The tide was acceptable for a morning boat ride across Drake Bay (instead of walking). At breakfast, we saw some of our friends from the bar staff working outside, probably hauling supplies for an addition to the nine-room lodge. They had told us the day before that when there were not enough guests to justify three bartenders, they had to work outside doing manual labor.

As an example, the day before, the guy who drove our boat to Isla del Caņo, Carlos, spent the day unloading cement blocks from a boat at the dock.

We shared our boat with a couple from New York City, David and Katy. She was a fashionably-dressed, huge-sunglasses wearing editor for Jane magazine. He was dressed like a 1920s English colonist, missing only a pith helmet with his rolled-up long-sleeved collared shirt and khakis, like he was going to find Dr. Livingston. Katy wore knee-high leather boots and bright red lipstick to go hiking; David wore nice shoes to make water landings in the boat. They both seemed to enjoy themselves tremendously, and they were both impossible not to like.

The boat dropped us off and we got into a jeep to head back to the airport. While we waited for the plane, the airport employee (singular), who was there with his family, talked to us in Spanish. He said it was nice that we understood, since most people who came through spoke only English.

We asked him if the war had hurt tourism in the area, or if less Americans were coming through, but he said no, since it was "safer" in Costa Rica.

The plane arrived a bit late, flown by the same pilot as before. The weather was better off the coast this time, so the flight was short and smooth and we didn't fly through any clouds.

We landed in San Jose without our travel voucher, which we thought fell out along the jungle path to La Paloma, and so had no idea where we were supposed to go.

We wandered over to the main terminal and tried to buy a phone card, but no one seemed to know where we could do so. When we went downstairs, an aggressive rental car man managed to talk us into a van to Economy car rental, which we thought was not our company but was near several other companies.

Economy did not have our reservations, but they called our travel agency, and found that the travel agency only worked with two companies, so they told us they had found our reservation at Europecar and that someone would be over right away to pick us up.

A few minutes later, a Europecar arrived and shuttled us to another location, where they didn't have our reservation. But the guy behind the counter said there was only one other company that worked with our travel agency, so he called that company, and they said they had found our reservation and someone would be over right away to pick us up.

This time, they turned out to be right. The driver seemed enormously relieved to have found us - he had tried to pick us up at the airport, but gone to the wrong terminal, and then had been driving around San Jose looking for us.

Our car was a white Daihatsu with four-wheel drive and an extremely sensitive brake, which made for an interesting first couple of minutes behind the wheel, particularly since our first task was to make a left turn across traffic on a busy street.

The delays had cost us about two hours, and we worried about making it to Arenal before dark. From San Jose, we drove north on Highway 1, passing the airport and the nearby town of Alajuela. The roads looked Hawaiian, with jungle in the background and red dirt mounds lining the road. The lanes were narrow, and occasional passing lanes let us get around trucks and let everyone else get around us.

The streets had no names, but in the town of San Ramon the highway split off, and signs pointed us right to the volcano.

We stopped right after turning at a small soda called "Snoop's," where Eric ordered agua dulce by accident, thinking it was fresh water, which was something he thought he had learned in high school Spanish class. Agua dulce, here, turned out to be hot water with molasses in it, which Eric should have figured out because it was listed on the menu under "bebidas calientes," and offered an option "con leche."

Back on the road, we went long stretches without seeing much except farms and jungle. Isolated towns usually had a school and a church, and lots of school kids walking around on the streets. As it got later, we saw adults hanging out in front of their houses.

The houses were small, one-story, flat-roofed and bright colors, like magenta or powder blue. They had small front lawns, where people would gather to socialize. Most also had some form of garden on the side or out back, with chickens and maybe cows.

All the school kids were wearing uniforms, with dark blue pants and lighter blue shirts.

As we approached the town of La Fortuna around 5 p.m., the residences along the road got more and more frequent, until it became clear we were actually in a town. We made a left in La Fortuna, again following the volcano picture signs, and passed through a main street with restaurants and tourism offices before returning to the jungle again.

The weather was cloudy, and a dense fog obscured the volcano, which should have been easily visible from La Fortuna.

It was still hard to see has we made a left turn toward the Arenal Observatory Lodge, where we were staying. We followed a fairly rough dirt and rock road for 9 km to the lodge, which was a fair way up the volcano. We drove on concrete slabs set tire-width apart in the dirt to climb the last set of hills.

Our room at the lodge had a huge window facing the volcano. The lodge, according to an informational brochure, was built to house Smithsonian researchers studying the volcano. It was just getting dark as we arrived, so we were able to see the mountain for 20 minutes in the fading light, before it disappeared into the night. Clouds prevented us from seeing the whole thing.

We walked to dinner through the lodge's pathway in the jungle, which included a suspension bridge high over a creek. The dinner was unremarkable, as the restaurant tried too hard to offer real meals - pasta, meat dishes, etc - in American-sized proportions.

After dinner, we saw fireflies buzzing over the path, and a football-sized yellow toad hanging out in front of our room. Hari took a shower, the first time since San Jose we had had hot water, and we went to bed watching the volcano and the fireflies out the window.