Bean Family Blog: Costa Rica

This year for our family trip, we decided to travel to Costa Rica. We spent 11 days away in a few different parts of the country. FYI, this post is really long!

In short, we nearly ran out of sunscreen while the bug spray and rain coats were unused. Altogether a successful trip!

Day 1: We were all up before 4:00. Here is a picture of us at the Boise airport waiting to depart.

We bought a new camera for this trip. It's compact, waterproof, and is bluetooth capable. This feature, combined with a small tripod were very handy for taking family photos like the one above. The camera itself is ok, not awesome. It was very portable, fitting in my pocket and I wasn't worried about it getting stolen as it was around $200.

We spent most of our first day traveling to San Jose. We had a nice typical dinner that night: rice, beans, and chicken. Also a popular local bear, Imperial. The traditional food is pretty good. They don't use much in terms of hot spices. It's pretty salty and vegetables are hard to find.

During our first full day, we picked up the rental car and drove to Arenal, about 2 hours from San Jose. Driving in Costa Rica is interesting. There are very few rules. It's all about common sense, paying attention, and courtesy. Traffic is more diverse there with even ratios of trucks, cars, motorcycles, cyclists and pedestrians on the road. There are no shoulders on the roads, so everyone stays on the road, including pedestrians and parked cars. I actually grew to like it after a few days. Speed limits are just suggestions, and you're almost expected to drive almost double the posted limit. While people haul ass most of the time, they are also very patient when someone is stopped and holding up traffic.

On our way to Arenal, we visited a small butterfly sanctuary. It was a decent place to visit for a quick stop. It's for sale and Elena is soliciting donations to purchase the property. It's one of may properties she wants to buy in Costa Rica.

Once we arrived at La Fortuna, we planned to hike the 1968 trail, but ended up on a sloth tour instead. This tour near town was much better than expected. Our guide was excellent and did a good job of explaining the biology behind everything on the tour. We ended up seeing about a dozen 3-toed sloths among other animals.

Here is photo of a sloth in motion. This was a real treat since they are only active for like 2 hours/day.

Here is our guide talking about termites. One of the popular guide activities is to have the kids make a hole in the termite nest at the beginning of the trip. At the end of the trip they revisit the nest to show how the termites have repaired the hole in the interim.

This is a leaf cutter and trail. It is impressive to see how efficient they are.

When the topography gets rough, they simply tunnel through the area for their highway and keep on going on the other side. If you haven't read up on leafcutter ant biology, I recommend doing so. It's pretty interesting.

We spent the evening with the Miller family at their place. It has a great pool and hot springs area with a view of the Arenal Volcano. It was really nice to catch up with them.

We also met the Millers for a dinner in La Fortuna.

On the third day we hiked around the volcano on the 1968 trail. Of course this was the only day the volcano was covered with clouds.

This is a branch from a trumpet tree. Sloths feed almost exclusively on trumpet trees.

This is Lake Arenal. The volcanic explosion in 1968 and resulting gas killed everyone in a village below the volcano. The village is now covered by the lake, which provides hydropower to local villages.

The La Fortuna Waterfall is not far from the 1968 trail, so we visited it next. It's a short hike, mostly on stairs going down and back up.

The waterfall is about 70 meters tall, or about 210 ft.

We played in the river below the falls. By we, I mean Marcus.

Here is a small sample of what the stairs looked like.

On our last day in Arenal we did a "Safari Float". This was one of my favorite activities. We rafted on a gentle river near town. We saw tons of wildlife on this trip. Our guide was awesome. He was so knowledgeable and also a great photographer. He took photos along the way and sent us a link to download copies free of charge. Here are some of the photos he took on our trip:

Howler Monkey

3-toed sloth

Iguana

Oriole snake

Crocodile

Baby howler

Bats

This is what the river typically looked like along the float.

Our happy family...

Africanized honey bees have shown up in Costa Rica. Here is one of several hives we saw.

Our guide found a group of howler monkeys that were really close to the river. He made some calls and they came right down next to our raft. Here are a few shots of some monkeys jumping from one tree to another above our raft.

Most of the tours end with some kind of local snack. It's usually really delicious local fruit. This one had a dish with tortillas, cheese, and friend plantains. They also had coffee, 'sweet, hot water,' and hot cocoa. The hot cocoa was made with raw cocoa, and they showed how it was processed.

Here is Steven's info in case anyone is interested:

That afternoon we visited the Bogarin Trail. It's a fairly short trail near the town of La Fortuna. They have a great reception area with bird feeders and a nice viewing area.

The trail is near the base of the Arenal Volcano. Our guide, William, and most of his family were living in the area during the 1968 explosion. He lost several friends in that and subsequent volcanic activity. We sat down at a bench with this view while he described all of the volcanic activity and show pictures he and his family had taken to document the process.

Just to the north of the Arenal Volcano is the 'Sleeping Man' mountain.

William has only a 3rd grade education, but he had extensive local knowledge. He showed us several interesting plants, including rubber trees, Mimosa, native pink bananas, and the tree used for Bengay. He also knew the local bird calls and was able to point out all kinds of interesting birds. His family has restored a swampy area near town that was not usable for a nearby landowner. After 20 years it has responded very well.

Caimen

Hummingbird nest

William promised to show us a poison dart frog, and he delivered.

This is a view of our backyard space at the Airbnb. Karen already has plans to make our backyard look more like this..

Short Guy, Tall Urinals

I caught on to this trend later in the trip, but there doesn't seem to be any standard urinal height in Costa Rica. It's really tough when you're a little guy who needs to go. Here are some examples:

Regarding plumbing, this is how most hot showers in Costa Rica look. No ground, no GFI breaker..

Following our stay in La Fortuna, we headed towards the highland cloud forest in Monteverde. We decided to visit the Rio Celeste, the "Turquoise River," along our way.

One of our guides told us about a stop along the way where we could see the biggest tree in Costa Rica. He said it the trunk was large enough it would take 30 people holding hands to encircle the trunk. It's certainly a big tree!

Rio Celeste did not disappoint. The trail followed the river upstream from a beautiful waterfall to the source of the turquoise water.

Here you can see where the minerals flow out and create the turquoise color.

After our visit to Rio Celeste, we continued on to Monteverde and the cloud forest. The road to Monteverde was one of the worst I've ever been on, and I've seen some a lot of Idaho backroads. I encouraged Karen to take some photos along the way, but she was too busy fearing for her life. We did a night tour on our first evening in the cloud forest. It was a bit disappointing honestly. There were tons of people in a relatively small area. It was fairly noisy and I think most of the animals were hiding. We did see three snakes, which Marcus enjoyed. Here is a orange-kneed tarantula we saw on the night walk.

The next day we visited the Children's Eternal Rainforest. It's a pretty neat story. The land was purchased by a nonprofit organization to preserve the rainforest and it is now the largest private reserve in Costa Rica. They raised funds by having children sell cookies.

We discovered the best way to keep the kids entertained on a hike was to give them a map and let them do the navigating.

We didn't see much wildlife on this hike, but it is a beautiful area.

On our way back to the house we stopped in for come coffee tasting at a local shop.

After that, we went to a small family-run coffee plantation. Chris is serious about his coffee. He weighs the grounds, measures the water, and pours the water over the filter in a specific pattern.

The following day, Karen, Elena and I were all sick. We are guessing it was some type of food poisoning. Karen caught up on work and I spent most of the day lying in a hammock, finishing my book.

On our last day in Monteverde we visited some hanging bridges. They were pretty cool, but we decided they weren't worth the entry fee.

We then visited the Santa Elena cloud forest reserve long enough to get a photo of Elena in front of the sign.

We also mad a quick ice cream stop. This stop was notable because the furniture was made out of old tires. Also, Karen dropped her entire ice cream cone on the ground before she even got a chance to taste it.

We spent the last couple of days in the beach town of Playa Hermosa. The ocean was warm and very welcoming.

We had lunch on the beach on our first day there.

After playing at the beach, we stopped by a grocery store to get some essentials. While we were there, Marcus shook his shorts and about a cup of sand fell out. It was reminiscent of the scene in Shawshank Redemption when Andy was scattering pieces of the wall out in the yard.

The next day we headed south along the coast to Playa Flamingo and Playa Conchal. The road was pretty interesting. We happened upon this burnt-out vehicle and a group of monkeys along the way.

Playa Conchal was a really nice beach. It has white sand due to the types of shells that was up there.

We spent our last full day in Costa Rica on a boat beach hopping. Karen and I both snorkeled. We also played on several beaches, did some paddle boarding, and explored a cave. We saw quite a few animals on the water, including dolphins, flying fish and devil rays jumping out of the water.