Manuel Antonio

We spent Thanksgiving weekend at Manuel Antonio National Park, which was beautiful but a little sad for me too because I felt disconnected from home.  Thanksgiving is an American holiday and we are obviously far from the USA!  We had a great dinner though, at a restaurant owned by a Polish-American-Costa Rican.  We have plenty to be grateful for, and its hard to feel too sorry for yourself with the experiences we are having, and the beautiful places we've seen down here.  Manuel Antonio is very busy and touristy but the beach and the animals make it worth it.  We saw 3 kinds of monkeys, a deer, turtles, birds, raccoons. 

We also visited the Rainmaker Park, which is a private park nearby Manuel Antonio.  It is truly a hidden jem!  We were one of few people there on a busy weekend, almost like having the whole jungle to ourselves.  They have many hanging bridges up next to the tops of the trees, such a cool feeling to be high in the canopy. 

We were cooling off in a waterfall in the park when it started to rain.  They are not joking around about the name of this park!  While we were walking back to the lodge, it started raining so hard that I thought to myself, "there is NO WAY more water can possible come out of the sky".  Then it would rain a little harder.  and harder.  It was like standing inside a high pressure shower.  We started to get worried about the camera (even under a rain jacket inside a case) and also the amount of water coming down the "stream"!!  It turned into a raging brown river in minutes!  Also very fascinating were the very cute black and green frogs that came out everywhere in the rain!  I couldn't get a picture of them obviously, but they were fun to see.  

Manuel Antonio Beach

White faced monkey

Squirrel Monkey

Enormous beach Iguana!

Raccoons are a bit of a nuisance in Manuel Antonio!  We saw one steal someone's food right off their blanket.

Rainmaker Park - which is no joke. 

Rio Tarcoles - Don't fall in here!

View from a restaurant at Manuel Antonio town.

These are so hard to catch on film! Blue Morph Butterfly.

My goofy girl

Too much time has passed by! Car wheels, surf, turtles and farms

Arribada in Ostional

We arrived back in Costa Rica in September after going home for a little over a month.  Re-entry was rough.  The first week we were back both the computer and the car stopped working.  Our Macbook was apparently fried by frequent power surges (yes, we have a surge protector) and the wheel of the Honda fell off after we had a "mechanic" "fix" the car for us.  It turns out that not only did he not fix it, but made it much much worse.  Instead of just a loud clunking noise coming from my rear wheel, the rear wheel just fell off.  The "mechanic" forgot to put one of the bolts back on.  Geoff also noticed that one of the parts that we paid him for was cracked and old and obviously had NOT been replaced.  So the first few weeks were a bit challenging, but then we also have been able to have some really great experiences too.  

We were able to see our first arribada - this is when thousands of Olive Ridley turtles return from the ocean to lay their eggs on Ostional beach.  It is absolutely amazing.  There were so many turtles on the beach that we had a hard time staying out of their way as they made their way up to the high tide line in the sand.  The kids loved it - and they spent much of the time being kind citizens of the world by chasing the vultures away from the newly laid eggs.  The turtles are fascinating.  Our guide told us that the temperature of the sand determines the sex of the turtle, and that the female turtles return every few months to lay more eggs.  The female turtles also have a reservoir in their bodies to hold sperm for up to two years just in case they don't find any appropriate suitors!    

G watching a turtle drop her eggs.  

Olive Ridley turtles arribada

Returning to the sea.  She gets sand in her eyes which makes her cry.

Geoff was able to come down here for a full 6 weeks this time around, and spent most of the mornings doing this:

Surfing Playa Guiones

yikes

Horse girl

 Amara has spent a lot of her free time recently learning how to ride horses.  She LOVES it.  All girls seem to love horses.  I didn't realize when I was little how lucky I was that I had two best friends who owned horses.

So many beautiful sunsets here

Turquoise Mot Mot

Happy on the beach

"Nana" Jay - my mom loved this bird so we named it after her.

Chow time

Fun on the Alfaro farm!
We were invited to spend the weekend on a local farm near Nicoya recently with our dear neighbor Maria to celebrate her daughters birthday.  We had the best time!  Her parents are wonderful, kind & generous people.  They treated us like family and fed us wonderful food and let us stay on their beautiful farm - so tranquil.  The kids had so much fun they didn't want to leave.  They played in the pool and ran around and rode horses all afternoon.  I stayed up late (10:00pm is late for me in Costa Rica!) trying to understand complicated conversations in Spanish - it was awesome.

Beautiful Maria & her wonderful mama and papa Luis & Ana Alfaro

Happy birthday Alana!

Alfaro farmland

storm over the farm

I will try to write more often - but life happens and months pass!  We were home for 6 weeks and had an awesome time in Washington.  Maybe I'll get around to posting about that too, at least in photos.

Arenal, Palo Verde, and a visit from Grandpa T and Jan Jan

So we didn't have internet for over 2 months - which is why this blog is so late.  These are events from May, and hopefully I'll get around to June soon enough.

Right after Rah Rah and Nana left, Grandpa and Jan Jan came to visit us.  We had a great time while they were here, although it was still REALLY HOT in May - it had not yet started raining and people have started to worry about drought here on the Guanacaste Peninsula.  Apparently April has been the hottest on record - even locals were melting (so poor Rah Rah was here in the WORST month possible - sorry dad!!).

We took a trip to Arenal to get up out of the heat - it was cool and lovely!  We saw toucans every morning from our porch, and it rained!!  Beautiful cool refreshing rain!  I loved the view of Lake Arenal from our hotel - it was quiet and peaceful and full of birds every morning.  I could've stayed there for weeks.  Volcan Arenal was shrouded in clouds until the last day, when we were able to actually see the whole cone-shaped mountain.  The volcano spends most of the time shrouded in clouds, so we felt very lucky.

We also went to an animal wildlife rescue near Arenal where the kids were able to feed the monkeys, macaws, and parrots.  We learned a lot there, and would like to pass on that you should NEVER EVER buy exotic pets from PetSmart, or any pet store.  Chances are that the beautiful parrot you bought was smuggled out of Costa Rica, and that the birds' family probably died in transport and the one you have is the only one that made it alive.  Please don't buy exotic birds, or any exotic animal at all - including fish.  It is very bad for wild animals to be trapped and caged.

We also took Grandpa and Jan Jan to the Rio Tempesque in Palo Verde National Park.  We took a boat tour where we saw beautiful birds and lots and lots of crocodiles.  We were even "lucky" and saw an ENORMOUS crocodile eating another crocodile.  This is apparently unusual to see...yikes.

Amara has also been asking for months to go on a horseback riding tour, so we all went along with her - I hadn't been on a horse in about 20 years but it went well.   It was Jan Jan's first time on a horse, and she did great!!  Everyone had a blast!

Volcan Arenal

Snake of undetermined variety

Grandpa T & Amara

Futbol 5

Rio Tempesque - American Crocodile

Toucan - Arenal 

Geoff rescuing a turtle from the road

Oropendula - Arenal

Baby Armadillo!  Its' mama is nearby hiding.

G & a Boa

A & a Boa

sweet baby monkey Isabella

Arenal

hiking in Arenal National Park

another gorgeous Nosara sunset

Volcan Arenal

Rah Rah and Nana come to visit! Rincon, Nosara, Monteverde

Quetzal in Monteverde

Hola!  I have been very busy recently with fun travels around Costa Rica!  Also, the internet is out most of the time because it started to rain a bit so the power goes off a lot which causes the wifi router to need resetting.  Right now I'm tethered to my iPhone and using a very slow connection.  It will probably take a few hours to upload one or two pictures...

The upside to rain, however, is that there are fireflies lighting up the night!  and the dust is settling and the trees are budding!  So grateful for all of these things.  Plus, it is slightly less hot.

My parents came to visit us - we picked them up at the airport and the kids were SO HAPPY to see them.  We took them straight to Rincon de La Vieja after they had been up all night on a redeye flight.  We drove to our cabins so they could rest a bit before we went and cooled off in some pools in a nearby river.  Everyone had a great time jumping into the cold, clear water (quite in contrast to Nosara's warm and murky rivers).  We then treated them to one of the two local restaurants near Rincon - in which the only vegetarian option consisted of rice, beans and "salad" -literally a piece of lettuce and one slice of tomato.  Yum.

We spent the next day at Rincon and took a walk past boiling water, bubbling mud, and lots of strangler fig trees for the kids to climb.  I finally saw my first Blue Morpho butterfly!  They are iridescent!  I saw this as a good omen.

We drove back to Nosara the following day, after visiting a gorgeous waterfall just outside of Liberia.  Highly recommended (Llanos de Cortes Cataratas).   This was a nice reprieve from the heat!  Unfortunately for my parents, we unwittingly chose the hottest and dustiest time of year for them to visit Nosara.  Rah Rah was not amused.  We did manage to have some fun snorkeling, kayaking the Nosara River, and playing "futbol" with Graham.  After spending a few ridiculously hot days in Nosara, we were all ready for the cool mountains.  We travelled to Monteverde to explore and meet up with more friends and family.

Monteverde is absolutely beautiful.  The air is so cool that pine trees can grow!  We stayed at Los Pinos cabanas - a perfect place for families.  They have a garden where you can harvest fresh salad for dinner, hiking trails, and a playground for the kids.  It was cool enough that chocolate didn't instantly melt so the kids were able to do a belated chocolate easter egg hunt.

People come from all over the world to see birds in Monteverde, and Nana hired the best bird guide around.  With Danilo's help, we saw some of the coolest birds in the world at the Cure Cancha reserve.   He uses his scope and our iPhones to take close up pictures of all the beautiful birds.  He found for us the famous Quetzals, one of which was spotted long after our tour was suppose to end.  He was so passionate about his job that he took us back out into the jungle to find the bird.  We also saw toucans, hummingbirds, a woodpecker, and so much more.   We saw so many Blue Morpho butterflies that I lost count.  I still never did get a good picture of one though, so I'll have to keep traveling to the cool mountains in search of them.

Graham was our lucky charm, he was so excited to see the Quetzals that I think they may have showed up just for him.  He loves birds, frogs, snakes, spiders.  Maybe he will be a wildlife biologist one day.  Nearby at the Childrens Forest we also saw a Bell bird, which makes the most lovely clear bell sound!  Graham was our lucky charm here too had helped us find it.

While in Monteverde we also took the kids and my 71 year old aunt Lois zip lining!!  Lois has such a great spirit and "can be talked into anything", including zipping through the treetops even though she has a fear of heights.  She is awesome.  Amara of course was in heaven.  She was the first in line for the "tarzan swing" - which is basically a free fall with ropes attached.  She LOVED this tour.  Other people kept looking at her and saying "well, if she can do, I shouldn't be so scared!".    We loved Monteverde so much we didn't want to leave.  It was so nice to be cold enough to wear pants, and to have to use a blanket at night.

We left Nana and Rah Rah and the rest of the crew at Monteverde - from which they drove south to take a 5 day kayak trip and planned to meet up with us after.  When the kids and I stepped out of the car back in Nosara, one of the first things we noticed was that it had rained, and there were fireflies everywhere!  Absolutely amazing transformation.  2 days of rain and the fireflies return and the trees start to bud out.


After everyone returned from kayaking, we spent a few more days exploring Nosara before they had to return to the US.  This time Amara was the lucky charm, and she found us her favorite bird of Costa Rica, the Roseate Spoonbill.   Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me at the time, but they were beautiful, and apparently somewhat rare because the policemen driving by stopped to take pictures of them.

It was so wonderful to have family come visit us!  Thank you Rah Rah, Nana, Linda, Bob, Lois and friends Michelle and Collete.  Thank you for the good chocolate, the Beechers cheese, the chokecherry syrup, almonds, books and
the movies!  We were all very sad when everyone left.  The kids especially loved sharing their jungle experiences and when we see something new they are sad you are not here to see it too!

Mi hijo guapo

Nana and her sis

Playa Pelada

Rah Rah and Graham playing futbol

Nana and G at Futbol 5.

Nesting Mot Mot right outside our house.  We see them everyday!

Coati in Monteverde.

Bell Bird in flight.

Bell Bird - these birds make a beautiful pure bell sound.  One of my favorite birds!

Nana and Amara on a jungle walk.

Violet Sabrewing Hummingbird - Monteverde - Cure Cancha.

Parakeet outside of our house in Nosara.

Orioles in our yard.

Nosara sunset

Happy Graham swinging in Rincon de la Vieja.

Amara in Rincon.

Pale billed Woodpecker - Monteverde, Cure Cancha Reserve.

Toucan - Monteverde - Cure Cancha.

Hummingbird - Monteverde.

Quetzal - Monteverde - Cure Cancha.

Rah Rah, Collete, Michelle, Geoff on the zip line in Monteverde.

G & A zip lining!

Tired and sick boy taking a rest with Rah Rah.

Aunt Lois

lunchtime.

Happy family!

Swimming in the refreshing cool waters near Rincon de la Vieja.

swimming in the river near Rincon de la Vieja National Park

Steam vents in Rincon de la Vieja

Mi hija muy bella

Strangler fig 

Happy birthday to me!

Quetzal - Monteverde - Cure Cancha