Sanders has been having a blast lately with his travels...as have we! He got to spend a week at Gma and Gpa Thackery's while we went and toured Costa Rica. We have become the spokespeople for the Costa Rica Division of Tourism. Check out our fun filled 9 days in a few pictures below!
Day 1 - Rafting the Picuare River. They filmed some of Jurassic Park on this beautiful River. We saw a toucan here-but couldn't get a picture because of the wet conditions!
We are in the front row of the pictures above!
Day 2-Arenal Volcano, Cano Negro Wildlife Reserve and Thermal Hot Springs
I guess we were one of the lucky few who actually got to see the entire Arenal Volcano. When we came in the night before, it was completely cloudy and the day we left it was also cloudy so we couldn't see the top!! The area is often under cloud cover or raining....so seeing the smoke coming off the top of the volcano is a rare sighting. This is the view from our porch when we got out of bed in the morning!
We then took an 1.5 hour drive to the Cano Negro Wildlife Reserve. We stopped at a restaurant that had Iguanas hanging out in the trees behind it.....pretty cool. Check out this guy who was looking at me.
We also stopped at a Pineapple Plantation for Dole and took some pictures of the pineapples growing.
When we got to Cano Negro, we boarded a boat and went up and down a small river to try to catch a glimpse of some of the wildlife. We spotted a lot of cool things! Tony was really good at spotting the Caimens (relative of the crocodile/alligator).
Below is a Basilisk. Yes, my first thought was also Harry Potter when the guide said it was a Basilisk. I was looking for a huge venomous snake that I should not look in the eye. (ironic, isn't it?)...anyways, it was this little green guy! How cute....
Then we saw some bats on the underside of a log in the river. They are camouflaged pretty well, aren't they? Later in the week, we'd visit a bat museum and learn more about these little guys.
Of course....we saw some monkeys too! This is a white faced monkey which is an omnivore (eats meat and veggies). We also saw some howler monkeys here..but my pictures from later in the week are better and are posted later on.
See the white faced monkey carrying its baby in the picture below?
Shhhh....don't tell the government. We stepped foot into Nicaragua while we were on vacation and didn't tell them! We discovered that Nicaraguans do a lot of the manual labor for the Costa Ricans.
To finish the day off, we went to a Thermal Hot Springs which was heavenly! The pools were heated naturally by the volcano...and the water was so crystal clear! We spent a couple of hours relaxing.
Day 3 - Traveling to Monteverde (the Cloud Forest)
We woke up and took a boat across Lake Arenal which is known for its windsurfing. I think this is one of only 2 activities that Costa Rica offers that we didn't try! haha! After we crossed the lake (which was about 30 minutes), we proceeded to board a minivan that was to take us 46 km. Yes, that is right only like 28 miles. That shouldn't take us any longer than an hour, right? WRONG!! It took us somewhere between 2-2.5 hours to get through the countryside...which was absolutely beautiful...but the roads were exactly why we chose not to drive from place to place and instead hire drivers. No pavement....no gravel....just a dirt road that has rocks (or boulders) sticking out of it because all they did was shovel out a path and let people start going. I can't even imagine this during the rainy season. It has to be nearly impossible to traverse. Thank goodness we stopped halfway through just to catch our breaths. We stopped and used the bathroom and grabbed a snack...and of course, Tony found a friend...as he always does in each country. I think in spanish you can call this a Perrito....[Sanders...please don't blame me for this. I tried to stop him]
After finally arriving at the hotel in Monteverde (which was only 11:30AM, but felt like we had been in a car for over a day!)...we walked around the town, had lunch and visited the bat museum. Tony suggested we do a sunset horseback riding tour...which was absolutely amazing! We even got the horses up to a gallop for a little bit!
This was truly an amazing sunset...
The perfect end to the day was dinner at the restaurant at the hotel. If you see Tony....ask him if he likes his steaks medium rare in Costa Rica :)
Day 4 - Monteverde Reserve and Zip Lining!
We woke up early the next morning and went into the Monteverde Reserve. We saw a lot of birds here. This was our first experience at birdwatching...it was kinda fun..but very attention demanding. I'd say the attention paid off!
Below is a nest of baby hummingbirds:
And our luck hadn't run out after seeing the volcano...we got to see the Quetzal which is an endangered bird and which many never get to see when they visit Costa Rica! Absolutely beautiful!! Below is the male:
And we were fortunate enough to also see the female. We saw these beautiful creatures 4 times through our nature hike:
Then we visited the hummingbird gardens where the birds flew out from the forest to the feeders. Below is a Violet Sabrewing. Absolutely beautiful. We also saw a toucan and lots of other birds...but didn't get any really cool pictures.
In the afternoon, we went ziplining. Our wildlife viewing had not yet ended when Tony spotted this thing walking in an open area just down from where we got dropped off. We braved it and walked down to see how close we could get:
Here we are all suited up and ready to zip! Yes, those belts are the only thing holding us to the line!
Here is Tony zipping across from mountain top to mountain top, 100 feet above the tree line!
Day 5 - Travel to the Pacific to Playa Conchal
We spent the day in the car (down the same bumpy road for 2.5 hours) traveling to the beach to meet up with the people I work with who also won the incentive trip to Costa Rica. After the 2.5 hours of riding down the bumpy road where we could have no conversation because all of our senses were jarred out of us...we got to pavement just outside of Liberia where we had another 2 hours to travel to the beach. We'd never been so glad to get to our hotel! When we checked in, we found out we had a butler and that the resort was completely all inclusive. So we spent this day just relaxing and hanging out by the pool .
Day 6-Fishing!
After spending the afternoon vegging out...we decided we still had things left on the list to fulfill the entire list of Costa Rica Tourism. We were OK missing out on windsurfing...but we heard it was Marlin/Sailfish season in the pacific ocean...and that people were catching lots! Unfortunately, we couldn't find a boat to take us out for the entire day to do the sailfish thing..so we fished about 6 miles off the coast. We caught some amberjack and Tony also caught a Ray. It was just the 2 of us with the 3 locals out on the boat. It was really relaxing and perfect weather. I let Tony do most of the fishing...while I just soaked up the sun and watched the birds fish. Below is Tony's big catch of the day....
We walked back up the shore to the resort and watched the sunset. It was so nice and relaxing.
Day 7 - Lounging around and the Mangrove tour
Tony spent the day lounging around the pool, and I went on a Mangrove tour. A Mangrove is an area where the salt water from the ocean and fresh water from a river meet and make a briney environment. The trees that grow in this area are called mangroves also. I saw a little bit more wildlife in the mangroves:
Below is a crocodile...Eerie isn't he?
Here is a howler monkey just lounging around:
We came upon a barrel of monkeys....errrr....wait...I mean a family of adolescent monkeys. These guys were hanging and swinging just like the little red toy monkeys we've all played with. They were hilarious. These were howler monkeys also.
These cows were so funny! the long ears and humps in their backs were completely distinctive. I think they are called Braman cows...like the kind they have in India. This one just wondered right up to me while I was walking through the forest!
Day 8-Snorkelling
OK, yes, this brings me to the only other thing I can think of that we didn't do. We didn't SCUBA. We just didn't have enough time. *sigh* So, we did the next best thing....we went snorkelling. If you've been spoiled by the waters of the Caribbean...the waters of the Pacific coast around the area we were staying at left a bit to be desired unless you skin dove (which we did). We saw some puffer fish, little crabs, trumpet fish, and lots of other little colorful creatures. We did see this from the boat....my first Manta Ray! This guy had about a 13 foot wing span. Absolutely beautiful!!
We spent the next weekend celebrating Tony's 30th birthday party. Sanders (this blog is about him, right?)....spent the Saturday with Gma and Gpa Halsey. He loves playing with their dog Alexis. And on Sunday he got to play with Tony's sister's dog, Kona (A rottweiler). We spent Sunday visiting with Tony's family/aunts/uncles and everyone...and Sanders loved all the attention. Here are the people who were at Tony's party:
To show me his love this past week, Sanders decided on Thursday morning that he was going to sneak into my bedroom, grab my left shoe that I use every day for work and try to clean off some of those pesky mud spots that were on them. I think he scrubbed a little too deeply, and thus I have to make the conscious decision to put the shoe away in the closet to keep him from trying to help me out any more. This will be fine until he decides to grow thumbs and figure out how to open the door.
This past weekend, we went to the Kentucky Derby, and Sanders went back to Gma and Gpa Thackery's.
Here are Jessica and I, decked out in our Derby attire in our seats:
One of the horses running in a race:
Here is Sanders when we picked him up from Grandma's house. Sooo filthy! He needs a bath!
Since we'd been spending so much time doing other things....we thought Sanders could use a visit to the dog park yesterday. He has this new found love of letting the wind blow his hair back in the car...it is soooo funny looking! But at least he can see!
And we spent some time in the front yard yesterday, nosing around all the pretty flowers and smelling the new smells.....evidence on his face that he was in my flower bed where I'm trying to teach him that he can't go!
GUHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! While I was writing this.......I just noticed that Sanders has destroyed the first piece of my clothing! An $80 sweater. What a stupid dog! OK....I guess the time has come when the dog makes me be a tidier person. This is going to thrill Tony...because now he won't have to deal with all my clutter laying around. Secretly, I know Tony and Sanders are working together against me!
