Apparently the monkeys made some noise over night - but I did not hear them.

It was raining when we left at 7:00 am this morning and it rained for some distance down the road threatening to be our first bad weather day , but it was a false alarm and the day cleared.

We passed through a number of radar traps this morning and were lucky enough not to get stopped thanks to more cautious driving, Norm's radar detector, and helpful motorist who flashed their lights to warn oncoming traffic about police checkpoints.

However my luck did not persist all day as on one hill I over took a slow truck just as we approached a police check point and got pulled over for crossing double center lines. It took a good deal of talking by Norm and $20 to get out of that one.

Because of the police and heavy Sunday traffic the drive into San Jose -the capital of Costa Rica- was at a sedate pace with wonderful scenery. The route through San Jose was complicated and we were glad of Norm's detailed route notes and his leading as some of the streets had changed and the notes would not have been enough by themselves.

At the Plaza Del Sol shopping mall - our intended stopping point for the night we discovered that the mall manager had changed, the security guards were all new and that we could not stay overnight. However we spent a few hours there getting groceries making some repairs to Norm's GPS antenna cable before heading out on the next leg.

The next stage of the journey came as quite a surprise as it climbs steeply into the mountains of Costa Rica on a narrow winding road to a high point of just on 11,000 feet from around 4,000 feet in San Jose. By about 8,000 ft we were in the clouds with mist swirling around us and the temperature heading into the 50°F's. We stopped for the night at a truck stop and restaurant called the Grasshopper at about 9,800 feet. We parked in a fenced enclosure behind the restaurant and tomorrow will complete the climb to the high point and then on down to the Panamanian border.