On Tuesday, July 7th, we drove to Washington D.C. to get ready to catch our flight to Costa Rica. Other than a pretty lengthy delay on the flight from Atlanta to San Jose, the trip was fairly uneventful. Once we arrived, we drove to our hotel at the foot of one of the most active volcanoes in the world, Arenal. This is Madeline with the smoke and ash of Arenal's lava flow behind her.
The hotel is situated on a gorge leading to the volcano. In order to get from the guest rooms to breakfast and the main office, we had to cross this suspended bridge.
Costa Rica is one of only two places in the world where squirrel monkeys have survived. Our guide book said that only about 1,500 of these monkeys are left in the world. Joanne caught this pair in a tree just outside an open air restaurant where we ate one night.
The Costa Rica trip was a working trip for me. We took two students along from the college to do work collecting and testing river water for heavy metals and other types of contamination and then documenting our findings in a database and geographic information system. One of our first rivers was Rio Reventazon. The bridge across the river was quite dangerous, so we decided to descend the fairly steep bank, hop across some shallow water on rocks, and take our water samples from the edge of the river. All of that went off without a hitch.
The next day, we were to sample the Rio Tarcoles. When we arrived there, the bridge was much more favorable, so we decided to pull our water samples using a long string over the edge of the bridge. It's probably good we did -- when we looked off the edge of the bridge, this is what we saw:
I called to the girls and told them to come check out the crocodiles. They counted at least 17, one of which didn't like our water sampling tools very much and came over to investigate.
We were set to go to Tortuguero, an area on the Carribbean coast of Costa Rica that is only accessible by boat. Unfortunately, we waited for 2 and 1/2 hours but the boat never showed up, so we ended up staying at an, um, interesting hotel. It was kind of like a little zoo -- they had a little white rabbit, a koi pond, an albino shelled turtle, and this friendly parrot that hung out on Joanne's shoulder:
On Sunday we attended church at the chapel behind the San Jose temple. It was an awesome place to go to church, even if we were really late.
More to come in week two in Costa Rica.
Matt
And then the city of Chicago oput on a fireworks display over the water to celebrate with us.
On Friday evening, we went to a very tasty Brazilian churrascaria. This is my dessert -- awesome chocolate cake. 
We tried to go to a Cubs game on Saturday afternoon before our flight home, but alas, I should have gotten tickets much earlier in the year, it was sold out so we merely enjoyed the atmosphere of the ballpark area (at least I did), and ate some nachos.
So that was our week in Chicago. Soon, Karl and Jolene will come to visit and our endless summer will continue! Sadly, I can already see the end of the endless summer on its way.
