Costa Rica Fun - August 2016, Page 1
Our big vacation this year was to visit Costa Rica and see what was going on down there. Felicia, Kendra, Larry and Susie went and this year we also went with Bobby and Leslie. We had to go in August before school started and I thought that we would have a very hot time in Costa Rica, but it turned out to be very warm and very humid. We had a very good time and I see why so many Americans go to Costa Rica on vacation. It is a good combination of exotic while not being too rough. I have also heard that if you stay out of the tourist bars and hotels, that it has a very good cost of living. We had decided to go see Costa Rica to see rain forests, volcanos and the beach and to do some fun activities like zip-lining and hiking.
Leslie put in a lot of her time to do the detailed trip arrangements and made it easy for us to get from point A to point B there without us having a car. Things went according to plan all week and we were very lucky with the weather. Even though it seems like it rains in Costa Rica every day/night, we did not get rained on while hiking around. Seven of us flew directly from DFW to San Jose, Costa Rica, which took just over 4 hours. At the airport the tour company that Leslie had found had a driver waiting for us who took us for a long drive north to the town of La Fortuna, home of the Arenal Volcano. Our driver Marvin kept us fed, got us some cold beers for lunch and showed us a lot of local plants and critters.
Click on any photo to see a larger view
On our way from San Jose to La Fortuna, Marvin stopped often to show us Cost Rica: cutter ants carrying leaves from a tree to their nest, coffee, pineapple, mango, plantain and other plants. He also showed us several 3-toedsloths in trees and a tiny poison frog called a blue jean frog that he picked up and held in his hand. That guy was a good tour guide and he was a good person to start off our trip with even though I worried that he might die from blue jean frog poison while he was driving.
While we were in La Fortuna, we stayed at the Volcano Lodge and Springs, which had a good view of the volcano – if the rain clouds ever moved over. The Volcano Lodge was filled with beautiful green plants and had a wonderful set of hot springs that fed into several hot pools. They also had several cold-water swimming pools, all near bars and food. We ate breakfast by the hot spring pools and spent our evenings there having some beer, wine and soft drinks. Staying there, we saw plants, birds and heard noises from the jungle that we had never seen or heard before.
Volcano Lodge in La Fortuna, Costa Rica
Imperial Beer seems to be one of the best-selling beers in Costa Rica. As soon as we got off of our plane, we saw a giant Imperial sign. I had a few every day, trying not to drink the water, and they were pretty good.
The Olympics were going on in Rio de Janeiro and the mosquito borne Zika virus had been in the news for several months before our vacation. A lot of people were worried about Zika spreading through Central and South America so we bought some extra bug spray – 100% DEET spray that you can also use to strip paint or kill weeds with.
Here are some photos taken in and around La Fortuna, Costa Rica. Our guide told us that the town was called this after the last time the Arenal volcano erupted and destroyed several villages but left this one fortunate village. The grocery stores have about what we have, all labels in Spanish, but they seem to have entire aisles dedicated to black beans and rice, which with some tortillas is the national dish that we could eat at breakfast, lunch and dinner. La Fortuna has a beautiful town square with shopping, bars and restaurants along the main streets.
The currency of Costa Rica is the colon. When we left, the exchange rate was about 540 colones = $1. We normally rounded off to $1 = 500 colones, but we stayed confused, there were too many zeros to keep track of. Their paper currency is very beautiful. I only came back with a few bills so had to get one of these pics off of the internet
