Quote Originally Posted by Cataboo View Post
Hey Melavai,

I finally just saw this - I was actually close by when you were posting this. I was in Costa Rica for a day on the 29th. We just went around Puntaranes for the day. It was brutal getting back to the US and the cold after 2 weeks at 90 degrees.

I'm actually really surprised that Lorrie & Ed remembered me, I only stayed 1 night, but really should have stayed more! They really were super sweet and nice people when we stayed there. I'm glad they took care of you as 'travel agents'

How was your trip? I was worried that maybe I had you stay somewhere too remote (we had a rental car when we were there). Did your daughter manage to zip line? We want details!
Yes, she zip lined, so did I. She loved it! I am glad to have done it once, and I don't really need to do it again ever.


We were going to get a car and drive to Rincon de la Vieja, but that didn't work out. However Ed & Lorrie were able to hook us up with a driver who was very affordable. He isn't really a tour guide but he was happy to accompany us on the trail, and tell us what he could about the volcano. A few days later we hired him again to take us to the Congo Canopy Tour for ziplining. I thought "Congo" was a funny name for something in Costa Rica, then I learned that is the name of the howler monkeys.

SO many monkeys! We heard howler monkeys every morning and evening. I went for a lot of walks, and I saw a family of them one morning. Another morning I saw a family of quiet spider monkeys, which surprised Ed & Lorrie. They've only seen howlers & white-faced monkeys.

A family of white-faced monkeys put on a show for us at Rincon de la Vieja. At the Congo Canopy Tour, they have a butterfly house, where we finally got some pictures of the blue morpho. We kept trying to get pictures of blue morpho at Rincon but it was elusive. They also had a monkey refuge, and we could walk into the cage! The monkeys climbed all over us and pulled my hair out!



Rincon de la Vieja is a volcano. It had fumaroles (smokers) and boiling mud pits. The waterfall was my husband's favorite part of Costa Rica. My daughter's favorite was ziplining, and my favorite was the monkeys.

We loved eating in open air restaurants. The villa apartments each have a kitchen with dishes, so we cooked several meals and only ate out once a day or less. Our driver took us to a little place in Liberia for lunch, which seemed the most genuine food we ate, the places in Coco being geared toward tourists.

In fact we didn't really need to speak much Spanish, and my daughter's translating skills didn't get put to the test much. I bought a couple t-shirts at the grocery store and then discovered they were sized too small. Since I got them at the grocery store, we were able to exchange them, and I had her handle the exchange. She did a wonderful job! I was SO proud of her.

We walked down to the ocean nearly every day. Playa Azul and Playa Ocotal are both black sand beaches. I loved and hated the ocean. The tide pools and rocks were really cool. The rocks are volcanic, black and pink. The Pacific was pretty cool but I had a bad panic attack at high tide and I really was never comfortable in it. (I swam in the Atlantic a couple times years and years ago, otherwise I've never even seen the ocean.) Kind of ruined the ocean for me.

More pictures at http://gallery.ruhlendavis.org/main.php?g2_itemId=29, and more details at http://www.kemenel.org/melalvai/ (start at Dec 16 and work backwards).