Costa Rica: Sunday, November 19-La Fortuna

We went to the local Catholic church for morning mass.  Afterwards there was an orchestra performance from some of the local youth that was pretty incredible and we enjoyed staying to listen.

After church we went to a nature reserve (ecocentro danaus).  It was farm land until 24 years ago they let it return to natural habitat and have local schools come help plant trees and learn about the animals there.

It's only about 7 acres, but has amazing wildlife.  These are a few of the birds we saw and James took pictures of, but we saw many more.  The guide knew the names of all of them.

The butterfly garden also had many kinds. 

Preston worked so hard to hold still for a butterfly to land on his finger.  

We saw 5 sloths, including a baby, but they were tough to spot up in the trees.  The squirrels and agouti were much easier and seen scampering through the trees as we walked along the path.

The binoculars were helpful in finding the sloths.  One was scratching his belly, making him easier to spot.

On the left in this picture is a bat that was hiding inside of a folded up leaf.  Top middle is a tiny 'blue jeans' frog.  Top right is an iguana on the tree branch, and bottom a lizard.  Ethan was good at detecting the wildlife and found a couple of the frogs for us.

Brad and Margaret flew into Costa Rica and made it to our hotel just in time to get our favorite mango smoothies before dinner. 

Costa Rica: Saturday November 18-Arenal

We made it to our hotel on Thursday night with plenty of time to explore a bit and enjoy the views and sunset before getting dinner.  We then got to relax in the hot tubs-natural hot springs warmed by the volcano.  

Each day our room was made up with a different towel animal.  The kids loved to run to see what it would be when we got back from our day of adventures.

Our first full day in Arenal region we went to Mistico for the hanging bridges.  We did not find out until after we left the area how lucky we were to have such great views of the Volcano everyday.  Starting the day we left it was fogged over completely.

We enjoyed the gorgeous day of hiking.

Larry chose not to join us (the previous hike still too clear in his memory).  He went to town for souvenir shopping.

We did not see as much wildlife as we'd hoped to in the rainforest.  Brielle spotted this walking stick.  We found lots of leaf cutter ants and lizards.  Ethan kept checking holes for tarantulas and we watched the tops of trees for sloths but didn't see anything.  We were told a guide would make the experience better, but it cost quite a bit more.

It was a relaxed enjoyable hike, but as we reflected back we all agreed it was the least favorite activity we did on the trip.

From Mistico we drove along more bumpy dirt roads to Sky Adventures where Larry and Donna were planning to Zipline the following day.

We loved the view and the pineapple smoothies on the back porch of the restaurant for lunch.

We got a pretty good show from the toucans.  We'd seen a few from further away but were excited as they came to closer trees.  

We were amazed when one of the workers came out to tell us he heard the sound of the toucans coming a few minutes before they showed.

The kids wanted pizza that night and we tried another one of the top rated Soda's (Costa Rican word for a more authentic restaurant).  Pizza was okay, but not great.

The fish casado (typical Costa Rican dish), that night though was one of my favorites from the trip.

Costa Rica Friday: November 17th-Rio Celeste

We started the morning with breakfast buffet at the hotel.  Costa Rica (at least the 2 hotels we had breakfast at while we were down there) has really amazing pancakes; something I didn't expect.  Of course we also enjoyed rice and beans (Gallo Pinto) for every breakfast and the pineapple was so sweet it was like candy for breakfast!

The Coatis came to join us while we were eating and we saw more later that day on our hike.

After breakfast we went to Tenorio Volcano National Park, just down the road from our hotel. 

The ranger station was covered with webs and these huge spiders.  The ranger told us they were venomous, but didn't seem too concerned about them.

We were told it is about a 30 minute walk to the waterfalls, so we thought it would be a pretty easy trail.  We convinced Larry to come with us, but he never did quite trust us the rest of the trip.  The walk was definitely a hike and took much longer than planned as it was steep and muddy in places. 

There were also a lot of biting ants to watch out for along the path.

and then 247 stairs -the kids counted them- to descend (and then go back up again!) to see the waterfall.  

 Our legs were a bit shakey when we got there, but it was worth it.

Preston was a bit upset that this wasn't the biggest waterfall in the world. He seemed to remember Pailon del Diablo from Ecuador last year as he was asking if we could climb in a tunnel behind it.  We've worked on his endurance this year and he was able to do the hike on his own with no complaints (except for the ant bites). 

 It's hard to capture the color of the water in a photograph, but it really does look like blue koolaid.  We (at least some of us) :) would have loved to continue the hike to the mirador and then on to the place where the two rivers combine causing the chemical reaction to make the blue color, but we didn't have enough time before needing to get back to check out of our hotel.

After the muddy hike we were glad for the outdoor shower at our hotel room to clean everyone up before hitting the road.

The kids were sad to say goodbye to one of their favorite parts about the hotel, the resident dog.  We think they said his name is Chilipo.  He followed us on our hike Thursday night to the river and around the property the whole time we were there.

Traveling to Costa Rica

All our bags are packed, we're ready to go...excited for our trip to Costa Rica for Thanksgiving break.  

One suitcase was filled with snack food.  Another with wetsuits, masks and snorkels, and one for the drone. :)  

We got to the airport with plenty of time before our flight and had time to explore and had dinner in the lounge before heading out.  We got to the gate 30 minutes before our flight and were surprised to find everyone already boarded and them calling our names.  

Traveling went smoothly.  An overnight flight to Panama, in which everyone actually got some sleep and then a long layover before getting on another flight to Liberia.

After meeting up with Donna (who had gotten to the airport a few hours before us on a different flight, we all picked up rental cars and drove to Rio Celeste Hideaway.  We were glad it was still daylight as the road to the hotel was quite bumpy with narrow bridges for the last few kilometers.

We had just enough time to hike to the river before dinner.

Which required crossing some rickety bridges.

But it was worth it to see the gorgeous blue coloring of the river.  The hike back was in the dark.  Dinner at the hotel followed by a swim in the pool before everyone crashed for the night.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is such a fun Holiday for kids.  We enjoyed the weekend as a family, going to a party at church on Saturday and eating Halloween themed food all week. 

Preston wanted to be a ghost.  He made sure it was a friendly ghost and not scary.  He has been scared of most things (and had lots of bad dreams) ever since last Halloween.  This year he loved it.

Brielle had this blue dress given to her and just knew it would make a perfect costume.  She was trying to decide between Belle and Alice and Wonderland, but decided her hair was a better fit for Alice.  

Ethan decided to be a football coach.  He loves sports.  Almost every morning he is asking about the score of whatever games was happening before he went to bed.  

The kids picked out their pumpkins at the patch a couple weeks ago and were very excited to carve. All the family time was our favorite.