Our Costa Rican Adventure Part 2 of 2

March 6 – Up early (as usual, not loving my alarm!) to take in a hike in the Santa Elena cloud forest – saw a huge tarantula, hiked on the continental divide, then on to Salvaterra hanging bridges (8 bridges, longest at 560 ft) high above the canopy. We also toured the beautiful butterfly garden, hot, humid & full of colorful butterflies flying around.

 

amazing huge trees, covered in bromeliads

lots of creepy bugs in the cloud forest

everything just oozes water

the cloud forest

hanging bridges thru the cloud forest

in the butterfly garden, a dish of fruit

a "pet" in the butterfly garden

chrysalis hatching

Our evening included a night walk (complete with head lamp) to spot an olingo small furry animal, lots of insects & a scorpion that glows under a black light. Much creepier walking around in the noisy, very dark jungle than a night boat ride!

 

scorpion under black light

same scorpion

today's steps, 17,000, 63 flights of stairs!

We ended the day up on a lookout, enjoying the scenery & the sunset; then out for a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant.

 

just outside our room!

view from our room

March 7 – after a huge buffet breakfast (all breakfasts included) we headed to the Monteverde Institute for some volunteering (part of the tour). The Institute works to grow native trees from seed & provide them to farmers & locals to reforest the area. The hope is to connect the cloud forest with the Pacific coast mangroves to provide a corridor for animals to travel & restore forests to preserve water.  Robin joined the group filling bags with soil for tree planting; I enjoyed my time weeding small trees in the bags. Hot again, in the 30C’s!

 

breakfast buffet

filling bags with soil

tree seedlings that we weeded

another typical meal, more rice & beans

Blue-crowned Motmot

March 8 – another travel day - passing road side stands selling huge avocados & fruits; the shipping port of Caldera; large plantations of palms for palm oil; a stop at the Tarcoles River to watch crocodiles before arriving in Quepos on the coast.

 

avocado stand

taking milk or cream to the cheese factory

palms for palm oil

Tarcoles River, known for it's crocodiles

the ever present souvenir shops

Costa Rica takes recycling seriuosly!

Our hotel, Villa Lirios was charming, lovely landscaped gardens, a pool & restaurant. We spent the afternoon at the public beach, of course filling my pockets with seashells & seaglass & Robin working on his sunburn!

 

our hotel pool, our room was overlooking it

public beach at Quepos

March 9 – after an early breakfast we drove to the nearby famed Manuel Antonio National Park – incredible place – we had a local guide who spotted capuchin monkeys, a snake, red eyed tree frogs, bats, racoons, basilisk lizards & iguanas. All this before we got to the beach! No umbrellas or lounge chairs (popular at the public beach, for a fee), just sun & sand, iguanas jumping at folks for their ice cream & sandwiches  & monkeys that can open back pack zippers looking for goodies! (They got handwipes from our pack while we walked the beach). The rules were “no food anywhere near the beach” & now we know why!

white faced capuchin monkey

racoon

iguana

hermit crab

red eyed tree frog under a leaf

beige colored baby two toed sloth

sloth

green snake

I dragged my snorkel gear this far so despite being told that the water was too murky to see anything I ventured out from the shore – and couldn’t see a thing!

Manuel Antonio National Park

Out for supper with new friends & finally got my whole fried red snapper, excellent!

 

March 10 – A small group of us went on a kayaking trip in the mangroves, led by William, a marine biologist who calls the mangroves beside his home his “office”. Lucky guy! The locals have used a mold of an ocean kayak & made it from fiberglass with no holes, so no wet butt & now reparable. We enjoyed a slow paddle down a canal, treed with huge mangrove trees, got up close with a group of white-faced capuchin monkeys & returned to a wonderful lunch prepared by William’s wife (the best casado in Costa Rica)!

 

green parrot

typical cattle in Costa Rica

tiger heron

Gray-necked Wood-rail

kingfisher

We ended the day with a group dinner at Ronny’s Place with spectacular sunset views over the ocean & another group photo.

 

March 11 – one last trip to the beach, looking for scarlet macaws before we said good-bye to some of our group that were lucky enough to stay a few more days. By this point we had become “family” so this was difficult. We all created a What’sapp group to share photos, comment & to keep in touch, so they are not lost to us.

Not long into our trip back to San Jose the driver spotted a flock of scarlet macaws, excellent as they had eluded us till now. Lots of photos & videos taken.

part of my collection

We committed a great big mistake – Dorian our guide got a call from the hotel that we had left an hour before, asking who was in room 308? They had found a folder with passports in the safe – ours of course! Crap!! After much time on the phone by Dorian, turning around twice, us volunteering to be kicked off at the next town to return for the passports – a solution was found! Our driver had the brilliant idea to send the folder on the public bus to San Jose - the hotel clerk packaged it up, put our guide’s name on it (safer than a tourist name) & dropped it at the bus station in Quepos. It would/should arrive in the morning (the day we flew home) & be picked up by Dorian. Fingers crossed, we said to go ahead.

Long trip back to San Jose, busy roads, lots of toll booths with multiple lanes merging back in to 2 lanes, thankfully roads in great shape (way more potholes back home). Back to the Radisson for our last night – we still had not turned on a TV during our trip. Anxious night, worried about the passports.

 

crazy traffic!

colorful painted ox carts

March 12 – Hurrah – Dorian arrived at 7:25, passports in hand!! Then we could relax & enjoy our last breakfast buffet. 

a visitor at our last breakfast at the hotel

On to the airport for our 1:50 flight, ready to go home to our own bed & home cooking but so thankful that we had been lucky enough to travel around Costa Rica with a wonderful group of people on a great tour!

 Covid precautions starting to lift back home but masks still worn everywhere indoors in Costa Rica & an emphasis on handwashing in new sinks outside of most places vs hand sanitizer. Our bus mates made the decision to opt out of masks while on the bus but needed everywhere else.

Our flight left us with a 12 hour layover in Toronto, we had booked a hotel but with the change to Daylight Savings time & waiting for food, our actual lay down time was about 5 hours. Returning to Toronto airport was a painful experience – in a line-up to get thru customs that stretched the length of the space & took over 1 hour, just making our flight to Edmonton. Arrived home to -5C.

Toronto airport, nasty long lines

All in all a wonderful trip, a tick off the “bucket list” & we are now fans of guided small group travel! Definitely still “Living the Dream”!