Costa Rica, Waterfall Gardens

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We arrived in Costa Rica early in the morning and had arranged with our driver to stop at the Plaza de la Cultura in San Jose before transfering to our hotel. We were disspaointed to find the National Theatre closed on Mondays but we were able to visit the Pre Columbian Gold Museum. The museum has thousands of different examples of Pre-Colombian gold artifacts. The pieces in the collection date from 500 BE to 1600 AD, when the new world was discovered by Christopher Columbus and the artifacts range from simple round earrings to intricately worked representations of local animals. We both agreed the museum was well worth visiting with many amazing artifacts.

Before heading off to our hotel in the rainforest we had lunch at the Gran Hotel Costa Rica where we were interested to learn of the history of this lovely old hotel. In 1928 in the absence of a major first class hotel in the country, the congress enacted a law between the first owner and the President of the republic. It granted a series of benefits to the contractor in exchange for the construction of the hotel. There was a provision to which the Govt was granted for twenty years the right to have at their disposal two apartments at the hotel for lodging foreign diplomats. The contract further agreed to always serve top qualtiy Costa Rican coffee at the hotel, we can verify that it is still top quality. We enjoyed sitting on the verandah eating our lunch and listening to the piano player, it felt like we had been transported back to the 1930s.

It only took an hour drive to our hotel the Peace Lodge in the Rainforest. We were amazed at the range of birds at the resort and we were able to feed toucans and hummingbirds by hand. The resort in located within the private wildlife refuge of La Paz Waterfall Gardens Nature Park as a guest of the resort we were able to enter the Waterfall Gardens Nature Park before the park opens and after it closes. The park includes three kilometers of paved Trails with Five Waterfalls, an Aviary, a Butterfly Observatory, Sloths, Monkeys, Hummingbird Garden, Serpentarium, Jungle Cat exhibit with five species of felines, Frog Habitat, Trout Lake, Insect exhibit and Orchid Exhibit. Our room at the resort was beautiful and very unusual with a large bathroom with its own waterfall and plants. We spent many a relaxing hour either on our balcony or in front of our open fire while the misty rain fell in the rainforest around us. After a restful two night we are off to Arenal to stay near the volcano.

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