Goodbye to Quepos.....again Central America Caribbean » Costa Rica » Quepos By Chris y Nikki April 6th 2007 Chris and NikkiOur last weekend in Quepos (before heading to Panama) the family took everyone up to a waterfall for lunch. It was a bumpy drive to get there, but very fun. Climbing around rivers, jumping off rocks into waterfalls...Nikki even ate tuna! For Easter we bought some markers and paint to make Easter eggs with the family, and that night we (and Jamie) took the whole family out to say thank you for their hospitality. Here are a couple pics from the weekend. [View Full Entry]

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During our many hours of relaxation at Punta Mala we read through a local advertisment magazine and found a hotel that caught our eye. Timarai Bamboo Resort The ad had pictures of surfing, kiteboarding, paramotoring, wakeboarding, etc. Slightly more entertaining than raking, so we went to check it out on our "free day". There we met Kent and Pablo, who had just recently been hired to run the resort's activities. Kent is a pro kiteboarder, originally from Indiana. Pablo's expertise was paramotoring, and he came from Argentina. Side story: We were talking to Kent and Pablo in the office about [View Full Entry]

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Monday the 19th we had Juan drive us up to Punta Mala to begin our volunteer work. Punta Mala is about 5 km north of a small town called Estarillos, and a little bit further south than that from Playa Hermosa. Almost that whole stretch from Estarillos to Playa Hermosa is protected beach for turtles and other marine life. Punta Mala means "Bad Point" and you can probably see from a picture or two that there are huge rock formations that jut out into the ocean a couple hundred yards. They were fun to climb around on during low tide, [View Full Entry]

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Waterslide Picnic Central America Caribbean » Costa Rica » Quepos By Chris y Nikki March 18th 2007 Chris and Nikki Before we left for Playa Hermosa / Punta Mala, our Tico family decided to take everyone to another ranchero for the day. We spent the day playing washers, soccer, eating and of course sliding down the waterslide (tobogán en español). The highlight of the day was Jamie's head injury when he tried to do a front sommersault (sp?) off the slide. He put his head down at the last second and his forhead knicked a little bump on the slide and split open. Lots [View Full Entry]

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Last Week In Manuel Antonio Central America Caribbean » Costa Rica » Manuel Antonio By Chris y Nikki March 11th 2007 Chris and NikkiOur last week in Manuel Antonio was pretty low stress. No major events or trips, just some beach time and some bar time. Although we did manage to study Spanish and do all our homework up to the last day. Friday, however, I (Chris) couldn't bring myself to write any more sentences in the "pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo" verb tense. Call me lazy. Now we're in Jaco at an internet cafe, which is the first chance we've had to get on the [View Full Entry]

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We decided it was finally time to see the park. We hired a guide so we'd actually have a chance to see some animals. Our guides name was Mauricio, and he knew his stuff. He also had a really nice telescope that gave us great views of the animals and some good pics too. That said, it was pretty freakin expensive for a 3 hr tour. Here are some photos from the walk. Hasta luego... [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday morning I went diving with Jaime. He is getting his DiveMaster certification as well as taking Spanish classes. It had been almost 4 years since my last dive so I took a refresher course that reviewed some theory and had a practical in a hotel pool. That was actually Wed and Thurs the previous week, but the dive wasn't till Tuesday. Not a whole lot to say about the dive. It was fun to be underwater again. Visibility was okay, and the swell wasn't too bad. We did two dives, about 45 minutes each, with 45 of surface time between. [View Full Entry]

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Last Saturday we went on a canopy tour near Quepos with three other students from the school. You wear a harness similar to rock wall climbing and they hook you onto a wire cable that spans from one platform to another, anywhere from 50 meters to 400 meters. The longest on our tour was just over 400. If you can zoom in on one of the photos I think it says the length. So they hook you on to the line, you sit down, put one hand on the rope and one hand on the cable to slow down and keep [View Full Entry]

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Hello All - we've fallen behind in blog entries again. We currently have 4 to upload so we're not going to do anything interesting for the next few days. Here are some miscellaneous photos we took that range from Feb 22 - Mar 3. Pretty much all from school or a hotel we crashed for lunch. Hasta luego! [View Full Entry]

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We're playing catchup with photos here. We got back from the Arenal trip around 4 and shortly after our Tico family invited us out the Quepos Festival. There was some live music, rides (bumper cars was the best) junk food, and bull riding. I'll let the captions and the pictures tell most of the story. The next day we had a 3 hour surf lesson and local surf spot that took us through some pretty interesting neighborhoods to get too. The waves were bigger than in Manuel Antonio beach and there was no one else but Nikki, me and the three [View Full Entry]

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