Ok everyone, this blog is gonna break records. There are too many amazing images from this trip to fit them all on this blog. I'm guessing we'll be doing a blog for each location we explored, but I have no idea, there may be more then that. We'll start with La Fortuna.
La Fortuna means fortunate. Fortunate because, out of the two villages that lived underneath Central America's most active volcano, La Fortuna was the one that didn't get buried. As a result it remains a tourist hot spot, and one of the most gorgeous places to stay. Almost every room at every hotel in town has a view of the volcano. You can literally lay in your bed and see the smoke rise from the vent. One year ago you could lay in bed and watch the lava flow down the mountain, but in the last year the lava flow has switched to the other side. We did get to see lava flow, but not from our room.
All of the tour guides go to school for at least a year and they're very knowledgeable and fun to hike with. This was our little volcano lesson in the dirt of the path of our hike, nicknamed the "liquid lava tour". It got it's name because they serve rum and cranberry juice at dusk at the bottom of the volcano. So in the event that it's cloudy or inactive, good times should still be had.
One of the many adventures we went on was the canyoneering up in the mountains near La Fortuna. Several tourists pile into the back of an old truck and drives an insanely bumpy road up the mountain. It was bumpy, but it was only a taste of some of the roads we would take later in our trip.
We drove up the mountains, and then hiked down into a canyon and proceeded to descend the mountain by way of the small stream that flowed down the canyon. There were a series of 8 descents that required repelling. From small short drops to 260 foot cliffs. Needless to say we got very, very wet, so these photos were taken with a disposable camera. It was dark in the jungle so please forgive the quality.
Here's Ruth doing the 200 ft drop.
That was one of my favorite adventures. At one point we were actually repelling down through a waterfall. The lower you descended the harder the water fell on down on you. It was incredible!
Obviously, one of the things we went to Costa Rica to see was the wildlife. Some of the jungle hikes we did were amazing even when we didn't see anything. I was really looking forward to seeing monkeys and lizards and birds.
This seemed like a bad tree for climbing, or touching for that matter.
This was the first foreign animal we saw, just outside our condo in Playa del Coco. It was gecko. They made an incredibly loud chirping noise at night. Especially when they got inside our bedroom!
One of the amazing tours we did was the Cano Negro safari. We basically floated down the Cano Negro river, about 2 hours outside of La Fortuna. It was like floating through a zoo, but the site seeing started on the bus on the way there.
This is a sugar cane factory.
We also saw several plantations, such as oranges, pineapples, lemons, bananas and papayas
Also many farms.
And then there was the iguana tree; a tree along the way to the Cano Negro that is home to many iguanas.
We finally arrived at the river. Thank God it was a beautiful day, perfect for pictures, unfortunately I'm not the perfect photographer. I bought a new zoom lens for this trip but there was a bit of a learning curve on it. So some photos were A little blurry or dark.
We were lucky to have a very small crowd on the boat, so we were free to move around and take pictures from all sides.
The birds were amazing.
We saw several species of kingfishers...
...including this cryptic photo of the apparently rare pygmy kingfisher. It's about the size of a hummingbird. According to our guide, he once took a small group of German scientists on the same tour, and they 'requested' to see the pygmy kingfisher. By sheer luck they found one early in the tour. The German scientists were satisfied and declared the tour complete. They turned the boat around and went back! So here's my photo of the pygmy kingfisher.
Ze trip iz complete!
These Inca's were gorgeous. They get in the water to fish so they're often drying their wings in the sunshine like this.
And of course there were other flying creatures...
Cute bats! Bats don't have eyelids!
There was a theme that Ruth and I noticed during our trip. The theme was babies. Everywhere we looked we seemed to find animals and their offspring. It's like God was trying to tell us something.
Here was a small grebe nest.
This is a three toed sloth with a baby clutching the mothers belly. If the baby accidentally falls to the ground, the mother will not rescue it. She'll simply leave it behind.
And of course, baby caiman's. Look closely, they're in the grass.
There were many other strange and interesting animals, including the 10 second turtle, as our guide referred to it. Because according to him, after you see one, you can count to 10 and...
...it'll be gone.
More caiman's
This is the Jesus Christ lizard.
It was named after our Saviour because of it's seeming ability to walk on water. What it really does is run incredibly fast trapping a pocket of air between its back feet and the water, and spinning the tip of it's tail in the water like a prop. We actually saw one cross a couple of feet of water on it's back feet.
More three toed sloths
And finally...finally...some monkeys.
We were first visited by a troop of white faced monkeys along the river. The alpha male was not happy with us. He was shaking a branch at us in anger. Our tour guide laughed.
And then we caught up to a pack of howler monkeys. They're the worlds second loudest mammal by decibals. The first is the blue whale. These howlers sounded like a group of barking dogs, only a little meaner and louder.
It was an amazing trip.
I'll share a few more photos of La Fortuna later. After La Fortuna we were headed to the cloud forests of Monteverde, high in the mountains of Costa Rica. For now, this was one of the many jungle sunsets we saw.
