I had another bad night last night but was able to rally and we rented a minibus for $US80 to take us all up to Volcano Poas. Claudio hadn't been able to see anything on Thursday but we were hopeful for today. It was about a 1.5 hour drive and Luis commandeered the minibus!

We stopped at the fruit cart (click here for photos)

There were beautiful coffee fields all along the way. We stopped at one place and bought strawberries. They tasted incredible. We also saw an old man with two oxen and an ox cart. Of course we had to get some photos of that! We piled all the kids in the cart - including Jerling - one of the cousins who went with us.

We finally arrived at the volcano and parked in the lot. It was a little bit of a hike up to the crater and I was taking it slow! Luis showed us these plants with giant leaves that he called "Poor Man's Umbrellas". They were so exotic looking.

We got to the crater and it was perfectly clear! The volcano is dormant and the crater is filled with a lake of bluish-green water. There was steam coming out of the holes around the side. After we took tons of pictures and gazed at it for a while, we hiked on the path through the woods up to a beautiful lake in the park. We saw lots of squirrels and birds. In the gift shop I

Volcano Poas (click here for photos)

bought the kids some t-shirts and Darby got a really cool wall hanging made out of beads in the design of a butterfly.

After leaving the volcano we headed to Jerling's house. She actually lives in the town of Poas and had been visiting relatives in San Joquin this week. We had lunch at her house with her mother, Jolene (pronounced Joe-Lenny), and visited with all kinds of relatives and friends that were there. Darby and I were exhausted so we both took a nap there but Grayson ran all around like a wild man with the other boys. None of them spoke a lick of English but he seemed to get along just fine and I never saw him run so much in his life!

We finally got home around 5:30pm and it had been a long day. I was starting to feel not so great again and I was very worried as we were scheduled to leave for Flamingo the next day. Alba finally convinced me to see a doctor and drove me into town. I saw Dr. Fabian Lara. He was half German and half Costa Rican so he spoke German, Spanish and English all perfectly. He was blond haired and blue-eyed which seemed so strange there. He determined I had the regular old stomach flu - not a parasite of something from the water - and he gave me a big old shot in the rump! It hurt pretty bad although I am not sure if the pain or the humiliation was worse. He also gave me a prescription and told me it might take a week to get over it completely! The shot temporarily relieved my symptoms and I was able to sleep through the night for the first time since I got to Costa Rica!

Click here to continue to the next day »