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.