TARCOLES - After we landed in San Jose we waited at the airport for our friends from Boston to arrive.  We collected Moose, Lisa, Brandi and Eric, picked up our rental car, and headed to a house we'd rented in Nuevo Arenal.  On the first day we woke up to the sounds of cicaedas, howler monkeys, about a thousand species of birds, and this view...



On our first day we decided to take a hike around Volcan Arenal, an active volcano that had it's last full eruption in 1992.  In 2001 some hikers were killed here but nevermind that.  Here's the volcano...



Here's the warning sign at the head of the trail.  Eric was not afraid...



Here's a very strange beetle we encountered on the trail.  We also encountered more ticks, and we had fun pulling them off each other later... but I don't like talking about that.



Here's us across from the volcano viewpoint.  From here you could hear volcanic rock spitting out of the volcano and tumbling down the slopes.  Later on that night - from an hour's drive away - we could see the lava flow glowing and we heard an explosion as it erupted just a teensy bit.



Here we are after our trip to the volcano.  Moose is up to no good with that rocking chair...



One of the cool things we did was head to a little butterfly/amphibian farm.  The guide took us for a short hike and got us lost at the end of the tour, but we got to see a toucan.  At the farm they had a bunch of screen covered arch buildings with all kinds of butterflies... along with an awesome assortment of tree frogs, including the poison dart frog varieties.



For the last half of our trip we stayed in Tarcoles across from the beach.  Well, across from the beach and the livestock rather.  There were over two dozen scarlet maccaws that would fly back and forth and roost in the trees around the house so Anna was pretty excited.  Here's a shot of one tree with a bunch of them...



Here's the goat that lived in the field just out our front door.  He had a lovely bleat but smelled kinda funky.  Lisa fed him a mutilated banana, and I think he enjoyed it.



These are the crocodiles that lived in the Tarcoles River just down the street.  If you can't tell from the photo, these guys are BIG.  We saw almost 20 of them hanging around together - waiting for something tasty.  Our water went out for a day and one of the locals suggested bathing in the river like they do.  Umm, yeah... not a chance.



We also took a trip to Carrara National Park and saw some good stuff including lizards, bats, toucans, trogans, monkeys, agoutis, and my personal favorite, poison dart frogs.  Here's one of the many we saw... you´re not supposed to touch them as the toxins in their skin do bad things to folks.  Anna and Moose were the best at spotting them.



Fresh fruit was in abundance down here and we took advantage of all the pinapple, mango, bananas, and watermelon that was available.  Here's a shot of Brandi and Lisa cutting up some delicious mango with Eric in the back... he wanted to soak it in the rum.



When night came we'd usually be out chasing toads, cicaedas, and lizards around the backyard, drink in one hand camera in the other.  And believe me, Moose would usually take a thousand pictures of everything we spotted.  He took this very artsy shot of a favorite visitor we got...



All in all we had a pretty busy week.  Between the sight seeing, the rum, the food and the sun we were pretty darned tired by the end of each day.  Some of us even took a little rest now and again.  I know Moose will make me pay for this photo...



Lisa, Moose, Brandi and Eric dropped us off in Alajuela today after a fun and scary car ride with Brandi-Andretti at the wheel through the guard-rail-less mountain roads of central america.  Thanks so much for coming down to visit us... it was awesome to see everybody and we look forward to more adventures! 

DRAKE BAY - We had to get to San Jose by 1:30 on May 2nd so we decided to fly.  The other alternative (boat, bus, taxi etc) required an overnight stay - and blew all kinds of time - but it was cheap.  Our flight to San Jose took 45 minutes but was pricey.  From the Mirador it was a 10 minute trip to the Drake Bay "airport" in a taxi that had to drive through a river (I quite enjoyed that bit).  Upon arriving at the airport we didn't actually SEE an airport.  Just this "check in counter"... 

Seriously, the check-in guy was sitting on a bench made of planks and blocks and called somebody on the radio with our passport numbers.  Here's where they weigh your bags... or the animal you just dragged out of the woods.

Check out the luggage counter...

The best part about this airport was the complete lack of security lines.  Before boarding the plane I didn't have to take my shoes off, walk through a scanner, or turn my head and cough.  Here's the plane... a 12 passenger Cessna Caravan.

We were the only passengers on the flight so we sat directly behind the pilot and co-pilot.  I of course had absolutely no interest in the array of gauges, lights, and switches on the panel.  I actually remembered how to use all the navigation systems from my flight school days.  Pilots are doing their pre-flight check now...

Here's the take off.  It was spectacular to pop over the end of the runway and see the beach and shore beneath us.

45 minutes later after a trip full of gorgeous mountain views we touched down in San Jose.  After reconsidering the alternative we agreed that the flight was some of the best money we've spent.

DRAKE BAY - Anna did a semester abroad 10 years ago in Costa Rica and never got the chance to visit the Osa Peninsula.  It was a pretty difficult place to get to back then and still is a bit out of the way today... but we got here and it is gorgeous!  You have to take a boat down-river to the ocean and then down the coast to Drake Bay... on the way we saw this "little" guy waiting for dinner...

We stayed at a place called "Mirador" and it was a bit of a splurge for us at 40/night per person, but that at least included meals.  There aren't any cars and there aren't many people so it's very peaceful and you can't beat the view.  Here's where we stayed.

This is what we had to look at all day...

For the entire trip Anna has been wanting to see scarlet maccaws in the wild.  We missed them in Belize, missed them in Guatemala, missed them up in northern Costa Rica... but we found them here!  There were quite a few of them too, and they are so loud that you could hear them a half mile away.  This one perched himself in a nearby tree to check us out (pardon the zoom)...

This pair did the same... they were very curious about us, and we them.  They are big beautiful colorful creatures that sound like cats fighting.

Anna loves these plants.  I think they're called "touch me nots" and they have the coolest defense mechanism against insects. 

If you touch them they fold their leaves like this...

Cool thing about the Mirador was the dinners were all communal... we sat with all the other guests so eating was a pretty social event.  Most were Europeans so you can bet politics never came up   We met a lot of cool folks... heres a picture of our friends Wolfgang and Timon from Berlin...

Wolfgang and Timon took a hike with us one day and led us to this cool bridge...

And we found this curious guy...

Then we came to this gorgeous beach that had a zillion tiny hermit crabs on the rocks...

Anna loved the maccaws but my favorite part was a night hike in the jungle.  The skies opened on us and we walked along the beach in a lightning storm but we saw some fantastic wildlife.  We saw giant smoky mountain frogs (known to eat kittens), a chunk-head snake, a tail-less scorpion (I held it), a venemous cat-eyed snake (held that too), masked tree frogs, marine toads, huge caterpillars, bioluminescent moss... and the quintessential rainforest creature - the red-eyed tree frog!  They are extremely hard to find, and I've wanted to see one since the last time I visited Costa Rica... so I was pretty excited.  I unfortunately didn't take this photo but here he is...

The trip into Drake Bay was a 2-day long complete pain in the ass so we decided to fly out.  It was expensive but easy and the views were so spectacular it turned out to be another one of the highlights.

LOS CHILES - Well, we are camped out in Los Chiles, Costa Rica, trying our best to avoid the chaos that is Semana Santa. The Costa Ricans celebrate Good Friday in a big way. Everyone closes shop and goes on vacation. Which is fine, unless you are a traveller trying to take buses or need to purchase something. Suddenly everthing became a big hassle... the buses were all full and all destinations were booked. So we found a quiet little town way up by the Nicaraguan border, where not much happens, and are hiding for a few days until the storm passes.

So the only thing of interest to report about in the last few days are Costa Rica´s Pre Columbian stone spheres. So heres the deal. Some 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, the communities in Costa Rica decided to build these huge balls out of rock. Some got to be up to 6 feet in diameter and weigh multiple tons. The communities back then only had stone tools, and the spheres were perfect within 5mm. No one really knows why they built them, though some of them were lined up pointing north or in other patterns. I thought that was pretty intriguing.

Heres Tom with one we came across in San Jose, the capital. Tom was not quite as impressed by the big stone balls as I was. Yeah, its not Stonehenge, but you gotta wonder...