Costa Rica

For our quarterly blog post, a recap of our trip to Costa Rica.

We traveled to Costa Rica in February and had a wonderful time. We flew into San Jose and then drove up into the mountains, through the cloud forest, and to Arenal volcano. The drive was interesting (and beautiful), to say the least. We were literally driving through the clouds...a first. Only on the drive back, which was clear, did we realize just exactly how dangerous the drive was. Here's a picture of the road we drove on on the way back down three days later. Keep in mind that as we were driving up the mountains, we couldn't see more than 20 feet ahead of us because of the clouds.

We arrived in Fortuna and stayed at a lovely new hotel set overlooking the Arenal volcano, which is the most active volcano in Costa Rica. While we didn't see any lava flows, there was plenty of smoke continually coming from the top of the volcano.

Arenal volcano in the background of the bar in the pool



The hotel had natural hot springs fed by the waters heated from the volcano. It was amazing. The views were spectacular, the water was warm and the forest surrounding us was amazing. We saw lots of birds and an occasional monkey and one huge spider. Later, on a drive around Arenal lake, I scared Ahmad by getting out of the car to take pictures of these curious little animals which looked like a cross between a possum and a raccoon. I think Ahmad was scared that I would get bitten, and in all honesty, the little guys were running towards me. I escaped unscathed, however.






While in the Arenal area, we went on an amazing zip line adventure. The longest zip line was almost a quarter of a mile long and over 600 feet off of the ground. Those of you who know me well know that I am scared of heights, but I conquered my fear and we had the most amazing time. I'll try and post a clip of one of the lines later.


We then drove to Quepos on the Pacific coast to the Manuel Antonio national park. We stayed in the only hotel directly on the beach. It was gorgeous. We took a hike through the national park and saw lots of monkeys and sloths and birds. I was hoping to see some tree frogs or snakes but we didn't. I think Ahmad was just fine with that. There were lots of monkeys, sloths and large iguanas at our hotel, too. We spent a lot of time on the beach just relaxing.

While in Quepos, we took a catamaran sailing trip. To everyone's surprise, we found 3 humpback whales, two adults and a baby. Mothers who have had calves spend the winters near Costa Rica while the calf learns to swim and gets fat for the trip back to colder waters for the summer. It seems that it is pretty rare to actually see them as the crew on our boat was just as excited as we all were to see the whales. One swam a foot underneath me as I was standing on the net on the boat. We felt so lucky to have been able to see the whales so close, within feet of the boat. I was too busy standing with my mouth open in amazement to take any pictures. Luckily, I am married to Ahmad, who not only took pictures but also shot some great video of the whales. Here's a short clip.

The trip was fabulous. It was great to get out of the snow and cold and to just relax together. Here's a slide show of the rest of the pictures.