Costa Rica

Sitting in our hotel room at the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica.  Rain thundering down on the roof.  We spent the day inside,   Marian reading ….Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and Lindsay working on the blog.  Rain aside the area is beautiful, lush and green.  We seem to have run out of our ‘weather’ luck in Costa Rica. We arrived here yesterday from Samara and saw the Arenal volcano briefly before everything clouded over. The camera battery died so we didn’t get any pictures.  We are hoping that the sky lifts long enough tomorrow so we can get a few photos and enjoy another look.  What we have seen so far has been really beautiful.

But we are a bit ahead of ourselves. After our visit to Granada,  we  travelled to the coastal town of San Juan del Sur.  It is a pretty town with a long compacted sandy beach lined with open air restaurants and cafe’s.  We stayed at the historic Victoriano Hotel with a great outdoor pool sitting area with an ocean view.  The days were spent walking the beach, a little swimming, sunning and enjoying the outdoor restaurants. The town has lots of little shops to browse through and many quaint looking hotels.  It is still the ‘green’ season here, so not too many tourists. It was really nice being on the coast again.

From there we travelled to Penas Blancas and crossed the border into Costa Rica. Coming into Costa Rica was a little different than with previous border crossings.  Basically it was just calmer, and I think we are also getting the hang of choosing someone to assist us with our paperwork to make our transition a little faster, but the bike paperwork always takes a couple of hours, leaving us tired and thirsty.

In Costa Rica we made our way to Samara.  We got wet on this ride as we came through the mountain pass to the coast.  We got into town just as light was fast disappearing, leaving us to look for a place to stay in the dark.  We connected with a young American girl who recommended the Treehouse  which was right on the beach, a collection of six treehouses.  We booked in for a couple of nights looking forward to another couple of hot days on the beach.  It turned out the daytime weather was ok, but not really hot and by six each night the rains set in…..as I mentioned earlier…..it is the green season….think tropical rain on and off all through the night…..us making our way to dinner, puddle jumping under large umbrellas.

We left Samara to travel inland in hopes of finding drier weather and to see the Arenal Volcano. Our ride through the hills and lake country up to Arenal just outside of La Fortuna was very green and lush. The countryside has a very laid back resort feel to it with many beautiful properties and vistas.  The closer we came to the volcano the closer the weather came to us. We did see Arenal, but just for a few moments, and as luck would have it our camera battery was out of power, so no pictures.

We found a nice resort to stay at, The Volcano Lodge and Hotsprings,  we booked in for two nights with the hope that the sky would lift.  No such luck….it was monsoon rains our entire stay here. On the positive side the resort had a gourmet chef so meals were delicious.

The morning of our departure we enjoyed breakfast by the pool protected from the rain, then got dressed in our rain gear, loaded the bike and headed out for the coast once again.  It rained for most of the ride but our gear did the job and kept us dry.

Our destination was Manuel Antonio, which we reached at about 4:00…..the rain had stopped about an hour before.   We drove through the main town out towards the State park and found a great little hotel…..Hotel Manuel Antonio….just across from a beautiful beach.  We have booked for one night at this point as we will decide tomorrow if we want to stay longer….completely weather dependent.

We are still here….the weather has been fabulous, spent the day enjoying the beach, fresh fruit smoothies in the afternoon and dinner out at el Avion restaurant.  The plane is a survivor of the ‘Contra’ affair times. On the way home with the taxi driver we were talking about our plans to go zip lining when he suddenly started laughing, stopped in the middle of the road and backed up about a block, and with great joy pointed to a sloth hanging upside down from a telephone line and said, that will be you tomorrow.  Pretty funny.

Well this morning we did go zip lining with El Antuario Canopy Tours. They boast the longest single zip line in Central America, over 4,300 feet, 14 tree platforms, 3 towers, 6 hanging bridges, 3 nature walks, and 1 double relay rappel.  It was everything they promised and at the end we were treated to a homemade lunch of chicken, rice, salsa, spiced kidney beans and limonada.  Fantastic.

Hope this finds everyone well.  We think of you all often.  xx