One last volcano and some souvenir hunting

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It was our last day of our holiday and I sure didn't want to hang out in San Jose all day. I got up while Trish was still in bed and booked us into a half-day tour leaving that morning. It was the most touristy tour that we have been on - the guide spoke reasonably good english and we had to stick to a tight schedule. The main attraction was driving to the summit of Volcon Irazu, Costa Ricas highest volcano. There was a paved road at the top and we did a short walk to see the bright green crater lake.

The other stop was La Basilica do Nuestra Senor do los Angeles in Cartago, apparently the most important church in the country. It was definitely the most impressive church that we had seen - not as old as the ones in Granada, but kept in very good shape. This was the church that over a million Costa Ricans make a pilgrimage to on August 2nd each year, sometimes walking for days to get there. Once they get there they have to walk up to the altar on their knees, which we saw some people doing. Outside the church, there is a spring of holy water, which people go to and fill a bottle or two to take away. I washed my hands in some of the holy water and suprisingly it didn't burn my skin like I had expected.

We headed back to San Jose, and Trish shopped until I dropped. We had refrained from buying many souvenirs on our trip so that we didn't have to carry too much, but since we were flying out the next morning we didn't hold back. The markets in San Jose are a pretty cheap place to buy stuff.

In the evening we went out and wandered around the town one last time. On the way out we decided not to take our umbrellas and of course, it poured down with rain. You would think that we would learn after 5 weeks in Central America we would have learned that we should take rain gear everywhere... I guess we had gotten used to the warm weather in Nicaragua where it had barely rained at all.

During and after dinner we listened to a busker strum his ukelele and make an groaning "eeeeeeee" noise. I don't think he was trying to be funny, but he sure was hilarious.

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