prime real estate

today (and tomorrow), i have the best office in the world... or at least, its up there. my office in san jose closed for the rest of the week and, realizing how much i'd be wasting my time in an apparently fantastic country, i decided to relocate to the west coast for a few days. with wifi and my laptop, i'm pretty portable.

so. i'm in manuel antonio. its touristy but, you can see why. its where jungle meets beach over giant cliffs. who wouldn't want to come? who wouldn't want to develop fabulous real estate that i want to buy? who wouldn't want to tempt me with fantastic hotels that jet out openly over cliffs? san jose and kitchener will be tough after this. people at the hostel keep saying how crappy it is that i have to be tied to my laptop here but, not so bad. at this point, i'm feeling somewhat at capacity for tourist activities. i'm pretty thrilled if i can have really good espresso.

last week was when i realized how down i'd let myself get in san jose. working 9-5 was good, but not exciting. missing home and friends, i found myself with a pre-bisco style countdown to sept 30th... dumb. a month is no time and i'm going to be tied to all of that forever. so, i headed off to a volcano.

volcano was pretty but, lacked lava. well, apparently we saw lava but honestly, more like a rock slide. i guess at night it is more impressive but of course, we only saw fireflies by the hundred (arguably prettier than red hot lava... but not as impressive to talk about). met an australian guy who was hitting a similar point of being tired of traveling. not an easy thing to own up to when its been such a huge and defining point of your life but... it was good to talk about. and gave me that final gust to really take advantage of my last little while. so, i went and belayed myself down some waterfalls before my busride back to the city. it is about as beautiful as you could dream belaying down tropical wateralls could be. pictures with a crappy waterproof camera don't come close to capturing it. sad.

wouldn't you know it that the australian guy saw real lava the night i left.

went reluctantly back to san jose and my host-mom's strange dependency on hotdogs and bologna in meals for two days... work still good, and is getting hectic. with such little time left i'm feeling a bit pressed and seem to be working stupidly long hours to make the most of it all. it will be nice to have this project wrapped up so i can turn my head to new ones.

anyway. on tuesday as i frantically typed and multitasked with facebook chat, skype, and 5 billion word and outlook documents, evelyn mentioned that we'd be closed. one more thing to think about. the beach, recommended by other travelers, was an obvious choice. today was just as productive but i managed to get in a walk through the jungle and a (delicious) local espresso. and a few bags of coffee to bring home.

this weekend... apparently its whale season so i'll try to see some of those. or maybe just sprawling on the beach trying to get a final bit of sun before a long canadian winter. oh the choices.

two weeks til home (i have a less aggressive countdown still going...). i wonder if my sheets at home will smell as aggressively of bounce sheets as my ones at this hostel do. if this place has bedbugs they've certainly fooled me with super potent cleaning products. and i'm spreading all my too-traveled clothes out on them so that they smell as nice too.