, Neal, and Andy went for a long hike to a waterfall and natural pool. The water is cold mountain water, slightly effervescent, loaded with minerals (which, I can tell you, promote both regularity and flatulence). After lunch, we all went on a two and a half hour horseback ride on mountain trails on good horses that were eager to run. We went to another waterfall and then to some mudbaths and hot springs. We were a bit sore afterwards, but it was a wonderful experience. We returned to the lodge as the sun set over the mountains and sea.

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     Monday morning, we stopped near the airport at a German bakery for an apple strudel and espresso. We stopped by the airport before returning our car and got excellent exit row seats with tons of legroom. However, while waiting at the plane, they told us that Boston was probably closed in from the snowstorm and that they were arranging to take us all to another hotel in Costa Rica for another night’s stay. At the last minute, though, they boarded us and said we’d try for Boston, and if it was closed, we’d go to Baltimore. The flight left on time and arrived in Boston right on time, just as Logan was closing. What a great flight! We flew through immigration and customs (they wanted to get right home, too) and took the van to the hotel where I had paid off the doorman the week before to let me park there for the week. Unfortunately, the doorman I had paid off wasn’t on duty as he had promised, and it took some further negotiation with his replacement to get our car out of the lot. The snow was really coming down now, and, although almost no one was on the road, there were no plows out all the way to Providence. We drove through a blinding blizzard with three to four inches of snow on the road. You could only guess where the lanes were. People were spinning out and going off the road, but the BMW has traction and skid control and did very well. I kept it at 25 mph, and the trip took two hours. At home, we couldn’t make it into the driveway and had to shovel our way in. Why do we live here?

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Andy and Neal stayed overnight and left early in the morning for New York, fortified by Carol’s slow-cooked McCann’s Irish Oatmeal, a breakfast even better than Marie’s.