Birthday Travel

My Costa Rica birthday cake!

Today is my birthday!

This year, I'm a little bummed because it's not in the cards for me to travel on my birthday. Usually, when I'm blowing out the candles on my cake, I'm doing it in a new travel destination. Next year, hopefully the stars will align for me to be traveling again on my big day, but for now, I'll be happy remembering some of my great birthday travels.

My first birthday trip was with my BFF, and not only was it my first birthday trip, it was my first trip to Vegas! (One of my mostest favoritist cities in the US.) It was supposed to be a trip with about 5 feisty women painting the town red, but all but one canceled. That's okay, it showed me who my true friends were, and the BFF and I had a complete blast! We played the slots. We ate the food. We lounged in the spa. We rode up the "inclinator" at the Luxor while tipsy (not recommended) and just generally had a blast. Thank you, BFF, for that awesome birthday!

I also remember spending a birthday atop the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Okay, it wasn't my actual birthday, it was a week prior. However, our guide as we climbed the bridge asked if anyone had a birthday soon. I was the only one who raised my hand, and all 20 people on our excursion sang to me atop the bridge, with the most beautiful backdrop below. It might not have been the actual birthday, but it was amazing none-the-less.

Another birthday I remember fondly was with my now-husband. We thought it would be nice to spend my birthday in Costa Rica - and it was REALLY nice. On my actual birthday, we were in Arenal, and woke up with a beautiful view of the volcano. We were surrounded by tropical paridise, and staying in something of a tropical log cabin. I woke up, he kissed my forehead and wished me a happy birthday before I even realized where I was. He gave me a birthday card that he'd brought with him from the States, and then we enjoyed a relaxing breakfast. At dinner that evening, he arranged for the staff to bring me a cake with "happy birthday" written on it. He got even more points because he didn't speak Spanish, and the staff didn't speak much English. Do you see why he's my NOW-husband?

I sure am blessed to have had some great travel birthdays!

Playa Flamingo, Costa Rica: Trip Report

After our short, one-day stay in Monteverde, we grabbed a transport van to head to the Western. Pacific side of Costa Rica, to Playa Flamingo. The bad news is that it was nearly a 4-hour drive, the good news is that only about an hour of it was on the awful, bumpy roads.

We stayed at the Playa Flamingo Hotel (be careful, because there's another Flamingo hotel on the Bay side) with an all-inclusive package. The hotel was nice, the rooms were large, the pool area was awesome, and it was just steps to the beach. The beach itself had soft sand and BIG waves. I wouldn't say it was a good swimming beach, but it was a good beach for walking and sitting and people watching. The food was okay - the menu never changes, so if you stayed here a long time, you'd probably want to walk to one of the other restaurants (maybe three others in the small resort area?) During our breakfasts, we were usually greeted by these large, blue birds who wanted our bread! They were very brave to get so close.

There is a gift shop in the hotel, but we took a cab down the road to another beach area to visit another shop.

We stayed here for three days. Three wonderful, relaxing, beach-filled days. The sun shone down on us (this is the dry side of the country), and we just enjoyed the warm temperatures and relaxed beach atmosphere. We took walks along the beach. We walked to the Bay side to just see what was there (in season, the bay side features turtle nests.) The bay water was kind of dirty, so I don't think I'd recommend swimming here. What we enjoyed at the bay was watching the hundreds of crabs that were living, mating and fighting for territory on the beach. It was like wild crab kingdom! I also enjoyed collecting shells here.

The sunsets here were beautiful, as they would be at any Pacific beach.

Enjoy your weekend, and also the pictures below.

Monteverde, Costa Rica: Trip Report

After our stay in Arenal (see post below) we were picked up by a shuttle and driven a half hour away to Lake Arenal to cross it by boat. (Taking a boat over the lake saves about 2 hours of driving time to Monteverde.) After a calming, beautiful lake passing with great views of the volcano, we docked and carried our bags up a steep hill to load them in the vans that would take us the rest of the way to Monteverde.

While we saw some of the most beautiful countryside, we also bounced on the worst roads ever. Costa Rican officials like to say that they keep the roads that way to keep too many tourists from trampling all over the preserves in Monteverde. I call BS. Everything about Costa Rica is about tourism. They just don't want to pay for it. At one point, our driver asked for volunteers to get out and walk up a hill because the van couldn't make it. I was not one of them.

When we got to Monteverde, we checked into the Fonda Vela hotel - a very eco-friendly hotel situated just outside the cloud forest. It's a family-run hotel, and the rooms blended in with the environment, and they were HUGE. We enjoyed our one-day stay at this hotel very much.

Our one activity in Monteverde was to visit the cloud forest preserve and take a guided tour on the hanging bridges. These bridges are built across the top of the forest, so it gives you a bird's eye view of the forest. It's not for the height-impared. :) The guided tour, which included pick up from our hotel, was $35 each. We booked through the hotel, instead of booking through one of the most popular companies, SkyTrek, which also combines the hanging bridges with a zip line tour. We really debated doing a zip line, because the BF doesn't like heights, and you fly past everything so fast, would we really SEE anything. So we decided to forgo that adrenaline rush. However, booking with a less popular company gave us less crowds and more personal attention. There were only 4 of us on our tour.

The guide first took us to a hummingbird garden, where the little critters zoom by your head with a buzz and hover over all the feeders.

Then, we started our walk. It was sunny when we started, and as we ascended, it got cloudy. (Thus, the cloud forest.) We didn't see a whole lot of wildlife, which was disappointing after all the luck we'd had previously on the trip, but our guide was clearly excited about his job (at one point even stopping to test bird droppings to see how recent they were. I don't want to see a bird that bad.) He told us about all the plants, used his telescope to show us orchids growing in the trees, and risked limbs to climb into the canopy to find a limocella (sp?) berry, which smells like lemon and naturally keeps the mosquitos out of the forest.

The bridges took some getting used to. There were 8 of them on this tour, and got increasingly longer and higher. They also swayed under you as you walked, kinda weird.

I've got to admit that we only stayed in Monteverde because of the way the trip was structured, and we chose only one day and night here because we wanted to get to the beach, which is tomorrow's entry. I think we made a smart choice, as we would've been bored the next day unless we did the zipline.

And for those of you who have asked, the BF is featured in one of the photos below. Finally! :)

Cano Negro, Costa Rica: Trip Report

Yesterday, I talked about our stay in the Arenal region of Costa Rica.

While we were in Arenal, the BF and I took a day trip with Sunset Tours to the Cano Negro Wildlife Reserve on the Rio Frio river. It took about 2 hours (the last half hour was on a horrible bumpy road), and once we arrived, we had the BEST food we had in Costa Rica. I highly recommend Casada Con Pollo - which was chicken, rice, black beans and tortilla strips.

After we ate, we hopped on a flat-bottomed boat to begin our wildlife spotting journey. And boy, did we spot some wildlife. (The water on the river was calm, so there was no getting sick while we were looking.)

Before we even got on the boat, we saw a white caiman (same family as a gator.) Two minutes into the trip, we saw a sloth in the trees - one that was actually moving, which is rare - because they don't do a lot of moving. (Thus, it's a SLOTH.)

There are three types of monkeys we could've seen here, and we saw ALL THREE! The howler monkeys, the squirrel monkeys, and some white-faced monkeys that we watched play and romp through the bushes. The BF thinks monkeys are cool, so he was very happy to see the monkeys. Though they were the hardest to get a picture of.

We saw some more caimans - and one of the boat drivers reached in and pulled a baby one out! It made some little chirpy noises while we all snapped photos and were amazed that he pulled one of these things out of the water.

We saw more birds than you could shake a stick at. Blue herons, snake birds, and so many other birds that I can't remember all their names. We refer to them in pictures as "yellow bird," "blue bird," etc.

I couldn't get over the crew of Sunset Tours. They could spot these animals a mile away. We even stopped to get a photo of some small bats lined up on a tree. (They did this to look like a vine while they slept.) How did they see these camoflauged things?!

Our guide said we were super lucky - we had great weather (though we did have a rain shower at the very end of the trip) and we saw pretty much everything we could see. Except a toucan. I really wanted to see a toucan. The guide stopped on the road on the way out to point out a flock of toucans, but it was dark, and all I could see was the outline of its beak in the dusk. :(

If you have the opportunity to visit Cano Negro, it was one of the highlights of our trip.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about Monteverde and the Cloud Forest.

Now, for photos of the wildlife we saw.

Arenal, Costa Rica Trip Report

On our first full day in Costa Rica, the BF and I boarded a shuttle bus and started our 3.5-hour commute on some super, nausea-inducing curvy roads to the Arenal region of Costa Rica (San Jose is in the south, west part of the country, Arenal is sort of in the north, central part.)

The Arenal volcano is the main attraction here. It's a relatively new volcano, having been created in the 1960s (and taking out a nearby town when the mountain blew its top.) It's an active volcano, almost always erupting - but often covered in clouds. So it's really a crap shoot for how much of the volcano you'll be able to see.

The closest town to the volcano is La Fortuna - renamed because the town was "fortunate" to survive the first eruption. It's about 2 blocks big, and mostly houses a few restaurants and gift shops for the tourists. Although there's a really pretty church with a view of the volcano, and a pretty park in front of it.

Our hotel, the Arenal Paraisso (Par-ay-ee-so), was about five minutes outside of La Fortuna, on the way to the volcano. Every room has a volcano view, and our bungalow was our own little house, complete with a resident hummingbird in the bush out front. It had a porch, it was made entirely of wood, and it was quiet at night except for the night animals and the monkeys. This area is chock-full of wildlife. This particular hotel had its own hot springs (which were actually not hot, because they cheated and funneled them from the REAL hot springs) and its own zip line. (Zip line tours are HUGE in Costa Rica. Word of advice if you do this, only about 10 percent of the zip line operators are actually licensed. Check before you jump off of a 500-foot high cable line.) We enjoyed the hotel, but it was a bit rustic, there were bugs (you're in a freakin rain forest, what do you expect) and there was a bit of a musty smell. However, I don't think you'd find any different in any other hotels.

We purchased a volcano hike tour from Sunset Tours (can't say enough good things about Sunset Tours.) We got on a van and took a very bumpy ride to the base of the volcano (the side that wasn't erupting) and took an hour-long hike through the primary forest surrounding the volcano. On the way, we stopped to be overrun by some Quintis, which look like raccoons with longer snouts. They were not shy (the photos below show the BF being surrounded. Yes! A photo of the BF. Another to follow on Thurs of the two of us, up close.) Once on the hike, we saw howler monkeys, which made the BF super happy, and lots of birds. The guide was great - he knew everything about the forest, and did one heck of a howler monkey call.

After the hike, we got back on the bumpy road to the active side of the volcano (along with every other tourist in Arenal) to see the volcano erupt. There was a fair amount of cloud cover, but after about 10 minutes of watching, we saw the volcano spit out some firey rocks and ash. (I was expecting a lava flow, but according to the guide, that kind of eruption is rare to see. It's more rocks being blown out of the top.)

Our second day in Arenal, we took a side trip to the Cano Negro Wildlife Reserve, also with Sunset Tours, on the Rio Frio river to go wildlife spotting. That'll be tomorrow's entry.

And now, for some Arenal photos. (Roll over the image for the caption.)

La Pura Vida in Costa Rica

While I was on my blogging hiatus, I celebrated my birthday, with the BF, in Costa Rica.

January-April is a good time to visit Costa Rica, because their rainy season ends around November. Naturally, that means the prices to the small Central American country are more during that time, but compared to what it'll cost you to go to Europe right now, it's still a deal.

We made it a cross-country trip. We flew into the capital of San Jose to spend one night (which was enough. more on that later). Then, we took a shuttle to Arenal - nearly 4 hours away on very curvy roads. We stayed in Arenal for 3 days and 2 nights, and then took a combo of a boat/shuttle to Monteverde (on the worst unpaved roads ever, for 2 hours, but some of the most beautiful countryside.) We stayed there for one night, and then took a shuttle for 3 1/2 hours to Playa Flamingo, and stayed there for three days. (Our deal included transportation to each city)

Often, people choose one "base" location, like the Western beaches, and then "day trip" to all the key locales on the island. It's an option, but your days are going to be long (you can see the one-way drive times) and your butt will be sore.

I do, however, think it's important to see the different locations within Costa Rica. Each one has it's own ecosystem, its own weather, etc. Arenal has the (live) volcano, Monteverde has the Cloud Forest, and the Western part has the beaches.

This week, I'll break down the trip report for you.

First, I'll start with San Jose. You know it's bad when, on the plane, the native Costa Rican sitting in our aisle suggested that we get out of San Jose as soon as possible. There's not really a lot to see/do in San Jose. The hotel (Hotel Britannia)as okay, but smack in the downtown area, which, to me, was a little scary and run down. It was 6 blocks from the main central square in downtown, which was the hub for the city's life. It was hard to believe that there were higher-end American stores in an area that seemed so poor, but the tourists are more important, I guess. We walked the square, saw the public buildings, took some photos, ate a mediocre dinner, and then went back to our hotel. We were thre for a total of about 5 awake hours, and that was plenty.

So fly into San Jose if you want, stay a night if you'd like to rest before you drive several hours, but I wouldn't make it a 3-day event.

Tomorrow: Arenal

Now, for some San Jose pictures.