Maquenque

The boys had a week vacation around Easter and we wanted to make a small trip. And besides the beaches get really crowded around Semana Santa, so it was either staying at home or leaving town.

A friend of ours recommended a small, family-owned lodge close to the Nicaraguan border. This time we made sure to take two batteries for the camera!

All things packed in the car (with the excitement of finding a leaking pipe in our storage room the night before) we hit the road leaving iPods and PSPs home. We did take our computer, but ended up not using it at all, since the lodge had no internet connection. Mobile phones didn't work there either. Risto packed a couple of board games and books.

We had driven the road to Arenal, our half-way point, the year before. Then the sky had been overcast and it had rained. This time the weather gods were friendly. We saw the volcano in all its glory.
Before Arenal we made a stop to have a snack and because Jaakko was feeling nauseous. A year ago he had recycled his toffee-filled doughnut in the car. This time he got out of the car to recycle some nachos. The road around Arenal lake is really winding, and I guess DH can't help his Finnish rally-driving genes hitting in. Maybe the third time driving to Arenal we remember to drive slowly and not to feed Jaakko anything!

From Arenal we continued past La Fortuna to Pital where we took the gravel road towards the Nicaraguan border and Maquenque lodge. The road was lined with hibiscus and dracaena hedges.
And behind the hedges were vast fields of pineapples.
I had to take a closer look to see if there were tin cans of pineapple hidden inside the plants.

After five hours of driving, the last 45 km taking the last hour, we arrived at the parking place of the lodge. We were picked up from there and taken on a boat across the river to the lush and tranquil premises. The rainforest was full of different sounds, birds flying in the garden. A paradise.
The water here is not the river, but a lagoon. The main building with the restaurant is on the left and you can see a few of the cabins on the right.
The cabins did not have a wall all the way up to the roof, but a meshed section of about 1 m tall. You could hear the sounds of the jungle all through the night. And the other guests could hear Jaakko wake up 5:15 the first morning full of rage because nobody wanted to play Monopoly with him. We had played it for the first time the night before and he was all into real estate and demanded a replay immediately!

This was the view from our balcony. We did go on a canoeing trip there with the boys. Just the thing Indiana Jones would do!

The full moon over the lagoon. With a flashlight you could get the eyes of the caimans shine like two diamonds. The first morning we went on a three hour guided walk in the rain forest and learned a lot about the plants and animals.
Izzy-Lizzy was kind enough to stay still so I could come closer and take a picture. Most of the birds were not as polite and it was frustrating to fiddle with my camera and try to take a picture in decent focus.
Tuomas spotted this lizard hiding next to a bush.
Emerald Basilisk basking in the sun.
This one is called the Jesus Christ Lizard since it can walk on water.

We started in the medicinal plant garden seeing in addition to numerous interesting medicinal plants
vanilla,
Ylang-ylang,
filipita banana which according to our guide grows faster and taller than bananas.
The colours, shapes and smells of the plants were amazing. And quite a few of them I remembered seeing in flower shops in Finland! This one, as far as I understand, is the Heliconia mathiasiae.

Our family on the rain forest walk. The tree behind us had a beautiful monkey ladder vine growing on it.

A closer look of the escalera de mono.
I was told that this one is a brown vine snake. First of all it's green and it doesn't look like the brown vine snake I googled. More importanly, it stayed put for a long time for me to take a picture!! And it wasn't poisonous nor aggressive.
Risto and Tuomas looking at a walking palm.
Fruit of Apeia membranacea that monkeys use to scratch themselves with.
A Green and Black Poisonous Dart Frog. It was difficult to take pictures in the quite dark forest with three, small, blond heads in front of the camera lens and usually making enough of movement and noise to scare all the critters away. I hate photos that are not in focus.
Tuomas trying to do as the native indians did, i.e. burn the fluffy stuff containing the seed of the balsa tree. The natives used the burning balsa fluff to transfer fire from place to place.

After relaxing in the pool after lunch we decided to go on a night walk after dinner. Due to the full moon most of the predators, i.e. poisonous snakes, were hiding. It would have been interesting to see the deadliest snake, Fer de Lance, but maybe it was a good thing that we didn't. We saw the eyes of the caymans shine in the lagoon, interesting fire flies,
a Central American Smooth Gecko,
another frog,
a cicada molting.

The next morning we went canoeing in the lagoon, and afternoon was spent on a boat cruise on the Rio San Carlos. A lot of birds,
a huge iguana,
a turtle,
bambu.

We stopped at Boca San Carlos, a stone's throw away from Nicaragua. The boys had a chat with the local policia
We walked through the village
spotting a cacao tree on our way to
the high-school. But what really made the whole trip worth wile in the boys' opinion was this
A crocodile!

The highlight in my opinion was my 1.5 hour bird watching tour the last morning. I spotted (with the help of my guide, and only due to the help of my guide) 24 different species. Again, not having good binoculars nor decent lens for photographing birds was slightly annoying, but I did see scarlet macaws fly right above me!

We learned a lot about the nature during our short stay!

Panama, Panama

After reading this post you might want to think twice about vacationing with our family.

We did our visa-run to Panama. We had to leave Costa Rica for 72 hours (remember this number, 72 hours is 3 days.... ok?) to get our passports stamped for the next 90 days. DH booked the flight tickets from San Jose which meant that we left early Tuesday morning a couple of weeks ago and started driving to the capital city. Tickets were a lot cheaper from San Jose and besides we needed to get a new license plate for our car and to have the car serviced because it didn't pass the inspection. And the car dealership we bought the car from was in San Jose.

Our flight left Tuesday evening and we started driving south around 9 am since you never know how long the trip will take. After 10 minutes of driving DH asks me if I had packed the camera battery charger. I hadn't since we didn't need a charger since the battery was fully loaded. I had placed the battery charger + battery next to the printer, and DH had unplugged the charger in order to use the same chord for the printer to print our tickets. And he said that he had packed the camera. We didn't need the charger. Even though he asked me to check the bag, I didn't do it since we simply didn't need the charger.

The drive to San Jose went smoothly, left the car at the shop and had Walter, our taxi driver take us to the airport across town. We agreed with Walter that he'd pick up the car on Friday and drive it to the airport for us to pick on Saturday.

We arrived in Panama safely, smooth flight. Another taxi driver took us to Casco Viejo, old part of Panama City. We stayed at an apartment which was just perfect for us. The building had been renovated and the view from the roof terrace was spectacular. It was an amazing mixture of old and new, rundown and renovated. The first picture and the two below are from the roof terrace.


This is one of the restored buildings in Casco Viejo, but some buildings had only the facade left with scaffoldings holding it erect. Due to our short stay and the concentration span of the boys, we decided not to do any heavy touristing. A friend of ours recommended to visit the metropolitan park and of course we couldn't miss the canal.

Trying to get a decent picture is sometimes a challenge. Well.... Wednesday morning we took a stroll around Casco Viejo, making sure we didn't cross the red line drawn on our map. The neighborhood just north of Casco Viejo was.... mildly rough. With 100% probability you'd be volunteering into making a donation to the guy holding a gun. After about half an hour of enjoying the architecture I decided to grab my camera. It felt quite light. This can't be true.... yes, no battery. (Omitting the exchange of words between spouses). And then we decided to go shopping... at least for a battery. Taxi rides are amazingly cheap in Panama City, and the traffic is crazy (they honk their horns even more than in Costa Rica) and most of the times we just hoped that the car doors wouldn't suddenly open and we wouldn't be needing the seat belts that were missing. Air-conditioned malls were quite nice, but we really didn't do much shopping. Bought a new battery and of course we needed to buy a charger, too. Chi-ching, money well spent.

By the time we got back to our apartment, it was dinner time. Just went for pizza around the corner, though Tuomas just wanted two plates of fruit salad. When we got back from our dinner we enjoyed the sunset from the roof terrace. The next morning we'd head out early to the metropolitan park and the canal with a camera that would work.

Jaakko is sometimes over-sensitive with tastes and smells. So that night his inner system decided that the pink, princess toothpaste (I didn't buy it...) was yucky, so he recycled his pizza, the whole pizza. Luckily we were in the bathroom and he hit the sink. The toilet bowl would've been better, but I have learned not to complain about minor issues.
The next morning, Thursday, just as we were leaving and hiding all our valuables in the apartment, we couldn't find Tuomas' PSP-portable (believe me, those things just cause trouble, don't buy them). We looked everywhere, asked Tuomas where he had used it last, turned beds and sofas inside out. No where! Everything else was there, but this one was gone. We had only been away for the dinner the previous night and half an hour on the roof top and now it was gone. Could someone have stolen it during that time? Almost an hour later we gave up, packed all our valuables into a backpack and took the taxi to the park. We were all grumpy. Tuomas had a runny stomach, Jaakko was angry, and DH didn't feel too well, either. We didn't bring enough to drink so Jaakko was extremely grumpy (more like screaming) during our trail in the park which itself was worth the visit. We saw birds and leaf cutter ants, and it smelled like in a flower shop.

Jaakko holding a flower of some tree.
The contrast in the view was again strong, a combination of lush tropical forest and skyscrapers.

Even though my friend had suggested that the best time to visit the park would be early in the morning it still was worth the visit.

The Miraflores locks just a taxi ride away were spectacular. We all enjoyed watching the huge ships and teeny-tiny-little catamarans go through the locks.
Here you can see two tug-engines helping the huge ship pass the locks.
Aren't we engineers smart to have come up with this magnificent system of locks that huge ships can pass through! I found the little tug-engines fascinating.

The obligatory touristy picture.

After lunch we visited the exhibition and honestly I thought it would be only one room, but it was actually 4 floors! The canal simulator kept the boys occupied for half an hour.

After the canal visit we headed for the mall again, this time to buy DH some sneakers and a pair of swimming shorts for Risto. His old ones were falling apart. The keep it short, DH got his sneakers and Risto got his swimming shorts. He was looking at a pair of $50 Billabong ones (my trendy little 9-year-old), but I talked him into wanting a slightly cheaper pair (not by much, but still a bit cheaper). After I paid for them he wanted me to carry the bag for him. I was already carrying a very heavy backpack with all the valuables we had not wanted to leave at the apartment, so I told him that he's fully capable of carrying the bag straight to the taxi. Which he did. Took a taxi to the apartment and when we opened the door Risto realized that he had left the bag in the taxi. Timo ran around Casco Viejo trying to find our yellow cab among all the other yellow cabs driving around, but gave up after ten minutes. Chi-ching, money well spent.

After all that hassle I continued looking for the PSP, because I never give up. Finally I looked inside the kitchen cabinet DH had already checked and there behind the single item in the cabinet was the lost PSP. "Oh, now I remember. That's where I put it!!!", said my dear, sweet squirrel husband.

Friday morning took us via the ice-cream shop for a bicycle ride on the Causeway. The boys really enjoyed their freedom riding bikes after more or less 4 months. Our choice of the granny-bike was not a good one, it was heavy and cumbersome.

After spending a couple of hours in the sun and heat, we headed, surprise-surprise, for the mall again. We had decided to buy a digital piano and they were (we think....) cheaper here in Panama. Went to the mall, got a piano (and $6 swimming shorts for Risto) and then headed back to our apartment with a taxi driver we had met before! How likely is it to see the same one in this huge city!

The evening was relaxing, DH picked take-away from a nearby restaurant and we enjoyed the roof terrace with its views the last time.

Just as the boys were ready for bed I was writing our contact details on the piano's cardboard box. I wanted to write the flight number, too, so I needed to check our tickets. The ticket said that the flight was on March 11th, 8:35 AM. It was March 11th about 8:35 PM!!!! Our tickets were supposed to be for March 12th in the morning since we needed to be out of the country for 72 hours. Our travel agent, a.k.a DH, had somehow forgotten how to change 72 hours into days and booked the tickets for the wrong day. After half an hour of frantic phone calls looking for the cheapest way of getting out of the country (there was always an option of having somebody drive us to the border and ask Walter, our taxi driver in San Jose, to pick us up..... ), DH finally got tickets for the morning flight. It wasn't cheap. Chi-ching, money well spent.

View from the roof terrace to the Causeway.
Saturday morning we had the last glimpses of the colorful Panamanian buses. Taxi to the airport with all three children healthy, hand luggage, one suitcase and one piano. Yeah, the piano. It was over-sized. And even though we had only one piece of luggage they still wanted us to pay for the piano. We even threw in a white lie that we had missed our flight because the kids had been sick, but that didn't help. $100 fee + $7 taxes. Boy, it was a cheap piano. Chi-ching, money well spent.

The flight was uneventful. We had a wonderful view of the whole canal, the Caribbean and Pacific sides in full view. Walter was at the airport to meet us, we drove him home and then waited 45 minutes for a wholesale store to open. DH stayed in the car with Tuomas to keep an eye on the luggage and I went on a shopping spree with Risto and Jaakko. You can get groceries and other stuff cheaper there; Guanacaste is very expensive. Then Jaakko got lost. I was running up and down the aisles and getting more worried by the minute. Finally I asked help from a salesperson (in Spanish, I might add) with tears running down my cheeks. I had already asked Risto to go back to our car and tell DH. But shortly after Risto walked back with Jaakko crying. When he had realized that he was lost he had walked out back to our car. I was so relieved!!! The I just quickly finished the shopping, took the boys to the bathroom (Tuomas' stomach wasn't back to normal) and then we packed the car with all our shoppings and boys and...... the motor didn't start!!!!! DH had been listening to the radio and the battery had died. At this point we just shrugged our shoulders, laughed and said "Pura Vida" before calling Walter to help us. Luckily he lived less than a kilometer away and was happy to help. We tried to start our car with his car battery, but ended up taking the battery off our car and Walter took it home to recharge it. And that worked!! Our quick trip to the store had taken almost three hours.


We drove a different route home through San Ramon. The drive was ok with spectacular scenery, not too much traffic and only one piece of lumber on the road that hit the bottom of our car caused some concern.

The earthquake and the tsunami hit Japan while we were in Panama. So when you put things into perspective we had a great trip!

The next trip might take us to Nicaragua. Anybody want to join? DH will book the tickets for you.