Sunday, December 29

Today was devoted to white-water rafting, something Josh had never done, and Joyce and I had only done once many years ago.  It was amazing.

We began by taking our van to the headquarters (?) of the rafting company, not a place to engender confidence, but they were highly recommended.  There we changed to their vehicle, sort of a four-wheel drive truck cum passenger compartment.  

On our way our rafting guide made crickets from the local grasses:

We stopped along the road and picked and tasted fresh lemon grass and cinnamon bark.  The mountains are very beautiful, and we climbed for an hour up along the river valley:

We were missing some necessaries—water shoes for Josh and, highly recommended, sunglass holders to keep our glasses on our necks when the force of the water swept them off of our faces.  We stopped at a market along the way and bought fake $6 Crocs for Josh and shoelaces to tie on our sunglasses:

Finally we got to the takeoff point, and were fitted with life vests and helmets:

I had my camera in a plastic bag and took photos through the bag of the first, very mild rapids and the stopping point for a swim:

After this, however, the guide strongly recommended that I give him the camera to put in his “dry bag” and was he ever right!  We went seven miles downstream through multiple level 2 and level 3 rapids.  These were amazingly strong and made for great excitement!  Our group had two rafts, and three people fell out of the other raft, but we all stayed in ours, although we were soaked for the whole seven miles.  There were two kayakers with cameras in dry bags traveling with us, and they went ahead and took photos of us from the riverbank at places where the current and rapids were especially strong.  I have a CD of photos they then sold us, but I have no way to transfer photos from the CD to this blog at this time.  We stopped along the way at a beautiful waterfall, and I did take the camera out and took these:

Tomorrow we leave for the cloud forest.  More then.

Saturday, December 28

We had a full day!  We had to get up early and out on the van by 7:30 to beat the heat and the holiday crowds to Manuel Antonio Park, a true gem.  We had a naturalist join us who was absolutely incredible; he was able to spot things which no one in our group could see!  Once he saw things, he could point us to them, but it took us all a long while to see what he saw in an instant.

The park has a very long path through it, and the variety of plants, birds and animals is astonishing.  Here are sample of some of the things I was able to capture in photos:

Here’s a video of leaf cutter ants who carry enormous pieces of leaves back to their den where the leaves grow a fungus which is what the ants live on.  It’s a cooperative venture with long lines of ants going to and fro:

Sorry, the video won't upload.  Later!

There’s an amazing variety of lizards; this one changes color like a chameleon, but is not a chameleon (I forget its name):

Groups of Howler monkeys are in the trees; we saw a number of families:

The spiders are phenomenal.  Here’s one about five inches long in its web:

We saw both two-toed and three-toed sloths; guess which one this is:

Our hike ended at the Manuel Antonio beach one of the most beautiful beaches we’ve ever seen.  The water is warm and very clear and the swimming is great.  We spent about 1 ½ hours at the beach:

There is a population of thieves at the beach: White-faced or Capuchin Monkeys.  They’re everywhere and they steal anything that’s not tied down looking for food.  If what they steal has no food, they simply toss it away.  This applies to cameras, fanny packs, etc.  We had to be careful!:

Finally we had a lovely lunch and came back to the hotel for R&R at the pool:

That's Josh making a big splash off of the slide.

We arrived at our room to shower and get ready for dinner and found a group of whiteface monkeys on the roof of the room below us, just in front of our balcony.  They were picking unripe coconuts (easy to open) and eating the fruit as well as drinking the coconut milk just a few feet from us:

From 4-6 PM is happy hour; Pina Colladas are 2 for 1.  (Josh’s are “virgin” Pina Colladas) and we enjoyed them as we watched the sun set over the Pacific. Dinner was fresh mahi-mahi, truly yummy.

 .

Friday, December 27

We stopped on the way to the airport for bagels, and had an uneventful trip to Atlanta.  Josh ate two bagels, and we bought him an anonymous sandwich at the Rochester airport advertised as egg and bacon.  It was inedible.  Peanuts (two bags) on the way to Atlanta, and then we stopped at TGI Friday’s for lunch; Josh had baby back ribs and fries, but wasn’t really full.  I bought a big bag of Hershey Kisses and Joyce and I ate a few; Josh ate most of the rest.  We were bumped up to Business Class out of Atlanta, and finished dinner—chicken, salad, roll and butter, drinks, and gelato for dessert.

 Then Josh finished the Hershey Kisses.  I’m not sure there’s enough food in all of Costa Rica for him!  He’s growing!

Anyway, all is well, the flights are jammed and Delta was begging for people to take being bumped for all kinds of money and extra tickets.  We arrived at the San Jose airport around 9:00 PM and were in our hotel room and settled in by 10:30.

At 9 AM today we met our traveling companions: a family of five, mom, dad and three girls 8, 10 and 12, and a mother and daughter (16).  We drove two hours to Carara National Park, where we took a wonderful hike.  Along the way we saw an enormous variety of flora and fauna, including iguana:

Strange bananas:

And trees with enormous “buttress” roots, as the soil is not very solid, and the trees need huge and wide root systems:

We saw macaws nesting:

And we crossed a river full of scary crocodiles:

We finally arrived at Manuel Antonio National Park on the pacific coast of Costa Rica, and rested for a little at the pool (which has a phenomenal water slide).  We’ll begin to explore the national park here tomorrow.

Anticipation

For Josh's Bar Mitzvah present, Joyce and I offered him the opportunity to travel with us, and gave him many choices of destination.  He chose a family adventure to Costa Rica with a travel organization called Classic Journeys out of La Jolla, California, and the three of us will leave on Thursday, December 26, returning on Friday, January 3.

This photo from the catalog was the tipping point which sold him on the trip:

Josh is very eager to see his grandmother on the canopy zip-line, but she's made no promises.

We'll be going to the Manuel Antonio park, the Villa Blanca cloud forest, the Arenal volcano, and many places in between, and I hope to post the story and photos of our travels as we go.  We're looking forward to this special time with Josh.

Victor