Costa Rica 2013: Day 9: Playas del Coco Day 2: When we woke up this morning and their was no coffee, no Andy the clerk, and no WiFi, I went out looking for coffee and found Laura's House B&B, right across the street. When Manoli and I came back to get coffee, we asked about a room. They showed us an available room and told us it was $50/night/room, including WiFi, and they have a cafe that serves coffee and breakfast early in the morning. We quickly decided to move, if Pure Vibes (now Villa Flores) would let us leave and pay for only one night. Well, Andy still wasn't there, but the cleaning lady (his assistant?) said okay. So, paid for the one night, packed up, and moved across the street to Laura's House. The ... read more

Costa Rica 2013: Day 7:Monteverde Day 3: This morning we'd booked the Hanging Bridges tour at Selvatura. The minivan picked us up, and about 12 others. After a rather long ride, mostly due to rough, winding roads, we arrived at Selvatura. This place has the Hanging Bridges tour, at least one canopy tour, canyonerring, a Tarzan swing, and Butterfly, Insect, and Serpent houses. We were really looking forward to seeing some wildlife, so we got our tickets and headed onto the footpaths towards the first of eight bridges. To make a long story short, we saw almost nothing but plants, a couple of birds, and one centipede! Granted, the trek was enjoyable, there were some pretty cool plants, and the hanging bridges were pretty neat, but that doesn't add up to $30 each worth of enjoyment. ... read more

Cosat Rica 2013: Day 5:Tortuguero To Monteverde: We woke up at 4:30am to pack up and get our taxi to the village boat ramp. The lodge made us up two bags of fresh fruit for the trip, and there was fresh coffee too. Unfortunately, they didn't remember the cream/milk, so I only drank a bit of it. We arrived at the village boat ramp before the ticket office opened, so we bought the first two tickets to La Pavona. The trip up the canals wasn't as exciting since we'd seen it all before, but we were entertained by the boat pulling into several private places to pick up stuff to deliver to either La Pavona or Cariari. Probably nothing elicit, but it made me wonder. We also had to wait after the first stop for a ... read more

Cosat Rica 2013: Day 3:Tortuguero Day 2: After our late night of unsuccessfully looking for turtles, we woke up a bit later than usual... at 7:30am. Today is our 39th wedding anniversary, so we plan on doing and eating whatever we want to. We'd already told the lodge staff we wouldn't be eating dinner in the lodge. Around 8:30 or so, one of the lodge staff knocked on our door and asked if we would be eating breakfast today, I assume because it was nearing the end of the breakfast service. We told him thank you, but no, we don't usually eat breakfast. I should mention that the room includes breakfast. Oh well. We had a water taxi pick us up around 9am to go into the village for the day, and evening. Tortuguero village is ... read more

Costa Rica: Day 1: Our 6am flight from Pensacola to Atlanta went fine, other than the fact that it was 6am in the morning! We arrived in Atlanta with over an hour to spare before boaring the flight to San Jose, Costa Rica. After getting the obligatory coffee, from McDonalds, we found out they wouldn't be serving a meal during the flight, so went back to McDonalds for carryout breakfast. It turned out that they did serve a light meal consisting of a small turkey and cheese sandwich, cookies, and drinks. Unfortunately, the in-flight movie was Guilt Trip, which we had just recently rented from Redbox. We arrived in San Jose on time, at about 11:49, their time. They are in the Central timezone like Pensacola, but they don't observe Daylight Savings Time, so the 4-hour ... read more