Archive for March, 2008
March 3, 2008 – Back to Reality!
It’s time to pay penance for the tropical respite!
The road has been a single lane for a few weeks now. Ever since they stopped running school buses on gravel roads, it seems like the county has given up. In this photo you can see the original snowbank peak to the left, and the new peak inside it.
In this photo you can see that most of the road is covered – you can see by the location of the stop sign and the road in the distance. For some reason, our stretch of road seems prone to drifting.
March 2, 2008 – Final Thoughts on Costa Rica
All told, we were 10 days in Costa Rica. We stayed in San Jose for six nights, Liberia for two nights, and Punta Leona for a night.
These are our digs in San Jose. It is tucked in a corner of the University of Costa Rica and had a nice grounds and exterior and functional rooms. Most of the time we had hot water! The place also had nice gathering spaces where many people could sit and chat if they didn’t want to be in their room.
I wouldn’t mark down San Jose as a “can’t miss” tourist attraction. It’s a city of one million plus with european size street and american style traffic. Most of the homes were gated and even had razor wire on top of the gates. I would not consider driving a car there. Most of the streets are unmarked/unnamed and driving takes different skills than U.S. drivers possess.
Here is Javier, the “most valuable” player of the trip, our bus driver. He negotiated both city driving and country driving with reliability. Out in the country, the roads seemed to be about as wide as a driveway, with no line markings, and equal numbers of buses, cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians and no shoulders. Up in the mountains we saw semi-tractors backing down the road because they couldn’t make it up the steep road. We had one particularly harrowing night in the fog on a winding road up a mountain when numerous semi trailers were dead on the road without lights or caution markers, often times right after a sharp curve. Through it all, we felt safe with Javier at the helm!
I’ll leave you not with urban sprawl and bad roads, but a bird of paradise flower which are common throughout the country. Shortly after I got home, I realized that if I wanted to, I could probably retire tomorrow and move to Costa Rica and live the rest of my life without having to add any more to the retirement account! One of the days we were walking out in a rural area, I think either after the visit to Alvero’s farm or the strawberry farm and commented how there are many worse lives than spending your time tending crops and animals with your family, without all the conveniences of modern life (dishwashers that don’t drain, for the most recent example from our home!).
So, that’s all from Costa Rica for now. We look forward to the Ticos who will come visit Iowa this coming July from Costa Rica!
one year ago…”Storm Day 2 or Day 7?”
March 1, 2008 – Costa Rican Beaches/Pacific Forests
At the end of the trip, we had about 20 hours at a place on the beach (Pacific side).
This woman’s Midwestern modesty cannot coax her out from behind the palm tree!
Later in the day, some folks tried their hand at fishing and were not successful.
There were some rocky stretches as well where we could explore the tidal zones and all the fun creatures living there.
Here’s our lodging. Say, don’t those plants in the foreground look like the houseplants that never look quite right?
Behind the pool and nestled in the trees is one of the restaurants at the resort. The literature claims no trees were felled to construct the buildings – many had trees growing through them. Most of the restaurants where we dined were open air and bugs/flies were surprisingly never a problem.
Here’s Costa Rica’s version of the raccoon. This one was searching the restaurant (one of the hazards of open air!)
The resort had a number of trails through a forest. Here is the base of a giant tree. This one had a zip line way up that you could speed above the rain forest canopy.
Martin, our resident rain forest expert said this picture had too much light to be a rain forest because rain forests only get 2% of the light down to the ground and this photo was more than 2%.
One of the most fascinating parts of the hike was coming across colonies of leaf-cutting ants. This particular group was disassembling a fallen flower. It was a treat to see a long line of ants, each carrying a piece of this flower back to the nest.
These ants were carrying bits of leaves. Unfortunately, the dark conditions and difficulty of close-up focus without a macro lens made photos problematic. I could say the ants were moving so fast, they were a blur, but that wasn’t the case.
Here’s a “Where’s Waldo” challenge for you.
