Bighorn Sheep or Dodge Rams?

Dri­ving home from the free REI snow­shoe demo day at Rocky Moun­tain National Park, we spot­ted this clan of bighorn sheep run­ning down the road toward us.

Costa Rica — The Real Deal

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11–19 The trip to Costa Rica

After much plan­ning, the day of our first trip and expe­ri­ence out­side the U.S. was finally here. Our amaz­ing friends Jake and Ari­ann watched our lit­tle beast (Lucy ((Loose Goose)) Lenfert). The flight to Costa Rica went very smooth, we were wor­ried about our short 50min lay­over times in Dal­las, but every­thing was fine. In fact on all of our flights there and back, we walked off one plane and right onto another with no delays.

When we got to the San Jose Air­port we were on the look­out for our hotel shut­tle dri­ver who was sup­posed to meet us with a sign (another first for us). Unfor­tu­nately we never saw him and instead got to barter and deal with swarms of dri­vers try­ing to get us into their cars. After a good wait, we finally saw our shut­tle. We were stay­ing close to the air­port and it was about 10pm when we got to our hotel. The ride was very inter­est­ing, it was dark, the roads were very bumpy, the houses all had bars and fences cov­er­ing every inch of them, and we wiz­zed past kids on bikes hold­ing kids on han­dle­bars as well as packs of roam­ing dogs. For­tu­nately our hotel was a lit­tle oasis from what we saw on the way in. Lots of trees, nice facil­i­ties, and friendly staff. Hotel Brilla Sol was the name.

11–20 Wel­come to the Jungle

The next morn­ing we were on our way toward La For­tuna and Vol­cano Are­nal. We decided to go with shut­tle ser­vice for our trans­porta­tion rather than rent­ing a vehi­cle. On our first ride toward Are­nal we knew we made the right choice. The roads were hilly and nar­row, and traf­fic laws seem to be pretty loose.  We saw some inter­est­ing coun­try along the way, and sunny ver­sions of our ride to the air­port the night before. The weather started show­ing it’s whim­si­cal nature being sunny, rainy or cloudy depend­ing on the minute. Along the way we man­aged to see a 3 toed sloth. Very cool. We learned that the leaves of cer­tain trees are like drugs to them and make them drunk, and they climb down every 3 weeks or so to poop.

We made it to La For­tuna and dropped off some of our shut­tle­mates and could see the base of the vol­cano. Our dri­ver informed us that we were stay­ing on the other side of it, and so the drive con­tin­ued. We took a turn onto a dirt road and about 9km or 5ish miles later our shut­tle van climbed up to the Are­nal Obser­va­tory Lodge. The lodge had a really nice setup with bal­conies over­look­ing the Vol­cano (which we sort of saw) and Lake Are­nal. There were also free guided tours around the Lodge grounds and sev­eral trails to roam around on. One of the high­lights, and a place we fre­quented was the restau­rant at the lodge. It had huge win­dows, served good food, drinks, and snacks, and had an amaz­ing (included) break­fast buffet.

Our room was about 1/4 mile down the hill we came up on, which after the 8th time walk­ing it, really seemed like a stretch. We had eaten din­ner, seen some hum­ming birds, went for a brief walk around the grounds, and went to the hot tub , so by the time we got back to our room we were ready to snooze.

11–21 Let the Rains Begin

We woke up hun­gry and had the amaz­ing buf­fet break­fast to look for­ward too. Only 1/4 mile uphill in the pour­ing rain was going to slow us down.  We were plan­ning to do a guided hike at 8:30 in the morn­ing, and after break­fast we had a lit­tle time to kill before the hike started. We went over to La Horminga (the aunt); a trail we decided not to go down yes­ter­day because it was get­ting dark. On the way to the trail­head we saw 2 Tou­cans. Being in the rain­for­est was amaz­ing to us, we’ve never seen so much dense plant life. Cas­san­dra also spot­ted some spi­der mon­keys off the trail and we got a glimpse of them before they took off down into a valley.

On our guided hike we learned all about the first major erup­tion of Are­nal and how it every­thing in the region changed after­ward. Edwardo, our guide also pointed out an eye­lash viper (snake), showed us a cool kind of flower that looks just like a bird’s head, and climbed a tree to pick some man­darins for us to eat. After hik­ing around in the pour­ing rain for hours, Cas­san­dra truly dis­cov­ered the value of a pon­cho (which she hadn’t worn, think­ing her jacket was water­proof). We spent the rest of the day stay­ing dry, eat­ing food, and just relaxing.

11–22 Are­nal Dia Tres — A dif­fer­ent kind of hiking

We started the day with a nice sur­prise. No Rain! We hiked up for break­fast, stuffed our faces, and got ready for our first real hike. Cerro Chato was the trail and we were about to get rocked. It was a 4hr dif­fi­cult hike, pretty much straight up a washed out mud and roots climb. We climbed and climbed through the rain and ended up see­ing some cool bugs, but­ter­flies and a frog. By the time we got to the top it hadn’t cleared off so instead of over­look­ing a lagoon, we saw dense fog. After hur­ry­ing down the trail we got back and dried off. We headed to the restau­rant for nachos and beers and then it was hot tub time. While at the tub we met a cou­ple who live in Boul­der, CO and an unre­lated guy who lives in Gene­see, CO.

11–23 On the Road to Monteverde

Our jour­ney to Mon­teverde was inter­est­ing. Part van, part boat, part van on rough roads. We passed a large char­ter bus on a wind­ing moun­tain dirt road that had bro­ken down. We how­ever didn’t break down and made it to the Mon­teverde Villa Lodge just fine. The own­ers of the hotel were very nice and our room was pretty sweet as well. We went to a but­ter­fly gar­den and a frog pond and saw some pretty awe­some stuff. Later that night we did a night hike (guided of course) and got to see coatis some birds and a big tarantula.

11–24 Mon­teverde Thanksgiving

We went into the national park for our hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions. Unfor­tu­nately it was more rain and not many ani­mals. We ended up pretty tired after more rain hik­ing, so we headed back to hang out in our room for a while. Accord­ing to our travel books one of the best restau­rants in town was Trio. I had an amaz­ing fish taco and we shared a sweet ice cream desert with mango, star fruit, and but­ter rum.

11–25 Manuel Antonio

We woke up to a sight we had for­got­ten all about… The SUN!!  It was how­ever still rain­ing, but hey, we take what we can get. We enjoyed our home cooked break­fast pre­pared by the hotel lodge own­ers. We hopped on our shut­tle and after a few rough patches, we hit the high­way to Manuel Anto­nio. We drove the Que­pos, a town just to the north, and then saw a slew of hotels and restau­rants on the road from Que­pos to Manuel Anto­nio. We stayed at the Hotel Verde Mar which was the clos­est hotel to Manuel Anto­nio with beach access. When we got in, the sun was still out and it had stopped rain­ing. We decided to head straight to the beach. We walked south down the beach toward the national park. The beach was crowded, but got less crowded the fur­ther we walked. Even­tu­ally we got to the end and that’s where we saw our first mon­keys (monos). They were capuchins. We grabbed a lit­tle bite at a touristy restau­rant called it an early night.

11–26 National Parking

The Manuel Anto­nio National Park opens at 7a.m. and that’s when we got there. Before we got into the park we saw a 3 toed sloth up in a tree.  Some tour guides tried to solicit us but we opted to explore the park on our own. The out­come was pretty great. We headed into the park and down the the beach where hun­dreds of crabs scut­tled away or popped into their shells as we passed. We found the first hike that we wanted to try which involved climb­ing up a hill, and wrap­ping around a penin­sula. I don’t know the sci­en­tific names for all the ani­mals we saw but here’s a lit­tle list. 1. Large Rodent 2. Red Headed Wood­pecker 3. Large Grey Bird w/Red Eyes 4. Lizards 5. A Capuchin 6. An Iguana 7. Another 2 Sloths. We con­tin­ued explor­ing the park and had a good time doing it.

We headed into town and bought some food and some beers, and rum & coke in a can and headed back to our hotel to sauce up. After hav­ing our drinks we headed back out the the beach. We decided to rent a cou­ple boo­gie boards and catch some waves. Nei­ther of us are really ocean savvy, but we caught a few good waves and rode them all the way in to the beach.

We wanted to try some of the many rave-reviewed restau­rants on the road to Que­pos. I had specif­i­cally wanted to try a place clev­erly named Ronny’s Place. For $2 we were able to ride the bus to the base of a dirt road that lead to Ronny’s. It was about a 1/4 mile walk up to the restau­rant, and it went pretty quick. The sun had unfor­tu­nately just set when we got there, and that was one of the big ben­e­fits of Ronny’s Place. For­tu­nately another ben­e­fit was that the food was deli­cious. I had a fish kabob that was amaz­ing and Cas­san­dra had a bur­rito that also looked really good. After din­ner came the scary part; walk­ing down the hill in the dark. Thank­fully it was pretty uneventful.

11–27 The Big Breakfast

We woke up with an urge for some cof­fee and some food. We headed into town and found a hos­tel that served up a big break­fast for 1800 colones or $3.60. The meal came on 2 plates and had papaya, pineap­ple, bananas and pan­cakes. And on plate 2, rice and beans, scram­bled eggs and 2 slices of bread. Throw in all the cof­fee you can drink and it was an amaz­ing deal. After break­fast we headed to the beach where we encoun­tered about 4 igua­nas sun­ning them­selves on the rocks and the sand. After spend­ing the day at the beach and hav­ing another go at boo­gie board­ing we decided to give another sun­set din­ner a try.

We headed up to Barba Roja and got some great seats with a great ocean view. It was really a great place. We had a good meal with some good appe­tiz­ers and desert to really drag out the sun­set as much as possible.

11–28 Last Day

We had the big break­fast again and headed to the beach. As we walked north toward the less pop­u­lated areas we saw about 50 capuchin’s swing­ing and jump­ing through­out the trees. It was a pretty great way to end our trip. We caught our shut­tle back to the a restau­rant near the Hotel Brilla Sol as they wouldn’t drop us off directly at our hotel.  This was fine with us because we needed to eat again any­way. We had a pretty great meal but after­ward there was a lit­tle dis­pute on the bill. Our bill showed a 9000.00 charge which is $18, but our credit card receipt showed a 9,000 charge which had us a lit­tle spoofed because of the comma loca­tion. We strug­gled to express our con­cern to the restau­rant owner who had waited on us and spoke very lit­tle eng­lish. So even­tu­ally we fig­ured our bank wouldn’t let us buy an $18,000 meal and it all worked out fine.

We got to our hotel after wait­ing through some crazy traf­fic and called it a night.

11–29 Home­ward Bound

We got up, rode to the air­port, payed our exit taxes to leave the coun­try and were on a plane. From the plane win­dow we could see the land and the ocean and at one point while over Nicaragua we looked out and saw a per­fect cone shaped vol­cano with a lit­tle puff of smoke rolling out of it. On the Dal­las to Den­ver sec­tion we got back around CO Springs and saw the sun set­ting over the moun­tains. It was good to be home.

Costa Rica

Just a tem­po­rary teaser of our Costa Rica trip. Sto­ries and bet­ter pho­tos com­ing soon.

The fol­low­ing pics were from my iPhone

The Awesomeness of Glacier National Park

Mom, Dad, Cas­san­dra and myself headed up to Glac­ier National Park from July 16th to the 20th. I’ll write more and updated this post after we’re done rehash­ing it in our travel jour­nal. But for now, enjoy the pretty pictures.

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It’s Snowing in Breckenridge

Wooo hoooooo

Family Visit and Ski Trip

This spring Mom, Dad, SeeStar (Clara), Nate, Aunt Pat & Uncle Daniel all made the trip out to Fort Collins, CO to see our new digs and do some ski­ing too. We man­aged to com­pile all the pho­tos from the week and after cut­ting out of a few I man­aged to get the gallery below to just under 100 pics. Enjoy! We had a lot of fun tak­ing them. The full size images can be down­loaded here (zip file)

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