December 22, 2008

Rafting Photos and Reunion with the Alexes




After making promises to meet up after vacation, we finally reunited with the Alexes (five months later). It's silly, especially since Fia and I work only a couple blocks away from Alexander. We all laughed about it taking us so long to get together, but with Alexandra doing her grad studies at Cal Tech, and the rest of us wrapped up in day to day work, time just got away from us. It's funny--when you're on travel time, promises to keep in touch and go out for coffee always seem very doable, then you get back...

Anyway, we had a good lunch at a fast-food Italian place and reminisced, and caught each other up on our lives. Alex also had copies of the CD of photos from our rafting trip in Costa Rica!

The photos reminded us of how much fun we had on the rafting trip! It was a solid day of rafting on the Pacuare River (rated one of the top five rafting destinations by National Geographic)--highly recommended if you happen to find yourself in the Talamanca region of Costa Rica. We booked with Exploradores Outdoors, and for around $80 USD you get transportation, luggage/backpack storage, the use of showers and changing rooms, a hearty breakfast buffet, standard gear (helmet, flotation devise, paddle), an experienced guide, a continuous 5-hour trip down river in class 3 and 4 rapids, and lunch. The scenery was breathtaking--cascading waterfalls and incredible greenery...

More rafting photos are posted to my new windows live account here. I've been looking for a large capacity, free, photo hosting site for my upcoming trip. I love the features of Picasa and Photo Bucket, but the free accounts are limiting. (I've maxed out both of my Picasa web album accounts since it limits users to 1 GB) A friend recommended Windows live (skydrive.live.com) since it offers 25 gigs of free storage, and it can be used for other data besides photos. So far, I don't really like the user interface, but with 25 GB free, I can't complain.