Costa Rica Day 5

What an amazing day!  The weather was absolutely beautiful!  Eva and I were out all day from 8 in the morning and didn’t get back until 7 in the eve.  Most of our day just kind of happened.

We started the day off with the river float tour down the Rio Penas Blanca in the hopes of seeing some wildlife.   It was a great tour since there are only 6 people allowed in the boat, 5 people and 1 guide.  It was great!  

Our tour guide, Roberto, was really great and provided us with a lot of information about the river and the animals that inhabit it.  He was also great at finding and pointing out the wildlife.  We saw various types of birds, a sloth, howler monkeys, about 5 crocodiles (one mammoth one!) and some turtles.  I saw a lot more than what I was expecting. 

We docked the raft and visited Don Pedro’s farm closer to the end of the tour.  He’s 99 years old and there are two women there that help him with the farm.  They have no electricity and there is no road to the farm.  If you wanted to get into town, you would need to walk up a path for about a half hour in order to get any kind of transportation.    All the food that we had was made on the farm, coffee, bread, plantains & cheese.  Everything was delicious. 

It was only about another half hour on the boat and the tour was finished.  I do have to say that I’m glad that we did the morning  because the afternoon ride would have been very hot. 

It was only about a ½ day tour so we still needed to figure out what we were going to do for the rest of the day.  On the ride back to our hotel we were able to completely see the volcano!  Yay!  That was when we decided to head to a hotel where there was a volcano observation deck to get a good view of it.  We literally dropped off anything we didn’t need at the hotel and then we were on our way again. 

So…the roads in Costa Rica are not the greatest (to say the least).  Some are fine but the ones that are not paved are crazy.  Potholes everywhere!  There is no proper side of the road to drive on, just the side that has the fewest obstacles.  

We arrived after a very bumpy ride and made our way to the observation deck.  Great view of the volcano and pretty much as close as you can get.  The hotel is fairly large and has many walks throughout so we did a couple of those and went to the reception to see if there was anywhere we could walk on the lava rocks.  He said that there was a tour leaving a 4pm that will take us up the old lava flow so we said "sounds like a plan".  We had about an hour and a half to kill so we at the restaurant that has a full view of the volcano.  Great spot!  The timing of lunch and then the tour couldn’t have worked out better if we planned it.

So we meet our guide and he says, lets go!  We look around for others on the tour and nope, we’re it.  It was our own private tour!  How perfect is that?!  We even worked it out so he would drive us back into La Fortuna instead of having to get a taxi back.

The tour was nice and the guide provided us with the history of the explosion of 1968.  The volcano was dormant for 500 years prior to that explosion and the people in the area didn’t even know it was a volcano..just thought it was a mountain.  Our guide even said that people would go and camp in the crater!

We saw lots of beautiful orchids (lady’s slippers) on the path along with more howler monkeys.  On the way back into town, he actually stopped off at his friends house and took us to a tree where we were able to find a tree frog!  It was so cute!   

We got back to the hotel around 7pm and I was completely spent.  The day had totally caught up with me and I felt soooo sick.  I felt sick but I couldn’t have asked for a better day!

KK

If my passport could talk…

                                           “Bye bye lovely La Fortuna…next stop Monteverde”