Ok. Love is probably too strong a word, but I did certainly enjoy my day today. After enjoying a nice cup of coffee at home while nailing down some email, I dressed and ran over to pick up an associate before heading off to walk some property with a friend/client.

The property is a litte more than an hour from Tamarindo, but is at over 3,000 ft of elevation (971 meters, to be exact) and thus much cooler and mistier than Tamarindo. Today was more cool and misty than most on account of the heavy rain and clouds present. But aside from the temperature, you can really see a shift in the flora and fauna when you go upwards in the tropics. While walking the property today we noticed that not only the trees and grass were different, but the birds, butterflies, and beetles were different too. Always fun to see something different in the bush.

After a brief discourse on the relative merits of various machete sharpening techniques (feel free to offer advice, we are pretty hopeless at it) we finally booted up and started into the property. Other than being fairly steep and very wet, there was also about three to five feet of undergrowth to hack through. Now, it may seem like fun to be tromping through the woods with two friends hacking at grassy undergrowth.... oh, wait, it was fun. Tons of fun. We couldn't help but comment on how ridiculously easy it was to entertain ourselves walking along hacking at weeds. Of course, we did notice that at the top of the trail we had cleared a nice broad swath whereas at the bottom the path had narrowed considerably (hey, we enjoyed it, but that doesn't mean that any of the three of us have a good machete arm).

After touring the beautiful Costa Rican mountainside for an hour or two, and watching groups of butterflies flit through the freshly cleared path, and talking about some of the cool birds that were keeping us company, we finally piled back into the cruiser and headed down the hill, telling stories of the dumb things we had done in cars as youths.

Starving from the "work" we had done earlier, we stopped in on a great little chinese food place in Santa Cruz (on the way home) and stuffed ourselves.

Headed back home finally, stopping off at our office to take care of a thing or two and then Steve headed down to the beach to enjoy sunset with the dog and a stick she found.

Took a few calls, cemented a deal on the phone, then had a nice meal at home with wife and dog.

Wish that the weather had been more accomodating to photography so that we could share the beauty, but maybe next time. All in all, it would have been a fun vacation day, but the great part is that this is actually how I earn my living. Love it.