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Published: December 13th 2008
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La Fortuna Waterfall
This waterfall was crazy powerfull. Hola Everyone!
We headed north to the rain forest area in Costa Rica. Where it is very cold and rainy but beautiful. We stayed four days in La Fortuna. A little town beside the Arenal volcano. It is a neat little town where there are lots of adrenaline activities one can participate in. Our adventures began with a volcano hike, in the pursuit to see lava. We had a bit of walk through the forest to get to the viewpoint on the volcano to see lava. Our guide was awesome and could really spot the wildlife. Our first picture in Costa Rica is of a sloth, very cool! Sloths really are very, very slow. There is no rush to take a picture. They are cool animals though and we got to see both the three toed and a two toed sloth. The two toed had a baby with her too which was cute. We also saw some wild howler monkeys, coatimundi (a large brown animal that belongs to the raccoon family) and many toucans, including the colourful keel-billed toucan. The toucans were so neat! They have amazing color on them and their bills are so neat. Our guide brought a telescope
La Fortuna
A "creek" we biked to. We were told we could swim here but the water was to powerfull. so we could see the animals really close up. We started our walk at 3 so that by the time we got to the volcano it would be dark so we could see lava. However, unfortunately you need to be lucky to see any lava because clouds are normally covering it. We only saw a very small amount, like a small red dot in the sky. But we got to go back the next night for free and the second time we got to see quite a bit. It was neat to see the red lava flowing down the volcano. Unfortunately, we couldn't get to close though because it is dangerous. Not the lava but the really hot gases that still come out. After the hike we went to the hot springs. There are lots of hot springs in the area because the volcano warms up the river. The Baldi hot springs were very cool with 25 different pools. It was really nice and relaxing. The next day we went repelling! This was awesome! Repelling consisted of 8 waterfalls, some we were tied to rope where you repel backyards walking down the fall. Two of them were just pure drops
TREE FROG
This is the coolest frog! The picture does not do it justice. We could only use our flashlights so we were trying hard to get a photo with limited light source. (200 feet) down into the canyon. You hold the rope so you could go as fast as you want down the drop. It was a lot of fun. The repelling was down the "lost canyon" so the whole time you keep walking down the creek and when you get to a big drop you repel down. It was so neat being in the middle of the rain forest. The vegetation was neat and for the most part it was raining/ misting which made it feel like a real rain forest.
On another day we rented a bike and biked up and up and up (it was very tiring) to the La Fortuna waterfall. It was a huge and powerful waterfall. It is incredible how much force water has. Biking down was fun as it was only down hill 😊 More my kind of biking. Costa Rica has so many neat rivers and creeks everywhere. We also biked to a small rapid waterfall area a few kilometers from the waterfall.
Our last day was white water rafting, another very fun activity. We rafted down the Sarapiqui river. The rapids were very fun and Curtis got bucked out of the raft during
Coffee Tour
This is the farmer of the coffee farm we visited. He is showing us how he picks the berries. There is a lot of work that goes in one cup of coffee. Notice the small red berries on the tree. the Superman rapid section (how suiting). I was scared about falling out of the raft so I was holding on for dear life. It was really fun though, after one section of rapids our guide stopped and we could jump of the hill into the last part of the rapid and drift down the river. Surprisingly the current was fast and you really get pushed down the river quickly. At one point we stopped and our guide grabbed a commando frog! These are the poisonous black and green spotted dart frogs. It was soooo cool. Frogs are awesome! Rafting was a very good experience, especially since the scenery was beautiful. I believe most of the river is a natural reserve so it is protected.
The next day we headed to Santa Elena, the town beside the natural reserve of Monteverde. Another rain forest area with neat activities to do. As soon as we got here we went to the Frog Pond. A place where they have 27 species of Costa Rica's frogs. This place was awesome. We saw some great frogs like the tiny blue jean frog, the red-eyed tree frog (the really colorful frog that is in front of
Coffee.....Yummy
Us enjoying one of the many cups of coffee we enjoyed on our tour. most Costa Rica books, it is like their mascot), the glass frog, the hour glass frog, another commando frog, giant toads and the happy frog (this one was cool because it totally looked like it was smiling at you).
The next day we did a coffee tour. As we both really enjoy coffee we really enjoyed the tour. We went to one of the farms and saw many coffee trees/bushes, lemon, grapefruit, hot pepper, orange and avocado trees. I got to pick a grapefruit, which was great as I really enjoy grapefruits and it doesn't get any fresher than that. We also went to the processing plant and saw how they dry the beans and roast them. At the end we got to try the different kinds of coffee they have! The best part of Monteverde was when we went zip lining through the forest. We signed up for an early morning Extremo canopy adventure. This company has 14 zip line cables over the canopy of the cloud forest and over the valley. It was a lot of fun zipping over the top and looking below at the creek, trees and even birds. Some of the lines were really fast
Repelling!
This was so much fun! The rainforest was so lush and misty, it was really cool. and really high. The highest one was 137 meters(450 ft) high and 777 meters (2550 ft) long. The best part though was the Tarzan swing. You sit down in your harness and then get pushed off (well I got pushed off because I couldn't step off) and fall 10 meters until the rope catches you and then you swing out 40 meters high over a hillside. It was definatly a rush.
We have one more day before we head of to the Nicoya Peninsula for Curtis' sister's wedding. Today we are just taking it easy and not doing anything, hence the long blog and we get free internet here. However it is still really slow so, so far we haven't been able to download pictures but we will try again.
Costa Rica is a great place and the people here are very friendly. We went to a salsa club one night with people from the hostel and the locals are great dancers. They were so much fun to watch. Tomorrow we take off on the public bus to the coast and then will spend 5 days at the resort. We are very excited to see family again. It will
Repelling
This was one of the highest waterfalls that we got to drop down from. If you look closely you will see one of us coming down the rope. be great to see Curtis' family and celebrate the wedding with them. Right after we head to Nicaragua where we plan to be for Christmas. We hope everyone is getting into the Christmas spirit at home. Is there snow yet? I was thinking about all the girls at work and wonder how you are all doing? I hope things are settling down as families are getting into Christmas. I hope everyone has some nice plans over the Christmas holidays. Feliz Navidad!
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brenda smith
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Xian and C left this a.m.
Merry Xmas, Monica and Curtis. Claudia and Xian left this morning for Peru! How exciting! Gary, Amber, Vincent and I leave tomorrow morning for Cuba. We are all so looking forward to that adventure. I love reading your blog. Enjoy Xmas. Brenda Smith - Xian's Mom