I started this post in June, when we came back from our trip (May 23 - June 1) to Costa Rica. It was moving very slowly, because I didn't have much time and there was just so much to say. In August, our hard drive crashed. All our Costa Rica videos were stored there, and I couldn't continue. So, I'm publishing it as an unfinished draft. Here it is:
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Day 1
A cab driver who works for our travel agency, Sergio Gomez, took us from the airport (at Alajuela) to our first stop in our travel plan (for 3 nights): La Fortuna, offering a great view of the Arenal Volcano (1650 meters tall), stopping by a fruit shop on the way. He acted as translator and we bought mangoes, bananas, guavas, grapes, and avocados. A hour and a half later, we arrived at our resort/hotel, Los Lagos.
The top of the volcano seemed to always be covered in clouds, but the view was still very majestic. We had a separate house to ourselves, and we started to discover that this resort was the best place we stayed in, ever.
But when we arrived, we were tired. A 6½ hour flight starting at midnight and a 2½ hour drive were enough to exhaust most. We got some food from the Restaurante Las Palmas (the Restaurant of the Palm-Trees) and returned to our room to sleep. The day was done.
Motto of the day: "Bienvenidos!" ("Welcome!")
Day 2
This was the day that we really got to know Los Lagos and Costa Rica in general.
After a breakfast buffet at Las Palmas, we dashed off to the pool. The day before, we toured the pool (or pools - there were four). First there was a kids pool which had an arch you could jump from. There was another pool which had a slide which leads straight into the water. And there was a volcano-shaped pool and an adults pool.
"Just slide right in," said Daddy. "No, I have to get used to it." So I did. I swam around the whole pool, got out, and not heeding the sign saying "Cuidado! Piso Mojado" ("Caution! Wet Floor"), I slipped, and fell into the pool that the slide led to. I was ready.
"Go Anna! Go!" said Sugi, as I climbed up the stairs. After pausing for a few seconds at the top of the slide, I went down like a bullet. SPLASH!
"Did you get the video?" I asked. "Yes, I did. Now I'll take you on the camera in sports mode." Sports mode takes super-fast photos, and it would be perfect for the slide. I went down again, and in a split second, Daddy captured six photos. Now Sugi encouraged me again. "I'll clap if you do it three times," she said. 30 seconds later, she clapped.
Then, I raced and beat Daddy at every race that I could think of, and jumped from the arch into the pool six times. Sugi, even though she got her swimsuit, goggles, and swim cap, never went into the water, and instead went into the hot springs. Bored, we went into the hot springs too. After spending some time in the hot springs, we got out and got our towels.
A common theme here was that wildlife was knocking at our door. When we arrived, we saw seven birds. We saw a few birds and an iguana on the floor of Las Palmas. While coming to the pool, we saw an iguana on a rock. In the morning, we saw six birds outside our room. And now, we saw two iguanas on Daddy's shirt.
After that, we headed out to Catarata del Rio Fortuna (River Fortuna Waterfall). We had booked a tour called "Unique Cano Negro" (for Day 3) and we would see lots of birds and animals there. We wanted to have something to do outside of the resort on Day 2, too. So we went to the waterfall.
We started out for the waterfall in our car, but we soon got lost in town with no GPS and a faulty map. When we asked "Where's the waterfall?" no one understood us. Finally, Daddy talked with a multilingual store owner who pointed us in the right direction. We went up unpaved roads to the waterfall, and when we got there, we had to pay. We walked across a bridge to the Mirador (viewpoint), where we climbed up 10 steps and spotted the waterfall. It was just spectacular.
After we climbed down from the mirador, we saw a tourist climbing up some stairs. "It was tiring, there were endless stairs...but it was totally worth it." So we decided to go down. There were a ton of stairs, and Mummy and Suraga got so tired that we had to leave them somewhere in the middle of the stairs. Daddy and I continued. The stairs became rock stairs, and there was smooth rock between them. I had to slide from step to step until the stairs became normal again.
Suddenly, it started raining. It was a huge downpour, and instantly, we started to climb back up to Suraga and Mummy. Now we had to climb up those rock stairs. It was really hard, especially since the rain made the stairs slippery. But finally, we managed to get back up to where we left Sugi and Mummy. They weren't there, so we kept going up. Finally, we found our way back up, and after finding Sugi and Mummy under the roof of some souvenir shop and wore ponchos. I wanted Daddy to take a picture of us in ponchos, but when he clicked the shutter, nothing happened. The camera was destroyed.
When we returned to the resort, we cheered up, because Sugi and Mummy were going to the Butterfly Garden, and Daddy and I were going ziplining (I can't talk about the Butterfly Garden because I never went there). At the info center, we wore our equipment (basically a lot of cables and a baseball mitt) and headed up a rocky trail to the spot where we started our ziplining.
It's pretty easy: you just have to stay in the same position for a few seconds until you see a platform on a tree trunk and brake (gravity and inertia carry you). Just as Daddy got down on a platform right next to our room, Mummy and Sugi saw him. They couldn't see me, however, since they started to go to the Butterfly Garden just then.
Meanwhile, I got ready for the final cable. The cable took us near the info center (it was called Canopy las Cañones) and we got off right next to the Crocodile Farm. Our camera wasn't working, so Daddy took a video of the crocodiles. Then, we went back to the info center, took off our equipment, and headed back to our room (we thought Mummy and Sugi would be there). But they weren't, so we searched for them in the Butterfly Garden, the Ant Farm, and the Frog Farm. Finally, we found them at Restaurante Las Palmas, and came back to our room together.
"The camera is dead, apparently," announced Mummy, "we took it to the waterfall, then there was a heavy rain, it got wet, and completely stopped working. Now we have to figure out how to do the trip without the camera." Well, we only had to if all attempts to fix the camera failed. So we decided to go to the souvenir shop and see if they had a replacement battery for the camera.
We knew it was highly unlikely, but we decided to go anyway. Fortunately, we ran into a photographer there, and she told us to let the camera dry out by the AC overnight. With this advice, we ended the day on a high note, eating dinner at the fabulous Anchio Pizzeria e Restorante (Anchio Pizzeria and Restaurant). When we returned to our room, Daddy put the camera by the AC and slept.
Motto of the day: "Fun, once you get used to it."
Day 3
When I woke up, I was greeted by Daddy. "Look!" he said. He had the camera in his hands. He pressed the shutter, and... click!
Now, we didn't need to "do the trip without the camera." That was great, especially because Caño Negro would be full of wildlife. When we got on to our tour bus, we drove for a long time and then parked somewhere. Our "naturalist guide," Bernardo, told us that we were going to stop twice before we went to Caño Negro. Our first stop was Centro de Turismo del Iguanas (Center of Tourism for the Iguanas). Well, why would some iguanas the size of your foot have a center of tourism for themselves? And what was so great about these iguanas that they were called the iguanas? We soon found out.
Bernardo took us to a bridge over a river. We could see some iguanas there, and they were just HUGE. The iguanas we saw in the hotel were the size of your foot, but these iguanas were three feet long! Two iguanas slithered up from the trees and stopped right in front of the Center of Tourism (they probably wanted to bask in the sun for some reason I don't remember, but I used to know why).
The Center of Tourism was just a shop, and Sugi liked something in it. I played around with mayonnaise and ketchup packets until it was time to go to our next stop: Restaurante el Caiman. It was a tiny hut with long tables, and I really didn't understand why we had stopped there.
We walked back to the tourism van and drove for some time. Along the way, Mummy kept pestering Bernardo about quetzals (one of the rarest birds in Central America; less than 1,000 live in the world today, 300 in Costa Rica alone) and toucans (Mummy said "I've seen one in the zoo, but I want to see them in the wild,"). When we arrived, we hopped off the van and into a boat.
Captain Rito pulled a lever and started the boat. We sailed "slowly and silently" through yellowish-brown water, seeing so many birds that Mummy was tired of seeing bird after bird. I'll let my pictures tell the story (a picture says a thousand words); this is a slideshow of all the pictures I took on the boat (click for a larger version):
After docking, we gave Captain Rito a tip and got back in our van. We stopped at Restaurante el Caiman again, where we had a "typical, delicious Costa Rican lunch" with yucca chips, rice with vegetables, and more. After taking pictures of papayas, mangoes, guavas, and bananas that they grew there, we hopped on to the tourism van for a 2-hour ride back to Los Lagos.
The 3-hour drive to Caño Negro (near the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua), the 3 hours in the boat, and the 3-hour drive back tired us out. After resting for some hours in our room, Mummy went to the reception desk. "Where can I see toucans?" she asked. Paula, the person at the desk, said that they come out around 4:00 - 4:30 and if you go to the "observation point" there would be a slight chance of seeing them. So we went a mile up a rocky road to the observation point.
It was just a hut with a few chairs and a fabulous view of some river and the Arenal Volcano. But it didn't have any toucans, and Mummy was disappointed. We drove back to our room.
After resting some more, we realized that this was our last night at Los Lagos, and our next hotel, Hotel Belmar, didn't have very many exciting things to do, so we decided to go to the hot springs one last time.
We spent time in cold, medium, and hot water. Mummy slid down a waterslide to the adults' pool, and encouraged me to do so, too. After I did it, I encouraged Daddy. Then all three of us (and Sugi) relaxed in the hot springs again. After a half-hour, we drove back to our room and turned out the lights.
Motto of the day: "Pura vida!" ("Full of life!")
Day 4
When we woke up, we headed straight to Las Palmas. After eating breakfast there, Sugi and Daddy went to the Frog Farm, while Mummy and I went ziplining.
When Mummy arrived on the first platform, three girls from New York went on the cable. It was Mummy's turn. "I can't do it," said Mummy. "Well, that happens..." said a good-for-nothing guide, Cesar. They had a van take her back to the info center.
Now it was my turn on the zipline. I really didn't like it because Cesar and two more useless guides, Louise and Stefan, pushed me (they called it a "super-chicken") on every single cable. Finally, I finished everything and met up with Sugi, Mummy, and Daddy outside the info center.
Determined to end our last hours at Los Lagos on a high note, I suggested making guacamole (avocado dip) for our chips. We bought some avocados from the fruit store back on Day 1, and nobody ate them until now. So we borrowed knives, plates, and spoons from Las Palmas. Daddy cut an avocado in half, and Sugi and I began scooping out the inside. When we were finished, we crushed it - and that was our guacamole. Then we tried it out with chips. It was a bit bland - with no salt or pepper - but we both loved it. Mummy, however, didn't. She told me to take one last picture of our room, because we were going around Lake Arenal to the Monteverde Cloud Forest, to a different hotel called Hotel Belmar. A half-hour later, we started.
Equipped with a GPS, we headed out on a windy road around the lake and, two hours later, arrived at a town called Tiláran. Hotel Belmar's website told us to follow a gravel road for 45 km (28 miles) and we did. What we didn't know was that on gravel roads we could only travel at 15 mph (we didn't have a Hummer) and it would take 2 hours to get there. After we were safely in Monteverde, our GPS failed us and took us up a hill somewhere. We decided to ignore it, and arrived at the hotel.
The hotel was surrounded by greenery, and we could see forest from our balcony. We singled out tours for the next two days, and ate dinner at Johnny's Pizzeria. We still didn't know what a cloud forest was, though.
Motto of the day: "Ups and downs - we need a Hummer!"
Day 5
On Day 4, we had selected a tour for Day 5. It was a guided, private cloud forest tour. We were looking forward to that when we arrived for breakfast in the hotel. The service was absolutely perfect, and the meals were great. Our table had a quetzal-shaped napkin holder (an extremely rare bird in Central America). After eating bread and butter, I drank some hot chocolate. Meanwhile, Daddy met up with our guide, Roberto Wesson. He was an artist and naturalist who spent most of his time out in the forest drawing paintings of flora and fauna. When Daddy and Roberto were talking (on the way to the cloud forest on a Hummer) about Indian ornithologists, Mummy realized that we needed water, and stopped by a market to get it. When we arrived to the Curi-Cancha Cloud Forest Reserve, we forgot the water and climbed outside with Roberto.
"Today, our goal is to see the quetzal nest," said Roberto. Mummy, at once, pestered him about toucans. "I know where the bellbirds are singing, I know where the quetzals are nesting, but I don't know where the toucans are," he said. As we went into the reserve, we began to see what a rainforest was like: tons of trees (many on top of other trees) that blocked out the sky and sun. Wildlife was hard to see, and for a half-hour the only wildlife we saw were some butterflies and a millipede.
Then, out of nowhere, came a piercing call: BONK-whoo! We heard it again: BONK-whoo! And again. This, Roberto explained, was a bellbird. Roberto took many detours to try to spot it, but the bellbird was too elusive for us. We finally gave up all hopes of finding that bird, and continued on the path to the quetzal nest.
It was just walking and walking for some while, until Roberto aimed his Swarovzki telescope at a distant tree, and I was the first to look inside. It was another bird. Roberto said it was a motmot and Daddy looked. He saw that the motmot was gone. We didn't have to wait long before we saw another animal though. In ten minutes or so, we saw a rabbit-like animal right on our path.
"Puma feet. Puma feet," whispered Roberto. I crept closer and closer to it, and in a split-second, that animal was gone. Roberto said it was a coati (rhymes with "floatie") and it was the animal that we saw on the way to Monteverde (from La Fortuna). But I couldn't take a picture in both cases, and we moved on.
Mummy and I were, at one point, so tired that we stopped to rest. However, Roberto and Daddy moved on. When we realized that Roberto and Daddy had gone far, far ahead of us, we ran and shouted for Daddy. We finally caught up with them, and found them staring at something. It was a quetzal.
The quetzal was absolutely breathtaking, colored a marvelous turquoise and black (it was a male; the female is jade green and red). Daringly, I crept ahead of all naturalists and tour guides clustered around there, and took seven pictures of the quetzal at full zoom. Sugi, Daddy, and Mummy followed me. "Take many pictures," said Roberto, "so some of them can come out perfect." And I did.
The quetzal had just fetched a juicy caterpillar for its baby quetzals and then perched on its favorite branch. Then a female quetzal came, and they both flew off.
At this moment, our camera failed. On its screen, it said "Error 50: Shooting is not possible due to an error. Turn the camera off and on again or reinstall the battery." Daddy popped the battery out and in again, but it still didn't work. By the time the quetzals flew off, the camera screen went black. We headed back out of the Cloud Forest Reserve.
For a half-hour or so it was just walking, until we heard that call again: BONK-whoo! BONK-whoo! Roberto said that he would take a little detour to see the bellbird. We passed a sour-orange bush and walked into an open field with a picnic table (Daddy ate a sour-orange and said "This orange tastes like a lemon!"). Roberto aimed his telescope at the top of a tree with no leaves (it was the highest tree in that range) and I looked inside. It was the bellbird.
It was a weird sort of bird, with a white head and a brown body, and with a "mustache." Roberto said (after spotting an "ornate eagle") "We saw a motmot, a coati, two quetzals, a bellbird, an ornate eagle, but no T-O-U-C-A-N." We continued on our walk back to the Hummer.
After another half-hour, we had almost reached the exit. There were a few horses in a pasture to our right, and the cloud forest on our left. Roberto took a turn to the right, and we followed him. He aimed his telescope at the top of a tree and we looked inside. "What is it?" I asked. "A toucan," said Roberto. He put the lens of our video camera into his telescope and zoomed. It was a toucan, all right.
Mummy smiled for a moment, and that was it. She still wasn't impressed. There was only one explanation: she wanted to see the Emerald Toucan. Roberto explained that there are 2 species of toucans in Costa Rica: Rainbow-Billed Toucans (the one we saw) and Emerald Toucans. Emerald Toucans are (of course) green, and they blend in with the vegetation around them, so it's really hard to see them. But Mummy wanted to.
Just outside the Reserve, near a sign saying "Welcome to Curi-Cancha Cloud Forest Reserve," we posed for a photo. Daddy uploaded it to Facebook, and it remains the only iPhone photo of our trip. We headed back home in the Hummer.
We ate lunch soon afterwards, and Daddy slept while Sugi and I jumped on the beds and steered a ship to Taiwan (well, not really). At four o'clock (while Daddy was still sleeping) Mummy, Sugi, and I walked down a path to the jacuzzi. We spent an hour there, mostly kicking around and trying to block jet streams. After coming back, we went to the game room, where we played pool. It was my first time playing it, and soon after Daddy got two balls down in one shot, I lost. But I got better (especially when I hit a ball like a hockey player would), and managed to lead, only to lose again. Soon after, we ate dinner (I ate a "Monteverde Cheese Platter") and slept.
Motto of the day: "Welcome to the rainforest!"
Day 6
We got up, ate breakfast, and got in our rental car to go to Selvatura Park, which was suggested by Roberto. Also, when we turned the camera on, it showed a black screen. We left it behind, and took Daddy's iPhone and the video camera along instead. The road to Selvatura was just up, up, up, until we saw an authorized ticket dealer. The park was still 3 km ahead, so we bought tickets for the "Hanging Bridges" and the hummingbird garden. A few minutes later, we parked at Selvatura's parking lot and, after giving the park officials the tickets, walked to the first bridge in the system. We noticed rainforest all around us, and before long, we saw a hummingbird. It flew just in front of us, but time is measured in hundredths of seconds for hummingbirds. It flew past us before I could even take out the iPhone. So we kept walking, and we reached the first bridge.
The hanging bridges lived up to their name. From there, you could see some trees above you and a lot of trees below you. It's just overwhelming to see so much green in one place. Quickly, we moved on to the second bridge. On the way to the third bridge, we saw a group of tourists led by a guide, whose name was Andres. We allowed them to pass us. Just seconds later, I exclaimed, "It's a bellbird!" But it wasn't. That elusive bird was somewhere else, calling out "BONK-whoo! BONK-whoo!"
We moved on to the fourth bridge. There, we saw six turquoise birds flash in and out of some bushes. We managed to find one of them. Mummy zoomed in. It was mostly black, but some parts (including the head) were turquoise. Some more tourists gathered there, and after seeing so many cameras taking pictures, the bird got scared and flew away. We wanted to meet Roberto and ask him what it was, but we could only meet him the next day. So we moved on.
On the next bridge, we heard that sound again: "BONK-whoo! BONK-whoo!" And the bellbird was right there. It was the same thing we saw through Roberto's telescope, but we saw it with the naked eye (actually, Mummy did and then pointed it out to the rest of us) and even my binoculars didn't have greater zoom. Daddy said that even though the tourists who had passed us on the way to the third bridge had payed an extra $10 for the guide, they missed out on the bellbird (certainly pressed for time).
The road to the seventh bridge was a very, very, very long one. It was just walking, walking, walking with no end in sight. When we finally reached the 7th bridge, we didn't see any birds, so we continued to the 8th (and last) bridge. After some time, we reached it, and after seeing nothing important, we walked down the path back to the parking lot.
At a restaurant near the parking lot, I ate the "Vegetarian Sandwich" and Daddy and I waited while Sugi and Mummy visited the Hummingbird Garden. Some time later, they came back and we got into our car and drove back to Hotel Belmar. At the hotel, we rested for three hours, and after drinking milk, went to the game room to play pool.
I protested against Daddy taking two turns ("Sugi's turn" and his own) and left the game. I went to the couch where Mummy was sitting. Mummy told me something, but I forgot it after we went back to eat dinner.
When we ate dinner, Mummy noticed the music they were playing, and sang along. It was some Hindi music, and the waiter explained that they took their music from an online channel, and that channel happened to play Hindi music that day. Mummy told this to everyone, and we resumed eating. After we were done, Daddy asked for coconut flan. As we were waiting, a waiter called Jorge brought something out, and placed it on our table. It was a cake.
"¡Feliz cumpleaños!" he said to Daddy, "Happy birthday!" The cake was a fresh and wonderful chocolate cake. It was the best cake I had ever eaten. However, Daddy was puzzled. "Why did he say happy birthday?" he asked. Mummy explained that it was a "Costa Rican birthday" and since this would be the last chance she had to have someone else make a cake (we were spending our last three days at a vacation house) she decided to go for it. A few minutes later, they brought in the coconut flan, which was even better than the cake, and we went back to our room and slept.
Motto of the day: "Costa Rica is pretty great!"
Day 7
When we got up and ate breakfast, we decided to go for a walk on a hotel-owned trail. The trail led us to a "garden" which had a lot of native plants. After walking past it, we walked to a duck pond, and standing on a dock, Sugi and I said "¡Hola, patos!" ("Hello, ducks!") After taking pictures of them and relaxing for a while, we walked back to the hotel.
We played pool for some time in the game room, and then, after eating lunch, it was time to go to the next location in our travel plan: Manuel Antonio.
We started for Manuel Antonio, but before we even got out of Monteverde, a huge rainstorm started. We had to stop at a coffee shop and waited out the storm. After fifteen minutes, it stopped and we continued. After an hour, we arrived at the Pan-American Highway (1 Interamericana Norte) and after driving for a very long time, we took a road towards Jaco and Quepos. Those two places were beaches, and the road ran along the coastline. After driving for another two hours, we arrived at Quepos (just 2 miles away from Manuel Antonio). We drove up a high road, and followed it.
We followed it until we were lost, and asked someone for a cell phone to call up the owner of the vacation house we were staying in (The owner's name was Olivier Collin, and the house was called Casa Tipoha). After getting lost again, we finally reached Casa Tipoha.
The house had a basement and irregular windows. It had some balconies and its shape was newfangled. It also had a swimming pool. It had Wi-Fi, but the password on the refrigerator didn't work. The phone also didn't work, and after we finally got it working, Olivier Collin came to the house. He explained that he was a Belgian whose family moved to England when he was 10. He randomly decided to move to Costa Rica, and soon built a lot of houses. This was one of them.
After telling us everything about the house and Manuel Antonio (including some good restaurants), he left us on our own. We immediately drove to a place called Pizza Pata. Their pizza was not measured in terms of diameter. Their pizza was rectangular, and it was measured by length. I ate a ¼ meter pizza, and Mummy and Daddy shared a ½ meter pizza. After eating our pizzas, we went to a tiny convenience store where Mummy bought a lot of things, and then we drove back to our house and slept.
Motto of the day: "Welcome to Manuel Antonio!"
Day 8
When we got up, we ate some corn flakes (purchased by Mummy the night before) and I got into the pool. When Daddy got into the pool fifteen minutes later, he spotted an iguana that Sugi dubbed "Iggy." Mummy scared poor Iggy, and it fled into its cozy little home. Daddy, after dipping his feet in the water for a few minutes, jumped in, and we raced and raced.
After some time, Daddy realized that he had no chance against me because freestyle was his only good stroke (he couldn't keep himself up in backstroke, and he'd forgotten butterfly and backstroke) and I beat him at it. He got out and went back inside. After some time, I did too.
It was time to go to Playa Manuel Antonio (Manuel Antonio Beach). After paying some money to someone to get parking, we ran to it. The ocean there was as hot as a swimming pool, and Daddy and I went into the water. After it became knee-deep, I stumbled, and ran back to Mummy. Soon, I ran back in.
At this time, Mummy said, "I want to go into the water, too!" and within a minute, she did. Leaving Daddy behind to take video, Mummy, Sugi, and I went in to the water. Sugi came back soon enough, and Mummy and I were left in the water. Immediately, a wave washed over us, and one of my shoes was lost.
Still, Mummy and I went back into the water while Sugi played "sand games" under the shade of our umbrella-chair. Mummy and I kept going inside the water, and soon a huge wave submerged both of us, and we found ourselves on the shore. Daddy and I went into the water next, and we swum on it as if it was a swimming pool. After doing that for some time, we got out and met an ice cream salesman.
He gave us a significant discount for the vanilla ice cream. It was delicious, and I soon finished one of the packs he sold to us. After eating, we drove home.
I played in the pool for a long time, and after I got out, three yellow-and-brown birds came near the pool (I later found out that they were Boat-Billed Flycatchers). After they flew away, we saw another bird. It had a big and long bill (like a toucan) so Mummy called it a toucan. But I was skeptical. It couldn't be one because it was only yellow, black, and red (the Rainbow-Billed toucan doesn't have red anywhere other than the tip of its beak, and its beak has green and blue too). It was, I reasoned, a Fiery-Billed Aracari. Soon, Daddy focused the camera on something else. It was a howler monkey.
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Day 1
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| "It's so green," she said. She was right. |
"I don't know how it's going to be," said Mummy, waiting for the TACA Airlines flight that would take us to the Aeropuerto Internacional Juan Santamaria (The Juan Santamaria International Airport in Costa Rica) in the San Francisco airport. Just hours before, as we checked in, we talked to a Nicaraguan about Costa Rica. "Costa Rica? Oh, it's so nice, so pleasant, [and most of all] it's so green," she said. She was right.
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| A cab driver took us to La Fortuna. |
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| The view of the volcano. |
But when we arrived, we were tired. A 6½ hour flight starting at midnight and a 2½ hour drive were enough to exhaust most. We got some food from the Restaurante Las Palmas (the Restaurant of the Palm-Trees) and returned to our room to sleep. The day was done.
Motto of the day: "Bienvenidos!" ("Welcome!")
Day 2
This was the day that we really got to know Los Lagos and Costa Rica in general.
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| I warmed up for the slide. |
"Just slide right in," said Daddy. "No, I have to get used to it." So I did. I swam around the whole pool, got out, and not heeding the sign saying "Cuidado! Piso Mojado" ("Caution! Wet Floor"), I slipped, and fell into the pool that the slide led to. I was ready.
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| SPLASH! |
"Did you get the video?" I asked. "Yes, I did. Now I'll take you on the camera in sports mode." Sports mode takes super-fast photos, and it would be perfect for the slide. I went down again, and in a split second, Daddy captured six photos. Now Sugi encouraged me again. "I'll clap if you do it three times," she said. 30 seconds later, she clapped.
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| One of the iguanas. |
A common theme here was that wildlife was knocking at our door. When we arrived, we saw seven birds. We saw a few birds and an iguana on the floor of Las Palmas. While coming to the pool, we saw an iguana on a rock. In the morning, we saw six birds outside our room. And now, we saw two iguanas on Daddy's shirt.
After that, we headed out to Catarata del Rio Fortuna (River Fortuna Waterfall). We had booked a tour called "Unique Cano Negro" (for Day 3) and we would see lots of birds and animals there. We wanted to have something to do outside of the resort on Day 2, too. So we went to the waterfall.
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| The waterfall. |
After we climbed down from the mirador, we saw a tourist climbing up some stairs. "It was tiring, there were endless stairs...but it was totally worth it." So we decided to go down. There were a ton of stairs, and Mummy and Suraga got so tired that we had to leave them somewhere in the middle of the stairs. Daddy and I continued. The stairs became rock stairs, and there was smooth rock between them. I had to slide from step to step until the stairs became normal again.
Suddenly, it started raining. It was a huge downpour, and instantly, we started to climb back up to Suraga and Mummy. Now we had to climb up those rock stairs. It was really hard, especially since the rain made the stairs slippery. But finally, we managed to get back up to where we left Sugi and Mummy. They weren't there, so we kept going up. Finally, we found our way back up, and after finding Sugi and Mummy under the roof of some souvenir shop and wore ponchos. I wanted Daddy to take a picture of us in ponchos, but when he clicked the shutter, nothing happened. The camera was destroyed.
When we returned to the resort, we cheered up, because Sugi and Mummy were going to the Butterfly Garden, and Daddy and I were going ziplining (I can't talk about the Butterfly Garden because I never went there). At the info center, we wore our equipment (basically a lot of cables and a baseball mitt) and headed up a rocky trail to the spot where we started our ziplining.
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| Me, ziplining. |
Meanwhile, I got ready for the final cable. The cable took us near the info center (it was called Canopy las Cañones) and we got off right next to the Crocodile Farm. Our camera wasn't working, so Daddy took a video of the crocodiles. Then, we went back to the info center, took off our equipment, and headed back to our room (we thought Mummy and Sugi would be there). But they weren't, so we searched for them in the Butterfly Garden, the Ant Farm, and the Frog Farm. Finally, we found them at Restaurante Las Palmas, and came back to our room together.
"The camera is dead, apparently," announced Mummy, "we took it to the waterfall, then there was a heavy rain, it got wet, and completely stopped working. Now we have to figure out how to do the trip without the camera." Well, we only had to if all attempts to fix the camera failed. So we decided to go to the souvenir shop and see if they had a replacement battery for the camera.
We knew it was highly unlikely, but we decided to go anyway. Fortunately, we ran into a photographer there, and she told us to let the camera dry out by the AC overnight. With this advice, we ended the day on a high note, eating dinner at the fabulous Anchio Pizzeria e Restorante (Anchio Pizzeria and Restaurant). When we returned to our room, Daddy put the camera by the AC and slept.
Motto of the day: "Fun, once you get used to it."
Day 3
When I woke up, I was greeted by Daddy. "Look!" he said. He had the camera in his hands. He pressed the shutter, and... click!
Now, we didn't need to "do the trip without the camera." That was great, especially because Caño Negro would be full of wildlife. When we got on to our tour bus, we drove for a long time and then parked somewhere. Our "naturalist guide," Bernardo, told us that we were going to stop twice before we went to Caño Negro. Our first stop was Centro de Turismo del Iguanas (Center of Tourism for the Iguanas). Well, why would some iguanas the size of your foot have a center of tourism for themselves? And what was so great about these iguanas that they were called the iguanas? We soon found out.
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| An iguana slithered up to us. |
The Center of Tourism was just a shop, and Sugi liked something in it. I played around with mayonnaise and ketchup packets until it was time to go to our next stop: Restaurante el Caiman. It was a tiny hut with long tables, and I really didn't understand why we had stopped there.
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| Our boat at Rio Frio. |
Captain Rito pulled a lever and started the boat. We sailed "slowly and silently" through yellowish-brown water, seeing so many birds that Mummy was tired of seeing bird after bird. I'll let my pictures tell the story (a picture says a thousand words); this is a slideshow of all the pictures I took on the boat (click for a larger version):
After docking, we gave Captain Rito a tip and got back in our van. We stopped at Restaurante el Caiman again, where we had a "typical, delicious Costa Rican lunch" with yucca chips, rice with vegetables, and more. After taking pictures of papayas, mangoes, guavas, and bananas that they grew there, we hopped on to the tourism van for a 2-hour ride back to Los Lagos.
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| Mummy at the observation point. |
It was just a hut with a few chairs and a fabulous view of some river and the Arenal Volcano. But it didn't have any toucans, and Mummy was disappointed. We drove back to our room.
After resting some more, we realized that this was our last night at Los Lagos, and our next hotel, Hotel Belmar, didn't have very many exciting things to do, so we decided to go to the hot springs one last time.
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| Daddy and Sugi at the hot springs. |
Motto of the day: "Pura vida!" ("Full of life!")
Day 4
When we woke up, we headed straight to Las Palmas. After eating breakfast there, Sugi and Daddy went to the Frog Farm, while Mummy and I went ziplining.
When Mummy arrived on the first platform, three girls from New York went on the cable. It was Mummy's turn. "I can't do it," said Mummy. "Well, that happens..." said a good-for-nothing guide, Cesar. They had a van take her back to the info center.
Now it was my turn on the zipline. I really didn't like it because Cesar and two more useless guides, Louise and Stefan, pushed me (they called it a "super-chicken") on every single cable. Finally, I finished everything and met up with Sugi, Mummy, and Daddy outside the info center.
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| Sugi and I making guacamole. |
Equipped with a GPS, we headed out on a windy road around the lake and, two hours later, arrived at a town called Tiláran. Hotel Belmar's website told us to follow a gravel road for 45 km (28 miles) and we did. What we didn't know was that on gravel roads we could only travel at 15 mph (we didn't have a Hummer) and it would take 2 hours to get there. After we were safely in Monteverde, our GPS failed us and took us up a hill somewhere. We decided to ignore it, and arrived at the hotel.
The hotel was surrounded by greenery, and we could see forest from our balcony. We singled out tours for the next two days, and ate dinner at Johnny's Pizzeria. We still didn't know what a cloud forest was, though.
Motto of the day: "Ups and downs - we need a Hummer!"
Day 5
On Day 4, we had selected a tour for Day 5. It was a guided, private cloud forest tour. We were looking forward to that when we arrived for breakfast in the hotel. The service was absolutely perfect, and the meals were great. Our table had a quetzal-shaped napkin holder (an extremely rare bird in Central America). After eating bread and butter, I drank some hot chocolate. Meanwhile, Daddy met up with our guide, Roberto Wesson. He was an artist and naturalist who spent most of his time out in the forest drawing paintings of flora and fauna. When Daddy and Roberto were talking (on the way to the cloud forest on a Hummer) about Indian ornithologists, Mummy realized that we needed water, and stopped by a market to get it. When we arrived to the Curi-Cancha Cloud Forest Reserve, we forgot the water and climbed outside with Roberto.
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| The cloud forest. |
Then, out of nowhere, came a piercing call: BONK-whoo! We heard it again: BONK-whoo! And again. This, Roberto explained, was a bellbird. Roberto took many detours to try to spot it, but the bellbird was too elusive for us. We finally gave up all hopes of finding that bird, and continued on the path to the quetzal nest.
It was just walking and walking for some while, until Roberto aimed his Swarovzki telescope at a distant tree, and I was the first to look inside. It was another bird. Roberto said it was a motmot and Daddy looked. He saw that the motmot was gone. We didn't have to wait long before we saw another animal though. In ten minutes or so, we saw a rabbit-like animal right on our path.
"Puma feet. Puma feet," whispered Roberto. I crept closer and closer to it, and in a split-second, that animal was gone. Roberto said it was a coati (rhymes with "floatie") and it was the animal that we saw on the way to Monteverde (from La Fortuna). But I couldn't take a picture in both cases, and we moved on.
Mummy and I were, at one point, so tired that we stopped to rest. However, Roberto and Daddy moved on. When we realized that Roberto and Daddy had gone far, far ahead of us, we ran and shouted for Daddy. We finally caught up with them, and found them staring at something. It was a quetzal.
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| The quetzal (click to enlarge) |
The quetzal had just fetched a juicy caterpillar for its baby quetzals and then perched on its favorite branch. Then a female quetzal came, and they both flew off.
At this moment, our camera failed. On its screen, it said "Error 50: Shooting is not possible due to an error. Turn the camera off and on again or reinstall the battery." Daddy popped the battery out and in again, but it still didn't work. By the time the quetzals flew off, the camera screen went black. We headed back out of the Cloud Forest Reserve.
For a half-hour or so it was just walking, until we heard that call again: BONK-whoo! BONK-whoo! Roberto said that he would take a little detour to see the bellbird. We passed a sour-orange bush and walked into an open field with a picnic table (Daddy ate a sour-orange and said "This orange tastes like a lemon!"). Roberto aimed his telescope at the top of a tree with no leaves (it was the highest tree in that range) and I looked inside. It was the bellbird.
It was a weird sort of bird, with a white head and a brown body, and with a "mustache." Roberto said (after spotting an "ornate eagle") "We saw a motmot, a coati, two quetzals, a bellbird, an ornate eagle, but no T-O-U-C-A-N." We continued on our walk back to the Hummer.
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| The toucan (Rainbow-Billed Toucan) |
Mummy smiled for a moment, and that was it. She still wasn't impressed. There was only one explanation: she wanted to see the Emerald Toucan. Roberto explained that there are 2 species of toucans in Costa Rica: Rainbow-Billed Toucans (the one we saw) and Emerald Toucans. Emerald Toucans are (of course) green, and they blend in with the vegetation around them, so it's really hard to see them. But Mummy wanted to.
Just outside the Reserve, near a sign saying "Welcome to Curi-Cancha Cloud Forest Reserve," we posed for a photo. Daddy uploaded it to Facebook, and it remains the only iPhone photo of our trip. We headed back home in the Hummer.
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| Me playing pool at the game room. |
Motto of the day: "Welcome to the rainforest!"
Day 6
We got up, ate breakfast, and got in our rental car to go to Selvatura Park, which was suggested by Roberto. Also, when we turned the camera on, it showed a black screen. We left it behind, and took Daddy's iPhone and the video camera along instead. The road to Selvatura was just up, up, up, until we saw an authorized ticket dealer. The park was still 3 km ahead, so we bought tickets for the "Hanging Bridges" and the hummingbird garden. A few minutes later, we parked at Selvatura's parking lot and, after giving the park officials the tickets, walked to the first bridge in the system. We noticed rainforest all around us, and before long, we saw a hummingbird. It flew just in front of us, but time is measured in hundredths of seconds for hummingbirds. It flew past us before I could even take out the iPhone. So we kept walking, and we reached the first bridge.
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| Daddy, at the first bridge. |
The hanging bridges lived up to their name. From there, you could see some trees above you and a lot of trees below you. It's just overwhelming to see so much green in one place. Quickly, we moved on to the second bridge. On the way to the third bridge, we saw a group of tourists led by a guide, whose name was Andres. We allowed them to pass us. Just seconds later, I exclaimed, "It's a bellbird!" But it wasn't. That elusive bird was somewhere else, calling out "BONK-whoo! BONK-whoo!"
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| The turquoise-and-black bird. |
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| The bellbird. |
The road to the seventh bridge was a very, very, very long one. It was just walking, walking, walking with no end in sight. When we finally reached the 7th bridge, we didn't see any birds, so we continued to the 8th (and last) bridge. After some time, we reached it, and after seeing nothing important, we walked down the path back to the parking lot.
At a restaurant near the parking lot, I ate the "Vegetarian Sandwich" and Daddy and I waited while Sugi and Mummy visited the Hummingbird Garden. Some time later, they came back and we got into our car and drove back to Hotel Belmar. At the hotel, we rested for three hours, and after drinking milk, went to the game room to play pool.
I protested against Daddy taking two turns ("Sugi's turn" and his own) and left the game. I went to the couch where Mummy was sitting. Mummy told me something, but I forgot it after we went back to eat dinner.
When we ate dinner, Mummy noticed the music they were playing, and sang along. It was some Hindi music, and the waiter explained that they took their music from an online channel, and that channel happened to play Hindi music that day. Mummy told this to everyone, and we resumed eating. After we were done, Daddy asked for coconut flan. As we were waiting, a waiter called Jorge brought something out, and placed it on our table. It was a cake.
"¡Feliz cumpleaños!" he said to Daddy, "Happy birthday!" The cake was a fresh and wonderful chocolate cake. It was the best cake I had ever eaten. However, Daddy was puzzled. "Why did he say happy birthday?" he asked. Mummy explained that it was a "Costa Rican birthday" and since this would be the last chance she had to have someone else make a cake (we were spending our last three days at a vacation house) she decided to go for it. A few minutes later, they brought in the coconut flan, which was even better than the cake, and we went back to our room and slept.
Motto of the day: "Costa Rica is pretty great!"
Day 7
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| The duck pond. |
We played pool for some time in the game room, and then, after eating lunch, it was time to go to the next location in our travel plan: Manuel Antonio.
We started for Manuel Antonio, but before we even got out of Monteverde, a huge rainstorm started. We had to stop at a coffee shop and waited out the storm. After fifteen minutes, it stopped and we continued. After an hour, we arrived at the Pan-American Highway (1 Interamericana Norte) and after driving for a very long time, we took a road towards Jaco and Quepos. Those two places were beaches, and the road ran along the coastline. After driving for another two hours, we arrived at Quepos (just 2 miles away from Manuel Antonio). We drove up a high road, and followed it.
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| Casa Tipoha (photo from its website) |
The house had a basement and irregular windows. It had some balconies and its shape was newfangled. It also had a swimming pool. It had Wi-Fi, but the password on the refrigerator didn't work. The phone also didn't work, and after we finally got it working, Olivier Collin came to the house. He explained that he was a Belgian whose family moved to England when he was 10. He randomly decided to move to Costa Rica, and soon built a lot of houses. This was one of them.
After telling us everything about the house and Manuel Antonio (including some good restaurants), he left us on our own. We immediately drove to a place called Pizza Pata. Their pizza was not measured in terms of diameter. Their pizza was rectangular, and it was measured by length. I ate a ¼ meter pizza, and Mummy and Daddy shared a ½ meter pizza. After eating our pizzas, we went to a tiny convenience store where Mummy bought a lot of things, and then we drove back to our house and slept.
Motto of the day: "Welcome to Manuel Antonio!"
Day 8
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| Daddy and me in the pool. |
After some time, Daddy realized that he had no chance against me because freestyle was his only good stroke (he couldn't keep himself up in backstroke, and he'd forgotten butterfly and backstroke) and I beat him at it. He got out and went back inside. After some time, I did too.
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| Daddy and me in the ocean. |
At this time, Mummy said, "I want to go into the water, too!" and within a minute, she did. Leaving Daddy behind to take video, Mummy, Sugi, and I went in to the water. Sugi came back soon enough, and Mummy and I were left in the water. Immediately, a wave washed over us, and one of my shoes was lost.
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| Mummy and me in the ocean. |
He gave us a significant discount for the vanilla ice cream. It was delicious, and I soon finished one of the packs he sold to us. After eating, we drove home.
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| Fiery-Billed Aracari, Boat-Billed Flycatcher, Howler Monkey. |
