Costa Rica

I had a work trip to Costa Rica and while it was great to be back 9 years after studying abroad there, it was a pretty quick trip and I only really saw the hotel, US Embassy and road in between... On the last day, we did go to a nice restaurant with a great view of San Jose, but it was pretty touristy - at least, I finally got some Gallo Pinto!

Hotel pool - tried to go out one night after work and a huge cloud came as soon as I walked out the door :(

Hotel room - a bit nicer than the places we stayed as students...

Quick stop-over to meet with our office in Miami

Spring is Here!!

Tulips! I planted some last year and despite Waylon's best efforts to eat them all, we had most of the yellow ones and yellow/red ones bloom, but none of the red ones...perhaps Waylon found those more tasty...

We hosted six friends for "Orphan Easter." I finally got to use the china and fancy tablecloth and pitchers after almost five years! We did have an Easter Egg hunt with liquor prizes, which I think was everyone's favorite part of the day although I'm not too sure that the prizes were exactly in the Easter spirit. Of course, I meant to get more pictures, but only managed one of the table:

Colombia

I had a work trip to Colombia in March so we turned it into a mini-vacation. I flew to Bogota on Wednesday, Spanky joined me on Friday and we stayed through Monday. Our friends, Drew and Christi are posted in Bogota with the US State Department so we stayed with them over the weekened. They were wonderful hosts and tour guides and we had a fabulous time.

Here are a few pictures from downtown (I must admit that I stole them from Christi b/c the day that we drove down there, it was pouring down rain so this is what we saw, but I wasn't able to get many pictures on Sunday...).

Here's the example of the rainy downpour on Sunday so not much sightseeing...

On Saturday, we drove to Guatavita - a very cute town about an hour outside of Bogota. It was so nice to see the countryside. We also went to see the sacred lake near the town - we thought that it was just a short walk only to find ourselves on a 1.5 hour hike up the mountain. The El Dorado legend of the City of God originates from this lagoon in Colombia. We probably missed a few of the finer points since the entire tour was in Spanish, but it was interesting and definitely a beautiful view.

Enjoying our $0.50 beers - kept the guys happy while Christi and I did some shopping:

On our way to Guatavite - an aerial view of Bogota:

Dinner on Friday night with Drew, Christi, Maria and Adam. I had thought that I ordered something light only to get an entire fried fish - head, tail, fins and all - it was yummy, but Drew and Adam had to help finish it...we also noted that the waiter only gave bibs to the guys...

My hotel room at the Sofitel - pretty snazzy: