PHOTOS: THE ROCKIES

Click HERE for photos of my day in The Rockies

PHOTOS: DENVER

Click HERE for photos of Denver

DEMS IN DENVER

WEIRDEST SIGHT I SAW ALL WEEK: a badge-selling old man who looked like uncle Jesse from 'The Dukes of Hazzard', covered in badges, with a teeny tiny dog tucked into his dungarees.

For one week only, the politics geeks ruled Denver.

It was such a great experience and I'm really pleased I went with Maxy to the DNC convention, even though I didn't get to go to any of the big speeches (erm, or small ones for that matter).

One major flaw in the DNC's plan to hold their convention in Denver is the lack of downtown hotels in the city, so we found ourselves staying in a Radisson inexplicably shaped like a castle, about 40mins drive out of town, on the side of a huge motorway. Max takes me to the nicest places!

Actually, it became a source of some anxiety to me as to whether I was allowed to be at the hotel with Max at all. We figured that it wasn't costing the BBC any more money, so it shouldn't be a problem, but then I found myself kind of being grilled by one of the managers. He was pretending to have a casual chat with me while I was waiting in the foyer one day, but fortunately I've started watching the majestic 'Veronica Mars' on DVD (another loan from the Megan/Anne DVD supply next door) - it's about a high school girl who's an amateur detective in her spare time - so can spot when someone's digging for information from a mile off. Like manager man would say, 'oh your husband, heeee's Andrew...?', to which I could only say, 'no, Max', then he'd say, 'oh yes, Max Giiiiilbert?' or whatever. Sneaky.

Anyways, nothing came of this (I thought he'd look up Max's details, see there was only meant to be one person in his room and throw me out) and it was all fine. Perhaps someone got into trouble, but I never knew about it.

It was a bit annoying to be reliant on the hotel shuttle bus to get into town, but it afforded me lots of really interesting encounters with other people staying at the hotel. One day, I shared a ride with a pollster lady who works for CNN and some other channels, who basically gave me a 40 minute analysis of where the polls are at and what the important issues really are. She was clearly pro-Obama, but said that although his chances are looking good, in fact McCain is very strong on issues that really resonate with the American people. Another time, I shared a ride with a lady from DC who's head of a DNC sub-committee and that was really interesting too - just getting these private audiences with people who are deeply involved in the election process.

I've never been political at all, because usually politics bores me silly, but I've got so into this election and for the first time, really like having long discussions with people about politics and feel like I know enough to hold my own in a conversation. So I'd emerge from these shuttle bus debates all energised. It's just such a bummer that I can't vote!

Denver is a great city - I really really like it a lot. It feels like the kind of city Baltimore wishes it could be. It's obviously been heavily redeveloped, having been quite industrial before, but it's been done in a much better way than in B-more, where just the waterfront is nice and the rest is a bit scuzzy. Fortunately for me, there's one central pedestrianised bit of Denver where all the shops and restaurants are, so it was a very easy city to immediately get one's head around and I didn't spend all week wondering if I was missing something just a few streets away.

Obviously the whole city was overrun with people adorned in Obama/Democratic regalia, which made it really fun just to saunter around the streets, but what I hadn't anticipated was the hardcore police presence that made itself known absolutely everywhere. It was extraordinary, the sheer number of police and the level of their armed-ness. They looked like something out of 'Judge Dredd'. We saw them on all forms of transport: on foot, bicycles, segways, motorbikes, cars, horses and massive tank-like armoured vehicles. We encountered a couple of demonstrations early on in our stay, where police actually outnumbered demonstrators!

Fortunately none of the demonstrations got out of hand, though we did get caught up in one, which was pretty funny. I was walking Maxy back to the convention centre one afternoon and we came across a huge crowd of anti-war demonstrators. So we picked our way through the crowd of people wearing Guantanamo orange jumpsuits, black handkerchiefs over their faces like bandits and angrily sloganned t-shirts, with Maxy wearing his lovely Ralph Lauren suit and me in typical tourist garb!

When we finally got through to the other side of this massive crowd, we discovered that the way to the convention centre had been sealed off, presumably because of the demonstration, so promptly had to turn around and pick our way back through the throng! But just as we reached them, they started to mobilise and move off, and we got swept along with them. Our situation wasn't helped by the fact that Maxy was actually in a massive hurry, because he had about 20 mins to get into the convention centre, through the crazy security, and get onto the floor before Bill Clinton's speech.

So we were desperately trying to get through the slowly lurching crowd, while Max tried to keep his face away from the many cameras filming the event, through fear of either appearing on that night's news or getting put on some troublemakers' register! But unfortunately the organisers of the demonstration were adamant that everyone keep behind a big banner being held across the front of the group, so it was really hard to get out ahead and away from the masses. Fortunately we managed it and Maxy made it back round to the centre, but it was all a bit hairy for a while.

Anyway, none of the demonstrations caused the police too much headache, but it was really scary to hear about an apparent assassination attempt by three racist meth-heads, which was foiled when one of them was stopped by police for driving erratically, only for the police to discover guns with long sights in the back of their truck, along with camo gear and crystal meth. Frightening.

I ended up seeing very little of Maxy as he's had a crazy-busy week, as we anticipated. Having flown in (separately) on Saturday, we were able to spend Sunday together, exploring the city and getting a sense of where the convention centre was. Then for the rest of the week, I just saw him in the morning and then again after the speeches in the evening. We didn't really socialise with the other BBC people because everyone was so knackered, but I was really pleased to be there and look after Max at the end of his long days.

I spent my days really enjoying just wandering around the city, soaking up the electric atmosphere, and also took myself off to see 'The House Bunny' (I wish I hadn't. Don't judge me - it was the only thing that was on) and 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona', which I REALLY liked. It didn't feel at all like a Woody Allen film and I was really happily surprised by how good Rebecca Hall was (I feel sure she'll be relieved to know this) and was blown away by Javier Bardem (much hotter sans 'No Country' haircut) and Penelope Cruz - they were both excellent. Scarlett Johansson not so much, but that's not great shock.

Poor Max, it's been blisteringly hot in Denver all week and he's had to wear a suit and socks and shoes while running between the convention centre and the fringe events that he was covering.

He hasn't been writing news stories or features, but rather blogging from the convention, which has allowed for a slightly more freeflowing writing style than the strictures of news writing and has also meant that he's seen more of the convention than just the inside of the convention centre.

I was lucky enough to join him on one such mission, when he scored us tickets to see The Daily Show record live, under the auspices of blogging about how the media are covering the election!! Woooooohooooooo! It was so so awesome. I've never been to watch a TV programme record before - I've always been behind the scenes - so it felt odd to be a member of the audience, shepherded into a waiting area, then worked by a warm-up man and encouraged to whoop and clap as much as possible.

After waiting outside the theatre for about half an hour, it was another hour once we were seated before the show started to record and I found myself sitting next to a really nice lady who'd been working for the DNC at the convention and is a member of Florida's electoral college. So she's one of the people who actually gets to cast a vote on behalf of Florida. We had a really spirited conversation about why Obama rules and how awesome it'd be if he won. She'd been working double shifts all week and so was pleased to get time off to go to the Daily Show, then afterwards she was going to a Kanye West gig, so I didn't feel too sorry for her having been working so hard. I did feel a pang of regret that we didn't manage to go to any celebrity parties all week, because it seems half the celebrity world and his trophy wife were in town, but we had an amazing time anyway.

The Daily Show was brill. They record it absolutely as live - playing in the VTs and taking advert breaks during which loud music is played to drown out Jon Stewart's conversations with his writers who scuttle onto set as soon as cameras pause recording. There are no stops, even if Jon Stewart fluffs a line. Unfortunately John Oliver was one of the correspondents who did a 'bit' (I can't staaaaand John Oliver), but then there was a really funny bit with Samantha Bee and Wyatt Cenac (he's my favourite) - click HERE to watch the clip.

The song they played before recording started, to gee up Jon Stewart, was 'Born To Run' and the song they played at the end of the show as we were leaving the theatre was 'Don't Stop Believin''. From this, I can conclude that me and Jon Stewart would be friends if only I could meet him.

Max had to rush straight back to the convention centre after the recording, to cover the evening's speeches, which meant that - having filed that morning's blogpost from his blackberry while we were waiting to go into the theatre, he then had to file his Daily Show blog (scroll down to '1900 local time') from the taxi that took us back into town! Such a pro.

While Maxy got to go onto the convention centre floor for the big speeches, I had to watch them elsewhere. Because our hotel was so out of the way, I stayed in town each evening and tried to find somewhere showing coverage of the convention, rather than watching in our room. This wasn't difficult, as for one week, the bars were overrun by politicos and the big speeches were shown on TV screens, just like a sports fixture. So the bars and restaurants were crammed with people cheering, clapping and crying at the screen, with all the camaraderie between strangers of watching the cup final down the pub!

Actually on the first night of the convention, when Michelle Obama spoke and her daughters made that adorable appearance on stage, I stationed myself at MSNBC's outdoor stage, where much of their broadcasting was coming from. We really like MSNBC and watch it all the time in DC, so it was exciting - in the most absurdly geeky way possible - to lay eyes on the likes of Keith Olbermann and the awesome Rachel Maddow in the flesh.

Not many people where aware of the stage right at the beginning of the week, so it wasn't difficult for me to get a spot right the front of the crowd, which meant I scored loads of MSNBC tat from the runner handing it out to people who'd be appearing in the back of shot. I was kind of meek at first, but after a while, was grabbing anything I could get and ended up with a Keith Olbermann t-shirt (actually that was given to me by a kindly man standing next to me who had a spare), a polystyrene MSNBC boater and lots of massive MSNBC badges. It did cross my mind that it might not look great for the wife of a BBC journalist to be seen in the back of a shot, bedecked in tat from another news channel, but I figured no-one knows who I am, so it was fine.

We had dinner with Oliver from the Guardian and Max's college friend Shehani who does video things for the Guardian website and is just over here for the conventions, which was nice. Though it was really strange to hear the Radio 1 Evening Session show being blasted out of a PA system on a street corner opposite, where an impromptu street party had started up!

And I had dinner with my state department tennis friend, Jean one night, too, which was lovely as I really got to know her better and hear all about her boyfriend and stuff. We watched the Joe Biden speech together - as well as his amazing introduction from his son Beau Biden - and both got quite choked up by just how good he was. I'm so excited that Obama has picked as his VP someone who fills in the gaps in Obama's experience, while retaining the same values and integrity that Obama embodies. And I thought it was so classy of Beau Biden, when he said that he 'won't be around' during the election, rather than scoring points by explaining that he'll be in Iraq with the National Guard. Having heard McCain make such a massive deal of his time as a PoW and the great service he's shown this country, it would've been really easy for either Biden to cash in on Beau's service, but neither did. And it was so moving to see how much Joe Biden obviously loves his family, after all the tragedy they've suffered, and hear how he goes back to Delaware every night instead of staying in DC. And it's amazing that he's been in the Senate more than 30 years, but hasn't got any enemies there. Awesome.

I didn't really see Hillary's speech, but was in a bar where once again it was being played. On Tuesday, I took myself off to the art museum, which was really excellent. It's a fantastically laid out and curated museum, with a terrific range of art. I particularly liked the modern art I saw. It was good in rooms where there was art and artifacts from different countries, because often I feel a little bit uncomfortable that these things have been swiped from the cultures in which they were made, but in Denver's museum, they have little gestures like headphones playing African music when you're in the African room, so you get a bit more of an immersive sense of the art and the circumstances in which is was created.

I got picked up from the museum by Katie, a friend of Emily's who moved from DC to Denver a month or so ago. We'd really got on on the couple of occasions when we met before she moved, so it was nice to see her. It was also nice to get out of downtown Denver and see a whole different neighbourhood. Katie loves Denver to an almost evangelical extent, but I can see why. She's got a lovely little flat and has made friends with someone round the corner, who we met to go for a walk with in the gorgeous local park.

I thought nothing of the fact that Katie changed into sports clothes when we got to her flat, before heading out for the walk, until we met her friend who was also dressed in sports clothes and looked me up and down (once again, I was wearing the tourist staples of skirt, summer top and sandals) and said, 'well isn't that just the cutest little outfit to go for a walk in?'! Turns out this was a hardcore speed walk designed as exercise. Whoops. But it was lovely - the park was really nice and it was fun to hear about life in Denver, with talk of ski passes for the winter and stuff. We didn't really get much power into our walk, as we were constantly dodging the fitness fanatics who covered the park. There were rollerbladers, runners, cyclists, volleyball players, skateboarders and even a blind man being taken for a jog by a guide runner on a lead-like thing. And I thought DC was outdoorsy!

Katie and I then went for supper at a local diner where the Clinton speech was being shown, but I didn't really see any of it. I was busy being amazed that Katie - in Colorado, a really important swing state - is still undecided as to who to vote for! Especially as education (she's an elementary school teacher) and economy are her two prime concerns and Obama whips McCain's ass on both.

I tried to be all impartial and tell her what I knew of the two policies from both candidates, but was perturbed to hear her say that she had a lot of time for McCain because, 'at least he admits that there are more important things to him than education' and it's good that he's realistic, unlike Obama who seems to be promising more than he can deliver. Ehhh?! I don't get it at all. Surely it's good to at least have aspirations, even if you can't deliver absolutely everything? To just ignore education because you're too busy with other things is loony to me.

During all my encounters on shuttle buses and at Daily Show recordings with people connected to the DNC, I kept desperately trying to find someone who might have tickets to the massive Obama event at Invesco Field, but with no joy. So yesterday, rather than wandering around the ghosttown that would be Denver, joining the forlorn few who were unable to get in, I got up early, rented a jeep and took myself off into the Rockies for the day!

Throughout the day, I kept getting texts from Max about how amazing Jennifer Hudson's soundcheck was, or how cool it was to see Stevie Wonder up close, which was obviously disappointing, but it was just the most glorious weather to be pootling about by myself that I managed to have a wonderful day in spite of what I was missing.

I headed into Boulder, which is a great town - I really really liked it. It's really small and feels kind of retro and very laidback - not a bustling metropolis by any means, but a lovely little town at the foot of the mountains.

Then I headed on towards the Rockies, stopping in the beautiful Estes Park for lunch. All the way, I couldn't really make out the mountains in the distance, because the horizon was really hazy. In Estes Park, I discovered from a kindly man collecting trolleys in the Safeway car park that it was because there's an enormous forest fire just over the border in Utah and that I should be careful if I was planning to go up into the mountains. After my Florida quasi-ordeal, I was starting to wonder if I was doomed.

In fact, it was fine and I had a wonderful day in beautiful sunny sunshine with bright blue skies, driving through the Rockies National Park along the spectacular mountain roads, sometimes stopping to take photos and gawp at the phenomenal scenery and sometimes not stopping, but taking photos while driving along. Hazardous but effective. Blame Max! If he'd have been there with me, rather than hobnobbing with Obama, he could've taken them!

Anyway, it was just breathtaking. Actually literally. I walked up to the highest point in the Rockies at one point, but it took ages, because the altitude robbed me of my breath with every step. Both Max and I found the altitude quite tricksy in Denver and both had really bad headaches for the first few days. I thought I was painfully unfit when I went swimming on our first day in the hotel but could manage little more than 10 lengths of the miniscule pool. In fact, I'm sure it was because I'm unfit, but I'm sure the altitude didn't help. Quite how Teddy Kennedy managed to speak to the convention having only flown in that afternoon, so not acclimatised to the altitude and with a brain tumour, I don't know.

I crossed the continental divide during my pootle and also saw a little mountain rodent that might or might not have been a chipmunk AND saw a whole field of elk! Ha - stick that in your pipe, Obama boy. I also visited a little village called Grand Lake, where this sign made me chuckle, as it was on a tiny lane, off another tiny lane called Broadway.

As I was rushing around hairpin bends in an attempt to get back into Denver to watch Obama's speech somewhere, I got a very excited text from Jean to say that she'd managed to get into Invesco Field as well! But had to bear in mind the amazing day I'd had and try not to be jealous...

Unfortunately I paid the price for my myriad photo stops and realised there was no way I'd make it back into town to watch the speech on a screen somewhere, so I ended up listening to Obama speak on the radio, with the sun setting behind me, driving along a freeway. I was so impressed and encouraged by his speech and found myself welling up a few times, just at the sheer ambition of Obama's hope and the prospect of someone really making a difference for the better. It was the clearest statement of his positions that I've heard come from him - often I get a bit lost in all the impressive rhetoric to actually get to the bottom of what he's saying - I thought he laid out his policies brilliantly well and that they sounded so sensible and encouraging.

I got back to the hotel while he was still speaking, but didn't want to miss any of the speech, so drove around the car park for a while and then parked up listening to it. But in the end, I made a dash for our room, just in time to see him finish. It looked like an incredible atmosphere at Invesco Field, though I was sad that Obama didn't look happier when he finished his speech - he looked really serious.

Poor Max got stuck in the thousands and thousands of people coming out of the stadium and lost all his BBC folks, so I drove into town to pick him up in my handy jeep. Turns out he hadn't really been able to pay much attention to Obama's speech because he was live blogging for Justin Webb (Justin make comments to Max and Max would type it up and post it immediately on the BBC website). But I think he had a great day, being in the thick of it all.

Now Max is off to St Paul for the Republican convention and I'm going to LA to spend the week with Tom and Bambi and my good friends Tom and Nina, because I have no interest in St Paul and can't imagine it'd be as fun a week being surrounded by Republicans as it has been here in Denver.

COUNTDOWN TO DENVER

Richard and Judy left early on Wednesday (the day after I got back from Florida) and we're off to Denver tomorrow for the DNC convention, so the remainder of the week has been spent trying to see as much of our DC friends as possible, as we're both away for the whole of the rest of August.

I've managed to see a lot of Anne in the past few days, which has been lovely, because I found myself missing her while we were away and was so happy to be welcomed back by a note from her on our door - it made the return to reality after Costa Rica more bearable.

Anne came out to dinner with us and Max's folks on Tuesday night, when we went to Bistrot du Coin, which is a French restaurant down the road from our flat, that Max usually goes to with his Guardian friend Oliver. It was a really lovely evening, though frankly anything unrelated to hurricanes would've been nice. The restaurant is always really busy and the waiters take the French authenticity so far as to be kind of rude while serving, which is nice.

On Wednesday night we swapped fine French cuisine for the finest food the Chinatown cinema could offer when we went to see 'Pineapple Express'. A supper of hot dogs, popcorn and diet coke - as nutritious as it is delicious. The movie was ok, but not brilliant - it felt a bit episodic and got a bit random. But James Franco was a revelation! So adorable! And seemed to really be acting, showing Seth Rogen up to be just a bit of a mook who was playing himself.

Unfortunately I think I'll be getting something of a reputation at the cinema concession stand, I was back there again last night, ordering exactly the same supper. I hasten to add that this had never been our plan. We met up with Alison, Emily, Patrick and Leanna for drinks at Poste, which has a nice outdoor courtyard, and were going to go for supper with them. But then Emily had to bail because she's dogsitting in Alexandria and wanted to get there before it was too late and I can't remember why Alison had to go, but she left early too.

So Patrick, Leanna, Maxy and I decided to go and see 'Tropic Thunder' but it was starting so soon that we didn't have time to go to a restaurant, and that's what brought me back to exactly the same server at the same cinema concession stand, ordering the same toxic-but-tasty supper.

We were pretty disappointed by 'Tropic Thunder'. Tom Cruise's cameo was way overrated, Jack Black didn't do anything and Ben Stiller was just Ben Stiller. Plus, again it felt a bit like a sketch show, all episodic rather than hanging together as a whole movie. Robert Downey Jr was freakishly amazing, though and Jay Baruchel - who I've hearted since 'Undeclared' (Judd Apatow's follow-up series to 'Freaks & Geeks') - was fantastic and I really hope this film does great things for him.

So tomorrow we're off to Denver - yippee! I'm really looking forward to it, though have been on quite enough planes already this month for my/Al Gore's liking. Ugh.

DON'T GO, FLORIDA

Max's parents, Richard and Judy, arrived the day after we got back from Costa Rica, for a 5-day stay. It was lovely to see them and have a slice of 'home' here in DC (as well as the baking paper Judy bought me - you just can't get it over here!).

Max's brother Aaron got married in Taiwan while we were away, so we heard all about that (none of the family were there - it was more of an official thing, ahead of a big wedding banquet in Taipei next year) and got very excited that we're now related to Chun-Yin, because she's wonderful.

Emily was kind enough to arrange a tour of the West Wing for Judy and Richard on Saturday, which Max and I kept a surprise from them and which they absolutely loved - they were blown away and very excited. However, I wasn't with them because I had to stay home to prepare for a 2-day work trip to Florida which I'd been offered by a friend in London while in Costa Rica.

The job was for a company making a video for HSBC. They wanted me to go to Boca Raton and Orlando with a video camera, to conduct casting interviews with two heads of companies who HSBC are considering making a mini-film about.

As seems to be the way with selling one's soul to the corporate devil, the money was really good, so I took the job, but was a bit nervous about using the camera by myself as, although I've taken courses on it and used it for fun before, I haven't had to operate a camera and conduct an intervivew at the same time. So I stayed home while the Devos went around the White House, practising with the camera and a teddy bear, so that by the time I landed in Florida, I'd come across as a very competent pro (not in the prostitute sense of 'pro'...).

Having got my head around the camera, and worked out how to erect the tripod without getting caught up in it like in an old-school deckchair, I went to check in online on Sunday night, only to discover huge hurricane warnings all over the place! There was a hurricane heading straight for Florida, due to hit almost exactly when I was there.

So I was pretty nervous yesterday morning, as I headed into the eye of the storm, only to be made more nervous by a pilot and his son who were checking the internet during my change in Charlotte, reading out progress reports about when the hurricane was going to 'make landfall' and giving us real-time updates as to its path. It felt like we were all in a disaster movie, as everyone was huddled round, listening, presumably all wondering what on earth we were doing, boarding a plane to fly somewhere which had been declared a state of emergency.

I was doing pretty well at being brave and approaching the whole thing as an adventure until I got to West Palm Beach airport, where the rain was more torrential than anything we'd seen in Costa Rica, and the mean lady at the car rental place wouldn't give me the GPS unit that this entire endeavour was counting on.

So I had to drive by myself through the driving rain with only googlemap instructions to guide me. No Maxy in the passenger seat reading the map, no robot-voiced British lady on the satnav to tell me when to stay in the righthand lane or whatever.

One sobbing phone call to Max later, I headed off and managed to get to Boca Raton, where my interviewee lived in this weird gated country club community that looked a bit like something out of 'Pleasantville'.

The chap I interviewed - Roy - was really nice and I was really pleased with the interview, but I got all flustered with the camera because I noticed its focus slipped halfway through our chat, so I had to try to change the shot and hope for the best.

Roy didn't set the world alight and I can't imagine HSBC using him, but he did give me a bag of pretzels for the drive to Orlando, for which I was very grateful, as I hadn't managed to get lunch at Charlotte (which didn't help in the resiliance-against-scary-hurricanes stakes).

Mercifully the drive to Orlando was fairly dry and went ok. I even managed to sing like a loon to some CDs. But there was a very real sense that I was racing the storm and that it was just on my tail.

The road my lovely Holiday Inn was on was really weird - it was a bit like driving through a theme park, with garish shops and hotels and random fairground rides on it. When I checked in, I was handed a piece of paper with warnings and advice on it for when the hurricane hits which, I was assured by the concierge, would be the following day. Great. So either I'll be driving to/from my second interview or in a plane during the hurricane.

What was weird was all the British tourists milling around, nonchalantly booking themselves onto bus trips to Disney World for the following day, as if nothing was happening. Either it's because British tourists are only too familiar with rainy summer holidays, or it was an example of the gritty British pluck at times of hardship, or I was wildly overreacting.

Advice like 'fill your bathtub with water as soon as possible, in case the water gets cut off' and 'keep your air conditioning unit on, even though rain in a hurricane tends to be horizontal so will come into your room via the a/c' and relentless scare-mongering on CNN and all other TV news stations just served to send me into a massive panic and Max The WonderHusband may or may not have received another teary phone call (he was a legend all day long - SO supportive).

My second interview was scheduled for 2.30pm and the hurricane was due to hit Orlando at 2pm, putting me in the car on a strange freeway during the storm. As it was obvious that my flight was going to be delayed or cancelled, I called US Airways last night to see if they'd put me up in a hotel if that happened. They couldn't tell me - conjuring up images in my head of scrambling through crowds at some information desk, desperately trying to get the last hotel room available to avoid a night spent sleeping in the airport like in news reports of baggage handler strikes - but the chap did mention in passing that I was allowed to make one change to my flight without incurring a fee.

In a rare moment of clarity, I called my interviewee to see if he could meet me any earlier and when he could, looked into any earlier flights out of Orlando. Already long story short, I booked myself on an earlier flight and went to sleep feeling way happier, if slightly disappointed that I'm such a massive baby.

Today went much better, no thanks to anyone I encountered wishing me good luck whenever I told them I was planning to fly back to DC this afternoon.

Getting to the interview went very smoothly and I arrived feeling really confident. Again, the dude lived in a weird gated country club community - that seems to be the Florida way of rich heads of businesses - and his house looked like a spectacular Middle Eastern hotel inside, all mahogony and exquisite furniture.

Vik (for that was my interviewee's name) wasn't as friendly as Roy and was way more businesslike - dressed in a sharp suit and with clearly not much time to spare. I thought I was looking pretty smart in my Mooks dress, but then I saw Vik's wife just mooching around the house in more makeup than I've ever seen in my life, a really fancy tight-fitting silk dress and vertiginously high heels. I wasn't that dressed up on my wedding day and I'm sure Vik thought I was an urchin off the street and certainly seemed surprised when it was only me - I think he was expecting a whole proper crew.

Anyway, the interview went fine. It only lasted 18 mins instead of an hour and the shot was shoddy again, but my eyes were firmly on the prize of getting the hell out of Dodge, so I didn't really care. Vik walked me out to my car through his garage, past his Lamborghini and Bentley, which I made suitably impressed noises about, while desperately trying to get out of there without letting the tripod swing wildly from my shoulder, smashing into one of the shiny cars.

It was a good thing that the interview was so short, because it took ages to offhire the car, but soon I was at the airport. Although none of the screens suggested a delay to my flight, I was taking no chances and indulged in a bit of panic buying at the shop - a comfy-looking blanket to sleep under, an absurd amount of bottled of water (probably enough to fill a bathtub) and a Patricia Cornwell book long enough to distract me from being stranded at an airport in the middle of a hurricane.

However, it wasn't long before me and my gigantic shopping bag were waddling onto the plane! Hooraaaay! I cannot begin to convey the relief. It felt like getting on the last chopper out of Saigon. And this was confirmed by the captain, who said we were very lucky to get on that flight, as Orlando airport was being closed in 20 minutes' time!! So if I hadn't rescheduled the interview and changed flights, I would've been stuck in Florida!

The flight went fine and I got back to DC, jumped on a SuperShuttle (where I met a very friendly Belgian man whose wife plays tennis and who told me about an amazing island of North Carolina that we must go to and talked me through the conflict between the Flemish and Walloons) and sped home to Maxy. Yippeeee!

I called Max to let him know I was nearby on the SuperShuttle, only to have the driver decide to drop everyone else off first, so it was ages before I actually got home - only to find a rather limp looking Maxy on the corner of our street with a 'WELCOME HOME SOPH' sign he'd been holding ever since I rang from around the corner about half an hour earlier!

I haven't really stopped clinging to Max since I got home. The grass looks greener, the air smells sweeter and I am categorically a massive wuss. But a wuss who's home and doesn't have to worry about horizontal rain or cancelled flights or having to read a Patricia Cornwell book under an airport blanket!

PHOTOS: COSTA RICA

COOLEST THINGS WE SAW BUT DIDN'T GET PHOTOS OF:
a gigantic sea turtle laying eggs
an active volcano spewing lava at night
me surfing
a stripey treefrog the same as the one on our guidebook and from 'Planet Earth'

Click HERE for photos of San Jose and Tortuguero
Click HERE for photos of Arenal and Manuel Antonio
Click HERE for photos of Playa Samara

VERY JOLLY HOLIDAYS

We're back! (erm, it's also October, but let's ignore that and move on...)

As promised, I won't blog properly about Costa Rica, but must report that it ROCKS. We had an amazing, amazing fortnight that felt a whole lot longer.

Some Costa factoids:
- it is quite small, which makes a 2-week holiday very nice
- turtles lay eggs on the beach there and the eggs look like ping pong balls
- there are very many monkeys there, some of whom steal Pringles tins from people's bags
- there is at least one 3-legged raccoon there
- as a country, it engenders travel sickness even in those who have never previously suffered from it
- it gets dark very early there
- the nicest beer is Pilsen, but the national beer is Imperial
- Carillo Beach airport looks like a bus shelter
- I am very good at Yahtzee there. Perhaps it's the altitude. Or maybe the climate.
- the ice there is made from mineral water
- filet means fish, not the steak we thought we'd be getting (and had been dreaming about) on our last night
- I have it on good authority (Reynaldo at the car hire place) that you could build 100 houses in Costa Rica for what we paid for our flat in London

Ah, Reynaldo - we'll always have La Fortuna... He was a nice man in a car hire place who I had to spend about half an hour with while Maxy waited at our hotel for our taxi (long story). My Spanish and his English ran out at about minute #2, so we communicated via the wonders of Google Translator, typing in what we meant, waiting for the other to read it and then respond. If it had been a romcom, it would've been quite romantic. As it was, it was in a teeny office on a backstreet in central Costa Rica...

We were pretty lucky with the weather and only had solid rain in Arenal - the place with the active volcano - which made our amazing bungalow at the foot of the volcano somewhat frustrating and redundant as it was permanently shrouded in cloud. In fact, I became quite convinced that the volcano was a myth, dreamed up by the inhabitants of a town blighted by constant rain, in an attempt to attract tourists there.

However, after a hike around the volcano in rain so torrential and hardcore that we were soaked within seconds of stepping off the minibus (during which we met a fun American girl who wants to be the first female football commentator in the country), we did manage to see the volcano erupt on our last night there, which was really extremely awesome. Volcanoes are my favourite natural feature.

Our tour operator lady did us proud, by booking us into really amazing hotels - not fancy, but extremely nice and unusual and 'us'. Except for the San Jose Best Western where we spent our first night - we were mortified to find that the hotel restaurant was a Denny's (think Wimpy) and that there was a Subway (think Subway) across the road.

The hotels kind of built to a crescendo - each was a little nicer than the one before, until we got to Manuel Antonio, where our room at Hotel Costa Verde was firstly enormous, then imbedded in the jungle on one side and had a beautiful clifftop view of stunning Pacific Ocean on the other. On our first morning there, I went to peek at what the weather was doing, only to see a family of squirrel monkeys - the rarest monkeys in Costa Rica - scampering right across the huge leaves in front of our balcony! It was like those leaves were the M25 and the monkeys were all commuting, cos there were loads of them. And there were lots of squirrel monkeys just hanging out around the trees of the hotel, too.

We had a really keen and interesting guide in Tortuguero (the place in the jungle that you can only reach by water or air), called Mario. He a little bit made me cry, because people weren't that interested in what he had to say and he was painfully keen that everyone have a good time. But we had a good chat with him on our last night and it turns out that he spent 25 years living in the heart of the jungle, so knows what leaves to eat if you get stranded and stuff.

He told us this amazing story of his encounter with a jaguar, which should've killed him, but didn't. Apparently they're very antisocial creatures so if you come across one, it's because they've come to find you. Mario compared their sense of smell to when you walk into a house where roast chicken is cooking and it smells delicious - that's what the jaguar (and most other animals) smells as soon as a human sets foot in the jungle, even if they're miles away - we're that distinctive and easy to find.

Our tour in Manuel Antonio State Park was a little frustrating, because our tour guide was the only one without a telescope, which all the other guides would set up so that their group could see things like toucans up in the tree really close up, or a bug that they've spotted a few metres into the undergrowth. So we were left squinting and searching walls of tendrils and leaves for animals we could hardly make out, which was a bit annoying. As was the fact that our guide was mad for ferns. She loved the ferns. Couldn't get enough of them. Unfortunately one fern looks just the same as another to me. Except the cool one which recoils when you touch it. In the end, I just started tacking myself onto other tour groups and got a good look at lots of amazing animals, like a baby porcupine in a tree and a humming bird that was - very unusually - sitting still.

A real highlight of the trip was the private transfers that our tour operator lady had arranged for us between destinations in that first week. We had the same driver both times - Gustavo - who was bi-lingual and really nice. We had his whole minibus to ourselves for drives of 3-5 hours and just chatted the whole time, all about Costa Rica. Turns out the reason it's such an amazingly nice country is because it's got a really big middle class, so doesn't suffer from a huge discrepancy between mega-rich and desperately poor people. Also, the government isn't corrupt, which is a bonus, and they're extremely hot on preserving the environment, so don't accept mega-bucks from developers wanting to build up the coastlines into massive resorts, and tourism is very tightly controlled by the government. We felt that everywhere we went - that Costa Rica is really really green and natural and tourists are very much visitors - but none more so than in Tortuguero, where we had to ride a boat down a river through the jungle for about an hour and came to our little hotel/resort place that you could hardly see from the river - the whole place looked like a jungley wilderness. Apparently there are 14 similiarly-sized hotel/resorts along the river, but you'd never know it.

Gustavo told us about how the Nicaraguans are to Costa Rica as the Mexicans are to America, in that they're an immigrant population who get given all the crappy manual labour and how there's a huge gang movement - I think called Maras - poised to invade Costa Rica, which would be really bad news. Apparently there's this really dangerous gang that started among the hispanic population in LA and has spread down into Central America, particularly Honduras and El Salvador, and is now working its way through Nicaragua.

Not only was Gustavo wise in the ways of Costa Rica, but it was he who suggested I drink ginger ale from a little roadside shack when I got really really carsick on a windy mountain road. Hooray for Gustavo!

We chose really well with Playa Samara for our final week, and with the Samara Treehouse Inn where we stayed (all sorted independently of tour operator lady). It turns out that it was the exact same beach where two of Max's best friends - Greg and Jane - got married a couple of months ago, which we hadn't realised when we decided to go there, but which made it all the most special. Especially as Greg lost his wedding ring in the sea shortly after the ceremony, so we had a mission to keep us busy... (alas, we didn't find it.)

The beach was just amazing and the Treehouse Inn was awesome. We had beautiful weather nearly all the time, and when we didn't, we just retreated underneath our treehouse on stilts and read books on our private hammocks!

I read 'I Was Told There'd Be Cake' by Sloane Crosley, which was a pretty funny collection of stories from the life of a mid-20s Manhattanite. A former friend of mine wrote a similar book, which I really hated and this one made me realise why - because Sloane Crosley is similar enough to me for me to recognise myself in her stories, but able to describe her experiences in a way that's way more witty and universal than the self-indulgent writing of the other book. So that was fun.

I also read 'The Yiddish Policeman's Union' by Michael Chabon, who's my favourite favourite author (some may say that that isn't difficult, since I hardly ever read, but he really is terrific), but I was really disappointed and left a little cold by the book, which was a real shame.

What was not a shame however was discovering body boarding! Man alive, it's the most. fun. ever. The Treehouse Inn had its own bodyboards, and as there are only 5 treehouses there with 2 people in each, competition for them wasn't very great. So Max and I spent ages in the sea, zooming into shore on waves. There was a swell on the way to Playa Samara, so towards the end of the week, the waves started getting bigger and a bit vicious, which wasn't so fun, but when we did manage to catch a wave, it was so so brilliant. Especially whenever I caught a wave and was yelping with glee, only to look over to my left to see that Max had managed to catch it too, and we were zipping along together!

We also took a surf lesson, but that didn't go so well. Max had flashbacks of P.E. lessons and never quite managed to get his body and board to cooperate with each other. And while I did manage to get up a few times, it wasn't as fun as I was hoping, because I was always on the verge of falling off, so we scuttled straight back to our bodyboards after our lesson - at least on them, when you're on, you're on and you're riding a wave - it isn't a constant effort to stay on the board or the wave.

It's weird, the whole holiday was almost a little too amazing, because we couldn't quite believe it was happening. I think it was a combination of not having to work too hard for it - tour operator lady sorted everything out for us and we hadn't spent months planning it, as we would've if it had been a travelling trip, rather than a holiday. But also the things we saw were just so incredible that they almost felt unreal - like they were in a brochure of dream holidays or something.

Anyway, we had a wonderful wonderful time and I'd recommend absolutely anyone to go - even those who fear Central America as being somewhere for hardy travellers with backpacks on their backs. I think by now we've established I'm not one of those travellers and I had one of the most exciting, relaxing holidays ever. It was about as 'difficult' as Greece or Spain and it'd be a great place to take children, because it's all so doable, whilst letting them feel like their Tintin on a big adventure in the jungle or on a volcano.