Blogs from Osa Peninsula, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 3

These are mainly Alice's photos Lots of jungle love Yaz and Jack... read more

This summer I was lucky enough to visit Costa Rica on an entomology field techniques class offered at my university. We were in the Osa Peninsula which boasts some of the highest animal (insect - in particular) biodiversity in all of Costa Rica. We flew in to the capital city of San Jose and immediately departed on our long drive to the west coast of the country. The drive was insanely beautiful, tons of hills beautifully decorated with the rich flora of the tropics. Driving was quite intimidating though, as the roads through the large hills were very narrow and littered with speeding semi-trucks all seemingly carrying over-sized loads of lumber. Our place of residence was Casa dos Rios, an amazing and enchanting 2-story house that comfortable accomodated the 8 of us. Sitting literally feet away ... read more

Our final Costa Rica stop is the OSA Peninsula where we spent a week at the Iguana Lodge on the Golfo Dolce, a tropical fiord. Who knew there were tropical fiords. We always thought they were only in Scandinavian countries. I am sure a fiord, by any other name, does not have accommodations like Iguana Lodge. Lauren and Toby, owners of Iguana, were great hosts and have created a new high water mark for the hospitality industry. They were friendly and professional and complimented by the wonderful staff they employed: Giovanni, Vladimir, Sydner, Maxine, Andre, Marti an a few others. We stayed in one of their casitas, a screened tree house 12 feet off the ground surrounded by the tropical foliage of the Osa. Waking up to the screeching Macaw and howler monkeys with the pounding ... read more

By this time I was feeling dirty and in need of a splurge so we rented a nice (5star standard to us) little room which was CLEAN (thank the heavens), and had a porch steps away from the sea. We watched the sunset over wine and guitar. The second day Dana went surfing and I had the day to myself to work on my residency applications, swim in the pool and go for a 2 hour kayak through the mangroves. A man was cutting down coconuts and with them down came a fer-de-lance, a deadly snake. No one was harmed but I did get a cool photo! ... read more

My scariest flight ever We made it to the small airport on time for check-in and managed to find ourselves seats in the 2nd row of the small twin engine plane that was to fly us to Puerto Jimenez. Luckily the plane was not full, as the dress took up 2 seats in the first row directly in front of us. It is the smallest plane that I have ever been on and Dan hadn't help calm my nerves by stating that it is best that we die if the plane crashes, as we wouldn't want to survive a crash all mangled! The take-off was fine, but upon our ascent every bump or slight drop had me cursing and grabbing onto Dan's arm for dear life. Fortunately, the noise of the engines was loud enough for ... read more