Costa Rica Part III: Manuel Antonio

Hi kids! Sorry for being sloooooow on getting part III up, but life has been busy. Happy new year to my Jewish friends! Hope this new year is 10x better than last year.

Okay, on to the pictures! It's what you are all expecting from the blog post title!

Playa Manuel Antonio. A free, public beach. It was beautiful.

DanT's toucan drawing and our feet. I don't even think the feet-thing was on purpose!

Your neighborhood Roadside Hawk. This, and the next bunch of pictures, was taken inside Reserve Manuel Antonio.

A Halloween crab. Crazy, right? Look how bright! And they live in the park in moist areas.

He looks so wise. And dinosaur-like.

A Common Potoo.  He looks like an owl.

A sleeping Red-Eyed Tree Frog. Though, when sleeping his eyes look electric yellow!

t

Awake Three-Toed Sloth! He/she climbed this tree! They don't move so slowly.

We also saw a Two-Toed Sloth. If you want to know the difference, besides the number of toes, Two-Toed Sloths are white while Three-Toed Sloths are gray. Though they usually both have moss growing on them, so they really appear a bit green!

Lizard. There are simply too many kinds in Costa Rica to remember all of their names. Sorry.

White-Faced Capuchin! No zoom on this, they really came this close to us.

Mommy Capuchin with her teensy baby!!

There were so many beautiful Hermit Crabs walking along the paths. That is our guide's hand, though. That guy was a bit too big for me...

Yeah... That's a Boa Constrictor from afar, thankfully.

Representing Bold Native in Costa Rica! Sorry, Bold Native shirt, for sweating you up like I did.

So beautiful out there, I'll even allow a photo of me in a bathing suit!

The one thing you potentially intrepid travelers should know about Manuel Antonio is that it is a big tourist trap. There is nothing authentically Costa Rican about it the way there was in Arenal and Monteverde. I'm glad this was our last stop as it was relaxing, beautiful, and full of amazing wildlife, but it is not how we will remember Costa Rica. Costa Rica, for DanT and me, was a place full of majestic beauty, amazing wildlife, and wonderful people. People proud of their country. People who respect their land and love their animals and understand that without those two things they, as a country, have nothing. My two favorite Costa Rica stats that I was told by locals there are that 97% of all their energy is created by alternative sources: water, sun, and wind. And that 10% of the country is government-owned nature preserve and another 17% is privately owned preserved land. Costa Rica, a tiny country with no standing army for over 50 years, has got it figured out. I look forward to going back someday.

Costa Rica part II: Monteverde

I'm back! Costa Rica waits for no woman! On to the pictures:

MollyG and DanT on the boat ride across Lake Arinal on the way to Monteverde!

At our stop on our drive up the mountains to Monteverde we bumped into this cutie!

Coffee grown the bad way, clear-cutting the forest.

On our first evening in Monteverde we went for a walk in the neighborhood and found this guy. A Motmot!

Spicy potatoes over rice.

Half-eaten broccoli pasta with fry bread. Amazing.

Both from Dulce Marzo

Dulce Marzo was the best restaurant we ate at in Costa Rica. It is owned by an ex-pat woman named Lisa. Besides being very nice, she is also very accommodating and almost always has a few vegan items on her menu. The food was delicious and the conversation was interesting. Then, best part, we found out that her homemade dark chocolates are vegan (except the ones with caramel, duh). We bought 5 during our three day stay in Monteverde. The best were the straight-up chocolate with peanut butter swirled in. A-mazing. And the only time on the trip that we had dessert. if you ever find yourself in Monteverde, I highly recommend Dulce Marzo.

In the Monteverde cloud forest, tiny little orchids.

Through our guide carlos's telescope, a hummingbird mommy-to-be sitting on her eggs.

Agouti!

The underside of a Resplendent Quetzal. A really beautiful bird.

The underside of a Keel-Billed Toucan!! Seriously!

A Three-Wattled Bellbird. Its call sounds like a gong.

MollyG in a tree! This restaurant, The Treehouse, is built around a 200 year old fig tree!

Veggie stuffed avocado! SO good! Veganized simply by asking for no cheese.

The daily casado.

Our tour of a shade-grown, organic coffee plantation. The good stuff! I don't like coffee and even I liked this coffee!

Coffee in all its stages on the way to drinkable.

A Violet Saberwing. The biggest hummingbird in the world!

A female Purple-Throated Mountain Gem

A male Magnificent Hummingbird.

MollyG on a hanging bridge. Our nature walk at Selvatura had eight of these suckers.

That tree on the right of the bridge is Costa Rica's national tree, the tree of life (no idea what its official name is)

Really cool beetle on our nature walk.

Butterfly! We saw many, many different butterflies in Monteverde.

A Blue Jean poison dart frog. Not seen in the wild, seen in a reptile house, unfortunately. No wild poison dart frogs were seen.

Monteverde was so great that we want to go back. DanT and I want to retire there. Sunny in the morning, rain in the afternoon, in the evening cool enough for a sweater, all year! And everyone who lives there (that we spoke with) is super-nice and helpful. And the animals! Amazing.

I didn't want to leave!

Next, and lastly, comes part III! Stay tuned!

Costa Rica part I: Arenal Volcano

Hello all! I have returned from Costa Rica! DanT and I made it home on Monday at 1 AM. We are doing great and had an amazing time but took too many pictures! Yes, it is possible! We took about 900 pictures. We filled the 4 GB card bought for this trip and had to use about half of the 2 GB backup card that we brought. Due to the 900 pictures we took, this will be a post of pictures covering our first Costa Rican destination, the Arenal volcano. All the pictures are in chronological order, just for reference...

Post early morning flight, after arriving at our first hotel, this is me - asleep - in the hotel lobby.

Yeah, that's one of the top 10 most active volcanoes in the world. Our hotel faced it.

Hotel room "waterfall" shower. See me dancing? That's how tired I was.

Part of our daily breakfasts. Amazing tropical fruit!

Enjoying a truly local banana

Along with fresh fruit every day we had the national dish (which happens to be vegan): Gallo Pinto, or spotted rooster. It is a beans and rice dish. The black beans speckle the rice which is where the name comes from. It's really a filling, fantastic way to start the day. This was an excellent, energy filled breakfast. We tended to hike in the mornings, as it is Costa Rica's green season and it rains pretty much every afternoon. It was sunny almost every morning, however, so hike we did!

Hummingbird. Perching. Apparently they do that.

Look what we found right at the entrance of our La Fortuna waterfall hike.

A nest with two eggs in it! According to our guide this is the nest of the national bird. A small brown bird with a beautiful song.

La Fortuna waterfall. Beautiful

Fish in the river. Look how clear!

River and forest. Pretty much all of Costa Rica looks like that.

Teeny lizard

Beautiful lizard at the exit of the park

On the way home our guide spotted this howler monkey and his family climbing the electric wires and a nearby tree.

The real thing on the tree. Bananas grow like weeds in Costa Rica.

And in the backyard of our room, cows and bulls enjoying grasses taller than me.

It looks like a postcard!

DanT and I getting ready for our hike of the volcano. Awww, so cute...

Probably the greatest picture of me ever. Apparently I was thirsty (that's the mouthpiece of our camelback).

View from as high up on the volcano as we were allowed to go.

Those black rocks you see at the bottom are dried lava from the big explosion of Arenal in 1968. Since then, this volcano has been consistently active, but not deadly (except to the stupid people who want to look into it and fall in. Seriously, don't do it...)

Our last morning in Arenal, two sparrows came to visit us at breakfast. I like to think the boy sparrow is chasing the girl.

And on to our next destination we go!

That is lake Arenal, and to get to Monteverde, our next destination, we had to cross it! Monteverde will be covered in my next post. Think cloud rain forest, high up in the mountains. Even more beautiful then Arenal, if you can believe it! Thanks for your patience with all the pictures, but we took 900, so I promise this doesn't even scratch the surface. More next time!