Back in San Jose, following roughly five hours of rafting and a two hour bus ride back. Lots of excitement. We got up for a seven a.m. breakfast of fruit salad (papaya, banana, pineapple, and orange), pancakes and ham with fresh Costa Rican coffee. Then it was back into our damp bathing suits and wet shoes, and into the river.

After a couple of rapids, we must have gotten over-confidant. At one rushing movement, our raft tried to take a rapid sideways and Danny was dumped into the brink. He was down for quite a bit of time it seemed, but then that may just have been a perception in the stress of the moment. When he popped up, he was by the boat, so it was no problem getting him back in. From there, we had some more fun--the river was quite low, and this made it a little more technical in how one handled the rapids. Fernando said our group would be one of the last to ride the Pacuare this year as the dry season takes its toll on the river.

Right before lunch, we had to beach and portage the raft. A tree had fallen into the river, blocking raft access, although John was able to take it in his kayak. We stopped and ate lunch here--sandwiches and fresh fruit. Fernando, John, and Jimmy threw cookies and bread out into the river at where we were, feeding the hundreds of previously invisible fish.

From where we ate our lunch, we could see a bridge that traversed the chasm that had been carved by the river, approximately 100 feet above the water surface. Fernando said that there is where "they" plan to build a dam that would block up the Pacuare for at least 60 kilometers upstream, i.e., the part that we had been rafting in the past two days. The dam would provide electricity that Costa Rica would sell to its neighbors in Nicaragua and Panama.