Snorkeling and zip lining

On Tuesday, we went to go snorkeling in the Cahuita National Preserve (a marine and forest park about 4kms from our Casita that our hotel owner told us about - not many tourists know about it and it was supposed to be a nice 3km hike to a secluded beach with great snorkeling.  We first went into Cahuita to rent some snorkels and masks and discovered that the park rules are that you can't snorkel from the beach but have to hire a boat. We'd all had our hearts set on finally getting to see some of the ocean's beauty and after figuring in the cost of the park admission and a free lunch, the trip didn't seem so bad... especially since we had our own private guide who would know exactly where to take us for the best sights.

I'll have to add some pictures once I get my hands on Shawn's camera (the only underwater one we have), but we took some very good shots.  We snorkeled in two locations on either side of a peninsula ... the first was out in the centre of a large bay essentially right behind our Casita in about 12' of water.  Many big brain coral heads with lots of different types of fish and we saw an Octopus that I got a good shot of.

Then we jumped back in the boat and headed over to the other side and jumped in.  Again with that 90 degree water... very warm.  Lots of salt so no problem swimming/floating either.  This place had FISH.  I've never seen so many large schools of different types of fish.  At one point I had three large (more than 200 fish in the smallest school) schools of fish swimming around me... the smallest fish would have been about 15" long.  Looking at them, you'd think they were swimming in each other because you could barely see water between them!

We also found a stingray trying to hide in the sand.  I did my best Crocodile Steve impersonation and used my fin to sweep away the sand on him so we could see him better (I did keep my distance).  He was about 5' long nose to tail and a good 2' across so a good size.  I've seen plenty of these over the years and they are pretty timid creatures... but I wouldn't swim down and try to pick one up either!  Saw a few poisonous sea urchins and a Lionfish (very poisonous and timid creature as well) but no sharks/barracuda's or anything like that.

 I'm hiding...  you don't want to step on me!  (the Stingray)

After we dusted him off, he swam away to hide again...

 No, they weren't photoshopped in there!

A Lionfish... very dangerous

 Not photoshopped either!

A Sea Cucumber

Fish for dinner, anyone?

 This doesn't do them justice... and only one of a bit of one of three schools within 20'

See the fish?

We then had a fruit lunch (which turned out to be a pineapple they cut down) on the beach at the end of the peninsula where we saw a bunch of small hermit crabs wandering around the sand which gave the kids no end of fun.  Then it was back to Cahuita where we jumped in the car and headed back to the pool at the Casita to rinse off the salt.  A great day all in all.

On Wednesday, we finally got to fulfill Jen's wish to go zip-lining through the rain forest canopy (they call them Canopy Tours here).  We had found a local tour office in Puerto Viejo that sold these adventures and we had thought it would be out of Limon (on the drive back to San Jose) but it turns out they are just outside of Hone Creek (basically the little village next to ours) about 10kms from here... 3 of them on 4x4 "Costa Rican highways"... we had to ford 2 streams but nothing my old Passat couldn't handle if it had the ground clearance for some of the potholes.  On the drive in, we were following their 4x4 club cab pickup with about 12 tourists jammed in the cab and the back... when they pulled over.  Turns out a sloth was just lying on his back up against some of the local weeds in the ditch sunning himself.  Had his arms and legs spread out like a snow angel.

This was the first three toed we'd seen and we got to get right up to him.  One of the guides showed us that Sloths aren't always slow as he'd reach for the Sloth's face and that Sloth would swing his claws in a real swoop.  I guess they are just careful moving in the trees.  Those limbs sure can move quick (and those long claws could do some real damage).

Note the claws!

Anyway, back in the truck we go until we get to the top of the big hill and then we climb up some steps to the zip line launch point.

We get the standard safety schtick from one of the guides about how you should always have your one hand on the cord between the pulley and your harness and the other about 3' back from the pulley to act as a brake and a guide to keep you from spinning... and that you should never set off before the person ahead of you has unhooked from the cable and is out of the way, and that the guide at the end will signal you when to start braking so that you don't get stuck on the line and having to haul yourself in, etc.  Then he hops on the cable, immediately lets go of the cable and hangs upside down racing for the other end 200' up in the air over the canyon below!  That should have been our first clue...

Then they strap in the first tourist and send her flying... she's barely 2/3 of the way down and they send off the next one!  Clearly the other guides weren't paying attention to the safety lecture.  I'm thinking... I sure hope that first one doesn't have to haul herself in as her boyfriend is going to connect with her at a serious rate of closure if she doesn't.... but the guide gets her off before her boyfriend comes screaming into the platform.  We watched a bunch of these and then it was our turn.  Rachel was too light for that first cable (most of the long ones) so she had a guide go with her.  As we found out, the heavier you are, the faster you go...  the guide was almost as big as me so she must have been flying!  After that, she was raring to do it herself and was pushing each time to go it alone - but this is the roller coaster fanatic in our family - and of course the one who broke both her legs by the time she was 6 (on separate occasions doing dare devil stuff).

Shawn also had a blast and learned to go upside down and wasn't the slightest fazed about it.  Jen of course loved it.  I had the only minor incident.  After watching that boyfriend nearly take out his partner, I was always concerned about getting stuck on the line and having the next person run into me so was waiting for the guide to give me the brake sign... when I finally said to myself... there's no bloody way I'm going to get stopped if he doesn't stop me now so I squeezed that cable for all I was worth and still managed to slam into the tree at the end at a decent clip.  I would have been fine except that he noticed me coming screaming in and stood in front of me and my leg caught his harness so I got a bit of a cut and bruised the bone a bit (on top of a bruise that I picked up the day before from a slip on the rocks at the waterfall).  Nothing serious but it drove home the point not to trust the guides at all.

Nevertheless, we got to rocket between thirteen different zip lines from platforms in the trees as high as 90 metres often across canyons hundreds of feet deep.  It was a lot of fun and one of the highlights of the trip.

 Here comes Pumpkin!

Mom's having a blast

Shawn on the Tarzan Swing!

Two happy zip-liners!

Shawn's right side up for a change

Yee Haw!

Today, we <sniff> had to leave the Caribbean coast to catch our plane tomorrow to NYC (which we understand will be under a major snowstorm alert... that outta be fun with us with no winter clothes!).  We knew that the drive to San Jose would be about 5-5:30 hours so we set out at noon after another morning in  the waves at Playa Uva.  The drive was pretty uneventful up until San Jose when once again, we got completely perplexed as to how to find our way through a city without street signs and with maps that do not show basic information such as highway names/numbers.  We got to San Jose in under 3:30 hours but it took us an additional 2:30 to find the airport!  By the time we got near our hotel, I was ready to just park the  darn car and walk away from it so we returned it to the rental agency and got them to get us to the hotel.  Turns out the directions the hotel gave us wouldn't have helped us find it either...  what the heck is so hard about saying take the exit under the second bridge and proceed 1km to this sign, turn right and an immediate left.  No....  they can't do things like that.  We had absolutely no trouble driving anywhere in CR but San Jose is about as bad as Bangalore.  Not fun at all.  Next time, I'll make sure to have a working GPS with me.  I have yet to see an accurate map of CR.  I think there is a unfulfilled niche... but Google's maps are the worst.

We fly out at noon and get into JFK at 11pm (hopefully).  I don't doubt we'll have some challenges along the way.  Love to all.

Our last week in Costa Rica

Well, after nearly a month here, I think we may have found a spot we like as much as we love Hawaii.  The temperatures are about ideal...  you can be out and about pretty much anytime of the day once you get acclimated to it (those first few nights in Torteguero were really hot but I'm thinking now that we'd handle them with aplomb).  We've finally been able to spend some quality beach time and the beaches here..... WOW.    Think miles of sandy beaches with perhaps 2-3 people you can see...  and you can easily walk somewhere that there are no people.

Today we swam at three different beaches all within about 10 miles of here.  Perfect waves for body surfing to perfect snorkeling to perfect for surfing if you wanted to...  and then late in the afternoon we found another...  picture this.  You walk in to 90 degree water, clear as a bell and with the famous azure blue that you expect of the Caribbean into perfect white sand, not deep, no drastic drop offs, etc... you put on your mask and swim out... beautiful reefs with lots of fish and then you hear a splash... you look up and pelican's are dive bombing into the water to catch their dinner... so you float on your back and watch them as you drift in the gentle waves along this peninsula that looks like it has been untouched by humans... and you notice a large iguana sunning on the rocks not 20' from you... then you look up and see Howler monkeys in the trees above you.  THAT's this beach.  Hawaii has some very tough competition here!

Right up next to that peninsula in the background is the  section of beach I'm talking about... but this part is only 500 yards away and its at least as nice as any in Hawaii...

Jen took this picture... she got Rachel to stand in front so she could take a picture of the man/horse (the girl isn't bad either!).  They washed the horse down and of course then it promptly rolled around in the sand!

Shawn's pushing to get access to the computer so I'll pass it over to him and bring you up to speed on the zip lining and other activities later.  Tomorrow we spend one last day in CR and then we spend all day Saturday getting to NYC for three days.  Hasta la vista baby!

A few days ago.

Man time flies when you are having fun!

I can't believe it's been almost a week more stuff since the last post.  As you may remember, Shawn, Rachel and I were suffering from a bit of Costa Rican poison ivy.  I'm happy to report that Shawn and Rachel are pretty much through it but for what ever reason my bout seemed to percolate along with not much until theirs cleared up and then it spread like it did with the kids - and I KNOW I didn't scratch spread it.  This is persistent stuff!  I've got little bits on the inside of my arms, and up both legs.  Big red splotchy patches that resist all medications and the itching can drive you insane! Luckily this little place we are staying at outside Cahuita (Costa Azul Lodge) has a little pool and being in the water provides almost instant relief!  I can say that I've had a few 2:30am swims!  Anyway, judging from the kids, it gets worse before it gets better and I'm fairly sure I'm coming down the back side now.  We're not letting it slow us down much anyway as you'll soon see.

A few days ago we went on a chocolate plantation tour.  It was an old farm bought by a German that decided he'd try to preserve the land much as it was back in the day when Costa |Rica did a lot of coffee.  They had a disease that went through the plants in the 70's that pretty much wiped out the commercial sales... it's still widely prevalent and tends to rot the fruit on the plant so it makes coffee farming here uneconomical.  The plantation itself was only about 1km down the road from us here and it was quite interesting to see it from bean to chocolate (which of course we got to sample!).

Our guide showing us how they get the cocoa fruit out of the tree.  

This is a mini banana tree.  After these fruit ripen, the whole tree dies and it starts again. That's quite the flower on the bottom!

A "Green" Bamboo stand.  This stuff is useless for building as it is too bendy but a great place to find pit vipers!  Some of those poles were 40' long.

The next day we decided to see if we could try to find the elusive Bribri waterfalls by ourselves.  A guided tour there was $49/pp so being of good Scottish blood, and equiped with our trusty 4x4 crap bucket, we set off to find them.  On the way, I noticed a plane flying BELOW us...   never a good thing when you are driving along a twisty mountain road.  

He's dusting the banana's...  none of the Tico's would eat these but they show up in our supermarkets!  Those hills behind the plane are in Panama.

We had to stop for directions (at Jen's insistence... I would have found it eventually), but it turns out it is up the main side road right in the town of Bribri itself...  you have to ford three streams and some car swallowing pot holes but you can get pretty close with the 4x4.  We had been told about theft and breakins so when we saw a house on stilts with a Parquero sign out front, we pulled in and chatted with the young man (Alejandro - like the song) who came down the steps to see the Gringos.  He didn't speak any English at all and our Spanish is pretty awful but we got our point across and he told us where to park and then led the way to the waterfall (across more streams and some slippery trails).  He even pointed out where other unfortunates left their cars only to have the windows smashed.  I wasn't quite sure if he was one of the ones doing the smashing (if you didn't pay to park your car with them) or not but he turned out to be a great guide and we had a lot of fun trying to understand each other.  He took great fun in watching Shawn freak out about the little fish in the pond.  As is often the case with these CR waterfalls, they can be a bit of a hike but they are well worth the effort!

That little pool in front of us was about 3' deep and FULL of tiny Tilapia which frightened Shawn to no end.  Our guide told us he'd caught a 24" one that morning downstream from here.  I can say from much experience here in CR, that the fish is VERY tasty!

The wet, but happy crew.  There is a deep pool behind that rock where we swam under the falls.  40-50' can really knock out any kinks in your neck!  

I'm running out of juice on the laptop as Shawn has been doing his blog all day (be sure to catch his as he's turned into a bit of a writing comedian)... so that's it for now.  Next time I'll talk about the great beaches, snorkeling and ziplining we did over the past three days.  Our love to all.

The last week

Last we posted, we drove all day from the continental divide to the Pacific and then over to the Caribbean.  We had a bit of a set back in that the rash on Rachel's leg spread fairly severely and then Shawn (and to a much lesser extent, I) got it too.  We visited a local clinic with surprisingly good and effective health care who immediately put Shawn/Rachel on IV drips to combat the infection in their sores.  Neither of them was very pleased by this as you can imagine but this Costa Rican Poison Ivy is particularly nasty stuff in that it has resisted all efforts to eradicate the antigens and any scratching at all spreads it.

Poor Rachel was initially hardest hit because she'd scratch it and it spread from her ankles all the way up to the bottom of her short shorts.  A few days after that, Shawn started moving his as well and his legs were also covered in pimply like sores that has started to become infected (as evidenced by the white pimple like heads to the sores).  So the nice Doctor put them on IV drips to combat the infection and then reduce the allergic reaction.  After three bags each, you could see the swelling go down... but of course the itching remains.  They gave them Antihistimines and anti-bacterial Cortizone creams along with Calomine to deal with that.  Rachel is nearly better (although she still shows some scarring) but Shawn's was still bad so we went back yesterday for another treatment and they gave him his shot in the tush...  you should have seen the look of surprise on his face when the nurse asked him to roll over and pulled down his pants!  They have given them some more creams and pills/liquid antihistimines and say it may be another 5-10 days.  I can say from my little bit that the itching drives you nuts.... and can wake you up from a solid sleep.

They told us to stay out of the ocean which has been a real bane for Jen... being in a place with this beautiful water and apparently fantastic snorkelling but not being able to use it - although she's MUCH more upset about this than the kids are and has been really bothered by this hole fiasco.   We narrowed it down to a walk that the kids and I took in the rain forest behind the Casita's at Bio Thermales.  While trying to find the main path, we took one of the side branches that seemed less used and was a bit over grown.  When we went back later with Jen, we never went down that path so that's the only spot we ever went that she didn't and we believe we brushed up against this plant on that walk.  Nothing very serious as it was initially just around the ankles above the socks, but our scratching has moved it around and no amount of lukewarm showers (hot water is non-existant here) and soap can remove the oils so any scratching just moves them around to start a new reaction somewhere else.  We are going to boil up some water today and try that with some strong detergents. The good news is that sitting in the swimming pool here provides immediate relief so we've been doing that a lot and this spot is a howler Monkey paradise and we can see more than a dozen without moving more than 50' off our front porch at pretty much any time.

Our little Casita at Costa Azul between Cahuita and Puerto Veijo.  That's a breakfast nook and kitchen along the side/back.  Nice having the kitchen outside facing the rain forest!

The little swimming pool where we spell RELIEF!  From here, we hear Howler's and see all kinds of pretty yellow birds dive bombing the pool for a drink!

Here's a few monkey shots we were able to take (out of hundreds).  These little guys are the second loudest animal (after lions) in the world and their howl sounds like it came from a Freddy Kruger movie.  It's the males that do it, the juveniles and females almost purr..

Just hanging around...  their tails are the strongest limb and we were told that if you pick one up, you should always pick it up by the tail... which seemed counter intuitive until we tried it.  They are perfectly happy hanging by their tails!

Monkey love!  (There are 6 of them in there!)

Just laying about...  and howling at passing trucks!

OK.... where's that truck gone now?  (This is an adult male).

We also spent some time at the local Jaguar Rescue Centre (so named because they rescued a Jaguar kitten who's mom had been shot by a local farmer - which subsequently failed).  It's a volunteer run centre run by two Spanish biologists from the Madrid Zoo who fell in love with each other and Costa Rica on a field trip and decided to stay.  When locals found out they were biologists, they just started dropping off sloths, monkey's etc and the place is now got scads of animals from Caymans to Fur de Lance Pit Vipers to Bird Eating Spiders to local small deer.  We attended a tour from a British student volunteer that was excellent and gave us a very good sense as to the issues facing the local species.  Best of all, we got to go in a monkey hut and have dozens of Howler's crawl all over us and check us out for fleas and termites! They are amazingly gentle and the kids were bowled over by this experience.

Some tiny (3') Caymans cooling themselves off.

A two toed sloth just hanging around....

This little guy was a big suck... he'd climb into your arms and immediately try to go to sleep!

When one jumps on you, they all do!  They seemed to like the heights I'd provide.

Checking for fleas!

A Red Eyed Tree Frog (with orange feet/belly).  When he closes his eyes and hides his feet, he's almost invisible.

A two toed sloth.  You can tell them because they have no tail, have a pig like nose (as you can see here!), and two toes on the front paws.  They hiss when you try to pick them up and these little guys have big teeth they use for opening fruit.  We've seen quite a few of them around the Casita as well.

Today is a bit rainy so we're just hanging around.  Jen's teaching the kids French and Shawn just got 175/180 on his test so they are doing very well at it.  I've been very impressed by how well Jen teaches them.  I can only say, I wish I had a French teacher like her when I was their age.

I've also been teaching Shawn some basic coding and now he's raced off and started learning HTML5, Javascript and CSS.  He's very enthusiastic about it.  Rachel has been doing a lot of French, Math and knitting.  The ebook readers are proving handy as we've had a lot of time to just lay about.  We're hoping to take a walk on the beach today if the rain holds off (it's been fantastic weather here during the day with large thunderstorms during the evening/night).

A "Crocodile Tree".  These little thorns are intended to keep animals away and are amazingly pointy and sharp... but the big iguana's just ignore them and happily climb right up them!  They stick out about 1/2"

Random stuff

It's pouring down raining at the moment and I'm stranded away from our Casita so I thought I'd post some links to some neat video's Shawn and I made with the PlayBooks (in full 1080p although I won't upload in that resolution as it would take hours at this speed!).  
This first one is of a unique plant species found around Arenal that we called the Disappearing Fern! We discovered this quite by accident and were very amazed by it. You have to see it to believe it, hence the videos!. Enjoy!


This second one shows the secret... watch carefully.


Neat huh?

Gotta run... a pause in the downpour!

From the Pacific to the Atlantic in a day

Well... more accurately the Caribbean Sea which is part of the Atlantic... but you get my point.  Costa Rica is one of the few places in the America's where this is possible.  We started the day in Monteverde up on the Continental divide where we had been delayed due to flooding of roads and landslides.  The roads in and around Monteverde are pretty wild as you can see below

|That's a 1000' or more drop off and those roads are very slippery mud.  Note the imaginary guard rails!

Jen was starting to have cabin fever as the local temps in Monteverde were about 12 degrees and she was going nuts from all the rain so we figured we'd try to make it to either Manuel Antonio on the Pacific for much more rain (but warm temperatures) or back to the Caribbean side to Manzanilo.

After about 60kms of those roads and visibility ranging from feet to a mile or so, we finally broke out of the clouds and got on the Panamerican Highway (a road that goes all the way to Chile... although calling it a highway is a bit of a stretch!).  We stopped for some delicious "spiky fruit" which is something the locals enjoy... we've paid anywhere from $1-$4 / bag for it but this was the most tasty!  It tastes a bit like Leechy and you need a sharp knife to get them open.  Very clear fruit wrapped around a hard nut inside that spiky shell.  A big hit with all but Rachel.

Mamonchino - "Spiky Fruit"

From the Panamerican, we drove to Punto Arenas on the Pacific side to see if we could get through to Manuel Antonio but we were told the road to MA was flooded and people had been stuck down there for a week so we decided to dip our toes in the Pacific and head across the country for the Caribbean.

The Pacific...  this was one moment it wasn't pouring down rain.  

Some of the stuff from high tide...  enjoying being out of the car after 3 hours

Back into the trusty BeGo "Crap Bucket" for the drive across the continent

One of the few moments it wasn't pouring down rain - but you can see it's just a mile or so away.  You've never seen it rain until you've been in a Costa Rican downpour!

We took the new toll highway back from Punta Arenas to San Jose and enjoyed a pretty good drive for that portion although there were a few necessary detours around roadworks intended to prevent landslides.  |Then we made the mistake of assuming bright orange highway markers in the country mean the same thing in the city....  nope.  We were on an assortment of one-way, back streets and alleys as it took us 90 minutes to get through San Jose when we made our next mistake.  NEVER assume the shortest distance between two points on a map is a straight line!  After 3.5 hours of very twisty, turny up and downs, we finally arrived in "Squirells" (a journey that with our guide Modesto took no more than 1.5 hours).  Now we know why he went half way north to Nicaragua and back to get there.... but we saw the real |Costa Rican Central Valley at least.    After getting some fuel in Squirells, we spent another 30 minutes trying to find the road to Limon which we realized we'd passed through earlier.  Needless to say, CR maps are NOT accurate.  

From Squirells, it was another 90 mins or so to Limon, a rough port town with more containers than people that Jen had read was having a Mardi Gras... although we saw no sign of it and were told it wasn't for kids anyway.  By this time we were rushing the sunset as we wanted to get to our destination before dark so we could find a hotel... So no time to dip our feet in the Caribbean.

No time to stop as we rushed down the Caribbean coast towards Manzanilo and Puerto Veijo.

Just after this picture was taken, the sky darkened right up to pitch black and the clouds let loose with thunder and lightning like we'd never seen before.  We could barely see ahead of the car, so pulled off at the first little village of Cahiuta which looked like a bit like a Jamaican hell hole at dark... and found a spot that had a room for us and we settled down for the night after putting on over 500Kms on the car.  We were woken up about 5am by Howler monkeys having a party outside our room.  Bright sunshine but man, can they wake the dead. 

The first of hundreds of Howler Monkey pictures and videos.  Personality galore!

After this, we spent the last 5 days down the road at a nice little spot run by an Italian Family led by "Franco".  More on that later.

Wet, Wet, Wet

As we suspected, today was a very wet day, so no zip lining for us here in Monteverde/Santa Elana.  We couldn't imagine zipping through the forest canopy at 50km/h being pelted by rain and fog and spending our budget to do it!  We had a great breakfast here at the Hotel Manikan (named after a bird) and then drove back to Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve for a 2.5hr hike in the cloud forest.

They wanted more than double the already expensive park fees to have a guide accompany us so we passed on that option - especially remembering how Nancy thought her guide here was the worst she'd had.  After doing the walk ourselves and not seeing much in the way of animals or plants we hadn't seen before, we thought we made the right call.

We found an Ent!

Someone wasn't happy about having his picture taken!

Here comes purple riding hood!

Hiding under a big leaf (I'm shooting nearly straight up to get at this).

Lots of colour to be found...

Looks like some sort of lily... quite pretty.

This has to be the world's ugliest flower!

Its a cloud forest all right!

We hiked all the way up here to the top of the continental divide to see this wonderful view!

The end of the world....

Didn't expect to see a crab at 5000' above sea level!

It was an interesting hike that took us to the continental divide.

We didn't get to see the elusive Quetzal bird although the ranger swore he saw one just outside the gift shop just before we arrived.  We did go back to the Hummingbird Centre.

There were lots and lots of these little green guys... hard to believe they can fly 10,000 miles in a few weeks.

Just hanging out at the local saloon...

The rest of the day we spent with the kids and studies (or more correctly, Jen did).  We had a FANTASTIC dinner here at the hotel...  Jen and I had the "Typical" dinner of fish, rice and beans.  The fish was about the best I've ever tasted... and lots of it.  The kids had the best spagetti alfredo (with mushrooms and chicken) they've ever had as well.  All very reasonably priced as well.  From looking at this place, you'd probably never stop here but we've quite enjoyed it along with the 18 month old daughter "Mia" of the proprietress Genia.  We're all looking forward to another great breakfast tomorrow then on to Manuel Antonio Reserve on the Pacific Coast - although Jen is trying to talk us out of it as she's absolutely had it with the rain/wet/cold.  

Our love to all.