All good things must come to an end...

It's so cold here!...was our exclamation as we stepped outside the Sacramento airport. We arrived Wednesday in Sacramento after a very early morning flight from Costa Rica (1 am!), a long line in customs and going through security again, and another long flight from Houston to Sac. Our last bus ride, the bus from San Jose to the airport, didn't feel like the end of our trip but rather just the next step in our journey.

But we are back now, glad to have some things again and annoyed by other things once again. What a whirlwind adventure we had; three months seemed to go by so fast! While we are glad to be back, there are many things we will miss. The relaxed, slow pace of life down there. People yelling out what they are selling, '¡Sandia, sandia, sandia!'  The bus drivers happily honking "Hi" to each other as they pass on the roads. The extremely tasty mangoes. The central american cows. Gallo pinto (beans and rice dish). Warm sun and warm ocean. The fruits and vegetables. The lower prices of everything. How colorful everything was from the buses to the buildings to how everyone dressed.

With that Pura Vida and Diacachimba! These are the mottoes of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, respectively, meaning 'good life' and 'fantastic day.'

Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoyed our tales and photographs.
With love,
Karen and Chet

Karen, Chet, and Wyatt. Just kidding. The awesome central american cows with their big floppy ears, a flap of waggly neck skin, and a big hump on their back. 

A really cool hibiscus with a frilly pompom at the end of its stamen. 

Karen displaying her new dress in Oaxaca. 

Beautifully bright buildings in Granada.

Gallo pinto and fresh salsa that we made.

Pura vida.

Arenal!!!

We arrived in Arenal by way of minibus, boat across Lake Arenal, and another minibus. Arenal is located on the east side of the mountain chain that winds its way through Costa Rica. The main town is called La Fortuna and is located at the base of the enormous Arenal Volcano. The volcano was relatively active up until 2010, when it entered into a dormant phase. Lava used to be visible at night flowing down the mountainside. Where Monteverde was quite chilly (we were wearing jeans and long sleeve shirts), Arenal is very warm and humid. It feels like we are back in the jungle again.

Wind turbines along the dirt road from Monteverde to the boat launch.

A third of the way across lake Arenal. The volcano is just visible among the clouds.

Our first full day here we decided to visit the La Fortuna waterfall. The falls are located about 6 km from town so we decided to hitchhike. Unfortunately no one picked us up, so we ended up walking the whole way. Lucky for us, it was a beautiful walk.

A view of Arenal volcano. Seen on our walk to the waterfall.

The falls were very impressive. The water thunders down from 75 meters above, pounding into a large pool below. It was a popular destination and there were a lot of people there. Fortunately the water was quite cold and no one could stay in for long. We hung out for a bit, ate lunch, and took lots of photos. Hitchhiking back we were lucky and caught a ride almost immediately.

Karen in the pool at the base of the waterfall.

The next day we decided to visit one of the attractions Arenal is most well known for: hot springs. There is a river here that is heated from the volcano to hot tub level temperatures (90s for sure). Developers have taken advantage of this and there is a swath of resorts boasting to have the "best" hot springs. Most of these resorts have outrageous prices ($100+) for day passes. Some say this is to prevent locals from coming to the resorts and limit the clientele to strictly tourists.

Since we are on a budget we decided to go where the locals go for their hot spring experience. It is located next to a giant resort called Tabacon. Tabacon actually used to own this part of the river, but lost it to the public in a lawsuit. Now it is a free, public access hot spring called Tabaconito (little Tabacon).

We hitchhiked out to the springs as it was a solid 14 km walk along a road with no shoulder and taxis charged $25+. The hot springs weren't what one would think of as traditional hot springs (a still pool that reeks of sulfur). This was a full on flowing river, or rather a stream, that had been heated from the volcano to 90+ degrees. The river was crowded with locals (we were the only gringos) as it is Semana Santa, a major week long holiday. We walked upstream and found a pool with no people to claim as our own. The water was hot, almost uncomfortably so as the air temp was quite high as well. It was still quite refreshing to soak. Once out of the water, with a breeze blowing the river was amazing. We stayed for several hours, alternating soaking and enjoying the light breeze. We timed our exit perfectly, arriving at the road just as the one bus that runs a day started to drive by. We flagged it down and caught a ride back to town.

Karen enjoying a soak at Tabaconito

For last bit of touristy tourism, Chet and I took a river cruise safari down a river called Caño Negro. The boat trip was about two hours with lots of wildlife viewing. We saw many, many different birds from King Fishers to Little Blue Herons  in addition to spider and howler monkeys, a sloth, iguanas, jesus christ lizards (the lizards that walk on water) and many caiman (caiman are reptiles similar to crocodiles but smaller in size and less verocious).

Spider monkey hanging from its tail to eat leaves.

Iguanas on the shore.

Caiman on the shore...it's about a meter long, just a little guy.

Love,
Chet and Karen

Monteverde

We caught a 6:00 am bus from Granada, Nicaragua to Cañas, Costa Rica. The trip went very smoothly and involved perhaps the fastest border crossing yet (only about an hour and a half!!). From Cañas, we caught a bus to Tilarán where we discovered we missed the last bus to Monteverde by about 15 minutes. We had no choice but to stay the night.

Tilarán was a quiet, beautiful mountain town. We read, napped, and ate Tritz (Costa Rican equivalent to an Its It ice cream sandwich). It was a relaxing day. We whiled away the morning and caught the 12:30 to Monteverde.

Monteverde is located high up in the mountains of Costa Rica. The mountains form what is called "The Continental Divide". Warm, humid air is blown up the mountain range east to west. As the air rises, it cools and forms clouds, which are ever prevalent in Monteverde. These clouds provide the water for the unique cloud forests which Monteverde is known for.

Our first full day in Monteverde we walked to a grove of strangler fig trees. Strangler figs are crazy trees! They grow from a seed which is deposited by a bird high in the canopy of another tree. The fig grows up and down using the 'host' tree as scaffolding. Over many years the fig completely encompasses the host tree, effectively strangling it, and the host tree dies. Over time the dead host rots away, leaving a hollow passage up the center of the thriving fig.

We walked around looking at the massive, hollow trees. They were breathtaking. We climbed up through the center of some of the bigger ones, making it up quite far.

While we were hanging out and climbing, a herd of coatis (Costa Rican raccoon) came through the brush on the hillside below us. A few minutes later a pack of Capuchin monkeys came to say hello. They were crazy monkeys, jumping quite far and falling long distances before grabbing on to another branch. Karen and I also saw some emerald toucanets (We didn't get a photo, but here is the wikipedia page), a beautiful green bird with a large beak (think cross between a parrot and a toucan). They were very noisy.

After the fig tree grove, we walked several kilometers to a butterfly garden. It was pretty interesting. They had a large swath of of butterflies as well as scorpions, tarantulas, millipedes, and cockroaches. There was also a leaf cutter ant colony in a box which you could look inside and see their process of farming the fungus which lives off the leaves they bring back.

The next day Karen and I (Wyatt had gone out drinking with a lady friend until four in the morning and was too tired) went to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. I had my student ID so I got in the park for a bit cheaper, but Karen didn't have hers so she had to pay $20 to get in.

The reserve is perched on top of the mountain and is constantly besieged by a mist and howling wind. The forest is not quite the jungle you would expect. It is much colder up there (we hiked in long pants and jackets for a good portion of the day) and the forest reminded us of the redwood forests of back home with all the ferns and greenery. We got to the reserve at 8 in the morning because we heard the parks can get quite crowded in the afternoon. The buses back to town were very sporadic and we ended up catching the 2 pm bus. Having so much time, we decided to get our money's worth and hike as many trails as possible. We hiked just about every trail that was open, about ~7 kilometers.

We didn't see as many cool critters as we had hoped, but the ones we did see and hear were pretty awesome. We saw this crazy bird, probably about the size of a turkey, called a Great Curassow. It was just standing 50 feet away in the middle of the path; it was pretty skittish though so we didn't get very close. We also saw a Black Guan, about the size of a red-tail hawk, that had made some crazy noises (Their call and wing click sound). We saw a very tame coati that didn't even care that we were there. The plant life was pretty spectacular too with huge strangler trees, super tall fern trees, and epiphytes covering everything (epiphytes are plants that grow on other plants without harmming or benefiting from their host like orchids and ferns). Some of the things we didn't see but only heard were pretty cool too. There was one bird call that sounded like a musical rust swing and we found out later was a three wattled bellbird (link to sound); wish we could have seen one of those guys but they were always really high up in the canopy. Later, we found out we had heard a quetzal but never got to see it. When we got back to our hostel, we googled 'monteverde bird calls' and were able to figure out what we had been hearing. The internet is an amazing thing ;)

The coati

We also did a free hike to the top of the highest point in Monteverde, the hill that is home to the TV towers. After the steepest hour hike ever, we arrived at the top of the hill in the middle of a cloud. Even though we didn't see much at the top, it was definitely an awesome hike through the forest.

Wyatt and I (Karen) also went to an orchid garden right down the road from our hostel in Monteverde. Wyatt grows his own orchids back home and so was stoked to go. The garden was fairly small in size but contained over 450 species of orchid, all of them found locally in the Monteverde region. Most of them were miniature with many flowers smaller than a thumb nail. Orchids are interesting in that they have neither pollen or nectar to offer pollinators, but need the pollinators to help them reproduce. So they develop 'tricks' to get the pollinators to come to them such as scents, very bright colors and the large modified petal that draws the bug in. It was a really cool tour.

Sunrise before our 6 am bus from Granada. 

Costa Rican money is definitely the prettiest. Somewhat makes up for how annoying it is to deal with. $1 = 500 colones. 

Climbing inside one of the Strangler Fig trees. 

Strangler Fig from a distance. 

Really old, really cool Strangler Fig. 

At the butterfly house. 

Karen and a giant tree in the cloud forest. 

View from the Cloud Forest. 

Tame coatis in the forest. 

Great Curassow in the cloud forest. 

Note the gigantic tree ferns; they look like palm trees in this picture!!

At the top!

The guys and the very very steep road.

Costa Rican national flower. 

One day bloom orchid. 

The tiniest orchid! 

Lots of love,
Karen and Chet