A funny Gianluca story at the start of our trip. We are all sitting in our car, waiting in line at a traffic light to turn onto the freeway out of town. In Costa Rica you will commonly find street peddlers who work the traffic that is backed up at street lights. Selling fruit, pencils, chewing gum, newspapers, whatever... So, anyway, we are sitting in line at the light and I see a street peddler at our back window trying to get our attention to sell us something. I'm ignoring him. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I notice Gianluca, in the back seat, rolling down his window to talk to the street peddler. Great#@!, I think, Gianluca is trying to buy something from this guy! Of course I can't understand anything Gianluca is saying to him, because its all in spanish. But I'm not too happy about it because I don't want to deal with this guy trying to sell me a pencil or something while I'm negotiating Costa Rican traffic. All of a sudden Christa starts laughing her head off at what Gianluca is doing. What's he doing, I ask? Apparently this guy is selling Chicklets and Gianluca rolled down his window to tell him that he likes Chicklets but he's only 4, and he's not allowed to have any gum until he's 6 years old. Good grief!
So the first day we drive out of San Jose on the Pan American highway and up through the countryside to the Arenal Volcano and Lake Arenal area. We get off the Pan American highway at San Ramon and then up to the little town of Fortuna. Beautiful countryside. Mostly a green patchwork of small farms in rolling hills. That first day we drive around the backside of the volcano to Arenal Lodge. This lodge was originally built by the Smithsonian institute as the closest safe place to study the volcano. Beautiful grounds, well kept, great trails, a very impressive lodge in a garden setting.
The 2nd and 3rd nights we stay at Tabacon, home of the Tabacon Hot Springs. Amazing place! A huge rushing stream, cascading down from the slopes of the volcano, and all hot water! The whole river is one huge hot springs! They have reworked the stream into numerous pools, rapids and waterfalls and have made the surrounding area into a tropical garden paradise. The hot springs are open until 11:00 PM, and one evening we have a great buffet dinner at the pool side, and then swim until 10:00 that night.
One of the days that we are staying at Tabacon we drive east to La Paz Waterfalls. There are seven waterfalls spaced among a wandering trail that starts high, and then winds down through the dense jungle gorges to the final, most spectacular, waterfall; and then over to where we will meet a bus to take us back up to the starting point. At the start of the hike we toured through a butterfly atrium, a snake house and a frog gardens. I saw a poison dart frog. It was a very wet hike. For most of the way we were surrounded by roiling mists from all the waterfalls. And then it also poured rain on us for the last half of the hike!
The next day we drive west around Lake Arenal. Absolutely beautiful high mountain rolling countryside and woodland. And hardly any development. A large pristine high mountain lake, and nobody is there.
We drive down from the mountains and over to the north west coast of Costa Rica - the Nicoya Peninsula area. This area is known as a more arid part of the country. It is being heavily developed and I have heard a lot about it. A lot of surfers go there. There are many large gated communities being built here. Lots of tourists. We stay at a couple of different resorts in this area to better check it out.
After the north west beach area, we travel back up into the mountains around Arenal Volcano and Lake Arenal. This time we are on the opposite side of the volcano mountain range. The Monte Verde area. Known for its bad winding rocky roads. This area is why we rented a 4-wheel drive vehicle for the first week.
Monte Verde. Settled by the Quakers from North America during the 1950s. To escape an increasingly militaristic US society, the Quakers, wishing to relocate in a more peaceful country, chose Costa Rica. They drove in a caravan from Alabama to 3,000 acres they had purchased at Monte Verde. There they have settled in peace and are known for their dairy farms and cheeses.
We drove to the very end of the rocky dirt road. To a lodge known as Mirador, located at the end of the road in a high cloud forest. We were the only people staying there, and it was very neat! We were the only dinner guests in the lodge, and the cook came back early the next morning to prepare an exclusive breakfast only for us. Although it cleared up the next morning to show us great views of Arenal Volcano and the lake, that afternoon and evening we were completely socked in by the clouds. Not to be daunted, we did a hike through the clouds and the rain. It was cool that evening and we fired up the pot belly stove in our cabin. Gianluca thought that was very cool, and I'm glad he was tired, because until he fell asleep, we had to get up every 5 minutes, and check and poke the fire to make sure everything was still OK. The only power to the lodge was from its own wind vane generators and diesel power plant.At the start of the second week we picked up mom and dad from the airport in San Jose. Then drove down to our place in Manuel Antonio. Manuel Antonio still has the best beaches in Costa Rica, and so we spent a day on the beach. Unfortunately, I got a really bad Staph infection in my leg about this time. I must have had a cut on my leg and swam in some polluted beach during the first week of our trip. This limited our sight seeing during the second week - I was pretty sick. But we stayed around our place, did a little fixing up and painting where we had a water leak and some mold had started to take hold, and just generally enjoyed each others company. Christa made some great dinners and mom and dad got a little sampling of daily life in Manuel Antonio.
One day we took a Damas Island Mangrove tour. Our guide was great! He was incredibly knowledgable. Most of the following pictures speak for themselves.
These apartment pictures may be a little boring, but this was the first chance I have ever had to get pictures of the new apartment, so I took a few.
The drive back to the airport. I have never had a rental car before, so I have never had a chance to stop anywhere I wanted and take pictures of this drive which I know so well. These bridges are amazing for the fact that they are still standing and there is still traffic driving across them. They are old railway bridges that have been converted to road bridges. They should have been retired years ago. The pictures may look scary, but not near as scary as driving across the bridge looking at almost completely rusted out girders and being careful not to drive into the holes in the roadway.