Costa Rica update.....Wed to Friday

Arenal Volcano

Iguana on the boat tour on Arenal Lake

Hibiscus outside my room near Arenal Volcano

Lunch at the Doka Coffee Plantation

Wednesday:
Waking up at 5:45 for a 6:30 breakfast was rather difficult today. Tough. Especially after the day of travel and a mere 1.5 hours of sleep on the flights. But, with a few good hours of sleep under my belt, I was ready for adventure today. Our first stop was Poas Volcano. We were the first group there at 8:30. We trekked up the walkway and as the vegetation cleared, I saw that it was cloudy. We hung onto the railing, peered into the crater, and saw…..clouds. We waited 5-10 minutes in hopes the clouds would blow over. You see, the volcano gets winds from the Caribbean, and in a matter of minutes it can go from clear to cloudy to rainy to clear. We hoped for the best……in the meantime we ventured over on another trail to see Bota Lake, an extinct part of the volcano. After that visit we ventured back over to the main part and in was a little clearer, so we did get to see something.

Next we were off to the Doka coffee plantation. Coffee is a major part of Costa Rica’s economy, so it was interesting to find out that Starbuck’s buys 50% of the coffee beans from the Doka coffee plantation. Here in Costa Rica they cannot process the coffee to the decaffeinated state, so they send the beans to Germany for the decaffeination process and get the beans sent back. We got our coffee fix with samples….yum!

Time to relax and soak away: we were off to our hotel for a quick check-in and swimsuit change…off to the Baldi Hot Springs! There were like 13 hot spring fed pools…..we lost count. My apologies. The springs were constructed on the side of a mountain…so the higher the spring, the hotter the water. There were water slides (I counted those, there were 3) that the kids got to go down…and they convinced me to go down one. The middle one. The fastest one. The one that had a sign hanging by it that said ‘this slide is constructed to make you go 40+kph’. The one that it was pitch black inside. The one that at the last moment, just when you had your eyes closed because you still had your contacts in you wondered ‘when in the hell am I going to hit the pool water and get out of this blasted tube?’. The one that when you rounded said corner, you caught air. Literally. My body flew up so high, that I almost lost bodily functions. Then you round another corner and it spits you out like yesterday’s garbage. The landing in the pool is like getting a good enema. Just kidding. Not really kidding. It was fun though!

Dinner was next…at the hot springs. What a fabulous dinner! Ham, beef, pineapple, mango, plantains, strawberries and a chocolate fondue pot….and coconut flan to die for.
We all got back to the hotel, and went to our rooms. I turned on the TV and made the mistake of getting started on watching Monster-in-Law. Good movie.

After a good night’s sleep, it was time for Thursday to begin….
My group in 2005 took a 25 minute boatride to a ranch, then a 3 hour horseback ride. This year that wasn’t possible, although a covered boatride across the whole lake was ….. 2 hours. We did it – saw monkeys, tons of birds, an iguana….it was a break from the bus and it was worth it! It rained the last 10 minutes, but stopped before we hit land.

Back on the bus….a quick restroom stop and we were off another 1.5 hour drive to Monteverde. We stopped at a restaurant to eat then checked in our hotel. We stayed at this same hotel in 2005, but this time we’re staying in a new part of the hotel, much, much further up the mountain and it’s absolutely gorgeous!!! LOVE the room, the views…..wow. (On a side note, I most definitely want a king size bed now at home.)

Cloud forest. Sounds kind of interesting, doesn’t it? I’ll clue you in: it’s not a forest made of clouds, if you were going there. It’s a forest, where the elevation is so high the clouds can come right in and make it feel like you’re smack in the middle of them. There are many here: we went and had a walk through one of them this morning. We saw lots of caterpillars, centipedes, monkeys, birds…..and a plant called ‘labios de mujer’, translated to woman’s lips, or hot lips. They look like lips, literally. Pucker up, baby!

Then it started to rain. Now, being that this is the rainy season in Costa Rica, we are prepared for it with our lovely ponchos and rain coats. But, we had a reservation for a canopy zip line tour….what is that exactly? I will explain. We wear helmets and gloves with a thick leather pad on the palm, and we’re in harnesses. There is a safety rope with a carabeaner, and another rope that is hooked on to a pully that rides on the cable. We stand on a platform and one guide hooks us up to the cable. We ‘sit’, ankles crossed, and put our dominant hand behind the pulley on the cable, and our weak hand on the ropes. Then we’re off…zipping atop the canopy of the forest. At the other end of the cable is another guide waiting for us, signaling for us to break by pulling down on the cable, or by coming faster by letting go. What a thrill!