They say third times a charm, but truthfully, we could do without it

The shock lost it's dampening fluid back in Venezuela.  While repairing in San Jose, we discovered the bracket had (one again) snapped.  At least we enjoyed San Jose

We spent quite a bit of time with Norval, a great guy and president of the BMW club of Costa Rica

Merv & Ruth from the UK, also going around the world.

Aside from the monster 41 liter tank, they are packed pretty light, considering they carry tent and cooking gear.

Jo Anne, a cool cat from Canada, currently heading south on her black F650.

Norval took us to see the surrounding sites

We thought this was a unique entrance to a church

The famous (and more elusive) Volcano Arenal -- still active, you can see the lava flowing at night

Every day, the locals say it will clear up -- what else can they say?!?!

We had much better luck viewing the crater of the Irazu Volcano!

Looking down from 3,500 meters

...maybe because we were ABOVE the clouds!

This was stuck to a rock next to the above photo -- our GPS said we were at 3,459meters/11,345feet

Regardless, it was a pretty view.

Not a lot of traffic at 7am

Breakfast stop 2-hours later

Chris was trying to setup a shot of the F650s

photo courtesy of Mario Guzman

And here is what he got....

Slogging through the mud of the Santa Elena Cloud Forest.

Norval and Jessica returning to San Jose on their F650GS