February 16th took us to Costa Rica via Frankfurt and Houston. 27 hours after we woke up at home we arrived at
Rancho Armadillo Estate in Playas de Coco. Rick, the owner of the 6 room "hotel", is an amazing person. Despite the late night he showed the boys all kinds of critters with his torch. Within an hour of arriving we'd seen gekkos, bats, scorpions and scorpion spiders. The next morning before breakfast he took us on a tour on the estate showing us lemon trees, orange trees, cashew nut trees, bananas and a tree that one shouldn't touch since it's protected by ants whose sting hurt really bad. And we saw and heard howler monkies (in addition to our own).
The dominant male of the crowd is on the left. It's quite obvious.
After two nights at Ricks, a canopy tour with 13 zips that petrified the smaller boys for the first few (more like 5-6, I thought they'd never forgive me) and tarantula hunting, we headed for the surf camp at
Una Ola, Playa Grande.
For six days we had 2 hours of lessons everyday, DH, Risto and myself; quite often the class was in the morning at 7 due to tides. Tuomas and Jaakko played with a babysitter with whom they had no common language.
A week of practice gets you here.... I wish. Risto was definately the best of us, thanks to his skate boarding background. Tuomas and Jaakko tried it, too, with the teacher and enjoyed it. We slept 9-10 hours a night, it was a quiet neighborhood except for some migratory birds that slept in a tree next to our hotel. Boy, were they noisy! They flew in around 5 PM, "chirped" until sundown, kept quiet for the night, but started their morning 12 hours later
very loudly. We met really nice people at the hotel; it was a 8 room hotel so you got to know everybody. Colin, the manager, was super friendly and helped us with a lot of things.
Sunsets were amazing.
After the surf camp we headed for the mountains and cloud forest of Monteverde. The distance was only about 200 km, but it took us half of the day. The last 35 km took us an hour. The last leg of the journey started at Tilaran. We just had a very general map, but the road from Tilaran to Monteverde was very well signed. Or that's what we thought. Just a few km out of Tilaran we suddenly came across a sign that had Monteverde crossed out. We made a u-turn and before we could say "pura vida" there was a friendly guy knocking on our window with a photocopy of a map, explaining quickly the road to Monteverde "make a left, a left, then right, left here". The map cost 2000 colones, about 4 dollars. It was so obvious that there was a connection between the misguiding signs and the friendly guy with the map!!! We paid him the 4 bucks and off we went.
The hotel in Santa Elena right next to Monteverde was amazing,
The Hidden Canopy. Treehouses! We threw in our luggage and headed down to Monteverde for lunch and a quick look around before coming to the hotel for 5 o'clock tea (an experience we were told you don't want to miss.... so true). In Monteverde we noticed that we had a flat tyre. We were lucky: right across the road was the only service station in the area. We had the tyre filled, but they said it looked punctured. When we got back to the hotel, I asked the hotel owner Jenn (yet another amazing person!!!) if she could help with the car. She just said in a very calm voice "no problem, we'll take care of it. I'll just book you on a cloud forest tour bus for the morning, and while you're in the cloud forest I'll have the car fixed". Every word was true, no problems! And it cost us less than 10 bucks. Amazing.
Sunset at Hidden Canopy. Gulf of Nicoya in the background. This hotel was small, too, and very intimate. Jenn's a great host and it seemed like only nice people stay at her hotel :-) We walked a 3 km long walk in the cloud forest with 8 bridges across the canopy. Jenn told me to ask the boys if they could spot any dinosaurs. "Mom, they're extinct!!!" Couldn't fool them. But I think I saw Tarzan.
In the clouds.
We visited the Bat Jungle, but it was quite obvious that the tourist stuff was a bit too much for the boys. They were restless and wanted the company of children.
Luckily we ran across José-Pablo and all four boys were happy to play some football.
Two nights in Santa Elena, then we headed back to Tilaran and around Lake Arenal to see the volcano. In Tilaran we stopped at a bakery and also to get some fruit. The road from Tilaran to La Fortuna combined with a toffee filled doughnut was too much for Jaakko. Two kilometers before our next hotel,
El Silencio del Campo, and after I put the plastic bag away that I had held infront of him for the last 20 km..... well, all I need to tell you that Jaakko entered the hotel in his underwear.
This hotel was nice, too, but a bit of a disappointment after the three previous ones. We didn't meet the owner at all (it was a bigger hotel, though) and the staff was semi-friendly. The towels were nicely folded.
Plus it rained and rained and rained. Driving into La Fortuna we saw 4/5 of the volcano, but didn't take any pictures; left it for the next day. Mistake. The next morning was totally overcast and it rained. We enjoyed soaking ourselves in the hot spring and
we did see this happy little creature in his natural habitat.
White chested magpie blue-jay was the name of this bird. I think. At Rick's hotel.
Rick's pool. The last night in Costa Rica. Howler monkies are sleeping.
Monteverde Cloud Forest. I think I saw Tarzan riding a T-rex...
Motmot at Rick's.
Hummmmmm. Humming bird.
We found theses tracks on Playa Grande early in the morning. I think we were on the beach at 6 am when the sun rose. It looked like a one-wheeled tractor had driven from the sea. A leatherback turtle had come during the night to lay her eggs.
The tracks led to this nest.
We found two dead, crispy little turtles. They didn't make it to the ocean.
This plant was found in the cloud forest.
Coati on our way to Arenal volcano. At Rick's place there was one (or probably a few, since you couldn't really tell them apart) that was tame. The boys fed him raisin and nut bread.
Calamari pasta. Risto and Tuomas shared this portion and I think their plates were empty in 5 minutes. Seafood is their thing!
