Pura Vida!

Lo hice bien a casa de Costa Rica después de tener unas maravillosas vacaciones allí con mi hermana. Teníamos un tiempo de diversión explorando el campo, comiendo el alimento, y vinculación.

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I took a week off from running to explore the Costa Rican countryside with my little sister, Anna. We had a blast! Anna and I have spent everything Thanksgiving together since I moved to California; it's our tradition now and we really look forward to it. Next year, we're thinking about taking a Mexican cruise. Anyway, I obviously didn't get any runs in (although I did see other tourists out running in some of the small towns and I talked to one local waiter who asked me how much MP3 players are at pawn shops in the US because his broke and they are expensive in Costa Rica), but I still did get some exercise walking, hiking, zip-lining, and swimming.

If you know me, then you know I love to go hiking. I especially love hiking uphill. It's all about the challenge! We didn't climb any mountains in Costa Rica, but we did forge through some pretty rough and wet terrain:

One of the most fun things that we did on the trip was go on a zip-line canopy tour. I highly recommend it. The zip lines were fun, the rappel was pretty cool, and the Tarzan swing was wicked, to say the least.

After all of our adventures in San Jose, Arenal Volcano, Monteverde, and all the horrible roads in between, we ended up on the Pacific coast at Manual Antonio where we relaxed on the white sands and went swimming in the warm waters.

All that sun was baaaad for my pathetically white skin, despite SPF 45 and so I retuned from Costa Rica last Sunday feeling like burnt toast and looking like a lobster. People as white as me should be banned from beaches. Here's the photo documentation of both of our sunburns at dinner in our last night in Costa Rica:

Since I was so roasted toasted from the beach and also since I had to dive right back into work and teaching (and unpacking, cleaning, meetings, etc.), I wasn't able to get back to running until this morning at 5:40am when I met Diana for a 3.5 mile run. I am hoping to get some nice runs in this weekend, despite the cooler weather that is in our forecast (cool for SoCal at least). Stay tuned...

Oh, if you'd like to see all of my pics from Costa Rica and read the story of our trip, click here.