News flash: I will be gone, really gone, until after the holidays.

I am going down to Costa Rica, where my oldest daughter is winding up several months teaching in a rural school. She put off college for a year in order to do this trip and then, after January, to travel to Bolivia and Peru for another 4 months. I am very proud of her, and also really looking forward to seeing her. 

While I am gone I won’t have email, or any other kind of mail; I am looking forward to spending some quiet family time.

I leave a few days before Mary and Tessa, our younger daughter, giving me a few days of what Marisa, my 19 year old, likes to call “Daddy-Daughter time.” She wants to take me down to the village she has been living in for 3 months, to meet the community she now knows so well now. Sounds great!

I agreed, in fact, before I checked the guide book. Big mistake. It says that the three hour bus ride from San Jose to San Isidro is possibly the worst road in Costa Rica, quite a statement in a country that specializes in Volkswagen-sized potholes. It is “winding, narrow, potholed, poorly marked, with steep drop-offs, ” warns the guidebook, which then adds the need to top the 10, 800 foot pass on Monte de la Muerte (Mount Death), “which is infamous for dense afternoon fog, sudden torrential downpours, and landslides.” If, I mean when, we get to San Isidro, it’s just a short ride of about an hour on another bus to her village. At least the whole trip costs only $3.

Actually, $6, we have to get back the same way.

After our special trip, Mary and Tessa arrive, and we’ll visit the rainforests, the beaches, and the volcanoes, staying in eco-lodges including one so remote you can only get there by boat. It should be great fun on all fronts.

See you all in 2008!