December 31, 2010

Today was our driving day!

We didn't get up that early, nor did we take off particularly early, which was good.  But today we drove to Volcan.  We had good weather all day - it was actually very warm and sunny when we left Boquete.  There were lots of clouds all around on the road to Volcan.  Since by the time we left, it was getting close to lunch time, we drove straight through Volcan and on to Guadalupe, where we went to the Quetzales lodge to have lunch.  It always take a looong time to get served there, so we were able to relax there for a while.  Afterwards, we drove as far as were could to the Cerro Punta side of the Los Quetzales trail before the road got undriveable for our car.  We turned around at that point and then slowly made our way back to Volcan.  We stopped once to look at a possible place to stay in March and also to take pictures of this bridge.

It just looks so precarious.  The words on the right say:  Please do not jump on the bridge.

And two more views of this bridge

Then we drove on back to Boquete.  By this time, Fernando and Eva were really feeling the effects of too many early mornings, too many late nights and too many airports in the last 4 days and they just wanted to get back to the house and rest.  So, they rested the rest of the afternoon.  That evening we were going to walk into town to have New Year's Eve dinner at our favorite Peruvian restaurant, but fortunately it was kind of raining so we took the car.

After dinner, we just hung around in the living room, watched a movie (Lars and the Real Girl) and it was just too bad that it was New Year's Eve, because we could tell they were tired, but wanted to stay up for the New Year.  At about 10 minutes to midnight, the fireworks started here in the valley and the people across the street were also setting off some really spectacular fireworks.  Actually, the ones across the street were a little too close for comfort so when we saw the guy lighting his, we'd run for the cover of our carport.  And on one of Eva's dashes for cover, she brushed up against the car and the car's outside mirror broke off and just hung there in its spot!!!!  It had obviously been pieced together and so we decided not to mess with it that evening, watched a few more fireworks and then called it a night.  We would have liked for  Eva and Fernando to have been feeling better, but it was a very Happy New Year, just to have them with us!!!