Sitting in the shade--Jill in a hammock, me at a table--next to the outdoor bar that is stocked with soda and cerveza that you help yourself to on the honor system. We're back from a morning of snorkeling and a wonderful lunch found at a Pizzeria run by an Italian man just off the roadside along Playa Guinos. About the snorkeling: well, we were worried. I had never gone before, so I didn't know what to look for; Jill had gone when she was in Hawaii as a kid, but nothing here seemed to match her recollection of that time. That's because, as near as we could find, that there are no constant coral reef still-water communities along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Instead, the snorkeling opportunities are in the tidal pools sheltered by large rock outcroppings that break and smooth the waves.

It took me a bit of time to get the hang of breathing through my mouth alone, and a few minutes of frustration trying to fit the goggles over my glasses and not getting a fit. I swam for awhile without my glasses, and saw some of the many little yellow striped fish and the larger, longer dull silver fish. Then I found that I could stuff my glasses, folded up, into the space between my face and the goggle lens, and the whole undersea kingdom was opened up before me. Jill and I saw a large, fat, bright yellow grouper who obviously had few natural enemies based on his total nonchalance around us. We also saw some thin, yet tall brown-striped fish and some thin, translucent ones that blended in well with the sand. In smaller pools, Jill found sea slugs munching on the fungus growing on the rocks, and we saw a variety of sand crabs along the beach.

The day before while walking on the beach we found a hermit crab. He was very small--Jill thought he was probably making his way from the sea to the beach for the first time-quickly crawling up the shore for a few inches, then disappearing into his tiny shell. Jill picked him up and I took a picture of him as crawled out of his shell into her open palm.

We had only taken 1,000 colones with us for lunch, so when we stopped at the pizzeria, I was a little worried. The waitress spoke no English, but when a man came out to pull the walls that they used to hide the kitchen from view of the balcony where we were seated, I said hello and introduced ourselves. That's when we found out he was from Italy, as we exchanged how much of each language we knew. I explained that we had only 1,000 colones, and we just wanted a small lunch and a couple of sodas. Initially we ordered a pizza, but they had just started the pizza oven, and it was going to take 40 minutes for it to be hot enough to cook. We switched to a bowl of Arrabiata-a pasta dish with a sauce of crushed tomatoes, garlic, basil, and mozzarella cheese. From the man's introduction as a native Italian, I had hopes that the food would be authentic and my wish was granted. Possibly it was also so good because we had been for so long without pasta, which is pretty much one of our staples as would-be vegetarians. But, then, I doubt it--I think it was just good.

As the trip begins winding down, I have a moment to look back on it. Obviously, I did not write enough every day, but I'm going to go easy on myself this time because this was the first trip that I have attempted to make notes as we went along. As for the structure of the trip, Jill and I think we may have done a little too much planning on this one. Our previous trips have been much different-spur of the moment jaunts to London or New York to stay with relatives or friends while exploring the new city or country. Even our first trip together, in the summer of 1989, was a unscheduled tour of the U.S. east coast for six weeks, with a couple of planned stops. This was the first time that we had utilized the services of a travel agent, for one thing. I don't think we would have managed to make this type of trip without an agent, but now we are a little wiser about what we should ask for. The items that were arranged and that we didn't have a difference with were the river rafting and the 4x4 rental vehicle (in fact, we had not originally planned for the 4-wheel drive vehicle-- Randy had recommended it to us, but it was an extra $100--we decided to go with his recommendation after reading about the road to Monteverde in several guidebooks). The hotels that he had booked us into at both Monteverde and Tamarindo were a little too "tourist" for us--catering to people just a step removed from the cruise ship league (especially the Hotel Tamarindo Diria, with its full service bars and water aerobics in the mornings). They were interesting, but my feeling was that the Ticos who worked in these hotels resented the tourists more than they were happy to serve them. And, finally, we know what we like--natural attractions over man-made (well, at least in developing nations). What we enjoyed most during our stay-the turtle tour, the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve at 6 a.m., snorkeling, rafting--were what we had come for, not poolside service or fawning Ticos at a mountaintop hotel.