Things to do in Fort Lauderdale on Easter Sunday

Church... and nothing else.

Greetings from Fort Lauderdale the land that prays on Easter Sunday and even the mighty capitalist machine grinds to a halt. We were expecting a day of shopping and sight seeing here but it looks like one last day at the pool. We may take our binoculars up to the rooftop pool and scan the city to see if we see a place that's open, somewhere in this vast swamp of houses and cellular phone shops.

A wonderful thing happened our last day in San Jose--we lost our camera. I know what you're thinking, besides the obligatory Paul "sexy" beach pictures being lost to the unfortunate soul who found the picture, how could loosing a camera possibly be a good thing. Well, let me explain.

Many years back, I was drunk (surprise, surprise) and on the way back from Cozumel to Cancun. I put the camera in the back of taxi then failed to pick it up. The next day, after realizing where I left the camera, I called the taxi company. They told me: "oh no senior, nobody turn in a camera." Drat, the camera was gone and with it about 20 photographs of Cozumel. Now, today, we're talking about memory cards and hundreds of pictures so there was a lot at stake.

We lost, or rather, I most probably lost the camera on our Friday tour to Poas volcano, La Paz waterfall and the coffee country. We realized after returning to our hotel and putting our feet up for the night that our camera was gone. It was a casual kind of "where's the camera, dear?"

"I thought you had it dear."

Then panic, the type of panic that only comes when you KNOW you lost something and KNOW you're not going to find it. We hustled downstairs to the gift shop thinking we may have left it in there, and as we scurried around the gift shop, an employee from the front desk came in and said: "Is Mr. Paul here?"

I said yes and he told me to get the phone. The tour guide, a man named Esteban, was on the line.

"Hello," he said, "It is Esteban, I have your camera here, you left it on the bus."

He continued, "I know you're flying out tomorrow, so we can bring it to you first thing in the morning if you want."

The next morning, at 6:00 am, following a restless nights' sleep, Juan Carlos, the driver of the tour, showed up at our hotel in San Jose with our missing camera.

Of all the wonderful things we saw and the great people we met along the way, this one act of kindness and generosity left such a positive lasting impression of Costa Rica and the Costa Rican people. Such small acts do wonders for tourism.

We will never go back to Mexico.