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Costa Rica
Dec. 10th, 2022 10:31 pmI got back from my Road Scholar trip to Costa Rica late Thursday night. Here’s a short summary and just a few pictures. I still need to transfer other pictures from my camera (vs. my iPhone) and organize things and so on. The camera cord is somewhere on my desk. So are a few thousand other things, including quite possibly the Loch Ness Monster. At least I am almost done unpacking.
The TL:DR version is: had a good time, saw lots of wildlife.
- Flew into San Jose via Miami. I’d used miles for my plane ticket which meant: a) I got to experience the inadequacies of AA’s business class (which I knew about, but beggars can’t be choosers) and b) because I did my own travel arrangements, I was on my own for getting to the hotel, which was easy enough via taxi.
- Group was 11 people, with 2 tour leaders, which is an excellent ratio. Both Erick and Deynor were excellent leaders, very personable, and particularly skilled at spotting wildlife. (Which is something I am not good at.)
- In San Jose, we toured the Gold Museum and the lobby of the National Theatre. All of those photos are on the camera.
- We spent three nights in Sarapiqui. Stopped on the way for demo of cheese-making and arepa making. Hotel had interesting design, based on indigenous architecture. Hotel grounds had lots of things to see, including wildlife and an archaeological site, including a couple of graves and some petroglyphs.
Here are a poison dart frog and a toucan (viewed through Erick’s spotting scope):
Here is one of the burial chambers:
- While in that area, we took a river tour, where we saw a lot of birds, a caiman, and howler monkeys. Mot exciting sighting was a two-toed sloth from the parking lot. We also visited a heart of palm plantation. where we ate a lunch in which everything, including ceviche and bread, was made with heart of palm. Fortunately, coffee was not.
- We also visited Dave and Dave’s which is an excellent place for bird watching, including hummingbirds.
- We stopped at a pineapple plantation on the way to Arenal for three nights. I got lucky with weather clearing to get a good volcano photo from the deck of my cabin. This is probably my best photo of the entire trip.
- While at Arenal, we toured the national park (mostly seeing plants) and went to the Arenal Observatory Lodge, where we had lunch and saw a lot of birds. We also had a quick look at their museum. I resisted buying stuffed animals (ooh, a sloth) at the museum gift shop. There was a large family of coatimundi as we were leaving. Back near our hotel, we saw a surprisingly active three-toed sloth.
- Also in that area, toured an organic farm, saw performance of traditional dance, and had demo of sugar cane processing. Stopped in La Fortuna (touristy town) for shopping. I bought some drinking chocolate with spices, which has no instructions so will require a bit of experimentation.
- Longish drive to Central Pacific Coast. One stop at fruit stand owned by our driver, Sammy, where we had the best fresh coconut water I’ve ever had. We also did crocodile safari on Tarcoles River and, who’da thunk it, saw crocodiles. (Also, birds. Egrets, I’ve seen a few ….)
- Wildlife sightings on way to evening lecture at hotel included 1 green snake, 1 leaf frog, 2 poison dart frogs, 1 kinkajou. The latter is extremely cute. Next day was outrigger canoe outing, which was fun. We saw capuchin monkeys, lots of pelicans and frigate birds, and a sea turtle. I had neither my camera nor my iPhone with me for any of the above. I did have my camera with me for our walk in Carara National Park, so have a picture of an iguana (one of 5 we saw there).
- And you might as well have a sunset photo from Jaco, possibly slightly influenced by the sangria we were drinking.
- Stopped at an orchid garden / botanical garden on the way back to San Jose. Orchids always make me think of Nero Wolfe. (Apropos of nothing, Archie Goodwin is my long-time literary crush.) The nice thing about photographing flowers is that they stay still.
- I flew home on Jet Blue through FLL. This let me sleep later and avoid MIA, which I consider to be at least seven circles of Dante’s inferno. It turns out that FLL is about 5 circles of hell, mostly because Jet Blue had their baggage recheck in terminal 4 closed and I had to schlep my bag on an unmarked walkway to terminal 3 and go through security again. Still, I made it home safely.
The TL:DR version is: had a good time, saw lots of wildlife.
- Flew into San Jose via Miami. I’d used miles for my plane ticket which meant: a) I got to experience the inadequacies of AA’s business class (which I knew about, but beggars can’t be choosers) and b) because I did my own travel arrangements, I was on my own for getting to the hotel, which was easy enough via taxi.
- Group was 11 people, with 2 tour leaders, which is an excellent ratio. Both Erick and Deynor were excellent leaders, very personable, and particularly skilled at spotting wildlife. (Which is something I am not good at.)
- In San Jose, we toured the Gold Museum and the lobby of the National Theatre. All of those photos are on the camera.
- We spent three nights in Sarapiqui. Stopped on the way for demo of cheese-making and arepa making. Hotel had interesting design, based on indigenous architecture. Hotel grounds had lots of things to see, including wildlife and an archaeological site, including a couple of graves and some petroglyphs.
Here are a poison dart frog and a toucan (viewed through Erick’s spotting scope):
Here is one of the burial chambers:
- While in that area, we took a river tour, where we saw a lot of birds, a caiman, and howler monkeys. Mot exciting sighting was a two-toed sloth from the parking lot. We also visited a heart of palm plantation. where we ate a lunch in which everything, including ceviche and bread, was made with heart of palm. Fortunately, coffee was not.
- We also visited Dave and Dave’s which is an excellent place for bird watching, including hummingbirds.
- We stopped at a pineapple plantation on the way to Arenal for three nights. I got lucky with weather clearing to get a good volcano photo from the deck of my cabin. This is probably my best photo of the entire trip.
- While at Arenal, we toured the national park (mostly seeing plants) and went to the Arenal Observatory Lodge, where we had lunch and saw a lot of birds. We also had a quick look at their museum. I resisted buying stuffed animals (ooh, a sloth) at the museum gift shop. There was a large family of coatimundi as we were leaving. Back near our hotel, we saw a surprisingly active three-toed sloth.
- Also in that area, toured an organic farm, saw performance of traditional dance, and had demo of sugar cane processing. Stopped in La Fortuna (touristy town) for shopping. I bought some drinking chocolate with spices, which has no instructions so will require a bit of experimentation.
- Longish drive to Central Pacific Coast. One stop at fruit stand owned by our driver, Sammy, where we had the best fresh coconut water I’ve ever had. We also did crocodile safari on Tarcoles River and, who’da thunk it, saw crocodiles. (Also, birds. Egrets, I’ve seen a few ….)
- Wildlife sightings on way to evening lecture at hotel included 1 green snake, 1 leaf frog, 2 poison dart frogs, 1 kinkajou. The latter is extremely cute. Next day was outrigger canoe outing, which was fun. We saw capuchin monkeys, lots of pelicans and frigate birds, and a sea turtle. I had neither my camera nor my iPhone with me for any of the above. I did have my camera with me for our walk in Carara National Park, so have a picture of an iguana (one of 5 we saw there).
- And you might as well have a sunset photo from Jaco, possibly slightly influenced by the sangria we were drinking.
- Stopped at an orchid garden / botanical garden on the way back to San Jose. Orchids always make me think of Nero Wolfe. (Apropos of nothing, Archie Goodwin is my long-time literary crush.) The nice thing about photographing flowers is that they stay still.
- I flew home on Jet Blue through FLL. This let me sleep later and avoid MIA, which I consider to be at least seven circles of Dante’s inferno. It turns out that FLL is about 5 circles of hell, mostly because Jet Blue had their baggage recheck in terminal 4 closed and I had to schlep my bag on an unmarked walkway to terminal 3 and go through security again. Still, I made it home safely.
