Costa Rica - December 2014

I'd always wanted to go to Costa Rica,  ever since I was a college student and saw a travel video about white water rafting through the jungle.  Ironically, one of my children was too scared to go whitewater rafting, so we didn't go.  White water or not, we still enjoyed Costa Rica!  We let the airline prices dictate how long we'd stay there.  Since we found the best Christmas break deal to be a 10 day span, that is what we did.  So we decided to divide the stay between two parts of the country.  We chose Arenal for the volcano/rainforest and Manuel Antonio for the ocean/rainforest.

Hotel Arenal Rabfer

In Arenal, We picked Hotel Rabfer because our friends who had visited Costa Rica a year earlier had stayed there.  It was a good choice in that it was reasonably priced and very close to the La Fortuna downtown with all the restaurants and travel agencies.  When we booked the rooms, they wouldn't let all 6 of us share a room.  They said there would be no room.  To the contrary, we thought rooms were huge.  The first thing we tried to do upon arrival in La Fortuna was buy a phone.  The stores sold the wrong type of SIM cards though.  The saleslady told us we didn't need a phone because all the hotspots had phones to call taxis, and that turned out to be true.  Even if you were going to a hiking trail, you could tell the driver what time to come back for you, and they were always on time.

Our first trip was to Fortuna Falls.  We flagged down a taxi for $10/person.  The 8 yr old was free.  We walked the steep path down to the falls and felt their cold force, played in the river and then trudged back up and called for a taxi.

Fortuna Falls

Later that evening we had dinner and interviewed tour sellers to plan the next parts of our trip.  Arturo, who worked at our restaurant but used to be a biology teacher in Switzerland, gave us a Costa Rican biology lesson where he pulled out his laptop and brought it to our table and showed us all kinds of animals we could find in his country.  Then he personally walked us to his brother's travel agency to sign us up for a volcano walk in Arenal National Park.

The falls inside Arenal National Park

Our tour guide of Arenal National Park stopped the van to show us a group of coati in the middle of the road.  He couldn't find any animals during the hike itself, so he felt bad and stopped the van in the middle of nowhere, walked out into a swamp with his flashlight and brought us back a huge green frog so we could take a picture of something.  In Costa Rica, you can't always find what you are looking for so easily.  After that, he really impressed us by taking us to the free stretch of the hot river where he showed us how to give ourselves a natural mud facial.  Although the trip advertisement had promised us each a water bottle, he poured us a sugar cane drink instead while we waded in the hot river with the locals.

El Silencio Trail near La Fortuna

We liked the guide but didn't think he was worth the price so we chose to do two more hikes without a guide.  To get to El Silencio cost $20 each way by taxi.  The hike itself was $4/person.  We were a little annoyed that there were no free hiking trails anywhere.  Hiking fees must go to helping to maintain the trails and protect the environment.  After our hike, which looked the same everywhere, but not as pretty as Cerro Chatto and left us with few memories since we had no guide to point anything out, we went to Pizza Latina for dinner.  It was too loud, with no service and messy, soft pizza.   

Arenal Canopy Tour

  

The whole family went zip lining with Arenal Canopy Tour.  That was definitely fun.  We must have done about 10 crossings.  You have to wait in line some because there are a lot of people, and the ride goes by really fast, so it's hard to focus on anything.  I wouldn't do it just to see the jungle; there are slower ways to do that where you can see more, but it's still fun.  

Arenal on top.  Cerro Chatto is the smaller water-filled crater below..  It's not so small as it looks!  What a climb up!

Top rim trail at Cerro Chatto

On Christmas Eve, walking near Rabfer hotel, we ran into some local boys, whose parents ran a hostel.  They helped us find a blue jeans frog in the creek.  They offered to be our personal guides at Cerro Chatto the next day.  They were 14 years old and didn't even speak English but offered to guide us for $35/person.  After refusing them, they offered $15/person.  We didn't accept, but they still told us where we could find toucans and a sloth nearby at 9AM.   The toucans land there every morning at the same time.  Indeed we found them, after which we set off for our Christmas Day Cerro Chatto hike on our own.  It was a steep, muddy climb up as it rained most of the day.  My poncho protected my fanny pack and my phone/camera.  My father had to turn back early because the hike was too steep for him, my 10 yr old hated it entirely, my 12 yr old thought it would be a somewhat memorable Christmas, but my 14 yr old thought it was the best hike she had ever done.  While the others turned back early, the two of us made it to the top and into the volcano.  The climb down into the crater involved climbing on tree branches that were growing straight out of the vertical mud walls.  We ended up being covered in mud but didn't care.  We walked barefoot for a good part of the return trip because it was just too muddy for shoes.  Once down at the bottom, we spotted some good-sized toucans.

One of our last trips in Arenal was this safari rafting trip down El Rio de las Penas Blancas.  Our tour guide, Gabriel, was great, and we had a good time amusing ourselves at how the guide looked and acted like our pet rabbit, Dip.  They shared similar ears and a mischievous expression.  He truly loved his work and pointed out all the crocodiles, sloths, iguanas and Kingfishers.  Unfortunately, when he stopped our raft under some howler monkeys, my younger daughter gazed up into the tree with her mouth open and received a less that pleasant sprinkle of a gift from one of those monkeys.  She won't be forgetting that.  The exciting part of the trip was when it began to rain!  It poured hard and I was lucky I had a water proof bag for my camera.  We paddled through and came out soaking wet at a farm house stop called Don Pedro, where we got to dry up and sample the local snacks such as coffee, bread, cheese and plantains.  This is where we learned about the Costa Rican philosophy, La Pura Vida, as they showed us how to cook banana leaves in their mud floor electricity-free kitchen.  At the end of the trip, Gabriel told us he used to own 55 rabbits.

Instead of renting a car, we hired a driver to pick us up from Arenal and drive us to Manuel Antonio.  This was very comfortable and affordable.  The driver mentioned places along the way we might like to stop at.   This was one- literally 32 crocodiles in the Taracoles river under the highway 34 bridge.  We encountered a 20 minute traffic jam before this point because of all the cars stopping to look at these beasts.

location of Verde Mar Hotel: a hop and a skip from the beach and in the middle of a monkey jungle-all connected to the National Park

the Hotel Pool- where monkeys came to pound on the roof and make a scene.

Our second stop of the trip was at Manuel Antonio.  We stayed at Hotel Verde Mar, which was conveniently located walking distance from the beach, the town and the National Park.  While exploring the National Park, I did pay for a guide.  It was only about $20 and well worth it because the guides are certified and point out so many plants and creatures that I otherwise would have not noticed.  The guide had binoculars and a telescope and could find you a sloth or whatever you wanted to see, really.  Here is what I saw:  3 toed sloth, Coatimundi,Waxtail cicada or plant hopper, Carob tree, Royal palm, Rainbow Grasshopper, Citronella, Rattlesnake plant, Shorttail night hawk, Golden nape woodpecker,

Blue butterfly, Land crabs, Golden orb spider, Tent making bat, Northern raccoon,Laughing falcon, Lesser white line bats,

Heliconia, Adult male green iguana, monkeys 

The highlight of staying in Manuel Antonio was witnessing the monkeys traverse the town via telephone cables.  Two families/types of monkeys followed me down the beach from the grocery store to the hotel - I was carrying a bag of bananas. There were so many distractions on the way: Ticos bbqing chicken and tourists offering pineapple. Many monkeys are dying from tourist food and heart disease. They are spending less time in the national park and more time on the beach.

While staying in Manuel Antonio, almost the whole family went on a catamaran snorkel trip off the coast of Manuel Antonio.  My son, however, came down with the stomach flu the night before and spent the day in the hotel room.  This catamaran had room for 40 tourists but somehow the five of us were the only clients that day.  We had our own crew of three men and unlimited drinks and food.  The snorkeling was nothing noteworthy, but the boat trip was memorable.  It had always been my dream to lie down on the point of a catamaran and here I got to do just that. 

Toward the end of our trip, the others were tired of adventure and bummed around at the beach in front of Verde Mar Hotel.  But Leo and I went horseback riding near Quepos.  This was a neat trip because the guides broke us into 2 groups- experienced and inexperienced riders.  It was one of Leo's first times riding, so I stayed with him.  Luckily, everyone caught on fast, so we were able to trot through the rivers at pretty fun speeds.  The other group got to gallop.  Still, trotting through the river was a romantic experience.  You could feel the freedom to do something you wouldn't be able to do with your own feet- so fast anyway- but without any motorboat.  and of course the horse goes on land and water.  The company we went with provided us a nice dinner afterward on their ranch.

kayaking with Kayak-lodge.com

Above Leo and I are kayaking through the white mangroves near Quepos.  The others stayed at the hotel for a beach day.   Since we saw long-nose bats and a hawk attack on a group of Capuchin monkeys, this was probably the most interesting part of our trip; it's a shame the rest of the family was not up for adventure that day.  Being able to master delicate control of the paddle to maneuver through tight and twisty turns kept the interest level high and made me feel like I was playing a live video game.  Meander through without hitting trees or getting stuck.  I actually formulated a whole mangrove video game in my head while taking this trip.

Finally, our driver picked us up and drove us a few hours to our hotel near the airport.  It was New Year's Eve.  We were to fly home early in the morning on New Year's Day.  It stinks when low airfare sort of forces you to waste your New Year's Eve, but that's what happened to us.  The only restaurant we could find open was a Chinese one.  The appetizer was Wonder bread with mayonnaise and catsup.  We ordered wantons but received what were obviously just tacos.  Our hotel was shaking like a WW2 bomb shelter from all the uncontrolled fireworks.  My kids were not happy about how we were spending our New Year's Eve.  They were at the age where they would rather have stayed home for Christmas, but I'm glad we went anyway.  It's the one time of year when everyone has time off from school, work and extracurricular activities.  We ran into some tourist traps, rain and Wonder bread but the trip was still worth it.