Costa Rica Love

Well, the big trip is over. A week in Costa Rica wasn't nearly enough. We went to three places: Arenal Volcano area, Monteverde cloud forest, and Manuel Antonio national park and beach. I'll give a brief synopsis of the trip.
We arrived in San Jose at 5:25 a.m and met Arnufal, our driver who took us to our hotel in Arenal (a 3 hour drive). We were exhausted from flying all night, so after breakfast, we crashed for a few hours and woke up just in time to meet our guide for horseback riding. We rode to the beautiful La Fortuna Falls.

Later that evening, we went to Tabacon Hot Springs. This is an amazing river that is heated by the volcano. It is warmer than a hot tub in some places.

The next morning we got up early and headed for the Pacuare River where we went white water rafting. It was a blast. There were class III and IV rapids.

That evening we drove to the observatory lodge and watched the fiery magma rocks roll off the top of the volcano while we ate dinner. Unfortunately, my camera is not good enough to capture a great night photo of this, so here's a pic of the volcano in the daytime.

The next morning we headed for Monteverde via a boat ride across Arenal Lake and the a long drive in a van on a winding dirt road. That day, we went and hiked around Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. We spotted a white faced monkey on one of our hikes, and listened as wild boars talked to each other (they sounded mean).

The next day we went on a zip line canopy tour (over 2 miles of zip lines). Then we walked through the canopy on hanging bridges that were about 150-200 feet tall.

Later that day, we went to the serpentarium. I hate snakes, but I have an unhealthy fascination with them. The serpentarium featured only snakes that are native to Costa Rica... a lot of vipers. There were also a few poisonous dart frogs...very cool.

The next day, we took another drive on that winding dirt road to get out of Monteverde. We drove another 3 hours to the Pacific coast. We stayed in a town called Quepos, about a 5 minute bus ride from Manuel Antonio National park. We spent Sunday just hanging out on the beach and playing in the ocean until sunset.

The next day we went for a coastal kayaking tour to a beautiful beach where we snorkeled. We were going to go on another tour of a mangrove forest later in the evening, but the tide was too high, so the tour was not running, so we just hung out in the town of Quepos.

Our last real day was spent in Manuel Antonio National Park. We hiked around and spotted wildlife. A lot of Howler Monkeys, sloths, lizards, and iguanas. We hit the beach for one last hour then headed back to San Jose. On our way, we crossed the crocodile bridge... a ton of crocs just hang out under this bridge all of the time.

That was it. We ate dinner in San Jose, went to bed, woke up at 3:30 and got on the airplane headed for Denver at 6:00 a.m. It was a great trip. We did so much, but there is so much we didn't do. Maybe we'll go back someday. PURA VIDA!